“I didn’t just survive. I became. And I’m still becoming.”
🌿 I Wasn’t Born Yesterday
I was born again… at fifty-eight.
But the world only sees what’s new — the name, the hair, the linen clothes, the long-overdue freedom.
What they don’t see — unless I tell them — is what it took to get here.
So today, I’m telling them.
I’m telling you.
A Life I Didn’t Choose
Before Ava ever took her first breath, I lived a different life.
A life marked by service, by family, by ministry.
I was a husband. A father. A pastor. A man of God — or so the world believed.
I lived for decades inside a life I didn’t choose.
I was praised for how well I carried it, never questioned for how it crushed me.
People called it faithful.
But I called it survival.
I wore suits like armor and smiled through sermons while quietly dying inside.
I buried my truth beneath liturgy and labor, thinking that self-denial was a kind of holiness.
That silence was a form of loyalty.
That love meant never allowing my truest self to speak.
Two Separate Wounds
And behind that silence?
There were two battles raging.
One was the long, private ache of being closeted —
Knowing deep down I was queer.
Knowing I was a girl in a world that insisted I was not.
And believing I had to hide it to be worthy of love.
The other was something even darker:
I was raped.
Not once. Not some “incident.”
It was real.
And it stayed buried for decades — festering beneath everything:
my calling, my relationships, my very sense of worth.
Let me be clear:
These were two separate wounds.
They arrived in the same season of my life,
But they were not caused by each other.
My queerness was not the result of trauma.
And my trauma did not define my identity.
Still, I carried them both in silence.
And silence, my God, is a slow death.
The Long Road to Ava
I raised children with a locked heart.
I loved my wife while hiding the most painful pieces of who I was.
Not because I wanted to lie —
But because I didn’t believe anyone could love me if they really knew.
And honestly, for the longest time,
I wasn’t sure I deserved to be loved at all.
But one day, I got tired of dying quietly.
So I came out — not because I stopped loving others,
But because I finally started loving myself.
I chose to transition.
I claimed my name.
And I began the long, holy process of becoming Ava.
Sacred, Not Selfish
And yes, it cost me.
People I loved stepped away.
Some looked at me like a stranger.
Others called me selfish.
But I know this in my bones:
I am not selfish.
I am sacred.
My gray hair falls like freedom across my shoulders now.
My linen clothes fit not just my body, but my soul.
I walk in truth — sometimes trembling, but always real.
If my truth makes you uncomfortable,
Imagine carrying it — all of it — for forty years.
I didn’t come out to shock anyone.
I came out to save myself.
To resurrect the little girl buried under decades of pretending.
Don’t Look at Me with Pity
So don’t look at me with pity.
Look at me with awe.
Because I didn’t just survive.
I became.
And I’m still becoming.
This is Ava.
And she wasn’t born yesterday.
She was born from the fire.
Leave a Reply