The True Story of Craig, Child of God, and God's Amazing Love
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Shared With Elizabeth Stalcup, founder and executive director of Healing Center International
“But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God. ”
We pray for people each day at Daily Connect, our mid-day time to gather on Zoom to connect with each other and God. One of our regular attendees, Emily, asked us to pray for a friend in her apartment complex named Vanessa. Vanessa had been diagnosed with ALS, a degenerative neurological disease that affects the nerves in the brain and spinal cord. It is a horrible diagnosis. The disease eventually takes away one’s ability to walk, dress, write, speak, swallow, and breathe.
We prayed close to daily for Vanessa and learned over time that she was a transgender woman. Through Emily, we learned that Vanessa had come back to Jesus, a surprise (to me at least) because I did not know that she was a Christ-follower. We learned the Vanessa had moved back to her family home. At one point, Emily—with Vanessa’s permission, forwarded Vanessa’s testimony to me.
Many days later, I began the intercessory prayer time at Daily Connect by praying for Vanessa. I believe the Holy Spirit was leading me because I prayed that she would experience a glorious end. I was picturing a divine encounter where heaven would open, and she would be drawn up into God’s loving embrace. All would be put to rights.
Two days later I learned that God had another answer to my prayers. One hour and ten minutes after I prayed Vanessa had a divine encounter. Here is that story.
Craig’s Story in His Own Words . . .
First some history . . .
Many people, over the course of my life, have told me I should write a book. This is the closest I'll ever come. If your only take away from reading this is learning some facts about my life and my struggles, then I have failed. My prayer is that you will see God's forgiveness, patience, mercy, grace, comfort, healing power, and most of all, his amazing love.
I started out as Craig. Just a typical boy, doing and enjoying, typical boy things. Around the age of six or seven, I began to be jealous of little girls. My mother would take me to Sunday school, and I would see the girls dolled up in their pretty dresses with all the frills, lace, and petticoats. Pretty ribbons in their long hair; shiny, black patent leather shoes on their feet. I wanted so very much to be one of them. At the age of nine, I put on women's clothes for the first time. From that moment on, there was never any doubt in my mind. I believed that I was meant to be female.
Fast forward to 1969 and my senior year in high school. A new girl had joined our class. Her name was Sara. For many months she shared the same Gospel message I have been sharing with you. Eventually, I started going to church with her and her mother. We started having feelings for each other, and so before long, I asked her to go steady with me. She turned me down though, saying that the Bible taught that Christians should not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers.
This was a real dilemma for me. I desperately wanted to go out with her, but I knew that if I was going to accept Jesus Christ as my Savior, it had to be for the right reasons. I have always been a stubborn, hard-headed individual, but somehow, God got through to me. Finally, very late at night on Memorial Day of 1970, I took a walk by myself to the outskirts of town. There, on a quiet little bridge, I confessed my sin and asked Jesus to save me.
The Bible says that when we accept Jesus, we become new creatures in Christ. Old things pass away. Everything becomes new. God gives us a new heart and new desires --a desire to love him, read and obey his Word, and put him first in our lives. This is exactly what happened to me, big time. I had been accepted at the college of my choice, but right away I said, “Forget that. I want to go to Bible college.” God's message of forgiveness had completely transformed my life, and I wanted to share that message with the world. I wanted to be the next Billy Graham!
Bible college was a shock to my system. First of all, most of my classmates came from Christian homes and knew so much more about the Bible than I did. Second, I had never spent a day of my life away from my family. Now, suddenly, I had a roommate and was sharing a dorm with a whole bunch of guys I didn't know. I felt very uncomfortable. The third thing I was unprepared for involved sharing my faith with others. On weekends, groups of us would go out to various college campuses in the area to hand out Gospel tracts. Often, these students had questions that I, as a new Christian, did not have answers for. This bothered me a great deal. Lastly, much to my dismay, my desire to be female, which I thought had disappeared for good, suddenly resurfaced. Needless to say, this was not the start to my Christian life that I had anticipated.
I don't want to make it sound like my two years at Bible college were all bad. I absolutely loved studying the Bible. I had fantastic teachers, men and women who really loved the Lord. Even with that great education, I still managed to mess up my life. I can't imagine how much more messed up my life would have been without that solid foundation.
The second great thing that happened while there was meeting Darcia. I was finishing my first year; she was in her second. Surprisingly, I can't remember how we met. All I know is that we fell in love in no time flat. Darcia loved the Lord and came from a good Christian family. She also sang in the choir and played piano which only made me love her all the more since the piano is my all-time favorite instrument. A year and a half later, in November of 1972, we were married.
We were young, goofy, and very much in love. We had next to nothing in the way of earthly possessions, but we had each other. We were inseparable. I knew then, and I'm just as certain today, that she was the woman God wanted me to spend the rest of my life with. She was, and always will be, my soulmate. It was like a fairy tale. Until it wasn't. You see, I didn't tell her beforehand about my need to dress up in women's clothes and my desire to be female. I was young and very naive back then; we both were. I honestly believed that when I got married and had a normal, healthy sexual relationship, that those desires would simply go away. They didn't.
It was probably about six months into our marriage when I told her. It came out of the blue and of course Darcia took it very hard. Any young wife would. To her credit, she tried extremely hard to make our marriage work. She still loved me. She had faith in me and faith in God. Still, my desires only increased. I put her through a living hell. Many times, instead of coming right home after work, I would go to the local shopping center and try on women's clothes, just for the thrill of being able to wear what I wanted to wear, if only for a few minutes. Sometimes, since I had no money, I would steal the clothes, put them on in the car, and drive around. We were living in Lancaster then, right in the heart of a very conservative Bible belt. One day, there was a knock on the door. The police had come to arrest me. The charges were basically drummed up fabrications to get me to stop going into stores and trying on clothes, but I was much too ashamed to fight them. Instead, we moved to the Washington DC area, near to where one of Darcia's brothers lived.
I think one of the hardest things for both of us was not having anyone to confide in. Transsexuality was not something people talked about much in those days.
Finally, we did seek help. I talked to one of the college deans. I had never known that the Bible had anything to say about this subject, but it does. Deuteronomy 22:5 states that any man who wears women's clothing is an abomination in the sight of God. Yes, the Bible does call it a sin. I can just hear all the denials and excuses many of you want to make in my defense. I can hear them because I have made them all my life. Most of my life has been a struggle between my Christian faith and my desire to be a woman. My sinful-self prevailed in many a battle, but in the end, Jesus Christ won the war.
The dean recommended a Christian psychologist. I went a few times, but nothing seemed to help. Then, about two years before our marriage ended, a major event took place. Those of you who know about it, already know; those of you who don't, don't need to. All you need to know is that it was a very sad and difficult two years. And yet, despite what happened during that time, God gave both of us a wonderful blessing. Still, I could not seem to get victory over my sin. We finally ended up getting a divorce.
Aren't you glad this is only a condensed version of my life story? Okay, so far, I have been painting this narrative in fine detail. It's time to switch brushes and start using some broader strokes.
My soap opera life continued. I went on to have another marriage and several more serious relationships, all of which were doomed to fail. The problem was this: I had learned the hard way to be honest with women up front. Not only did I tell them that I wanted to be a woman, but I also happened to share with them the tiny fact that I didn't believe I could ever love another woman like I loved Darcia. How's that for a couple of pick-up lines? It boggles the mind, but most of them believed they could change me.
Finally, in 1990, after a two-year failed attempt to live for the Lord, I gave up on relationships all together and gave in completely to my transsexuality. I legally changed my name to Vanessa, went on hormones, and started my journey. My boss, at the vending company I worked for, was very open-minded and understanding. Ours was one of two branches in the country where they were trying out a new supervisory position. They offered me the job and I took it. For a year and a half, I dressed and lived full-time as a woman. It was difficult being trans back then, but I loved it. Unfortunately, through no fault of my own, the position was eliminated, and I had to go back to route work where I would be out in the public eye and not living comfortably as a female.
For most of the next 23 years, I dressed up only at home and on weekends when I would go to lesbian bars where I felt comfortable. Like I said, unless you were very passable, life was difficult for a transgender person at that time in society. All this time, I was far from God. I picked up hookers. I even became a prostitute myself for a short while, just to see how I felt about being with a man. I started watching porn.
Fast forward again to 2014. One day, coming out of the local CVS drugstore, I ran into two women handing out flyers for a community church. I decided to go check it out. I could feel God calling me back to himself. I started attending regularly. I even went to prayer meetings, Bible study, and a weekend retreat. I met several times with the pastor, one of the godliest men I have ever known. We discussed and prayed about my situation. Then, because of day trading in the stock market, I ended up losing the house I had lived in for almost 40 years. Instead of trusting and obeying God, I shut him out again.
Right about now, you're probably wondering where God is in this whole picture. Where did that relationship go? What were my thoughts when I was doing all these things? Where were my heart and soul this whole time?
Before I answer these questions, you need to understand me, and to understand me, you need to know a little bit about my father, because even though I almost hated him for about the first 20 years of my life, in many ways I am very much like him. The first thing you need to know about him is how passionate he was about things. My father was an inventor. You always knew what my father was working on because he could never shut up about it. He would talk incessantly about whatever he was involved in at the moment. My father believed, and constantly drummed it into my head, that anything worth doing was worth doing right. You should never do anything halfway. I am the same way. It's either all or nothing with me.
The second thing you need to understand about my father is that, like me, he was transgender. My mother told me when I was about 20 years old. Prior to that, no one ever knew. My father hid his secret well. In those days, you had to. At least I lived in a time period when society was becoming more open and tolerant of such things. I can't imagine how hard it was, for both my father and my mother. The fact that they were married for more than 60 years when my father passed away is an attestation to the great love they had for each other.
Two questions have haunted me my entire life, at least until recently. Those two questions have spawned many more, but basically, everything for me has boiled down to those two. Why did God allow me, at such an early age, to be transgender? Why, after accepting Jesus Christ as my Savior, after praying about it repeatedly, didn't God remove this problem from my life?
The Bible says that God has a perfect plan for each of us. First, we need to accept his free gift of salvation. Each of us comes into this world alienated from God because of our self-centered, sinful nature. God, in his grace (undeserved favor), provided a way for us to be reconciled (restored). He sent his Son, Jesus Christ, to pay the penalty for our sin. Not only did Jesus die for our sins, he also rose from the dead to have victory over sin and death so that we, as believers, could live in newness of life and have victory over sin also. God even gives us the Holy Spirit to help us. God's perfect plan for believers is that, through growing in our knowledge and understanding of Jesus, we may be made more like him.
What's the problem then? Why don't we see faithful, obedient Christians everywhere we look? As I have said in previous messages, God did not put us on this earth to be robots, programmed only to love and serve him. He gives us free will. He gives us minds capable of making choices. Again, I've said it before, but it bears repeating. Christians are not perfect. They are merely sinners who have, by the grace of God, and through faith in what Jesus accomplished, been forgiven.
In Luke 15:11-32 we see the story of the prodigal son, but we are never told why the father allowed him to go away and live the foolish life he lived. David, who God calls a man after his own heart, committed adultery, deceit, and even murder. In 2 Corinthians 12:7, it says that the Apostle Paul was given a thorn in the flesh. Not a literal thorn, but something that caused him great anguish. He implored God three times to remove it, but God did not. In this case, there was no disobedience involved. I only mention it to point out another example of God allowing something to happen. I could give many more examples from the Bible, but we also see it in our everyday lives. We always ask the same question. Why does God allow certain things to happen?
I could give a hundred rationalizations for my behavior over the years. I could say that I never really was male; that I was simply a female trapped in a male body. Our problem, as humans, is often perception. God sees things differently, especially when it comes to sin. The Bible says that the main purpose for which we were put on this earth is to glorify God. He wants to, deserves to, and should be, first in our lives. Number one! Anything we put ahead of God is an idol. That can be self, reading great books, playing pool, money, career, other people, or a desire to be female.
Transgender people probably know this better than anyone. People tend to make judgments based upon what they see. God looks at the heart and he knows mine. He knows, even though I rebelled against him, that deep in my heart, I love him and desire to do his will. Three times--during my first marriage, then from around 1988 to 1990, and again in 2014--I came back to God and tried to live a victorious Christian life. We often hear it's not how many times you get knocked down that count; it's how many times you get back up. As a Christian, all our sins are forgiven--past, present, and future. No matter how many times we fall, no matter how far we stray, the Bible says that as Christians, our sins have already been forgiven and God is waiting with open arms for us to come back in repentance so that we may once more have fellowship with him.
As I have stated, I am an all or nothing type of person. I was not lackadaisical in my attempts to live a good Christian life. I went to church. I read my Bible. Once, I even memorized the whole book of Philippians, all 104 verses. I prayed, I prayed, and I prayed some more. Three times I had tried to live a life pleasing to God and three times I failed. I felt defeated. Another excuse I used for staying away from God for such long periods of time was the fact that I hate hypocrisy. I was not about to pretend that my relationship with God was good when I was living in sin. It was easier to pretend I wasn't a Christian, keep silent about my faith, and just live as I pleased.
I like analogies, so I'll give two, and then, finally, we'll get back to my story. The first one involves God's will for Christians; the second deals with where I was for so many years.
God's will is like the GPS in your car. In the Bible, God lays out the path He wants us to take. However, unlike your GPS, God's will is always perfect. Your GPS only gives you directions. It does not grab the steering wheel out of your hands and force you to go its way. In the same way, God does not force us to obey him. With the GPS, if we make a mistake or choose a different path, it simply recalibrates. The same is true with God. If we go astray, we can confess our sins, ask for forgiveness, forget the past, and get back on track.
In 1970, my life was like a beautiful garden that God had planted. The flowers were the things I mentioned in the first paragraph of this story: God's forgiveness, patience, mercy, grace, etc. But sin is like a weed. Left unattended, it not only grows, it multiplies. Before long, they take over and hardly a flower can be seen.
Okay, back to my story. I'm nearing the end. God's light is at the end of the tunnel.
In 2015, after losing my house, I rented out a room from a nice, kind-hearted woman who owned a condominium in College Park. The next five years were the happiest years of my life up until then. Notice, I didn't say joyful. I said happiest. Everything fell into place for living the life I wanted to live as a woman. The grounds of the complex are adjacent to Greenbelt Park and there are so many beautiful, flowering trees there. I loved the fact that they allowed pets. I made friends with the many people I met while they were walking their dogs.
A true believer, one whose life has been bought and paid for with the blood of Jesus Christ, can run, but never completely hide from God. The Holy Spirit still resides in your body. No matter how much you may try to push him away, he is still there, whispering to you: Yeah, you may be enjoying this life you're living, you may be happy, but you know this is not the life you were meant to live.
I closed my ears to that voice. After all, this was the life I had always dreamed of. Times had definitely changed. Living my life as a woman was so much easier now. Gone were the fears of laughter and rejection. My family and friends were very supportive. I totally embraced this newfound freedom to be the woman I had always wanted to be. Also, I was retired now and could do the things I had always wanted to do. I played pool four or five days a week and made so many wonderful friends. Then there were books. All my life, I had longed for the time to do some serious reading. It is so pleasurable to just sit back and enjoy a great book. From that point on, I read more than 60 a year.
Finally, finally, finally, in 2019, I got approved for gender reassignment surgery. I was over the moon excited! Wanda, a friend of mine from pool, agreed to go with me out to Portland, Oregon, as my support person. On February 6th, 2020, I had my surgery. My doctor was amazing, and everything went smoothly. I can't describe how great it was to finally have my body match how I felt inside. I couldn't wait to get home and start my happily ever after life.
It turned out to be the world's shortest fairy tale. The week after we got back to Maryland, Covid shut everything down. About this time, my life began to unravel. Covid was bad enough. Yes, I would miss my friends and playing pool, but there was something else going on. Back in September of the previous year, I began noticing a slight slurring of my speech. Then in December, I pulled a muscle in my neck which led to pain and tingling in my left arm. My doctors were concerned that maybe I had had a slight stroke, so they ordered an MRI of my brain. The brain scan came back negative, and I was allowed to have my surgery, but now, in March my speech issues were starting to get much worse.
Because of Covid, I put off going to the doctor, but by July I couldn't take it anymore. I wanted answers. I talked to my primary care doctor and then had two video visits with a neurologist. He asked me to hold out my left hand. I had never noticed how much atrophy there was between my thumb and forefinger. He didn't mention ALS during the first visit, but I looked up my symptoms and I was quite sure. We talked about my self- diagnosis during the second call. He was pretty certain that I was right, but he wanted me to have a number of tests. I didn't want tests. I wanted to die. In the space of a few short months, I had gone from happily ever after to death sentence. I had experienced my fair share of pain and sorrow throughout my life, but nothing like what I went through for the next five months. I hit rock bottom. All I could think about was everything I was about to lose--my speech, my ability to swallow, the use of my left hand, basically, my whole independence. I didn't want to go through all that, and I didn't want my family to have to watch it happen. I didn't want to become the somebody that everybody feels sorry for. I have always loved life to the Nth degree--family, friends, nature, music, reading, playing pool, all of it. And still I wanted to die.
But the worst thing for me was not what I was about to lose, but what I felt I had already lost. I remember talking to my sister, Linda, one night. I was in tears as I went through my whole litany of sorrows. Then, I remember saying something like this: "The worst thing is that I feel like I have lost my faith." It wasn't about my salvation. I still believed that Jesus died for my sins and that I would go to heaven when I died. It was about never having felt so far removed from God. I was never angry. I never blamed God. The only thing I felt was sad, capital letters SAD, a million miles away from God sad.
Throughout my life, I have often thought of writing some poetry or songs. I'll get a verse or two, but I never finish one. This is an example of one I started during this time period:
It was a cold, gray day
That Vanessa chose
To go away.
One last cry,
One last smoke,
Her tears the final words she spoke.
I spent practically every moment of every single day thinking about death and how I would end my life. If I had had access to a handgun, I wouldn't be sharing this story. I finally decided on pills. Overdosing wouldn't be as quick or as certain, but at least it wouldn't be as messy. There was only one small problem. I just could not do it. No matter how hard I tried to wrap my head around it, I knew I could not take my own life.
Finally, late one night, with nowhere else to turn to, I turned to God. I poured my heart out to him. I confessed my sin and begged him to help me. There was no miraculous voice from heaven. No angel appeared in the sky. The earth did not shake. But there was peace when I went to bed that night. The transformation from who I was then, to who I am now, did not happen instantaneously, but within a week or two the change was obvious, both to myself and to others. The transformation was miraculous, and it's still going on.
Looking back, I can see how God was working during those horrible five months, even though I didn't realize it at the time. It seemed like every time I turned on my car radio to a certain soft rock, contemporary music station, I heard the same song, a Christian song called "You Say" by Lauren Daigle. The Holy Spirit started to convict me. Then, on my birthday, August 9, after shooting pool for a couple hours, it was like God was telling me to stop by my pastor's house on my way home. I had not seen him for 5 years. I knocked on his door. He answered and the first words out of his mouth were, "Happy birthday!" I was dumbfounded. I can hardly remember the birthdays of my own family members. That incident has had a profound effect on me ever since. I still cry when I think back on it. It was a reminder that, like my pastor, God had not forgotten me, no matter how long I had been away.
I came back to God in December, but two things happened in January that really strengthened my faith. The first was a music video sent to me by a good Christian friend of mine, Emily. No song has ever had such a dramatic effect on me. The song is called "Another in the Fire" and it speaks to the fact that God is right there beside us as Christians, no matter what we are going through. The second thing was the way God used a book called More than a Carpenter by Josh McDowell to completely change my life.
So, now that we're at the end of my story, what about those two questions that plagued me my entire life? Humans are born curious. We always want to know why? I call it whyosity. The truth is, God never gave me answers, but as it turns out, I've discovered that I really don't need them after all. All I really need is Jesus.
One of my best friends recently asked me if I thought ALS was a punishment from God. She said she hoped not because that would break her heart. On the contrary, I see ALS as an amazing blessing in disguise. God used it to bring me back to himself. He has changed my heart, my mind, and my soul. In times past, I prayed and read my Bible because I thought that was what good Christians should do. I do them now because there's nothing in this world I would rather do.
Almost everyone who has responded to the first three emails I sent out, say the same thing. They tell me they are so happy that I am finding peace and comfort from my renewed faith. My response is always the same. Yes, God brought me back to give me peace and comfort in a difficult time, but the story does not end there. I believe He brought me back so that I could finally live a life of faith and obedience. He also had a message He wanted me to share with the people I love most - my family and friends. Now I have done that.
You may wonder, now that I have returned to my faith, how do I feel about myself as a woman? My answer is this: I rejoice in it. I think gender has always been a bigger issue for me than it has been for God. He has always been more concerned with my heart. The most important thing was not whether I called myself Craig or Vanessa, but rather, that God loves me and calls me a child of God.
But then on March 31, 2021 something amazing happened. You may not believe what happened to me, but it's true!
I sent this account to my family and friends the next day, April 1, 2021.
Up until recently, I can only remember one time when God spoke clearly to me. Shortly after I was saved, God told me to go to Bible college. After that, I believe God tried to speak to me many times, but I refused to listen. Most of the time, I was listening to Satan. However, in the past couple months, I can recount about a dozen times when I could clearly hear God speaking to my heart, telling me exactly what he wanted me to do.
Anyways, yesterday afternoon around 4:00, out of the clear blue, God spoke to me. It was a conversation between God and me that lasted perhaps all of 10 seconds. God said: I created you male and that is how I want you to live. Immediately, I responded, “Yes, Lord.” Afterwards, I asked myself, “What just happened?” In that brief space of 10 seconds, God had completely transformed my view of myself. For the first time in my life, I was okay with being a man. I was dumbfounded. I was flabbergasted. It is still hard to fathom how that change took place, but I am 100% certain that I want to live the remainder of my life as Craig.
The previous two times when I came back to God and tried to live a good Christian life, I always held that part of me back from God. It was like I was saying: Yes, Lord, I'll live for you, but I just can't let you have that part of me. I'm sorry, but I feel like a woman inside and that is how I want to live my life. I believe now that that is why I always failed. Yesterday, God knew that I was finally ready to surrender all of me.
In practical terms, not much will change. I'll get a haircut and exchange my purse for a wallet, but that's about it. But spiritually, it is the miracle I have always prayed for, and I cannot thank God enough. I love him so much!