Laura’s Beautiful Transformation

Dannah Gresh: Laura Perry Smalts understands the grace of God. Grace that rescues . . . and grace that transforms.

Laura Perry Smalts: I didn’t have to clean myself up in order for Him to save me, but He didn’t leave me there.

Dannah: This is the Revive Our Hearts podcast with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, coauthor of True Woman 101, for June 21, 2023. I’m Dannah Gresh.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: Laura Perry, actually, now Laura Perry Smalts, is a name you may have heard before here on Revive Our Hearts. She’s become a dear friend of mine and a sweet friend of this ministry. Laura has a deeply moving testimony, and she’s shared that at several Revive Our Hearts events, including recently at the Mujer Verdadera conference in Mexico. Today we’ll hear a message she shared at an ROH Revive conference. 

Let me try and paint the picture for you. Laura got up there with no notes, nothing in her hands, no podium in front of her, no mic stand—just this precious woman standing on the platform sharing out of her heart, out of her journey, and most importantly out of the Scripture which she had memorized and flowed from her lips to our audience. You could have heard a pin drop as Laura shared her story. It was breathtaking.

After Laura's message, so many women came up her and to me and to our team and said, "We need this testimony to be heard in other places." Women talked about issues their children are facing, even in Christian schools. Laura's story is a powerful illustration of the confusion and the seeds the devil has sown in so many people's hearts—including Laura, who grew up in the church and in a Christian family. But it's also a beautiful illustration of the power of the Holy Spirit of God to transform the most confused and broken and rebellious people in our culture.

I know Laura's story is also a great encouragement to moms and grandmoms whose children and grandchildren have walked away from the Lord and are making foolish or ungodly choices. This story encourages us to believe that God really can change those prodigals' hearts. Let's listen to Laura Perry Smalts as she shares how the Lord can redeem brokenness and turn it into a thing of great beauty. Here's Laura.

Laura: I'm so glad to be here and sharing my story. I really rejected God’s design; I didn’t like God’s design of woman. But I’ve talked to a lot of women that maybe haven’t traveled the path that I did, maybe didn’t take it to that extreme, but I think a lot of us struggle with God’s design of woman, with understanding it. I think a lot of that is because we’ve been wounded by other people. Other people have put information on us about how our design is not good. 

For whatever reason, I really want to challenge each and every one of us today, even if we don’t fully understand it, if there are things about our personality or our gender, our body, whatever it is that we have not agreed with God that it is good—there are things we don’t like about ourselves. I really want to challenge us today in my story to really believe God that His design is good.

There’s an analogy I like to use. In kindergarten I was in a school play, and we were doing little nursery rhymes. This was one of the most embarrassing moments of my life. I was not the class clown. I didn’t like a lot of attention, but all the parts had been assigned. They got down to the last one, and I got chosen to play Humpty Dumpty. I was mortified! They put me in this big plastic sack full of newspaper, and I was about this big around. My only job was to sit on the wall while they read the nursery rhyme, and then just fall over and crack. So, I remember as he’s reading, 

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall;
All the king’s horses and all the king’s men
Couldn’t put Humpty together again.

That was kind of what I felt like a lot of my life. My life had just been shattered beyond repair, and there was no one that could repair it, no one that could put it back together.

When I was little girl, I grew up in a good Christian home. We were at church every time the door was open, and I’d heard all the Bible stories. I was in Bible drill, and I was in Vacation Bible School and Christian school—all the right things. We were doing all the right activities. 

My mother, whom I love very much and I don’t blame my mom at all, but I want to tell you a little bit of her story. So many women have identified with her. The reality is that we are all sinners, we’re all sinners raising other sinners, and so there are ways that we do hurt each other. I think my mom was just completely unaware. She was trying so hard in her own flesh to please God; she didn’t really have that deep relationship with the Lord. She knew how to check the right boxes. She knew how to read her Scriptures the right amount of times for that day. She knew how to pray a certain amount of times that day. She knew what committees to be on and what Sunday school to be in and what things to teach, and she played the piano. She was doing all these different things, and yet she didn’t really have a deep relationship with the Lord. She’ll tell you that now in her own testimony.

When I was little, she was often just too stressed. She was doing so much she just didn’t have time for me. She was pushing me away a lot: “Just go away. Leave me alone. Get off of me,” and just pushed me away. I would often overhear her telling other people how annoying I was, what a handful I was. She didn’t realize how deeply these things were impacting me.

I began to feel so rejected by her, even though she loved me very much. I understand that now, but she didn’t know how to show it. As a little girl, I was constantly pushed toward my dad. I was told I was so much like my dad. “You’re just like him; you act just like him; you look just like him. You’re two peas in a pod.” So, I really began to identify with my dad.

As I got a little bit older, I was getting more and more jealous of my brother, who seemed to have it all. He was six years older than me. He was very popular; he had a lot of friends, and he got a lot better treatment from my mom. I really began to desire to be my brother. 

The more that I tried to play with the kids at school, you know, naturally the kids kind of separate for the most part. The boys would play with the boys, and the girls would play with the girls, but I didn’t seem to relate to the girls. I didn’t know how. I really perceived it as rejection from them, but I think the reality was I didn’t know how to relate to the girls. I was already identifying so much with the boys, because I spent all my time with my dad and my brother. So, I found myself on the playground playing sports with the boys rather than playing with the girls.

My identity was just getting more and more fractured, because the more that I began to think of myself that way, I began to fantasize all the time about, “What if I had been a boy?” I began to write stories about being a boy, and I lived in this fantasy world.

Then when I was in middle school, I found out that I was diagnosed with polycystic ovarian syndrome. So my female system was not only not working, it was causing me constant, chronic, excruciating pain all the time. This body that I didn’t want in the first place wasn’t working very well. Then the doctors were telling me that I was likely never going to get pregnant. I was being told this at fourteen years old, and it began to devastate my heart. Even though I didn’t like being a girl because of the wounds that I had had—I’d had some girls betray me; there were a lot of things in childhood that I felt so wounded and rejected by girls. So even though I didn’t like being a girl very much, there was still that instinct that I had to desire children, but now I was being told that was likely never going to happen.

I really began to turn away from the Lord, and I began to get angry with God. I didn’t believe God that His design of me was good. I thought I knew better than God. When I was fifteen I still had never even heard the word “transgender.” I didn’t know there was anything I could do about me being female, but I was so angry with God, I told Him I would never serve Him again. I just really just began to run away from the faith. I wanted to be the opposite of a Christian, whatever that was. I wanted to sin as much as possible. I wanted to do everything I’d ever been told not to do, because I was so angry, and I was so wounded.

As I began to pursue that road and I began to get deeper and deeper into sexual sin. I thought that would bring me happiness and fulfillment. I thought that would help me get the worth and the value that I was seeking, but the reality was, the more that I gave away to men, the more I began to feel less and less valued. I began to be rejected and dumped over and over and over again, and just treated like absolute trash. I had guys, sometimes when they were drunk, they were honest about how they really felt about me. I just felt like I had no identity, no value. I felt so unwanted.

In fact, in college I had become so broken, I was so desperate. I couldn’t get any guy to really be interested in me. I eventually joined an adult site and began just meeting men all over the state, even for just one night, thinking, At least for a moment I’ll feel like someone wants me.

I was in this horrible relationship with an alcoholic, and I finally thought one day, The reason that this never works out, the reason I’m never happy, is because I was supposed to be the man. If I was the man, I'd know how to treat a woman. So, I began to shift in my thinking. I lived in a fantasy world for several months, and it just began to drive me crazy. I was consumed with this idea that I had to become a man.

I finally decided to just search in Google and see if anybody else felt like I did. I was amazed at thousands of results that came up. 

I’ve heard this so much from these young people that are going into these lifestyles. They’re broken; they don’t understand themselves; they have these desires and these feelings—and so many stories I’ve heard. “And then I went on YouTube and I found this person that said this, and they went into this lifestyle.” It clicks, and it’s like, “Oh my goodness, that’s me.” I hear this over and over and over. Social media is influencing our young people so much into these lifestyles!

I went to the support group meeting, and within five minutes they were like, “Oh, you are definitely a man!” So I was like, Yes! I knew it! This is who I am! At that moment, I believed I had always been born that way. That was really who I was. I was just a man trapped in a woman’s body. In fact, I wasn’t even openly transgender. I wanted to become a man and absolutely erase the existence of Laura. I didn’t ever want to even remember that I had been a girl, there was so much pain in my heart.

As I began to pursue that road and I began to take the hormones, my voice began to get lower, and I began to grow facial hair. Then I had my name legally changed. I was with a partner who was also living as transgender. He was a man living as a woman. So, we had that mutual comfort for one another in this journey.

But this journey was a lot harder than anyone had told us. We used to say we wouldn’t wish it on our worst enemy, because even in the early years, as much as it was exciting, it was also mentally very, very difficult, because I was trying to make it real. All the affirmation, either from what I was doing or from what the hormones were doing or from what other people were saying, it all sort of added to this identity, and yet, I was reminded every single day that it wasn’t real. But I kept thinking, One day it’s going to be real. One day this will all go away, and I will never remember that I had been a girl. I thought I could reinvent my life. So as began to pursue that, I had my name legally changed, and in 2009 I went to San Francisco and had an outpatient double mastectomy.

The reality was this whole time my parents were praying, and God was moving in my life. So even in the darkest depths—this moment that seemed like Satan had really won, and my parents were in completely despair—they didn’t know that a few days before my surgery my aunt had written me an email. She said she was compelled by the Lord to do this. I think it’s important to really wait on the Holy Spirit, but be willing to speak. She wrote me this email, and she said, “Laura, please don’t do this. You are such a beautiful girl. You are being deceived by the devil. This is straight from the pit of hell. I love you; please don’t do this.”

My aunt was one of the few women in my life that I knew had loved me as a child. I loved my aunt, and for her to tell me this was heartbreaking. I didn’t talk to her for a very long time—I was angry—but most of all, I was kind of ashamed. Deep down, I knew she was right.

As I was lying there on the operating table, I was looking down at all the purple-dotted cut lines on my chest where the doctor was going to cut me open, I thought, What if she’s right? What if I really am in the hands of Satan? What if I wake up in hell? But I was so desperate for this, I believed it so much, that I was willing to roll the dice. But for the first time in years—my parents didn’t know this for many years—I prayed, and I asked God to spare my life. I knew that I needed God. I knew that He was in control.

I woke up from my surgery, and I forgot God. I was so happy with the results. I was on my merry way, but God didn’t forget, and God really began to pursue me. As He began to intervene in my life, as He began to show me who I truly was, as He began to reveal Himself to me, over the years He would show up in my dreams. He would speak to me. He would speak to me through radio. He had so many ways that He was encountering me over and over and over again, and I know it was my parents’ prayers.

Just an example: one day I was driving down the road, and—this memory is one of the most clear memories from that entire lifestyle; I can still picture where I was on the road—I had been listening to a lot of rock music. I believe my dad was praying about my music and praying that God would change it. One day, all of a sudden, I realized how angry this music made me. I was like, Why am I listening to this? I’m so sick of this music; it makes me so angry! I turned the music off, and the Christian radio came on, and the presence of God filled my car. I began weeping uncontrollably, and I knew that God was after me. This was probably six years before I got saved. This whole time God is showing Himself to me over and over and over again through encounters, through people. 

So even though I’m running away . . . I was like Jonah. I knew when I was thirteen that God had called me to be a missionary. I knew I had a calling on my life, but I was running from God because I was in so much pain, and yet the whole time, God was running after me.

Over the years I kept thinking . . . I was still faced with this reality, because after my chest surgery, I realized that the surgery really hadn’t made me a man. I began to get very, very depressed, even though I liked the physical results. A couple years later I thought, It’s because I still have all the female organs. Once I have all the female organs removed, then it will be real. So, I had all the female organs removed, and that still didn’t make it real.

But as I started looking into the final surgeries, I was devastated. No one had ever told me how bad these surgeries are. If anyone is out there listening who is even considering this, please, these surgeries are so bad! There are so many complications, there are so many horrific things that have happened. On top of that, they’re never real. I realized how fake it was going to be. On top of that, they told me—I think they’ve improved slightly, but at the time those surgeries—40 to 60 percent would lose all sexual feeling physically, because of nerve damage. 

I was devastated. I was like, What now? I’m halfway transitioned; I’m like some freak in-between! But I began to realize even if I’d had this surgery, it was so fake. I realized that was never actually going to be a man. I had this job now where I was only known as male; they didn’t even know I was trans. No one in the whole company knew. I thought, What am I supposed to do now?

I was just faced with this mental hell every day. I tried to be in conversations where I would be telling something about childhood, and they don’t know I’m trans. It’s like, Oh, wait a minute. I couldn’t have been in Girl Scouts; I had to have been in Boy Scouts. I couldn’t have played softball; it had to have been baseball. I remember one time I got caught in a huge lie about an ex-boyfriend, and I’m telling this story, and as far as they know I’m a straight man that’s married to a woman. 

So I just began to be tormented by all of this. I didn’t want God, but God wanted me. I don’t know why, I didn’t deserve it. I was almost killed the year before I went into the lifestyle. We were sideswiped by a semi-truck. We were spun all over the highway into oncoming traffic with a semi-headed right for us. God peeled back the curtain just a little bit, and I could feel the demons coming for me. I knew I was headed for hell. I could feel the evil like I can’t even describe. I was in so much fear that I don’t think I could have endured it for more than a moment, because I don’t think the human brain can even comprehend that kind of fear. That was the year before I went into this lifestyle. God had so much mercy on me, and I think a lot of it is because of my parents’ prayers.

When I was at the lowest of the low, God began just in a very simple way—at first, my mom and dad tried so hard to fix me. They had tried to fix me for years. They had sent me to a group home in high school and paid a lot of money for it. They had tried so hard to fix me, but they got a point where the Lord really had them surrender me into His hands. In fact, He told my mom one day—He said, “Francine, only one of us is going to work on her. If you want to work on her, I’ll go sit down, but if you want Me to work on her, you go sit down, you get in the Word, and you work on your relationship with Me.” So God had been pursuing me during this time.

It started very simply. He ended up actually using my mom. I was working on a website for her, for her Bible study. God just began to reveal Himself to me through His Word. As I began to get more and more interested in the Word, I finally said one day, “Mom, what’s happened to me? Six months ago I was 180 degrees from where I am now.” I said, “All I want is to hear the Word of God. I have never wanted that in my whole life! What’s wrong with me?”

She said, “Well, I’ve been praying that God would draw you back like a magnet.”

I was like, “Wow, that’s what God has done.”

I didn’t have any explanation for it other than God had answered her prayer, because I knew I had never wanted that. So I realized then the power of God, that God was answering her prayers.

I went home that night and I began to repent of every sin I could ever think of. As I began to remember all my sin, I thought, Why would God want me? God, I am damaged goods! There’s no way You can restore my life. But I had this incredible encounter with the Lord a couple days later, where He proved to me He wasn’t done with me yet. I gave my heart so fully to the Lord, I was in complete surrender. I was so in awe that this God still wanted me, that He wanted my broken life. I was so excited I radically transformed in that moment, and I was going to be a man of God, and I was excited! I didn’t know yet that God was going to do. I was like, Wow, God saved me! I didn’t think He would save a transgender, you know. But I didn’t know He had another plan for me.

It’s funny, because I was so hungry for the Word of God. He began pouring His Word into me. I was listening to some form of the Word, either through preaching or a Bible study or something, all day every day. At work I had my headphones on; I’m listening to the Word all day.

At one point I’m getting more and more convicted—that’s the funny thing about the Word of God. I didn’t know that God could speak to me through all these different passages. It wasn’t even just the one or two (actually there are many) about sexuality necessarily, it was all kinds of other passages that God began to convict me with. “Surely your turning of things upside down shall be esteemed as the potter’s clay. For shall the thing that is made say of him that made it, ‘Why have you made me this way?’ Or shall the thing that is framed say, ‘He had no understanding’?”

God began to convict me of the way I was living, and I didn’t know what to do about it, because there was no way I was going back to being female. That was just not even an option. So, I kept trying to stuff away the conviction, but He kept bringing more and more. He was so gentle and so patient.

One night my mom was teaching—I asked her what she was teaching, and she said she was teaching on the judgment seat of Christ. I began to just tremble with the fear of the Lord. I went home that night and I said, “Lord, I want everything You have for me. I don’t want to miss anything You have! What do You want for me? I want to hear, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant.’”

I expected a checklist; that’s what I’d grown up with. “Do this, do this, do this.” Instead, He asked me a question. He said, “If you stood before me tonight, what name would I call?”

I said, “Oh, God, that is not fair!” I said, “I’ve repented of this. I said I was sorry. I know this is not Your will for me, but it’s too late now. I have facial hair. I’ve had all these surgeries. I’m legally male. I have a job where I am only known as male. There is no way I’m going back.” I’d never even heard of someone coming out of the lifestyle. I was like, “People don’t do this. This is a one-way street.”

It reminded me of John chapter 1, where it says that Jesus Christ Himself is the Creator, and He said, “You cannot claim to love me and yet reject my creation.”

I thought I was being condemned because I was not going back to being female. If God doesn’t accept me as Jake, then God doesn’t accept me. But in the most loving voice I’ve ever heard in all my life, He whispered to me and said, “Let me tell you who you are.” That’s what began to free me, because I realized then that no matter what I did, no matter who I said I was, no matter what I claimed to be, no matter how I looked, I was never going to be anyone other than who God had created me to be. I began to hear God speaking over me and calling me Laura. I had tried so hard to pretend like God was calling me Jake, but I knew He wasn’t. I really was.

In fact, it was funny. I had gotten all of my credit cards changed over into my new legal name, except one. It’s a bit of a long story, but I could not get this one card changed into my legal name. I had to call this particular company because of something that happened; I had to call them every month. Every month they would ask me, “Are you Laura?” It was like God was asking me, and I knew it. I lied about it every month, but God was after me. He was after this identity. He didn’t leave me. He saved me! I didn’t have to clean myself up in order for Him to save me, but He didn’t leave me there.

Over the next couple of months, I began to wrestle with the Lord, and He was wanting me to come out of that lifestyle, and I didn’t want to. I began to think of any way out of this. I was beginning to really hate and regret that I had done this, but at the same time there was no way I was going back to being female. I didn’t know how to solve this. I finally was in this deep, dark pit I couldn’t get out of, and I begged the Lord for over a month, with all my heart, to just take my life, because I saw no way out. I was in this deep, dark pit I couldn’t get out of. I could see the light at the top, but I had no way out.

He reminded me of this verse, Matthew 16:24–26. It says, “If anyone will come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake shall find it. For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and yet forfeit his own soul? Or what shall he give in exchange for his soul?” (ESV)

I had a clear vision of Jesus Christ getting down on one knee. He reached His hand down into the pit, and He said, “Do you trust me?” I knew He was asking me to walk away from everything. I was like, “Lord, I can’t do this!” I don’t know how on this earth—I did not have the faith for that at the time. He had been building my faith little by little. I had just this tiny seed of faith, and yet I knew I didn’t have any other option, because it was like, if I continue in this way—God had really withdrawn His presence—there was such a void. After I had known Him so closely, He’d been so near to me. I knew He wasn’t angry with me; I knew He wanted me to pursue Him. He asks us to love Him with all our hearts.

Just like the rich young ruler, who had done all the right things. Obviously in the pride of his heart he thought he’d kept them perfectly, but Jesus said, “One thing you lack,” and this was that moment. “Are you going to give up everything that means everything to you?” This is the only thing I wanted, because I thought it was the only thing that was ever going to make me happy. But the Lord was asking me to walk away.

I said, “Okay, Lord,” and I honestly thought I was going to be miserable the rest of my life. I could still picture the church I’d grown up in, and I thought, I’m going to sit in the back of the church, and they’re all going to snub their noses at me. They’re going to say, “It’s about time you shaped up!” I really thought I was going to have this horrible reception from them.

But as I walked away and I went back to live with my mom and dad—that’s what the Lord asked; that wasn’t my idea. That was the last thing I wanted to do at thirty-three! I went back to this church that I said I would never go back to. I was never going to step foot in the door. As I walked in, they embraced me. I can’t tell you. I told God He was going to have to help me love my name again, and I had 300 people that morning call me Laura. I said, “Okay, I don’t love it, but at least I’m used to it!” But I couldn’t believe how much they remembered me, and people hugged me and loved on me. 

When I went to my mom’s Bible study, these women that had prayed for me for years embraced me with such love, and they embraced me like one of the women. I was so blown away at what God was doing in my life!

I remember as He began to peel away the layers, as He began to unpack all of this, as He began to help me to forgive and let go of the wounds and the bitterness . . . You see, bitterness had destroyed my life. It wasn’t my mom’s fault, it wasn’t the fault of any of the girls that had abused me; it was my own bitterness and unforgiveness.

In Hebrews 12:15–16 it says, “Looking diligently, lest any man fall short of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you, and thereby many be defiled; lest there be an fornicator, or profane person, as Esau, who for one morsel of meat sold his birthright” (KJV). It was my own bitterness that turned me away from the Lord.

Those bitter roots may not cause you to go down a transgender road, but maybe they’ve caused you to stray from the Lord in some other way. Maybe they’ve caused you to have a hardness in your heart. Maybe there’s that one person that you just can’t forgive.

I shared the story about Humpty Dumpty earlier, and how my life had just been completely shattered, and I felt like it was just in ashes. In fact, at one point I remember this visual of scooping up the ash-heap of my life and going, “Lord, if You can do anything with it, You can have it, because I have screwed everything up. I have no recourse. There is nothing I can do.”

Maybe you’re in that boat today. Maybe you feel like your life has just been reduced to ashes. Maybe you are like that cracked egg, and nobody can put it back together. But there is a King who can. Maybe all the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put Humpty Dumpty together again, but the King of kings has resurrected my life, and today I’m so grateful to Him! I’m so grateful to our Savior, because today I stand before you, and not only have I thought I was going to be miserable the rest of my life. Not only have I embraced my femininity, I love being a woman for the first time in my life! (applause)

 

I am so grateful to our Lord and Savior who can redeem and restore whatever the enemy has stolen in your life. So don’t give up on your prayers. Believe the Lord for whatever He’s going to do in your life. That miracle that you are waiting on, God was answering their prayers the whole time. He can redeem and restore whatever has been broken, no matter how shattered it is, and He can restore the years the locust has eaten. (applause)

Dannah: That’s Laura Perry Smalts, sharing her story at a recent Revive Our Hearts conference. Isn’t it comforting to remember? God loves us just the way we are, but He also loves us too much to leave us the way we are. 

Laura goes into greater detail about her journey in her book, Transgender to Transformed. As she puts it, it’s “a story of transition that will truly set you free.” You’ll find a link to more information about her book in the transcript of today’s program.

In addition, be sure to check out Rethinking Sexuality, by Dr. Juli Slattery. It can be easy to slip into arguing about what’s right and wrong when it comes to gender and sexuality. But what if you had a resource to help you share the love of Jesus as you encounter the pain of sexual brokenness—your own or someone else’s? 

In her book, Juli Slattery will help you to think and act biblically and compassionately about matters of sexuality. The full title is Rethinking Sexuality: God’s Design and Why it Matters, by Dr. Juli Slattery.

Right now it’s our way of saying “thank you” for your donation of any amount in support of Revive Our Hearts, just ask about Rethinking Sexuality when you contact us with your gift. Visit ReviveOurHearts.com, or call us at 1–800–569–5959.

Thanks for listening today! Tomorrow, Laura Perry Smalts will be back, helping us answer questions like, “How do we make our churches a welcoming place to the sexually broken without compromising on what God’s Word teaches?” I hope you’ll join us to hear Laura’s helpful answers to some practical questions, next time on Revive Our Hearts. 

Reminding you: He doesn’t leave you there. Revive Our Hearts with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth invites you to experience true freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.

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