When God thought and made me a boy, he gave me a gift: the gift of a male body, and a male brain, and male feelings. These aren’t obstacles to overcome; they are gifts to be sanctified. Can they sin? Absolutely. There have been many times where I wish my particular impulses were different, or that I didn’t have to worry about the things I worry about. This is not a sign of a mistake. It’s the sign of imperfection, of a body that is waiting to be glorified, not emasculated.

When I was growing up, Mom would tell me sometimes:

God thought, and thought, and thought, and he made you a boy.

This is a beautiful thought to me. It used to conjure up images of God sitting carefully, deep in thought, deciding with unhurried precision whether my mother’s second child should be a boy or a girl. As I grew, so did my theology, and I no longer think that the moment of my divinely bestowed gender identity looked like the famous Thinking Man sculpture. But that’s not the point. I understand now what Mom was saying. The body that grew inside my mother was given to me, on purpose, by a Creator who decided to give it. It’s the opposite of a fluke, incompatible with impulse. God doesn’t think fast and slow; everything he does has an incomprehensible eternity’s worth of intention. God thought, and thought, and thought, and he made me a boy.

I wonder if this short thought might be a blessing in your own life and in the life of your home. We live in an era of near-unprecedented despair over the meaning of a life. Gender dysphoria is illness, and in the parched search for something to tell us what we are, many in our age have clutched at an illness to bestow some kind of direction to their lives. What Mom gave me those years ago was an antidote to despair. Unpack it:

God

The doctors didn’t, and don’t, decide who I am. Not even my parents engineered my maleness.

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