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Hey friends, I'm your host, anna Murby, and this is Honest Christian Conversations.
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This episode is going to be tough for a lot of people, especially those who are going through it.
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I am talking to Debra McNinch.
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She is a mom who's going through a difficult situation with her eldest child, her son, who is transgender.
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This subject really hits me hard because for some of you you might know if you've listened to any past episodes I've mentioned my eldest child and how she's no longer following the faith, but I kind of keep quiet about the rest of it because it's her story to tell, not necessarily mine, but she has also claimed to be transgender and it definitely hit me and my family out of the blue.
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Being Christians.
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It's not ideal, obviously, but it is definitely.
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It was refreshing to meet somebody who understands what I'm going through and we have a very candid, very honest and open conversation.
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You're going to be encouraged.
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If you have grandchildren going through this, if you have your own children, maybe you are going through this yourself.
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This is going to be a very encouraging episode for you.
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It's going to be very hard to hear some truths going on, but this is, overall, an episode that I believe everyone needs to hear, every believer, every church.
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So share the poo out of this one, sorry, but seriously, definitely share this episode.
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It's timely, it's necessary, it's perfect.
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It's out just in time for this upcoming month of June.
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Y'all know what that means, so, without further ado, let's get into it.
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Before the episode starts, make sure you follow the show so you never miss another episode, but I know there's many, especially with the temperature of today's culture, that are going to resonate with this, unfortunately.
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Why don't you give us an overview of how you came to Christ first, and then we'll jump into your story?
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Yes, thank you so much for having me on today and thank you for having an important, hard conversation.
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There are so many just in the church in general that are not talking about this, and so it's important that we do talk about hard things, and so I thank you for that.
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Yeah, no problem.
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And how I came to Christ.
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That is, you know I have your typical kind of story.
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Came to Christ, that is, you know.
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I have your typical kind of story.
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When I was a teenager I went to youth group and accepted Christ.
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You know I always I could tell you what I was wearing.
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I know the exact day, you know it was December 19th 1983.
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I had on a gray coat.
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I mean I, you know, I could tell you every single thing that that happened that day and I was baptized in January.
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Right after that, um, january 9th, Um, you know, again, I know exactly.
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I remember what I was wearing and and just all of those details.
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So it was very real and it was very life changing.
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But as a lot of people um, that happens to them.
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You know, you grow, you go to college, you kind of get away from that for a while, you kind of become your own prodigal and you just explore what else is out there.
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But it wasn't until I had my first child that it was just like something dropped into me that was like you've got to get back in church, and so that was kind of my start back into believing.
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You know, more than just saying I was a Christian, more than just saying the words, you know, and it was some tough times.
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Our family grew, we had to move.
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My husband had gotten caught in a downsizing and we had to move out of state estate and it was during that time when he was unemployed for about almost a year, that people would be like are you okay?
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And out in public I was like, yeah, I trust in God.
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He's got this, you know.
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But at home I was like Lord, what are you doing?
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And so that was really when my faith became real.
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And it was during that time, after our move and just going to a different kind of church maybe than I had attended in the past, and I just made, I went there was this like moment that I went from Jesus just being my savior to Jesus being my Lord, and I and I understood what that meant to just have him really in control of every part of my life.
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And so that's kind of my journey into who I am today is just in that pit of not knowing and having to trust God.
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I always like to joke that faith is super easy when you don't need it.
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Yes, you need it.
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You're like that's when you have to decide.
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You know what am.
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I made of so yeah, exactly, and that's why we go through trials, because he's trying to test us and refine us.
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It's not fun.
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It's definitely it's not fun.
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How, how did you get into the situation that you are in now, where you have very close ties with the LGBTQ in the sense that your son is transgender?
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I believe, in the sense that your son is transgender.
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I believe, yes, yes.
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So how did that come about?
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About seven years ago you know, I like to joke my kids had they were all adults, all out of the house and we we had raised them.
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They all were raised in church, they went to youth group, they went to Christian college.
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We did all the things.
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We did all of the right things and we kind of thought, like a lot of people, that you know, you have this little slot machine and you just put the quarters in, you know of church, youth group, church camp, and then when you're ready to pull that lever and send them out into the world, like it's just going to come out all cherries, right.
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I mean that was kind of what I think I thought.
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And so about seven years ago, I got a phone call from my oldest child that said Mom, I'm transgender, and at the time I really one.
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I love to just say I didn't even know what that meant.
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I really did not know exactly what that meant and I sure didn't know what my family was going to look like from that moment on.
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I always just like to say there's a famous picture of a tsunami that hit Thailand, like over a decade ago, and it's this picture of people sitting on a beach and they're just enjoying their day.
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They're just out in the sunshine with their families.
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What they don't know, though, is there's a wave out in the ocean, where the ocean has pulled back and it's getting ready to hit them, and nobody knew it, and that was kind of what happened with that announcement for me.
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I didn't know that this wave was getting ready to come in and hit my family.
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I didn't see it coming.
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I didn't have anything that I knew that was going to happen.
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There was nothing leading up to that moment that would have led me to believe that was going to happen.
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It just happened, and so, when it happened, I had to decide.
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I thought I had built this little house where it was just this perfect little family in this house, and I was just sitting watching the waves and the beach, and I was just waiting for the grandkids to roll in and all the things that were coming in the next season, but what I didn't know is my house was getting ready to be leveled by a wave, and I had to decide at that moment, right then, and there is my house built on the rock of Jesus Christ, or is it built on shifting sand?
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And so that is how my whole kind of new thing with the battle cry movement that I have got started was with that announcement.
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Yeah, I love your analogy of the tsunami.
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It's sad, but it explains my situation as well, because my daughter's going to be 18 in May Actually, when this episode comes out she'll already be 18, and she's already made declarations she's gonna do what she wants to do to take that journey.
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And she just recently came to visit us in February, which was nice, but it was a little bittersweet because her brother, who's a little younger than her he kind of understands this stuff because he's in junior high and he has heard all these things and he knows what's going on with her.
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She's got other siblings as well that don't know anything completely because they're younger, but they all just know that she's stepped away from the faith and she's not following God.
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It was nice to see her again, but it's also bittersweet because we don't know if we'll ever see her again.
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And if we do, we don't know what version of ever see her again.
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And if we do, we don't know what version of her we'll see.
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And it does I mean if you don't see any signs of it at all throughout life, and then it just comes at you like a big, like you said, a tsunami wave.
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And I always joke.
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One thing about this whole journey is I had to decide early on that I was not going to lose my joy, that my happiness could come and go, but my joy I would give away.
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And I refused to give that away.
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I decided I was going to maintain my joy and my kind of quirky sense of humor throughout it all, and so I said from the beginning that you could have told me the Pope was coming over for supper, and that would have made more sense than that announcement to me.
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That's how, like out in left field, I felt like it was for myself.
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Yeah, yeah, I completely agree, and I've had to surrender my daughter to God a long time before this even happened anyways, because she hasn't lived with me since she was 12.
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She came back right before COVID happened.
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Her dad had sent her back to me because he couldn't handle her, and then she was with me during the COVID lockdown and I don't know how long after that.
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But then she went to go move with my parents and at that point I had surrendered my parental rights because they were going to be taking care of her because of a situation that had happened here between her and someone else.
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But through that process it was very difficult for me to surrender, let go and trust God that he was taking care of her and that if I let her go he had her care of her and that if I let her go he had her.
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So it's been several years that I've had already been working on that letting go of her and allowing God to do what he had to do.
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This has just been the most difficult part, because she's very impulsive and I don't know if she's just saying these things just to say them, because there were never any signs of this being her future and I don't know if that's the same with your son, but yeah, it just completely surprised me.
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I had no clue it was coming.
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But I refuse to let go of my peace and my trust that God will take care of her and even if it's in the middle of things, even if she goes through with the things she says she's gonna go through with, I have already told her that I love you.
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I will always love you.
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You always have a place here and if you ever do regret what you've done, you can come back to me and I will hold you and I will be there for you when you cry and I will not judge you and say I told you so and that's what we can do.
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Yeah, that's what they need to know, is that, no matter what, we still love them and I refuse to let go of my peace and I'll make I'll make jokes too.
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She'll say things and I, I just won't go along with what she wants.
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I will not call her the name she wants and she respects that boundary.
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She respects other boundaries and I'm hoping she will continue once she actually is an adult.
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But and it's a very hard thing, especially when they're adults, because you said he was an adult when he came to you with this At that point you don't really have much you can do other than sit back and watch.
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Yeah, yeah, you can't ground them.
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Whatever, mom, you can't put him in his room because he doesn't have a room in my house.
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Yeah, yeah.
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You know it definitely.
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But one thing I've learned during this battle is God gave my children to me.
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I believe he handpicked me to be their mother.
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But it's hard to wrap your head around the fact that God loves our kids more than we do, and he is.
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He wants them, they are his children and he's going to stop at nothing to get them back, just like he didn't stop in my life to draw me back.
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It's his kindness that leads us to repentance.
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And there's nothing I can say, there's nothing I can do, there's nothing I can buy, there's no church I can go to.
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There's nothing I can do in my flesh to fix any of this.
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I have to just sit back and I have to trust.
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And I've joked from the beginning that my child was transgender, but I'm the one that's changed, and so what I've learned is this journey is about me.
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This journey is about my relationship with the Lord.
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This journey was about the things that were in my own heart.
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None of this that I speak about in the book I wrote about this, none of it has to do with my child and that decision.
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It all has to do with my relationship with the Lord.
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And did this throw me off or what happened with me and God during all of this, and so I think that's for anybody that's going through anything.
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It's not always about you, you know your child or it's not about your spouse or whatever.
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It's about what the Lord wants to do in your heart.
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Yeah, and I've grown so much during the time, the season I've had, of having to let her go and trust God to take care of her, when she originally was going to go live with her dad, I dug my heels in and I was like God, he's a terrible father, she can't go with him.
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She doesn't understand the fullness of it.
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And I just felt him saying you need to trust me, she's mine, I will take care of her.
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And I just let go.
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And I said God, I'm letting go, I'm going to trust that you're going to take care of her and I hope you take care of her, like you said, and during the difficult seasons we've had since I did that throughout the years, I just keep reminding myself and looking up at heaven and saying God, you said you were going to take care of her.
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I'm still trusting you're going to do that.
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I've been really down.
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I remember when she first told me that she planned on getting some surgery, I wasn't sure if I believed her and I laid out my boundaries pretty quick on I didn't want to see any pictures of it and I told her, reminded her again how much I love her and that God loves her, and then I couldn't sleep that night.
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I was just really worried about it for her, for her future, because before she even came out with this information, I had already been listening to various podcasts talking about this subject, the long-term effects that it's had on other people who have done it.
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So I had already had all this knowledge.
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She had heard some of it before she moved away.
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She just didn't, doesn't care.
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She wanted to do her own thing and I wasn't going to force because I don't have legal parental right over her right now and I remind her all the time is that I still parent you because I love you.
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I said your dad doesn't parent you the way that you need it because he doesn't have to legally and he doesn't want to so but I'm choosing to, which should show you how much I still care about you.
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Is that legally I don't have to care.
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Legally I can walk away and say it's your grandma's job now so but I don't do that because I love you, because you're my child and I want to take care of you.
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So this whole thing really upset me and this was the first time that I had ever shown an emotion about it is when I went outside the night or the morning after she had told me that and I could not sleep.
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I went outside and I went over to the tree we have a big dead oak tree that's in there and I think I had on a punching glove, I'm pretty sure and I just started punching the tree and was letting out my frustration.
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I just started crying.
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I leaned against the tree and I just started punching the tree and was letting out my frustration.
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I just started crying, I leaned against the tree and I wept.
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I don't know how long I was out there.
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It was hard to handle, but I cried and I cried and when I was done, I stood up from where I was and I just started praising God.
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I sang worship songs and I stayed out there until I felt a little better and then I went in the house and I just just.
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That was the last time that I had shown any seriously deep emotion like that, because now I just I completely trust God that he knows what he's doing and that this is going to work out the way he needs it to.
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He needs it to, no matter how long it takes, no matter where it goes.
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My job is to show her the love of Jesus Christ by being her mom, regardless of what she chooses to do or how she lives her life, and it is not an easy thing at all, but we still have a connection.
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She still talks to me and I don't know how long that will last, but I'm going to enjoy it while I have it, Amen.
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You know, at the very beginning of my journey, I heard the Lord speak to me and just say it was my job to love my child and it was his job to save him.
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And that just took the pressure off of me of what my role was going to be in this.
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And you know, the Bible is full of examples.
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That's why we have God's word to comfort us, and I often think of Moses and his mom.
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You know, his mom had to make a choice.
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It was time to let him go.
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But when she put him in that basket in the river to float him away, she did not know what was going to happen.
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She didn't have a promise on the other side.
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She didn't have a promise on the other side.
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She didn't have a promise that a crocodile wasn't coming out of the river.
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She just knew that she loved the Lord and she trusted.
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And she put him in the basket and floated him down and I believe she went back to her house and prayed like she had never prayed before.
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And that's what we have to do.
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We have to just place our children in this basket and float them down and just believe that God has someone on the other side to grab them.
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Yeah, amen.
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So you started a community for people going through the same thing.
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When did that start and what do you do with the community and what?
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do you do with the community?
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Yes, so after this announcement, several years went by I knew that I was called to speak about this.
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At the very, very beginning, I promised myself a few things.
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I promised myself that I would never stop believing that God was a God of miracles and nothing was too hard for Him, and I promised myself that I would start a community for moms like me that had prodigal children that I wasn't seeing the church talk about, I wasn't seeing prayer groups and things for people that have prodigals, and so I promised I would start something.
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And then the third thing I just promised that I would just always speak about this, even if I cried the whole time, even if I misspoke, even if my grammar wasn't perfect, whatever it was.
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I was going to speak about hard things and I was going to let other moms know that they are not alone.
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And so, from the very beginning, I knew that the Lord had put it on my heart to start some sort of group, and so I wrote a book, started it in 2020.
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I knew that that was something the Lord had light in my heart years before to do, and as I was kind of writing the book, that was when I knew that I was going to like the community was going to go alongside the book, and so what I did is I started my own social media network.
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It's called Battle Cry.
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There's a Battle Cry Moms and there's a Battle Cry Dads.
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And so what I did is I started my own social media network.
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It's called Battle Cry.
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There's a Battle Cry Moms and there's a Battle Cry Dads.
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And what it is?
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It's an online space.
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It has nothing to do with the major, like your Facebooks and your Instagrams and all that but it operates like Facebook inside, but it's its own separate network and so it's private.
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You have to answer five questions before I let you in and, based on how you answer the questions, whether you get into this private community or not.
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We are about 13, almost 1400 moms strong from around the United States and even around the world there's some moms from other countries that have joined us and what it is it's a community of moms that are praying and believing for their families, and within my group we have subgroups, and so we have the main page where everybody can post, but we have different just tribes.
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I call them just little small groups.
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And so if you have a transgender child, there's a group for you.
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If you have an LGBT child, there's a group for you.
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If you have a child addicted to drugs or alcohol, there's a group for you.
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If you just simply have a child that doesn't believe, there's a group for you.
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And so you're going to find moms going through the same thing you're going through and you'll find community with that.
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And so I know and probably mine and your situations.
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You know, things come up like we have questions and things that we're walking through that maybe other moms aren't going through, and it's just a great space to be able to bounce things off of each other and say how do you handle this?
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What is God telling you about this?
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And so it's a special place where we just gather and we're just full of hope.
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When I first started it, I thought, oh gosh, this is going to be really depressing Moms that are like super sad all the time.
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But that's not it at all.
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We are the most hope-filled, spirit-filled believers together that you can even imagine.
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We're full of joy, we're full of belief, we pray, but we say we pray and we believe because we believe that God is working and that he is going to reconcile and heal our families.
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And so if you're listening to this and you're a mom and you don't have anybody to turn to join our group, we would love to have you.
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We are like we like to talk about Moses and Aaron and her in the old Testament when they were in a battle and Moses would raise his arms and the battle was won.
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But when he got weary he would lower them and then they would start to lose.
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But two of his friends came along beside him and held his arms up for him when he was too tired to do it, and that's what we do in Battle Cry Moms.
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We hold each other's arms up on the days that we're too tired to hold them up ourselves, and so we would love to have you join us in our group.
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Hey friends, have you joined the Honest Christian Conversations online group yet?
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If you haven't, you're missing out on a perfect opportunity to grow your relationship with Jesus Christ.
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This is a community for those who want to go deeper in their relationship.
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You can do Bible studies together, ask the questions you have biblically and get the answers that you might need or maybe you're somebody who has answers to somebody else's questions.
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You can leave your prayer requests.
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You can leave your praise reports.
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This is a community.
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This is what church is supposed to be, and I am so glad that I finally took that step to make this group so that people's lives can flourish in Jesus name.
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Also, if you haven't signed up for the mailing list, you're missing out on an opportunity there as well.
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I send out a weekly email chocked full of so much awesome content that I don't have time right now to share it all with you.
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But when you do sign up for that mailing list, you get my seven-day free devotional that I created just for those who sign up for the mailing list.
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If you haven't joined either of these, you can go to my website, honestchristianconversationscom and sign up there, or you can use the links for it in the show notes.
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Iron sharpens iron.
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Yeah, community is very important, especially when you are going through a difficult season.
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You need to know that you aren't alone and sometimes it can feel like God is a million miles away because you can't see him.
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But that's where the church body comes in to be his hands and feet and to be there to remind you that he's not as far away as it seems and that maybe there's a delay in what you're praying for.
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But it's not a denial of your request.
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It might just be.
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You need some time.
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There's something going on behind the scenes that we don't know, and to have people going through it with you or who have been there done that and they are able to help you through what you're going through is very important.
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And, yeah, I'm so glad that you made this group and I'm definitely going to be joining the group myself.
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Yes, you need to join our group.
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You know it's a great group we have.
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It's just a place where we share.
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So if somebody reads an article, they share it.
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Or if somebody, if God, puts a verse on your heart, they share it.
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If somebody hears a worship song that spoke to them, they share it.
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And so we just share with each other things that spoke to us and you just don't know, like the things that the Lord is speaking to you, it might be something somebody else needs that day as well.
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And in my group we also have what I call the battle plan, and that's just a five-step plan that God gave me at the beginning of how to pray for my child, and so we talk about our battle plan all the time.
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We that's how to pray for my child, and so we talk about our battle plan all the time.
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We just don't willy nilly, get up and pray prayers.
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We know we're in a battle and we are going to pray and believe with power and authority that our families are going to be reconciled and our kids are coming.
