“Sometimes, not saying anything is the best answer. You see, silence can never be misquoted.”
| — | Unknown |
Tag Archives: Charissa Grace
The Forest Dark Is Full of Grace
“dark is the forest and full of grace”
I read this line and it made me pause
as I recalled spanish moss lace
concealing all the oak tree’s flaws
and how the path did twist and flit
around the thickets dark and deep
to clearings where light does acquit
the night as my soul’s love will keep
you, in the brambles, in the brush
and lost in deepest forest glen
and blind to dusky quiet hush
or if not lost, well……wandering, then.
Full of grace…oh grace so sweet
and falling soft as snow on leaf
to wash and bless your tired feet
and lead you home healed of all grief,
this is the cry of my soft heart
cut from the velvet cloth of night
and covering every broken part
with grace like stars dancing so bright.
Nothing Rhymes Orange
i’m befuddled as jokes,
while i sit here and stare,
at the ordered brush strokes
that are hung there, mid-air
translucent and shimm’rey
in a gloaming lost day
i have witnessed the fading
of the old beauty way
while the efforts of many
seek orange everlasting
orange for my heart,
bits of white lay contrasting
and the nuance is gone,
disappeared in the mist
along with soft kisses,
it’s all been dismissed
by orange fading soft
into white then returning
to orange, and orange
and then just more orange
so i sit here, i wait,
i remember another time,
other days full of
sweet music and rhyme
before it was orange,
with some white thrown in there
cus nothing rhymes orange
it just hangs in the air.
Addressed To Everyone Who Knew Me Then:
Dear Constance, Dear Reader:
I make a distinction between you Constance, who found your way here, drawn by my writings…poems, posts, pics…perhaps bloviating, who knows…but you found your way here to me, Charissa. And you have known my heart, known me for who I am, what I am…
…and then there is you, Reader. You are from my past. You knew me “then”. You knew the role I was in, the part I played, and played even to myself in the midst of the horror and sorrow dysphoria is. You watched me from afar. You assessed always, judged by what you saw on the outside.
More often than not you threw me into your scale of judgment with me on one side and yourself on the other and I was found wanting in the balance.
And then there is “Brother of Reader, Sister of Reader”…and you also are from my past. You come around like people from a small midwestern town go to the travelling freak show: you slink in under cover of darkness and read. You gossip to one another in hushed tones, and wag your head in wonder over this person you knew “who finally lost it”.
Well Reader, I did indeed finally lose it, and found me.
But here is the deal: you broke trust with me…the person. You broke faith.
I extended kindness over and over again. I extended love and sacrifice. I placed your needs above my own, and sought to serve you, give to you freely and without expectation and in hope that you would learn and be transformed by the renewing of your minds and hearts in the washings of the eternal word I sought to live.
I cannot allow you to be around. Broken trust is too deep a gulf, too broad a breach. And there are also factors that literally prohibit me from taking any chances with anyone from my past…from that specific past that involved your access to my life, and even deeper, to my heart.
So now I am gone…and the reality of my absence is sinking in…and you miss that steady striving earnest heart. You miss that gentle person you could yell at or off load on who kept cool under fire and didn’t repay evil with evil, but evil with good. You think to yourself that maybe there was a different narrative than the one you conspired with in the moment because if felt good and was safer to you than the risk of allying with someone who was going down, and going down for good…
…so you come here, reading, finding the same heart and soul, and more…realizing there were depths and chambers hidden from which treasure came, from which pearls came. You hope to find expiation. You imagine that perhaps the traces can be picked up once again and we can pick up where we left off…except that “we” didn’t leave off…
You did. Leave. Off.
Let the word be spread: I cannot risk you in my life. I will block you as I find out your presence in the various social media I utilize. Oh don’t get me wrong…I forgive you, and have forgiven from the beginning…I just cannot control what happened to the land when that nuclear bomb went off and radiation blighted that territory. Half-lives simply must pass and in the meantime nothing will grow.
So spread the word. I am not responding. I am not waving. I am not answering. I am not hating. I am not loving. I am not acknowledging. I have shaken the dust off my feet and moved on, and will never utter another word in your direction…because I am required to, I have to, I must.
I am dead to you…and alive to me, and to Constance. I am legally transitioned to me, and fully so…the me I always was and almost lost.
I am Charissa Grace…I am beloved of God, by Their Word and Their Blood…I am not yours.
Life Between…
This is what life is like, between the relief and joy of transition, and the persistent existential state of dysphoria…
“Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt,
so that you may know how you ought to answer each person.”
Mama Comments on Charissa’s Comments on Leelah
Dear Constance…
Nights are not good.
Almost every night of my life since I was around 4 I wake up in the night, and I am petrified. Skert stiff, and I mean that literally. I don’t know why. And inner voices that say horrible things that crush…flat, inflectionless, as if I am so worthless that those voices will not even waste their powers on one as meritless as I. No need to tell you what they say.
In 1966 I was exposed to a horror movie that really hooked into my dysphoria and an extremely traumatic event that had taken place a few months earlier, and since then, I have bad dreams, too.
That’s a lot of years.
That’s a lot of fears.
That’s a lot of tears.
As I grew, I discovered that talking with God helped…some. And after I had grown some more, I learned to recognize Their voice back to me…each one distinct and each one full of Love.
Well, if you have been reading here lately you know that I have been in a rough patch. A bit challenging in fact. And those voices? The ones that say crushing and horrible things? They have utilized the raw materials in my life of trial, betrayal, abandonment, loss, and sorrow, and added that weight and depth and breadth to their curses…and I could not escape their toxin. I had to just listen…and endure.
Until last night…after waking, freezing, cramping, clenching, crying…and ripping apart again…
I heard my Mama’s voice quiet and sure, certain underneath the Mordor doom-drums and orc snarls…and we talked. A long time.
At the end, She exhorted me to write some of what She told me…here on Grace Notes…as a faith step and an exercise…an attempt to call myself into fullness and being, because I have languished for so many years encased in roles, expectations and binary bondages. I have even torn myself in two in my desperate attempt to perform and thus be worthy of love and acceptance…and so all those voices whispering all those years are like a gravitational pull to be overcome.
So here is a bit of what Mama told me…translated from spirit/soul/heart talk to written words:
I am Charissa Grace, and I am not the person everyone thought me to be (including myself). 
I am made sensitive and tender…so I feel the pains and sorrows and hurts and worries of everything and everyone around me…in the same way that a tuning fork hit with vibrations will itself vibrate in frequency, or a crystal goblet will sound when it is circled with a finger.
It is not a function of something wrong in me when I feel all of that…it is a function of how my Mama created me, and so I am to stop calling myself names and blaming myself for things that are not my fault…they are simply the things that I feel because of how I am made by Her.
I am made to drink cups and drain dregs…many of them bitter and some sweet.
I am made to transform things…to catalyze their becoming into who and what they are destined to be, but I myself am not made a part of that…rather I remain apart…alone, and in my Mama’s Hands.
I am precious to Her, and She watches over me in such Joyous Jealousy, having purposed to allow me to experience pain in order for Her good riches to be birthed into this world.
I am Mama’s womb of Life…having no womb of my own and born so barren and lonely. She intentionally formed me intricate, delicate and robust, so easily woken but desperately determined to hang on…hang on…hang on.
I am Her Instrument and She delights in my unique and utterly singular voice, and so She tunes me…constantly…to be sure I am in tune to Her song, Her heart…She tightens me, She loosens me.
Above all…I am not evil. I am not “wrong” or “null” or “nothing” or a “monster” or a “freak”. What I endure is a function of Her goodness and intention and not a function of my flawed-ness and failures, and there are many of those by the way…flaws and failures. But to Her they are akin to the chiseled away wood or stone…they are like the clay She pushes away as She makes me into Her Own.
I am the daughter of Holy Spirit, Great Lady Grace…my Big Mama…and I am good. She has said it and my Precious Merciful Jesus has made it true in His own Love dripped completely over me and washing totally thru me cleansing me and making me Their Righteousness.
I will live, and still pine and long…grieve and mourn…but I will also see the Dawn morning by morning and I will keen under Her loving caresses to my hair and cheeks as She wipes away travail and gives…
…gives me Beauty for ashes…and the Oil of Joy for mourning…and She clothes me in Songs of Praise glorious and radiant and She disappears the spirits of heaviness…as She plants me in Her Own Orchards of Righteousness and calls me Her Very Own…and I will indeed day by day glorify Her Name and call Her good and only good as She brings me to the Father of Lights from Whom every good and perfect gift comes.
I am a prophetic declaration to a world that is spiritually cross-borned, just as I am physically thus. Yes, each and everyone of us is “transgender”…walking around with this knowing inside us that we were not destined for death and dissolution and destruction, knowing that we are victims of time, knowing that who we are in our hearts is somehow choked down and held down and thrown down by something that ought not be…
…and so as I live and love, as I trust and talk, as I weep and write, I am becoming a living word of love to whoever will listen, and let their own hearts awaken the dawn.
These things I say in faith…believe me, they are not said in boast, or even really anything that I think about myself. But I do know that I have heard from my Mama…and these sorts of things, the things I have written here? They aren’t even remotely like anything the voices have ever cursed at me, and like nothing I tell myself…wait, correction: told myself…so I know that they must be Her.
Mama said She was so thrilled when I picked out the name double-grace…She promises She will make good on it.
I am Charissa Grace, and I am in my Mama’s Hands. May my song ever be sweet and my tune ever triumphal, even in tears.
Guilty of Too Much
It’s been said I run so fast, but there is One that’s faster,
One who walks upon the winds and is the tiger’s master.
Trailing on Her garmets quick and in Her steps so graceful
There it is I find Her draft and drink Her flow so faithful.
I feel all the power of the pulse of life in me.
I cannot hold back this river running fresh and free.
There’s a turbine in my heart that churns and whirs and hums
amidst the power and percussion pulsing rhythmic thrums.
Well, I did not receive a choice when I was fashioned thus!
I had no input, say, I couldn’t even raise a fuss!
No…placed inside this body rough and slow and made of dirt
I am a dancer graceful, runner swift, and princess pert!
I am a mind mercuiral, I am a soul of grace!
My heart is fashioned intricate, my spirit is spun lace.
And I have wings and courage, I am bold enough to soar
on winds to mountains high, and then dive deep to delve for more.
I am Charissa Grace. I always have been she.
Imprisoned in this body dark and struggling to be…
My deep flow furious is just a shadow of my thought
so I will simply open and bring forth the things I’ve bought.
Today is the first day of the rest of my life!
Dear Constance…it is official! At 1:15:15 PM yesterday, the judge said the words…and I legally became me.
Charissa Grace White
I guess I am out there now…still have yet to do the entire company sit down and talk, which will be about 15 minutes…but things are moving along.
And yes…I did wake up this morning and feel totally different. Not some massive quantitative change, but rather a deep and profound qualitative change. I have often jokingly sang to myself “I Got a Name” by Jim Croce…well, now for real I do.
I went out to my car to leave work around noontime, to go home and get ready. I see a yellow legal pad with writing on the seat…and there is a vase with 6 beautiful lavender coloured roses!. They were from my darling darling DARLING!!
I dressed nice, in a style that gets me lotsa compliments (Scorpio-Patrol I think you have seen the outfits??), and arrived walking straight and tall and in the right sort of way proud. I looked everyone straight in the eye and smiled. I was treated with deference by this old man there…I honestly do not think he realized I was transgender! He was kind and interactive.
The clerk office opened, and within 5 minutes I had my papers and was on my way to a teeny courtroom. It had 5 rows of benches, and felt like a mortuary funeral service chapel.
In the back, there was an advocate for battered women talking to a woman about a very very scary sounding man that she had been involved with. I thought about how I had been treated by the old man. I prayed that I would not have to sit through that case.
When the judge arrived, she walked forward…slim, serious, no nonsense, and appeared highly competent. I was equal parts afraid and excited.
She called for me, and I stood, and then…
…she did this thing with her eyes and face that told me non-verbally “you are so brave for being here!” I just know that is what she was saying. I turned in my papers, and she read them over, the ghost of a smile playing at her eyes and hovering at the corners of her mouth…and then she took her pen, and brandished it!! And then she signed…announced that I was now Charissa Grace White, and openly congratulated me.
I walked out and down the stairs, and then in a rush I began to weep, overcome in the moment with the monumental implications of one loooonnngggg journey at last drawn to a close, and a new one well and truly begun.
The clerk was moved by my tears and much nicer…mayhap she figured out that this was a big deal?
I was alone.
Oh, I know you were there, but Mama had distanced everything, everyone…it was just me…and Her. I went home and stood in our house, raised my hands in the air and upturned my face, and I prayed out loud to Her, thankful, grateful, supplicating…
…aware that I had started the first life ignorant of Her…and was beginning the second in relationship with Her, the most amazing indescribable being ever.
Later in the day, I was able to have a short conversation with my bff, and her words of life just laid down right beside the prayers I prayed, and then later in the evening, my darling and I opened a bottle of pink champagne and toasted many things.
I am out.
I am free.
I am Charissa Grace, my Mama’s daughter of grace and sister to the Great Precious One.
I am at last glad to be alive.
October 1st, 2014
Hi Constance…
Well…it is going to be official on October 1st, 2014…my new name, Charissa Grace White will be my legal name. It astounds me and truthfully I feel weird. Not bad at all…but I am not quite sure what to feel, getting ready to officially have a name that means me, and not someone else I felt chained to.
I will still be going by my old name at work for awhile…in talking with HR they are fine with that, and the important thing is that I get it done.
And…it looks like the methods at work to police me will be along the lines mentioned in the “Tolerance or Acceptance” article that I reposted. Some things happened today that discouraged me, greatly.
Ima declare it right now…like Daniel, in the lion’s den…I want to do and say and be the right thing. So I am going to keep on:
doing justice
loving mercy
walking humbly
a sad, giddy/weird feeling Charissa Grace who finds her name sustaining her in Lady Grace’s courts.
Later, after I started this:
PS: omg…thank you ddh!!
❤ always ❤
Quartet
One the 1st
there.
back there.
where was it, when was it?
somewhere,
between the ends of the rainbow,
in the middle,
where the gold pushes east
and the gold rushes west,
and leaves green, leaves mossy green
and bowed by light.
my eyes dazzled…there.
gleamed.
your eyes,
soft and intent, hawklike and cowlike
all at once as you took me
in glance and
then in glitter-glance
and then (shiver) in hungry glance and I,
I was still and not moving…
between the legs of the rainbow…
but between my own, I was alive (again),
I was the heart of a star,
my light wet and my gravity heat
pulling you there by your eyes,
to me, and then
there. oh
there. oh
there. oh
After…when you…yes…
your eyes and their leggy light
gone there and then gone out,
I lay wakeful, still in the moonlight streaming
thru gossamer curtains, swaying slowly
‘neath the wind’s caresses.
And my smile,
my endorsement of you
played round the corners of my mouth
and moved in time to sounds,
the symphony of many waters
rustling in me now,
rapid, and rushing runny…
there
and I held my life-your life,
I held our life
there, curled round it
with my galaxy curves
and molten churning spark.
I thrummed, hummed,
taut and unstrung all at once,
and waiting for that java-jolt,
that move, that kickback…
there.
until there was
no there.
and we…here?
Eyes dulled
in pain’s muddy waters dirty,
hearts torn. Just torn.
Nothing fancy,
just brutal grip,
grab, tear, shred, toss
and then I was empty
there
I journey steady now,
come to (that)
grips, come to terms
with that day but
never
come to heal or honor it because,
my heart wanders
there,
it sneaks off from the chain gang
and floats, up,
circling the rainbow’s middle spaces…
never in Oz, never in Kansas,
but always
there, looking
looking there,
for us, come and torn away…
and finding footprints, hearing echoes, touching ashes
of what never happened but should have,
there.
when I walk I get tired.
when I get tired, I sit down,
here, or on the wet grass,
and I remind myself that
there’s a cure for all and
everything, somewhere
there and I content myself
with knowing that,
I trick myself with knowing that,
I choose to know our us-life…
waits…for us
there.
Two the 2nd
stare.
that’s all I could do, waking up
in warm and darkness close and clothed
in the warm velvet of you.
I heard steady “Luv u. Luv u. Luv u,” together
with some sound like wind out in out in
around me, thru me…it felt good to be, swaddled
and surrounded with you
(by you)
(I stare),
I strained, tippy-soul up to surround you back,
around your voice, around your breath, to add to you my “luv u. luv u. luv u.”
back, in octaves high and beyond, but in dark.
I saw blind, inside wonders but I still sang, I still stare.
you held me careful as you sang and told me things without words
(in your colors and shades), remembering yourself (then)…and him…
(and me there, almost, but still here too), you stared at you,
youth and inexperience veiled in optimism and immortality…
you saw, that then time…(the rain, pouring steady
crackling like forest fires, popping like firecrackers,
water splashing and sweat spouting in the dusky light flicker-dash-streaks,)
you told me that you clicked your tongue in time and tempo
your slick and graceful grappling torsos, tissues, tangos,
and on your lips the glorious taste of salty skin like mangos…
and you moved…in time…with him…and you…and him…and you…
stare, dance, that then time…different from this one…now.
you hummed, he thrummed, near bursting in the joyous moment
and incense of recovery from the tragic, fluky lash of death’s
hungry whip o’ nine tongues, til rejoicing, rising, falling safe and one
then me, brewing and becoming, moving future of hope fulfilled.
I was me there, with you inside your song and center
while you gathered courage still to stare unblinking into dark unknowing gaping,
you sang of me…
then silence…
and I was spun afraid and cold and oh the wrenching rain
in the dark dawn hours
of that green field clotted
in stone and searing sorrow.
you keening, fallen on your knees and wordless,
empty agonizing grappling with that monster blind and mute,
that just rolled over, ripping you in two,
ripping every goodness from the heart of greatness,
leaving all creation crying in the center of every bitter moment.
I float over you since then, and now, here in front of you,
your face tattooed forever with the tales of me writ large and hidden there,
and I try to wipe those silent tears and dry them with my hair
and then I stand in that spot, there, the one you focus on to live
the one you wish hard on, will hard in, try hard to go on within…
well I wish too, will and try hard, to get in, become, break out and
to burst in, be born into your world from mine. but there is always that…
shadow and space…
between me here and you there in time.
and so I wait and follow you, learn you and I shout to you
it’s not your fault, I don’t know what or why but it was not!!
your fault…or mine, and like you, I am waiting…mama.
Love you cross the years, as you are loving me, we wait…
we
stare.
Three the 3rd
Sissy!! Dani!!
Where are you?
You walk
(there)
in time
(here)
at pace, keeping place, for them
step steady…
step steady…
step steady…
for them
silent beat…
silent beat…
silent beat…
but oh god bereft of them
(oh! oh! OH!!!)
you walked alone inside (me too)
and haunted, by ghosts of your regrets (me too).
You, bereft of a full womb, and I,
a womb bereft of a full me!
Dani!!
My heart keens, cries, with you
and for you, thru you
But now…
(why we met now, and not before…)
where am i to go?
Where is there now for me that you are not as well,
sister-friend, walker on the paths of the dead
and thru?
questions turn and spin in wonder,
longing to have been
there, then,
and afterwards to be
here, now…
pouring river-deep-consoling,
over pain and empty sorrow
and then break a hundred times
and heal a thousand more!
I could shatter endlessly
(oh please, I can, oh please let me)
shower pieces teary wet
this red heart over you, and then
extinguish grief-fires and wild questions
drowning all conflagrations of
there
and drain that bitter cup of black despair…
Let me take some…sister-grief?
I practiced 50 years for meeting
here and feeling there, my sister,
me a sea-sponge wrung out dry
of love so I can sop up sorrow
mop up gall into this hyssop, I–
made for so many things, I–
made for just this one thing…
by your side, in your shoe,
I will walk with you and dance then walk
with you and sing then walk some more
and cry then walk with you
and then just sit and sigh.
Let me bleed over your feet,
over your way, don’t worry,
ddh, there’s plenty blood enough
for grief and for me both!
When you kneel at graves, me too
When you walk, tears dry and stale
me too with tissues in my glove.
When you sit, remembering? I’ll serve you “Cookies Rissa Roo”
and love-tea…and when you are smiling
I’ll rejoice and shout nonsense,
the world’s best Fool of all.
that’s all I got, sissy…
and Dani…that’s all you need and that’s the truth…
wait…
wait…
that and Mama always…
love, forever,
from your sister
friend devoted me
Charissa Grace
Four the Fourth
My daughter Dani bends low.
Her hair drags feeble thru the scraggly mud.
I watch her there, hands on her knees
and stomach clenchy sick.
My heart breaks resolute and sure
on schedule as I feel her…
sad…grieving…torn…
and empty-numb.
I approach her and she knows,
somehow…she starts and stands up quick,
a gold-brown willow springing up
resilient and released from ill winds blowing…
Her fine hair frayed and flying, she looks
right at Me! Straight into my eyes, but she saw
only the white leaping fox, her tail flickering quick and neat,
the silver hare hopping and skittering
into her warm burrow waiting
and the glinty moon reflecting
frosty on the secret owl-wing gliding,
silent in the still soft ebon night.
I step to her, she feels Me as the Wind in her face,
smells, scents, wafting cleansing arctic hymns
and fragrances following spicy with that joyous island song.
I touch her precious tear torn cheek,
and her eyes close and she smiles low
imagining that holy flakes of ice falling from heaven
bless and beautify her solitary suffering and sorrow.
Then she stills, she lets go and My Love washes her over.
Glancing right I see her sister
(My daughter Charissa Grace)
kneeling in the silent softness,
tears like diamonds in the incandescent moonlight and the snow.
Her crimson garments caked with ice at knees,
but she does not take notice of these, for her heart is fixed on Me,
and her eyes fixed upon her sister.
I nod, Charissa jumps up, ever eager serving vessel
cracked and faithful broken…quick she runs unto her sister
and she wraps her arms around those shattered shoulders
And I watch how Dani flicks her eyes wide open,
pools of night and galaxies of stars therein those touching depths.
Charissa gently touches her dear sister’s cheek and nods,
she deftly touches hand to belly, heart to heart,
and Dani breathes and sighs released and reaches
out to touch Charissa’s back with fluttery grateful hands.
I smile, happy and rise up wings spread,
healing flowing forth.
I am well pleased because My daughters,
sisters of My Heart and in the Sacred Blood,
My Brood is well.
Loving you with my life, for the rest of our days.
Pledged to you as sister, pinkie-swear,
Love and all my gooey heart…
Charissa Grace
A Prayer, by Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Good morning Constance…today I ran across this prayer by the amazing Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Won’t you take a look with me…and then set your spirit to be committed to becoming! If you profess Jesus, then join in directly to his prayer…and if your conscience leads you otherwise, uncover the intention and will within the prayer, and align with that.
The world is always a better place when our sin is diminished, our struggle to overcome evil is assisted, and God is near!
Love, Charissa
“Lord Jesus, come yourself, and dwell with us, be human as we are, and overcome what overwhelms us. Come into the midst of my evil, come close to my unfaithfulness. Share my sin, which I hate and which I cannot leave. Be my brother, Thou Holy God. Be my brother in the kingdom of evil and suffering and death. Come with me in my death, come with me in my suffering, come with me as I struggle with evil. And make me holy and pure, despite my sin and death.”
I am Charissa Grace for a reason…
Good morning Constance…rather than excerpt, I am reposting this article in its entirety…some of the ads that were on the site where it was had potential to be offensive to some? So, Ima just make it easy to read here. If you want the original link, I will provide it to you.
I will add one thing: I have a more robust view of grace than most. One of the greek word for Grace’s meanings is Power (the word is Charis…the root of my chosen name! 🙂 ). Allow me to relate a small vision?
In the vision, Jesus held out a silver coin to me and bade me receive it, which I did. His image was graven into the top or heads of it…like a founding father of spiritual money! giggle!! But on the bottom, was graven the cross and the dove…signifying His powerful act of sacrificial deliverance, and the release of Lady Grace into creation as a result.
Jesus then told me that I could buy whatever I wanted with this coin…I could spend it in banks, one of two! If I decided, I could spend it in the bank of overcoming…temptation, despair, fear, anxiety, gluttony, (fill in the blank)…simply picture the lil bank (mine are in the shape of a loaf of bread with a slot in the center) and slide the coin in! Talk to Him while you do it, and then walk away. Period. And if 5 minutes later, fear is back knocking, or that ice cream calls your name, spend another coin!
You can have as many as you will receive!! Literally!
However…let’s say you decide to not spend that coin, you hold onto it, and end up failing in your desire to overcome. What does one do then? ‘Cus now, I am not only failed, but also ashamed of that failure! Jesus told me just take the coin to that other bank…the bank of forgiveness, and drop it in…and then walk away, ready to receive another coin to spend as I chose, as my faith measured…
Each side of the coin represents power: power over sin, and power to forgive. Each one needs to be spent, regularly!
But the best part is that it is all right there, within your simple and direct choice to either over come or be forgiven.
Grace: The gift of power to do that which God requires, a gift given free and on the merit that you have asked. Period.
And that is why I call myself Charissa Grace: double grace…grace to be forgiven, and grace to over come.
May I be a kajillionaire in each one, and not a miser!
Love, Charissa Grace
TG and The Church
I have a news flash for you. The Christian church is made up of flawed humans. Big surprise right? I know. I am stating the obvious. But when it comes to understanding the issues that separate the Christian church and the transgender community, this is something that is forgotten on each side of the divide.
The church is often quick to close ranks and the doors to many in the trans community. Many within the church refuse to even sit down and listen to a new point of view and they fall back on human interpretations of age old scriptures.
The hurt that the church, as a whole, has caused the trans community is not something I need to rehash. I’m sure that many of us have wounds that run deep and many may not have yet healed. But how are we to react to the prejudice and close minded attitudes that we perceive within the church? That is the greater question.
We flawed humans like to point fingers, assess blame and often place unkind labels on others. When we do, we live counter to the lives God has called us to live. God does not access blame or hold a grudge. God gave us grace by dying on the cross and loving each and everyone of us — not for who we are, but in spite of who we are. He has given us something not one person on this earth ever deserved.
Grace is all to often a forgotten aspect of living life true to what God has intended for us. Grace is a conscious act. It is an unmerited act of kindness, giving someone a gift that is undeserved.
Grace certainly doesn’t come naturally. We humans like to hold on to the hurt, the wrongs against us and dwell on the negative. By doing so, the constant rehashing of the pain only gets in the way of showing grace to those that we may not agree with or those that have hurt us. Grace goes beyond just forgiving.
Grace is not just what God has given us, but through the Holy Spirit we can show a form of grace to all those around us. Grace is an act of kindness or clemency we show not only to our friends that occasionally wronged us, but also to all those that speak out against us.
I understand completely what it feels like and what it does to your soul when a group of people turns against you when they are supposed to embody the love of Christ. I understand the emotions that run through you when people turn their backs on you.
Forgiving prejudice and all the acts that go along with it is difficult. Forgiveness alone can be difficult enough, but when someone speaks or acts against your very being, sometimes forgiveness is just too unthinkable, too difficult for us humans to comprehend.
But by living a life of grace; forgiveness and showing love to those that hurt you becomes easier. By living a life true to God’s plan, not society’s or the church’s, we can live as an example of Christ to those around us.
For far too long now the church has become known for only what it is against. It’s time to stop the hurt. It is time to bridge the gap. It is time to stand up and be the light in a darkness. Instead of creating outcasts, the church should be a place of open doors.
We can complain and point fingers all we want and accuse the church of prejudice, discrimination and outright transmisogyny. But complaining about a problem is not a solution. It only adds to the divide. We are the answer.
If the Church will not show grace to us, then we are called to be the examples of grace to the church. We are to live our lives visibly and openly, true to the voice of the Holy Spirit in us.
Editorial Comments on “Haunted By A Lovely God”
Constance…I can tell from some of your emails and contacts that you are feeling good about this poem, as an awesome and metaphorical take on life, a means by which I am communicating my point of view regarding spiritual things…
…thank you for the kind words…
…BUT…
This really happened.
Every. Single. Word.
I really am, Haunted by a Lovely God…
I really do…feel such guilt that They have haunted me, and I am always so torn at why they singled out this fickle girl when there are so many so much more deserving than I.
It is an absolute fact that when I hear someone speak of how God wasn’t there, I grieve sorrowfully and sit, silent and still.
I am also going to be editing a lot…for rhythm. There is a thrum and pulse in this poem, and it wanders in and out of it, and when I read it aloud more of it comes into focus for me…so check on it a lot, if you enjoy it…it is going to be changing faster than Charissa Grace on her miracle HRT!
Love, lots of love and great puzzled thankfulness for being haunted,
Charissa Grace
Today…
Dear Constance…
So.
I have thought about it for a few days…what I would say this morning, if anything. After all, there are some things that a woman just never tells.
But:
I am different than other women, both in that I am myself and unique, and also because I am myself and transgender…in each way I am set apart, and thus have a strong sense of both my freedom to do or not as I choose, but also my “obligation” to report, to chronicle, to make my best effort to inform anyone interested in what life is like inside the oppression of the wrong gender.
The metaphor is just too perfect: We are, all of us, trapped in a wrong place, in a wrong time, with the sense that things ought to be different, and will one day be restored to “happily ever after”.
So with that said…
55 years ago today, I was gripped and smushed and pushed and eventually pulled into the rough light and harsh noise and frighteningly huge space of this world we live in. I was born July 13th, 1959.
It’s been such a long journey, and yet 55 years is literally nil when considered in the light of the days that have gone before.
But to me, it has been all I have ever known, and so I had a history of being on the outside, being outcast and no one knows, and being condemned to persisting in keeping my heart beating and my chest heaving, and my fruit sweet in the midst of a land that had no air, and weighed a million bajillion tons and was the stark backdrop for growing cactus and joshua trees.
Last year was a year of finishes, and it nearly finished me…so much ended, so many things fell apart in my world, and only a few things remained. At the time, it was unbearable. I would go to the mountains on my bike, and scream myself hoarse. It was either that or die.
Jesus told a church back in the day to wake up, and strengthen the things that remain. See, they had invested in transient things, and ignored what lasted. He exhorted them to get a grip, assess priorities and focus on eternal things.
When we don’t listen to the exhortation, He simplifies our options by removing the transient things…and this happened to me last year, a year of sorrow, loss, and ultimately deliverance.
I am glad to see it end, and so happy as well for the way that Mama took me in hand the last 3 months of the year and rooted, grounded my feet and heart in a renewed understanding of my worth and value and significance to Them, to Her…She taught me to begin to love myself, and thus I can with a true heart truly love others.
I have always associated the number 5 with Grace, for a variety of reasons.
So 55…this is gonna be the year of double grace…Grace upon grace! Charissa (which means grace) Grace.
Moses said to the Lord, in that famous encounter that began with the Lord testing Moses’ heart with the declaration that He was sick and tired of the stubborn nature of the people of Israel.
CLUE: He really wasn’t, but Moses was!! I have found that the Lord often times presents Themselves to me as if THEY are like the attitudes of my heart, in order to mirror to me who I am in that moment.
So here was Moses, pretending on the outside (even to himself) that he was not tired of them, fed up with the dullness and stubbornness, and so the Lord tells Moses that He is done with them, but that He will take Moses himself and raise him up into his own nation of great and awesome people, just like their Progenitor was! (Sarcasm intended btw…this is the same guy that tried to become the great deliverer if Israel by killing an Egyptian slave guard, and then ran into the desert to hide for 40 years!).
But…thank God that Moses had hung out with Them enough to know that when this sort of word came, it was a really good idea to listen with the heart of hearts and not the heart of desire…and so as he thought it over, it became manifestly obvious that it was better to have God Themself over merely Their blessing and protection.
So Moses says this: “Now therefore, I pray, if I have found grace in Your sight, show me now Your way, that I may know You and that I may find grace in Your sight.”
Did you catch that? Moses asks for grace to get grace!
Do you need grace in your life…undeserved favor unending, and the power to do whatever God requires? That is the biblical meaning of grace, by the way…it isn’t some cheap get outta jail free card fire insurance…
The lesson is that it starts with Them, it is by Their power and ability, and it ends in Them, while They in love loop us in to the joy and blessing of Their perfect fellowship.
They include us in Their family.
So…55 years…and new beginnings for Charissa Grace…me, this cursed child of loneliness who has been redeemed from the pit of emptiness, from death. I am walking in faith this year is going to be a year of grace upon grace. The wonderful undeserved unmerited Shalom They have extended over me, to me, in me, thru me, and the power to walk and be fruitful in the land of my afflictions.
I have gone forth sowing in tears. I shall return, harvesting in joy.
And this is the year it truly begins for me…and that is indeed a faith statement!!! It scares me, the gravity of 54 years pulls hard back to the pits of loneliness and despair, but the power of Their love and affection is a strong magnetic irresistible draw.
I cannot resist it.
I do not want to resist it.
So I surrender, and say Happy (yes…for the first time, Happy) Birthday (for I was in so many ways born last year too) Charissa
Happy Birthday, Charissa Grace, blest of God and most fortunate of beings
“
Charissa's Grace Notes 
You must be logged in to post a comment.