One80: Testimonies of Transformation
Be inspired by stories of Christian transformation from around the world--and next door! Hear miraculous coming-to-Jesus stories from all walks of life and be amazed at how God writes a story in all of us. One80 is a production of OneWay Ministries.
One80: Testimonies of Transformation
98: Straight to the Father, Lex Renick, Part 1
“I now pronounce you husband and husband” were the words spoken at Lex Renick’s wedding. Married as a trans man to a gay man, Lex was transformed through the love of Christ. Both she and her husband went Straight to the Father, living for the Lord with a traveling ministry to the misfit community, spreading a powerful message of love and hope.
See how Lex seeks God’s heart and finds it, as well as the truth of scripture, the love of Jesus, and the freedom in her new identity with Christ.
In this three part story, you'll see the slow but steady transformation of Lex and how God honors those who earnestly seek Him. And you'll never see the lost the same way again!
Part 1
Hear the heartbreak that unfolded in Lex’s young life and how that propelled her to feeling “trapped in the wrong body,” how she eagerly attempted to find truth in God’s word, and how her father lovingly refused hormone therapy for a young, confused girl.
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OneWay Ministries
Welcome to One80, transforming testimonies from next door to across the globe. Be amazed at how God works to bring people to himself. Share today's One80 with a friend. It might be the best news they hear today.
Lex Renick:After that moment I've always felt like I was a boy trapped in a woman's body. I know that that probably sounds absolutely outrageous.
Margaret Ereneta:I now pronounce you. Husband and husband were the words spoken at Lex's wedding. We're not going to get into those labels too much here, but suffice it to say Lex Renick and her husband went straight to the father. Now they are serving the Lord with their miraculous growing family. Romans 12 being lived out Such a beautiful three-part story You're going to need a Kleenex box and a hymnal. Trust me on this one. Welcome to Lex's One80, part 1.
Lex Renick:Well, my name is Lex Renick. If you were to ask me as a child how my childhood was like, I would probably tell you that on the outside we had the white picket fence. My family was both mom and dad were in ministry. I was at church all the time but little did people know. It was like we had demons lurking around our home. When the church doors closed and the home front door closed, there was a lot of hidden addiction. There was addiction to alcohol, which led to adultery, which led to a pill addiction, and all these things I was exposed to growing up in this Christian household.
Lex Renick:So from a very young age I began to get angry at God, even as a young child, because I thought, Lord, if you're this loving God, why would you allow the people that you've gifted, you know, a baby with me to come into my life and cause such harm? And so that caused a lot of confusion. So my view of God from a very young age was almost like halfway in, halfway out, and I say it that way because I would be at church five days a week. I would see my parents go after the Lord and then behind closed doors at home. It was like they were different people. And so my view of God was like, okay, god, so we experience the good of who you are at church, but then we experience, like, the bad, of who you are at home. And so at a young age, my view of God was very angry. I was very angry, I was very upset at him for letting me be born into a family where I experienced abuse. I was angry at him because if he's this, all powerful, all loving God, then why would I have gone through all the horrible things that I went through as a kid? And we find that same narrative in almost every person's belief system If they've had hurt or pain and they no longer believe in Jesus or haven't at all, unfortunately.
Lex Renick:Um, when the adultery happened, you know there's a separation that happened and the enemy was like this is the perfect time to come into this young girl's life, little Lex, and rip away her innocence. And so, as my spiritual covering, my father was removed from the marriage and we only saw him once every now and again. That is when, unfortunately, I experienced one of my first sexual traumas, and that was the first of many, and that happened between the ages of five and six years old, and it's like the devil knew that this is the perfect time. She's so incredibly vulnerable. There's no man here to protect her spiritually, there's no father here to protect her physically, and it's almost like abusers know children that have been abused, because this became the narrative of my childhood, unfortunately, and I had so much confusion come in from that From a very young age.
Lex Renick:After that moment, I've always felt like I was a boy trapped in a woman's body. I know that that probably sounds absolutely outrageous, but even before the word transgender was ever taught to me, it was like I felt like I was a boy stuck in this body and I just wanted to unzip myself and walk out. And this uncomfortability was spiritual. It was demonic, because if the enemy can get a child or an adult confused about their identity, the enemy can try and rip that person out of the will of God that God has for their life. And I really feel like the devil knew the plan that God had for my life and that's exactly why there was torment, attacks, abuse, confusion and all the things that flooded in from a very young age.
Lex Renick:So as I began to get older and go through puberty, I remember when Google came out, one of the first things that I've ever Googled was I feel like I'm a boy trapped in a woman's body. And the word transgender came up Again. This is before it was really, you know, publicized and all over the media or in TV shows. This is before it was really pushed on and promoted to young children. And I just remember Googling that and finally not feeling insane, finally not feeling like I was the only one in the world that was struggling with this or that felt this way. And the word transgender came up. The word LGBTQ community came up. Hormones, getting surgery, seeing all this from such a very young age, like I don't think our parents realized the power and access that we had to the internet. So finding this information there was comfort. The world was going to sell me this cure, this magical cure that was going to make this body dysphoria go away.
Lex Renick:And so dysphoria in the transgender community is basically a word that describes like this inner uncomfortability, like you almost want to like look in the mirror and scratch your eyes out because you're so bound in bondage and so uncomfortable it makes you just want to scream. I can't explain it other than I know that it was spiritual because I lived it. I will look in the mirror, 12, 13 years old, when I finally first got my period and my breasts started growing, and I would look in the mirror and cry as I had a razor cutting my chest, mutilating my body, blood just going down my chest because I was so that uncomfortable with myself and so I just began to believe the lies that this world was selling me. The world was saying oh, god made you that way. Oh, it's okay, god's fine with that.
Lex Renick:I began to get confused with my Christian faith, not only because the spiritual leaders in my life were not leading spiritually, they had addictions, like I previously mentioned, but I also struggled with that word, homosexuality. And I remember being so young, 13 years old, had Bibles all over my room and I'm just looking at so many different scriptures. I'm looking at Leviticus, I'm looking at Romans, chapter one and two, and I'm just praying to the Lord because I'm like God. If you made me this way, why would you make me feel so uncomfortable? Lord? If you made me this way, then why would I need all these surgeries and all these things? God, are you really okay with how I'm identifying?
Lex Renick:And I was trying so hard to give myself permission to live this out and it's so weird, even discussing the old life then in my BC days to the now, because since I've been made new in Christ, it's like I've taken off the rose colored glasses and I can see why I did the decisions, the bad decisions and choices that I had, why I had that dysphoria and that uncomfortability due to the sexual trauma. And instead of the world selling me this cure of surgery and taking hormones, I honestly needed therapy. I honestly needed a loving body of believers to say hey, I'm not saying that what you're going through and your same-sex attraction or gender identity is okay, but I'm saying that I love you enough that I want to walk with you back to Jesus. I needed a body of believers to love me, to not be ashamed of me, because Christ wasn't ashamed of me, and to walk me on the road of salvation. That is what I needed.
Margaret Ereneta:Stay with us till the end, it gets really good and Lex will help us talk to people who are like she used to be and what to say and how to love them.
Lex Renick:And so this world is selling people struggling with you know, previous sexual traumas and confusion, this knockoff version of Jesus. But I found, through my testimony that there's only freedom in the arms of our Savior Jesus Christ, testimony that there's only freedom in the arms of our Savior Jesus Christ. And so again, as I began to get older and older, I started begging my dad to let me get on hormone blockers, to let me start taking testosterone, and I'm very glad that he told me no, he's like, this is not something that I want to be a part of. This is not a decision that I want to say is okay. I think that this is definitely a decision that you need to make when you're an adult and you're a minor right now. So therefore, the answer is no. I could not thank my father enough because I probably would have had way more damage to my body if I started hormones you know, pre-puberty or just when I started puberty and through the division of my family and separation, just to have some insight. It's always difficult to talk about the hardest things that I've experienced in my childhood, but I know that there's importance. The Lord convicts my heart to say, every time I share my testimony, some of the hardest things that I've heard, because we have to see where we once were, to see where God came through and where we are now. And so one of the things that was spoken over me as a child my mom struggling with an alcohol addiction, struggling with mixing it with pills I'm not saying that this was my mom that said it in a sober mindset. I believe that this was demonic that my mom spoke over me because of the alcohol she was drinking they call it spirits for a reason and I remember my mom looking at me and this is when I started to openly come out as being transgender.
Lex Renick:I lived my life as a transgender man for 14 years. Seven years of that was as a minor and then becoming an adult, and then the seven on were becoming an adult and getting surgery and getting on testosterone, et cetera. And so I remember coming out to my mom at 13, letting her know everything that I was feeling and what I was going through and what I was identifying as. And I'll never forget my mom drunk, drinking her glass of wine, putting it down, giving this really like solemn, creepy kind of giggle, and she just looked at me me and said if I would have known that you were going to be my daughter, I would have aborted you. And it's never easy for me to ever mention that because, going forward, that was some of the hardest echoing that I would hear on repeat. It's like the devil took that clip of hearing the woman that grew me in her womb, the woman that was supposed to protect me, replaying over and over and over again. And then the next thing that she would say no one's going to love you, you're just a freak. And so I started believing that lie. No one's going to love me because I'm a freak, because I'm different and I'm out of the ordinary. She would have aborted me because I'm a part of this community. What it was. Very heartbreaking, in fact.
Lex Renick:I started putting two and two together, thinking, well, if my mom's saying that she's Christian, then this is how all Christians think. And you know it just created this like narrative that Christians are these mean, horrible people. And you know that they're just going to bang me in the head with the Bible, and the enemy knew that. It was like resentment over anger. Now I'm mad at God again and it was just horrible. And that led me down a horrible hidden pornography addiction. I started having this hidden porn addiction that no one knew about and I struggled. It was like changing my brain chemistry. It was changing the way that I viewed myself and the people around me. It became this addiction that I felt like I could not break away from.
Lex Renick:And when I became an adult and I started the hormones and I started getting the top surgery and doing all these things, I had to take a testosterone shot with the needle about this big. Every Wednesday I would inject myself with synthetic testosterone. And did I feel good when I got on these hormones? Yeah, my voice changed. I grew an Adam's apple, my shoulders broadened. It was everything that made me feel matched the identity that I was honestly very confused and fully convinced that I was, and there was a sense of false freedom. But we know that that doesn't last forever, because only fullness of freedom comes with Christ.
Lex Renick:And so, as I'm taking these hormones and again struggling with this porn addiction, I'm trying to seek the Lord, I'm trying to seek answers, and every church that I was running to, I wasn't flaunting my sexuality or my gender identity. At this point, I'm living a stealth lifestyle, which means that no one knew that I was transgender. Everyone just knew me as Austin, as I identified, uh, male. And I just remember getting rejection after rejection after rejection, and I was just hungry for Jesus Again. I didn't need anyone to affirm me, I didn't need anyone to tell me hey, it's okay. I didn't necessarily have a family, I didn't necessarily have positive believers in my life that could speak truth and love, and I knew that I needed the Lord and I knew that I needed community and it was like the Lord was drawing me to the church. But every time I went there was some type of rejection that I faced, and after every rejection it was like more pain, more lies of the enemy came on, more repeats of the horrible things that people have said over me. That led me to drinking alcohol like crazy. That led me to hanging out with the wrong crowd, that's for sure. That led to me getting into coke and, you know, doing drugs and just not making the right decisions.
Lex Renick:Ultimately, it got to the point where I kept having this insecurity that my mom was right, that no one was ever actually going to be attracted to me, and so I began to realize that people fetishized trans people and it was a terrible addiction. But I was the story of the woman at the well. I started prostituting myself just to validate that that lie that my mom spoke of me wasn't true and it's horrible to say, but it was almost like an addiction. I would go run to this sin, literally exchange my body for money and feel horrible and so disgusting on the inside after because of that sin and then feel like I needed to do it again just to wash away that. It was this horrible, terrible coping mechanism of just saying, aha, look, look, you were wrong. People think I'm attractive People like me. And then my therapist brought it to my attention that I was never, actually ever enjoying these sexual encounters. My therapist brought to my attention at a young age that I was actually putting myself in the position that I was as a child and I was trying to reclaim my consent, reclaim my ability to say yes, but ultimately I was self-harming myself with sleeping with other people and not even wanting to to try and heal. And so it just tells you that you could run to the world for healing. You can run and do what the world says to heal, but the only one who can heal is Christ. Truly, and on my journey of walking with the Lord and I kind of fast forwarded here. We have to talk about the coming to Jesus moment and I feel like I had a few of those in my testimony.
Lex Renick:I remember being 17, telling people in high school that I believed in science. I know nothing about science, I just knew that atheist people would say that and then most people would shut up because no one wants to argue with science. And there was this girl named Kylie in my drama class at my high school in Marietta, california, and she is just awesome. We still talk to this day and I don't think she realized the impact of her evangelizing to me. Consistently. She always said hey, lex, well at the time, hey, austin, after school today, me and a bunch of friends were walking down to a church we would love for you to come to youth and I remember just telling her over and over no, I believe in science. No, I believe in science, thank you anyway. She would always say like hey, can I pray for you? She was always loving, always kind. I would be like that misfit sitting in a corner and I was totally emo let's just be real Like the swoopy hair, the colors, the pins in the pants. I was just out of the ordinary and I got severely bullied, but she didn't not care. She would always sit with me, she would always encourage me, speak a word over me, invite me to church and finally, after at this point in my life, I was already self-harming myself.
Lex Renick:At this point, at 17, I already attempted suicide twice. I there's this, how do you say this? There was this like when she invited me. This time it wasn't like I had a choice, it was out of desperation to feel the love of Christ, like I knew that I was missing something, and I was desperate, desiring to live but listening to all these lies about how I shouldn't be alive and how I should just kill myself Cause I'm going to go to hell anyways, all these things that were spoken over me. And finally she asked me and I said, okay, I'll go.
Lex Renick:And we walked after that Wednesday after school. We got there about a mile away and I remember when we walked into the sanctuary, this wasn't a Pentecostal church, this was just like a regular, you know non-denominational church. We walk in and these teenagers start taking their shoes off, and that was a little weird for me because at this point I haven't been to church since, like I don't know, fifth grade and I'm like Kylie, why are they taking their shoes off? And she said, well, what do you do when you get home? And I said I take my shoes off. And it was so prophetic to me now that I could see, because she's like, well, what do you do when you get home? You take your shoes off. Well, welcome home. And that welcome home had like an anointing on it. It's like God does know our hearts. He knows when he's chasing after us. He knows when he's pursuing us, what we like, what we don't like.
Lex Renick:Then the worship band goes on. Again I said I was in my emo days there. This was a worship band that was playing like metal, christian music. Never knew it was a thing. I was like, wow, god is pretty cool. Never heard of any of that. And then all of a sudden, after they're getting a little hardcore, it's softened down and these kids were going after God.
Lex Renick:And at this point in my testimony I've tried everything. I tried sleeping around, drinking drugs. I've tried filling the void, I tried even witchcraft at this point in the tarot cards and seeking out psychics and mediums and just trying to take a hold of my life with the new age. And nothing was filling. And I remember seeing these kids with their arms lifted high, with tears streaming down their face, like on their face with the Lord, and it was real, like it was so real and I could see it and I didn't know what they had, but I knew that I needed it, I knew that I longed for it and I remember looking at Kylie saying how do I do that? Like, how do I re-give my life to Christ? How do I worship? How do I trust God? And I remember her looking at me and just saying okay, well, close your eyes. And so I closed my eyes, I rededicated my life back to the Lord and she told me that when I would worship, to keep my eyes closed, to not think about what anyone else was going to think, that if I felt like God was leading me to lift my hands, to lift my hands, if I felt like God was stirring something in my spirit, to be honest with my emotion, to talk to him like he was my father because he is my father and my whole life started to change from that point on.
Lex Renick:At that point on, I continued to attend church Again.
Lex Renick:Like I said previously, I experienced rejection and even at that church. I remember I would go to young adult night and then I'd go to Monday night worship and they had a young adult pastor and I had a lot of moments with pastors that have done the wrong thing and said the wrong thing out of either ignorance or hatred, I'm not sure, but at the time I remember being so vulnerable with this youth pastor and all of a sudden he pulled me aside and everyone loved me at young adult night, like I was friends with everyone. It was the first time that I didn't feel like a loner in my life. I was on fire for Jesus. I was in my word. Were there things that I still needed to lay down? Absolutely? But there was other areas that God was working on in my heart and removing. Do I believe that God wanted me to lay it all down at the feet of Jesus? Absolutely, but I know that with this walk with Jesus, it was almost like the Lord was like do you trust me with this now?
Margaret Ereneta:Join us next week. There's so much that happens. Hear how Lex just earnestly seeks the Lord and finds him and finds the love of her life A man woohoo, and so very many miracles that happened. Both of them are just totally transformed. It's such an encouraging story.
