Transgender Prayer

When I was a little boy, I prayed to God. I prayed God would make me a girl because I knew I wasn’t really a boy, not inside. I didn’t want to keep pretending to be a boy because it was hard to pretend all the time. I knew I couldn’t go on forever pretending like that.  It made me very tired and sad.  I wondered why God would want me to be tired and sad every day. But I tried hard not to disappoint God.

 

One morning, after praying like this for many years, I woke up and God had changed me. God changed my tiredness into courage. God gave me the courage to tell the truth. God gave me the courage to tell people that I wasn’t a boy, even though it made some people laugh and some people getA writ of divorce. Traditionally, only a man can grant his wife a get. Liberal Jews have amended this tradition, making divorce more egalitarian. mad.

 

God’s courage has made me happy. God’s courage has taught me to love myself. God’s courage lets my outside be like my inside. God’s courage gives me the gift of honesty. God is Truth. 

 

I thank God for giving me the courage to tell the truth. I thank God for giving me the courage to be me.

Thank you God, for creating the whole infinitely complex universe and for creating infinitely complex me. 

 

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Originally published in  SiddurLit. Order of prayers. The prayer book. B’chol L’vavcha by Congregation Beth Simchat TorahThe holiday at the end of Sukkot during which Jews dance with the Torah late into the night. The yearly reading cycle of the Torah is completed and a new cycle is begun. Shemini Atzeret and Simchat Torah mark the end of the holiday season. In some congregations, the Torah scroll is unrolled in its entirety, and selected verses are read or sections noted. (pg. 261, 2008 edition, used here with permission of CBST.