Gender Confused Man Finds Wholeness in God

“I wanted to be a boy one week. I wanted to be a girl next week. It was constantly like that confusion always in my mind.” The confusion started early for Tommy Mota. The youngest of ten in a blended family, Tommy identified more with his mother and sisters.

“I was very sensitive. I always felt like I was more in tune to femininity-- how they moved, how they talked, how they gestured.” Adding to his confusion, his half siblings engaged in things he didn’t understand. “It was sexual things taking place within the household, within siblings. I wanted to get involved in these things at a very young age. It kind of painted a picture, like this was a normal thing.”

Tommy’s feminine mannerisms brought insults and bullying from his brothers and kids at school. “Hearing faggot, gay, all that stuff constantly. I kind of went into a place of self-defeat. It was very lonely. I was in a lonely place and really wanting to belong.” So, to fit in Tommy began using cocaine at thirteen. During that time, he was also fighting his growing attraction to boys. “I'm already struggling with my whole sexuality, not understanding it, not knowing what it was. It was just very lonely and trying to figure out everything in my life and who can I tell.”

At sixteen, Tommy decided it was time to give in to those desires. “I just allowed myself to really go into that place of what they're calling me. Now I'm just gonna do what I want to do.” Now addicted to meth, he dropped out of school and began frequenting gay chatrooms and nightclubs. “I did feel like I was wanted, people wanted to be around me, people were gravitating towards me now, um, more so than I ever felt in my life. So, it was very accepting.”

Even then, he had a feeling he couldn’t escape. “I had an internal knowing that it was just wrong in here. Like, I just knew that it was wrong.” Despite his doubts, Tommy started taking female hormones and making plans to have a sex change operation. Now in his early twenties, he even asked God to make him a woman. "I said, ‘It would just be so much better if I was a female. I wouldn't have to deal with the torment of what I was feeling, of knowing this was wrong. Always struggling back and forth. Feeling like, honestly, this was a mistake. This is not it. This is not who I'm supposed to be.’”

Then one night, he woke up after having a bad dream and turned on the tv. A television show was airing a story about a transgender man who’d given his life to Christ and became the man God intended him to be. “Something happened, something changed. I always had a knowing of God and knowing that's not the plan that He had for me. Throughout my whole life, I just knew this was not what was intended for me.”

Tommy stopped taking hormones, but not knowing where to turn, continued to be stuck in the lifestyle. “Am I always gonna be a loser? Am I always gonna be this thing? Still just feeling empty, wanting change, but not knowing how to go about getting change.”

Then, on the evening of May 9, 2012, Tommy was doing drugs with his brother and sister when he felt an oppressive, paralyzing fear. “I just knew something was in my apartment, I just couldn't see it. I'm feeling hands all over me, but not seeing nothing there.”

Terrified, Tommy left the house, went to his mom, who had recently committed to her life to Christ and asked her to pray for him. “All I knew was I had to cry out to God because I just knew in that moment that He was the only one that was able to help me. So, I remember crying and just telling Him I was sorry for how I treated my mother and my father; I'm sorry for the lifestyle that I was living. I just went into this deep place of repenting and asking for forgiveness. I just felt air leave my body, outta my mouth, like if I was taking like deep breaths or yawns. In that moment, I just had this knowing that I was being delivered. I ended up going to sleep and then I woke up to a place where I never felt so clean in my life. I was just undone. I can't explain it, but I just felt so clean. I never felt clean in my life like that. I didn't want to go get drugs. I didn't want to go do the same things that I was doing before, jumping on the chat line, jumping on those websites. There was just something that changed in doing all that. The desire to want to be a woman, all that stuff, that got eradicated.”

Tommy started attending church and studying the Bible. He also began to embrace his identity as a man. “All that took time, but that's something I submitted to God where, ‘Lord, create what You called me to be from the beginning of the foundations of the earth. You called me to be a man, recreate in me those things. I don't want a life where I fail you. I don't want other people to think that, that you're a God that doesn't save.’ Because the God that I met that night changed me.”

Today, Tommy is committed to helping others find their true identity through Jesus Christ. "God says, ‘Tommy's a champion.' God says, 'Tommy's an overcomer.' God says, 'Tommy is chosen.’ If Jesus did it for me, He could do it for you, no matter what that looks like. We all need a savior. We all come from a place of brokenness.”

For more information about Tommy and his ministry, please visit https://www.facebook.com/Grace2Change.