i used to pray all the time for god to make me into a female. the weird thing is, things worked out, but not in just a concrete over night way. it was a series of even over years, and things seemed to turn just the way i wanted. i also got some tuning done in my mental state along the way. i still have problems, but i did turn out to be able to live as female, and the things i feared most didn't happen, but some bad things did happen that made me learn later on. i was really desperate, but it seems like you get this peak of fear, and then it starts going down. has anyone else prayed? i used to, but i just try to be pure of heart now, and be grateful of what i have gotten.
Yes, most fervently. There was a time when I was a religious bigot.
Like you, I just try to live a good life. But now... well, my eyes have been opend. I think I see the world in a much different way. I'm not worried about the afterlife. Rather, I try to make this life count... for me, my neighbors, friends, family, and those less fortunate. Why should I wait until I die to make a little paradise? Why not do it now? That's the way I see things.
I guess I pray informally. I don't ask whether the glass is half full or half empty. I am just glad that I have a glass at all.
I certainly don't expect to be given things in preference to someone else who may be more deserving. I have never believed in miracles, so don't expect Divine Intervention anyway.
Karen.
I never really prayed to God to ask for anything even when I did go to church, because I figured he wouldn't do it anyway.
I thought, hey, everyone says God knows what's best for you. So why the heck would he listen to what you want?
And it seemed so ridiculous to me that the church members would say "God listened to my prayer" when things went their way and "God has his own plans" otherwise. That irritated me immensely. I soon stopped going there.
Only when I was young, like middle school age. I didn't believe in god, but I prayed in my head nonetheless. I guess "god" enabled me to be my own therapist. She enabled me to talk out my feelings and feel better afterwards.
I don't ask the Gods to make me female, because I already am, I just ask for the strength to make it through all the adversity. When I was a kid I used to hope that one day I'd wake up in a proper body, but I never really expected it to happen.
And I agree, we should be focused on living well and right action now. Do that and you needn't worry about the afterlife.
I don't pray as much as I just try to shut up, listen and be here now. I spend time every week out in the mountains, or in the woods, or out at the beach. The Pacific Ocean is my is my prayer and mantra - ever in motion, ever changing, always the same. The redwoods my cathedral , the mountains my communion and together they help keep me on the path, and aware of my place and connection with the universe. There may, or may not be some huge deal after this life. I'll find out soon enough. No need to rush it.
Prayed almost every night from the ages of 4 to 13 that I'd wake up in a girl's body. Not only that I'd wake up with the body, but that my entire history would have been rewritten such that I'd been a girl all along and that's how people would relate to me: as if the boy thing never happened.
I did pretty much the same thing as Zoe, which I think may be why I turned out rather agnostic when it comes to religion as I grew up. Could be a lot of other things too I suppose lol.
The closest I come to prayer now is that I have a routine of finding one thing that I love about life every day. Keeps me smiling, for the most part.
Basically, after enough prayers, I realized that if there were a god, he was being malevolent towards me, or had no power to do anything for me, either way I found that faced with those choices I would rather not pray at all, and hope there isn't a god.
I prayed, when I was a child, cause I was taught to. I prayed with all my little heart.
I prayed for my body dysphoria (though I didn't know that name for it) to go away, didn't care how, I just wanted to feel better.
It didn't help.
I prayed quite a lot that I would "become a girl" when I was younger. Nowadays I'm an atheist, more of an anti-theist really. The idea that the magical god in the sky is going to fix things is a bit ridiculous to me now.
I didn't pray as a child, I wasn't raised to beleive or go to church. Of course I wanted to be changed, but didn't have a "god" to pray to or even realize there was a God.
As an adult its a different matter, I accepted God into my life when I was 30, and prayed fervently for God to step in and resolve my body issues, it hasn't happened, but that does not shake my belief in a loving God.
I guess you'd call it praying, more like begging. I hated the way I was and thought if I was a girl even for a little while things would be better. I wasn't sure if I really believed in god but I was desperate and was willing to try anything.
German version:
"Lieber Gott mach mich fromm dass ich in den Himmel komm"
(Dear God, make me pious so I may go to heaven)
Well, there was maybe some other but that one stuck.
Yet I never had the idea to pray for being a girl --- hey, that's just not a German thing to do I guess :-)
In this culture prayer needed to a organized, and remembered like a sort of poem. All else must have been reserved for more life threatening situation. Like getting bombed in a dugout, or some cellar?
These days I keep on praying for "guidance and direction" --- not always getting the expected results though. Transition being just one of them, eh. :-)
Axelle
I went to a christian primary school and I did pray then both.
"Make me into a real boy" and "Make me a girl." was the start of me loosing my faith and me becoming an atheist.
Quote from: Zoë Natasha on August 26, 2011, 09:54:27 AM
Prayed almost every night from the ages of 4 to 13 that I'd wake up in a girl's body. Not only that I'd wake up with the body, but that my entire history would have been rewritten such that I'd been a girl all along and that's how people would relate to me: as if the boy thing never happened.
Pretty much the same thing, just that my prayers went on for quite a bit longer :-\ I still wish it, sometimes, even though I realise it can never happen, of course.
I prayed, in my own way (http://www.youtube.com/embed/2DSPUbMFgFQ) but then I gave up. I realized he didn't give a hoot about me, but then a friend of mine told me about a 'version' of God that doesn't owe anything to anybody...
I lost my faith way before that though.
So yes I prayed, but that went out of style like a bad internet meme and it's going to take an act of God to put me back on God's path.
I prayed to be female a lot when I still bought into the concept of God. By the time I reached my teens I concluded that anything I knew about religion has been designed and fed to me by other humans to fulfill their own agendas. Without more than that, it isn't something I can believe in.
Oh yes. And I prayed for God to make me happy as a boy. Well...... my understanding of prayer is a lot different now.
(https://www.susans.org/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fganjataz.com%2F01smileys%2Fimages%2Fsmileys%2FloopyBlonde-blinking.gif&hash=4545ddf8251cf9c32ae6074d56e48bc34a755857)Kristi
Quote from: Kristi on September 03, 2011, 08:10:24 PM
Oh yes. And I prayed for God to make me happy as a boy. Well...... my understanding of prayer is a lot different now.
(https://www.susans.org/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fganjataz.com%2F01smileys%2Fimages%2Fsmileys%2FloopyBlonde-blinking.gif&hash=4545ddf8251cf9c32ae6074d56e48bc34a755857)Kristi
i had a phase in my life where i just said i was ok if i could stay at boy, but not become a man. i didn't actually understand that i could adopt a female gender role at the time. i didn't like the idea of becoming a man, but even if i didn't transition, i still wouldn't have been able to become one anyway.
I dont know if that qualifies as praying, because as far as i remember there were no gods involved but i constantly wanted to be made "right" and my confusion to end and searched for ways out in all directions, including trying to make "deals" with nature of sorts....
Yep hon,
that counts by me for prayer - kind of when we at our wits end, right?
AND KEEP ON WALKING, as rightly suggested by Mr. Winston Churchill, all we CAN do, eh :-)
Axelle
i will pray to god now even if i dont believe in him, for the one i have feelings for, to not reject me.
I pray often to the Flying Spaghetti Monster, that soon I will have the money to remove my noodly appendage.
When I was little used to pray that I would wake a girl and all that. Don't do that anymore, just pray to have the strength to face whatever I have to face. Sometimes feel guilty as hell, sometimes think it's a blessing. Who knows...
I've always been an atheist, even as a toddler, so no. I've never prayed a day in my life.
I had no concept of deities as a child, I thought it was a metaphor that adults used but didn't honestly believe in.
When I started noticing my transgendered feelings I was already a teenager though; as a child I had no care about being a boy.
I don't really consider myself very religious now, but when I was a kid I was raised a Christian. I remember praying to God to give me boobs. It never happened though.
...Unless you count Gynecomastia. :D
This is where I'm sure I'm a bit different (but that it connects all the same), but since the very day puberty happened, I've always wished I'd wake up with a beautiful face. In school, there were always girls who, like me, had no boobs and butt and weighed 110lbs, but were getting laid left and right because they had such gorgeous faces. While I've always liked my petite body, boobs or not, I've always hated my extremely brutish, manly face. On top of contradicting my inner gender, it even contradicts my slender, sleek body! I've always hated it.
And quite frankly, twice in my life, I've woken up with a different, albeit botched and maimed, face. You know life is toying with you when you get the surgeries you want but turn into the victim of malpractice at the hands of a rapist who performs your surgery without proper training and under the influence of a substance.
One thing I want to ask everyone here: I know how young transgendered children act (most of them automatically think of their parts as a birth defect), but how exactly does one get all that hyped up about the body during youth? I literally did not know what a vagina was until quite late in life, nor did any of the girls around me my age have boobs until late middle school. Sometimes I believe that some cases of ->-bleeped-<- are actually a (maybe undiscovered) disorder where a young child wants to be an adult in form, wanting to have boobs and parts that, rather than classifying the gender of children around them, classify an adult mother or father.