I Took Jesus’ Hand": Former Transgender Man Laura Perry Says Christ Restored Her True Identity
Laura Perry Smalts says she spent nearly a decade living as a transgender man — undergoing hormone treatments, surgeries and a legal name change — in an effort to erase who she calls "Laura" entirely.
Raised around church but without a personal relationship with Jesus, Perry grew up believing a lie that she should have been born a boy, a belief compounded by childhood trauma and a painful relationship with her mother.
Everything shifted when a request from her mother to help design a Bible study website put Perry on an unexpected path back toward Scripture. Night after night, she cried out to God, until she says she saw Jesus reach out His hand and ask her a single question: "Do you trust Me?" Taking that hand meant surrendering everything she'd built.
"So I took His hand," Perry said. "I walked away from my entire identity" — her partner, her job, her financial security — and "left it all to follow Christ."
Perry says God then broke what she calls "the transgender lie" she had lived under for years. "I knew that I was not meant to be a man," she testified. "You can change your outward appearance. You can change your body. But ultimately, you are who God created you to be."
Since sharing her story, Perry has married a Christian man and now describes herself as "a former transgender set free by the resurrecting power of Jesus Christ, my Lord and Savior."