In a world where issues surrounding gender identity have become more prevalent, one man’s story of finding wholeness in God comes to limelight.
CBN News had interviewed Tommy Mota, the youngest of a blended family of eight, and according to him, he was closer to his mother and his sisters.
“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.” He said, describing how the transgender struggle had started out very early for him. “I was very sensitive. I always felt like I was more in tune to femininity– how they moved, how they talked, how they gestured.” To further confuse him, his siblings had engaged in stuff he wasn’t clear of. “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.”
As a result of feminine manner, he ran into bullies a whole lot 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.”
When he clocked the age of 16, Tommy decided to consider his 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.” Addicted to drugs, he frequented different gay clubs and chatrooms. “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.” “I had an internal knowing that it was just wrong in here. Like, I just knew that it was wrong.”
Entangled in the lifestyle, Tommy started taking female hormones and also considering having an operation to change his sex completely. “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.”
On the May 9, 2012, Tommy narrated that he was doing drugs with his siblings when he suddenly felt an oppressive fear from within. “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.”
According to his testimony, he immediately went to his mom who happened to have the experience of salvation recently at the time.
“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 has since then got his freedom and he is now in the ministry of helping others discover their being in Jesus Christ.
