INTERVIEW: Chrissie Chevasutt

Chrissie Chevasutt, faciltator of Transgender Church and advocate for transgender awareness, discusses her new book Heaven Come Down ...

What was your inspiration for turning your story into a memoir?

Ever since falling into the church as a recovering drug addict and someone trying to rebuild their life after a total breakdown and severe mental illness, I was wheeled out by every church leader who ever heard my story, at every evangelistic event, to tell my story. It was so extraordinary for them and their churches. So I told my story, and would watch people gently crying as tears rolled down their faces, whilst others openly wept. Something about my story touched people, and their own sufferings, deeply. Every time I shared my 'testimony', folks would come up to me afterwards and tell me that I must write a book. This went on for a couple of decades.  

What both they and I did not realise, was that every time I told my story, I was lying. Not consciously or intentionally, but because I was so deeply ashamed of the gender conflict I had buried within my soul, and because I knew if I shared this truth about who I was, everyone would judge me.

I first wrote my story about fifteen years ago, partly for cathartic reasons, and partly because I suspected people were right, it is a story that needs to be heard. But in writing it I was still in total religious denial about my own gender identity. I finished the book, with not a mention of my inner battle with gender identity. It did not even register that I was omitting something so fundamental to my being and my story. That is the nature of how religion and faith can blind us to inner truth. The story sat in the hard-drive of my computer gathering dust for ten years. I knew it was not finished, that there was a vital chapter missing, but I had no idea what that chapter was about. 

June 2014, I saw Laverne Cox on the cover of Time magazine. The word transgender exploded in my soul with all the force of a bomb going off. Thirty-five years after my first mental and physical breakdown, I had another. I was a husband, father, and had been a Pastor, missionary, preacher and teacher and was now running my own successful building business. Fifty years of repression and suppression of my true self had finally turned totally toxic. The truth erupted from my unconscious and subconscious into my daily life and existence. I could lie no longer. I knew instantly that this was the 'missing chapter' and that I would have to rewrite the whole story, from beginning to end, telling the whole story, revealing my troubled inner life, and the cause and real reason why my story was the tragedy and miracle it is.

In standing before God, in naked, vulnerable honesty, admitting for the first time ever that I am transgender, I discovered not God's wrath or judgement, as I had feared all my life, but rather, God's unconditional love and active affirmation of who I am. The love of God broke from my life fifty years of bitter torment, guilt, shame, self-hatred and suicidal ideation. They are all gone, washed away, and I haven't suffered from them in the seven years since. 

So, I knew the real reason for writing this book, the real motivation and desire, is to send a message of love and hope to every transgender child who suffers with gender dysphoria and dysmorphia. It is to advocate for them, to say to the world and especially the church, don't judge us.

Listen to our stories and learn to love. 

How long did it take you to write? 

Initially I started writing this book, almost as a hobby, in my spare time, as a way of redeveloping my love for the written and spoken word, for storytelling and because I love the creative power of words used with love and kindness.

It took several years, with long gaps, many rewrites. I know nothing about writing, I'm uneducated and untrained in writing. My love of the gospels, of Jesus’ life and message have fuelled a deep desire to communicate love, hope and faith ever since I first encountered Jesus whilst lying, dying in a gutter in Old Delhi, India. 

After my second breakdown, coming out as transgender, I started the rewrite in earnest. The backlash and judgement from Christians after my coming out pushed me into severe depression, I developed pleurisy, contracted Covid and spent the best part of a year bedridden. For the bulk of that time in bed I wrote, rewrote and edited the book.

If I quantify the time spent slaving over the laptop physically writing, it equates to something close to two years, working eight hour days, six day weeks.

It is a real labour of love, I've poured everything I have and am, into this book. 

Is there a memory or moment you’re most fond of, or you feel is the most powerful, that you knew you absolutely had to include?

Yes, many, too many, and too many that I had to cut from the original submitted manuscript. I could not even choose one.

The first time I saw, or encountered Jesus?

How I saw Jesus through the eyes of the woman caught in adultery, that caused me to fall in love with Jesus?

The girl who threw herself from the multi storey car park in High Wycombe and lay dying at me feet?

The day I met my wife to be?

The birth of my two daughters?

Perhaps, if I had to choose one, for now, it would be the day I stood in the studio of a Transgender Dressing Service, having had my first ever professional make up session, feeling like Jonah, in the belly of the whale; that I had run as far away from God as a 'man' could possibly run. Here I encountered God in the most real, tangible and overwhelming way I have ever experienced in my entire life. It was both a 'baptism in the Holy Spirit', a deliverance, and the moment that God first spoke to me by name. Kerry who owned the studio, was neither Christian or churched, but she was a channel for God's love to finally set me free from lifelong shame and suicidal ideation.

If you could choose one lesson or message for readers to take away from your book, what would it be?

Yes, without hesitation;  

It costs nothing to judge another, to judge is to empower self, the ego, our pride and our sinful natures. In judging another we actually exalt our own ego and debase and degrade the one we 'other'. It is more addictive than opium or crack cocaine. It gives a more lasting high, but ultimately it pollutes and poisons the body and soul every bit as much. Religion with its propensity to judgements, can be every bit as addictive as crack cocaine.

To love someone? That will cost you everything. To listen, to seek to understand, to stand with, to identify with, to protect, and even save a life, as Jesus did in standing between the crowd of religious experts, bigots and their mob and the woman caught in adultery, that is the true nature of love. That is grace.

In my story is the story of not just trans children and youth, but so many we marginalise, stigmatize, even demonise; the mentally ill, the homeless, the addict, the alcoholic, the stranger, the refugee, the immigrant.

Human rights for anyone, is actually the intersection of all human rights, you can fight for one, without fighting for all.

Chrissie Chevasutt facilitates the online community Transgender Church and is well-known as an advocate for transgender awareness in the Church. She and her wife Pam have lived, worked and witnessed in Oxford for more than thirty years.

Heaven Come Down: The Story of a Transgender Disciple by Chrissie Chevasutt (Darton, Longman and Todd, £12.99) is available from all good bookstores.