The Life Challenges Podcast
Modern-day issues from a Biblical perspective.
The Life Challenges Podcast
From Transition to Truth: A Journey with Katie Coblentz | Part 1
Katie Coblentz shares her powerful journey through gender transition and detransition, revealing how her identity as a baptized child of God ultimately became her anchor when everything else fell apart. She describes the complex path from childhood confusion to medical transition and back, offering unique insights from someone who has lived on both sides of this profound life experience.
"I'm a baptized child of God," Katie says, describing the moment of clarity that came after years of confusion. "Really, honestly, it's all I'll ever need."
The path to that realization wasn't straightforward. Katie shares how cultural influences and social media led her down a rabbit hole of gender identity exploration in her teens. By college, she was receiving testosterone injections and undergoing surgeries—all with surprising ease and minimal psychological evaluation. "I went to the clinic and they said 'yep, textbook gender dysphoria.' Their in-office clinician diagnosed me same day," she explains, highlighting concerns about the medical gatekeeping process.
Most compelling is Katie's description of the moment everything changed. After years of successfully "passing" as male, a routine haircut led to an unexpected confrontation with her reflection. Suddenly, she saw herself as a woman again. This disorienting experience coincided with her reconnection to faith through Father Mike Schmitz's Bible in a Year podcast, eventually leading her to a Lutheran church where her original baptism was honored as valid—a theological point that became her lifeline.
Katie's story challenges assumptions on both sides of the transgender debate. She doesn't fit neatly into political narratives, instead offering something more nuanced: a testimony about identity that transcends both gender and politics, rooted in something more fundamental than either.
Listen as Katie shares what happened when she finally told her pastor the truth about her biological sex, how she navigated the complex emotions of detransitioning, and how she found peace not in changing her body, but in remembering whose she was all along.
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On today's episode, or never been more anxious, never been so unsure about the world around me. I could say well, at the very least, I'm a baptized child of God Not son or daughter, couldn't get that language out yet but I'm a baptized child of God and it's all I needed. Really. Honestly, it's all I'll ever need. But I'm blessed with much more. But I'm a baptized child of God and I just kind of stuck with that blessed with much more, but I'm a baptized child of God and I just kind of stuck with that.
Jeff Samelson:Welcome to the Life Challenges podcast from Christian Life Resources. Our world today presents people with complicated issues of life and death, marriage and family, health and science. It can be a struggle to understand or deal with them. We're here to help by bringing good information and a fresh biblical perspective to these matters, and more.
Christa Potratz:Join us now for Life Challenges. Hi and welcome back. I'm Krista Potratz, and I'm here today with Pastors Bob Fleischman and Jeff Samuelson, and today we have a very special guest with us. We have Katie Koblentz. Welcome, katie, we're excited to have you today.
Christa Potratz:Katie is going to share her story in just a little bit, but first I just wanted to kind of mention what today's episode is going to be talking about. We are going to be talking about transgenderism, and Katie has agreed to so kindly come on here and share her story with us. And it is a story of somebody who has transitioned but then also gone through detransitioning. And I feel too like for myself personally, I have found a lot of these detransitioning stories recently and they're very fascinating, very interesting. And, katie, your story is interesting and fascinating as well, but your story is also very different too, and it was very different just because of everything God has done in your life too, and so we're definitely going to be talking about that today, and it just really reminds me so much of God's relentless love for each and every one of us. And so, with all that said, katie, can you share with us a little bit about yourself and a little bit of your?
Katie Coblentz:story. I am a detransitioner, which is how they call people like me, and all that means it's just a big fancy word. It just means that I at one point in my life for me it was when I was about 18, 19 years old went through a gender transition, decided that I did not want to be a female anymore and, biologically female, decided that I wanted to be a male. And then later on, after I'd taken hormones, had surgery, I decided nope, I don't want to do this anymore. I want to go back to being a woman. And at this point, as a quote unquote detransitioner, I live as a biological woman who has all of the literal and emotional scars from having gone through a whole gender transition gone through a whole gender transition, so can you share with us a little bit of your beginnings and how?
Katie Coblentz:this kind of all began. I was a tomboy growing up. I always was, and I think when it came time for me to tell my parents that I'm transgender, that I'm going to become a boy, there really wasn't much of a surprise. Growing up I had a cousin who was exactly like me. He's a bit younger but they would say sometimes oh, he's the boy version of Katie. And my parents would joke no, katie's the boy version of Katie. So I was always a tomboy. I always wanted the boys clothes, the boys toys, everything. At recess I played with the boys. All my friends were boys at school and by the time I got to high school, surprisingly, I started to outgrow that just a little bit. And I try.
Katie Coblentz:This is people will say in the trans communities. They'll say I tried to be my biological sex. So for me, I tried to live as a girl and I wore the girls' clothing and I did the girls' things and I played on the girls' sports teams and made friends with girls. But it just didn't fit for me, I guess. So I went back to wearing all the boys' stuff and doing all the boys' activities. My friends were still all girls at that point.
Katie Coblentz:And then the other thing that was happening in high school was there was a push for birth control. I had my first boyfriend. I was 15, maybe 14. And the push was you have your first boyfriend and you start taking birth control right away Because we want to prevent teen pregnancies. The assumption is just because I've started dating somebody very innocently, I'm going to just start having sex with them out of the blue. Not something that was ever on my radar. Well, as you can imagine, as a 15 year old girl, this made me extremely uncomfortable. I had no desire for being anywhere near sexually active with my boyfriend, who I only ever played with on Xbox. We were too awkward to ever talk in person. We would just log into Xbox, we would talk on Xbox and play on Xbox, but other than that, our friends would talk to each other for us If we wanted to go on a date or break up. At one point it was my friend told his friend, it was just this whole thing. So it was way too innocent, way too awkward to be worried at all about teen pregnancy.
Katie Coblentz:So there was this push for birth control and it honestly just confused me at first and I was thinking well, I'm not wanting to do this. So does that mean that I'm the odd one out? If my friends are taking birth control, if my friends are doing these things with their boyfriends, am I the weird one? And some girls in my class actually said there's an easy test to figure out if you're even straight. And you just look around the classroom at all the boys in the room and they say can you picture yourself sleeping with any of them? I said no. I looked around, no, can't see it, don't want to do it. And they said, all right, well then you're a lesbian. And for me that was like a eureka moment. It made sense All right, I'm a lesbian. Lesbians don't have to take birth control because lesbians are not worried about pregnancy.
Katie Coblentz:So it worked. And now the push for birth control was off of me, off of my shoulders. I didn't have to think about that stuff so much anymore. But I started dating girls and I didn't want to hold their hands, didn't want to kiss them honestly, just didn't want to look gay, just wanted to be normal, but without having to worry about this push to be sexually active or sexually promiscuous in any way.
Katie Coblentz:While I was dealing with the confusion and anxiety that kind of came along with where do I fit in? I started exploring the LGBT acronym. Am I the L? Am I a lesbian? No, not really. B bisexual maybe All right. Girls clothes maybe I'll cut my hair again. I did that. Or the girls clothes cut my hair. Bisexual doesn't fit, doesn't fit, I don't. I've been told now I'm a lesbian and I think that's right, because I'm still not interested in having sex with the boys in my class, but I also don't want to do anything with the girls. So maybe I'm asexual, which just means no sexual preference. So you see, when I got confused I'm exploring my identity only in terms of the LGBT acronym Right At no point did I think maybe I'm just normal, maybe this is just what 16 and 17 year old girls should feel that they don't want to have sex yet.
Christa Potratz:But that's not, that was not on my radar to at this point, where they were also just looking at all of basically like the letters of the alphabet, to try to find their identity.
Katie Coblentz:Oh, absolutely, Okay, Absolutely I out of my entire friend group. By the time we graduated high school, maybe two or three of them were still identifying as straight. I've not kept in touch, so I don't know how many have, you know, gone back to just being normal and decided all right, I'm straight again. This was just a phase I went through, but by the time we graduated, very few of us were still identifying as heterosexual.
Christa Potratz:What other cultural influences also kind of led you to transitioning as well?
Katie Coblentz:Well, at my high school. Now, I graduated from high school in 2014, and I'm almost 30, so it's been a while, but I went to the public high school. I'm from Massachusetts and we didn't have the big rainbow pride flags. But what we did have was those blue and yellow equal rights stickers. I guarantee anybody listening has seen them. They're put out, I believe, by the Human Rights Campaign. Nice, pretty blue, navy blue square with two yellow parallel lines in them Just looks like an equal sign and it just means marriage. Equality, basically, is what they're going for, and all that means is they support gay marriage. And when you would see that in a teacher's classroom, outside of a teacher's classroom, you knew that that was a safe place to kind of explore that alphabet community. And we had teachers who were in gay marriages. If we call them gay marriages, they were married to each other quote unquote, married.
Katie Coblentz:So I was exposed to all this at my public school, but it wasn't from school that I got the idea that maybe I'm transgender. That was YouTube, social media. I went down these rabbit holes of I'm supposed to be a lesbian. I don't feel like one. I'm not asexual, I'm not bisexual, I'm not any of these other things. I'm supposed to be a lesbian, but I still have all of this anxiety, a little bit of depression, because I just can't figure out where I fit. And that is when I found the transgender community. And it was through the online communities and the YouTube videos, the transgender influencers, what they call themselves talking about transitioning and how great it is for them. That's how I decided now I'm going to go down the path of being transgender.
Katie Coblentz:Where did your folks land in all this? Your mom and dad? No-transcript sexuality or your gender? If you can even explore those things, really, you just leave your parents out of it. And when I went to the gender clinic, the gender clinic said the same thing to my parents. Usually, parents are the last ones to find out, so until I absolutely had to tell them anything, I didn't say a word. So what it looked like when I was becoming transgender and watching all these YouTube videos at this point it's my freshman year of college they have no idea what I'm watching on YouTube and they don't really care. It's never been a problem. I've never been addicted to social media, so they're just thinking all right, yeah, sure, watch YouTube, whatever.
Katie Coblentz:And I'm watching all of these other 19, 20, 21, maybe year old girls who are talking about how they were a lesbian and they were depressed and anxious and they started taking testosterone or they had top surgery, which is a double mastectomy testosterone, or they had top surgery, which is a double mastectomy, and they felt not dysphoria or discomfort in their biological sex, in their true identity, but euphoria, an overwhelming positive feeling about their identity, the identity that they've put on themselves, not not their true one.
Katie Coblentz:So I thought, well, I want that euphoria and so I sought that out. I thought, well, if these girls are going through it, I think I have gender dysphoria and I think I'm transgender, so I'm going to go to the gender clinic and get this sorted out. And that's exactly what I did. I was I think I had my last appointment with my pediatrician before I was going to move on to a grownup doctor and I asked for the referral for the gender clinic. She gave it to me, no problem, and at the gender clinic they said I have textbook gender dysphoria, which? How did they come to that conclusion? They just asked me a bunch of questions about my childhood, about being a tomboy, and they said this is what you have. And they slapped that label on it and that was all I needed to get in the door of transgenderism.
Christa Potratz:And had you already pretty much self-diagnosed yourself with gender dysphoria? Were you kind of just going to the clinic to just get what you wanted? Absolutely.
Katie Coblentz:And I didn't have a therapist, and this is actually really important. I thought I needed a therapist because the only thing I had done at this point is self-diagnose from YouTube influencers. That's all I'd done and I thought surely they'll make me get a therapist. I'll have to go through this six months of counseling that's supposed to be required and I won't have the diagnosis for another six months, and then who knows how long it'll take to get on hormones. That's not at all how it happened. I went to the clinic and they yep textbook gender dysphoria. Their in-office clinician diagnosed me same day and I had the hormones Either my first or second appointment, I don't remember.
Christa Potratz:So can you also just bring us alongside your faith journey growing up and where you were when you were transitioning, and where you were when you were transitioning.
Katie Coblentz:As a child. I come from a very devout Catholic family, though we fell away from the church when I was about 14 or 15, right before high school. So growing up, we were in church every Sunday. My parents and I have good parents still married to this day. I'm not from a broken home. I have a younger sister and I get along with her just fine. She has a younger sister, so we argue enough. But you know, my home life was great In church every Sunday, went to Sunday school, ccd, first Communion, all of that exactly how you'd expect.
Katie Coblentz:Really, up until we were, my sister and I, going to graduate from our private Catholic middle school, for some reason my family had just started falling away from the church. At that point we weren't going to church every Sunday and we weren't really doing these things. But we were still going to Catholic school and I was still very faithful. I still loved God. When I was younger, even in middle school, I wanted to be a nun and my family thought oh yeah, you'll definitely, you'll grow up and you'll become a nun. They just thought that's, that was my calling. But then things got a little bit derailed because, like I said, in high school, I was exploring the LGBT acronym. And now I'm not having any of the religious education at school or at home. We're not going to church, and once you fall away from those things, you just start looking at other stuff, and that's exactly what I did.
Katie Coblentz:So all through high school, I don't think that I ever said I was an atheist, but I definitely said, yeah, I just don't, I just don't buy into this stuff, and I didn't care about any religious or spiritual anything. It was just yeah, whatever Doesn't matter, and that was kind of my attitude toward it. It was just yeah, whatever doesn't matter, and that was kind of my attitude toward it. So, functionally, I was 100% an atheist, just saying nope, this is just, this is just bunk. I don't know if I ever would have said that In college, even when I was transgender, it was a little bit of the same thing.
Katie Coblentz:But a few years into being transgender, but a few years into being transgender, I started seeking a church again and I was thinking I am transgender, this is who I am, this is how God made me, because that's what I'm hearing from the online communities. But I'm trying to fill and I would seek out the churches that would accept me for being transgender. But those churches were never really preaching the word of God, because they're just saying, oh yeah, you're your own God essentially.
Katie Coblentz:You can just do all these things to yourself and it's perfectly fine. So I still felt very empty.
Christa Potratz:So those messages? Did that resonate with you?
Katie Coblentz:No, and there was one church that I went to. Perfectly nice people there Got along with them, just fine. They had communion. And now I'm from the Catholic church. I know what communion is, I've had it growing up. But I knew that the Catholic church doesn't do the whole transgender thing and I thought, well, the church is wrong, I can't be the one who's wrong. So I was thinking all right, I need the sacrament. And this just non-denominational church that I went to I thought they saw it as a sacrament and they had I don't know what they had, maybe cups of grape juice or something and bread. But I thought this is communion, this is a sacrament. I'm not going to participate because I've not been catechized, I've not been confirmed in this faith, so I won't have anything to do with it. And all the people are looking at me like why wouldn't you go up for it? I said, oh, I'm just visiting, I really I shouldn't. You know that sort of thing. And they didn't have the option where you could go up and cross your arms.
Katie Coblentz:So I just stayed in my seat, no big deal, but everybody was kind of looking at me funny. I didn't realize that that was not a sacramental church and they just do anything. Apparently Anybody can just go up and have that because they don't believe it's the true body and blood of Christ. So these churches you can see were just very confusing for me and I was just searching for something.
Christa Potratz:And I just want to go back to the transitioning then part. What were the different things you did to become you know?
Katie Coblentz:quote unquote trans Right, that's a really good question. It started off that I just changed my name and you could change your name legally and on your birth certificate. A lot of people don't know that you can change your name and your gender on your birth certificate just because you identify a different way. You don't have to have anything else. Or in Massachusetts you don't even have to have a doctor's note to change your gender on the birth certificate anymore. It used to be when I was transitioning, I had to show a doctor's note. Now you don't need to, you just change it.
Katie Coblentz:So step one was just trying on the different names and the different pronouns. Hey, instead of calling me she, could you call me he? And most people did no problem. They went ahead and they called me. The name I asked for was Caden, close enough to Katie that I would answer to my name when my parents called me, but also a male name and they'd call me he as best they could. They'd forget here and there and they'd call me she. It was no big deal to me. My my neighbor told me it's like when you move your silverware drawer and you always still want a fork and you go to the old drawer but that's not where the forks are, and then you have to correct yourself. So I gave people a lot of leeway. You know you call me the wrong pronoun.
Katie Coblentz:I get it, you're just going to the old silverware drawer. But a couple of years in I was like all right now. Now you people need to fall in line. Stop calling me the wrong thing and I would get angry After wrong thing and I would get angry After that. Social transition is what it's called. When you're just doing things socially just the name, the pronouns, your whole wardrobe is of the opposite gender.
Katie Coblentz:Now Then it was time for me to start testosterone, which is? There are a few different forms of it, but I opted for the weekly self injections because they will give you a gel and you just rub a gel on yourself and that's one of the options. But I sometimes work too closely with kids or I had younger cousins and I would not want testosterone gel rubbing onto or transferring onto small children. That would be a recipe for disaster. So I opted for the weekly self-injections. The shots initially deepened my voice. Injections the shots initially deepened my voice, helped me to grow some facial hair, gave me more muscle mass, kind of rounded out my shoulders and, as you would expect a steroid to do, helped me to stand up straighter, feel more confident. I was not able to feel quite so many emotions, so instead of feeling sad all the time, sometimes I'd get angry, but most of the time I just felt neutral. I could think about nothing and I liked it.
Katie Coblentz:After the testosterone after about a year on the testosterone, the effects started to plateau and I wasn't noticing any more changes, so I wasn't having that euphoria that the testosterone initially gave me. So I thought, well, what better time than now to have top surgery, which is a double mastectomy? A lot of times, breast cancer patients will have to have their breasts removed as a form of cancer treatment. Well, women who identify as transgender or even non-binary or even sometimes other things, are able to have this surgery and remove their healthy breasts. There's no sign of cancer or anything, and that's exactly what I did.
Katie Coblentz:A year into taking testosterone, I was 20 years old and I had my breasts removed, and now I have the scars straight across my chest, just like a lot of transgender people do. And after that surgery I felt better than I ever had. I could stand up straighter and be more confident and my chest was flat. I was able to walk around day to day. I didn't have to bind my chest, wrap it, wear compression shirts or anything like that. I could just live my life, and I could just live my life the way I wanted, and everybody thought I was a boy. I could just live my life, and I could just live my life the way I wanted, and everybody thought I was a boy. They thought I was 20, 21, and they thought I was 11 or 12, but at least they think I'm male.
Katie Coblentz:That was kind of my thought process. At least they think I'm male. Four years after the top surgery, the double mastectomy, I started having abdominal pain and the gender clinic said what that is? It's your uterus basically shriveling up from all the testosterone, pulling on your whatever. Your uterus is connected to tendons or muscles or something and just causing me this immense pain that would have me doubled over. And the cure for that, the gender clinic said, is a hysterectomy. You just go ahead. The hospital's not too far from here. I was in Boston, great doctors in Boston and I went ahead and I had a full hysterectomy. They removed my uterus, cervix, fallopian tubes and both ovaries. And just a quick side note, that was during the summer of 2020. So everything shut down, except this, apparently. And yeah, it's ridiculous. It's laughable how ridiculous it is but the surgery didn't go well.
Katie Coblentz:So when I came out of the surgery and I'm in recovery, my condition was getting worse and worse and worse. Now what's going on? So they couldn't send me home. It was just supposed to be a quick outpatient surgery. Come in, get surgery, go home. They couldn't. They admitted me to the hospital, Couldn't figure out what was going on until later in the night my heart rate was I don't know what it was over 100, even though I'm in bed.
Katie Coblentz:But I was writhing in pain, my blood pressure's dropping significantly. They do an abdominal ultrasound and they see that I'm bleeding internally and I have been for quite some time now. They rushed me in for emergency surgery, sewed me back up. One of my arteries was open Whether or not it was supposed to be I don't know, but it definitely was not supposed to be after the surgery. So they sewed me back up, fixed that I had three blood transfusions and then I was good to go and I have no lasting damage, at least nothing that I know of from that, which is, I think, miraculous.
Katie Coblentz:After the hysterectomy I still I'm now, let's say, five, six, almost seven years into transition. If you would have asked me in that moment, do you regret your transition? Nope, don't regret it. I am still happy with it At that point still was after everything that put me through. But because the hysterectomy was such an adventure, as the doctor said, I decided no more surgeries. I wasn't planning on having any others, but this basically down the road. Now, if I wanted any, I wouldn't get them now.
Christa Potratz:So you've done all this stuff now to transition, done all this stuff now to transition. I think people would wonder okay, how did you ever get to the mentality to detransition after doing all of this work to?
Katie Coblentz:your body. Honestly, the way I got there, I still sometimes don't even think it makes sense, because it's just, it happened so fast and so unexpectedly Because after the hysterectomy I'm still yep, still want to be trans. I'm happy with this. That was the summer of 2020. Early 2021, I start listening to. You know, my Catholic upbringing comes back to me. Oh, father, mike Schmitz just put out a podcast Bible. In a Year, maybe I should listen to the Bible. I never read through the Bible before In my 20s now almost mid-20s never listened to the Bible, never read the Bible, don't really know what's in it. So I start listening. About halfway through the year I think, wow, I should go to confession. And I didn't really know why. Because if you would have asked me then I still would say I'm happy. If you were to ask me at this moment today, in the year 2025, are you still happy with your transition?
Katie Coblentz:Part of me would still say yes a t-shirt and I don't have to worry about a bra or a period not to be TMI. But I'm done with those things. I'm very happy with it. And I'm still like, oh, if I could go back, would I get the surgery again? A lot of days I think I would. Unfortunately, it's the sinful part of me that wants that, but sometimes that still comes back. So when did I finally realize this was all bad? That still comes back. So when did I finally realize this was all bad? I'm not totally sure I fully have yet.
Katie Coblentz:I know intellectually that it's bad, but without somebody else telling me hey, you know, this is kind of not good. What happened to you, what you did to yourself, I don't think I would have any clue of how bad it was. But somehow, you know, I'm listening to the Bible somehow and the Word of God is getting through and I think I should go to confession. I was not detransitioning at this point, I was feeling kind of guilty. And I go to confession with just a priest in my neighborhood church that I've been to before as a child and I tell him yeah, I'm transgender. No, I don't think I should be, I think it's bad. And I tell him yeah, I'm transgender? No, I don't think I should be. I think it's bad. I receive absolution. I kind of move on. He gave me some good advice and I move on from that.
Katie Coblentz:When was the mountaintop experience where you realized that you know things have to go a different course? So while I'm listening to the Bible in a year the first time through I listened to it a couple of times I I'm listening to the Bible in a year the first time through. I listened to it a couple of times. I had just had the hysterectomy and maybe it was a year after the hysterectomy and everything's going fine and I'm not regretting a single thing. And there was one day in particular. I was going to work the night shift and so I needed a haircut, because I had a men's haircut, so every few weeks I'd need to get it trimmed. So I scheduled a haircut appointment. I was going to get my haircut, go back home, shower, get all the itchy hairs off my neck and then go into work. And that's exactly what I did. I went to the barbershop, got my haircut standard men's haircut, a little longer on the top, short on the sides, paid for the haircut, loved it. She showed it to me in the mirror thought it looked great, nothing new.
Katie Coblentz:I'm driving home, I get home, I'm about to get in the shower. I look in the mirror and something just didn't seem right. I'm looking at my reflection in the mirror and I just I'm staring. Something's wrong. Something's wrong. I's wrong. I don't look like me. I thought I was having a stroke. I was not. But I'm looking. No, I don't look right. I don't look right.
Katie Coblentz:What it was was I looked like a woman to myself. I'm seeing myself now as a woman for the first time in my adult life. And I shook it off. It's not that. Something's not right there.
Katie Coblentz:Got in the shower, cleaned up, put my work uniform on, looked in the mirror again, I just started crying. I couldn't control it and I was taking testosterone. It's hard to cry like that when you're taking testosterone, but I did, and then I stopped crying, because it's easy to stop when you're taking testosterone. All right, I've had my five minutes of crying time I can't be late for work and I went off to work, but I just couldn't shake that feeling of something's wrong. Why do I look like a woman? And at that point I shouldn't have looked like a woman.
Katie Coblentz:Nobody in my life nobody walked past me and thought I looked like a woman, say, oh hey, buddy, what's up?
Katie Coblentz:They always thought I was a boy, but I just couldn't shake it. And then later that night I'm looking in the mirror. Yep, I look like a woman. I look like a woman and I just couldn't handle it and it just got to a point. I think that's when I was like something's not right and I couldn't. I didn't have the words for it and, like I said, even still sometimes I think, oh yeah, I'm happy with my transition. But that was the point when it kind of all crumbled for me, when everything just fell apart, all that work I put into it, and now I don't even look like a man and on top of it I look like a woman and maybe I should be a woman, but I have a men's haircut and men's clothes and I couldn't do anything about it. And I keep listening to Father Mike in my ear every day, listening to the Bible, waking up, listening to the 20 minutes, or however long it is and I just you know something.
Katie Coblentz:Maybe I should try to go to a church that is not so pro-trans and I don't have to tell them anything yet. And that's what I started thinking. And I did not go to church until through the end of 2021. I still had not gone to church. I said nope, too scared, nobody wants to go with me, I don't want to go on my own, so I'll just stay home. Maybe I'll watch a church service online, maybe I'll watch one of Father Mike Schmidt's other videos, something like that.
Katie Coblentz:And then, early in or late in 2021, I made it my New Year's resolution to just get off my butt, suck it up and walk into a church. So all of December I spent researching where am I going to go? What kind of church should I go to? Actually, this might have been 2022. I might be getting my timeline mixed up. It's sometime and I'm back and forth. Should I do transition, should I not? Is it really that bad? No, there's no way it's really that bad. I like it better like this. But anyway, whatever it was, I think end of 2022 is when I made it my New Year's resolution.
Katie Coblentz:I should really try to go to a church and I'm Googling churches in the area and I'm thinking, you know what, maybe I shouldn't start with proximity, maybe I should start with theology, because one time I went to a church and they had the sacrament all mixed up, okay, and I don't know anything about the faith I'm identifying as a transgender Christian, as if that could ever exist but I know something wasn't quite right about the way they treated the sacrament. So I thought I'll start with theology and I landed on the Lutheran church and then there are a lot of different flavors of Lutheran is how I called them and some of them were very pro-trans and some of them were very much not. So it's like, all right, that's interesting, they have the same name but very different theology, I guess. And I didn't know any of the background yet, but I'm looking into it. I'm like any of the background yet, but I'm looking into it.
Katie Coblentz:I'm like you know what? I am going to go to the most conservative church I can find, so conservative that I can't just be anonymous, that I have to have a relationship with people, especially if I want to receive the sacrament. I have to tell the pastor. But I also don't want anybody to affirm me as male, because I know it's wrong. I don't know why it's wrong. I still want to be a male, but something's not quite right and I knew that. So I went to a Lutheran church LCMS church in the area.
Christa Potratz:Lutheran church Missouri Synod.
Katie Coblentz:Missouri Synod yes.
Christa Potratz:We'll just clarify for all of our listeners. Missouri Synod church.
Katie Coblentz:There were a few different flavors, as I called them, so I was like all right, yeah, those would work.
Katie Coblentz:The closest one to me was the Missouri Synod, and that's how I went there, right next to my work, and so I walked in at a few Sundays no, the first Sunday, because January is my New Year's resolution Telling myself get to a church, get to a church. First Sunday in January rolled around. I was too scared, I chickened out and I just watched the live stream. And I actually think I did that the second week of January too. And then I just thought, for lack of a better term, I just need to man up and walk into church. And that's what I did. So the next time I went to the church and I just went, I sat in the back and I left. The pastor saw me, I was in the handshake line Hi, pastor, see you later. And I still looked like a boy Short hair, men's clothing, all of that. And the pastor had no idea that I was anything other. And then I went the next Sunday and the next Sunday, and on the third Sunday, third or fourth Sunday, I said, hey, pastor, I'd like to make an appointment with you. Could we meet in your office? He said, yeah, I'd love to. So he had it down as he would meet with this young gentleman who's come to church just a few times.
Katie Coblentz:I went to his office for the appointment that first time, and an hour and a half goes by and we're talking about all things, small catechism, talking about baptism. I told him I'm not joining this church if you tell me I need to be rebaptized. He said there's no such thing as rebaptism. Yeah, okay, good, because my baptism's valid Only thing I have right now. Okay, I'll tell you that much, and then we get to the end. He goes. Anything else you want to tell me? I said oh, yeah, there's one more thing, just one thing after this hour and a half I'm biologically female and I'm transgender and I don't think I want to be Something along those lines.
Jeff Samelson:He'll tell the story accurately because I think it shocked him so much.
Katie Coblentz:He's like okay, let's make another appointment. Sure enough, I came back and we're going through the catechism together. We're talking about especially with baptism. This is something that, when I'm listening to the Father Mike Schmitz podcast, I didn't have the words to describe yet. But as I'm deciding, do I detransition, do I not? What am I going to do?
Katie Coblentz:Not realizing that this was wrong, not realizing for a while, listening to the Father Mike Schmitz podcast, I'm thinking I have nothing. It felt like my whole world was falling apart. I know something's wrong. I don't have the words to say what it is. I have no idea what to do, what to do with my life, what to do? Just? What's my next step? What am I? Am I going to keep wearing the men's clothing?
Katie Coblentz:My feelings I knew were wrong and I was not in line with reality. But there's a huge step between knowing intellectually and actually believing it and doing something about it. It's like I know something's wrong, but do I do something or is it okay? Kind of is where I was and the illustration that I like the best, that it's just how I picture it automatically in my head. I don't know if it works for everybody, but it felt like I was a cartoon character falling off a cliff and I'm just trying to grab anything I can reach to catch me. And the one thing that I could grab out and reach was my baptism.
Katie Coblentz:And I could say definitively, when everything else was falling apart, when I'd never been more depressed, I've never been more anxious, never been so unsure about the world around me, I could say, well, at the very least, I'm a baptized child of God, not son or daughter, couldn't get that language out yet but I'm a baptized child of God and it's all I needed, really, honestly, it's all I'll ever need. But I'm blessed with much more. But I'm a baptized child of God and I just kind of stuck with that and that's what stayed with me is I have my baptism. That's why it was a criteria. When I went to the church I said I'm not joining your church if you're going to re-baptize me Because.
Katie Coblentz:I knew my first baptism was valid.
Christa Potratz:I think that that is really an amazing part of your story. It's not a fate or coincidence, it's definitely God that you ended up at a church that said, yeah, your baptism is important Probably the reason you're here, type of thing too.
Katie Coblentz:So yeah, so I officially joined the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod in the summer of 2023. So I've been a Lutheran for about two years and now I'm married to a Lutheran seminarian, so it's like I'm in all these Lutheran circles now.
Christa Potratz:Yeah, yeah, I think that too is a part of your story, that what I tell people like, oh yeah, we're going to have this girl on the podcast and she transitioned and then detransitioned and now she's married and people are like, wait, what? Back up here she's married. How did that happen? This concludes our part one episode with katie.
Christa Potratz:We had so much to talk about with her that we are gonna have another episode coming out next week and in that episode we're gonna talk to katie about how her parents reacted to everything going on, how her church was able to connect with her, what her pastor said to her, as well as also her advice for talking to family and friends that we might have. You know wanting to become trans or are living this lifestyle currently, and so we'd love to have you join us for next week. In addition, also just want to remind especially people that are local, the Christian Life Resources Conference is this Saturday at Kettle Moraine Lutheran High School. It is $50 to attend. We'd love it if you'd pre-register, but walk-ins are also welcome and you can find more information at christianliferesourcescom.
Jeff Samelson:We hope you can make it and we'll see you back next time. Thanks a lot, bye. Thank you and other valuable information at lifechallengesus, so please check it out. For more about our parent organization, please visit christianliferesourcescom. May God give you wisdom, love, strength and peace in Christ for every life challenge.
