“I feel like I lost nine years of my life.”
Those words carry the weight of heartbreak, regret, and hard-earned wisdom.
Today, Laura Beth Perry Smalts openly shares a story that is deeply personal and often emotional. For nearly a decade, she lived as a transgender man, convinced that the solution to her struggles was changing her body to match how she felt inside.
“I just thought I was a man born in a woman’s body,” she recalled. “And I just needed to fix the body.”
Determined to make that vision a reality, Smalts pursued medical transition. She took hormones, underwent surgeries, and altered nearly every aspect of her physical appearance. At the time, she believed these changes would finally bring peace and fulfillment.
But instead, she says the deeper questions remained.
As the years passed, she began confronting a growing realization that no amount of medical intervention could change a fundamental truth she felt she could no longer ignore.
“I realized with horror that I was never going to be a man, no matter what I did,” she previously shared. “Everyone could think I was a man, but I knew the truth inside.”
That realization became a turning point.
Smalts, who became a Christian during her transgender journey, says her relationship with Jesus gradually transformed how she saw herself, her identity, and her future. Rather than finding freedom through transition, she says she found it through faith.
Looking back, some of her deepest pain centers on the permanent consequences of decisions she made during those years.
She has spoken openly about the loss of her reproductive system and the reality that she and her husband will never be able to have biological children together.
“That has been a huge regret,” she said. “I have shed so many tears over not being able to have a baby with my husband.”
She also questions why medical professionals did not more strongly challenge procedures that she says carried significant physical risks. At one point, complications from hormone treatments reportedly led to dangerously thickened blood, requiring regular therapeutic blood withdrawals.
Today, Smalts believes her story is ultimately about more than regret. It is about redemption.
Her testimony resonates because it touches on something every person understands: the search for identity, belonging, and purpose.
Many people spend years looking for answers in careers, relationships, achievements, or personal reinvention. Yet her story points to a different conclusion. True peace, she says, was not found in becoming someone else. It was found in discovering who she was in Christ.
Whether one agrees with every aspect of her perspective or not, her willingness to share her journey requires courage. It is a reminder that behind every headline is a real person carrying real struggles, questions, wounds, and hopes.
And perhaps that is the deeper takeaway.
God’s grace is not limited by our past. No matter how far we wander, how confused we become, or how many mistakes we carry, His invitation remains the same: Come home.
Sometimes the most powerful testimonies are not about becoming someone new. They are about finally embracing the truth of who God created us to be.
