The Power of A Single Doubt

How Ambivalence Makes Space for Truth

A Childhood Memory

I was seven or eight when I handed a Jack Chick tract to a stranger in a grocery store. I had been told it was the most important thing I could give her. That it would save her. That it was the truth.

But when she took it, I saw the way her eyes moved across the grotesque drawings. And before I could stop myself, I said, "I'm sorry."

I didn’t know why I said it. I had been conditioned in obedience. But my voice slipped out before I could catch it.

I wrestle with how I had been told that I was offering something good, but something in little me sensed it might cause harm.

I believe many people are standing in that same moment now.

Holding a message they were given.

Feeling the smallest flicker of doubt.

Unsure what to do with it.

When Certainty Becomes a Cage

I don’t know what it’s like to have gender dysphoria as we talk of it today. I can’t speak to that experience. But I do know what it’s like to feel uncomfortable in my own skin. I was a 14-year-old girl reading Nietzsche in a small midwestern steel town, an outsider in a place that valued certainty over curiosity.

My first crush at age nine was Steve Perry, followed almost immediately by Amy Ray of the Indigo Girls at age 11. I was a 'skater' who was taught the correct way to wear a slip and how to sit (cross at the ankles, not the knees!) by my Proverbs 31 classes, which were, in essence, the Independent Fundamentalist Baptist’s version of Charm School.

I am not a stranger to complex sexuality and gender.

I would argue most Gen X-ers have their own version of this experience. We resisted labels. Nuance wasn’t just a virtue; it was our identity. We found freedom in ambiguity.

That’s my generational lens...but I hold it lightly. Every generation has something to teach the next.

But one thing remains the same.

The universal human experience of ambivalence.

Dr. Stephen Levine, a psychiatrist who has spent decades studying gender distress, says that to be human is to be ambivalent.

Maybe it’s because I see my life through a contemplative lens, but I know that without ambivalence, there is no space to question, to reconsider.

Certainty doesn’t let you stop long enough to ask if it’s true. It turns hesitation into a flaw rather than a guide, insisting that ambivalence must be ignored or overridden.

Those who believe gender transition is the only way forward will inevitably experience doubt, and if they have been taught that doubt is betrayal, they will have nowhere to turn.

And for those of us critical of gender ideology, certainty can be just as destructive. If we refuse to hold space for the human experience of uncertainty, we risk becoming another voice of rigidity rather than an invitation.

When Doubt Opens the Door

A few days ago, my husband shared with me about his years as an active alcoholic. He told me that he loved his family. He loved his work. He loved the life he had built. But nothing could break through his obsession with alcohol. Not love. Not reason. Not willpower.

Except one thing.

Doubt.

One night, a crack formed. Just a sliver of space. A thought, no bigger than a whisper: What if the problem isn’t everyone else?

Doubt was the chisel.

And God tapped the hammer.

That moment made space for him to see what had been there all along. That his life was unmanageable. That alcohol had consumed him. That he needed help.

Shame and guilt did not save him. Walking into his first AA meeting and being embraced did. Not excused, not affirmed, but welcomed. Seen. Known. And in that space, he could begin the work of choosing something different.

A Message to Those Caught in Ideology

To those caught in gender ideology, I say: Listen to your hesitation.

You have hesitation because all human beings are ambivalent. About everything!

You don’t have to have all the answers. Just notice the feeling. Just let yourself wonder. Just sit with your wise human ambivalence, before the next person tells you what you’re supposed to think.

A Message to Parents

To the parents who have lost their children to this movement, I say: Hold steady.

Your child is still there. The script is loud now, but it is not all they are. You cannot force them back, but you can be the place they return to when they are ready.

Love them fiercely. But love them in truth.

You do not have to affirm what you know is false. But you can be a place of return.

Pray. Speak. Love them. And then—wait.

An Invitation to Those Who Advocate for Trans Youth and Young Adults

If you have never felt the ache of losing a child who is still sitting before you, I invite you to pause. To listen. To consider the weight of that grief alongside the care you offer to distressed children and young adults. There is room to hold both.

To Those Caught Between Knowing and Not Knowing

What stirs in you as you read these words?

Can you let the chisel of doubt rest in the crack of your certainty so God can tap the hammer?

Can you allow doubt to create the smallest crack, just enough for something new to emerge?

You do not have to force an answer. You do not have to silence your own hesitation. You can sit in the unknown and trust that, when the time is right, the next step will find you.

The Invitation of Doubt

Doubt is not the enemy of truth. It is the doorway to deeper knowing. It makes space for what we cannot yet see and allows truth to rise in its own time.

If what you believe is true, it will not fear your questions.

Let doubt be your guide. Let it break what was never meant to hold. Let it make space for what is waiting to be known.