There is one thing you said that I would like to add my fervent affirmation of. Your pareticular trial may not be GID. Mine is not same-sex attraction, or abuse as a child, or alcoholism. But the principle is exactly the same. We must be willing to place everything on the altar of sacrifice, and then we must commit ourselves wholly to the Savior. I know that if we do that, He can and will carry our burdens. I know because He has done it for me. Although my feelings about gender have not changed, I no longer feel that they are a burden. I rejoice in who I am, because the Lord has shown to me how I fit into His plan.

The Savior taught a mob of enraged Jews that “Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”. (It’s in John 8; I don’t have my scrip tures handy). The beauty of that teaching, to me, is found in D&C 93, where we learn that Jesus Christ is the Spirit of Truth. So to know the Truth (Jesus Christ) is to be free. I have seen this as I have come to know the Savior and He has freed me from the burdens of my heart aches and sorrows. I no longer ask Him to take the feelings away. I know now that they are an integral and important part of my own eternal identity and purpose. To destroy them would to be to kill a part of me. But the things the Savior has taught me through the Spirit bring my feelings into their proper focus and move me to do His will. That is how I feel free—indeed, I feel I am much more free, in very deeply significant ways, than those who have told me that the only source of happiness for me is to forsake the teachings of the Lord’s chosen prophets or modify them to suit my own inclinations.

Again, thank you for your kind words. And thank you for sharing your testimony here. And thank you a thousand times over for sharing your testimony through music. May the Lord bless you and your family abundantly for your willingness to share that supernal gift of music.