A radio program called Unshackled, which began in 1945, is a production of the Pacific Garden Mission, an organization that, among its other ministries, has served the homeless in Chicago since 1877. The mission's professional radio productions are insightful dramatizations about the lives of real people who were "shackled" by various dependencies and addictions, and who underwent compelling life transformations after spiritual renewal.

In the moving story of Laura Perry, Unshackled dramatizes the life of a young girl beginning with the trauma she suffered in childhood through her long, painful journey into and out of transgenderism as an adult. The account is based on Perry's book about her life, titled Transgender to Transformed. The three-episode radio drama ends with Laura's eventual return to her Christian faith and new awareness of the person she was intended to be.

The radio drama is enacted throughout with actors giving a first-person voice to "Laura" and the key people in her life. Born the third child in a Christian family in Oklahoma, Laura recalls being a rambunctious, strong-willed girl who was jealous of her brother, particularly with regard to his relationship with their mother. Laura characterized her mother as "always trying to do so many things," meaning that she spread herself too thin and doubtless failed to realize the extent of her daughter's distress. Laura the child found herself missing her mother "even when she was right there," and wishing she could be a boy like her brother or anyone other than herself.

When Laura was just eight years old, she was molested by a friend's nine-year-old brother. Not long after, she was molested by another, older boy. Like many innocent children, she was unable to process or communicate what had happened to her, but as she grew, these painful experiences remained with her.

In her eighth-grade year, the actress voice of Laura announces that "demons came into my life." She began drinking and smoking, and in high school she abandoned her Christian friends and began running around with a bad crowd. Inside her was a strong sense that "men have all the power" and she thought about becoming a lesbian. During this time, the demon she believed to have possessed her "made me feel powerful." She defied her worried parents when they confronted her about her wild, erratic behavior. By then she had lost her faith, and even planned with her boyfriend to join a satanic cult.

In desperation, her parents sent her to live with her uncle David in Alaska. She immediately befriended the worst kids in her new high school, and started exhibiting signs of the demonic possession she believed had overtaken her. David attempted to expel the demon through prayer, but Laura inwardly begged it not to leave her.

After only four months, Laura left Alaska to meet her parents in Montana near Glacier National Park, where they had enrolled her in a group home. A senior in high school and sixty pounds overweight, she resisted the move to no avail, so she grudgingly embraced the home's residents as her family. Since it was a Christian home, she pretended to convert and lied about her true feelings. At the end of her senior year, she suffered a seizure and was sent home.

Laura's mother next enrolled her in a college in Texas, and it was there that she thought seriously about becoming a man. While the radio dramatization does not elaborate, doubtless the atmosphere on Laura's college campus did nothing to dissuade her from this notion. When a serious crime at a nearby apartment complex caused her worried mother to fetch her from college, the two were involved in a potentially deadly car crash while driving home. They somehow survived, but the miracle failed to turn Laura back to God.

Upon returning home, Laura moved in with her old boyfriend. Although living with him, she drove many miles to another town to hook up with other men. After an odd encounter with a police officer on her way home one night, during which she now believes she actually heard the voice of God, she ended her one-night stands in that town.

But Laura's life continued spiraling further out of control. When she abandoned her promiscuous lifestyle, she turned to seriously considering transgenderism. She left her boyfriend and began attending transgender support group meetings at an "equality center." She cut her hair and began dressing like a man, announcing herself as "Jake" at the meetings, and asserting that "she had always felt she should be a man."

The transgender group meetings enforced Laura's wish to "transition" and the next step was to undergo counseling. She felt overwhelmed, lamenting later that at the time she didn't realize "that not even hormones can change your DNA; which is contained in every cell in your body."

The dramatization emphasizes this point several times: "Every cell in Laura's body proclaimed her womanhood, no matter how much she denied it." This biological reality exists no matter how many hormones or surgeries transgender people undergo, and explains the high rates of despair and suicide among these groups.

In Laura's case, she got nothing of value from her counseling sessions except a letter authorizing hormone treatments, and she relied on her transgender group members to bolster her resolve to transition. Along the way, she met a male-to-female transgender who called himself Jackie, and with whom she began a relationship. Jackie soon became her "soulmate," the first close connection she'd ever had with another human being. By then, her voice had deepened, she had legally changed her name, and she began growing facial hair.

Nine months after beginning her transition, Laura revealed her new self to her parents. She told them that she had been born in the wrong body. They told her she needed Christian counseling. She believed that the acceptance of the LGBTQ community was "love," whereas her parents' rejection of her new lifestyle was not.

Eventually, both Laura and Jackie began to see their transgender friends in a new light, agreeing that they didn't seem happy. They were chronically depressed and "whining about their childhoods." Jackie admitted to being uncertain about the lifestyle and their transgender community.

Despite this, Laura became even more adamant about making a full transition. She underwent surgery to remove her breasts, even though her parents begged her not to do it. Her aunt Shirley told her: "This is from the pit of hell." Before being wheeled into the operating room, Laura found herself asking God not to let her die. Afterwards, she thought she would be happier, but still felt discontented. She decided to have all her female organs removed, but even after that surgery, she remained unfulfilled.

A turning point came for Jackie when his brother Doug showed up unexpectedly one night. Jackie reverted to Steve, the male he actually was, when Doug arrived. As they reconnected and spent more time together, Steve's masculinity began to come through. He stopped trying to look like a woman, and Laura found herself attracted to his maleness. That realization left her feeling empty and broken.

One day, Laura heard a comment on a radio show that touched her deeply: "Why is it that transgenders always want to change their bodies to match their minds, instead of changing their minds to match their bodies?" She found herself up against a wall she couldn't get past.

While she wanted to forget that she'd ever been a woman, she faced constant reminders that she didn't belong in a man's world, such as when a man she worked with made a suggestive comment to her about a woman. She was caught in a wasteland between manhood and womanhood.

Laura's turning point came when her mother asked her to create a website for her Bible study group. Reluctantly, Laura agreed. In reading her mother's notes for the web postings, she discovered a loving God. She began to view the bible as "an intricate supernatural entity rather than just a book." As the weeks wore on into months, she started to see a change in both her mother and herself.

Laura began praying, asking God's forgiveness of her sins, and expressing a renewed faith in Jesus Christ. She asked God to save her. She felt overwhelmed with a sense of loss, but it took a couple of years before she was able to move past her desire to be a "man" of God. Listening to a radio ministry of Dr. Piper, she realized that "Laura is God's creation, Jake is Laura's creation."

After living nine years as a man and undergoing all her surgeries, Laura could not imagine life any other way. Yet God's truth persisted, even when she tried her best to ignore it. Laura kept hearing God's voice saying: "You cannot claim to love me and yet reject my creation."

She knew the Lord had not forsaken her, but she felt alone and utterly miserable. She begged God to take her life, but she continued to read His Word. She found that she wanted to please Him more than to keep her new identity.

While she doesn't know how she managed it, Laura Perry is once again living her life as a woman. She bought a new wardrobe and started going to church. Her partner of eight years, Jackie, became a Christian and returned to his life as Steve.

Laura paid a terrible price to discover that there are things you cannot change, and your gender is one of them. Her transformational power is now shared worldwide.

As Dr. Piper, the man who changed the way Laura thought about her trans condition, said: "All of us understand the flaws of our human nature and the evil in the human heart." G.K. Chesterton said: "The fact that human beings are not complete, noble, or good, but rather broken and in need of repair, is perhaps the most provable part in all of Christian theology. This human desire to change ourselves is as old as humankind."

May God grant that many others considering Laura's former lifestyle find this wonderful example of hope.

(Visit Unshackled for more uplifting stories.)

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