From Ricky, to Rachel, to Reverend A story of transformative love

Rachel Love

I tried not to write this story but gave up fighting one cold December night. Just a week before Christmas when my thoughts should be on faith, Christ and family, mine went backward. It was very late but I just couldn't sleep ... The walls of my bedroom had a ghostly look of blue caused by the glow from the television, no doubt. But there was that familiar feeling in my heart. And I realized that this bedroom looked very similar to the pale, blue room of my youth. As I looked around that room, this nightmare, my young life came back to me full blast. I felt the fear cover my heart and panic overtake me. Nightmarish memories covered up with many years of living found me again that night.

This time I felt I needed to tell someone. This nightmare was not going to leave unless I exposed it to the light of day. And I have kept this secret to myself far too long. It is not something that I want to share. But it is a secret I must share. Forgive me but I believe I must tell this story.

Thus begins a story Rachel Love feels compelled to write even as she stands more in the limelight for her efforts to bring the Carroll County community together and to promote it by focusing on what is positive, praiseworthy and spiritually grounded.

Meet Rachel Love

Her chosen name -- "Love" -- is what it's all about. But her horrific childhood and youth were filled with anything but that by those who should have been supportive and caring. Through it all, however, Rachel did have an abiding source of love that, as much as it comforted her in the darkest times, also demanded of her a service to the world that she could finally no longer ignore.

Meet Rachel Love for the first time in person, and her demeanor, dress and gentle, feminine manners belie her deep voice.

Meet her for the first time over the phone, and you might think you are speaking with a man.

That is because, up until a few years ago, Rachel Love was a man.

Rachel was born in 1955 in Barstow, Calif., on a Marine base. Her mother had gotten pregnant at 16 and later married a Marine.

Intersexed

Rachel's birth was a shock to her mother and stepfather in 1950s post-war America. She was born "intersexed."

"I had both parts, but apparently I had a vagina and a penis and testicles. I don't know if I had ovaries."

Her mother was advised the baby should be surgically altered to be male, and so she was, and Rachel was raised as "Ricky," or Richard.

"Apparently they closed me up and did something. I don't know what they did. They tell me it's quite common and 70 percent are raised male."

According to the Intersex Society of North America, an average of one in every 1,500 births has some form of atypical sex differentiation, and the continuum of such differences is very wide. It can go from a minimal hormonal condition to pronounced anatomical variations, many of which don't manifest until puberty.

Physical and sexual abuse in an atmosphere of alcoholism and drug use became the devastating life of this young boy who would rather play with tea sets with a neighbor girl than kick a football.

"Praying was my hope. I believed there was someone in heaven who would hear my prayers. If only I would not give up. If only I was truly good they would be heard and I would be protected, taken away from this horrible world."

A compassionate 'presence'

Through all this, there was a presence, a figure that came and stood by the young child. It did not intervene, but looked sadly on, with compassion.

"... In that nightmare I sensed a presence. Felt a warm touch on my small right hand. I opened my eyes and there in a faint light looking at me was someone with kind eyes. Not saying anything just looking at me. Sadness flooded across their face ...

"That person in the dim light I saw so many times watching me. They never spoke to me, never did anything but watch. I knew they saw and I knew they cared but I was not a very good boy and they knew that. They knew everything and they saw everything. They were an Angel or maybe even God ..."

As Ricky matured, he was shamed for being too fat and beaten for acting "too effeminate." So he compensated by starving himself, losing weight and picking fights. Richard did everything he could to be a man. But something was missing.

"I learned that I was not attracted to girls; I was not attracted to anybody. I felt cold, dead inside. I kept thinking, what's wrong with me?"

Misery and longing

Fast forward to years of alcoholism and drug abuse, two cold-hearted marriages that ended in misery, but also an intense spiritual longing and attendance at many different churches and spiritual groups.

Richard also had spiritual gifts: an ability to pray to God to heal people and it was done, and an ability to see into their hearts and minds.

On three separate occasions in different locations, complete strangers said to him: "What is a servant of the Most High God doing here? Why are you running from God? You can't escape God." And they asked, "Who are you?" and Richard said, "I don't know."

"Finally I went to church and said 'God, I won't run away from you anymore. What do you want me to do?' " Rachel said. "This happened during a church service, at the altar call. I fell down and had a dream. Everything went dark and a voice said, 'Who do you think you are?' and there was a bright light and these waves came over me and told me how much I was loved and loved and loved. They said I was out for 40 minutes. I couldn't see, I couldn't talk for 40 minutes."

But it was still years before Richard could straighten out his life. He still had to learn and face the truth about his birth.

A grandmother's gift

His mother had lied to him, and when his grandmother was nearing death and began to talk about what had been done to him, his mother put her mother in a nursing home.

When Richard was 43, his grandmother, on her deathbed, finally told him the truth.

He found the scar from his surgery and then went to a doctor for tests.

"You're perfectly normal for a premenopausal woman, with a penis," the doctor told him.

Richard began to learn more and more about what had been done to him and what it meant for his life. It was a hellish period of coming to terms with all of it.

"One day on the way back to Arizona I had to pull over and laid down in the sand in the desert and cried to God, 'Why did you do this to me?' and I heard, 'The barren woman will have more children than the married woman.' I got the thought there was a reason I was set apart as something different."

From Richard to Rachel

In 1999, Richard began wearing women's clothes, and the next year became "Rachel" by name. It took six years, because it was so expensive, to finally be able to afford the surgery, and in 2006, Rachel had the operation.

Rachel began an intensive search for a church where she could fit in, trying out different ones. She also rode with a Christian bikers' group, which is how she came to Eureka Springs two years ago.

[Editor's note: This is Part I of a two-part story.)