His traumatic journey began at four-years-old, when his grandmother—for whatever reason—started cross-dressing him. "By the time I was five, she made me a purple chiffon full-length dress," says Walter Heyer, the author of Trading My Sorrows.
 
Every time his parents dropped him off at her house, she dressed him up as a little girl. "She got excited about me being a little girl. She liked me better as a little girl. She told me to keep it a secret."
 
Two years later, Walter took the dress home and hid it in the bottom dresser drawer in his bedroom.
 
"At home I was a rough little kid, playing in the dirt with scuffed-up jeans. But I wasn't getting the same affirmation at home as I got from my grandmother for being a girl. Her words of affirmation were powerful but very confusing," he recalls. (Photo via God Reports)
 
One day at dinner, his mother asked, "So what's with the dress you have in your drawer?"
 
Walter started to break out in a sweat. "Grandma made it for me." He proceeded to tell them what had been going on and for how long.
 
His father got red with anger, his face glowing like a Roman candle. "You could have set off a nuclear explosion at that point," Walter recalls. His father was a part-time policeman and industrial goods salesman and also into martial arts.
 
From that time on, Walter wasn't allowed to go to grandma's house unless his parents were with him.
 
The purple dress disappeared and he never saw it again, but it took on a life of its own within his thoughts.
 
"I had been a skinny kid before this. I started eating to fill that pain I was feeling. One time I ate seven sandwiches," he says.
 
His father's adopted brother, only a teenager, decided Walter was "fair game" and at family gatherings he would take him off behind the garage and molest him.
 
He complained one day to his mother and she didn't believe him. "That didn't happen; you're lying," she said.
 
Dad decided he needed to shape Walter up, so his discipline got more aggressive. "He would spank me with a hardwood floor plank. Today it would be called abuse because it left welts. At first I would cry and wail. But then I decided the only way to defend against it was to be silent."
 
In high school, Walter excelled in theater, running track and became the kicker on his football team.
 
At the same time, his inner conflict intensified. "I had this split persona," he recounts. "The female inside me was silent in terms of visibility but lived mightily in my head. Everything was confusing."
 
Questions swirled through his mind: Who am I? Am I really a girl? Am I really a boy? Why was my uncle abusing me? Why was dad hitting me? (Photo via God Reports)
 
"It was like a radio in my head playing this stuff over and over again. I couldn't turn it off. There was no off switch."
 
His parents dropped Walter and his brother [off] at church but didn't attend themselves. He didn't have any relationship with God.
 
Later the family moved and he was baptized at another church. "I was so damaged by what happened (in the past) I couldn't get in a relationship with anybody, let alone God," he says.
 
"I went to church and I prayed for the Lord to take this stuff away from me, to heal me from it. I thought this stuff must be so new to God that He doesn't understand it. I felt like I was on my own and needed to fix it myself."

After college, Walter became an associate space engineer, working on the Apollo space project and an expert on cryogenic connecters.
 
He met a girl at church in the Sunday night singles group. They dated two years and got married. "We were doing well and had a nice relationship," he recalls. "We were going to church. I still wanted to see what God could do to heal me." They attended couples conferences at Forest Home, a Christian camp in the local mountains.
 
But sadly, the seed his grandmother planted—watered by the abuse—continued to grow and...
 
Read what happened to Walter that changed his world, by clicking here.

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