Spring break 2016
Our little family of four (our oldest had already flown the coop back in June 2014) took a whirlwind spring break trip starting with a brief visit to our nation’s capitol in Washington, DC.
In the middle we had a 2-½ day consultation with Dr. Mark Yarhouse, the author of the book, Understanding Gender Dysphoria, and his team at Regent University in Virginia Beach, VA. Continue reading
God, I just want to be okay.
Trust me.
I want to, but how can I when there is so much I don’t know or understand? Doubts and questions plague my mind. The more I seek to know, the more questions I unearth. The history of people who doubt is just as long as those who believe.
Without doubt, people would never have discovered how things work and how to make things better. Without doubt, belief doesn’t mean much. Don’t be afraid of doubt.
I see that we’ve progressed in our complexity and understanding, and so many things are possible now that weren’t before – cures for diseases, ways to communicate across continents and oceans, earthquake resistant building design. But things aren’t really better. People are lonely, we’ve invented new ways to kill each other, and the gods of religion remain enigmatically silent.
But I am not a god of religion. I am God, creator of the heavens and earth, in whose image you were formed. Continue reading
Last night I was extra sad. And when I get sad I try to figure out if there’s something true about my sadness. As an emotional person,
I have learned not to trust my feelings, at least not all of the time. Though feelings just happen, they’re not always based on truth. So I try to figure out if my emotions are based on fact and try to adjust my perspective if they’re not.
I think my sadness has some truth in it, while also being impacted by other outside circumstances. Continue reading
How do you see the world? Do you see it clearly? Do you see it through rose-colored glasses? Do you see it with corrective lenses in place?
Rose-colored glasses invoke the idea of seeing things in a positive light, even when circumstances aren’t positive. Sometimes this is a good thing and sometimes it’s a bad thing. It just depends on why and how you do it – to effect positive change or to deceive yourself.
Corrective lenses, on the other hand, are an invention from the late 13th century to correctly bend light entering the eye to mitigate conditions in the eye that cause refractive errors – nearsightedness (myopia), farsightedness (hypermetropia), or astigmatism (deviation from spherical curvature). They can even correct presbyopia! Bifocals, anyone?
Dr. Mark Yarhouse, in Understanding Gender Dysphoria, describes three different lenses through which people view gender dysphoria depending on their starting point. Continue reading
When the kids were little, I told them I wouldn’t play What If. I refused to participate when they didn’t want me to leave at bedtime and they would say, “Mom, what if I’m bleeding?” or, “Mom, what if I throw up?” I told them that if any of those things happened, we would deal with them at that time.
Another seven books on my recent and current book list.
The Armor of God – Bible Study Book by Priscilla Shirer
This is an impactful study I completed with a lifelong friend over Skype. I greatly dislike “fill in the blank” Bible studies because it makes it seem as if the answers to faith are easy and the same for everyone if they’re doing it right. This study is totally the opposite. The questions are highly personal and thought-provoking. The more honest I was with my responses, the more insight I gained into the analogy of the armor of God. I used to think it was just another list of practices I needed to put into place to be a good Christian (one more thing at which I could fail), but I began to understand instead that the armor is a gift provided to us by God to help us in our interactions in this broken, fallen world.
Gender Born, Gender Made: Raising Healthy Gender-Nonconforming Children by Diane Ehrensaft Continue reading
Learning and knowing are things I enjoy. I tend to enjoy learning most about philosophy, history, personal stories, and how or why things happen. My reading list in the past few years has been quite eclectic. I’d like to share a handful of my selections with you.
This book didn’t come out until 2015, two years after our first twin revealed their identification as transgender. I wish it had existed sooner. It is a scholarly book with a pastoral tone. I found it while I was searching online for transgender information and support, especially for persons of faith. Our family scheduled a multi-day session with him and his team for our first twin and my husband and me in the spring of 2016. I’ll detail that experience in a future episode.
I
describe myself as a person of faith. I am not a religious person, nor do I support religion, per se. To some people, including my children, this distinction is my personal distinction, rather than one of definition. So to clarify, I believe religion is man’s attempt to reach God. I believe having faith means trusting in God’s attempt to reach man. I do still claim the title of Christian, not because of association with current religious organizations, but because I desire to associate with the historical Jesus Christ. I do believe Jesus Christ was a literal human being, and also fully divine, the Incarnate God. Continue reading
As a mom, I reserve the right to challenge my kids’ choices and not just take everything at face value. That said, nobody better mess with my kids. I will stand up for them; I will fight for them; I will defend them with my whole being. My desire to defend them comes into play in wanting to protect them from their own inexperience, but also to battle for them against people who are thoughtless, unkind, or downright cruel.
I’ve always been a little bit of a rebel. I don’t like to be told what to do. I like to push boundaries and question things. I’m pretty sure I passed that on to my children, both intentionally and subconsciously. So as they push the boundaries even further, part of me is proud of their fortitude. The other part is less pleased. I thought that we’d teach them to be independent thinkers, and because we (my husband and I) were pretty smart, they’d all agree with us! How silly! Now that I’ve figured out that’s not how it works, and that they will choose their own path (and have been doing so since the day they were born), I’m still ready to back them up. 
So, I’m going to put it out there and say, I don’t believe that a person’s gender is separate 
from their sex.
Latin – genus (birth, family, nation) →
Old French – gendre / genre →
Late Middle English – gender
The earliest meanings were kind, sort, genus
Latin – sexus from secus, root sec- (division, segment, cut) →
Old French sexe →
Late Middle English – sex
Denoting the two main categories (male and female) into which humans and many other living things are divided on the basis of their reproductive functions.
I mean no offense to those who believe otherwise. It’s just important to me to look at word meanings and histories and the concepts they represent. Continue reading
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