Tag Archives: Gender and emotions.

It’s Time for a Reality Check

Posted on by
Reply

What I’m about to express is not going to be received well by many in the trans community, especially the male to female trans community. But the time has come for a reality check. The fact is that regardless of how we as individuals feel; how our emotional mindset works, how we chose to present ourselves to the world, we are not REAL women. We never will be. For most of us, regardless of the fact that we may live our lives as real women … we aren’t.

The fact that we have a set of emotions that doesn’t correspond to the emotions of the average male, does in no way mean that we can began to even relate entirely to those people we choose to emulate in the way we dress and live our lives. We are born with male bodies. We don’t have two X chromosomes. We only have one X … and a Y. Nothing is ever going to change that fact or the fact that there will always be differences in how we perceive the world and, most important, how the world perceives us.

The progressive liberal goal of forcing the rest of society to see and accept us as something we are not is doomed to failure. But until they face that fact and stop trying to force the square peg into the round hole of that fact, those of us who have been blessed with that mismatch of nature are going to continue to be the butt of sarcasm and ridicule by a large portion of society.

I personally have been blessed in ways that many in our segment of society have not, and I am keenly aware of that fact. My height and weight alone do not give me away. The majority of my mannerisms do not give me away and that is due mainly to the effort I have made to study and emulate the women in my life that I admire. But I know on close scrutiny most people will realize that I was not born “Georgia”. And I’m okay with that. Sadly, too many of us are not okay with that fact. And it is the source of immeasurable emotional suffering.

A target has been placed on our backs by a group of XYers who have chosen to “transition” to female roles and then proceeded to inject themselves into athletic endeavors where they have robbed real young women of their opportunities to reach the pinnacle of their chosen field of endeavor. There always comes to my mind one huge question which is never addressed in the stories reporting on these individuals.

Are they so committed to being female that they’ve had all the surgeries necessary to bring them as close as current medicine can, to being as genuinely female as is possible? I have never seen anything to indicate that they have.

Thus, the second question: Why not? It seems to me that should be the real core of their claim to being female. I would think that would be on the minds of everyone reporting on the issue, but apparently it isn’t.

The people in our segment of society that have a public voice have been relatively silent on the subject. I for one don’t understand why. I have considered that it may be due the fact that there are, to be fair, a relatively few cases of the unfair competition that occurs when a male competing as a female. So, why the uproar? Consider the age-old story of what happens when a camel is allowed to get even its nose under the edge of the tent. The camel is never happy with just a warm nose. He wants his whole body to be in the warm tent with the humans. But he is no more a human than a male human can ever be a REAL female human.

Those of us who are MtF transexuals who accept that we are not REAL women but nevertheless find fulfillment in living our lives as though we were, need to come to the aid of the young women who are being robbed of achievement by males who for reasons we can only guess at, take pleasure in using their masculine assets to defeat young female athletes. To my way of thinking, it’s extremely unfeminine to take pleasure in winning in such an unfair matchup.

The entire situation has cast a shadow of condemnation and disdain on our entire community. The only way we are ever going to be able to regain the ground lost in our desire to be considered, acceptable, albeit oddly acceptable, to the society we live in, is to loudly and emphatically voice a unified condemnation of those individuals and their cisgendered supporters who find their cause a worthy cause.

If their situation is worthy of consideration, then let them create a “league of their own”.  If they are genuinely interested in fair competition, then I for one will be first in line to support them. But as things currently stand, I simply cannot support their cause. Otherwise, they need to accept as I did, that the choice they made to change their gender expression comes with the sacrifice that there are things in their lives that they must give up. As the old saying goes… “You can’t have your cake and eat it too.”

I will only add that this is the one place where Caitlyn Jenner needs to step forward on her unique platform and lend her voice loudly and effectively in defense of the women that she, as I choose to emulate.

From the Horses Mouth … so to speak

Posted on by
Reply

Each and every day there is someone in the news proclaiming to be an expert on gender affirming care. What I have yet to see is anyone who is a long term post-surgical transsexual, with the exception of Caitlyn Jenner, discuss the issues involved in that fateful decision. Now, admittedly I do not watch every news channel, and for a very good reason. Most of them have an agenda and the predominant agenda is based in a push to force a trans-gender ideology on much of the adolescent population in our public schools. I find that tragic.

In the early years of the 21st Century, I stumbled across a mid-nineties article in a medical publication that discussed the suicide rate among transsexuals. The numbers in that article were based on “actual” suicides not “attempted” suicides. There were a lot of statistics listed to shore up the basic findings of the study which the publication quoted. The one statistic that stuck out for me was that the suicide rate among the cisgender community was in the neighborhood 0.25 percent of the study population. In comparison, the rate among the trans community was roughly 10.5 to 11 time higher. Personally, by the time I was in my mid-fifties I had personally only known 2 people who had committed suicide. Within one year of involvment in the transgender community I had four people I knew commit suicide.

Consideration of suicide is something that has never been an issue with me other than to wonder what it would take for me to even mildly entertain the idea. So, when I read about the current rate of youth who have “considered” suicide as a reason for “gender affirming care” in the youth today I have to admit to a certain degree of skepticism stemming from the knowledge that teenagers have a tendency to be a bit dramatic. So, just how accurate is that statistic? Is it based on hospital records or the teenager’s word?

My biggest concern regarding the frequency of “attempted” suicide is the influence that the school personnel are having in the student’s lives. It’s my belief that school personnel have only 2 jobs. The first being to educate children in their care … not indoctrinate them. The second job they have is to keep the parents informed as to the progress their children are making and highlight failings as well as accomplishments. That is not what’s happening today.

Anyone who has followed what I write in this blog knows that I have been beating a drum about the dangers of the NEA for quite some time. It’s a danger that I recognized over sixty years ago when doing debate prep on the high school debate team. Even then I was aware of the fact that our schools and the teachers they employ had in reality more hours a day in which to influence the understanding that children develop than the time their parents have. Recent events regarding gender identity have proven that what I understood then was fairly accurate, without knowing the extent to which the teacher’s unions would go to usurp the rights and influence of the parents. In my mind it’s akin to kidnapping when a teacher who is entrusted with the care of a child goes behind the parents back to push what, in most cases, is surely a temporary fantasy.

What is going to happen ten or even as little as five years from now when that child realized what a horrible mistake has been made? I can’t imagine what the actual suicide rate is going to climb to. Unless I miss my guess, an entirely new form of legal remedies will develop in the form of suits brought against teacher’s union and individual teachers themselves and deservedly so.

There are those who will say to me that I’m just spewing sour grapes since I didn’t make that irreversible decision until late in my life because I was a coward. Maybe! But, when I made that decision, it was with a background of having lived a life as a boy, a man, a husband and a father, which gave me knowledge that could only come from that experience. I admit there are times that I wonder “what might have been” had I not made that irreversible decision. I also wonder at times what life would have been like had I made that decision then. And I seriously doubt that I am no different from every other post-surgical transsexual.

I have had the privilege of living 2 lives which is something that these children who are being groomed by teachers and sometimes by misguided parents who think they are being loving, will never know. In most cases those parents are not being loving at all. How many of these children who are being secretly transitioned are going to return to that classroom with an AK47 ten, fifteen or twenty years from now and indiscriminately open fire in anger. (and yes I’m aware that the recent case involving a former student at a Christian school appeared to be revenge for having not been recognized as who she thought she was).

The bottom line to me is that we are witnessing a tragic confluence of out of control so called educators and woke ideology. As far as I’m concerned, the first of many lawsuits against school administrators and teachers is long overdue. Gender identity should be left to the individual and the family together with a trained counselor.

So now you have it straight from the horse’s mouth… So to speak.

The Third Time Is Charmed Indeed

Posted on by
Reply

There are numerous clichés about the number “3”. “Third time’s the charm!” “Third time at the rodeo!” “You’re 0nce, twice three times a lady …” “Strike three! You’re out!” Etc, etc, etc … And I’ve had my share of “third times” to be sure. And, many have been charmed to say the least. But in order for there to be a “third” there has to be a “first” and a “second”.

For me, the first in this case was the result of total ignorance combined with overwhelming youthful passion. It was a relationship doomed from the beginning. However, it wasn’t … isn’t a relationship that I regret. That marriage was a hurry up affair that was arranged and performed in less than a week. Two children resulted from that relationship, and although neither have spoken to me or connected in any fashion since the publication of “Dear Mom and Dad”, I have no regrets in having been half the reason they are in this world. Their mother, a.k.a. the first, swore at one point in our bitter divorce that she would see to it that my children would hate not only me but the rest of the family. She has been relatively successful in that effort.

Moving on …

The second time, my readers should be very familiar with. That relationship was far from being a mistake. “George” was for the first time in his life, genuinely deeply in love and it was reciprocated. As I related in “Dear Mom and Dad” the second time was a hurried-up affair as well because Marilyn was dead set against a couple just living together if they weren’t married and George had created a situation wherein he and daughter Kiffani had moved in without the benefit of an executed marriage license. Without consulting Marilyn, at eight o’clock on the morning of June 5, 1980 he called Judge Gordon Bugg and made arrangements for a marriage ceremony in the judge’s chambers at 9:00 o’clock the same morning. With a small glitch in the license corrected they were married and both back to work by 11:00 that morning.

The love that existed in that relationship was tested repeatedly by George’s alcoholic behavior, use of cocaine. It was primarily due to Marilyn’s steady hand that the relationship did survive and eventually led to George’s sobriety. But, the one thorn in their relationship that she was never able to remove was me. George just couldn’t understand why Marilyn didn’t welcome that part of him that was me. My presence was the only thing that ever elicited vicious reactions from Marilyn. I remained a thorn for the duration of Marilyn’s life and thus a thorn in the relationship that could not be removed.

After Marilyn’s death the thorn that I was, began to produce roses but I was ever conscious of the fact that I would be a hard pill for any woman, of the character that I wanted in my life, to swallow. I was alone, sometimes lonely, but accepting of the lot that I had drawn in life. Over the next 16 years I dedicated the hours of my life to reaching an understanding of how my life was intended by God to benefit the world around me. And, at the same time wondering if the same God had any plans for me to share my journey with another woman. When I observed the other trans people around me I would become skeptical, primarily because I saw a lot of very lonely people who had been abandoned by their spouses, families or lovers because of their trans identity.

It wasn’t easy to accept God’s judgement nor the slow pace with which He seemed to be acknowledging my desire to share my life with someone who would love me the way I wanted to be loved … both parts of me without condemnation of the path I had trod to.   become who I was.

Then there she was … The Blue Magnet.

I suddenly found myself in love as I had never imagined, never dreamed was possible; not even with Marilyn. George was not a thorn in this relationship as I had been in the relationship between Marilyn and George. In fact, pictures of little Georgie appear frequently on Blue’s night stand.

Fast forward to this past summer. We had been living together in the townhouse I’d been leasing since August of 2017 and had eventually reached the joint decision to find and purchase a house we could call home for as long as we wanted to remain there.

So the search began. Zillow for a few weeks before I called an agent, a friend I trusted to help us find a suitable home. The search had its ups and downs but we found one that we loved. Blue loved the location and I loved the kitchen. However, there was one hitch. In order to qualify for a VA loan we both needed to be on the loan and since I wasn’t a veteran the only way that could happen was if we were married.

Now since the early stages of our relationship Blue had made it clear that she did not want to get married. At least once or twice a week I would suddenly say something like, “Hey, how about we get married tomorrow?”  The reply. “I don’t think so.” But all that had begun to change and by the time we reached this stage in our relationship where we were preparing to buy a home her negative reaction to the idea of marriage was gone.

On the advice of our agent we needed to be qualified for the VA loan by Sunday afternoon August 12th which meant we needed to be married on the evening of August 11th.  This conclusion was reached on the evening of August the 8th. The following morning, August the 9th we acquired a marriage license. That evening we were discussing where to have the ceremony. I said,

“You know where I think would be a cool place to do it would be in the Kitchen
Design Center at the store.”

The store of course was The Home Depot #469. Blue cheerfully agreed so first thing the next morning, Friday, August 10th, I approached the store manager ask if that was a possibility. He said he had no problem with it but that approval had to come from the district manager. It was after 2:30 when that approval was given. So, the mayhem began.

I was scheduled to work until 6:00 pm and Blue had a previous commitment for the following morning. She picked up a chocolate cake for a wedding cake, the store provided flowers and balloons and let us set up a reception in the store break room.

Pastor Jabowa Whitehead showed up at 6:00 pm along with some friends from church and quite a few friends from work. By 7:00pm on the evening of August 11th we were married.

All this was done in order to be able to make an offer on the house by Sunday afternoon. After a lengthy and detailed conversation with the agent, input from the mortgage company and a look at one another we decided, at 3:00pm on the afternoon of August 12th, that the house was going to cost us more that we were willing to make in mortgage payments. So, we made no offer on the house.

But … we were married and very happily so. And, last week we made an offer on a house that is much more suited to us. Whether or not that sale is completed depends on the VA appraisal.

But … we are married.

Becoming who and what we are supposed to be

Posted on by
Reply

In the world of the trans-sexual, first becoming who and what you feel you were meant to be, then living as who you feel you were meant to be, is often more than just a mixed bag of emotions and decisions. It’s often a veritable mine field. It’s not uncommon for “normal” people to have difficulty with the hand life has dealt them, but for “trannies” it’s often impossible.

I have been fortunate, extremely fortunate, but it’s not easy to say why, at least in language that many people understand. The reason for that is my firmly held belief God has been guiding me to my current situation since spring of my sophomore year in college. There are a couple of ways for me to explain what I mean and how life has played out for me … so far.

The first is to compare the course of much of my life to a pinball machine; a description I used briefly in “Dear Mom and Dad”. Immediately after turning my life over to Christ that spring I made a genuine effort to make changes in my life. When my grades came through at the end of the quarter they were accompanied by a letter from the university instructing me to kindly not darken the doorway of their school again. Okay … so Jesus didn’t rescue me from that lion’s den. That pinball of my life went straight in the crapper.

The next ball involved a new romantic relationship. The direction that took was an unhappy marriage to an unhappy young girl with the proverbial shotgun in my back. All the time I just kept thinking that God surely wouldn’t let this happen to me. But, He did. The pinballs just kept coming … and going straight into the crapper.

Occasionally I would utter desperate pleas to God to once again bail me out of trouble, and sometimes He would, but usually not. I genuinely believe that God did what any good parent would do for a headstrong child going the wrong direction. He let me go the wrong direction until alcohol got the best of me and one of His tools, namely my wife, forced me surrendered to God’s will completely. And therein lay the key … my will. I had turned my life over but not my will.

It took a while for the fog to clear and for me to finally surrender the last shred of my stubborn will, but when that happened the understanding of my own emotional make up, what that meant and where it was leading, became clearer with each passing year.

I did not make demands about the path of my future. I literally lived day by day, week by week, month by month as my life slowly evolved from occasional expression of who I was becoming, to more frequent expressions and eventually full and complete expression of who I am.

Each of those phases came about almost entirely without effort on my part. Opportunities to move to that next phase seemed to appear almost out of nowhere. Each of those steps was taken without expectation what the next step might be; just realization of the changes in my emotions, changes in the reality of what my life had become at each point.

For me to arrive at the point where I now find myself; to move from the life of George to my life, has taken the better part of 35 years. The first half of that time was a series of inconsistent starts and stops. The second half developed into a slow but steady progression of attitude changes, periods of acceptance of life as it was, followed by unexpected advances toward a complete metamorphosis.

The changes in my life have been gradual and I believe guided by the unseen but gratefully felt hand of my maker. It saddens me when I observe much of the gender identity community of which I am a part, struggling in unhappy circumstances. Many are simply unhappy because life On the South Bank of the Rubicon (See posts for June 15, 2013; March 28, 2015; September 24, 2015 and September 1, 2016) is not what they imagined. Often, it’s because they forced transition on themselves and their families.

People are creatures who tend to like things the way they were. Forcing change on them inevitably results in backlash. It certainly doesn’t help when the man or woman they knew tends to show through the wig or long or short hair and makeup or the lack of it. But the primary cause for the unhappiness is the rush to change.

Poets have long written comparisons of the aging of fine wine to allowing change from grape juice to wine to develop in its own time. And comparisons of improper care taken in the development of a wine are frequently seen. Trying to force that change is also like trying to force a square peg into a round hole.

Would I be as happy as I am now if I had rushed into a transition neither I and those close to me were ill prepared for. Absolutely not! Many scoffers who consider me ignorant or lucky because they believe, or they think, I have had an easy transition. Or they think I just don’t understand them and their plight. In that they are partially right. I understand their plight, but I don’t understand them.

Every unhappy phase and moment in my life occurred when I was trying to run my life according to the gospel of “George”. When I finally decided to let God mold me and fix me, I found peace and comfort I can only compare to a warm blanket on a cold night. I still have moments of sadness. That is inevitable, but it is always followed by that sense of comfort.

When I see people in our gender community struggling with their lives and yet refusing to let God help them, it makes me sad. I want to share what I have found, but it seems that every attempt to do so is rebuffed.

But, I will keep trying to find the right words in the right combination and the right sequence. That’s what God expects of me, so I must.

One is Silver, the Other is Gold (re-visited)

Posted on by
Reply

I have been posting about friends recently. No particular reason that I can point to really. It’s just that friends have been on my mind a lot recently. Is it a natural progression because I am now ankle deep in my seventies? I assume that has something to do with it, but there’s more.

People who live relatively normal lives because they are born with bodies that match their gender identity are fortunate. They generally don’t know the feeling of rejection by the people in their lives due to something beyond their control. Before you go off on a rant about having control over the issue, bear this in mind; we all have control over our actions but control over emotions is a different matter. Emotions have a life of their own, and those are what cause the most grief in the life of anyone who is born with a body that doesn’t match their emotional set.

When I finally came face to face with that unorthodox set of emotions, I also came face to face with friends, and family too, who couldn’t see beyond the appearance to the spirit behind the screen. I soon found myself faced with a sorting process. Sorting out the relationships, both new and old became a painful exercise.

I have old friends that I’ve known, literally all my life. Jeanie and I were born in the same hospital room in the Texas Panhandle in 1944. Roger I’ve known since I was 4 years old. Vince and Connie since I was 9. Denny and Candy since high school. These friends are people who have stuck with me through all the chaos of redefining my person.

Family on the other hand is an entirely different story. A sad story but true. The closer the relationship, it seems, the more difficult the process of coming to grips with who I have revealed myself to be. The 2 oldest children haven’t spoken to me since the publication of Dear Mom and Dad; each for their own reasons; misguided as I deem those reasons to be. One first cousin is understanding and accepting the other 2 have pretty much disapproved. My only brother and only sister have more or less, followed the lead of the 2 disapproving cousins. Again, each for their own reasons. So, what am I left with?

Friends! At the close of my last blog I quoted a little ditty that we used to sing at camp. “Make new friends, but keep the old. One is silver the other gold.” If I could convert all the silver and gold I have in friendships to hard currency I could retire and live comfortably for the rest of my life. The older I get the more precious that currency becomes, and it is never more evident than when I lose one of those gold coins like I did earlier this week.

I spoke of Daryll in a Facebook entry earlier this week. Tuesday morning, last week I awoke and reached for my phone, still pretty much in a stupor, to check the time. I inadvertently dialed his number. When I realized what I’d done I immediately canceled the call. Within a minute he called me back.

We hadn’t spoken in months. I hadn’t bugged him because I assumed he was getting on with life and building his fabricating business. Over the course of our 10-year friendship, Daryll had bailed me out of trouble, mostly vehicle trouble any number of times, always coming to my rescue with a tow or a battery or tires. He even set up an online parts business for me to run at one point.

We talked for the better part of a half hour and through the conversation I learned that his health wasn’t the best; that the Arizona heat was beginning to wear him down. He talked about closing up shop here and moving to Boise Idaho next year. But, I didn’t realize how bad his condition was until first thing in the morning, the day before yesterday, when once again my phone rang and it was his name on the caller id. But it wasn’t him. It was his wife.

“Georgia, it’s Vonda. Daryll passed away on Sunday. I need your help.”

It was like a bugler blowing reveille 6 inches from my ear. Death or the reality of impending death never comes gently to any door. That is a hard reality for anyone, especially for me to face. Up to the time Marilyn died, I had never, not one single time, lost anyone close to me. Daryll was not what I would classify as close, though we shared things that few understand. But he was a solid 24 carat gold friend and his death has shaken me to the core.

His death has brought home to me the very fragile nature of life and how easily it can be shattered. It’s only been a few weeks since a member of our church family suddenly and unexplainably lost her 12-year-old son. He just became ill and died one day.

These circumstances always remind us of that fact, but how often do we awake each morning and treat everyone in our sphere with the tenderness that we would if we knew that would be the last time we would ever be together? From my own experience, I would surmise that the answer to that question would be … never. But it should be “every time” shouldn’t it?

Who is sitting next to you right this minute, on the phone with you, right this minute, that you have given the slightest thought to the possibility that it might be the very last time? Would you be saying, thinking, feeling what you are at this moment if you knew it was the last moment?

At this point in history, the radio and television ads for precious metals and the importance possessing them are as numerous as the ads for beer, maybe more numerous. So how about the next time you see or hear one of those ads, why don’t you give some thought to the silver and gold people in your life and what you need to do to make sure they know that they are safe in your heart? And, never take their presence for granted.

A Year On the South Bank of the Rubicon

Posted on by
Reply

Has it really been one year? Apparently so, and I have to admit that there was an unexpected rush of negative emotion the moment I set foot on the south bank of the Rubicon. I was aware of the possibility of that happening but I really didn’t think it would. Even though I was aware that regret could occur I didn’t expect it to rear its ugly head the instant I stepped out of the water. However, metaphorically speaking I polished my armor, picked up my sword and shield and set off for the imperial city.

It has been an absolutely amazing journey and much of what’s happened has been due to “Bruce” Jenner’s very public and visible transition to Caitlyn Jenner. For the first time since Dear Mom and Dad was published in 2012 the investments that my publisher was suggesting made sense, especially the opportunity to “pitch” my book to a group of movie producers in New York City on October 17th. The response to that presentation was overwhelming. Nothing has come of it yet but … hope springs eternal.

Of course there have been a few glitches and detours on the road to the imperial city, but nothing that can’t be overcome. Of course there is an occasional curiosity about what might have been had I not made the choice to cross that temperamental river, but only a curiosity, not a regret. I awake every morning with a sense of purpose that I seldom experienced there on the north shore. New challenges are daunting at times but serve to remind me that I am alive and well.

The one thing that remains unchanged is my Christian conviction and the confidence that is in inherent in that faith. Everything that has happened on my journey has been purposed by a bigger vision than I can even begin to comprehend. So my message today is short and sweet.

Regrets? Not a one! Happy? Absolutely! As they used to say on the cattle drives of years past … “Head ’em up and heel ‘em out!

What if … “I was 3 again knowing what I know now?”

Posted on by
Reply

It’s confession time … AGAIN!!! I confess that I am not the most astute participant when it comes to keeping up with reading about current issues concerning the trans community as a whole. And, lately I’ve been extra remiss because of my consuming interest in politics. However, I’m going to attempt here to correct that oversight.

Last Saturday night I was able to attend a meeting I don’t often get to because of my work schedule. As I was leaving I noticed a stack of the latest issue of ECHO magazine which, by the way, I wrote a series of articles for several years ago. The primary focus of this issue is “(Net)working”, but that’s not what grabbed my attention as I perused the contents page. The article which captured my interest was titled, “TransParent” by Megan Wadding a freelance writer.

The focus of the article was on an organization for the parents of trans children of all ages. TransParent was started several years ago by Tammy Janssen for the purpose of supporting her son Max and although she has since relocated out of state the group is now in the hands of a parent’s advisory board. I don’t intend to go into the details of the article because that’s not my intent in bring it up.

The reason I’m writing about it is because of the questions that the existence of this group brings up in my own mind … the “what ifs” regarding my own journey through life.

In Dear Mom and Dad, I describe the life I was born into and the society in which we lived and how that life and society affected my development as a human being, as a young man and as a husband and father … and ultimately to the recognition of my own existence within the backdrop of “George’s” life.

If I was to tell you that my life would have been different had I been aware of the variety of gender identities at that time I would, most likely be only partially right. Of course I have wondered what life might have been like if my existence had been discovered much earlier as a result of current knowledge, exposure and relative acceptance. But, in reality I don’t really know how much different it would have been. In fact, the thought is actually somewhat frightening for me. It’s frightening because I have few, if any, regrets for how my life has been.

I/we have had a very rich and fortunate life … not perfect, but certainly rich and fortunate. When I think about how it might have been different if my existence within George’s existence had been discovered or, perhaps more accurately, identified when I was an adolescent, the one abiding question is; “Wouldn’t I have missed all the events, people and circumstances and situations that have contributed so richly to who I am today?

It must go without saying that the children George fathered would most likely not exist. We would never have met, fallen in love with and married that beautiful brown-eyed brunette who so completely filled our life with love.

The events that made up what became Dear Mom and Dad would never have occurred and I might not be able to look back on the life that George led with a sense that it was all in God’s plan from the beginning. To not be able to look back on the scenes that have made up our life would, to me, be sad indeed. What has made my life so incredibly rich and fulfilling has been the fact that it has turned out exactly the way it has.

Honestly, I do wonder at times what it would have been like to have been a cowgirl and not a cowboy on a ranch in Colorado; to have been a liquor saleswoman and not a salesman traveling the mountains of southwest Colorado; to have been and done a lot of things as a woman instead of a man. I would be lying if I said any different, but wondering what it might have “been like” is not the same thing as wishing it had “been.”

When I read about the changes and levels of awareness regarding gender identity today and how society is not only more accepting but, in many cases encouraging gender identity variations I’m glad that I’m 71 years old and not 7 or 17.  Sure, life was more cut and dried then and there was little room in society for the Johnny who was out of step, but it’s part of what has made me … me.

I gradually and cautiously moved from the role of mature adult George to mature and adult Georgia and that made it possible for me to accept and embrace the role God intended me to play in this life. I can only hope that the parents coping with the seeming reality of a trans gendered child are wise enough to guide their children to a resolution that will prove to be the right one and the one God had in mind for them later in life.

“Born Again?” Really? …

Posted on by
Reply

I generally don’t have a problem explaining an idea, opinion or an event. However, there is one glaring exception. I simply cannot, or at least up to now, haven’t been able to explain in terms that are acceptable to the listener, exactly why I am a Christian … a devout, born-again, completely devoted Christian and how that has affected my life and my attitudes about virtually everything about me. I think it’s important for me to attempt here, to explain it in carefully crafted words and thoughts.

Maybe the fact that Mom was what I lovingly refer to as “front pew” who believed that the only reason, good or otherwise, for missing church and Sunday School on Sunday morning was a hearse … in the driveway for your body. Everyone else was going to church; just maybe some of it soaked in.

I don’t remember exactly when I actually began listening to the teachers in my Sunday School classes but it was most likely my junior or senior year in high school. That’s when I was blessed to have the good fortune of being taught by a woman I considered the first truly Christian person I had ever met.

What? You mean Mom wasn’t a truly Christian person? Mom was a devout Christian in her daily life, but she never talked about it. She just lived it. Hanari Triboli on the other hand went that one step further and taught others about a Christian life. I didn’t realize it at the time but I do now. I know now that what I learned from her wasn’t words or phrases or examples. I learned what it was like to be around a person who had a truly Christian aura about her that so vivid you could almost see it and touch it. She planted a seed in those 2 years that Reverend Mark Miller cultivated the summer after high school graduation. The young couple who were with Campus Crusade for Christ attempted to harvest the crop, but … it was not to be for many years.

Thirty-six years passed before I even looked at a bible let alone opened one. Oh sure there were times when I prayed … “God please get me out of this mess.” But it was only when Marilyn became ill and begged me to begin attending church with her at last that I began the return trip to my Christian foundation. At that point I believed that God existed and that the person of Jesus of Nazareth had walked the earth, but did I believe that the things I wanted in life were important to them? No, I didn’t.

The sad truth is that I had never really learned anything about the faith I was supposed to be expressing. Not that I remember exactly, but I suspect that a lot of what I thought I knew, probably came from Cecil B DeMille. I was so ignorant of what was actually between the covers of the bible that when my AA sponsor Larry B used Deuteronomy 22:5 to convince me of how evil my existence within George’s psyche was, no argument was ever voiced.

In Dear Mom and Dad, I chronicle much of what followed Marilyn’s death in the way of learning the facts of the faith I was professing. In the years immediately following her death I read the bible through word for word four times looking for clues, for a sense of what I was supposed to be doing with the remainder of my life. I can tell you that there was no specific moment of revelation for me. I was getting messages of one kind or the other from everything I read or heard and some of those messages were discouraging.

I have an entire stack of “notes” taken during church services in that time. I tried sorting through them at one point looking for a thread that would lead me to my purpose for living and therefore to my peace. But, instead it seemed as if I was doing was pulling on a string in a never ending knitting project. When I looked back on what I had put together, all I saw was the equivalent of the Gordian Knot. But, unlike Alexander the Great, I wasn’t interested in ruling the world. I just wanted a faith that would let me walk on water. That’s all. Just the ultimate level of faith.

Then one day I was listening to Rush Limbaugh and in his usual intro he said what he frequently said about his mission. “There is no graduation from the Limbaugh Institute of Higher Learning only more education.” Now you would think that I would have figured that out about life as a Christian, but I hadn’t. I was a bit unnerved at first. It seemed as though God had put me on the path of Sisyphus, meaning that I would never succeed in my quest for the ability to walk on water.

It was a slow motion process that eventually led me back to the beginning of my beliefs. At some point which I don’t remember, the nature of faith resurfaced and I realized that for all my talk about faith over the years I had never really understood it … not really. All the words I had read in the bible, while helpful in the learning process, they would never give me a sense of faith.

I eventually found that faith when I learned to approach it from a sense of trust and learned to trust Abba to guide my life. Many people, and I was one of them for much of my life, fear that “turning your life over to the care of God” will mean losing control of it and that personal dreams for one’s life will have to be forfeited. I’ve told the story more times than I care to remember, about how I treated my life like a toy which had directions I never read aboit how to enjoy it. I’m not going to repeat it here but I will briefly repeat the lesson of the mustard seed which Jesus used to illustrate the nature of faith. “It begins as the smallest of seeds and if allowed to grow becomes a sheltering tree.”

At this point in my life I am happy, content, and although not fulfilled, I am fulfilling my life purpose. There is a white board on the wall next to my desk on which long ago I wrote five words. They are FAITH … Belief … TRUST … confidence … assured. In Wm. Paul Young’s “Eve”, Adonai asks Adam a number of times, “Do you trust me?” And therein lies the answer because when Adam came to believe he was alone he didn’t trust Adonai to fix  it. As long as he was turned toward God, Adam did not cast a dark shadow. It was only when he turned away that his shadow appeared before him.

Do I trust Abba? Absolutely! Does that quell my impatient nature? Not always. Frequently that part of my being gets the best of me. But when I look back, which as an amateur historian I do often, I realize that all my “God Given” aspirations either have, or are, coming to fruition.

The only thing I have trouble accepting is that not everyone is interested in this gift I would so willingly share, because I have yet to figure out how to get them to hear what I have experienced. I just have to love them and wait for the right moment. In the meantime, I will have to remember that faith has nothing to do with walking on water unless you are walking with Abba. I’ll never do it alone.

Do You Trust Me?

Posted on by
Reply

During my lifetime I have read quite a few books; not as many as some people, but more than most. The book shelves in my home contain a considerable number of books and I’m proud to say that with scant few exceptions I have read every single one of them at least once. Several of them I’ve read more than once and a few, many more times than once. The genre for most of those relate to history of people and/or events. And, there are novels on my book shelves as well.

I have a fairly complete collection of Steinbeck; the same for Michener and Agatha Christie. Michener is among my favorites because his writing is a wonderful blend of history and fiction which I find both entertaining and educational. But, the fact remains that my favorites all involve history.

I share in Dear Mom and Dad, my early childhood experience with the children’s library at the Methodist church in Okmulgee, Oklahoma and the wonderful collection of biographies of the founders of our country and others who were influential in our country’s history.

As I grew older I began to read more sophisticated biographies. Some of those were of the same people and some were of different people that I had no prior knowledge of. Obviously they all had different backgrounds and were influenced by a variety of events in their personal and public lives, but the thing that I was fascinated by was what made them rise above the crowds they were born into.

None of their births were heralded by heavenly hosts and the arrival of magi bearing gifts. They all began life in very ordinary circumstances in most cases. So what made them so different that people want to remember them and their contributions to our world and our country?

In the late ‘90s actor Jim Carrey narrated and briefly appeared in a movie titled “Simon Burch.” The title character, played by Ian Michael Smith, was a small physically handicapped, boy that refused to let his handicap deter him from diving into life with gusto. He stated frequently that he was born to “do something important.” He eventually did do something important and what he did ultimately led to his death. His selfless act was one that would go unnoticed by the world outside of his small town. But, for the lives he saved and their families his act was “something important.” The point here is that, even though the story is fictional, it shares a thread of purpose with all the real heroes of our world … an overriding sense of purpose.

In all of my reading, I don’t remember any discussions of a “sense of purpose.” Maybe that’s because a “sense of purpose” was just assumed. After all, isn’t purpose or a sense of purpose, generally behind all great accomplishments?

I don’t remember when I began to feel as though God had a specific purpose for my life; that I was supposed to become one of those people that others write about; that I was to “do something important. And, I don’t recall when I lost that sense of purpose, although I believe that it was lost along the alcoholic path of my misspent young adult years.

When I sobered up, my focus became one of attempting to make up for all my failures and prove to Marilyn that I could be the person she expected when she married me. When she died I felt that the only thing left for me in this life was to learn to live with the grief of losing her … and to learn why God took her away and left me all alone.

Reflecting back on my life at that time I concluded that it was doubtful that I would ever be one of those people whose life was worth writing about. So is was up to me to write about me.

It was cathartic to say the least, and I highly recommend writing about oneself with an eye toward others, who have been involved one’s life, reading what is written. It tends to force one to be brutally honest about circumstances, events and the causes and effects of events and acts.

The effect of Steps 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9 in Alcoholic Anonymous was to force me to take that first hard look at my own biography. It was a bitter pill to swallow and one I resolved to take once and only once. I never want to go through that again. But to my original point … what was the difference in those people whose biographies I read as a child and me? I believe that most of them rose to the occasions in their lives in such a way as to inspire others to record their lives. As to whether or not they responded to guidance from God or not, I’m not certain. I do believe that the early founders did respond to what they felt was a mission from God. And, that required faith or to put it another way, “trust.”

For much of my life I have relied on the issue of faith to guide me; faith as defined by “trust.” However, I have never use the word “trust” to define faith … until recently. Last November, a friend from church handed me the latest novel by Wm. Paul Young titled, “Eve.” I confess that I wasn’t expecting much because my experience is that anything resembling a “sequel” has always been a disappointment. “Eve” was anything but a disappointment. By the time I finally placed it on the shelf next to “The Shack” I had read it at least six times. I read it repeatedly because, in addition to Young’s ability to fascinate me with his un-orthodox views of God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit and their relationship to us humans, I found myself totally consumed with one concept.

That concept was presented when Adonai asked Adam, and then Eve, not once but a number of times, “Do you trust Me?” That one question actually shook me to the core of my faith. I had never associated having faith in God with actually trusting God. The question was always in the context of trusting God to eventually grant Adam and then Eve, their heart’s desires within the context of their love of their Creator.

And that is the crux of what I have been struggling with in terms of my own desire to see my creation, Dear Mom and Dad, You Don’t Know Me, But … bear fruit. I’ve always believed that I’ve applied the talent God gave me to advance the mission I believe He gave me, but always with the mindset that my belief would be confirmed by the success of the book. To date that has not happened. So when I read the question posed to Adam and Eve, “Do you trust Me?” it took a few readings to realize that it was a question and not an order, “Trust Me.”

That’s a hard question to answer truthfully, but I am working on it and in the meantime I am writing and creating more of my own biography that I hope, for those affected will include “something important.”

Dear Mom and Dad : You Don’t Know Me, But …

Posted on by
18

Marilyn was shaving her legs, and that’s when it happened. She took a couple of playful swipes with the razor on George’s left thigh.

“Wanta shave cowboy?”

In that one instant … with that one simple act … she unwittingly opened the door to that closet where I’d been hiding all the time. It was the beginning of comprehension of the emotions he’d experienced all his life, but not understood. He thought he wanted to be like her. He didn’t know it was me, but then he didn’t know I existed yet. The emotions he was experiencing for the first time, in reality were the result of the emergence of my spirit; a spirit he didn’t know existed. But then, I didn’t really know I existed. What he felt in that instant, was a desire to shave his legs, put on her clothes; he thought he wanted to know what it was like to be her, and before the night was over, like a newborn emerging for the first time, there I was. Understanding why I was there, and in what capacity, was just beginning.