Confused People

Today I start several days of training with Choose to Wait. We want to use the curriculum with many aspects of our ministry. As I look over my introductory packet, I realize that we are going to be asked to journal our personal journey.

My own is quite confused, and when I was growing up, the surrounding culture was not filled with nearly the multitude of confusing and contradictory messages that it is today. I never thought I was lesbian, bisexual or transgender. I was never sexually abused, thank God. Yet my journey was still confused.

Two things stand out. One, my dad tried constantly to teach me to say "No" to boys and all the things he was sure they were going to try to do to me and with me. I have realized since then that it was pretty ridiculous to think I was going to say "No" to boys when I couldn't even say "Hi" to them. I was so vulnerable in those days. It is only the grace of God that protected me.

Second, along the way I have struggled tremendously with my role as a woman in God's world. I've gone to some pretty wild extremes in the past trying to find my place. I think a lot of that goes back to the way my parents related to one another. I deeply resented the way my dad treated my mom, and over the years it has resulted in so much struggle. Gradually I've come to some kind of balance on it, I think, although I don't claim to have resolved all the issues.

Knowing how deeply my experiences have affected me, and realizing how mild they were compared to the confusion proffered in today's world, compounded with the truly terrible, undescribable unthinkable experiences so many kids have had to endure, I feel a real need to get a better handle on these issues.

The training goes beyond just saying no to sex outside of marriage. It goes down to the core of being men and women created AS men and women by God. I'm looking forward to learning more.

The majority of African kids we work with don't even have a father who is active in their lives. Most are with single mothers (and some on their own in child-headed families), children of prostitution and casual sex, children whose fathers deserted them when the going got tough, children whose fathers were killed in cattle raids and in war, children whose both parents died of AIDS. Most have never lived in and many have never seen a normal family with both parents intact. Of course, this is not the majority of African families, but it is because we work with vulnerable children or children in crisis.

I thank God that gender confusion has not yet become popular in Africa as it is in America, but there are groups that are pushing it. Unless God intervenes, it is probably only a matter of time until gender confusion begins to grow there, too. It is scary to me to think what it would be like for such confusion to grow in a soil fertilized by such family breakdown. The results could be scary indeed.

I don't claim to have it all down, but this I do know. God created us male and female, different but equal in value. His plan is always good.

I am praying that the training I'll be receiving will help to clear some of the confusion for those who call me "Mama".

Transgender people problem in public bathrooms

This morning I received a notice about a transgender person the article called a "woman" who was pulled from a public restroom at a restaurant & beaten. They wanted me to blame the restaurant employees who stood by.

Hmm. Well, I would never condone the beating of a person. I know that however confused that poor person was, he/she was created in the image of God. Of course, that image did not include gender confusion. The Bible clearly states that "male and female created He them." We do live in a fallen world where our human tendency to choose our own way and to think we are smarter than our Creator has marred us all, myself included as well as that poor person who was confused about what gender he/she was and what bathroom he/she could use. I do not hate that person or wish that person evil. I would not wish to see that person harmed.

But the employees must have been just as confused. What were they to do? Were they to let a person use the women's bathroom whom others obviously recognized as not a woman? If so, how were they to protect the privacy of their other customers who entered that bathroom not expecting to find what they recognized as a man? The other customers did not attack the person in question when that person sought service at the counter. They only attacked that person when that person invaded the privacy of the women's bathroom. They were wrong in attacking her, but I can understand their outrage in finding no privacy in the bathroom of their own gender.

I would not want to say or do anything that would encourage attacking people who conceive of themselves as transgender. Probably I would have cleared my family members out of the bathroom and waited for the offending person to exit. That would have meant giving up our rights to use the bathroom freely, but it would have been preferable to the action that was taken. This incident, however, clearly shows the problems we face as a society when we decide to label ourselves as something other than what God created us to be. We all need the use of public bathrooms, so there is no way we can relabel ourselves without infringing on the rights of others. Yes, I do sympathize with the poor person who was beaten. I also sympathize with the customers who were offended to find what they perceived as a man invading the privacy of the women's bathroom. I also sympathize with the employees who in a split second had to decide whether or not to defend the person who was being beaten. When we leave God's ways behind, we always create confusion, not only for ourselves, but for all those around us.