Reconciliation

Okay, so the other day I was scrolling through my Facebook News Feed and I saw a story posted by NBC News:  http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/transgender-kids/transgender-8-year-old-makes-grandpa-congressman-mike-honda-proud-n345731?cid=sm_fc. It is a story about a transgender 8-year old.  After I read it, I had to put my phone down and walk away for a second.  I turned everything off, I was home alone, and I just sort of paced around and stopped in the kitchen.  My mind was swirling with a million thoughts and I just wanted one of them to land, so I just started speaking them out loud to try to wrap my mind around what I read.  

Let me let you in on my thought process:

"Okay, this child was born a boy physically...but believes he's a girl..."  Why?  Kept coming up with the question, why?  I thought, "As is true with many homosexual persons, maybe they're missing a mother or father..."  Nope, not in this case.  I thought, "Maybe he only has sisters..."  Nope, two brothers.  Then I thought, "Maybe when the mom was pregnant, she really wanted a girl...she had two boys and maybe she desperately wanted a daughter..." And I guess the main question I have is "At what point did this child's gender actually get changed?"  It obviously started mentally and emotionally before it began physically.  I then thought, "I could go totally old school black and white and say, 'This child is physically a boy, formed with the DNA and chromosomes of a male...he should therefore be raised as a boy..."  It's like the sky is blue, the grass is green, up is up, down is down, this shouldn't be that hard...so why is it?  Why would the parents go so far to get the child's blood work done to start them on hormones to literally change their gender.  It didn't make sense to me.

So first I took it to a personal level.  "What if this was my child?"  "What if my child were born with all the physical parts of a boy or a girl, but grew up wanting to change it?"  Then the question became, "Why would they want to change it?"  Or more "Who told them that the gender they are is wrong?"  You guys, at this point, I completely broke down in my kitchen in tears.  Face in my hands and I literally wept...loud.  I work with children, youth and teens.  I could not imagine who would tell a child that they aren't okay being who they are and they wil never be accepted like they are so they have to change it.  On the other hand, the children who feel "trapped" in the wrong body or forced into a life that they don't belong in to the point of being in such an internal war inside that they want to commit suicide and many have.

How did it get like this?  Why is this happening?

I have so many questions and I'm trying to reconcile it in my brain and I'm trying to understand.  While I was wrestling with all these questions, I caught the last 30 minutes of the Bruce Jenner interview and have seen many clips.  I sincerely want to understand this better.  Forget political, left vs. right, liberal vs. conservative, or NBC vs. CNN or FOX News.  I really want to know from a psychological perspective, "When does a thought even enter a persons mind, 'I was born the wrong gender'?"  

In my attempt to reconcile this in my brain, I took it back...way back.  Let's get a big picture perspective of where this might originate.  Like, you have you, wherever you're sitting in your house, you zoom out, your neighborhood, city, county, state, country, keep zooming out, the Earth.  For crying out loud on an issue like this, let's go to space.  Picture a picture of the Earth from space.  How in the world did we get here?  Who made us?  Where did we come from?  Where are we going?  Does anybody have an answer?  Well, I have what I believe.  I believe in a Divine Creator who created man in His image and then He created a woman.  The only way any of us got here was because two people procreated...not just two people...a man and a woman.  It's the only way procreation happens.  Does that make sense to everyone?  Children aren't made any other way.  So God creates the first two people.  Then what?  Doesn't take long for Evil to enter the scene and what happens?  He lies.  4. little. words. and our world has been changed forever.  "Did God really say?" As soon as Satan spoke those four little words to Eve the world was forever changed and this is how we got to where we are today.  Everyone believed the lie at one time or another in some way, big or small.  "Did God really say you should honor your mother and father?" "Did God really say you shouldn't kill?" "Did God really say you shouldn't lie?" "Did God really say marriage is only supposed to be between a man and a woman?"  Those four little words placed one seed of doubt in everyone's mind and look where we are.  I believe God set up a divine order and we have strayed so far from God's original design, but my hope lies in the fact that one day He will set all things right.  To me, changing your gender is a huge slap in the face of God.  It's a direct denial or direct disrespect of God's creation.  If you change it, you're taking the control out of God's hands.  You're literally looking God in the face and saying, "You did this wrong."  Who has the guts to do that?

Here's the thing.  The majority of the world doesn't regard God or the Bible in this way.  So, I can't expect the world to hold themselves to this standard or expect everyone to think like me.  I'm really just trying to understand.  From the moment a person is born, to the time they die...what lfe experiences shape them?  Mold them?  Make them who they are?  I really want to understand people better, find out where they're coming from, find out what made them that way...learn their story.  I'm sure we'll be hearing many more stories in the years to come.