A Leap To The Unknown

I admit that I have been lazy. I simply accepted that I was born male. I went along with the idea that I was a son to my parents. I only shopped in the boys/men departments of stores. I dated only members of the opposite sex. I agreed that my hair should be kept short and my pants long. I even wanted to go to an all-male high school and play sports with only those of my given gender.

It didn't have to be this way. I could have claimed my right as a child of an androgenous God. I could have tried life as other than my gender, even if I wasn't willing to change my sex. I could have grown my hair long and seen if it was as attractive as my sisters'. I could have experienced what it's like to have the demands of my mother and the expectations of my father as their daughter.

I could have struggled more with being respected for my looks rather than my intellect. I could have found how difficult it is to be independent when people expect you to be docile. I missed out on looking the part because I didn't include that missing part of my life.

How, as a Christian, did I not see that in Christ there is no (longer)male or female? Could I not be as happy to bleed in my body once a month for the sake of others as I was to bleed outside for my own sake and reputation as a fighter? Could I not have found the compassion to be a nurse instead of a doctor, a housekeeper instead of a manager, or a mother instead of a father?

I feel cheated somehow, but not by God or Jesus. Maybe my country, my church or even my family is the cause of my incomplete formation as a human being. Maybe the social and cultural trappings of my life are just that - trapping a wholly different possibility in a man's body.

The philosopher Kierkegaard's advice for destitute and derelict humanity was a leap of faith, but not like the temptation of Jesus by the devil in the desert. Not a self-willed and brazen challenge to an all-loving God, but a leap to the infinite potential we have as God's children to be holy. A leap of faith that is described by a trans-gendered person as having no guilt or need for reconciling with someone's version of God's plan attached to it.

Described by Jade Devlin as having only God attached to it, as the parachute is attached to the skydiver. If the sky is the limit for this skydiver, then gender fundamentalism is just clouding the issue of who we really are.