When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became (an adult), I put childish ways behind me.

I was reflecting on this verse (one so often quoted it can lose its impact) and thought it had some relevance to our gender identity struggle.

The transformation of a person from child to adult requires among other things: time, experiences, practice, trial and error experimentation. My pastor made an interesting comment in his sermon last Sunday , reminding us that the "child" time of our life brings lessons that we do not really lose, but tend to forget, like how to play with complete abandon. We can revive and use those lessons if we are willing to open ourselves to them.

In our humanness, we learn numerous lessons in our gender experiences, no matter which gender we have had to express over our lifetime. The learning aspect of this process is the key. Those of us who wished to be female and were socialized as males, in those times, whether the experiences were painful, or merely a bad fit, we gained life wisdom. Building toward maturity is like the continuum I have mentioned before about the gender spectrum. Each day brings new opportunities to move toward a goal or appreciate some new part of creation. Included is our re-creation in our new gender. But we cannot afford to throw off all that was behind us. These are not 'childish' things being replaced by 'adult' things. They are an accumulation of life wisdom.

Often we get caught up in the 'unlearning' mode as we present ourselves...constantly checking to see if any aspect of our presentation screams the wrong message and 'outs' us. The truth is that so much of what we do is genderless, or at least the lines have become so blurred, that we are trapped in a futile pursuit of perfection that does not exist. We cry, "I want to be myself!" then struggle to act like an idealized image of our gender role models. The lack of socialization as children has formed this void for us and we feel vulnerable. As I watch my 16 year old daughter, I realize how much time she has already had to practice 'girl stuff'. Her trial and error times have been within the comfort of a loving home and then by society that acknowledges her femaleness as correct. By the time she reaches adulthood, her comfort with her gender is a almost a given.

Not so for the transgendered individual! We struggle to maintain the facade of our birth assigned gender until it collapses under the weight of our discontent. But chance for years of practice are lost. We must realize that our most cherished dream of complete comfort as a female/male, will be burdened with this loss.

I think that is why we do yearn for 'normality'. To let the issue of gender recede into the background to the point of disappearing. Then we focus on living as a person, not a model of something that is outside of us. That to me is putting away the childish things (not foolish, but un-formed) and taking on the maturity of a whole grown person.

The gender spectrum comes into play in this way. The further our place is along the spectrum away from the 'norm' (in this case, we might call it gender/genital matching) , the more our life struggles for a coherent answer to this issue. The further we are from the norm, it takes more and more effort to build a whole identity. We work to match whatever aspects of our persona can fit social expectations, which in turn will allow us to function without conflict over our gender expression. Those that don't match can obsess us, unless we give them over to God.

As believers, living in a world that denies or scoffs at God is already a familiar struggle! We constantly make choices that will either put us in conflict or not with the world around us. So, our gender struggles are neither unique or impossible to work through, and we have a similar set of experiences not fitting into the world's mold! We are admonished not to be molded into the world's fleshly image. Let us take heart and find our true calling, both as children of God, and the gendered person that makes us most blessed.