THE DAY I WAS MISTAKEN FOR A TWIN

Catherine Nicolette
  Gender choice has been a hot topic for some time now. In a nutshell, a very young child is given the chance to decide personal gender.
  Based upon the result of this choice, medications and path of treatment can be begun.
  To change the child to the opposite gender.

Well now. All of this has left me very thoughtful.
  I count myself deeply blessed with two wise and grounded parents.
  They needed to be; my teenage years weren't pretty.
  Hissy fits, tears and slammed doors. It isn't easy becoming an adult.

Anyhoo. I'm so lucky that a gender choice wasn't given to me as a child, because right now, in my mature years, I'd be in deep trouble.
  You see, in my very early years I didn't think - I knew - I was one of the lads.
  I wore khaki boy shorts and shirts [very South African anyone?] teamed with boy sandals.
  My hair being fine and in no way suitable for growing into girly styles, the option was a boy's haircut.

Mom cried the day she took my brother and myself for a walk through Joburg and someone complimented her on her two lovely twin sons.
  [I was a little short for my age and he a little tall for his].
  Mom was devastated, I was delighted. No greater compliment could have been paid me. A boy!
  Mom - recalling her early maternal dream of a little daughter with braids and pretty printed frocks - forthwith banned boyish styles.
  I was doomed to wear dresses, skirts and tops which I HATED.

  My shorts had left me free to play soccer and cricket in the veldt with tomato boxes for cricket stumps.
  And anyhow I didn't want to be a girl - they had to do boring stuff like washing dishes, curling their hair or needlework.
  Boys got to run around the neighbourhood, fish for tadpoles after infrequent summer showers and scrape their knees while playing rugby.

  But my early childhood freedom as an honorary boy was over. All was gloom until . . .

My teens. All of a sudden boys started to look a little less like delinquents with mud on their knees and more like mysterious heroes.
  [I know, I know, with three brothers I should've known better, but the teens are a strange time].
  I discovered the joys of spending hours winding my hair in different styles [by now my hair had decided to grow].
  After sixteen I decided I was all grown up, and now looked down my nose at rugby and sidewalk marble competitions.

Now it appears I have somewhat gone back to my early years. 
  Nothing beats the freedom of short hair and an easy style.
  Washable clothes that don't need ironing, and minimal - and shamefully, on many days, nil - makeup.
 Sturdy sandals give freedom to stride, instead of the Italian shoes on which I teetered in my early twenties, much to the envy of my peers and the outrage of my poor aching feet.

  The moral of the story is that, if at a very early age I had been given a choice I might well have made a gender choice which in fact was not at all compatible with my true identity.
  This would have stored up suffering, disillusionment and confusion in my future.

  I  fully support professional assistance of those who face the challenge of gender dysphoria.
  Yet I am grateful that my parents and their generation did not trouble little children at the dawn of their lives, but left us free to enjoy a glorious childhood - whether kicking balls or playing dolls . . .
  
Gender ideology harms children - American College of Pediatricians
http://lumierecharity.blogspot.ie/2016/04/gender-ideology-harms-children-american.html

REMEMBERING A FRUGAL CHRISTMAS

Luky
For years I had opted to be a stay-at-home mom although I was a qualified shorthand-typist and could have been making good money for the family.
  In South Africa schools opened early in January and our six children attended private schools - sometimes three or four kids at the same time.
  January was the time for book-buying and registration. 
  Uniforms had to be upgraded and new shoes bought and one December we had a choice in that frugal year - either Christmas presents or school books.

  In later years I rejoined the bank of working mothers and from then on we could afford both books and Christmas gifts. 
  But that meant losing other benefits - being with the children all the time and having the privilege of watching them growing up and sharing their sweetness.
  Also giving them that je ne sais pas quoi quality that children whose mothers care fo them personally seem to have.
  As the older people used to say: "You can have anything in life you want - provided you're prepared to pay the price."
  To mix a metaphor: If I could put the clock back, would I have bitten the bullet?

  On a different tack: my granddaughter has been playing on my computer and as I type there is a little brown dog cavorting all over the page, simpering and blinking his pinpoint eyes at me.
  I wish I knew how to get rid of him.

When I was about thirteen, that same granddaughter's age, we in our family had a horribly frugal Christmas.
  My father, a baker, was allowed to bring  home two loaves of bread a day as part of his package, but we were new immigrants to South Africa and that day there seemed to be precious little else to eat.
  My mother believed that if there was nothing in the house you ate soup, bananas and rice.
  "Look how healthy people who eat this food are," she'd say.
We had a lot of soup, bread, bananas and rice in those years but it wasn't the fare you expected at Christmas.

  A knock came to the door and I opened it. A man stood outside.
  He said he and his family had come from far away to pay the people next door a surprise visit but they weren't at home.
  He asked if we would keep their gifts and take them next door when the neighbours arrived home.
  We carried the presents into the bedroom I shared with my sisters and placed them on the marble wash stand my mother had bought second-hand from an old Victorian lady who had sold up her home to move into a retirement place.
  One of the gifts was a Hansel and Gretel house cake.
  At various times during the afternoon I stole into the bedroom and pinched sweets and chocolates off the icing.

  Next morning I took the presents into the neighbours. They were delighted to receive them but too civilised to express their astonishment at the denuded cake which, squirming with guilt, I carried in last.
  I still remember the lady's expression of total astonishment as she looked at it and felt bitterly ashamed.
  Somehow I knew even then that one day I would write a story about it for people to read.
  Well here you are and I hope you don't think too badly of me.
  To the betrayed donors and recipients, most of whom are probably already in heaven, celebrating the eternal Christmas - Christ with us - I can only say: "Mea culpa, meal culpa, mea maxima culpa."

I regret to add that the little brown dog is still jumping around my computer page and has been chortling sarcastically at me. 

  Many things are possible, but surely he can't read?

Catherine Nicolette
Kids. They pinch sweets from cakes and don't always know the full story.
  Years ago Mom read the article I wrote about the time we as kids didn't get Christmas presents.
  She then told me the real reason behind the presentless Christmas.

  As a child, I had the perception we did not get Christmas gifts as an object lesson.
  It never entered my youthful mind that my parents struggled to shelter, clothe, feed and educate six of us.
  Today as I look at the astounding cost of living, I marvel at how well they managed, as well as the way they protected us as children from financial anxiety.

We might have had a frugal Christmas from time to time - but there was always a wealth of love . . .

GOLD FEVER IN MY HOME TOWN

Luky
SOME YEARS AGO MY HOME TOWN WAS IN THE THROES OF PREPARATIONS FOR ITS GOLD FESTIVAL.
  The feast which took many months and so much money to prepare was there one week and gone the next.
  The festival was arranged to promote the image of the city, which produced 21% of the world's gold and 46% of South Africa's gold output.
  Although the gold price had not reached the dizzy heights it did in previous years, you wouldn't have said so to see our town.
  Streets and roads were being built, huge business complexes rose like mushrooms, and those dusty stretches of veld which abounded when we first came to the town were becoming ever scarcer.

  Though I was constantly being told from the pulpit that materialism is the cardinal sin, my heart swelled to be part of such a progressive place.
  Not having the financial acumen of some of our peers, Sean and I never made our fortune there, though we saw others do so, but there was always enough to eat and wear for ourselves and our children.
  Maybe I'm just not very demanding but to me, that's riches.

Family first
In our home town there was work if not for every woman, certainly for every man.
  It was also one of the few cities in the country which has Catholic schools for both girls and boys and an active, bustling Catholic parish life.
  Now and then a turbulent sermon reminds me that I'm burying my talents in the ground, but if I thought that were true at the time I would have been on every committee going.

  I felt I had a job to do, and that my presence with my young family was infinitely more important than serving on committees.
  There is an age difference of sixteen years between our first-born and the youngest, and we paid monthly fees to the Catholic schools without a break since 1967. My husband, my youngest and I - and the Catholic schools - did not sign off until the end of 1994. Sean was then 61 and I 54.

Time of temptation
I hope that when I am judged on the matter of buried talents, God will count unflagging support of the Catholic school system in mitigation of my sins of omission.
 Speaking of schools, I know that in various places graduation farewells were held. 
  In some areas, the end of the graduation farewell at midnight marked the start of a big champagne breakfast which could go on until sunrise.
  Just how much strength and resistance to temptation do we expect our teenagers to possess?
  My children have always blushed for me because there have been times in their lives when they were the only ones in class who couldn't do what was allowed by other parents.
  Did I get sick of the recriminations? You betcha.
Yet did I mend my ways? Not a chance.
  If ever, God forbid, something bad had happened to my kids, I'd like it to have happened despite my vigilance.

Catherine Nicolette
Well now. Vigilance certainly was the keynote in our family.
  What Mom didn't see, Dad certainly did. Having heard from peers at school that they were free to come home and do what they liked - with funding from both working parents - I decided to try for a little freedom.
  Having spoken to Mom about the possibility of her getting a job, I mulled over her reply.
  She found raising us more fulfilling than a job. "Your father and I can't afford the luxuries, but I am here every day with a meal on the table, and can listen to how your school day went," said Mom. "That means more to me than a salary."

Well, I had to admit I enjoyed having Mom at home. The problem was that when Mom went out, Dad was at home with us. Zero freedom.

  So I spoke to Dad. "Dad, why don't you go for that nice job as supervisor?"
  Dad looked at me seriously. "Nog," he said, "With promotion comes added responsibility. At the moment I can finish my shift and come home to be with you all.
  If I apply for a supervisor position, I'll have to work evenings and weekends.
  I won't be able to spend as much time with your mom and you kids.
And," he concluded sincerely, "Being with you during your growing up years is the greatest joy I can imagine.
  After all, I had children because I wanted to be with them."

  I went away and pondered it all. Our family did not appear to value status and finances as priority: the family itself was the most important.
  I didn't really have a problem with that. 
What I did have the problem with was that we had no freedom to do what we liked.
  I guess it was called parental discipline. Looking back, I realise a great many teenage difficulties never came my way simply because the neighbourhood lads were very aware my dad was in the home, and the girls respected my mom.

  Years later, I have the same value system I learned that day from my parents. 
  Many of my peers have beautiful houses, steady finances, excellent career portfolio and management positions.
  I knock on from day to day, happy in the love of the Lord, financial state parlous at times and unwishful for a career climb.

  Sometimes I find myself wondering if I should not have been more responsible, and settled into a more planned career path.
  Then I think of the life Jesus led, calling us to follow Him in freedom and simplicity of life.
  He had no settled place to call His home, because every house he came to was His home.
  He had no personal family, because every person He met was His family.
  He had no career ambition, because He Himself was the epicenter of the entire universe.

  Following Him is the greatest joy of my life.
And - sometimes when I find myself wondering if I shouldn't have tried for a more wealthy lifestyle - I remember the glow in mom's eyes, and the sincerity in dad's, when they told a youthful me that the family's greatest wealth in the world is each other.

HAPPY CHRISTMAS AND A BLESSED NEW YEAR TO OUR READERS

HAPPY CHRISTMAS AND A BLESSED 

NEW YEAR TO OUR READERS

DO YOU CARE WHAT THEY THINK?

Luky
SOME OF THE WORST MISERY AND ANGUISH OF MIND IN THE WORLD IS CAUSED BY FEAR OF WHAT OTHERS THINK ABOUT ONE. 
What a waste of time.

Come to think of it, what person in your circle of acquaintances is absolutely perfect in your eyes?
  I have stopped going to tea parties and giving them, because somewhere along the line I always hear myself saying things like: "Please don't tell Alice what I said, but you know she hasn't a clue about child raising."
  At home I'm safe, my children don't gossip and to my husband at least I never needed to say: "Please don't tell Alice . . . " and that was most relaxing.

Went with it
  I used to worry a lot about making a good impression on people at one time, and when I didn't succeed it would make me most unhappy.
  I wasted some of my best years moping.
  Then one day it occurred to me that, no matter what I did or said, some people would remark:
  "Isn't she a shot in the arm?" and others: "Boy, what a pain in the neck!"
  Once I'd accepted that I began to enjoy life.

  When I first went to school in South Africa, my chatty ways made little impression on my teachers.
  After the first term a report card arrived on which my conduct was tersely described in the words: "Talkative and quarrelsome." I still don't know whether to laugh or to cry when I recall how eagerly I ran for my English-Dutch dictionary to find out what these big words meant, so that I could tell my parents.

In the middle
  As the years went by I grew tired of licking my wounds. Being the centre of a talkative and quarrelsome family I am too busy to worry about my popularity or lack of it.
  Still, there are times when I feel that people might mind their p's and q's somewhat when talking to me, if not for my sake then surely for their own, especially when I expected a baby.
  "You've picked up a lot of weight," someone said one day.
  I laughed: "I'm going to have a baby," I said.
She literally shrieked out for all to hear: 
"What? Again?"
  Some years before that would have caused me to assume a wig, sunglasses and a headscarf in order to appear incognito until after the happy event.

Cool comeback
  As it was I just said: "You make it sound as if it were the fifteenth, instead of only the fifth. What will you say when I'm expecting my tenth, I wonder?" and the lady beside her whom I didn't know thought that so funny that she nearly choked in her tea. [So alright, I do go to a tea party now and then.]

  Then there is an odd sort of expression that many people used when addressing me years ago:
  "Are you still walking!" they used to ask with an exasperation as if they kept me in shoe leather.
  That was until  I thought of a good answer:
"Yes, I am," I would say, tongue in cheek, "but only until the baby comes. After that I'm going to do handstands and cartwheels all over the place."

SOUTH AFRICAN FAIRY RINGS

Catherine Nicolette
Dad had been telling us his Celtic stories again. Wide-eyed, we huddled around as he spoke of dark nights, owls hooting and fingers tapping against window panes.
He imitated the howl and terrifying sweep of the banshee; and spoke of things of long ago.
  He would always recount our favourite story, Treasure Island. 
  Jim Hawkins and Long John Silver became as familiar to us kids as the neighbours next door.
  Every now and then, we'd cuddle up around Dad and plead with him, 'Tell us a story! Tell us a story!'

  He knew the drill. He'd start in his storyteller's voice, "It was a dark, cold night. The wind was howling through the eaves. A tap . . . tap . . . tapping sound came slowly up the road ..." and we'd wait wide-eyed for tales of adventure and other lands.

Anyhow. Dad had also, in one of his anecdotal moods, told us about Celtic faerie queens, changeling babes, and fairy rings.
  The idea of mushrooms in a ring fascinated me, and thereafter I used to dedicatedly hunt the kikuyu grass for any mushroom in sight.

  In the subtropical heat of South Africa, mushrooms didn't abound. But sometimes, you were lucky.
 I got into the habit of early rising, climbing through the high bedroom window and swinging through the great peach tree which lived next to it.
  Then I'd go - still pyjamas clad - and dance on the lawn. 
  One day in soft summer - after some recent rains - I found a somewhat haphazard ring of mushrooms on the lawn. 
  Delighted with life, I closed my eyes and started dancing in the middle of the ring.
  Maybe - just maybe - I'd see the beautiful Queen of the Faeries.

  And thus it was that Dad - up early, and coming out to admire the sunrise - found his little offspring in summer pyjamas dancing with pointed toes on the lawn.
  "What are you doing?" he asked in surprise. "Look, Dad, there's a fairy ring here," I told him. "I'm dancing so that maybe I can see the Faerie Queen."

  "No, no, no," said Dad, "True fairy rings only exist in Ireland. They don't show up here in Africa."
  I was indignant. "Well, that's not true," I said, indicating the mushrooms which at a stretch of imagination loosely described a circle.
  "Those are Irish fairy rings. This here is a South African fairy ring. 
  They're totally different. Now in Ireland there'll be an Irish faery queen, here in South Africa there'll be a South African faery queen."

  Having explained this to my satisfaction, I stood awaiting his response.
  Dad's eyes twinkled at me from his - at the time to me - great height.
  "Well, who'd ever have thought this family would one day have our very own little Miss Jumping Joan?" he said, and returned indoors to oversee breakfast pancakes . . . 

Here I am, Little Jumping Joan
http://www.mamalisa.com/?t=es&p=1515

With thanks to mamalisa.com

GOD CREATED ALL

Catherine Nicolette
As a little girl, my identity was clear to me; I was a girl. So were my female peers. 
For the boys I knew, life was clear too. They were boys; and so were their male peers. 
I knew, too, that God created male and female, and blessed them. This was clear from Genesis Chapter 5, verse 2. 
I believed that there was only male and female; until I became aware of a further blessing God created.
Within His creation of male and female, lies further detail; some are born with both male and female characteristics.

Discernment 
During my childhood, I became aware of the journey some undergo, attempting to discern whether they are inherently male or female.
The reason for this need for discernment is the fact that their bodies have been blessed by nature with both attributes. 
As teenagers, those with both attributes undergo the process of having to come to terms with their unique bodies. As do we all.
So it was from my very earliest years that I was aware that nature brings forth male, female and hermaphrodite.

Transgender
Which brings me to the transgender issue. There are many who struggle with issues surrounding their physical identity. 
Some experience gender dysphoria.
Gender dysphoria occurs when there is a persistent sense of mismatch between one's experienced gender and assigned gender. 
Gender dysphoria is defined by strong, persistent feelings of identification with the opposite gender and discomfort with one's own assigned gender that results in significant distress or impairment. 

Words of Jesus Christ
Jesus Christ, the Son of God, gives us clear guidance as to how to treat others in all circumstances. 
"A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another." [John 13:34-35].

If we follow Christ's command, we will be understanding and supportive towards others on their life path which may be different to our own.

Emotional and spiritual path
I witnessed the deeply painful emotional and spiritual path hermaphroditic peers walked with such dignity, those many years ago.
Their quiet example made me very aware that loving support from family and friends is essential for those struggling with physical attribute and identity issues.

Excellent support from family, school, friends, medical and psychological personnel can help those coming to peace within themselves as to their authentic identity.

Let us pray for them, and be as supportive as we can.
Each person's life faces particular challenges.
Let us prove a godly support to each person we meet, as they bloom into the full person God created them to be.