Somewhere in the great
Kingdom of Almost Never,
next to nothing,
yet close to everything,
lives a mighty ruler:
the much lauded,
but seldom celebrated
Queen of Procrastination.
Her intentions are worthy,
her heart quite pure yet
between her needs and
her deeds, her urges and
surges, her beginnings and
endings lie many
debilitating can’t be dones,
buts, and what ifs.
The Queen of Procrastination
goes out of her way
to explore every option
in the name of delay.
The kingdom keeps running
just barely, at best
the knights aren’t lazy
but they aren’t full of zest.
I don’t know what the rest of the universe is discussing this week, but here in the states the top story is Caitlyn Jenner’s cover photo for Vanity Fair. She looks stunning. I’m not being facetious or sarcastic, I’m just stating my opinion.
As might be expected a great many people are upset by the story of Jenner’s transition from male to female. I understand that. It’s as if Angelina Jolie had announced that she identified as male. America loves her icons. We put them on pedestals. They’re supposed to stay the way we want to picture them forever, even if it kills them.
The words “hero” and “brave” have been bandied about in reference to Caitlyn Jenner’s journey, and there are those who take exception to those adjectives being used in this instance. After all, they say, our soldiers and firemen are brave, not someone who changes genders.
But how can one not refer to her as brave? Caitlyn lived a lie for the majority of her life. She had to play a role. Her entire life. She could have continued in this lie. It would have been so easy. Just keep being who people thought she was. She’d done a great job of fooling the world for all these years. Only her health, self-esteem, and personal integrity were on the line.
Instead she knowingly risked everything, her family, her reputation, her career, to become her authentic self. That is bravery.
I don’t expect to change anyone’s mind on this issue. There are all sorts of folks who will argue against me on religious grounds, but I believe God would want Caitlyn to be true to herself rather than living a lie.
We are just beginning to be able to understand gender identity, and if we keep our hearts open we might just begin to realize that gender isn’t a hard and fast rule. It literally is more than just the sum of our parts.
I attended two high schools back in the 70’s: Floydada high school and Dumas high school. Just three hours apart in travel time, but at that point in my life it might as well have been three hundred hours.
I’d spent all of my school life in Floydada, Texas, population 4,000, until the end of my junior year in high school when my dad switched jobs necessitating a move to Dumas, Texas, population 10,000-ish. Eventually I adjusted to life in the “big city” of Dumas. It was tough, but I made friends and met my Studly there, and graduated from Dumas high school in 1975, so all’s well that ends well, right?
Fast forward to 2015 and the epic forty year class reunion. I would love to attend the reunion in Dumas, and I’m even going to be in Texas the weekend it takes place. Unfortunately that’s the same weekend the the Doright Family Reunion is scheduled, and I’ll be unable to be in two places at once.
Floydada’s class of ’75 is planning to meet in Gruene, TX, in October. I’ve already booked my hotel room for that event. After all, these are the grown-up versions of kids I went to school with from kindergarten through my junior year.
I was never “most beautiful” or “most popular,” but I always had a place among my class. And I was probably too busy dealing with my own insecurities to notice those who were more disenfranchised than I was. So I was caught by surprise when a member of the class became angry that she’d been invited to the reunion because she had felt disrespected and unnoticed during our school years.
I wish I’d noticed her more. I wish I’d been nicer, friendlier, more inclusive. I wish I’d known then what I know now–that it doesn’t diminish our own worth when we include others. Who knows how my life might’ve turned out if I’d known that years ago?
To all those who felt they weren’t included, you are loved and valued and I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you this years ago.
In the last trimesters of my two pregnancies my mind and body went into high states of anticipation. Physically I was full of child, round and healthy, a walking, talking, glowing clichè. Who cared that we were young and totally unprepared? My body was saying, “Let’s do this!”
Not me.
Mentally I went into the hormone zone. At night I dreamt of having twins or triplets, and literally juggling them (even though I can barely handle more than one bag in real life without dropping it) or forgetting they existed at all until learning they were grown without having ever known me. Gotta love those pregnancy hormones.
Recently I began noticing a parallel between my late term pregnancy time and my current existence. You see every night before I closed my eyes to sleep back then I’d think, “What if this is the night I go into labor?”
Now, as I near sixty, I sometimes wonder at bedtime, “What if this is the night I die?” It’s not as morbid as it sounds. I’m a healthy woman. I sleep well and eat a reasonably nutritious diet. After my bout with early stage breast cancer I am religious about having regular mammograms and other preventative medical exams.
But it’s as if I’ve become pregnant with death.
I’m past those years of thinking I am invincible. I’ve lost friends who seemed full of life and possibility. I was with both of my parents as they died, and I was struck by just how effortless the final step was. They’d both suffered the indignities of long, painful illnesses, but when death finally came for them there was a release and a relief.
So sometimes at night the anticipatory thought comes to me. “What if this is it? What if this is the night I die?”
I say my prayers as always, for forgiveness, for the health and well-being of my family, for an end to wars, for any friends who’ve requested prayers, and I always end with a thank you. Because if I’m to go I want gratitude to be my final thought.
In the end I guess we are all “pregnant with death” and life is too precious to spend even a moment on dramas that separate families and friends. So forgive. And then forgive again.
I’m not a big Max Lucado fan, but this I agree with.
Peace, people
If I leave tonight
my spirit will stay with you I’ll love you always.
Praying for Eyebrowz 