Fearfully and Wonderfully Made I

Thank-you, Lord, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. - Psalm 139:14

This is something I struggle with. By mortal eyes, while I am not repulsive, neither am I particularly well formed (although my wife would disagree). I am rather unremarkable. My mind is less trained than those whose company I keep and anyone whose is less trained cares little to nothing for academics. I am not entirely straight and also rather feminine, both in tastes and leaning, either as an accident of birth or something I unintentionally learned (nor particularly desired to learn)—and I do not know if I am just imagining it as I look back on my life and something I should therefore see razed from my being or simply an aspect of who I am. In short, I neither overly care for who I am nor am I particularly comfortable with myself. Not with my body, my mind, or my gender.

And yet I kneel before the Blessed Sacrament and see before me a lesson in humility, and a voice speaks to me reminding me that without humility we cannot love. Part of humility is seeing that God has made all things good. My spiritual father, my priest, reminds me of the words of the Psalmist, I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

Who am I to be a higher court than God? Who am I to say to God, “I am made wrong”? Whether I was first made with this discrepancy of gender and sex (sometimes more apparent than others) or whether it is something which grew in the shadows unawares and unsought, only to be discovered now, first and foremost I must praise God who has made me. And I must praise Him who saw me fit to suffer for His Name's sake. And I will bless His Name who made me, for even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, He has blessed me with a companion who keeps me steady on the path.

I cannot now say whether affirming myself as I know I have been created (for physical form is notably easier to discern than the origins and development of gender) will show how I need to be purged of my feminine inclinations to be a fluid masculine and male being and participate in such a purging, or if it will pave the way for me to accept the apparent contradiction of gender and sex within me. But this I know: I am fearfully and wonderfully made; great are the works of God and let none slander anything He has made, for what He makes is good; and with all that is in me, I shall bless and praise the Name of the Lord who has made me.