Growing up on the family farm, I worked right along with the guys, never thinking much about gender until I was in High School when someone said I was gay. Fairly clueless, I had to ask what gay meant.

Getting the definition of homosexual, I thought this prospect through and came to the conclusion that I was Cheryl, nothing more, nothing less. My body wasn’t Cheryl, my human mind wasn’t even Cheryl.

I’d learned in Sunday School that God was my creator and I was the image of God, divine Mind, male and female. Gender, so to speak, is a state of divine consciousness.

The human mind will take ANYTHING, including gender and try to split it and break it down. I was not to be broken down into mortal elements so I confirmed in my mind that my gender can personify both male and female qualities.

I continued working on the farm, operating heavy equipment. I also didn’t bother attempting to blend into the girly talk in school centered on fashion, frills, and fluff. The boys accepted me as a participant in bike racing and wood shop (which I had to convince the counselor to let me sign up for instead of home economics).

The boys never really interested me as serious partners, and when I paid attention I discovered there were plenty of us individuals, both sexes, that didn’t think we had to have a partner.

High School and College were graduated from and it was simple and natural to meet a man who later became my husband. Then, after years of still working on the new family farm, I got pregnant.

Pregnancy was a shocker to say the least, and plunged me into gender thoughts. However, the knowledge that God is the creator dimmed my notions of wishing I wasn’t in that situation or that one gender was better than another. I focused on divine Mind, greater than my human mind.

After the birth, I’d hear:

“Is the baby a boy or a girl?”

I’d ponder, “Is there a difference?”

Sure, physically there was a difference when I thought about it, but to me, the baby, any baby, is the representative of Life, Truth, and Love. Not a sex organ.

When we fostered children years later, the ability to make decisions centered on the spiritual truth of us representing divine Mind, both male and female, allowed me not to get hung up on gender and background, which in turn didn’t create the need to get hung up on gender and background in the future. The children were freer to develop as a product of God, rather than a product of human beings.

Physical bodies are temporal and therefore not good representatives of Life, Truth, and Love, or even of our self. They don’t need to become the object of our expression.

The divine consciousness is eternal and personifies all the qualities associated with male and female and we can freely express this Mind to a greater extent each day.