When Seasons of Life Collide

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When I initially started HRT, my doctor at the time had me on one medication that required a weekly injection and one that required a monthly injection.  I did not do well self-injecting (and later on was advised that doing such a thing is dangerous for someone who lives alone like me).  For about 18 months, I was able to find people willing to help me with the injections.  But when I was down to one person, I realized that it was not feasible as a permanent solution.

So I researched online and found that there was a patch alternative to the weekly shot.  And that was acceptable to me (although I have since switched to a daily gel as far easier and more convenient).  But for the monthly injection, the only alternative was a pill.  And for certain medications, pills are the least safe alternative.  After we discussed it a bit, my doctor declared that I really didn’t need that medication anyway.  After all, he said I was basically a “post-menopausal woman.”  It’s a real hoot going through puberty and menopause at the same time.  But I have to say that my body has responded well.

Recently, I considered rejoining Classmates.  I left that website when I transitioned, at the time still expecting to go stealth.  (Wow, was I wrong!)  But finding the listing rather inflexible for anyone who changed first name since high school graduation (as almost any transgender would have done, but many cisgender people as well), I decided to pass for now.  Under their setup, the emphasis would have been on my old name and my new first name would be an afterthought.  Since I also changed my last name, it could be confusing.

What that exercise did was stir up a desire to look up some of my old classmates in high school, even some who switched to other schools before graduating.  The recent death of one of those who graduated from another high school also added to that desire.  My high school graduating class had thirty students.  (It also happens to be the largest graduating class in the history of the school.)  As far as I have been able to find, at least five of those thirty have died.

So I went to Google to search for my classmates.  I found some on LinkedIn, some on Facebook (at least their public pages; I do not have a Facebook account).  Others showed up in news stories or have their images on the web.  I learned of one death through my searching.

My classmates from the little prep school, at least the ones I could find, became doctors, entrepreneurs, accountants, community activists and public officials.  They have been through marriages and divorces, raised children and sent them to college and some are seeing grandchildren come into the world.  They range from England to San Francisco and Florida to the Canadian border.  I only know of one other classmate who stayed in the county where the school is located (another who stayed in the local area died two years ago).  While some moved back to New York City from the nearby suburbs where we lived and went to school, part of the urbanization trend at the time perhaps, the rest have been quite scattered.

At this time, I am not in contact with anyone from my graduation class, although I am still in contact with one person with whom I went to school in grades 6-8.  Without Classmates, I do not know how I will make contact with the rest.  I also do not know how interested any of them will be in renewing an acquaintance.

What I am feeling the strongest is that a number of my classmates have made their mark in life and most are wrapping up stages of their life, even though they still may be active.  For me, echoing my doctor’s remark about puberty and menopause, I am simultaneously wrapping up a life and starting one.

Twenty-eight of us graduated from Rockland Country Day School on a drizzly June day in 1970 in a nearby church because the weather prevented an outdoor ceremony on school grounds.  (Two girls spent their senior year of high school as college freshmen and didn’t walk with our class.)  Then most of us went off to college like any group of young people: excited, scared, hopeful, ready to take on the world, and searching.  The boys still had to worry about being drafted and going to Vietnam.  (One of our younger teachers fled to Canada to avoid the draft during our time at the school.)  Some protested.  Some struggled with drugs.  One lied to his mother about applying to college and found his niche as a commercial fisherman, eventually becoming the captain of his own boat.  One died in a heroic attempt to protect someone else.  Many of us ended up with lives much different than we expected when we ventured out of that church some 45 years ago.

I cannot say that my life is more different than anyone else in my class.  But it is surely different from my high school and college days.  After getting very good grades (especially on the standardized exams) and lettering in four sports in high school, I went to Cornell as an engineering major wanting to become an urban planner: designing rail systems and roads.  I ended up majoring in political science, a degree I promptly shelved in 1974 and never went back to.  I tried for careers in publicity, public relations, sports writing (co-authored one book, but couldn’t build on that) and advertising.  To pay the bills, for a couple of years I settled for government jobs in public housing.  Chafing in that climate, I took the risk of working for commissions instead of a salary in the brokerage business.  Over time, I added hats in real estate, insurance, financial planning and tax preparation.

In my personal life, I was married for less than a year.  I never had a long-term relationship and never initiated any relationships.  I was torn between a need for privacy and a need to be loved for who I am.  There were times when the lack of companionship hurt.  But now that I see what so many others in the TG community go through with their families, I am grateful that I am single and without children.

I drifted away from organized religion while in college.  But in my late twenties I returned and within ten years became active in church leadership and in a worldwide Christian missionary organization.

By the time I reached my mid-fifties, it looked like my life was settled.  I said a final good-bye to both of my parents.  I was respected in my church and moving up the ranks in the missionary organization.  I jettisoned everything from my financial services business except tax preparation, blessed by a group of wonderful, loyal clients.  With the extra time and some inheritance money, I began to travel for the first time in twenty years.  I have been blessed by extraordinarily good health.  I was content.  Until …

My supervisor at HUD would say that you have to watch out for the quiet ones.  Still waters run deep and dark.  And deep beneath my surface there was a different name, a name hidden in my heart during my time at RCDS and Cornell but shared with no one.  That is my legal name now (with a middle name eventually added).  And the gender marker on my driver’s license has changed from M to F.

Certain I would spend the second half of my life in a quiet, plain vanilla way, I have found myself doing quite the opposite.  When I least expected it to rear its beautiful head, I reached the point where I could no longer live a lie.  (I could write a book expanding on that one sentence.  And I hope to do so.)  Even after I went full-time nearly three years ago, I thought I would stay in the background: grateful for each client who stayed with me; attending support group meetings and an occasional social function; finding a new church that would accept me and hopefully a new place to do ministry.

But I could not stay silent.  Even before Laverne Cox and Transparent and Caitlyn Jenner began to splash across the headlines, I knew I needed to find a way to do more.  Crying out to me was the blood of transgender people who were murdered or who committed suicide because they were bullied, rejected by family, disparaged by their religious community or denied the opportunity to transition.  The indignity of those who were buried by family members using their rejected name and laid out in the wrong gender cried out to me.  Anti-transgender doctrine by many major religious groups cried out to me.  Legal and societal pervasive anti-transgender discrimination in employment, housing and medical care (to name just a few) cried out to me.  The plight of runaway and throwaway transgender teens cried out to me.  If I remain silent, then shame on me for ignoring those plaintive cries.

Once again, I am venturing forth excited, scared, hopeful, ready to take on the world, and searching.  But you can add urgent to that list.  I am not heading off to college this time.  I am in my early sixties, not in my late teens.  Then I appeared to be a quite ordinary white suburban middle-class male, hoping to find upward mobility through education.  Now I am a white female member of a marginalized group, hoping to help open doors of social justice while establishing reconciliation and common ground with the Christian community.

While I hoped against hope to transition to female, until I was 59 years old, I never thought there was a chance of me doing so.  In fact, all the evidence was to the contrary.  And it is at least as big a surprise that I am a budding activist.  Yet here I am, despite or perhaps because of my shy, conservative, college sports team manager and calculator keys background.  But I also have a background in writing, editing, publicity, public speaking and political science.

Ready or not, here I am.  There are no retirement plans in the Bible.  Who will find me?  Who will I find?  One person can make a difference.  Together we can make a bigger difference.

I write unto you, little children, because your sins are forgiven you for his name’s sake. I write unto you, fathers, because ye have known him that is from the beginning. I write unto you, young men, because ye have overcome the wicked one. I write unto you, little children, because ye have known the Father. I have written unto you, fathers, because ye have known him that is from the beginning. I have written unto you, young men, because ye are strong, and the word of God abideth in you, and ye have overcome the wicked one. – 1^st John 2:12-14

God bless,

Lois

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Two-faced

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acceptance, astronomy, Carl Sagan, Chris Bohjalian, Christian martyrs, conformity, consensus, Cornell, discussion, Doctrine, education, erroneous, feminine strength, general public awareness, hatred, knowledge, LGBT, liberal, marginalize, New York Times, observation, Oriental philosophy, out of date, Planet Mercury, reconciliation, religious beliefs, religious debate, Rockland Country Day School, Salvation Army, science, socialist, TDOR, Trans-sister Radio, transgender allies, Transgender Day of Remembrance, Transgender Lives series, transgender rights, Vermont, water, yin-yang

Originally part of the previous post on handedness, I pick up the thread once again with song lyrics from back in the day.  Thank you, Lou Christie!

And I have a confession to make.  No, I’m not living a lie nor do I wear two faces (although until a few years ago, that was true).

My confession has to do with the title for my blog.  It is based on out-of-date science.  It is based on the idea that Mercury was the McDLT of planets: one side faces the sun and is always kept hot; the other side always faces away from the sun and always stays cold.

It is now known that the belief was erroneous.  The errant observation was due to the nature of Earth’s orbit and rotation as it synchronizes with Mercury’s orbit and rotation.  A layman’s explanation is that when Mercury was in its best position to be observed from Earth, the same side was always facing the sun.

I discovered this bit of information when I reconsidered my blog title recently.  At first, I was not upset at the error.  After all, no one corrected me on the inference I had made.  So I assumed that this must be a recent discovery.

Then I dug a little deeper and my heart sank.  This has been known about Mercury for 50 years!  I was in junior high in 1965.  Yes, I did well in math and science and hung out at times with the math/science “geek” crowd.  But my interests extended beyond that one group.  I was a well-rounded student who at one time or another hung out with the athletes (I lettered in four sports at my tiny private high school, Rockland Country Day School), I was one of a group of guys who would play bridge at a drop of a hat, I had one male classmate who got me interested in war gaming for a while (Avalon Hill games, for example) and a female classmate with whom I discussed classical music (she being far more knowledgeable than me).

While astronomy was never my science focus, I was interested in it.  And to top it off, I attended and graduated from Cornell, where I was an engineering student for two years.  By the time I arrived at Cornell in 1970, one of the best known astronomers and popularizers of science, Carl Sagan, was already there as a professor.  Becoming a full professor in 1971, he was already one of the more popular and visible professors on campus.  I even read (and I think I still have) one of his books, The Dragons of Eden.  But somehow, I never received the memo that Mercury was a little more complex than one side always facing the sun and the other always facing away.

But the title of my blog post still fits.  Not only is this still a commonly held view of the planet Mercury, it is a reminder that it can take a while for scientific knowledge to trickle down to the general public.  The average citizen is not going to be aware that the medical community (AMA and American Psychiatric Association) no longer classifies transsexuals as either suffering from mental illness or engaging in a form of homosexuality.  They are not going to be aware of recent studies that show that certain areas of the brains of MTF’s are closer to the normative female brain than male brain.  They are not going to be aware of the recent knowledge that male and female does not always fit into neat little physical boxes (see my links page for various conditions, such as XY people giving birth, Androgen Insensitivity Disorder, other sex chromosome abnormalities and XX people born with MRKH: the lack of or severely underdeveloped vagina, fallopian tubes and uterus).

I happen to meet some of my tax clients at the local public library.  I sometimes browse the used book sale to see if there is something interesting to read while I am waiting for a client.  Now and then, I buy the book I started reading.

Chris Bohjalian. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Usually it will take a while before I find something I like.  But last week, I zoomed in on a book.  It was “Trans-sister Radio” by Chris Bohjalian.  With a title like that, how could I pass it up?  And while Bohjalian is a thoroughly cisgender author with a number of successful novels, I was correct: the book had a thoroughly transgender theme.

Bohjalian researched the topic very well and the writing showed it.  But when I first picked up the book and read the liner notes, I thought he had erred.  A resident of Vermont, he did what good authors often do: he wrote about what he knows best, so he had most of the story take place in a small town in Vermont.  So it surprised me when the blurb on the back of the paperback edition stated that the main characters had to contend with the “outrage” of a “Vermont community”.  I know that Vermont is a very liberal state, having elected a self-described socialist, Bernie Sanders, to the US Congress ten times (eight times to Vermont’s only House seat and twice to the US Senate).  Vermont was also one of the first two states to approve Medicaid funding for surgery to treat gender identity disorder.

Then I saw that the copyright date was 2000.  Bohjalian had been researching this book at the turn of this century.  Now I knew he had not erred.

What is the point I am making?  Simply that transgender rights has not always been a liberal cause.  It has not always been a cause for the L, G and B members of that coalition.  There are still some radicals who have a problem with transgender rights.  And transgender allies who have worked with all four communities will tell you that even those supportive members of the first three do not understand those of us who are T.

My desire is to educate people and add transgender allies.  I don’t care what other labels they give themselves.  Older allies were new allies at one time.  Therefore at one time, they were not allies.  If they can convert, so can others.

When I came out to people, I lived by two slogans: “If I want to be understood, I need to be understanding;” “if it took me fifty years to figure this out, I can’t expect you to figure it out in fifty minutes.”  So my desire is to help people understand.  That requires a process.  And it requires understanding what part of their belief system prevents them from being an ally already.

In my previous blog post about handedness and reviewing the historic treatment of left-handed people, we saw that there are some cases where society is driven by a need for conformity.  In the related and intertwined topics of sexuality and gender, many people feel the need to see things as male or female with no gray areas.  Initially at least, it isn’t a matter of hatred.  It is a matter of wanting to keep life simple and manageable.  Who do I call “sir” and who do I call “ma’am”?  Which pronouns do I use for a person without having to ask everyone I meet?

At the beginning of this post, I discussed the time lag before which knowledge passes down from the expert level to the general population.  If there are people who are not aware of the nature of transgender as a birth condition instead of being a behavioral choice, is that the fault of the student or the educator?  Therefore, we need to continue to patiently educate.  Some people are resistant to change, some people are skeptical of new ideas and some people are slow learners.  These things take time and effort and persistence.

And then there is religious belief.  As a Christian, I respect those who follow deeply held beliefs consistent with their religion.  I also know that in every religion with which I am familiar, there are doctrines that are debated within the body of followers.  So there is room for discussion on a number of points outside of the principal doctrines.

I have witnessed hatred first-hand from people who have turned away from me or who have attacked others in the transgender community.  It could be because of ignorance, fear of a world that is moving beyond their comprehension (loss of conformity), religious fervor or any combination of them.  But I have had people disagree with me without showing hatred or disrespect.  Some remain in my life as good friends.  Therefore, I will not automatically ascribe to hatred those who hold a different opinion on transgender issues.

I endeavor for open, honest, respectful discussion and to build consensus as a result.  I do not want to be marginalized during that discussion.  And I will not marginalize any other parties of the discussion by name calling or making assumptions about them.  I will listen to the other person’s point of view and respond in a way that befits their beliefs.

Last year at the Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDOR), we memorialized between 300 and 400 people who we learned were killed because of their transgender identity or their alliance to transgender causes.  Since there are many countries that will not acknowledge the transgender identity of murder victims, it can be reasonably assumed that the number is significantly higher.  For the sake of this post, I will make a guess of 550 victims.

According to reliable statistics, 100,000 Christians are violently killed for their faith every year.  That would be roughly 550 victims every two days.  But it is also true that the Christian population of the world is much larger than the transgender population.  There is not a matter of competition.  I belong to both groups and I grieve those who lose their lives or are otherwise marginalized due to hatred against either group.  And I grieve the existence of any in one of the groups who hates those of the other group, whether or not directed at me.

Last week, my story (400 word limit) was published in the online NY Times editorial series “Transgender Lives: Your Stories” (http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/storywall/transgender-today/stories/lois-simmons). With the encouragement of two non-Christian members of the TG community, I focused on the acceptance I have received in my church from church leaders and others.  With the permission of denomination leadership, I included the fact that my church is part of the Salvation Army.

How did I achieve acceptance at such a church?  I did not compromise any of my beliefs regarding either group.  After meeting with three key people who provided reasons to believe that I would be accepted, I simply let people get to know me.  On a need to know basis, I came out to two people here and another person there. Based on people’s responses when  I came out to them, I have ~90% acceptance, one person who asked for time to process the information (granted!) and one person who appears to be negative.  I would have been thrilled with 50% acceptance!

As I put it to the college class to which I spoke last Wednesday evening, instead of coming in like a hammer, I was water.  It is consistent with the feminine strength of yin-yang (gleaned from my days of studying Oriental philosophy).  With nothing more than a desire to educate and bring the Christian and transgender communities together, I flowed where the terrain would allow me to go.  It has brought me to a larger body of water.  We shall see where it will flow next.

All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again. – Ecclesiastes 1:7

God bless,

Lois

Favorite Moments in Sports (plus USA advances in World Cup)

Tags

1980 Winter Olympics, 1988 World Series, baseball, Big Red, Cornell, Dodgers, football, Germany, Ghana, group of death, Hockey, Kirk Gibson, knockout stage, Manaus, Miracle on Ice, Portugal, Rockland Country Day School, Round of 16, Team USA, USA, World Cup

No list of my favorite moments that I witnessed would be complete without including sports.  I have attended some major league baseball games in person in four different cities including a playoff game, many NHL hockey games, one pro football and one pro basketball game.  Then there are many other games I have watched at the high school and college level (including Ed Marinaro breaking the NCAA rushing record).  And then there are countless games that I have watched on television in these sports, plus contests in person or on television in other sports like soccer, lacrosse (my alma mater, Cornell, was NCAA champs two of the four years I attended there) and track and field (including an international meet at the Iffley Road Track at Oxford, the same track on which Roger Bannister ran the first sub-four minute mile).

Kirk Gibson’s hobbling to smack a clutch pinch-hit home run to win Game 1 of the 1988 World Series and the U.S. Olympic Hockey Team’s miracle victory over the Soviets in 1980 are two memorable moments in sports that I saw on television.  But some of my most memorable moments are from games in college and high school that were played in front of relatively few people and have never made it into the annals of sports history.  They happened long before You Tube, Facebook and Twitter.  But all of them were feats I never saw any other time.

Schoellkopf Field at Cornell University. Source : wikipedia.en  (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I have seen many dominant performances by quarterbacks, running backs and pass receivers in football.  But a kick blocker?  I saw Cornell beat Rutgers because of one man on special teams.  John McKeown was an NCAA championship caliber long sprinter.  He was also a speedy pass receiver but initially he played on the 150 pound (now sprint) football team at Cornell.  (A handful of colleges have football teams reserved for smaller talented athletes.)  Eventually the Cornell varsity added him to their roster.  Normally, his heroics were on the receiving end of a long Mark Allen pass, scoring three touchdowns on twelve catches.  But this day was different.

On October 7, 1972, Cornell beat Rutgers 36-22.  There is no doubt in my mind that the Big Red would have ended up on the losing end without Johnny Mack’s efforts.  Early in the game, he lined up on one side of the line and blocked a punt deep in Rutgers territory.  Later in the first half, he did it again.  On their next punt attempt, the Scarlet Knights adjusted and blocked McKeown from getting to the punter.  Soon, Rutgers punted again and this time he got through to the kick from the other side of the line.  Finally, with the Rutgers punting team completely befuddled, Johnny hid behind a defensive lineman in the center of the line.  He timed the snap perfectly, sprinted through the line, past the blocking back and sacked the punter!  My recollection is that all of these plays gave Cornell great field position and led to scores.

That collegiate game was witnessed by a few thousand fans and was broadcast on radio, perhaps on local cable TV also (at least highlights).  But feats at two high school games with teams I was a member of were witnessed by no more than a couple of dozen people, plus team members, coaches and officials.  Still, I know they happened because I was there.

On the day we (Rockland Country Day School) beat the Halsted School in 1970, the opposing hitters could barely touch our pitcher, Ian Kanner.  In a seven inning game, he pitched us to victory by mowing down all 21 outs with strikeouts.  I did help him a bit, however.  Not as alert as I should have been, I let a grounder go through my legs that I should have handled with ease.  Undaunted, he finished out the inning and the rest of the game sending hitter after hitter back to the bench, bat in hand.

A year earlier, I had an excellent seat on the bench as the second string goalie for our hockey game against Bergen Catholic.  We somehow found ourselves killing off two penalties at the same time, leaving us at a two man disadvantage.  Tom McAllister was only a sophomore and far from the biggest player on either team.  But he was already an excellent puck handler and good skater.  Tom was sent out as our only forward to kill off the penalties.   Soon after the faceoff following the second penalty, Tom intercepted the puck, went down on a breakaway and scored.  Following another faceoff, he stole the puck again and put the puck past the goalie once more.  My recollection is that they were the deciding goals in the game.  Only one NHL player has ever scored two short-handed goals in the same game while two men down, but they were on different penalty kills and one of them was when the opposing team pulled their goalie late in the game because they were losing.  No one in the NHL has ever scored two goals on the same two man disadvantage.

World Cup Update – end of Group play

Despite a 1-0 loss to Germany in the final game of group play, USA advances to the Round of 16 by a tiebreaker.  With Portugal’s defeat of Ghana, USA and Portugal tied in points (4), but USA’s goal differential was three better than Portugal, due to a sorry performance by the latter in their opening game against Germany.

It is difficult to assess Team USA’s performance over the first three games because it was inconsistent and because their path was much more difficult than for most teams.  They came in after six months while aware that they were in a “group of death”, and that the supposedly weakest team in Group G, Ghana, had been their nemesis in the previous two World Cups.  They also faced more travel than any other squad (in part based on their decision to have their practice location in the south, in Sao Paolo, with all their games ending up in the north).

Furthermore, they had to play one of their games at Manaus in the middle of the Amazon jungle.  The fact that it is technically winter in that part of Brazil means little as it is very close to the Equator.  The combination of heat and humidity during their match there against Portugal led the referee to call for a break in the middle of the first half so the players on the field could be hydrated.

Four games were played in Manaus.  Regarding the first three, only Portugal was able to win its next game, but that was against a Ghana team that was somewhat in rebellion over not having received their promised payout: two of their best players were dropped from the team before the Portugal match as a result.  England, Italy, Cameroon, Croatia and USA all went down to defeat the next game.

The fourth game in Manaus was a final group stage game, so we don’t know what will happen next for one of the teams, Switzerland.  The other, Honduras, was eliminated, still seeking their first World Cup win.  Switzerland will be facing Argentina in the first game of the knockout stage, and they might have too much to overcome, even without having to recover from the toll of Manaus.

If USA faced dehydration in game two, their third game featured the opposite.  Heavy rains in Recife since the middle of the night had led to localized flooding and a soggy, though playable field.  Rain, alternating between light and heavy, fell throughout the match and affected both teams passing and ball control ability at times, although the German squad still had the superiority in those parts of the game.  Fortunately, there was no standing water anywhere on the field.

How would Team USA performed against Germany if they hadn’t played in Manaus in the previous match or had 27 hours less rest?  There is no way to find out.  Having survived the gauntlet thrown at them, have they grown as a team, ready to take on the world’s best as worthy opponents?  Or do they still have a few too many weak spots to be among the elite?  Yes, if they fall to Belgium in the next match, their advancement might be considered a moral victory.  Team USA will only arrive as a soccer power when it is no longer satisfied or even concerned with moral victories.

Belgium is the better team on paper, but not nearly as superior as Germany or Portugal were, and they lack the impact players on the roster of those two teams that Team USA already faced and held their own against. Belgium came through Group H undefeated and allowed only one goal. But they managed to win by only one goal in each of their matches, facing Algeria, Russia and South Korea, all teams lower ranked than Team USA.  Both Belgium and USA are seen as improving squads.  The result of the match may come down to which team as improved more and/or which team has come through group play in the best physical shape.  If Jozy Altidore is able to return from his hamstring injury, it will give the Americans fresh legs and someone who could make the difference against a stingy defense.

There were three expected “groups of death” coming into the tournament.  Outside of those three groups (B, D & G), there were no major surprises and the top seed in each group advanced, with Switzerland the only one to advance in second place as a highly-rated French team came up on top.

Group B saw defending champion Spain sent home.  It wasn’t a good tournament for the Iberian peninsula, as both Spain and Portugal drew groups of death and both were unable to overcome defeats by a margin of four goals in their first matches, albeit to excellent teams from The Netherlands and Germany.

Group D provided the biggest upset of all, with little regarded Costa Rica finishing ahead of the teams expected to slug it out to advance: Uruguay, Italy and England.  And we have already dissected Group G’s results.

Trying to guard against favoritism for my home country, on paper it would seem that USA has the best chance of advancing from a second place group finish.  The warranted suspension of Uruguay’s star, Luis Suarez, for biting an opponent, should greatly diminish their chance of besting Colombia as four of the five advancing South American teams face off in matches today.  Overall, it will be interesting to see if the teams that played their games in the cooler southern part of Brazil will have an advantage in this round.  (By the way, Belgium played their games in three southern venues.)

Surprising Costa Rica’s fortunes continue to look good, at least for one more round, as they drew the weakest team to advance, Greece.  With only Honduras departing after group play, it is the strongest showing ever by CONCACAF (North America, Central America and Caribbean football association), qualifying the maximum number of slots allotted to them (4) and a record three teams advancing to the knockout stage.

Know ye not that they which run in a race run all, but one receiveth the prize? So run, that ye may obtain.  And every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things.  Now they do it to obtain a corruptible crown; but we an incorruptible. – 1^st Corinthians 9:24-25

God bless,

Lois