Part of My Story

tw:csa


“Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid.” ― Frederick Buechner

For years I have been in the process of healing from a terrible thing. There were times this process was more fits and starts than anything, but in hindsight, I can see it as a journey I’ve been navigating for much of my life. I’m writing about it now because I believe hope and healing and blessing in our own lives are meant to be shared with others.

When I was a child, I was molested by someone who was older than me, but not quite a teenager. I didn't tell anyone, even though it happened multiple times, because he told me I’d be the one in trouble if I did. Instead of telling, I tried subtle ways to get out of being alone with him. If that didn’t work, I’d end up crying, insisting that I didn't want to play with him, but my tears were dismissed and I was told to stop being rude and go play.

I spent years trying to minimize this experience or rationalize it away. I made excuses for all the reasons no one stopped it from happening. I told myself that a kid who would do that was clearly troubled, that something bad had likely happened to him, too.  I told myself the adults didn’t know what was really taking place and that they'd been taught “acting out” was defiance. I reminded myself that far worse has happened to many other people. None of this helped.

What happened is a true and terrible thing about my life.

Neither minimizing nor rationalizing creates a magical path to healing. What I told myself about those involved is probably true. It is also true that far worse has happened to many other people. But I now understand that I can only heal by dealing directly with my own experience – an experience that has influenced the way I see myself, how I relate to people I'm supposed to trust, and how I parent my own children.

Part of dealing with my experience has been realizing that what happened to me was made worse by unhealthy fears created in a culture of fear. My fear of punishment made me afraid to tell anyone what was happening. The adults who dismissed my tears feared what others might think of my behavior.  They also feared that taking the time to try to understand my “acting out” would be an indulgence that would lead me to even more defiant behavior.

When we succumb to a culture of fear, we have trouble distinguishing healthy fear that is an appropriate response to real danger from unhealthy fears that create more fear, harm, and secrets.

I'm learning, however, that we can learn to identify and break free from the unhealthy fear that causes us to react in hurtful, controlling, or dismissive ways with ourselves and with others. Pema Chödrön writes, “Interrupting our destructive habits and awakening our heart is the work of a lifetime.” While it's true that healing from living in unhealthy fear is a process that takes a lifetime of work, each step we take in that process brings us closer to wholeness and freedom.

For me, the process took physically separating myself, as best I could, from places and people dominated by unhealthy fear. It took stumbling my way into a daily practice of contemplative prayer. It took (after much searching) finding a church where the voices of women and children are valued and heard. It took letting go of most of what I’d been taught about relationships and parenting in order to find new understandings. It took finding life-giving friendship where I could be true to my process in a safe and accepting dynamic. It took finding a good therapist. And it is still taking time.

It's true that it has not been easy. I've struggled and doubted and second-guessed. It's taken a lot of hard work and tears and reevaluating. There are times I still worry over the possibility of terrible things happening. I'm still affected by terrible things that did happen. I still have a long way to go and lot to learn.

But I've also discovered it is possible to own my story and choose how to move forward, that I can choose love over unhealthy fear. 'Love is kind' (1 Corinthians 13) and 'Love casts out fear' (1 John 4) have become deeply held truths for me. If you’re needing to find a way to heal from your own terrible thing or simply realizing you need stop living in unhealthy fear, don’t give up. Love can be a lifeline for you, too.

If it seems too overwhelming, start small. Start one new practice – meditation, mindfulness, hiking, biking, walking, setting a loving intention every morning, taking a few deep intentional breaths every night, appreciating one beautiful thing every day – anything that can help you start to separate yourself from the habits of unhealthy fear. Find a way to get help, from a professional if you can, or from a trusted friend. Work on one relationship. I started with my kids, convinced that since love is kind then my interactions with them must come from a place of kindness rather than fear. None of us are able to change the past, but we can choose a brave and loving way to live now.

I know that love can't always stop terrible things from happening. I know that love can't necessarily make other people respond the way we hope they will. But choosing love changes us. Each time we make a conscious choice for love over unhealthy fear, we become less afraid. We open ourselves to growth and to healing and to new understandings. We become people who can be a safe, life-giving, loving space for ourselves and for others.

And that is beautiful.



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Note: I know that sexual abuse and trauma varies in degree and each survivor will have his or her own journey to healing. If you are traveling this journey, please reach out to those who are qualified to support you. Many areas have excellent local organizations or you can contact a national organization like RAINN at https://rainn.org/ or 800-656-HOPE(4673). You are loved and worth the effort it takes to find hope and healing.

Brené Brown's wisdom has been invaluable to me on this journey. 

I encourage you to read her books or visit her website here.

The Word Made Flesh

"Let us try to grasp the significance of the Word made flesh" - Thomas Keating

There are many topics being debated these days – self-image, modesty, purity, sexuality, relationships, rights, responsibilities, the circumstances of others, the autonomy of others, and so on. Even if we try not to get drawn into the debates, we are often forced to consider our own views on these matters and, if we are parents, will eventually have to discuss them with our children.  Our views on these topics are usually a result of the framework we use to evaluate and process life.  Increasingly I feel that if this framework is too narrow, too focused on one aspect of morality, it is easily distorted and leaves us ill-equipped to make determinations of how to respond when life doesn't fall neatly into our pre-defined criteria.
 
Over the past few years I’ve been in the process of dismantling much of what I was taught while growing up in Evangelical Homeschooling culture.  I’ve had to discard a lot of baggage associated with the popular “Godly” methods that were promoted by various groups over that time.  The framework for most “Godly child training” I encountered involved a focus on obedience – obedience for the sake of raising children who are obedient to their parents (and thus, to God) – in the ways defined by the specific methods of each group.

It is clear to me now that whether or not I am living my faith well or raising my children successfully is not determined by how we measure up to a trendy method established by some other person’s interpretation of “God’s Way.”  I understand that I need to replace that old, discarded thinking with something new, for my own faith and in raising my kids.  But rather than embracing a new “method,” what I’m attempting to define are the basic beliefs that provide a general framework for thoughts and behavior.

I’m increasingly drawn to the study of Incarnation and the way it so beautifully incorporates how I want to live and what I want to teach my children about everything from making wise choices for ourselves to how we treat others.  I don’t want to be ashamed of my body and I don’t want my kids to be ashamed of theirs, but I also want us to understand that the body is sacred.  I don’t want us to behave as though other people’s bodies exist for our judgment or pleasure.  I want us to care about the physical needs of others and make choices that are good for our bodies and our spirits.

I completely identify with Barbara Brown Taylor when she writes, "I do not recall ever being told that my flesh is good in church, or that God takes pleasure in it. Yet this is the central claim of the incarnation—that God trusted flesh and blood to bring divine love to earth." 

Incarnation is not something that was specifically discussed in my home or in my church growing up.  Of course I was taught that Jesus was God in human form, but I can think of no deep discussion of what that truly meant for humanity, other than Jesus coming to die for our sins.  I was never instilled with a sense of awe for what it means for “the Word,” present with God and one with God from the beginning of time, to be “made flesh.”  (I’m not even sure if anyone would have been okay with using the word “flesh,” because it has such scandalous connotations in those circles.) 

Yet as I've studied the writing of Barbara Brown Taylor, along with Richard Beck, Thomas Keating, Brian Zahnd, and others who write of Incarnation, I'm struck by how their understanding of it is woven through their work, even when they are addressing other topics.  The way they view humanity and their belief that God cares for our physical bodies has transformed the way I understand my faith.  I have no delusions that I have new insight to offer the world on Incarnation and I realize I do not fully comprehend it, but I can feel it continuing to transform my thinking and the way I view humanity.  I’m still trying to grasp the full significance of passages like this:

The lost beauty of God’s good creation is what is recovered in the Incarnation. The beauty of the image of God marred in man through the Fall is what the Incarnation redeems. By a deep appreciation of the human vocation to bear the image of God, we realize that the value of a human being is in no way determined by what he can do—this is the sin of objectification (treating humans as objects). Human value is derived from the image all humans bear—the Imago Dei.  It is the image of God deformed in humanity that Christ recovers through his Incarnation. - Brian Zahnd

Or this:

In Christian teaching, followers of Jesus are called to honor the bodies of our neighbors as we honor our own. In his expanded teaching by example, this includes leper bodies, possessed bodies, widow and orphan bodies, as well as foreign bodies and hostile bodies—none of which he shied away from. Read from the perspective of the body, his ministry was about encountering those whose flesh was discounted by the world in which they lived. - Barbara Brown Taylor

When I read and meditate on these words, I cannot help but be convinced that I was getting it wrong by attempting to adhere to a faith framework based strictly on morality or obedience.  Not that morality and obedience are wrong in themselves, but by using those things as the lens to view myself and others, I was focusing on how well we measured up to those standards, rather than beginning with an understanding that we are all human beings created in the image of God.

When I think of my own self-worth and teach my children about theirs, the belief that Jesus loves and redeemed our humanness must influence that.  When I consider my interactions with other people and how I teach my children to treat others, my belief that God loves and values not only the inner life, but also the physical existence of both ourselves and others will necessarily be part of that.  Drawing again from Taylor, "One of the truer things about bodies is that it is just about impossible to increase the reverence I show mine without also increasing the reverence I show yours."

Internalizing a sense of reverence for the human body allows me to see the human form of everyone else as a gift God gave to that person.  I can never view their body as an object, as something that exists to please me or meet my personal expectations or preferences.  They may be any shape or size.  They may be considered attractive or not.  They may use their bodies to practice the rituals of a religion different from mine.  They may have different anatomy than I have or experience their sexuality differently than I experience mine.  They may love their own body or they may feel they were born in the wrong body.  But each person I encounter has a body and I cannot love that person in some abstract way as though his or her body were an afterthought or is somehow subject to my approval. 

And when I teach this sense of reverence to my kids, when I tell them the stories of Jesus in close fellowship with the marginalized of society, when I tell them of the woman washing his feet with her hair, I can remind them that Jesus was just as human as they are and that he was the example of how we should value and respect the humanness of others.  Jesus didn't see our flesh as dirty or wrong, but as something beautiful and in the process of being redeemed.  As Brian Zahnd has written, "In the Incarnation Jesus makes beautiful all that it means to be human."

What I am now attempting to discern is how to continue to apply the insight and wisdom others have shared about Incarnation.  One of my favorite passages from Thomas Keating reads, "Once God takes upon himself the human condition, everyone is potentially divine. Through the Incarnation of his Son, God floods the whole human family -- past, present, and to come -- with his majesty, dignity, and grace.”  Our bodies are the basic component of the human condition, and therefore we must learn to respect and honor our own bodies as well as the bodies of other people.  Truly grasping this undermines the temptation to dismiss others, to objectify others, or to turn a blind eye to their physical needs.

I have only scratched the surface of all there is to learn about Incarnation, but I keep coming back to how it reminds me that I’m connected to God as well as to others and how that connectedness should influence every aspect of my life.  As Zahnd points out, Incarnation shows us “what God is like and how to be human,” and Barbara Brown Taylor reminds us, “wearing skin… is what we have most in common with one another.”  My hope is that rather than focusing too narrowly on current trends or hot topics, I can live my faith in a way that exhibits a deepening understanding of the way my human flesh connects me to God and to other people.  And I hope living this out will help my kids understand and see the beauty there as well.





Note: Thomas Keating quotes are from The Mystery of Christ, Barbara Brown Taylor quotes are from An Altar in the World, and Brian Zahnd quotes are from Beauty Will Save the World

Between God and Me and No One Else

A recent conversation with my husband, Ryan:

Me: "I have a hair appointment Thursday.  I'm going to have her cut my hair even shorter this time.  And dye it a little darker, too."
Ryan: "Okay."
Me: "It's kind of annoying having to go in for appointments more frequently to keep it shorter.  And always having to flat-iron it so it doesn't look weird.  I have honestly considered just shaving it off.  That would be way easier."
Ryan: "Haha.  Okay.  Your hair, your head."
Me: "Good answer, Babe."

And that is representative of how Ryan always responds in this type of conversation, not just regarding my hair.  My fitness level, my decision to have a permanent contraception procedure, my tattoos: I cannot think of anything having to do with my body – appearance or otherwise – that he has ever made me feel was anything other than my own decision.  And not out of indifference, either, but in a way that makes it clear that he will support whatever I decide.

It would simply never occur to my husband to think that I need his permission for any of these choices.  I'm only recently beginning to fully appreciate this about him.

When I was twelve, I wanted to start shaving my legs.  I tried to talk to my mom about it, but she told me I had to ask my dad.  My dad examined my shins (yes, really), said he didn't think they were that bad, so no shaving.  The discussion continued off-and-on for a few days, but he just didn't think it was necessary yet.  His mind was made up, the answer was no.

This is just one example of the many ways I was taught that choices about my body (or really any woman’s body) could not be made without the “wisdom” of a male authority.  In such teaching, the father is the intermediary until a girl is married, then her husband fills that role.  I still feel a twinge of humiliation about some of these things and still wrestle with the effects of being taught these (and other) distorted views about my body.  I know that my parents’ actions were a result of what they were taught in Evangelical/Homeschooling culture.  I know that they were not trying to humiliate me and they truly believed they were teaching me “Godly” principles.  I know I should be thankful that there are other areas where they did not adhere so strictly to the teachings from that culture. 

But still.

For years now, I have shaved my legs every single day.  Even during the cruel Midwestern winters when layers of warm clothing prevent so much as an ankle from peeking out.  Even when I was nine-months pregnant and unable to see my feet.  Even at times when Ryan and I are on completely opposite work schedules and don't see each other for days.  I shave my legs every single day for no other reason than I absolutely hate the way it feels not to have my legs shaved.  Read into that whatever else you will, but it’s my body and I’ll shave my legs if I want to.  I’ll also shave my head if I want to and get tattoos if I want to and never be pregnant again if I don’t want to.

I realize that will sound dangerously rebellious to some people; even as I wrote it, I could hear the teachings from my youth in the back of my mind trying to make me feel guilty for the boldness with which I am so publicly defying them.  But I've come to believe that much of what I was taught about bodies is a distortion of the truth.  Jesus was the Word made flesh, the mystery of the divine in physical, human form.  Why would God choose that if human bodies were something to be ashamed of?  Why would he give me a body if I couldn't even be trusted with the opportunity to make good choices with it?

I do not need to be ashamed of my body, nor do I need to look for the permission of some falsely-established human authority (father, husband, or otherwise) for the choices I make regarding it.  As long as I am not inflicting harm or dishonoring my commitments, no one else has a right to tell me what I should or should not do with the body God entrusted to me.

In fact, no one else has the right to make decisions for another person's body at all.  At my most basic, I am a person in a body – before I am a woman, a wife, or a mother.  A person’s body requires neither the approval nor the permission of another person. Maybe some of the choices I make (like my tattoos) are, at least in a way or in part, a physical symbol that I’m learning to embrace my body as a gift God gave to me and that I refuse to go back to a time when I was made to feel I couldn't be trusted to decide what is best for it.

And if I live more fully in my body with tattoos and shaved legs, that is between God and me and no one else.

"I do not recall ever being told that my flesh is good in church, 

or that God takes pleasure in it. 

Yet this is the central claim of the incarnation—

that God trusted flesh and blood to bring divine love to earth." - Barbara Brown Taylor

Neighbors

I grew up in the outskirts of a small town, not in a neighborhood, but not really in the country.  Our house was on Main Street, which was really just a mile-long stretch of a busy state road, where the houses were closer together and drivers were supposed to slow down. Instead of our backyard being adjacent to another family's backyard, it butted up against a bean field. We did, however, have wonderful next-door neighbors on either side.

When I was very young, both homes were occupied by beautiful, elderly, white-haired widows. Despite that I was so young and my memories of that time are more like snap-shots, I can still close my eyes and imagine each of them. I remember sitting on the double porch-swing with Mrs. Brown. It was painted green and occupied a spot in her front yard in the shade of two maple trees. She would let me swing with her and talk, I'm sure about complete nonsense, but I still felt like she wanted me to be there with her and I loved our visits.

I remember Mrs. Rankin, on the other side, who called me "the pig-tails girl" since my mother almost always had my hair in two ponytails to keep it out of my face. I remember her minuscule galley kitchen that had a thin shelf all the way around, on which she displayed different kinds of tea tins. When she eventually got too old to live on her own and moved to a home, I ended up with a little red tin that had once held some kind of British loose-leaf tea. I don't remember her giving it to me, but I still have it tucked away in a box of keepsakes.

When I was six, a young family moved in where Mrs. Brown had one lived. A year later, Mrs. Rankin was replaced by another young family.  Both of them became like extended family to us. Even after they eventually moved away, we have all remained close.

At some point, during one of my parents' landscaping phases, they decided to install a split-rail fence around the front and side of their property. In the side between the house where Mrs. Brown had lived, they left a gap in the fence at the base of the small hill in the backyard, where we could easily pass back-and-forth between our backyard and the next. Shrubbery eventually grew together overhead, creating a 'secret passage' sort of feel for the opening.

Our families made the trip through that passage so often over the years, that the grass wore away between the fence posts. Countless cook-outs and afternoon visits and shared dinners at each house left us all with strings of memories. When I close my eyes and think about it, I can still see how the adults would have to duck slightly to avoid the over-growth when coming or going, and how the kids would run back-and-forth between the yards like they were a single, magical playland.

Now I live out in the country where our closest neighbors are empty-nesters who keep to themselves. My husband and I both work full time, so family time takes precedence over daily visits with friends. Don't get me wrong, I love watching my boys grow up as best friends by default, since there are no other kids nearby for them to play with every day.  I like living where there is no traffic and I can hear the pair of owls calling to each other in the woods at night.  Yet sometimes I can't help but feel nostalgic for a time and place where friends as close as family were just on the other side of an opening in the fence.

Warped

A woman I know once told me that when she first started commuting daily on the interstate, she prayed God would always let her merge onto the highway with no issues.  She said that since that day years ago, there was always a break in traffic as she came down the on-ramp.  That is a nice story, and I was raised to believe that God cares about all these little details of our lives.  But I have to confess something I've realized recently:  If I’m expected to follow a God who will regularly adjust traffic patterns so that one lady can be less stressed about driving on the expressway, but who can’t seem to be bothered to do anything about genocide or war or starvation or kids dying of cancer, I don’t think I want anything to do with that God.  Do I know that God is not intervening and causing cars to part like the Red Sea for this friend?  No. I have no idea.  He may be. But these are the kinds of doubts and questions I struggle with daily and this struggle sometimes causes me to feel like my faith is weak.  So many other people are so very certain.

________

When I was in college, I went to see the campus counselor for several months because of something that happened to me when I was little.  Worse things have happened to other people, but it was damaging enough that I felt I should see a professional to help me figure out how to deal with it.  She was a nice lady, but when I told her about it, I’m pretty sure she was thinking, “That is really not that bad.”  Okay, maybe she didn’t really think that, but I honestly don’t remember anything we talked about that helped me feel any differently about it.  I know some people have dealt with worse, but that doesn’t mean that it was okay for this thing to happen to me.

________

Both of these seemingly unrelated things came to mind as I’ve been wrestling with my One Word.  For a couple weeks I’ve been working a riff on these lines about weaving:

Warp means "that which is thrown across.”  Weft is an old English word meaning "that which is woven."  The method in which these threads are inter-woven affects the characteristics of the cloth.  Because the warp is held under high tension during the entire process of weaving, warp yarn must be strong.  The warp of a fabric, in other words, acts like a net to capture the weft, holding these threads firmly so that they will not escape, causing the textile to unravel.

I have been putting a lot of effort into the concept of warp.  In trying to focus on figuring out how to put my unravelings back together and what characteristics I want my life to have, I thought that establishing the warp, especially for the context of writing about it, was pretty important.  I felt that I needed to clearly define the warp and focus on it for a while.  The sentence "Because the warp is held under high tension during the entire process of weaving, warp yarn must be strong" initially inspired me to write about how “love” is the warp.  I mean, isn't that how love is?  It has to be strong and made out of something substantial.  It can't be just a distraction or something half-hearted.  There is so much tension there – with who we love, how we love, the love we accept  – and how God’s love allows us to live out love in the right way.

But that post would not come together.  I worked on it for days and it never made sense.  As much as I strive to do everything out of love, I don't.  I'm flawed. My life doesn't fit into a neat metaphor that way.  I’m still sorting through so much, which isn’t a task with a clearly defined beginning and end.  I'm so busy reading and listening and learning and living and dealing with the new and the old that I can’t set a timeline for figuring everything out or saying that everything I do can be summed up in something so perfect.  And I refuse to pretend something that isn't reality just because I've committed to the word “weave” for the year and want to write something pretty about it.

At about this point in my frustration over the mess I seem to be making, I realized it's not love, it’s me.  I am the warp.  My life is the warp.  I'm not the one weaving, not really.  I know that I am making choices daily about what I make my life out of, but there is so much out of my control.  I may be making decisions about what to incorporate into or leave out of the pattern, but I'm not entirely in control.  I am the one in the tension, in the process, and the weaving is happening whether I’m trying to make it happen or not. 

Is God the one weaving?  Maybe.  There was a time when, just like the friend I mentioned earlier, I tried to believe that God was up there directing every detail of my life – from the grade I got on a test to finding a pair of shoes in my size on sale.  But I just don’t believe that now.  I do believe we are created in God’s image and I do believe that God is there, but I also think many things just happen.  They happen as the result of choices or sin or... who knows?  Maybe a butterfly wing fluttering or a tree falling unheard in the forest.  I have to do the best I can with what I have and with what happens and try to hold on to hope – hope that somehow, long after my present has become my past, the characteristics I end up with are mostly good and what has been woven is strong enough that it doesn't unravel. 

This is why the weaving is more about taking what comes and figuring out what it will be in my life.  It doesn’t mean not caring or not being as intentional as possible, but there are many unknowns and unforeseens and I can’t control all of it.  Some things are just going to happen, even if they shouldn’t, and some things are going to turn out far differently from what I had planned.  There will probably be times I realize that I’ve focused all my efforts on incorporating something, only to find that it doesn’t belong.  There will probably be times I suddenly notice something vital that has been there all along, but that I didn't see until something happens to make it obvious.  I know there will be times of unraveling and reworking, especially as I learn and live and grow.  And as frustrating and painful as that will be, it is real and it is okay. 

I’m learning that I am strong and I am getting used to the tension.  I guess I will find out if I am strong enough to keep up with the process.

T-shirts and Roller Skates

When I was seven I spent the entire summer wearing a light blue T-shirt that had a rainbow on it, cut-offs, and roller skates. I don’t know what it was about that shirt that made it my favorite, but I know it made me mad when I wasn’t allowed to wear it.  The skates had been a birthday gift and I wore them as much as possible, whether or not it was practical. (Have you ever tried roller skating in grass or on carpet? I don’t recommend it.)  I wore that shirt and those skates until they were far too small.  My mom finally had to intervene and hand them down to my sisters, and that was one of the few times I remember from grade school when I wasn’t happy to be growing.

When it meant handing down a favorite shirt or something as fabulous as red-wheeled roller skates, growing-up could be a pain.  But for the most part, getting bigger was fun.  I loved measuring how tall I was in comparison to my dad or older cousins.  It was exciting to get new gym shoes, to graduate to the next grade, and to achieve various milestones like learning to tie my own shoes or blow bubbles with bubble gum.  When I could finally reach something around the house that my little sisters were still too short to reach, I felt so grown up.  (Of course, they both grew to be taller than me, so that was short-lived. Pun intended.)

I think most of us probably liked the finally getting taller or finally getting to the next thing parts of growing-up.  At some point, though, we’re done getting taller. After that, growing becomes less about physical growth or milestones and morphs into something more difficult to navigate.  There are times we are more in control of this and can grow with purpose, investing in ourselves by pursuing education or life experiences or new opportunities.  Other times, the growing is more chaotic and out of our control, like when the unplanned happens or when are forced to adapt to the results of other people’s choices. 

Whether positive and deliberate or difficult and circumstantial, post-growing-up growing is rarely as fun as getting taller was – especially when it leads us to the realization that we’ve outgrown something.  Be it a relationship, a job, a belief, a practice, or anything else, it can be traumatic to realize that something that has been a part of our lives for years doesn’t fit anymore. Things that used to make us feel comfortable or grounded become constricting or impossible to keep up. We have to start rearranging our lives to accommodate the changes and it can be disorienting and distressing. 

Had I been an especially crafty kid, I probably could have turned that rainbow t-shirt into some kind of keepsake or fashioned it into a practical and functional item.  We don’t always have to get rid of things we grow out of, not if we can figure out how to make them work with where we’ve grown.  Relationships, jobs, beliefs, practices – some of these can be transformed into something worth keeping, in one capacity or another.  A very few of these things are even valuable enough (far more valuable than an outgrown t-shirt, obviously) that we should invest whatever effort is required to keep incorporating them as we grow, albeit in new and revised ways.

But old roller skates?  Sure, when they used to fit there was nothing more fun than zipping around in them, laughing and feeling the breeze in your face.  Yet when you can’t wear them anymore, they are useless.  I suppose you could have them bronzed so you’ll always have them around, unusable and taking up space.  Or I guess you could disassemble them and use all the parts to make some other kind of wheeled contraption, but it really is better to just get rid of them.  Some things would require infinitely more effort and resources than we have at our disposal to transform them, and even if we did, the results would be heavy and impractical.  This is when it’s important to realize there are things you have to stop trying to lug around.  Get rid of those things and stop allowing them weigh you down when you have other growing to do. 

I guess one of the biggest challenges of growing after you’re grown up is figuring out which outgrown things are the t-shirts and which are the roller skates.

Boys and Girls

I have no idea what made me think of this, but as I was doing laundry this morning I thought of my first "real" boyfriend.  I write "real" because I guess he wasn't technically my "first" boyfriend.  My "technically first" boyfriend was a guy in second grade who asked me on the playground to be his girlfriend and then never talked to me again. I remember that guy had red hair and got in trouble for eating glue when we were in first grade.  I guess some things just aren't meant to be.

Anyway, my first "real" boyfriend was a guy I met at my first real (no quotes necessary) job when I was fifteen.  He was a grade younger than me and had beautiful blue eyes and hair like the kid from Terminator 2.  Other than seeing each other at work while we were working, we went on a total of three dates.  Only these weren't actual dates, they were things we planned to do with our friends and show up at the same place at the same time.  Did I mention I wasn't allowed to have a boyfriend?

He broke up with me after the work Christmas party because I wouldn't let him kiss me.  That worked out fine because by this time I had felt guilty enough about hiding the "relationship" from my parents that I'd told them he was my boyfriend and they'd insisted I tell him we could only be friends.

After that, my parents took the approach that if I wanted to go out with a boy for an activity (not a date, I wasn't allowed to call them dates), said boy had to call my dad and ask permission.  I think I've written about this before, so I'll try to summarize.  I wasn't allowed to have a boyfriend and I wasn't allowed to plan activities with boys who wouldn't ask my dad for permission.  It was also very rare that I was allowed to go anywhere in a car with a boy unless other people were present in the car as well.  In fact, I think it only happened twice before I was eighteen, both times to a homecoming dance with a friend, with strict instructions that I was to be returned home immediately after.

There were also several guys who I was allowed to go on an activity with and who jumped through all the hoops of calling my dad and finding other people to go too and then my parents decided they were too old or too fill-in-the-blank and there would be no future activities with those guys.  And my dad would tell them that the next time they called to ask if I could go out.  For me this was all was somewhat humiliating and socially limiting, but I can (mostly) understand why they did it.

All of this led me to thinking about the boys and.... ugh... girls. Or maybe it was thinking of the girl thing which got me started thinking about the old boyfriend thing. Not sure. Anyway, right now, girls are just other kids at the boys' school, other kids who sometimes come over to play.  I don't want to mess that up by breaching the subject too soon, so we haven't really talked about girls other than in the general, respecting-other-people way.  I keep telling myself I have time, but I know it's going to go so fast and we will be talking about girlfriends before I know it.

I'm not going to tell them they can't have a girlfriend.  I'm not going to try to control every decision they make.  But I kind of feel like I don't have a context for how this all works outside of the way I was raised.  And I kind of feel at a disadvantage because I've never been a boy.

As the boys get older, I worry about them feeling pressured to do things they shouldn't or behave in ways other than the ways they've been taught to behave.  I worry about them liking the wrong girls.  I worry about them not talking to me about what is going on in their lives.  I worry about them taking relationships too seriously or not seriously enough.  I worry about them getting their hearts broken and I worry about them breaking someone else's heart.  I just worry.  And I kind of feel that maybe the way the relationships of my youth were handled (for me) didn't fully prepare me for helping them navigate theirs.

Maybe.

Or maybe it did.  Or maybe it doesn't really matter. We're all doing the best we can. My parents were doing what they thought was the best thing for me just like I have to do what I think is best for my kids. It won't be perfect and I'm sure time will reveal mistakes I've made with them and ways in which I've failed them. But I'm doing my best. I hope and pray the way I'm raising them is teaching them to respect and value both others and themselves enough that they can make the right choices at the right times.

And I hope to raise them each to be the kind of guy who wouldn't dump a girl after three kind-of dates because she isn't ready to kiss him.

The Trouble With Explaining Things

A while back, someone I knew during childhood posted that her young son had heard something about abortion on the radio and she had explained it to him.  She made a point of stating that it was funny that her 6-year-old could understand how bad abortion is when so many adults can’t seem to.  I wasn’t there so I don’t know for certain, but I’m guessing her explanation was along the lines of equating all abortion to killing babies with no discussion of the differing views on when life begins or why there are caring, loving people who may see the issue differently.  Abortion, like many other divisive topics, can be explained in a variety of ways.  I often struggle with how to explain these topics to my kids. 

How things are explained to us and how we hear them discussed in our environment as we’re growing up form the foundation for how we think and what we believe.  As parents, we want to teach our kids to know the difference between right and wrong and how to make good choices and all the basics that will help them turn out to be good people.  Many of us also attempt to impart our religious and political beliefs to our children as part of teaching them what is right.  These last two things are what have concerned me recently.  There is nothing wrong with teaching these views to our children; my concern is more about how we do this and how differences are explained.  

The family I was raised in was very conservative and vocal about sticking with conservative, “biblical” values.  I knew from a young age that Republicans were the “good guys” because they care about things like saving babies and keeping God in America.  I vividly remember overhearing a conversation between my parents when I was about twelve years old, in which my dad revealed to my mother that, although he had been voting Republican for years, he was still a registered Democrat.  He’d simply never gotten around to changing his registration.  I remember getting this horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach, wanting to say something and yet knowing I couldn’t since I really wasn’t supposed to be listening.  MY DAD?  A Democrat???  How was this possible???  Why on earth would he want to be associated with the very people who killed babies and wanted to take God’s name off our money?  I obviously don’t have to tell you how all these things had been explained to me… either directly to me by my mother or by absorbing it from the Christian publications in our home, hearing people speak about them at church, or overhearing the conversations of concerned adults.

If you know me at all or if you’ve read many of my previous posts, you know that my beliefs have changed quite a bit since I was twelve.  I wouldn’t say that my views are the total opposite of how I was raised, but I am certainly the minority in my family now and I am not teaching all the same things to my kids that I was taught.  So here is what keeps tugging at my heart: Twelve-year-old me would have been horrified by present-day me.  Twelve-year-old me would have thought that someone like present-day me had taken too many steps down the slippery slope and plunged into darkness.  Thinking about this, I realized that when we are teaching kids to hate, fear, disrespect, or disparage the politicians and political parties and points of view we disagree with, we aren’t just teaching them these things in big, nebulous ways.  When we do this, we are teaching our kids to view their neighbor or their teacher or their grandmother or their aunt (or even their future-selves) as a villain, as someone who should be hated or feared or disrespected or disparaged.  It was the aunt thing, especially, that hit home with me this week.

My sister has an almost-three-year-old son and three tiny one-month-old babies.  I love these four kids as much as I love my own kids.  My sister and I had a brief conversation yesterday about something my mom mentioned to her about something I’d said about a certain political viewpoint and was concerned about.  Knowing that my sister and her husband agree with my mom on the matter, I got to thinking later about how much I love my family and how much I love my sister and brother-in-law and how much I love their kids, regardless of any disagreements on certain issues. 

Then I got to thinking that it's possible that the way things are explained to them as they grow could influence my nephews' and niece's opinion of me.  How would I feel if the triplets didn't think of me as the aunt who cried when she held them for the first time and drove to their house in the middle of the night once a week when they were tiny to feed them and cuddle them so their mom could get some sleep?  And it devastates me to think that their big brother could one day not care that I was the aunt who would pick him up and spin around until we both got dizzy and fell on the carpet laughing or the aunt who would sneak him fruit snacks and let him drink chocolate milk straight – not mixed with white milk (at least at my house).  It absolutely breaks my heart to know that although I would give my life for any of them in a second, they may one day think of me as a political enemy, someone to look at with scorn and disdain.  Not because I'd done something terrible, but because they realize that I think about things differently from they way they were taught was "right."  Tears are streaming down my face as writing this, just thinking that it is a possibility.

I am not in any way whatsoever insinuating that my sister and brother-in-law would ever tell their kids to think of me in such a hurtful way, because they would not do that.  I am not saying they would ever even tell their kids to think badly about anyone.  But what I am saying is that this is where what we say about others in generalities goes from a seemingly justified political or spiritual rant to becoming a real, face-to-face, heart-to-heart hurt.

This made me wonder about what I'm teaching my kids with the way I talk about what I believe.  It breaks my heart to think that based on how I explain things to them, my boys might one day look at my sister and brother-in-law as anything other than the people who love them as much as their dad and I do.  I hate to think that anything I would say to my kids about a view my sister and brother-in-law happen to hold might make my boys think badly of them.  Their aunt and uncle are two of the most generous-of-spirit and big-of-heart people I have ever met in this world.  They have stayed in our home with the boys and spent countless hours manufacturing all sorts of fun projects and silly games for them and showered them with love and affection.  I honestly don't care if we disagree about certain issues and I would never want the way I talk about things to cause my kids to care either. 

But since I am raising my kids with a few different views from some my sister's family holds, how am I doing that?  Am I teaching them the same exact thought process I was raised with, but only with different villains?  Or am I teaching them love first and foremost, regardless of political or religious differences? 

Our political or religious beliefs are only part of who we are and as we are searching and questioning and trying to grow, they can change.  That doesn’t mean we become completely different people.  In some cases, like mine, I would say that the evolution of my religious and political beliefs was more a process of bringing them in line with the person I am.  It doesn’t mean I love my loved ones any less because they may not agree with me.

So here is what I think we should do:  The next time we are tempted to act as though what we think or believe is the absolute, 100%, no-questions-asked right thing to believe and that we know the exact right way assert it to "stick it" to dissenters.... before we start to type or say words that demonize or disparage anyone, we should think of the people we love most in this world.  I want us to think of how we SHOULD discuss the matter if those people we love were the ones on the other side.  We should think of all the things we love about them, all the wonderful things they add to our life, all the things that make them individuals instead of the labels we assign to people for their beliefs.  We should think of how we would feel or what it would mean to us if we were speaking those hateful words to those we love -- to their face.  We should think of how we would be destroying something precious by directing those words to them and teaching our kids and those around us to do the same.  If that doesn’t give you pause, well, it should. 

We need to stop.  We need to think.  We need to remember that those groups and parties and politicians and other-side-ers we so love to rant about are representatives of individuals.  They represent individuals we know and love.  We need to teach our kids and the people around us that there is another way, that who we are and how we treat each other is far, far more important than whether or not we agree on things that are decided in the voting booth or can only be believed rather than proven. 

That, my friends, is what I intend to explain to my kids.

My Dad is a Feminist

I can only imagine what would be my dad's somewhat confused reaction if he were to read this title.  It makes me chuckle a little to think of the reaction of my mom or anyone else who knows my parents.  I know what many people who know my dad are likely to think of when they read or hear the word "feminist," so I'm sure they would all think this must be some kind of crazy joke.

It isn't.

I recently read this blog post by Dianna Anderson over at Rachel Held Evan's blog, and I can't stop thinking about it.  (Yes, I may have a serious girl-crush on Dianna Anderson's brain, but that is not the point here.)  I just love how Ms. Anderson is able to articulate how her faith and views of feminism go hand-in-hand.  I also love how she was able to strip away some of the noise and present her views in such a simple, well-thought manner.  The following excerpt really stood out to me:

What I tell people, though, is that feminism is a big umbrella – there are pro-life feminists, there are feminists who are anti-porn, there are feminists who disagree with each other on any number of policy issues, but there’s one common thread: feminists believe that women are human beings and deserve to be treated with the same dignity and respect as men do.

As I was thinking about this, I realized that part of the reason it is so easy for me to identify with this sentiment is that, at least by this definition, my dad is actually a feminist.

My dad may be a lot more conservative than I am, but the belief that "women are human beings and deserve to be treated with the same dignity and respect as men do," is absolutely one of his core values.  Growing up with my mom and sisters, I never once felt that my dad was disappointed that he didn't have a son (although on some level never evident to me he may have been).  I never once heard him say that either of my sisters or me could not do, say, try, or be anything because we were girls.  He always supported us. He always encouraged us.  He always made sure we knew we were loved and he was proud of us.

One reason this realization about my dad's feminist status seemed so odd to me at first is that when I was a teenager, I was not allowed to go on a date unless the guy asking me out called my dad and asked permission.  I always thought this came across as though he was very controlling and didn't trust me to make my own choices.  Some might even say that it was an assertion of some kind of patriarchal dominance.

Now, however, I realize that it was actually one of the best things he could have done to show me how much he valued me as his daughter.  I realize that to him, if a guy didn't even have enough respect to call my dad and ask him if he could take me out for pizza, the chances that said guy would truly respect me were pretty slim.  As of today, I've been married for eleven years to a guy who had no problem calling my dad, even though when I first told him about it he laughed and thought I was kidding.  But he is a guy who has never been anything but respectful to me in the fifteen years I've known him.

I now realize that all the things my dad did that might have seemed on the surface to be a man putting his proverbial foot down when it came to his female offspring, were actually things that showed how much he valued me and loved me.  These things are evidence of how much he respected me and how far he was willing to go to ensure that other men in my life showed me respect and dignity as well, all before I was quite up to the task of demanding it for myself.

My dad taught me to fish and mow the lawn and drive a nail and refinish furniture and make pizza dough.  He expected me to go to college and to work hard and to pull my weight.  Certainly my mother gets a lot of credit for the person I've become.  But my dad, with the way he has always treated me with respect and, in doing so, taught me that my gender really had nothing to do with my abilities -- he gets the credit for turning me into a feminist.  Whether he intended to or not.



PS.  Happy Father's Day, Dad.  I love you.  I didn't say it the other day, but you're one of my favorite people too.

What to Watch For

I know I've mentioned before about being raised pretty conservative. I've also mentioned before that my parents are surprisingly open-minded and accepting of me, their much more progressive daughter. This is all fine and well. It's great that I can still be close with my parents, despite that I have "strayed" so far from how I was raised.

Where I have trouble is in trying to figure out how much or little of certain aspects of my upbringing to pass on to my kids. There is a lot of it I question, some I still hold on to, and some I've completely discarded (or am probably still in the process of discarding).  So many of the things I'm trying to avoid passing on are more about the perceived guilt a person should have if they do or don't do certain things.  I don't see value in the guilt that comes from being taught that all things, views, and actions are either good or bad -- From being taught that you shouldn't do or think "X" because "X" is bad and you don't want to be bad.  Or, conversely, that you should always do "Y," because "Y" is good and you want to be good.

Just for grins, here are just a few things I do or don't do now that I still feel a twinge of guilt about when I least expect it.  These aren't necessarily things my parents specifically taught me were wrong, but I did learn/absorb the idea they were wrong as a result of the overall environment in which I was raised:
Having tattoos
Not abstaining from alcohol
Working Full-Time instead of staying home
Not having our family life revolve around church activities
Not homeschooling my kids
Not being Conservative
Not demanding unquestioning obedience from my kids

The more I think about it, the more I realize that while I'm working out some of the more specific aspects of what to pass on to my kids, I also need to be working toward an overall strategy that guids them yet avoids passing on these guilt issues.  I want to teach my kids to be wise.  I want to teach them to be kind.  To be generous.  To be helpful.  To be compassionate.  To be hard-working.  To be responsible and realize their choices and actions affect their own future and can affect others.

But I want to TEACH them these things.  Not guilt them into them.

So here is my newly formulated strategy: 

What to Watch For

This isn't rocket science.  I'm not saying I've invented some entirely new thing that is unlike anything anyone has ever done before.  I'm just saying this is what I'm going to try.  I'm adding our weekly What to Watch For to the boys' chore chart.  Every week we will have a new one, although some may be repeated every so often.  We will watch for ways to use wisdom.  Ways to be kind.  Ways to be generous, helpful, compassionate, hard-working, responsible, etc., etc., etc.

Maybe.... just maybe.... this will help me and help my kids to focus on thinking about what we do and what opportunities we notice.  Maybe it will help us to be aware and to be intentional and to make good choices about how we want to conduct ourselves.  I'm going to be watching positive results and for responsibility without the guilt.  I'll let you know how it goes.

Tinsel

Although Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, I have always loved Christmas.  Not just the presents, but the decorations and the music and the lights and the traditions.  All of it.  I loved getting to stay up late when I was little to watch Christmas movies.  I loved candlelight service at church, when I got to hold a real, lit candle.  I loved playing with my sisters and moving around the figurines of the old nativity set my parents had.  I loved lying on the floor under the Christmas tree and looking up at the lights and the ornaments.  And, of course, I loved the anticipation of Christmas morning.

Wednesday we had a family movie night and watched Rudolf the Red Nose Reindeer.  When the song "Silver and Gold" came on, Ryan asked me if we ever put tinsel on our tree growing up.  My parents never had tinsel, but it reminded me of a memory I hadn't thought about in a long time: trimming the tree with my sisters at our grandparents' house.

We spent a lot of time at their house growing up, as my mother often helped my grandpa (or "Pap" as all the grand-kids called him) care for my grandma. Even when Mom wasn't there helping, my sisters and I slept over regularly, sharing the pull-out bed of the hideous orange and yellow floral sofa.  We would wear Pap's t-shirts as nightgowns and he would sing to us old hymns like "When the Roll is Called Up Yonder" and "Old Rugged Cross" as he tucked us in.

It was always fun to stay over, but we especially looked forward to December when we got to help decorate their tree.  We would follow him down the narrow steps to the basement, and help gather the pieces of the world's first artificial tree to drag back up the stairs.  Okay, so it wasn't the actual first artificial tree, but probably close to it.  It smelled a little musty from its home in the basement and you could see the twisted, metal wire of the pieces showing between the matted "needles."  Once assembled, it had a strange, alien quality, with the unwieldy branches curling up at strange angles.

None of that mattered to us.  We loved digging through the ornament boxes and hanging up the strange shaped glass Santa faces or birds with colorful feathers.  Best of all, we were allowed to put colored lights on it.  But not just colored lights.  The ones that blinked!  It was only white lights and sentimental ornaments at our house, so this was quite a treat.  And they let us use tinsel.  I think more of it probably ended up on the floor and in our hair and static-clinging to our clothes than where it actually belonged, but we loved playing with it and adding it to the tree.  How pretty it looked reflecting the colored lights!

Regardless of how tacky this all seems to me as I'm writing it, in my mind's eye I can still see how beautiful and magical it was to us at the time.  I loved driving up to their house and seeing that tree blinking in the front window.  I'm sure we loved rearranging the ornaments every time we went over.  But my favorite part was snuggling up on the couch bed with my sisters and falling asleep in that tree's beautiful glow.

Merry Christmas everyone.  I hope your celebrations are full of love and laughter and cherished memories.

The Big Bad Wolf

When I was really little, the thing I was most scared of in the world was the Big Bad Wolf.  I don't remember when I first started being scared of it, but to me the Big Bad Wolf was horrifying.  He was the terror hiding under my bed, he was what was waiting in the shadows ready to pounce, and he was the in the nightmares that would leave me awake and shaking in the middle of the night.  I could not stand the stories of Little Red Riding Hood or The Three Little Pigs. 

If the lights were off in my room and I needed to get out of bed, I would sit on the edge (feet up, of course) for a long time, trying to decide if it was worth the risk.  I just knew that as soon as my foot hit the floor, the Big Bad Wolf would reach his hunormous* paw out to grab me and pull me under the bed, never to be seen or heard from again.  If I really absolutely had to get out of bed, I would jump out as far away from the side of the bed as I could, and race out of the room. 

One of the main problems was, that if I was getting up in the middle of the night, it was probably to go to the bathroom.  The 1950's house I grew up in still had the original tile half-way up the bathroom wall.  Along the way, someone had decided to paint that tile several times.  Most of the tile was painted white, but along the floor was a spot where someone had dropped something heavy (a paint bucket, perhaps?) and put a large chip in the white paint.  Of course, the chip revealed a layer underneath that had been painted black.  And it was in the shape of a wolf.

Thinking back on it, it all seems so silly.  To be terrified there was a wolf under my bed and to let my imagination run wild that he could hide in a chipped tile on the wall and would somehow come to life and get me if I didn't watch the chip the entire time I was in the bathroom alone.  Thankfully I've outgrown all that and realize now that The Big Bad Wolf is a fictional character.

Although, to claim that I've completely gotten over absurd fears would be a lie.  There are still some things that scare the bejesus out of me.  Of course, I try to act like a normal, rational adult, but sometimes and in some situations I just want to freak out.  I guess in a way I am still scared of the Big Bad Wolf, only now he has taken on a the form of bad things I fear could happen or risks I'm scared to take.  Maybe I will never really be grown up. 

Oh well.  At least I can get up in the middle of the night without racing away from the bed.



*Hunormous is a word my 4-year-old uses all the time to describe something that is huge and enormous.  I love it so much I cannot bear to tell him it is not a real word.  Maybe someday it will be.  Didn't they just add "ginormous" to the dictionary?

The Guilt is All Mine, Folks

I realized after re-reading my last post that I left something out.  Or maybe I didn't leave it out, I just simplified it to the point that it may have misrepresented something.  See, while my parents were crazy-strict when I was growing up, I've come to realize that they were actually strict about most of the right things. 

I wasn't allowed to go to parties.  I wasn't allowed to go out with a guy unless he called my dad first and asked for permission to take me out.  I had a curfew, strictly enforced.  I was still required to attend family functions and things for my sisters.  I had to dress modestly and I wasn't allowed to have my own car.  I had to go to church and to youth group and, up until I was seventeen and started taking classes at the local community college, I still had to go to homeschooling events.  I also had to help out around the house and make dinner a couple times a week.

But there were a lot of things they weren't that strict about.  My parents let me work and they bought an old beater car I was allowed to use as long as they knew where I was going and who I was with.  I was still allowed to go on dates, as long as it was with a guy who asked my dad and as long as I was home on time.   And not having my own car allowed me to have my own money to do stuff with my friends, as well as save for a trip I took to Spain after I graduated.  I never look back and wish I'd been a partier or dressed like a slut or skipped out on time with my family or been saddled with a car payment at sixteen.

My parents were strict, but not in a bad or over-the-top way, despite how I might have felt about it growing up.  And, while they did raise us in a very conservative environment, I've realized over the past few years that they were just doing what they thought was best at the time.  I never remember either of my parents telling me that I had to believe a certain way to gain their approval or to be a real Christian.  Most of the attitudes and beliefs I talked about walking away from in my previous post were more from the environment and the groups and the church than they were directly from my parents.  I think I used to think of my parents as much more conservative than they actually are, just based on the groups we associated with during those years. 

I wrote a post about my mother's example a long time ago (that you can read here), which I was thinking about after spending time with my parents over the holiday weekend.  Both of my parents have always set a good example of how to treat others and be responsible and work hard and they are the most generous people I know.  So, while I have to acknowledge and discard some of the baggage I have from my formative years, I have to thank my parents for being the kind of people who would never make me feel guilty for doing so.  The guilt is all mine, folks.

Guilt. And Green Day. And Guilt.

I remember when I was growing up and the only music my sisters and I were allowed to listen to was Christian music. I was reminded of this when a friend sent me a link to this article. It is a great article and worth the read, but this post isn't exactly about Christian music. It's more about growing up in a conservative, right-wing (which I hilariously just typo'd as "fright-wing"), Focus-on-the-Family environment. And Green Day. Yes, the band.

Throughout my adolescence, I thought my parents were ridiculously strict. They home schooled us and had a lot of rules. All of our activities centered around our church or our homeschooling group. All the people I hung out with were kids from one or both of those groups. And I knew, not even so much from my parents saying it specifically to me, that being a good Christian meant that you were a pro-life Republican who wanted the Ten Commandments, teacher-led prayer, and the Creation story back in public schools. Despite that most of us didn't attend those schools. Good Christians went to youth group or Bible study in-between Sundays and avoided anything "secular," from magazines to music to cartoons.

Somehow, though, around the year I turned sixteen, my parents lightened up.... just a little bit. I wasn't banned from "secular" magazines and music completely. Part of that was probably my parents' good sense in realizing that telling me I couldn't do or see or have any of those things was probably just going to make me want them even more. And, I think at least a little of it was their own naiveté at not realizing just what I was being exposed to. I mean, have you ever perused a copy of SEVENTEEN magazine?

Anyway, that year also happened to be the year that Green Day released their hit single "When I Come Around." I remember sitting my by radio, blank tape in the tape recorder, waiting for it to play as the number one song on the Top 8 at 8 so I could record it and listen to it over and over. Now, I don't think that if my mom had realized that Billie Joe was saying anything about being a "user," she would not have let me listen to it. But she either didn't realize or decided to overlook it.

My favorite part of the song goes:

So go do what you like
Make sure you do it wise
You may find out that your self-doubt means nothing
was ever there

You can't go forcing something if it's just
not right

Now, I realize the song isn't really talking about theology, but humor me. Looking back on it, I have to wonder, was this song the start to the proverbial slippery slope that led me from the way I was raised, to the centrist (okay, borderline Liberal) I am today? Someone who thinks that there are some situations in which I know I couldn't look a woman in the eye and tell her an abortion is not an option for her? Someone who believes that those in the LGBT community are people created by the same God who created me and who should have the same rights as everyone else? Someone who finds the right-wing more than a little scary and who believes we should respect the beliefs of others? I mean, as long as they aren't hurting anyone, shouldn't everyone be given the same freedom of belief that I enjoy and shouldn't they be able to live without having my beliefs jammed constantly down their throats?

I'm not saying that I have it all figured out in everything I think or believe. I'm still learning. I'm still questioning and searching. But I am saying that what I think and believe now is a lot different than it was when I was fifteen. And I also, sometimes, feel guilty about that. Being raised in a culture where a lot of the things I believe now were seen a "wrong" and "un-Christian" is sometimes very conflicting for me. Even when I've looked in the Bible and prayed about something and determined that what I believe about it now is much closer to the things Jesus taught than were the things I was raised thinking, I still have this lingering feeling of guilt for turning my back on what I was taught was "right" for what I was taught was "wrong."

But, in the words of the oh-so-wise Billie Joe, "You can't go forcing something if it's just not right."

I know this post is already really long and I don't know if anyone is still reading it, but all of this has been on my mind so much lately because I don't want my kids to grow up with this kind of baggage around their faith. Certainly, I want them to know what the Bible says and how Jesus said we should treat others. And I do believe there is real wisdom in the Bible that can help them as they grow up and have to make more and more decisions for themselves. But I also don't want them to get to a point where they feel that all I've done is tell them what to think. Nor do I want for them to have to deal with so much guilt when they try to work out for themselves what they believe. Truth is truth, whether it comes from the Bible or a Green Day song. There is no need to feel guilty about recognizing that.

Choices

We recently went on a short family trip to Mammoth Cave National Park in the middle-of-nowhere Kentucky. We stopped to have dinner at the one local eatery in a nearby town. When the waitress came to take our order, she asked, "Just these two?"

Um. No idea. I said, "I'm sorry?"

"Just these two kids? Is that all you got?"

What an odd question. I'm so bad. I wanted to say we'd left the rest in the car, but that would have been super rude so I replied, "Yep. Just two."

"At least you don't have seven."

How do I even respond to that? I obviously know nothing about this girl, but she was probably late twenties. Maybe her husband or life partner (she wasn't wearing a wedding band) was home with the kids and she just waited tables at the local dive for a break and some extra money. I'm guessing not, but maybe.

For whatever reason, this got me to thinking about the families we come from and how we end up where we do. My maternal grandparents came from very humble roots. My grandpa grew up in a mining town in Kentucky and my grandma grew up in Covington, Kentucky. Times were very hard for both of them.

My grandpa joined the army during WWII and ended up being able to go to college to be a teacher. My grandma also became a teacher. Then they got the hell out of Kentucky. This is nothing against Kentucky. There are plenty of lovely people and places there. But from what I can piece together from eavesdropping on the adults' conversations growing up, it wasn't so lovely for my grandma and she wanted out.

They built a life in a small town and had a family. It was by no means all rosy-perfect, but it was much better than the life my grandmother had growing up. There was a lot of hurt and anger from things that had happened in her life, but I like to believe my grandma did the best she could. She chose to make a change and give her own family a better hand than she'd been dealt.

My own mother had to deal with some of the fallout of my grandma's pain, but she was determined that she was going to do even better for her own children and make sure they always knew they were loved and never felt rejected. While there were some very tight times in my childhood, my parents did their best to make sure I did well in school and stayed out of trouble and had the chance to go to college.

Yet, when I saw that waitress and heard her talking about her seven kids, I thought, "That could easily be me. Just a few choices different and I could be waiting tables in middle-of-nowhere Kentucky to try to make ends meet with eight or nine mouths to feed." Now please understand I am in no way saying that having fewer kids or more opportunity makes me a "better" person than anyone else. I certainly do not think that I'm better or my life is better. But I probably have it easier. Maybe she has the life she's always wanted, and if so, that is absolutely fine.

I'm not trying to be critical of someone else's life as though it is a bad thing. I don't know if I'm explaining myself very well and I'm really sorry if this rude in any way, because that is absolutely not what I intend. I'm only saying that in my mind it would be a hard life to have a lot of kids when you don't have a lot of resources or opportunities.

Now, I know that we are each responsible for our own choices and ultimately have to make our own way. But it is much more difficult when you start out in a tough spot and don't have easy access to things that could improve your situation. And sure, if my grandparents hadn't moved to Ohio, my parents likely wouldn't have met, and I likely wouldn't exist.... but humor me.

Just thinking about how my grandparents' choices gave better opportunities to my mom and then to me and now to my kids, is kind of sobering. I have to say I'm thankful for the new paths they took, because my life could have easily started in a completely different situation. I hope the choices I make in my life are as good for my kids and their kids as the ones that were made years ago by my family that eventually benefitted me.

My grandma, aunt, mom, and grandpa

Confession Friday

When I was little, I wanted to be a ballerina. I loved the shoes and the costumes and watching the graceful, beautiful dancers. My mom, God love her, was kind enough to never say that I was not graceful enough or tall enough or athletic enough and she let me take lessons. She was kind enough to never point out to me the obvious: that I am a huge klutz and have the gracefulness of a duck. I eventuality got bored and quit, and it wasn't till later that I realized that I would never have been not-a-klutz enough to be a ballerina.

Lucky girls outgrow their awkward klutziness and grow into their adult bodies and lives. Girls like me can grow up and dress up like an adult and get a degree and start a career and have a family, but just can't shake the klutz. Let me give an example.

There is a nice shopping area right near my office building. Recently, I went in to White House|Black Market on lunch and found some cute clothes on their clearance racks. I tried on several outfits, then put my my own dress and heels back on before realizing I hadn't tried on a black skirt I'd picked up. No sense to undress again, right? I'll just slip it on real quick. That is what I thought right before trying to step into the skirt and SLICING the side of my knee open with the heel of my shoe.

So... there I was, standing in the dressing room, leg bleeding, wondering what in the heck I should do now. I mean, I was wearing a dress, so it's not like there are pants to cover it. I scrounged around in my purse and found the little first aid kit I keep in there for the boys. Of course, it's out of band-aids (and if it had them they would probably be brightly-colored cartoon ones anyway). I see there is still an antiseptic wipe, so I try to use that. Only, of course, it is the worlds smallest wipe. Not kidding. It comes in a pack like those regular moist towelettes, but only unfolds once. I had to blot the blood with this tiny, two-inch by one-inch wipe. Oy.

There you have it. These are the kinds of things that happen to me. I know that might not sound so bad, and it wouldn't be if these were only occasional occurrences. But no. I have (epically and like something from a movie) fallen in public more than once. I drop things, bump in to things, bruise, scrape, and maim myself. My name is Trischa, and I'm a klutz.

Pizza and Potato Chips

It's so crazy how something I've probably seen hundreds of times will randomly spark a memory I haven't thought of in years. My boys and I were at the Reds game on Sunday, walking near the stadium, when I looked up and saw a sign for "Mike-sells". Mike-sells is a local potato chip/snack food company that distributes mostly in the Midwest. Their wavy potato chips, including the ones that have the greenish edges from being cute too close to the peel (?), have a special place in my heart. On Sunday afternoon when I saw that sign, I was transported for a second to pizza night at my parents' house WAY back when I was little.

Pizza night when I was growing up did not involve a delivery guy or carry-out. Sure, from time-to-time we did buy pizza. But that wasn't "pizza night." Pizza night when I was growing up always started with some yeast, water, flour, and a pinch of sugar. Pizza was the thing my dad made. And as soon as we were old enough to spread tomato sauce or sprinkle oregano, my sisters and I had our hands all over it. I don't remember a time in my life when I didn't help make pizza or know how to make pizza.

The dough that results from my dad's recipe is very... yeast-forward (no, I don't know if that's a real thing, but "yeast-y" just sounds weird). It's not like anything I've every had in a restaurant, and yet it is still my favorite pizza to eat. I now make it with my boys at least a few times a month. Back in the day, pizza night was a huge deal and usually involved company. Even if that company was just the neighbors.

I know we ate a lot of pizza in the winter, including every Christmas Eve, but my main memories of pizza night were in the summertime. We didn't have air conditioning and despite having every window open and multiple fans working overtime, the house would get increasingly warm from the oven being on and opened/closed to cook multiple pizzas. We (my sisters and I, the neighbor kids, and all the adults) would eat in shifts around the ancient, creaky table in the dining room. When the pizza with the toppings you liked was ready, you'd get a paper plate with a slice, a perspiring cup of 'Pepsi-free' (pizza night was one of the few times we were allowed to have soda), and a handful of wavy, Mike's-sells potato chips.

And there you have it. The crazy way my mind works. Walking on a chilly, rainy day in the city with my kids, and all it takes is seeing an advertisement to take me back to a sweet memory of a sweltering, summertime joy from my childhood. I don't think I've eaten chips with pizza in years, but for the past few days all I could think about was getting some Mike-sells chips and savoring a memory. Luckily, I went to the supermarket today. If you'll excuse me, my writing is keeping me from a salty, crispy snack and some serious reminiscing.

Boys Will Be Boys

Easter Sunday always brings back a flood of memories for me. When I was little, my parents would get my sisters and I up at the crack of dawn to put on our matching Easter dresses and go up the road to Sunrise Service at church. After that service, we would make the five minute trek to my grandparents' church for Easter breakfast and regular Easter service. At some point we were allowed to have our Easter baskets, but it seemed to vary from year-to-year when and where we found them.

Easter is quite a bit different for me now. I let the boys find their Easter baskets first-thing, and yes, they pretty much end up eating candy for breakfast. My life is miserable if my kids are robbed of sleep for even one day, so we don't get up early for sunrise service. We also live too far away now to make it feasible for us to go to Easter breakfast.

Last year I did buy the boys coordinating polo shirts and plaid shorts for Easter, but it ended up being too cold for shorts and Luke refused to wear a short-sleeved shirt so I had to let him wear a plaid button-down and jeans. Then Owen didn't want to wear his shirt since Luke wasn't wearing his, so he ended up in a different polo than his Easter one. And we were almost late for church. It was so frustrating that I didn't even bother to buy them anything this year.

And now I'm so glad I didn't. I just let them wear clothes they already had, and it was pouring rain this morning, so we all wore rain boots. Thank goodness. Here is a little glimpse of what happened after Easter lunch and before Easter dessert.





And no, we were not at home, so I had to make use of my sister's laundry facilities and the boys had to run around in their underwear until their clothes were clean and dry. Oh well. They had fun. And got rid of some of the sugar buzz. Somehow I don't think matching outfits would have been nearly this memorable.

Distractions

I know it has been forever since I've written. I blame my third-of-life crisis. I'm mad that I know what I want to be when I grow up, but I can't be that and instead I'm being something else. I can barely tolerate all the office politics and stupidness that consume my job right now. I was talking with my friend Irena today about how much time work sucks up out of our weeks and it was completely depressing. Despite that there were years in the past that I was working two jobs, weekends included, I don't remember feeling this way back then. She feels same way and thinks it's because we had goals then, biding our time till we graduated college, moved away, got married, or whatever was the next step then and we thought our real lives would begin soon.

Now that our real lives are here, we realize that we're kind of trapped. And that makes it almost unbearable. It's nice to have a distraction.

Tonight, my distraction came in the form of a long-time friend's wedding. She looked gorgeous and happy and I am ecstatic for her that she has found someone who treats her the way she deserves. My husband couldn't attend with me because of work, so I met up with my dear friend from forever, her husband, and a friend from back in my working-all-the-time phase. There is something so refreshing and almost soul-cleansing about spending time with people you spent so much time with in your past. People who knew you back when you were an awkward teenager and then college student, trying to figure it all out, and who still embrace you as a grown-up once you've all realized you will never have it all figured out.

I'm not really sure of what else to say about it. I love those moments when you are completely comfortable in the company of people who really know you. This night could not have happened at a better time.

Come on Eileen

It's so funny how songs you don't even like can just stick with you and bring up memories at the oddest times. Tonight I was at happy hour with some friends. The place was really loud so I couldn't hear the music.... until I walked into the ladies room. The speakers in the ladies room were screaming the song "Come on Eileen."

"Come on Eileen, well I swear (what he means) At this moment you mean EV-ER-Y-THING!!....."

Ah, memories. Every single time I hear that song, I'm nineteen again and it's 12 AM and I'm closing at work and trying to finish my tasks while that song is blaring out of the dish washing area. Blaring over and over and over again because whoever is washing dishes gets to choose the music and my friend and co-worker who I closed with a lot at that time always chose that song. I can still see her, soap suds clinging to her forearms, carrying the heavy chili crocks out to put them away while singing under her breath.

The place I worked starting my senior year of high school and on breaks all the way through college was the same place most of my friends worked. Some of my favorite memories from those days were from work. It adds another layer to your friendship to work late, side-by-side, commiserating about lousy tips and annoying customers while mopping and scrubbing crocks. And my friends all having a certain song or band or radio station they always liked to listen to just added another layer to the memories. Whether it was Barenaked Ladies, Aerosmith, "Mickey," or 103.9 The Edge (before Pizza Hut sued them and they became "The X"), I will always associate that music with those friends and that job and those times. And that is not a bad thing, even if I can't stand "Come on Eileen."