Belonging Together

In An Altar in the World, Barbara Brown Taylor writes of making a practice of standing naked in front of a full-length mirror with a sense of reverence for the physical body one lives in.  She goes on to observe, "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."  When the narrative for a reverence of my own embodied self is based on the belief that God loves and cares for people – people in their skin-and-bones physical entirety and not only their heart and soul and mind – it is impossible for me to view others with less reverence and autonomy than I allow myself.  

When this reverence is my narrative, I cannot think of others only for who they are in my life or what interaction I have with them. 

While embracing this narrative has broadened the way I view everyone I encounter, I've spent a lot of time reflecting on how it has changed the way I think of my family and my role in it. I never fully bought in to the teaching that a wife belongs to her husband and children belong to their parents, but it was part of my framework and influenced my thinking and my actions.  The way I now see myself as a person and a woman has helped me better understand the way I view marriage and motherhood. 

I know I've explained before that I do not belong to Ryan, my husband, but then it follows that neither does he belong to me.  I've always known this, but wasn't sure of how to explain it when “belonging to” was my default understanding.  I don't want to trivialize our relationship by arguing "we don't belong to each other," but I feel it is important to make the distinction between belonging to another person and choosing to belong together. 

Ryan’s role in life is not “Trischa’s husband.”  Yes, we said vows that we would build a life together and incorporate the role of husband or wife into who we are, but we did not take on the role of husband or wife as our entire identity.  It would be wrong to reduce Ryan from a person with his own passions and thoughts – many of which have nothing to do with me – to a role he fills in my life.  We choose that we belong together in our marriage, but we do not belong to each other.

Our sons, Luke and Owen, do not belong to me either.  Yes, I grew them inside my own body for a time and gave birth to them and nurture them and love them with a connected, reverent-awe kind of love.  I am their mother, but their role in life is not to be my children.  They belong to their own, autonomous selves and to the stardust from which their atoms were formed, and to God, who breathed life into their lungs.

They do not exist to exhibit behavior that would give me bragging rights or make me proud or conform to the way I think.  Treating my sons in that way would be to objectify them, to act as though they serve a function the way possessions do, which is not showing reverence for them as individual, embodied people.  I am responsible to actively teach them essential values and skills and celebrate with them when they excel or when they act with compassion and responsibility.  But I believe they learn much more about equality and consent and autonomy for themselves and others when they are encouraged to experience life within a framework of reverence, rather than training them to meet my expectations. 

My sons and I are in a life-long process of learning to love each other and figure out how we belong together as flesh and blood, but they do not belong to me.

Thinking that I belong to someone or that someone else belongs to me discounts that we all are unique individuals created in God’s image. I am better able to love with a deep, encompassing love when I embrace the incredible people around me as those I have the privilege of belonging with and when I allow them to determine how they belong in life with me.   

Note: I started writing this post last week, but just recently read a similarly-themed piece by Ben Irwin on why he does not intend to “give away” his daughter at her wedding.  It is beautiful and I highly recommend you read it 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

Speaking the Same Language

I was homeschooled beginning in forth grade until my senior year, when I enrolled in the local public high school. I went to classes there in the morning and took courses at community college in the afternoon. During that one year in public high school, I shared a table in study hall with two exchange students, Andre' and Maria. I know what you’re thinking and yes, that does tell you everything you need to know about how well I fit in that year. Lucky for me, Maria and Andre' are fun, friendly, welcoming people and became some of my dearest friends that year.

Andre' was from Brazil and spoke Portuguese and Maria was from Spain and spoke Spanish.  I am not a linguist, so forgive me if I don’t explain this well, but apparently the more Cuban dialect of Spanish that Maria spoke was enough similar to the Portuguese Andre' spoke, that they could have conversations with each other in their own native languages and almost completely understand each other. They weren't speaking the same language, but their own knowledge of words and phrases, along with context and possibly some English thrown in from time to time, allowed them to communicate with each other more effectively that way than in English.  It was fascinating to observe their interactions when they did this.

Several weeks ago, while discussing my new church with a friend, he asked me why I feel it is so important to go to church when I can clearly maintain my faith without attending church (as I have been doing for almost a year), through reading and personal study. He then admitted that it has always surprised him that I identify as “Christian,” because I don’t put off a “Christian vibe.” 

Back in my youth group days, a comment like that (especially from a "non-Christian") would have sent me into some sort of existential crisis, but I knew exactly what he meant. He and I have always been able to communicate well and discuss various topics even though we have some fundamental differences on faith and politics and social issues.

Something about this reminded me of Maria and Andre'.

I realized that the most meaningful conversations I have about my faith tend to be with people who do not share it. I think the reason I connect so well with my non-faith friends when we talk belief is that these friends care about the process by which we arrive at our beliefs in the same way I do. We may not have arrived at the same conclusions or share the same faith, but we understand each other because my sick-soul, messy, uncertain faith-process quite similarly mirrors the journey that led them to choose not to believe. Parallel journeys with different conclusions, similar enough that we can understand each other even if we haven't arrived at the same place.

Different languages, but with dialects that allow for connection and understanding and community. It is beautiful, and I would argue, holy, even if they would not use that same word.

I know. None of that explains why I need church.

As much as I care about and need my Atheist/Agnostic/Other friends, I've come to see that I also need to be part of a community where I can discuss my faith without the necessity of translating our dialects back-and-forth between faith and non-faith language. I have found a few of these people via blogging and social media and I don't mean to downplay how much I appreciate those connections, but I need some of those in-person connections as well.

I do have people in my life with whom I have Christianity in common. I have my family and I have friends from previous church communities. Yet even though we share the language of faith, our dialects are so drastically different it can be difficult to communicate without misunderstanding each other. We may try to have discussions, but we’re often left gazing at each other over a seemingly untraversable chasm of theological differences. I may have a close enough relationship with some of them that we can talk to each other without shouting angrily over the chasm, but our attempts can leave us exhausted from the effort required to make sure we are questioning thoughts and belief rather than attacking each other. It is often easier to find a common, non-faith-related topic to discuss to avoid making too much of our differences.

I need to be in community with people of faith who speak the same faith language and dialect that I speak. This is not to say that I do not love those who speak their faith differently or will stop trying to connect with them over our differences This is not to say that I no longer need my non-faith friends, because I do need them, and I love and appreciate them more than they could know. Yet I am also longing to sit at a table and hold hands in prayer and break bread and make eye contact with at least a few people who speak faith with the same dialect, accent, and syntax I use. I know we won't agree on everything, but we will be able to speak freely without translation required.

And that is why I need church.

"Real Men"

"Look at you, helping your mom like real men!"

Yes.  Someone said that to my boys this past weekend when they were helping me carry our luggage.

Oh, how I grow weary of this “real men” talk.

"You mean they are helping me because that is what we do… right?  We help each other.  And they are really good helpers."

Yes.  That was my response. 

Oh, the looks I receive for my gentle corrections of “real men” talk.

And no, this is not in the general public.  I do not fight those battles.  If some stranger makes a comment in passing that is especially bothersome to me and I know the boys hear it, we discuss it later, privately.  I only attempt these corrections with people who spend a lot of time around my kids.

I simply do not understand why it is so upsetting to some people that I refuse to raise my sons to think they should offer help or courtesy to others on the basis of gender.  I cannot understand why it bothers some people that I refuse to teach my sons that in order to be “real men” they should do things for women because women are somehow weaker and need them.  (I am apparently also harming their real manhood by my refusal to glorify guns and war and certain “manly” types of violence, but that is another post.)

Yes, I am a feminist and that does influence the way I raise my kids.  But I'm not trying to use my kids, who happen to be boys, as some kind of political or social statement.  I don't force them to read feminist literature or tell them negative things about men or try to make them “girly” or whatever else it is that people scared by feminism think that feminists do.  All I'm trying to do is raise my kids with values that promote equality, mutual respect, and healthy views of gender.

So when friends or family say things to my sons about being men in a context that makes it seem that the way we treat others hinges on gender instead of shared humanity, I am going to say something.  Not because I am trying to be difficult or because I am angry, but because it is contrary to the values I am trying to teach them.  I want my boys to know that showing kindness and courtesy to others – regardless of who they are – is part of how we value the image of God in others and in ourselves. 

I want my boys to be good men because they are good people who happen to be male, not because they fit a certain social or religious stereotype. 

I'm not trying to turn my kids into feminist activists, harm their sense of manhood, or teach them women are better than men; I'm trying to raise kids who truly understand equality. 

Yes, I am teaching them to hold doors open and help carry luggage and lots of other things many may consider chivalry, but not because those are things “real men” are supposed to do.  I'm teaching them these things because those are just a few of the countless ways to show we understand the inherent value of every other person.  And if someone doesn’t want the help they offer, that is okay as well.

Behavior matters, but so do the attitudes and thoughts behind that behavior. I am trying to teach my boys that the behavior they exhibit toward other people should come from the desire to show respect, kindness, empathy, and love, rather than teaching them attitudes that assign worth to others based on gender or how well a person fits into certain roles. 

So really, there is no need for eye rolling or concerned looks when I politely dispute the “real men” comments directed at my boys.  It is fine to complement their kindness and helpfulness or to tell them it is appreciated when they do something nice without being asked, but there is no reason to use their positive behavior to create differences where none need to exist. 

I may not be out there on the front lines, fighting the good fight against patriarchy, sexism, male privilege and the like.  I may not be able to single-handedly eradicate from this earth all the attitudes and views that are harmful to both women and men.  But I will speak up when people say things to me or to my children that promote and reinforce them. 

And I hope my sons are learning to do the same.

Cost

It's funny how when you're growing up you often don't realize how much things cost.  When I was little, I didn't realize that most of our house was cold in the winter because the fuel oil that ran the furnace was too expensive to crank the furnace up; I just thought my parents liked using a wood-burning stove that only heated more than one room if you used a box fan to circulate the warm air into the next room.  I didn't know we weren't allowed to ask for things at the store because we didn't have money to buy extra stuff; I thought it was rude to ask for things.  I didn't realize that I was wearing boy jeans because the only hand-me-downs that fit me were from my equally-skinny older male cousin; I really didn't give it a second thought.

It probably wasn't until I was about eight or nine, when my dad was established at a better-paying job and there was more money and the house was warmer in winter and I had more girl jeans than boys' hand-me-downs, that I realized money had been so tight before.  Granted, even in the lean times we still had it much better than a lot of other people.  Even if dinner was Banquet pot pies that could be purchased five-for-a-dollar on sale, we never went without.  Not ever.  My dad always worked long hours and we always had what we really needed.  But it wasn't until I was older that I understood both the fortune of never going without, as well as how stressful it must have been for my parents when times were tough -- when I was older and had a better understanding of what things cost.

Even though circumstances are a bit different for my kids than they were for me when I was little, we still want them to understand what things cost.  We talk to them about why we work and how things are paid for and why we don't have some things and why, even if we do have the money for something, that doesn't mean we are necessarily going to buy it.  As I was thinking about the way we are teaching the boys about money, I also started considering how teaching them about what things cost isn't only about money.  I want them to learn to be wise about their money, of course, but making wise decisions about cost is so much more than considering if they have enough money for a new toy or should be saving for a rainy day.

It is important to me for the boys to understand that there is often a cost associated with our actions an choices.  I want to be deliberate in teaching them about cost -- financial and otherwise -- instead of merely hoping they figure it out for themselves. I want to help them learn to weigh cost and make wise decisions for themselves, rather than me always telling them what they should choose. 

When they ask me “Why?” a million-gazillion times a day in response to every single thing I say to them from, “Go brush your teeth” to “Don’t swing that metal bat in the house,” my answer is almost always, “Why do you think?”  Of course we have discussions about why, but I want them to come up with answers to these obvious questions on their own, without me having to constantly explain personal responsibility and the consequences of their actions.  I want them to think about their choices and the cost of those choices.

I don’t want them to be paralyzed by the fear of making the wrong choice, but I do want them to learn to be deliberate and careful about what they choose. For now it may just be that if they choose to have soda with dinner on weekly treat night, they can't have ice cream for dessert.  Which would they rather have? It may be that if they choose not to do their homework when it is time, they don't get their 30 minutes of PlayStation time after dinner.  Which is more important to them, putting off homework or having time for something fun later?

Those are obviously not life-changing decisions, but my hope is that even on the days when it seems they will never "get it," somewhere in the recesses of their minds they are learning the importance of choices and the importance of owning their own choices.  I hope that as they grow they learn to hear those questions for themselves when they are making decisions: "What will happen if I do this?  What will happen if I don't?  Why am I doing this?  What is it costing me?  Is it worth it?"

I hope they will choose what is right, even at the cost of the approval of others.  I hope they will choose fun, but not at the expense of others.  I hope they will choose to be daring when they should and guarded when they should and have the discernment to know when the time is right for each.  I hope they will be willing to take risks, but only when they are also willing to accept that the results of those risks might not be exactly what they'd anticipated. Some things are absolutely worth the cost and some are not.  I hope I'm teaching them to discern the difference. 

And I pray that when they look back they will see that we worked together to help them learn to make the best choices for themselves, rather than me making all their decisions for them.  They will mess up.  They will not always make the right choice.  But I never want them to feel like their choices were all dictated by me.  I know I'm not a perfect parent.  I know I mess up in numerous ways.  I know I don't always make the right choices for myself.  I know this is all going to get increasingly more difficult as they get older.  But, God... I pray this is one thing I'm doing right.  Even at the cost of my own sanity.

Why I'm A Feminist

There are many different kinds of feminists, just as there are many different kinds of.... almost any label or category you can think of that people use to describe themselves and others.  Broadly speaking, being a feminist means that you believe women are equal with men and should have equal political, social, and economic rights.  Outside of that, a person will often find a wide range of thoughts and beliefs held by those who claim to be feminists, as well as a variety of reasons why a person would choose to claim the feminist label.  If a person tells you she or he is a feminist, their beliefs and ideology may or may not be in line with what you think of as a feminist.  It is good to ask questions and listen.

I have not always identified as a feminist, but I have always believe in equality.  Over the past few years I've learned a lot more about the role my faith plays in my beliefs on equality and justice and would say now that one reason I am a feminist is because I am a Christian.  Another reason I would say I am a feminist is because I am a woman who realizes that despite how far we have come on issues of gender equality, we still have a long way to go.  I am a feminist for many reasons, but one of the reasons I think is most important is because I have sons.

Only sons and no daughters.  Sons who will grow up to be men.

I see the attitudes of so many men who are considered leaders in political or religious or business circles who, through their words and actions, communicate that women do not deserve equality or a voice or fair treatment... and my blood boils.  I see how men and women are portrayed in the media in ways that degrade and objectify women... and my heart breaks.  There are times the odds seem insurmountable to reach a point where we are all treated fairly and equally regardless of gender.  I don't want my sons to think any of this is acceptable and I especially don't want for them to become part of the problem.

Of course, I also see men in political or religious or business circles who, through their words and actions, promote equality and fairness... and I am overjoyed.  I see men and women who fight against the degradation and objectification of women... and my heart soars.  I want my sons to know about these people and see that things can be different.  Being a feminist and being aware of these people so I can learn from them and help my sons learn from them is a big part of that.

A few months back I wrote a post riffing on Rachel Held Evans' writing about the cosmic lottery and the privilege my kids were born with simply because they are white American males.  I wrote that I wanted to raise them in such a way that they do not use any advantages this gives them to put themselves ahead of others.  I went back and read it again and I think the following is worth repeating in this discussion:

I want my boys to learn that any good things they may have in their lives don't make them better than anyone else.  I want them to see others as their brothers and sisters in this world... I am trying to figure out how to teach my boys to be able to step back from their own experience, to listen, to connect, to care, and to think.  And, when appropriate, I want them to help, to stand up, and to speak out. 

Sometimes I feel like my heart will break with the weight of thinking about these things.  I wonder if there will ever come a day when there aren't so many people looking at others who are different from them and trying to find ways to deny them dignity.  I wonder if pondering and being deliberate about these issues will make a difference.  I wonder if trying to instill a sense of humility and responsibility in my two little boys will ever matter at all.

I think that sums up why I am a feminist.  I am a feminist because, even if it is only my two little boys who are hearing me, I want to raise them to treat others fairly and equally.  I want them to see that their dad and I treat each other as equals and share equally the responsibility for earning money and taking care of our household because that is what we both want and agreed to before we got married.  I hope they remember that we arranged our work schedules so that one of us was always home with them, even though we both work full-time.  I pray the example we set for them and the things we teach them will help them become members of society who realize the importance of equality.

I want to raise my sons to know that although we are each put on this earth to serve others, we are never to treat others as though they were put here to serve us. We are never to objectify, degrade, oppress, or use others, because every person is made in the image of God, regardless of their genetic make-up or how different they may be from us.  I want to raise my sons to be the kind of men who treat others -- especially women -- the way they want to be treated.

And being a feminist is just one of the many ways I can teach them that.



Note: This post is part of a linkup on Feminism hosted by Kelly J. Youngblood at Renewing Your Mind.  Please check out the other posts and join in the conversation.

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.

Not Less or More

I have started many drafts about my church issues.  Almost all of these drafts detail stories about youth group or courtship or leadership or homeschooling or secular music or gender roles or authority.  Most of these drafts start off coherent, but then descend into jumbled thoughts in run-on sentences and emotional ramblings because all the things listed above were completely intertwined during the same period of my life.

Along with those unfinished stories are multiple attempts to write about how those intertwined things have affected me since that time.  I've done a lot of writing about things I've sorted through, from thoughts about why in college I let guys talk over me in class without calling them out on it, to listing out words I didn't mean yet said anyway because I believed they were words I was expected to say because I was a girl.  I've spent a lot of time trying to put into words all the questions and doubts that I learned from a patriarchal view of religion that became part of who I was back then.  I've spent a lot of time trying to explain how I eventually realized that I'd learned to question things I should not question and that I'd learned to avoid questioning things I should.

I’d learned to question my right to speak.

I’d learned to question my right to disagree.

I’d learned to question my heart.

I’d learned not to question contradictions.

I’d learned not to question when someone else “heard God” for me.

I'd learned not to question the notion that I was somehow less because I am a girl.

As much as all of those things still bother me at times, there is no reason for me to share those stories in any more detail than what I've shared in the past and what I've written above.  The details of the stories don't matter anymore.  I’m no longer involved in that community.  I’m not going to try to go back and talk to those people about what happened.  It’s all still there in my back story, but continuing to hash out the details is only going to distract me.   

What I need to focus on now is figuring out what to do about church.  What I'm currently doing with staying home on Sundays is fine for now, but I can’t stay away from community with God’s people because I had some bad experiences years ago.  I can’t keep avoiding it because my more recent (admittedly half-hearted) attempts to find a place to serve with other Christians have been dismal failures.  I can’t keep hiding because I’m afraid of being overwhelmed with my baggage and damaging my kids with it.

I realize communities are comprised of people and therefore no community is perfect.  I’m not looking for perfection.  I am not perfect and would not fit in any community where perfection is the goal.  I know I need to be willing to listen to people with whom I disagree.  I know there will be times my heart or thoughts will be wrong and I need to be willing to admit that and seek forgiveness if necessary.  I know I should always be striving to be a better version of myself and to learn and stretch and grow. And I know now that I need to find a place where all of those things are possible and encouraged.

Yet it must also be a place where my faith questions won’t be met with hostility and where my self-doubts won’t be fanned back to life.  I need to find a place where the way community is lived-out reinforces, to me and to my sons, that my heart is not less because it beats in a female chest.  That my words are not less because they are spoken with a female mouth.  That I am not less.  I refuse to raise the boys in a Church community where they are taught that having a Y chromosome makes them more or better or gives them the right to control anyone else.  We need to be in a place where it is understood that we can all serve and learn and grow together, with all our differences and despite disagreements.  I need to keep looking until I find that community – flawed and imperfect as it may be – where no one is taught they are less.

For you are all children of God through faith in Christ Jesus.

And all who have been united with Christ in baptism have put on Christ, like putting on new clothes. There is no longer Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male or female.

For you are all one in Christ Jesus.

-  Galatians 3:26-28

Carrying My Own Suitcase

bag·gage
\ˈba-gij\
noun
1. suitcases, trunks, and personal belongings of travelers
2. things that encumber one's freedom, progress, development, or adaptability


We all know about baggage.  We all have baggage of one type or another.  Of course, in this post I'm referring to the encumbering kind of baggage and not necessarily the kind that goes in the cargo hold -- despite that both types can be accurately described as the "personal belongings of travelers."  My mind has been racing lately, taking stock of my baggage, testing the handles, feeling the weight, wondering how I accumulated such a mismatched assortment.  I am still working on how my baggage, full of my unraveled or unraveling messiness, is going to work its way onto this blog.  But right now, I'm thinking about one of the major things I need to address this year: what I'm going to do about church.

When I explained previously that I'm not attending church, I wrote,

If there is one thing I've learned over the past year it is that if you don't learn to own your faith, to truly understand what you believe and why, then you may as well not believe anything.  When your faith is based only on what other people have told you that you should believe, you have to close yourself off from people who think differently from you, lest they ask you questions you can't answer or find gaps in your story.  I don't want that and I don't want it for my kids.

But here is what I'm questioning: can we choose our kids' baggage?  Of course I know that part of being a good parent is doing everything in our power to raise our kids in an environment that grows them into healthy and well-adjusted people and that there are obvious things parents should avoid to prevent the baggage that results from things like abuse or neglect.  I'm not talking about those obvious, universal things.  What I'm worrying about is if by trying to avoid something so specific and not-universally-avoided, if my kids are just going to end up with the same baggage I have anyway?  Or are they going to have some kind of opposite baggage (is that a thing?) because in trying so hard to make things different for them they will pick up something else along the way?

I honestly have no idea.

This is just one of many reasons I need to work through my church issues.  At this point, I'm completely unclear about what it is all going to look like on the other side, but I do know that I need to make some decisions.  I don't know if we will be regularly attending a church by the end of the year, but I know that Christian community is one of the foundations of the Christian faith and that I need to figure out how to incorporate that into our lives.

Into my life.

That's really what it boils down to.  These issues with church are my issues.  Sure, when my kids are older, I'm sure there will be discussions we have where I will reference some of my baggage, but at this point, it is my responsibility.  My job is to live out what I know is right and bring my kids along with me.  Some day, they will have their own baggage about something, as much as I try to prevent it.  But this church thing, this is mine and they have no obligation to it.  With this church thing, I need to suck it up and carry my own suitcase.

Dispel the Long Night's Lingering Gloom

O come, O Come Thou Day-spring bright
Pour on our souls Thy healing light
Dispel the long night's lingering gloom
And pierce the shadows of the tomb



It just doesn't feel like Christmas.  I have no idea how many times I've said that over the past couple weeks, but it's a lot.  I could try to come up with why -- from the tears that well up in my eyes for the heartache of people I care about, to being so disorganized, to the weather -- but I don't know that it really matters why.  Regardless of why, I can't seem to find the Christmas Spirit and I am not ready for Christmas.  This is not good, since there are only two days between now and Christmas Day and then it will be here whether I am ready for it or not.

I keep trying to listen to Christmas music and watch Christmas movies and wrap Christmas gifts, but if I'm honest, the music is getting on my nerves and I've really only managed to watch two Christmas movies and I didn't get anyone a truly good gift this year.  Don't worry.  I'm not going all Grinch on my kids or anything.  They are getting some great presents and I am able to muster up excitement for them.  But when they aren't around and it's just me, I feel like it is all a ridiculous waste of time and I cannot wait for it to be over.

The things I really want can't be wrapped and put under a tree.  In fact, it's really felt lately like the things I want can't "be" at all.  No amount of asking Santa or wishing on a star or praying or petitioning can bring them about or make them possible, regardless of Christmas magic or anything else.  I want kids -- not just my kids, but all kids -- to be safe and healthy.  I want families to be able to celebrate the holidays together.  I want people to not be lonely or sad or sick. I want everyone everywhere to have what they need.  I want us to be able to resolve conflict without violence, because I don't want my kids to grow up and know all the terrible things humans do to each other when they see each other as enemies instead of brothers and sisters in Creation.  I want peace and I want life.  For everyone.

Yet, we all know the harsh reality.  Things are bad.  Things are messed up.  Certainly, there are moments of hope, those passing seconds where things seem right and hope blossoms despite all odds.  Then we remember how wrong so many things are and it is difficult to keep that hope from fading.  So often, it seems as though hope is something we once knew, but now exists only in our memories.  As Barbara Brown Taylor once wrote, "Hope in the past tense, [is] one of the saddest sounds a human being can make."  Sometimes it seems impossible to think of hope as something that still exists, as sad and horrible and pessimistic as that is to admit.

I've stated before that I'm not an optimist, yet, regardless of our beliefs, Christmas seems to call for an attempt at looking on the proverbial bright side.  This year, I can't do that on my own.  Christmas will come. Right here in my home there will be love and laughter.  I will smile and laugh and hug my family and watch gifts exchanged and I will force myself to be in the moment and enjoy it.  I will remember why we celebrate Christmas at all and I will be grateful.  I will cling to the love I have for others and the love I receive. 

But if the lingering gloom is to be dispelled, it will take more than gifts or lights or faith or love: It will take renewed hope.

Time will tell if that remains.  I hope with all my heart it does.

"And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love."
- I Corinthians 13:13

The Road Home

So, poetry.  I used to write poetry all the time.  The first thing I wrote that I ever shared with anyone outside a writing class was a poem.  Would it be too cliche to spin a woeful tale about how I've somehow lost the poetry in my soul?  Probably.  But it has literally been years since I've written any poems.  I honestly don't know why, but I can feel the genre beginning to rattle around in my skull a bit.  I think I should give it a try, even if I'm so rusty that I'm unsure of where to start.  I miss it.  So here goes.....


Something about
that stretch of road
overwhelms me.
The way the fields
illuminate in the afternoon
sun is so
familiar and also
strikingly glorious.
A feeling
like homesickness
creeps in and
brings to mind carefree
summer joyrides and
treacherous winter commutes.
My mind wanders
to mostly forgotten memories
and the fragility
of life.
Anything
can happen.
Yet,
on that road,
I'm
going home.
And everything,
if only for a moment,
is going to be
okay.

My Heart

I know it's Thanksgiving weekend and we are all focusing (or trying to focus) on what we are thankful for.  Social media is full of posts and tweets with daily thankful thoughts and reminders to give thanks.  I realize the importance of focusing on what we have in our lives that makes us thankful.  I understand why we should back away from the stress and the noise and remember the good.  I love Thanksgiving and giving thanks and I am so, so grateful for countless people and good things in my life.

Lots of good has happened in the past year or so.  In my circle of family and friends there have been babies and promotions and successes and new homes and new jobs and... good.  So much good.  And my heart is thrilled thinking of all of it.  Sometimes life is amazingly wonderful and I love that there are people in my life that much amazingness has happened to and that even in a small way I have been able to share their joy. 

Yet, in the midst of all the thanks and happy and good, part of my heart is very heavy.  In my circle of family and friends there has also been loss and pain and heartache.  So much heartache.  Some have experienced hideous, catastrophic loss that takes my breath away when I think of it.  Others have endured one shitty thing after another piling up, to the point that they wonder if things will ever turn around.  Sometimes life is horrifically awful and I hate that there is nothing I can do to ease their heartache.  I hate that all I can do is keep a place in my heart where their pain is neither forgotten nor trivialized.

So, while I anticipate this holiday weekend with joy and and thankfulness in my heart, these are tempered with lament for the anguish of others. My heart will give thanks and celebrate the good and my heart will hurt for my friends and family whose thankfulness is eclipsed by pain.  My heart will be filled with thanksgiving, but also with hopes of peace and comfort for those enduring heartache and with prayers for them for better days ahead. 

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.

A Synonym for Deliberate

I've been thinking about the title of my blog.  I've been thinking of how funny it is that when I named it I was trying to convey the total randomness of my thoughts and life and writing.  I didn't (and still don't) have a theme or a focus for this blog, other than just getting thoughts out of my head.  However, I did feel the word "random" was overused, so I chose some words that meant random.

When I started this blog, I did feel as though so much in my life was haphazard.  I had an almost-two-year-old and a not-quite-four-year-old and when you have kids that age, everything seems like chaos.  Just when you think you've figured out a routine or something that works, that stage has passed and you're trying to figure out life (or even dinnertime) all over again.

My kids are five and seven now.  Sure, there is still plenty of chaos and unpredictability, but the moment-by-moment insanity is not nearly as bad.  Despite outbursts of crazy boy-energy, we have settled into more of a.... I won't say "routine," but maybe a "mutual understanding."  I no longer feel like everything is a spiral of randomness.

I've realized that being deliberate is not only important, but necessary.  With the way I respond to the boys' questions and behavior, I can't just wing it.  I have to put thought into it and purposely choose the way I react and the  motivations for my reactions.  I want to make sure that I'm teaching them to think for themselves and to use discernment and make wise choices, but also to enjoy the hell out of life.  Most kids don't learn that by accident.  Some do, but don't I want my kids to remember that they learned at least some of that from me?

With my thoughts and my writing, I've also realized I've become more intentional.  Not that I've lost any of my craziness, not that I have everything figured out, and not that I know what I want to be when I finally grow up; I do feel that I am a little more focused about what I think and what I (try to) write about.  Where before, the thought of being deliberate seemed unattainable and therefore overwhelming, now being deliberate seems like a welcome necessity.

I obviously don't know what the future holds.  I don't know what life has in store, nor do I know how long this stage will last with the boys.  I could wake up tomorrow to an almost five-and-a-half-year old and a several-months-past-seven year old who have changed everything and feel like I'm starting all over again.  I could lose all sense of focus and go through another phase where I don't know what I think about most things.  Because of all this (and also because I'm ridiculously sentimental), I'm not going to change the name of my blog.  I'm going to leave it and see where life takes me. 

I do, however, realize that there is no reason to cling to randomness when a little bit of intention is appropriate and necessary.  I'm learning to live with both the antonym and the synonym of deliberate.

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.

There's No Day Better Than Today

"tomorrow you will know there’s no day better than today
we don’t see how lucky these days are til they go away
til these days go away"
- Ingrid Michaelson
(If it will work, you should go here and click "play" and try to listen to the entire song. It's the only place I could find it.)


"I will shoot you with my massive lasers." - Owen


"O-WEN!" - Luke (About 80 times a day.)


"Mom! The baby learned to fly!" Owen (Don't worry. It was a Hero Factory baby.)


"When I grow up, I'm going to drive a Mustang. A green one." - Luke


"Look at my cool outsuit." - Owen
"Owen, it's 'outfit,' not outsuit." - Luke


"Oh. Yeah. I love to play basketball and I'm really good at it." - Owen
"Really? Can you dunk?" - Luke
"What's a dunk?" - Owen


"Why is it called 'Lady and the Tramp'? Does it have a tramp?" - Luke
"Um, what's a tramp?" - Owen
"I don't know. Mom? What's a tramp?" - Luke


"When I grow up, I'm going to be an architect." - Luke
"Yeah, and when I grow up, I'm going to be a storm chaser." - Owen


These are just a few of the things I've heard my kids say over the past weekends we've been trapped together. The one-car thing is still a huge pain and I think that by the time Sunday afternoon rolls around the boys and I are starting to go a little stir-crazy. It's a lot of togetherness with almost no breaks or distractions. For all of us.

There are times when they get really loud and fight with each other and it is all I can do to not go crazy. There are times I feel like I've reminded them a billion times in one day to use their manners or pick something up or follow the house rules and I end up yelling and feeling like a total mom-failure. But there are other times, when I'm sitting between them on the couch, reading while they watch one of their shows and they are all snuggled up to me, that it's not so bad at all. And the other day we were blasting "I'm Yours" by Jason Mraz and dancing around all silly and I actually thought that maybe I don't suck at this whole mom thing as much as I thought.

But when I think of those rare, almost magical mom-kid moments, I can't help but wondering what life will be like in 10 years. Will they totally despise being around me when they are sixteen and almost fifteen? Will they shut me out completely to the point that I feel like I don't even know them? When I think about that, it makes the times when we are stuck at home together, but having so much fun, seem even more valuable. Just thinking there will be a day when they not only don't need me, but don't want me around either, makes me want to capture these times and make sure I never forget them so I always have them to look back on.

I know I've said it before that I am not one of those parents who wants to keep my kids little and hates the thought of them growing up. I love seeing the new things they learn and the new stages they reach. It isn't about wanting to freeze time or not wanting to embrace the future. I certainly hope there are better days ahead than a lot of the days I've had lately, but at the risk of sounding ridiculously sappy (especially for die-hard realist who rolls her eyes at anything overly optimistic), I think what this song reminded me is about noticing the good and the love in some of these "todays." Not taking the good times for granted. I don't know if tomorrow will be better or worse. I need to capture whatever I like about today and remember how lucky it is when there is anything good.

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.

Little Women, Little Men

One night when I was bored and on Facebook and I was actually paying attention to that annoying real-time feed on the right side, I saw that a friend of mine had commented on her teenage step-daughter's photo.  It was a photo of her tagged with her brother on vacation or something like that and I hadn't seen a picture of the kids in several years, so I opened it.  Then, because I was bored (and, okay, I am nosy), I clicked to the next photo and was shocked to see that it was a picture of the girl side-by-side with a photo of another girl with a bunch of people tagged and the caption, "Who's Hotter??" across the bottom.  The next several photos were the same thing, only with different girls.  And they all had multiple comments voting for one or the other, often making derogatory comments about the one they didn't think was "hotter."  There was only one girl who had consistently commented on each of the photo pairs, stating that it was sick that people were even doing this.  And her peers pretty much told her to eff off.

I closed out my browser window, but I kept thinking about it.  Sure, I've heard and read about these kinds of things, but to actually see it on a real person's Facebook page made it so much more than something mean rich kids do on smut television.  I so wished that I could have commented.... said something to make all those kids think about what they were doing and feel bad for treating their peers like some kind of rate-a-girl pastime.

Then, a few days ago, my friend Jenny posted this link right here that you should go and watch right now (unless you are very easily offended, as it does contain some mildly explicit material).  I know some of it was a little over-the-top, (for example, perhaps some smart women purposely choose to stay out of politics because they realize there are better ways to affect social change).  However, they really do make quite a point.  Why do we just accept the way women are so often portrayed in media?  And why does it have to be so difficult for young girls to go against this cultural phenomenon?  I do think that as women we need to support other women and help young girls to see their potential goes so much farther than some guy's fantasy or some model's photo shoot.

Only I don't have daughters.  I have sons.  Certainly girls need to be empowered to buck stereotypes and to embrace the talents and gifts they have that have nothing to do with their looks.  But I think that another big part of this is what boys are being taught.  How do I raise boys who would realize that it is not okay to participate in a "Who's Hotter??" poll on Facebook?

Gender stereotypes are so ingrained in our culture that just being different from the norm is not enough.  My husband and I both work full time, but one of us is always home with the boys.  I work Monday through Friday and Ryan works Friday through Sunday.  I work from home on Friday and my sister comes over to help me out.  Working opposite schedules like that, we both have to share responsibilities for the boys, for cooking, for housework, and whatever else needs to be done.  I still cannot believe how many times my boys have told me that I can't do something because "girls can't [fill in the blank]."  What the heck??  Where is that even coming from?  They are only in first grade and preschool and we strictly monitor their media consumption.

Clearly, teaching boys to respect girls has to be intentional.  I can't just sit back and think that because my husband his very respectful of me or that he and I share responsibility so evenly, that my boys will automatically pick up on it and act accordingly.  Sure, kids learn by example, but there are some lessons that need additional reinforcement.  And this is one of them.  Now all I need is a strategy.

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?