Graduating next month =)

Hello any readers still out there in cyberspace.  The end of net neutrality means that the rich will soon control your access to the thoughts and words of little people like me, so I thought I'd make a final post while I still could.  And to think I once believed in trickle-down economics, silly child that I was.

So, here's the scoop on my marriage, career and family.  I am still married, even though my husband occasionally endulges in abusive behavior.  It happens far less frequently, and ends far more quickly, because I am so close to complete financial self-sufficiency that it is as good as done.  Nothing like seriously working on your exit plan to get a man to take you seriously. ;-)

I graduate in May and I have assurance of a well-paying job with "all the hours I want" to quote my potential new supervisor. I am one of the top five graduates in my community college.  I have already passed the national registry exam in my field which means I will graduate as a credentialed professional.  Can I get an "Amen"?

Our whole family stopped going to church two years ago.  My husband has been sleeping in church for years, or going in the back room with his laptop because he was on call.  Yes, sometimes it really was work, but other times, Sudoku or Minesweeper were what was calling to him.  So when my pastor called me and chewed me out, yelling and calling me insulting names over a facebook post that a) he admitted was true and rational but b) did not admit was hurting his "brand" and might have a potential negative impact on his income if read by reactionary small-minded people who can't understand basic English (his target audience =), my husband had no problem just not going anymore.

My son, great-hearted guy that he is, kept going for awhile, since he doesn't carry other people's grudges.  He still loved God and loved being part of the worship band, so continuing to go was the right thing to do.  Unfortunately, the pastor was not as emotionally mature as my teenage son.  He transferred his hatred towards me over to my son and started treating my son like an enemy instead of a friend.  Eventually my son stopped going as well.  Thank you, Pastor Todd for freeing us from the confines of the cultish business empire that is today's American evangelical Christianity.  Go now, you are forgiven. 

My daughter is out of the Air Force and wants no part of the war machine.  She saw through it quicker than I did, smart girl that she is.  She lives with her boyfriend, a man who clearly dotes on her.  He was also raised to go to church every Sunday and be a good American Christian.  So much for parents doubling down on religion, eh?   Why he won't marry her I don't know (she asked but he turned her down), but this I do know: he seems to truly love my daughter, I know she truly loves him, and they are by all accounts very happy with things the way they are.  So, I am happy for them.

My son is a wandering spirit at this point, his heart captured by poetry and art.  Where he will end up vocation-wise I do not know, but that is not my journey.  He is free to follow his own path, and I will love and accept him wherever that path leads.  I want nothing less than for him to follow his conscience and be good to all people to the best of his ability, and nothing more for him than self-sufficiency with generosity.  I am confident he will live up to my expectations, such as they are.

So, thank you faithful readers. And thanks to all in the evangelical community who shunned us, condemned us and turned your backs on us.  Here outside the wall, with all the other lovers of God and lovers of humanity, the "bleeding hearts and artists", life is truly worth living.  My prayer for you is that you too will also eventually escape "the mask of life they had placed upon the face of death"*, i.e. current American evangelical Christianity and all it encompasses.

*Damascus Road by Rich Mullins

One Last Thing...

School starts up again tomorrow, so my blog will go back to being neglected for the next few months.  But I just had to say...

I AM SO GLAD I HOME SCHOOLED!

Nothing is perfect, and certainly there were many problems with our family life and marriage as my kids were growing up.  Before I accepted the probability of my daughter being "on the spectrum", I often doubted if maybe her slow social development was possibly related to not being forced to interact with crowds on a daily basis.  Now I know with 100% certainty that home schooling had nothing to do with it at all.  In fact, who knows where she would be if she were forced to deal with crowds on a daily basis?  It would not have helped her mature any faster, or changed her neurology.  So, yeah, I am glad she did  not have to deal with public school.

Instead, her earliest years were spent in a calm, creative environment.  Our home was resplendent with educational paraphernalia: books, DVDs, CD-ROMs, paints, colored pencils, markers, whiteboard and markers, scissors, glue, construction paper, magnets, puppets, toys, craft kits, music, posters- you imagine it, we probably had it.  She had all the time in the world to explore and most of the day was free to get busy.  I can't think of a better environment in which she could have grown up.

The middle school years were tough, and things were  not good at home.  Mom had been imbibing Poison for my Marriage for years, and the damage was growing daily.  When I listen to P!nk's song "Family" I think of how tough that must have been for her.  But even then, I am grateful  that on top of that she didn't have to face the expectations of a school full of NT adults and children each day.  Rejection and misunderstanding from her parents, her church and social groups was bad enough without crowds of people to overwhelm her and add their disapproval to the mix.  As much as I misunderstand and didn't notice being home with her every day, how much more would *I* (not working moms in general, but me specifically) have missed if my attention was further divided to include the workplace AND the potential problems she was facing expanded to include the public school environment?  For us, home schooling was the right choice.

Home schooling has turned out to be a boon for my son as well, at least as far as the interests he has and the man he is.  He would like to be more popular (who wouldn't at that age?) and he certainly would have had a greater crop of potential friends to choose from had he attended public high school.  But this coming semester, going to the urban community college instead of the rural community college he attended last year, I think he'll solve that dilemma.  Also, the wisdom that comes with maturity (not everyone at public school is popular either) will give him a greater sense of satisfaction with his life.

So, if I had to do it  over again, would I still home school?  Yes.  If I had the budget to afford an exclusive preparatory school, I would have encouraged my daughter to try that for high school.  Ditto for  my son.  Christian school would remain out of the question, because school should be about learning and education, not indoctrination.  But we never had that kind of money, so home school- for my two- really was the best option.

Peace and good will to all who read here. SS

Nightmare Before Christmas

Tim Burton’s movie entitled “The Nightmare Before Christmas” was released to the public in 1993.  My daughter was three years old. 

I was a fully committed fundamentalist Christian mother at that time.  Determined to pass on my faith to my precious daughter, I filled our home with Christian books, Christian videos, Christian music, and Christian toys.  I took her to Sunday school.  I took her to Mother’s Day Out at our church.  I took her to Vacation Bible School each summer.  Every day in every way, I sought to fill her environment with words of faith and love.

Faith and love were my intention, but faith and law were instead often the result.  So many things seem to be like that in parenting.  We embark on a course of action with every positive intention, and when the course is run, we are stunned to find that we are nowhere near where we intended to end up.  Like the many parents you can see each week at Disney World waiting for the evening parade, the frustration of having all our good intentions stymied can be maddening.  We put all this money, time and effort into trying to create this magical experience of wonder and amazement in our children’s childhood, and then they instead experience something entirely different and not always pleasant.  Who wouldn’t be upset?

Most parents’ initial reaction is anger.  They (we) scold the children for being (fill in the blank) ungrateful or selfish or rude or ugly or call them whiners or sissies or other unpleasant names, when they are experiencing our efforts as a negative instead of the positive we intended.  Good parents catch themselves and stop, apologize, and do a logistics check to look for the cause of distress.  Hungry?  Tired? Sunburned?  Cold? Thirsty?  Sick?  Over-stimulated?  Need to go to the bathroom?  Activity age appropriate?  I liked to think I was a good parent, especially when my daughter was very young.

But then, when my daughter was somewhere around eleven or twelve, things went awry.  I was doing all the right things- Christian devotions, daily prayers, fun activities, church socialization, teaching to her interests and strengths, providing lessons outside the home, exposing her to social groups (Girl Scouts in this case).  Why was my daughter so depressed?  Why was she so “rebellious”?  What was “wrong” with her? 

Looking back now, the signs are everywhere obvious.  She needed me to stop with all the religion and constant moralizing and spiritualizing everything and listen to her. I should have listened to her, and listened without any idea in my head of what the “right” answers were, the “right” feelings were, the “right” thoughts were.  I am sad, truly sad, to say I did not do that.  I was full of Christian culture claptrap, up to my eyebrows, and I knew what were the right answers, the right feelings and the right thoughts for all good Christians.  I was quick to point out to her where she was wrong, why she shouldn’t feel the way she did, and why she should not think the thoughts she was thinking.  I called her thoughts and feelings evil and demonic.

To those of you not up to your eyebrows in Christian culture claptrap, I know that sounds heinous- it is heinous to say that to a child!  But to those of you steeped in Christian culture, it will sound right and good doctrinally.  We are always being tempted by the devil and his demons to think evil thoughts and hold on to evil feelings like fear, resentment and jealousy.  These are not perfectly normal or understandable human emotions and reactions. They are sin.  If a person does not repent of them right away, then they are under the power of the demonic.  That is the spirit at work “in the children of disobedience”.

 Ephesians 2:1 And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins; 2 Wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience: 3 Among whom also we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind; and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others. 

Poor kid.  She was having a hard time figuring out who she was and how she fit into this world, and she was getting no breaks from me.  I thought I was the most loving and supportive Christian parents a child could hope to have, and I was.  I was living the Christian version of the Eagle’s “Life in the Fast Lane”.  I knew all the right people; I took all the right "pills".  I had the scriptural answer to everything. 

But she did not need a Christian parent, she needed a loving parent. She did not need religion to tell her how she should feel and think.  She needed a loving mother to listen to her express how she did feel and think, and without shaming her for having the “wrong” thoughts and feelings.  That she did not get.

She did get tolerance. That was the best I could come up with at the time, but she did not get that tolerance shame-free.  Oh no, there was still plenty of shaming and prodding to do the “right” thing and think the “right” way and feel the “right” things.  Is it any wonder that my daughter’s favorite song to play at the time was “Reflections” from the movie Mulan?

“Look at me

I will never pass for a perfect bride

Or a perfect daughter

Can it be

I'm not meant to play this part?

Now I see

That if I were truly to be myself

I would break my fam'ly's heart.”

(http://www.fpx.de/fp/Disney/Lyrics/Mulan.html#Reflection)

So, she quit talking to me.  Most of the time, she just hid in her room.  We didn’t always fight (disagree, clash, hurt each other), but it was still a daily occurrence.  For reasons I now understand, but did not at the time, we just could not connect.  I tried, in my own fashion, every day.  My daughter tried, in her own fashion, probably just as often.  But I was not really trying to understand her.  I was trying to change her.

I wanted to mold her into what the Christian culture said she should be and it was not taking. She appeared to be something else entirely, much to my dismay. While appearances are not always what they seem, she seemed to be (in my estimation at the time) mean, self-centered, uncooperative, pretty much the opposite of the cheerful, obedient, pleasant Christian girl I was expecting.

I was embarrassed by her, because I knew that we would be judged harshly and rejected by our Christian peers.  But I did not forsake her, as I have watched so many other Christian parents do to their children whom they could not control. I give myself some good parent points for that.

The best I could do, the very best at the time, was stand beside her.  I allowed her to express herself in the ways that she chose, though I was not really happy or supportive about it.  I tolerated it.  Not a best case scenario by far, but really the best I could come up with at the time.  I was willing to bear the shame of being her mom, even though I did not understand her and was incapable of trying, because I knew that God loved and accepted me as I was, without condition. I would love my daughter the same way.

The day came when my daughter became fascinated with Goth culture.  She was already depressed, I reasoned.  No wonder she would fall into a depressing and dark subculture.  I didn’t want a war over everything, so I picked and chose what I could tolerate and what was just too far over the line for even me.  So, when she asked to watch Tim Burton’s “The Nightmare Before Christmas” I stuck my nose in the air and agreed to tolerate it.  *I* would never watch such garbage.  I am quite sure I made some comments about not understanding what she saw in such dark entertainment, but I allowed it. 

I thought that was the farthest stretched out limit to the love of God any reasonable Christian parent could reach- to allow her to watch it.  I would not sully my own happy Christian bubble by watching it with her.  I was too pure for that.

Fast forward to this year.  My daughter is now a grown adult. She was home for the holidays, and I asked her and her brother if they wanted to watch a Christmas movie.  “Yes!” came the happy answer.  “Let’s watch ‘The Nightmare Before Christmas’!”  Her father and I, being less religious than we were ten years ago, agreed.  Ironically, we are still both infected by Christian culture enough to only agree reluctantly. J

Oh, my dear Lord, why did I not watch this movie earlier? 

This movie is a beautiful fictionalization of my daughter’s experience of life. Like Jack Skellyton, she wanted to belong to the magical world of Christendom (Christmastown).  She was enamored by it, and tried her very hardest to make it work.  But like Jack, she was doomed to be forever on the outside of that to which she so wanted to belong.  Ten years ago, when she asked me to watch this movie, she was trying to get me to understand her heart.  What a religious fool I was to turn my nose up at the opportunity.

There’s a scene in the movie, where Jack is pretending to be Santa Clause and failing miserably. The townspeople are employing anti-aircraft guns to shoot down the imposter.  They don’t understand that Jack has a good and loving heart and wants to be a part of the gift-giving love-fest that is Christmas.    All they know is that his gifts don’t look right, and he doesn’t look right, and when he tries to “ho ho ho” it sounds like the frightening cackle of a Halloween ghoul.  So they take aim and shoot him down.

Jack falls out of his downed aircraft and lands, appropriately, in a cemetery.  Even more poignant, he comes to rest on the outstretched arms of an angelic statuary.  I am tearing up at this point, and I look at my daughter.  Tears stream down her cheeks, and yet she is smiling.  “Yes,” she assents out loud, “because God loves us, too, even the ones who can’t ever fit in.”

My heart broke in that moment and it still hasn’t fully recovered.  I hope it never does.

Just Checking In

My first semester is over, and one thing I have learned: life is not going to get any easier for the next 20 months.  The school is not hard except in the most critical area: actual hands on learning of technique. We are given brief verbal instructions, once (sometimes not everyone gets them even) and then expected to perform like professionals. I kept waiting for the written instructions, checklists, visual aides, videos and helpful hints to be offered, in any format.  I finally found out (after flunking the hands on portion of the test) that they never will be offered.  It is expected that everyone who is not finding their own way to learn these skills (i.e. developing their own curriculum) and/or is not in the group who is lucky enough to hear the brief instructions in the first place, they will all be eliminated at the end of the next semester.

That, at this point, looks like it will include me.  BUT, I am now aware that I am waiting in vain for real teaching, and so I will spend my three weeks between semesters doing my best to develop my own curriculum for this skill.  Also, I know better now the level of expertise expected, though it is possible that starting out slow I will always lag behind the curve.  If that turns out to be the case, no worries. I will do my best to transfer to a different medical training school for a similar job.  The other option relies more on academics and scientific acumen, which are my strengths.  But I will have wasted a year and a lot of time and money.  :\

So, I am hoping that my home education skills at putting together my own curriculum will pay off in a big way.  Wish me well and pray for my success, all who read here.  I will need the cooperation of others so pray that I will have favor with the right people for this to work out.

On another note, my husband is happier and healthier than he has ever been.  He is working on his shame issues with his therapist, and that seems to be the foundation of all his depression and repressed anger.  Life with him is really good.

Also, I started doing thirty minutes of gentle yoga most mornings and evenings.  I got my first yoga lessons as a Christmas present.  I am now twenty pounds lighter, way more limber, and also happier.  Did you know the "Ohm" sound is really the first and last letter of the Sanskrit alphabet (Alpha and Omega, anyone?) followed by the MMMM sound because it is made with mouth closed reminding one of the presence of God within (...the kingdom of God is within you).  Why are Christians so scared by yoga?  Crazy.

I have thought about taking the blog off line, but I still get regular visitors reading for how Bill Gothard negatively affected my life.  So, though I will rarely post, I am going to leave the blog up for now.  I wish more evangelical women in crappy home school marriages would read here.  They would find the bread crumbs I left, and maybe be able to follow them out to freedom for their own family.  That's my wish.

Peace and good will, SS

The Sisterhood of the Hidden Dagger

I have gotten so used to posting every day that it is going to be tough neglecting my blog again, but more pressing IRL concerns start back up again tomorrow.  I am excited, a little scared, but deep in my spirit I feel....

quiet confidence.

I hope this turns out to be the appropriate feeling.  I have some reservations about being in a trade school vs. regular college, and they are all social.  I will have the same nineteen classmates for the whole 2 1/2 years, and the same two instructors.  In most situations, if someone annoys you (classmate or teacher) you can just clam up and get through the class/semester.  Not this time.  There's not even a day to cool off between classes.  Here's to Buddha and detachment! My plan is to be as Zen as possible while in class.

This will be all new to me.  I am by nature enthusiastic, outspoken, and (not bragging, it is what it is) smart.  I love learning.  I really get a thrill out of understanding new concepts.  It's not a chore to learn, it's a treat.  Here's hoping I can keep myself out of the limelight most of the time.  Even as I type those words out, I know I will have very limited success.  But hopefully, I will be better at it than in the past, with my newly begun practice of yoga to guide me.

Eighteen of my fellow students are women.  Most of them are close to my age.  I don't know if this will be a plus or a minus.  Growing up, I generally got along better with guys than gals.  I didn't understand why then, but I'm pretty sure I do now. 

I am no threat to guys. Men still have a distinct advantage over women in all fields, and fields traditionally held by women are no exception.  A guest  instructor for the shadowing course I had to take this summer was very open and free with her opinions on everything.  One of those opinions she candidly shared was that male nurses are better nurses than female nurses.  She is, of course, a Southern Baptist, so no surprise that she would defer to men in all things.  Still, it was very unnerving to see her be open about her own misogyny.

I am a threat to the other women in the class.  That has been my experience throughout my life.  It has been my daughter's experience.  It is probably the experience of smart and decent-looking women everywhere.  I briefly fantasized that there might be a sense of sisterhood in the career world that was missing in the realm of the stay at home mom, home schooling or otherwise.  

Well, there is: the Sisterhood of the Hidden Dagger.  It's not going to be any different than public school was, I'm sure. The only women who will befriend me are those who don't feel threatened by me.  All others will be ready to believe any gossip about me, any ugly rumor, and may even start some of their own.  I am not a pessimist by nature, but I know this is a very real danger in this social setting.

If I were very overweight, or were less than average attractive (not that I'm "smoking hot" or anything, far from it, but my face doesn't scare children), then no doubt some if not most of these women would befriend me.  If I were a B student, or even a C student, no doubt those in the same GPA area would befriend me.  Of course, if I were a conservative religious person like I was for so many years, that would probably help in this particular school.  But I'm not.

I'm smart, ambitious, fit, and while I won't be attending any functions that the Romneys would attend, my husband makes just enough money to keep us in the less affluent end of an affluent neighborhood.  I plan on using all this to my benefit, but I also plan on being as quiet about my advantages as I can.  Jealousy and spite lead to gossip, and ugly gossip has torpedoed many a woman, including myself. 

This sort of behind the scenes back-stabbing is oft practiced in Christian circles, so in this rural trade school in the South, I can expect  that my peers are well-versed in it.  I have been a victim too many times to count, and while in the past the "prize" women were vying for wasn't worth enough for me to stand my ground, this time it is.  Enjoy your positions in church and so-called "Christian" home school circles, back-stabbing gossips.  You won your little patch of ground.  I am moving on to bigger things.

And this time, I will not be marginalized or deterred from my goal.  I already know it's going to be hard to keep from being outed as a threat.  Even keeping your mouth shut is seen as a threat to someone spouting off opinions left and right.  By not agreeing openly, they know you are disagreeing privately.  I am just praying that enough of the job sites will be here in the city that I won't have to worry about it much.  

At the rural hospitals, I know there will be whole departments filled with anti-abortion, elitist, homophobic white Southern women.  Not my favorite, as you might have guessed.  My secret weapon here will be daily prayer and morning yoga before I leave for work.  My next strategy: proclaim at every opportunity that I am looking forward to taking a travelling job when I graduate.  This will calm people that I will not be competing with them for local jobs.  It has the advantage of not being completely false, because I will follow the money so I may very well take a travelling job.

Another strategy is to talk up moving to Florida when my husband retires, and pointing out that he is older than me so I'll still be working.  Also true and not true.   He is older than me and I will still be working after he retires, but he's not THAT much older than me.  

The final strategy, and the one on which all the rest hinges, is to not friend anyone from school on facebook.  In fact, I may even have to shut down my facebook account.  It's already private, and I go back and hide past posts pretty regularly.  I know that one of the two instructors stalks her students on facebook; she already lectured us that if we put on anything negative about her she would find out and have it on the overhead projector when we got to class the next day.  

I am not sure exactly how to handle this facebook situation.  It's possible I may rub the instructor the wrong way by not adding anyone from class as a friend.  I plan to say something like: I prefer to keep my private and professional life separate.  Or I could create a new account for school only using my intials instead of my name, but my name is so unique people would probably still try to friend me on both.  Not happening.  Not. Happening.

Suggestion are welcome, if any of you have some for me.  Otherwise, I probably won't post again for awhile.  Wish me luck and happiness, and know I wish  the same for you.  Peace and good will to all who read here, SS

It's a Personal Thing

In case anyone wonders why this flurry of blog activity, it's because I am between semesters at school.  So, I have the actual time to devote to writing about the things that I think about, rather than the topics I am assigned for a class.  I am still a perfectionist when it comes to school, or as I prefer to call myself, "one who pursues excellence".  By this, I mean I study like a mad man when school is in session, wanting no less than to thoroughly master any subject I am taking.  It pisses other people off sometimes, and makes others think I am an insufferable know-it-all, but learning brings me joy.  So, sucks to be them.  I am going for it with all I've got, no matter what the class is about.  There is no such thing as a throw-away class, imo.  Like a race horse was born to run, I was apparently born to learn.

I wish I had been raised in a family where I was valued and supported.  I would no doubt have been able to choose a challenging career (medical engineering technology would have been fascinating) or have my Ph. D. and be teaching in a college somewhere. But, life did not unfold for me with such a charmed and happy beginning, so I am where I am.  I look back with happiness, not regret, for the way I handled the circumstances and adversity I encountered in life.  I am pleased with who I am, what I have chosen, and also with my current GPA and career prospects.  So, yay for me, right?

I am also able to write so prolifically about other things because my marriage relationship is not giving me trouble right now.  It is crazy how many times things have been up and down in my marriage. Or rather, it is crazy how my spouse would go from loving and supportive to distant and withdrawn to hateful and cruel.  It is part and parcel of growing up a child of addicts, for that is what his parents are: religious addicts.

Imagine growing up the child of addicts, only instead of the world offering you pity and compassion for your plight, they praised your parents for their addiction and told you how lucky you were to have addicts for parents!  It's quite the mind-fuck.  The emotional abuse, mental confusion, and effed up thinking that creates in a child is something few people can overcome.

My spouse is an amazing person.  He is smart as a whip.  He scored a perfect score in math on his SATs and said he kept waiting to get to the "hard" sections he was warned about when he realized he had finished all the questions.  Those of you who have taken or helped someone study for the SATs knows that a perfect score shows more than mastery of the subject, it shows a keen attention to detail and above average critical thinking skills.  Without all that going for him, I think real change for my husband would not be possible.

Then there is also the level of abuse.  My husband was emotionally, physically and spiritually abused and neglected.  The religious addiction always came first; the needs of children were definitely lower on the hierarchy of parental concerns than feeding the religious addiction.  His boarding school experiences were a nightmare of rejection, bullying and neglect.  BUT others had it way worse, and their boarding school experiences included savage beatings, sexual molestation, rape and in some cases, violent gang rape.  I am actually trembling as I type this out, knowing the horrific abuse children suffered at the hands of "ministers of the gospel" who were assigned to the staff of the "missionary kid abandonment centers" known as missionary boarding schools.  Visit www.mksafety.net and www.fandaeagles.com  for books and other resources, including forums with the opportunity to talk to survivors online and find out how those who were sent to these schools have fared.

Still, though my husband didn't suffer as much as other people have suffered, he suffered plenty.  It warped his emotional coping mechanisms and turned him into an emotionally abusive person.  He was cursed with passive-aggressive personality disorder, which he developed as a coping mechanism for dealing with the anger and pain he was forced to experience but not allowed to express.  So, as recently as last month he was still acting out towards me in ways that required the use of our DAPP (domestic abuse prevention program- i.e., "time-outs").

Well, I am closing in on the last step of my five-year plan, and I am just done dealing with the unpredictable and irrational.  I decided that while calling DAPPs were a necessary step in the healing process for our relationship, it is not something I can live with the rest of my life.  So, in calm quiet times after the storm, I created a new requirement for living with me.  If it's bad enough to call another DAPP, then we will move into separate bedrooms for a minimum of three months.  We have the space, so we can do that.  Also I want him to know I'm not angry, I'm just unwilling to live off-balance and unable to fully relax and enjoy life, so that's the next step.  He understands and accepts that.

And, now, finally, he is working in EMDR as diligently as I have been doing all this time!  He seriously wants to work through all these issues himself now.  So, good for him.  For far too long he has resisted getting into the most painful memories, the root of the "shame spirals" that drag him into depression and hate.  Since he is seriously digging them out now, I think there is great hope for a happy life (even a happy married life) in his future.

Unfortunately, the way his inner MK was raised, dragging his feet in doing what's right was the only thing that ever gave him any sense of control over his own life.  He had no choice about what he would do, and if he flat out refused to do what he was told he would have been beaten and shamed.  Dragging his feet to the last possible second is a personality trait he developed to cope with his forced captivity.  I accept this about him, but I am not going to let it affect me anymore.

And he accepts that about me!  We are actually pretty happy now.  At night, we have been reading Jim Palmer's books, and he really identifies with the author.  Currently, we're reading "The Evangelical Universalist", but I'm ordering Palmer's "Wide Open Spaces" as soon as I finish this post.  He doesn't go to church anywhere (maybe won't ever again- it's fine with me!) while I go on Communion Sunday to a local UCC church with a wonderfully wise woman pastor.

So, that's the personal update.  I have finished EMDR, and I have more peace and happiness on an ongoing basis than I knew I could experience.  My walk with Jesus is very fulfilling.  I do a bit of yoga most mornings and evenings, and go to a yoga studio once or twice a week.  I read Trinity and Humanity's blog, John Shore's blog and Steve McVey's blog to see what Jesus is up to in the lives of others.

I pray daily as I have done for years.  I pray for much better things: the inclusion of the outcast in the body of Christ and for legal protection for all US citizens, the defeat of the religious right, the dismantling of the apostate Christian politco-business empire, the pre-eminence of Christ in the hearts of the church, the salvation and reconciliation of all people.  I pray for friendship, life satisfaction, challenge and accomplishment, love and acceptance for my family, healing for the sick and provision for us all.

Peace to all who read here, SS

EMDR and moving on with life

We just got back from a family vacation.  It was so nice to have both of my children and my husband with me, enjoying the relaxing days and nights.  It was also something of a milestone.

Two years ago on vacation, my husband was  not the man he is today.  He was (had been) an abusive bully for many years, but I was just waking up to it.  I was only beginning to read  Passive-Aggression: A Guide for the Therapist, the Patient and the Victim and visit web sites about domestic abuse, putting it all together.  For years I had been accommodating my husband's behavior (I am such a forgiving person) and putting it all behind me, only to have new painful letdowns occur every few weeks.  Since he had only been physically violent once, I was still unsure that what I was experiencing was abuse.  In fact, this blog is the story of my awakening to that fact, and how I have chosen to respond in light of this knowledge.

Two years ago, he engaged in behavior that was unmistakably, straight off of the checklist, abusive behavior. When I was terrified, confused, and shrinking against the wall, crying and praying, he snuck up next to me and snarled a loud "BOO!" in my ear.

I had my answer. No question about it: this is clearly intentional emotional abuse.  Who DOES that to someone they love?!

Now two years later, I have good news.  My husband lived a life of love and self-control on our vacation.  Any request I made, he happily complied.  Any time I was concerned about anything, he listened and adapted.  We actually had a very good time together, all the time, the whole week.  And now that he's home?

Still good.

What are the factors to his healing/improvement?

Well, I am more independent in every way.  I am well on my way to achieving my career goals.  I was accepted into the school to which I applied (I was told only 15 are accepted out of 500 applicants).  I am maintaining a high GPA.  I am in therapy, on the final stages of EMDR and soon to be done with that.  I think this determination to take care of myself, and not be dependent on my husband for anything is key.  I don't need him emotionally.  If I go to talk to him and he is aloof, I just stop what I'm saying, get my inner bearings straight, and walk away without a word.  Sometimes he apologizes and chases me down, wanting to know what I was going to say.  The thing is, it doesn't hurt me anymore.  I really don't care if he wants to be there for me or  not.  I am well capable of hashing out my thoughts on my own, or with a friend. I don't NEED him to be there for me.  Oddly enough, this inspires him to be there for me.  Weird, huh?

He is in trauma therapy and on anti-depressants.  He is getting healthier, and while it may have all started out as a mere attempt to save the marriage, now it is to save himself.  This makes both of us very happy.  He has stopped jumping when his parents call, and we don't go to church anymore.  I think these last two are milestones in his healing at this point.  When he sees his parents next, it will be on his terms.  When he goes to church again, if he ever does, it will be because he wants to, not because he should or as proof he is a good person.

Every night we read together.  Right now we are reading Divine Nobodies by Jim Palmer.  He plays golf, something he does for himself.  I study, something I do for myself.  I also do yoga now, which I love.  I started out with Brooke Boon's Holy Yoga and am exploring the discipline from there.

Some things are sadder.  No one in my family goes to church now.  So much for the home school promise of daily devotions turning out model church-going Christians.  Lolz.  As far as the Christian part goes, though, everyone in my family has a genuine faith and a personal relationship with Jesus.  We are just each and all so burned by organized American Christianity that we are not in church right now.  Prove everything, hold fast to that which is good.  =D

I wish I had a fellowship of believers to take communion with, and to spur one another on to love and good works.  If it's out there, though, the Holy Spirit will have to lead me to it as I live my everyday life.  Visiting churches is such a bummer so much of the time.  So, we'll just see where it all goes from here.

I like where we all are now.  I love my daughter.  I love my son.  I love my husband AND it even looks like he might be fit to live with, not just for the time being, but for some time to come.

This makes me very happy.  Namaste, ya'll! (Loosely translated: the light in me honors the light in you- a yoga version of the song we used to sing in Charismatic church while holding hands and looking into each other's eyes:  "Yes I love you with the love of the Lord, yes I love you with the love of the Lord, I can see in you the glory of my King, and I love you with the love of the Lord."

Peace and good will,
SS

Both Hope and Regret:How is that possible?

I feel both hope and regret today.  It is the weirdest thing.  I don't feel them both at the same time, but I do feel them both within the same ten minutes.  I think EMDR is working, as before I would likely just be crushed with guilt and shame, and only be able to cultivate hope through a lot of tears, bible reading and journaling.  Now I just feel hope.  It's totally cool to be hopeful without extensive work to get there.

So here's the deal: I was a sorry ass mother in many ways to my little girl.  The irony is that my number one desire was to be a good mother!  It was both my deliverance and my curse.  My deep, deep desire to be a good mother is what led me to buy all those Christian books, go to all the seminars and Bible studies, put my kids in all the children's programs and include such a huge dose of "wholesome morality" in my home school.  That is the curse part.  The true sincerity of my longing to love my children in the way that was best is the deliverance part.  Isn't it ironic that what I meant for good turned out to detour me in the wrong direction, and actually put up a barrier between my daughter and myself?

You know the saying "better late than never"?  I really hope it turns out to be an absolute truth. My daughter  needs it to be,  and I need it to be true for her.  Yesterday in tears, as I was making these confessions to her, I apologized for not being the mother she needed me to be.  She, also in tears, replied to me that I was the mom she needed me to be NOW and that she loved for me that.  (Okay I'm getting all misty-eyed again now. Deep breath.  Exhale.  Carry on.)

I feel like I should reiterate here that I love Jesus still and always will.  I don't find fault with the Bible as much as with the way it is used.  Lewis Wells calls it "bibliolatry" and he is so right.  I was hoodwinked by the doctrine of Biblical inerrancy.  It is a heresy, in my opinion.  The Bible is a record of people whose lives were affected by the Divine, and while it may be a true record of what they experienced, believed and taught (my opinion) none of those people are/were Divine themselves, except for Jesus.  Proverbs are just that, proverbs: generalizations that are true much of the time.  The history books are just that: a historical record of what people thought, did, said, felt and heard.  They are not encyclopedias of fact.  Whoever wrote Genesis was recording the stories of early Judaism.  It is not eyewitness testimony, and if it were, we would still have to consider the character and motivations of the witness.  The poetry is poetry; the gospels are four written records of what was remembered of the life and words of Jesus in the decades after his death (and resurrection!  Yes, I believe in the resurrection.); the epistles are letters written to congregations of the early church and the book of Revelations is apocalyptic writing meant to encourage the persecuted church.

But when my daughter was growing up, I thought I believed in the inerrancy of scripture, and I went to churches that taught the Bible from that perspective.  I listened to nice, wholesome, middle-class Christian teaching- nobody who dressed funny (like Mennonites, the Pearls, etc.) or acted too strange (IBLP, for example).  Nope, the people I associated with and to whom I listened dressed like everyone else and was appropriately integrated into the culture at large.  You could wear makeup and dress nice, as long as you didn't show too much skin.  You could watch television and movies, as long as you were selective about what you saw.  You couldn't cuss or drink, though, and of course you should go to church every Sunday and, generally speaking, seek moral perfection in all you do.

Ah, and therein lies the curse.  Do you know what moral perfection is, boys and girls?  It is when you look, act, talk and feel, in a word, Christian.  In order to become that kind of person, everything has to be a moral lesson.  One should be appropriately emotional- cry at the right times, smile at the right times, all that sort of outward proof of your inward transformation.  You should feel the right feelings and if you are a good Christian you will feel these right feelings at the right times.

For example, really holy people will cry at the showing of mission films.  How can you not feel despair and sorrow at the nice people on the screen who are all going to hell?  Also, you should choke up with regret and remorse at sermons calling for repentance.  If you are unfeeling, you must be some kind of amoral monster, though no one will come right out and tell you that.  And if you are reading all those family devotions, you know that these moments calling for appropriate emotional responses happen all the time.  Good Christian children will respond in the good Christian way to the sermonettes popping up in all those "teachable moments" that good Christian parents are forever alert to recognizing. Not to mention the extras the church throws in unintentionally, like athletic prowess is godly (Awana) and being beautiful is also godly (check out the casting on those plays and musicals, we all know it's true).

So here I am, earnestly wanting to be the best mom ever to my children, relying on the Christian parenting industry because I could not rely on experience, so grateful to have married into a truly godly Christian family, because in my naivete, I thought Christian was synonymous with love and nurture.  For the record, I do believe that Christ is synonymous with love and nurture, and that it is possible to be a good and loving parent by putting into practice the commands of Christ.  My mistake was in thinking that the evangelical, fundamentalist Christianity being marketed was at all about obeying the commands of Christ.  Not even close.

See, I bought into the line of reasoning (insane that it is, in my now much more humble opinion) that since the Apostle John called Jesus the Word of God made flesh, and since Christians called the Bible the Word of God, that following Jesus meant trying to obey everything in the Bible.  That is insane, because Jesus actually gave precious few commands in his life on earth, and all of them centered around empathetic love for others.  The Bible, on the other hand, has commands out the wazoo about everything from what you can eat, to how to greet people, and everything in between, much of which are contradictory to one another and very few of which actually involve empathetic love for others.

So, my daughter was pretty much screwed from the get-go.  If she had been a neurologically typical child, she might have been better able to comply.  But, unbeknownst to me for many years, my daughter is Aspie.  She doesn't feel things like other people. She doesn't experience life like other people.  I might have known that if I had been asking her questions about her experience of life, without a mental template of what was good and acceptable with which I measured everything she said and did.    If I had been parenting with the idea that there is a wide range of human experience, and all of it is acceptable, I might  have learned much earlier what kind of mom she needed me to be.  As a Christian mom, I was never encouraged to ask that question. The Bible had the answer to that question, and there were plenty of Christian authors to explain it to me, should I need more than the weekly sermon and a good look around to get it through my thick skull.

I didn't need to try to empathize with or understand my daughter: I needed to demand that she empathize with and understand others.  If she couldn't (when she couldn't) do that, it was plain enough what was going on.  She had a sinful, selfish heart, and was in rebellion to the Word of God.  There is only one right way for a Christian child to be: cheerfully obedient, appropriately compliant to whatever was expected in the moment.  Everything else is rebellion, and can be trained out of them with the right effort.

I am ashamed to admit that I punished my daughter for being who she intrinsically was.  I shamed her for being who she was, as who she was did not fit according to the template of acceptable evangelical Christian thoughts/feelings/actions.  If I could go back in time and change it, I would.  If I thought there was any depth of remorse I could feel that would undue the damage, I would dig deep into depression and regret and stay there as long as it took.  Since that won't help at all, I won't go that route, though that also is an unhealthy ideal I picked up along the way in Christianity.  Sackcloth and ashes- if you are really, really sorry enough, long enough- moves the heart of God like nothing else, at least according to some Old Testament stories.

Thankfully, I didn't have the stomach to keep it up forever.  When I saw my daughter hurting so badly in middle school/high school, I backed the hell off.  I was willing to suffer the shame (yes, I wrote shame- sad but true, it's how I internalized it, and that's how the Christian community dished it out, too) of allowing her to be herself, because it was plain that she needed that freedom in order to know she was loved.  In my evangelical delusion, I thought that such sacrifice on my part would result in healing for whatever hurts she was suffering, and THEN she would transform into the perfect Christian girl!

Little by little, over the last eight years, I have come to understand who she really is inside.  She is beautiful, inside and out, just as she is.  She does not need to change.

She doesn't need to feel anything she doesn't authentically feel.  Not feeling on cue does not make her an amoral monster.  She is as loving and sweet as anyone else, just not on cue.

She doesn't need to clean up her artistic bent.  She is an amazingly talented artist, and while her style isn't as dark as it used to be, there was nothing wrong with her earlier darker images.  She was expressing dark truths, which do also exist you know, as surely as sunshine and rainbows.

She does not have to become an athlete.  She will never be very athletic, and who really cares?  Adults aren't put into high pressure athletic events against their will. Awana is over, finally and forever.  I just wish I hadn't made her try to fit in there as a child.

There are ways in which her neurologically atypical brain will always be at a loss.  She will always have trouble navigating through space in an absent-minded professor sort of way.  She will dress in a manner that is aesthetically pleasing to her, and if it burns someone else's moral or fashion sensibilities, they had better not tell me about it.  I think she is freaking amazing, and I will back her up to anyone, anytime.

I hate that she smokes, because I love her fresh pink lung parynchema and want it to be nurtured forever.  But since she likes it, I accept it.  I refused to feel shame for anything about my daughter ever again.  I am proud of her in every way.

Thank God (literally) that I quit trying to make her into something she is not when I did.  I just wish I could have back all those early years to enjoy her for who she is, and be better equipped to help her find her place in this world without all the shaming and yelling and frustration on my part.  I don't have a time-machine, but I will pay for her therapy, and pray that somehow the love of God can heal the damage I did back then.

She'll never be evangelically fashionable, which was what I was striving to produce in her all those years.  Nope, she is much better than that.  She is authentically who she is, and I love her for it.  Shine on, beautiful. Someone cue up Katy Perry's song "Firework".

Confession is Good.

Hmmm, blogger changed the user interface and I am having a very hard time navigating the new layout. I am trying to publish drafts I left unposted at the time, but it's not working. I am not sure what the problem is, but I hope to get it figured out soon.

I have been refraining from posting about my reforming Crappy Home School Marriage for a couple of reasons. The number one reason being that my husband now reads here occasionally, and I don't want to offend or discourage him. The second reason is that if my anonymity is ever breached, the highly personal nature of my blog could affect my family in ways I never intended. That explains my caution. But I owe it to my readers, especially other home school moms in crappy marriages, to be honest about the whole journey. Trying to heal an abusive relationship is hard. The road is not a freshly paved express highway to fulfillment and happiness. It is under construction, and we all know what that means: delays, rough conditions, and sometimes debilitating collisions that don't always end well. It looks so far like I am going to be one of the lucky ones, who makes it through to a whole relationship without irreparable,permanent loss. That does not mean it is still not a rough go.

My readers deserve to know that this Thanksgiving, I spent with my husband overnight in the Emergency Room. Howie Mandel's horrible show was an extreme trigger for my husband, whose missionary parents also want to be hailed as heroes when they are in reality abusive, self-centered asses. Though our entire family showed him much tenderness, compassion and understanding, he still could not break through the devastation of abandonment that viewing Mobbed brought out in full force. The evening ended with a suicide gesture.

When I figured out what was happening (he went missing for a bit) I went looking for him. He came home on his own accord while I was out, but we took him to the ER anyway. He stayed until morning, when a psych eval ruled that he was no longer in any danger and he was released. He followed up with a new appointment to check his meds and continued with his weekly counseling sessions. As distressing as this was, a friend pointed out that it could be a personal turning point. He took his anger out on himself instead of on his wife.

Maybe. I hope so, although in his depression, he tried to pin it on my preparing to be financially self-sufficient (and therefore preparing to also abandon him).  Once he recovered he was able to ascribe his painful feelings of abandonment to his own inner state, rather than anything I had or hadn't done "to him". This is a huge breakthrough.

Also, it was that very evening, while he was out of the house, that I discovered the Date With the Family video clip. It explained SO MUCH about my husband: why he accuses me of not caring about his thoughts or feelings (not allowed by his family of origin) along with why he was so innately misogynist (in that video, the only good woman is the silent woman- every time a woman speaks it is allowed as an example of UNACCEPTABLE SPEECH/BEHAVIOR and the men are shown as IN THE RIGHT when they roll their eyes at the speaking women and share knowing glances of disgust) in spite of intellectually rejecting misogyny. The MST3K version is so spot-on about everything wrong with that 50s scenario.

The kids and I watched THAT version with him a few days after Thanksgiving, to hug him and tell him we think it sucked eggs that he grew up in such an emotionally abusive environment. Insisting on taking him to the hospital was key to taking this suicide gesture and making it his bottoming out experience. If we as a family had blown off this gesture, or been cynical about it, he would not be healing. If we had ignored it or dismissed it as overly-dramatic or mere foolishness, he would have continued the downward spiral. He needed to see that we CARE, that we take his life seriously. He did not need to be shamed, which is all he would have felt if we did not treat it like a medical emergency. The only other choice- to treat it as a moral failure- would have hurt him further. It was also have encouraged future repeat events, as we would have been saying it was no big deal if we did nothing in response.

As it is, he told me that when he opened his eyes the next morning and saw me smiling at him, it was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. He was not actively trying to kill himself, though he could have. He committed the cardinal sin for a missionary kid: he got drunk. He got miserably, embarrassingly, in-a-stupor-vomit-fest drunk. And since he is on anti-depressants, that made it a medical emergency. His meds are clearly labelled "do not drink alcohol with this medication".

I called his doctor for advice and was told to take him to the ER, so I did. In treating this as a medical emergency instead of a moral failure, we not only saved his physical life, we honored his heart. We also kicked denial right in the teeth as well. No one could just pretend nothing happened the next day. Something big had happened, and we treated it as such.

The very good news is that my husband is talking now. He talks about his unhappy feelings, his happy feelings, his bored feelings. He has FEELINGS! And he is dealing with his parental issues, instead of making everything about me. This is progress.

We are three years into my five year plan, and I am right on schedule. If I get accepted into the school to which I have applied, I will be able to work in the field in thirty months at the earliest. I can be proud of that. I should be done with my own EMDR therapy by summer, if not before. I read my print off from Youarenotcrazy.com every day. I am so much happier and confident about the future, no matter whether my marriage works out or not.

On my spouses part, he has been steadily working at getting his own life together since I shared my plan with him. He completed the 20 week Life Skills program, and still refers to the notebook when one of us (usually me) calls a time-out. He also reads a copy of my print off from Youarenotcrazy.com every day. He went to the sleep clinic and his sleep apnea is now treated. He is in weekly EMDR counseling. He saw a doctor about his depression and is on medications. He is exercising regularly and eating more healthy. Things are looking better for his future as well, no matter how things turn out between us.

It really looks like things are going to turn out good between us, I will cautiously admit. He regularly thanks me for being his friend these past two weeks. He is talking more and about more personal stuff than ever before. We are both pretty happy.

And none of this good- not one bit of it- would be happening if I were still silently suffering in submission! So, to all my readers, don't take any more Poison for your marriage. Stand up for yourself and in doing so, begin an end to the abuse and a start on a life of peace and good will. It won't happen overnight, but it will never happen if you don't start standing up for yourself.

Merry Christmas, SS

Happy Happy Day

I am so freaking happy!

My daughter, my amazing daughter, is living her dreams! She has the career she wanted, the job posting she wanted, her own apartment, her own car, a full social life, beautiful art she continuously creates, and she is getting her degree studying the language she loves. I. Am. So. Happy!

She has roommates of her own choosing, activities of her own choosing, romantic interests of her own choosing, and when she truly leaves our home- meaning all the way out of state, where we can't meet up for dinner or drop by to see her latest art project- she will have a well-paying job and can easily afford her own place, food, clothes, everything she needs. And she is looking forward to that new experience, not afraid of it.

I am deliriously happy!

You see I had none of those things.

I was on my own at eighteen, aged out of foster care. I had no car, no job, no family support, no hopes or dreams, other than to just make it through another day. Oh, and I feel compelled to add, I went to twelve years of public school. (That was for my cyber-friend and reader who claims that public school is the golden key to finding your place in this world.) My daughter was home schooled from birth until she went to college. She is living her dreams at an age that I was hanging on to a minimum wage job and praying my car would hold together. Too sweet.

My other "children"- my son's best friend and the daughter of a former friend of mine- are also living their dreams. I KNOW I had a hand in that too.

My son's best friend spent more time with me from middle school on than he did either of his own parents. His dad was home, but not exactly a nurturer, and his mom was working late hours bringing home the bacon. They are his parents, and they love him and of course support him. But I was there encouraging him to hold on to his dream until he had the courage to tell his parents what that dream was, since it did not match the plan they laid out for him. He did, and he excelled at it, and when he got an audition for an arts school, his parents were ready to listen. Being the wonderful people they are, they finally caught the vision, and he is excelling with their blessing and support. Booyah.

My former friend's daughter came to live with me for a semester. She was flunking math so her mom sent her to me for a semester, to help her catch up. She was easy to teach, and caught up and moved ahead quickly in math. But more important, she learned about love, forgiveness, and what real family support felt like. She is still considered a sibling by my two children! Her mom was telling her she was ugly, fat and would never make it. When she left our house, she knew better. Instead of returning to her mom's, when she left our house she went to live with her dad and his boyfriend. She is now a happy sophomore in a major East Coast university, and I saw her post a picture of her beautiful self in a bikini on a social network this summer. Live the dream, young friend!

Then there's my youngest. I love that kid! He was sharing a poet with me today- amazing stuff! He is such a deep thinker with such a big heart- both the poet and my son! (But mostly my son.=)

He has his first job and they love him! He is still doing school, so he applied for 10-20 hours a week, but it's always at least 20. He is a really good musician. When he was really young he played cornet, then baritone, but now it's electric bass. He has a duo with another home school friend of his, a sweet little vegetarian rocker who is in public school this year. (Incidentally, it was taking a Brit Lit class in my house that I facilitated that inspired her to go to the arts magnet school. I'm just inspiring like that. I wrote her recommendation letter. =)

In addition to his music, work and school, he also kick-boxes and does Tae Kwan Do. He beat his kick-boxing instructor in all three rounds the other day. He came home glowing that his instructor said he had taught him all he could. Since his instructor is ex-military, currently a police officer, that made the teen feel pretty good.

He applies to the local private university on Monday, and then he's applying for their biggest scholarship. I hope he wins. His big dream is to be a doctor, and I believe he will make it. He's always been an enthusiastic leader, starting with playing center on community league football when he was eight years old. He was the unofficial leader of his team of volunteers in Dominican Republic this summer, and made some lasting friendships there both with his public schooled peers and his college student sponsor.

Politically, he keeps me informed and opens my mind to new perspectives, which I love. Anyway, all my praying friends, keep him in your prayers next week. Also, he's trying to get a donation of shoes to the kids in the D.R., so pray for success there too. And my non-praying friends, just send good thoughts his way.

No time to edit this. I have to go to bed. I have a TON of school tomorrow! Goodnight!

Buddy Wakefield: Human the Death Dance

Of a Personal Nature

Just wanted to let everyone know what I am up to these days. =D

I am taking three classes this fall, including Physics (with Trig even!). This makes me very happy. I had not learned any trig or geometry until I learned it to teach to my home school students. I am thrilled that I am able to keep up in this class. I am working hard to earn another A, at least that's my goal. The other two classes, Intercultural Communications and Medical Terminology II are subjects that fascinate me. I am looking forward to knocking them out of the park.

I finished up the CNA course work and clinical trials. I take the state exam on September 29th, for all who pray for me. I would appreciate your prayers. Normally the test is supposed to take place within two weeks of the end of course work, but due to a scheduling error I am taking it over a month later. I need to remember every detail to pass the test. I plan to review like all get out, but prayers on my behalf will no doubt help too. :)

Other than the above, I will have met all the requirements to apply for the 21-month course of training I need to pursue the career I want. I am competing with hundreds of other applicants for a mere fifteen spots. I am giving it my all. The application deadline is January 31st, and I will know the middle of February if I make it.

I am still in EMDR therapy and I still highly recommend it. Nuff said there.

My husband is still in therapy and on anti-depressants. While he has struggled with bouts of worsened depression since we visited his parents at the end of July, it has been nowhere near as bad for me as life got last March. The worst was two weeks ago, which I published on this blog and then removed again. I put it back up just now. I am happy to say that he fully admitted his fault and admitted that what was really going on was a worsening of his depression since visiting his folks again. Things did not continue to build up after that admission. Merely coming out of denial was a benefit, and while he still struggles with feelings of shame and abandonment, he isn't blaming me. Progress.

My daughter is a senior in college this year, and next year the Air Force will spirit her away. I plan to make the very most of the time left with her so close.

My son is back from the Caribbean. His secular mission trip renewed his interest in becoming a doctor. He is applying for scholarships and colleges now. He does have one gap in his education that needs filled: I can not get the kid to write a killer essay. I was able to teach my daughter, and I can write a quality paper myself. But I just can't get the kid out of the middle of the pack on this one. Pray that we will find a solution soon, as he is a senior in high school. (Personally, I blame facebook, twitter, reddit, etc. for teaching his brain to think in short, incomplete thoughts. *sigh*)

So, there you have it. Thank you for sticking with me, dear readers. Your support means so much to me.

How Things Are Going These Days...

Things are gong pretty well these days. Big thanks to Sandra for sharing with me a link to a book awhile back about doing EMDR at home. That has been really helpful.

So, my husband and I went to see his parents the weekend before last. I was expecting trouble afterwards, because clearly his parents are the source of much of his childhood trauma and seeing them is a huge trigger. The last time we had trouble serious enough to ask him to leave the house for awhile, we had been to see his folks three weeks earlier. The tension had been building over those three weeks, and when everything came to a head I was not surprised.

This time, things are slightly different. We are both in EMDR counseling, but now we are seeing different counselors. Also I am much farther down the road to full financial self-sufficiency. Finally, we have this sweet book that Sandra recommended.

The visit was much better than any previous visit, as my husband was able to talk freely with me about his feelings. This is a huge improvement. In the past, denial and a desire to defend his parents (imho indefensible) actions would pop out of nowhere on these trips. The day before, he would express his own disillusionment with his folks, but once he laid eyes on them, he would make excuses for them and get rather irritated at me for expressing any disapproval of them in any way.

My therapist talked to me about how children feel this responsibility to protect their parents, and this then became a topic of conversation between us before we left on the trip. In this case, forewarned was indeed forearmed. He did not revert to protecting his parents from criticism.

My carpal is acting up or this would be a long post about the actual visit. That will have to wait. Not only does typing hurt my hand, but I have to go back to school in a few minutes. This post will be limited to the after-effects of the visit.

The night after we left, things were going very well when out of nowhere, my husband's attitude toward me changed. This led to me confronting the change, and quickly discovering he was "in his reptile brain". Not good. I offered to do some home EMDR with him and he agreed. Five minutes later he was again his normal self, and very appreciative for the help.

I think it was three or four days later, he got ugly again. I decided to just leave the house and go study at Starbucks. When I got home, he was admitting he was very sad and depressed. We again did some home EMDR. Sunday it happened again, and again a short session of EMDR returned him to a normal mental state.

I don't do childhood issues with him when I do EMDR. He visualizes gathering up all the yuck and locking it away in a vault labelled "nothing comes out except for my healing" and then visualizes a relaxing, happy place. His regular therapist can actually deal with the ycuk itself.

So, things are working out for me pretty well. Except that I just now wondered if I missed my own appointment today? Hmmmm. I'm sure someone will let me know. That would be an expensive brain glitch so I hope I didn't.

Anyway, gots to go. Peace and good will to all who read here, SS

Feminism and Me

I grew up in the seventies. The feminist movement was very much a part of the social context I was living in, even way out in the sticks of the Great Plains. All in The Family was forever making patriarchal men look like the joke they actually are. One Day at a Time and Alice gave us a realistic view of what being a single working woman was like at the time, while Mary Tyler Moore and Rhoda presented to us the ideal of all life could be for a single working woman. Betty Friedan and Erica Jong were on our book shelf. I was reading "Diary of a Mad Housewife" and Redbook magazine in middle school. Helen Reddy was belting out "I am woman, hear me roar..." from the radio and record player.

Many of the messages were mixed. It's great to be a woman, but it really sucks to be a mother. It's great to have sex, but it really sucks to be pregnant. You can do anything you want, but if you choose to stay home and love on your kids you will go insane. You can do anything you want, but if you WANT to stay home and love on your kids you are a cowardly, dependent, woman-child. Look at Edith Bunker- your husband won't respect you, society won't respect you, and you'll get all vaque and clouded in your thinking. Smart women do not stay home and raise children. If the man is keeping women down, then children are the tools he uses.

Feminists will often deny what I'm about to write, but then the movement can't learn from it and move on toward it's higher objectives of equal power for women in society. So here's the big scoop, the reason for the backlash that brought on home schooling and patriarchy among other things. You ready?

We who were daughters, children during the seventies, got the message. The message we got was this: we were hated. Children are an obstacle to get around. Children suck. Caring for children is low, low, low on the feminist's list of things she might want to do with her time. There is nothing lower than child care, except maybe house keeping. We were a hindrance to our mothers' "higher" aspirations.

(This could even account for why so many view abortion solely in terms of cruel, selfish women "getting rid of unwanted children". My generation feels this acutely in our inmost being. In my experience, this is rarely the reason a woman chooses abortion. Women who choose abortion rarely do so flippantly, and it is often a heart-breaking decision based on compassion, for those who bother to research it IRL. Still, to a generation who grew up knowing we were considered an unwanted inconvenience to our mother's aspirations, it is easy to believe that this is the only reason women seek abortion. "Pro-life" propaganda exploits this to the hilt.)

Now my own problematic situation was further complicated by my mom's personality disorder. She would have been a mess to live with no matter what philosophy had been popular during my childhood. I have written on the blog that the only way my own childhood could have been worse was if my mom had been a home-schooling SAHM. That's because she would still have been completely self-focused and uninterested in meeting the needs of anyone's heart but her own. NPDs are just that way.

But the feminist movement is culpable in that they agreed with her that children were a pain in the butt and caring for them, both physically and emotionally, was beneath her and a waste of her time and life.

That is the fatal flaw in feminism, the way I see it. The idea that childcare is lowly and demeaning and not for smart woman is the real reason for the backlash against feminism that has filled churches across America and actually resonated with the hearts of both men and women.

We were those children.

We were those children, the ones considered unworthy of our mothers' time and talents. We were those children, the ones despised and looked down on as mere hindrances to our mothers' "true ambitions". We read it, heard it when our mothers' talked to other adults over our heads, and certainly felt it in the way our mothers' treated us. For some of us it was mere disdain at having to meet our needs. For others it extended to real rejection, persecution, neglect and abandonment- all in the name of a woman's "liberation".

Liberation from what? To a child growing up in the seventies it was clear to me that the liberation women wanted was liberation from the obligations of mothering. Feminists hated children, and hated mothering. Right along with the male workforce, women stated that child care was meaningless drudge for the lesser capable among us. There's a reason child care is still one of the lowest paid and lowest respected occupations among us.

And so I became a very different (and in my mind) more authentic kind of feminist- one who embraced her body and it's amazing capacity to create and nourish new life. I determined that not only would I use my incredible ability to bring forth life and nourish it from my body, MY children would be worth all of my time and talents. I determined to make an art and skill out of raising my children, in defiance of the way my mother and her generation had continually said we children were worthless crap.

Much of the rest of the feminist message I did and still do embrace. Equal rights? Yes. Equal pay for equal work? Yes. The right to control her own body? Yes. But every time I start to think I can actually call myself a feminist, I run across disdain for my chosen career of SAHM and I think to myself,"Damn, they still think I am a worthless piece of crap. Eff you, feminism!"

How I wish it wasn't that way. I wish feminism could have room for those who embrace their reproductive capabilities. I wish feminism loved children, and were demanding honor and commensurate financial recompense for those who nurture, teach and mentor them- i.e. parenting and child care. I keep waiting for feminism to grow up to the point that they see that children and caring for children are intrinsically honorable and worthy, but I keep getting disappointed.

I always run into the feminist who loudly proclaims her disdain for SAHMs and children. It never fails. The woman on stilettos at my husband's office who looked down her nose at my children like they stank when we came up to see where Daddy spent his days? I would loved to have beat the holy sh** out of her skinny ass that day and I could have easily. His coworker who lived in our neighborhood and asked what I did, who responded to my proud declaration that I home schooled with a malicious "Oh, that's right. You don't DO anything."? I hope your husband leaves you, your kids grow up hating you, and you die alone and unloved like you deserve. (Yes, that falls short of loving your enemies, I know. So sue me.)

Last year, I picked up an awesome feminist magazine, Skirt, and I was really getting into the articles. They even featured a woman who was starting her career at fifty after staying home to raise her children, and they portrayed this in a positive light! I was so excited. Had feminism finally stopped hating children and denigrating those who loved them? My heart started to race with hope.

But alas, it was not to be. Shortly thereafter,in the same magazine, came the article from a woman complaining about how children are always demanding something (how dare they?), always have some sort of noxious substance oozing from their bodies somewhere, and how that particular author could never understand why someone would willingly carry a parasitic creature in her womb for nine months and then get stuck caring for it for the rest of her life?!? YUCK!

When I hear these ugly sentiments about children and mothering expressed, there is no way I cannot take it personal. I was that child!

Feminism that truly embraces the female body and ALL of its capabilities? Count me in! Equal opportunities, equal pay for equal work, the right to control what happens to your own body? Hellz to the yeah! I would love to see a feminism that elevates the status of pregnancy and child care to the valued status it should be, as women who choose this are shaping the attitudes and ethics of the next generation. What could possibly be more important than that?

The feminism I see, though, still resents the functions of the female form. Rather than elevating the status of children and those who care for them, the feminism I see disdains these traditionally female roles and only honors social roles traditionally open to men. Any function in society that is clearly woman only- pregnancy or nursing- is considered icky and disgusting by feminist women in solidarity with the men they really wish they had been born.

Every time a feminist puts down pregnancy, child birth, child care and child mentoring (i.e. parenting) she is not only saying that she doesn't believe her children or potential children are worth her time, she is saying that all of us born to feminists are/were undeserving of our mothers' time and talents. If child care is so lame and icky, then those women who choose to care for children are losers. That message is undeniable.

And THAT is the weakness in feminism the patriarchy exploits! The prey on the hurt and resentment of the generation brought up hearing that they were a waste of a woman's time. The also honor the parts of our lives that we women embrace that traditional feminism mocks- pregnancy, nursing and raising children. It should not be this way.

When will feminism open her arms and embrace children? When will she stop despising women who understand that raising the next generation IS a noble and worthy pursuit? If feminism was our champion, the patriarchal religious establishment would be worthless to women.

Wouldn't it be awesome if feminists valued SAHMs and home schooling moms? It would totally rock if feminism was demanding that society value these traditionally womanly roles with the same value society ascribes to traditionally manly roles, like hard physical labor. Surely raising the next generation is more important in the long run than constructing new houses?

Alas, on another forum I frequent, I have recently heard the same old, same old feminist drivel from younger voices. Caring for children isn't rewarding, and people who say it is are lying! (No, we're not. Some of us actually do like it. Sorry to disappoint- again. But then since I started out one of those children myself, I guess I have always been a disappointment to feminism. Sigh.) Truly smart woman avoid pregnancy and parenting. Sucks to read that this is still the feminist party line.

The other part of feminism- you can be and do whatever you want- still nurtures my own heart as I set out to start a career midlife. I do believe, as Helen sang, "if I have to, I can do anything. I am strong. I am invincible. I am woman." If only feminism would open their hearts to include children and caring for children, and give traditional women's roles the honor they deserve, patriarchy would dry up and blow away in a generation. I hope to help build that kind of world myself.

Peace and good will, SS

Spring Break

So I have been sleeping in every day this week so far. It's been sweet.

My term paper is written, so yeah. I just need to let it sit and stew in it's own juices for a bit, have my editor give it a read, go back once more and see if I still like it, and turn it in.

When school returns, I have two more Module Tests and three Finals, plus a couple of smallish papers to write. Wish me well. With the program I am applying for, there is a huge point differential between an A and a B,and the applicants with the highest points get in. So, I really do need the A over the B if possible. With both PreCalc and MedLegal my A is in the bag, but I still am too close to the line in HumanAnatPhys to be relaxed about it. So, those of you who pray for me, keep praying.

I got my titers back for my vaccinations, and my doctor says I'm good. All I need to do now is take all my papers in to sign up for the CNA classes this summer. It's looking good so far. Thanks for all your support, cyberfriends. It means the world to me.

I don't yet have a new EMDR therapist, but I am on someone's waiting list. I think I would rather just wait it out for this person to be available than take someone my former practitioner recommended. I am still considering writing to the state licensing board for clinical social workers about my experience. I do have the contemporaneous record of my blog to keep the dates more or less straight. On the other hand, I am a very busy person with a lot of my plate, and it is not even close to the top of the prioritized list of things I need to accomplish.

I am still torn between hope and realism, as far as my marriage is concerned. So many people are urging me to leave,immediately if not sooner, but I do not feel that sense of urgency. I also doubt myself, if I am making the right decision to move slowly but steadily toward independence, giving my husband time to heal to the point we can live a life of love together, or, if that doesn't happen, being thoughtful, proactive and reliable for myself. I think on occasion of women who have been seriously hurt by PTSD husbands. I know they must have felt safe enough too, or they wouldn't have remained in the relationship that long. Surely a part of them thought that their husband would never cross the line to heinous violence/murder, or they would have left before then. So I do sometimes wonder if I am only kidding myself, but I also trust that God will keep me safe.

The thought of doing anything hastily really bugs me. I don't want to be pushed into action by circumstances or the behavior of others. I have been married twenty-three years. For many of them, the only difference between now and then is that I have woken up to the truth that it's not my fault my husband behaves/thinks the way he does. I now know I have absolutely no control over the man's inner life, and in fact have rarely been aware of what that really is. I *thought* I knew who he was, because of the assumptions I made. Now I know that I truly am not the issue here, and that all the good will in the world on my part guarantees nothing. Sobering, but at least the playing field is now level. It was so confusing for so many years.

I *thought* that we meant the same things by the same words, especially what it means to follow Jesus. I have discovered that was never true. Fundamentalism sounds good, but they do not mean the same things by the same words I understand the Bible to be saying. They have hidden meanings and unspoken rules that negate the actual commands of Christ and turn them into something different. For example, "love one another as I have loved you" turns out to not be so loving.

First of all, the fundamentalist Jesus burns most people who have ever lived in hell for all eternity- not very loving,eh? My experience of the gospel is that it was the good news that God has removed all barriers between God and man, that He freely forgives and wants to lavish His kindness on us through Christ Jesus. "Just as I Am" and "Amazing Grace" actually meant something good to me.

The MKs experience of the gospel is that God will burn the Indians in hell forever if your parents don't lay down their lives to translate the Bible for them. This is serious business! So serious, little child, that your need for parental love and attention pales in comparison. Small child, you may need love, but if your parents give you the love and attention you need, those Indians will burn in hell forever! Forever, young child! You don't want the Indians to burn in hell FOREVER, do you? DO you?!?! How could you be so selfish?! Shame, shame, shame on you young child. ps God loves you. Your parents love you. Now be a good boy and go away and keep your needs quiet or GOD WILL BURN THESE INDIANS IN HELL FOREVER AND IT WILL BE YOUR FAULT!

Another huge difference between my faith vocabulary and fundamentalist faith vocabulary is what Jesus meant by the commandment to love one another. For me, that means both to feel (compassion, kindness, pity, remorse, longing for security/healing/kindness to come to your brother) and to act in ways that bring good (comfort, provision, healing, understanding) to others. It is both a feeling and an action that is directed toward wanting/accomplishing good for others.

Fundamentalism dismisses such notions as silly sentimentality. In the letter of John the apostle (this proof text only works if you take the verse completely out of context, which they do!) the Bible says that we know we love the brethren when we obey the commands of God. So a fundamentalist never need feel compassion, or long for relief or comfort for another, because they attend church regularly, memorize Bible verses, believe the right doctrines and don't smoke, cuss, drink or dance. That's how they can KNOW they love the brethren. They obey what they believe to be the commands of God, so they never need experience (i.e. "feel" equals bad to fundamentalists) emotions that resemble what the rest of the world calls compassion or love for another. They can rest assured that even without ever feeling anything resembling that for other humans or ever acting in ways that relieve the pain and suffering of others, they do "love the brethren" because they are obedient fundamentalists.

Ugh.

I hope you can see why my frustration with my husband is tempered by my compassion for the lies with which he was raised. I will lay out both arguments so that you can see what goes on in my head, and why I am willing to stay until my education is completed and I am self-sufficient. It both gives him time to heal, and keeps my from denying my own value system (i.e. love my neighbor as myself).

Common experience says abusive men rarely change. This is undeniably true.

On the other hand, my husband has taken a lot of actions others husband's never take. He attended a 26 week Life Skills course and went to the Davison's Marriage Intensive. He is in therapy, which is something his family would NEVER condone. And he is on anti-depressants, another huge defiance of the family rules which say medications are for the weak, and are mostly unnecessary.

But back to common experience, this work has been going on for two years and he still allows himself days/weeks of reverting to the old resentments and hatreds. This should not be.

Again on the other hand, he is actually doing more on his own lately that is in keeping with the Life Skills/Davisson's advice. He is watching the Davisson's videos at lunch. I printed off a checklist from this site and he knows I read it everyday. He says he reads it every day. He says he meditates on positive statements about me while he walks on the treadmill most days after work. I have seen the paper. He is reading Rob Bells' book Love Wins- the most non-fundie book of all time, full of questions about the character and words of Christ, rather than an answer book interpreting everything for you so you don't have to think, fundie-style.

Common experience says all this is just forestalling the inevitable. The man's psyche is truly warped by his fundamentalist upbringing, and I don't know if it's possible for him to change enough to be fully alive to love in this lifetime, much less in two years. When he wants to be healed, he really wants to be healed. I do believe that much is true. He just doesn't always want to be healed.

The psychological land mines his family's religion have placed within his soul are SERIOUSLY DANGEROUS. All other abused, neglected hurt children can turn to Jesus for healing, but MKs? They were taught that Jesus decreed their neglect! He grew up believing that the emotional and physical distance his parents kept from him WAS love! He grew up ignored and that was explained to him as the very definition of LOVE. As a young child at boarding school, being bullied at worst/ignored at best by house parents and other missionary kids was NORMAL. Any attempts to get his needs met were shamed as selfish, unforgiving, or rebellious.

How is there hope for this man to learn to live loved?

And yet, with God all things are possible. Jesus has done so much for me that other people believe impossible. And so I keep praying and asking God to give my husband a revelation of who He really is! A vision, or a revelatory dream, or something that will break through all the religious lies and reveal the loving, gracious heart of God.

And that is how I have decided to keep working toward financial independence and not just leave now. I am asking the God of all hope to deliver my husband's soul from the religious darkness that obscures his vision of who Jesus really is. I am giving the gift of time to my husband, hoping against hope he will grab onto Jesus and plunge headlong into grace.

If that's even possible. All the words have been tainted by fundamentalist lies, so that grace means "ability to keep the law" instead of extravagant love. Forgiveness means "keep your resentments well hidden" because talking about a grievance is "unforgiveness" to my husband's fundamenatalist family. So according to their fundamentalist upside down religion, the person wronged has the responsibility to suck it up or be accused of the heinous sin of unforgiveness. They ignore Leviticus 19: 17-18 and Jesus command to rebuke our brother who offends us. In avoiding all appearance of evil (which fundamentalist treat as the greatest command of all!) the hide evil in their hearts and that is considered righteous.

So time will tell. These three faith, hope and love, remain.