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

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".

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.

Don't Want To Jinx It

Not too long ago I made a post entitled "No News is Good News". So yes, dear readers, the fact that posts these days are few and far between is mostly good news.

But I have an internal time goal, and if that goal is met without a noteworthy scary incident, I will give a full accounting of all these non-posted days/weeks. =D

I started EMDR again with a new therapist. My educations is progressing satisfactorily (all As so far). My daughter and I talk almost every day. My son and I definitely talk every day (haha) as he is still home schooling, about to finish his junior year.

My husband and I are doing well, hence the "no news". He is still in EMDR, and it seems to be working very well. He is happy at work. He watches Joel and Kathy on DVD a couple times a week. He works out after work at least three days a week.

Father's Day came and went with no problems. My son, husband and I had a great day together. We went to lunch and then shopping for a Father's Day gift for my husband. We did not show up at my father-in-law's house as he originally ordered. (However we scheduled for a visit next month. This could trigger trouble. I am taking a "wait and see" approach.)

So, there's a little taste of what no news means around here these days. Peace and good will to all, SS

Commandments of Men

I am so busy with school, both mine, and home schooling my amazing intelligent, good-natured son, that my poor blog is being neglected. *sigh*

I am even behind on my blog reading, which I myself can hardly believe, as much as I love my cyber-haunts and the people who populate them. So today I will just link to one of my favs, Commanments of Men. Read and learn!

Looking Back and Looking Around

Looking back, I can see how far my husband has come in healing. He has been in therapy, group and individual, for almost a year now. He is receiving medical treatment for depression as well, which is making a huge difference. It's not that he never slips back into blaming, abandoning behaviors, but he doesn't stay there long and it is happening farther and farther in between. The actual aggression is a thing of the past.

Looking around, I can see how much improved all of our family is, both in a personal sense and in our relationships. My son is really enjoying life now, taking on new hobbies, setting academic and personal goals. He's losing weight and getting strong.

My daughter is shining socially now, a whole new thing in her life. Every week she is growing and accomplishing new goals she has set for herself. We rarely argue. She calls me just to talk, sometimes for advice. She invites me to do things with her and accepts my invitations too. It is a relationship I now enjoy.

I am much happier now. I have more peace, and more joy. I actually have thoughts and feelings about my own life now. I am not always worried for my family and praying for them, because I know things are going to be okay. It's wonderful to have the freedom to think about my self, my future, my happiness. n_n

My husband smiles often now. Not always. Occasionally the depression takes over still. He is working through a lot of personal things from his own childhood in therapy, and it still casts a cloud now and then. BUT it used to always hang over his life, unrecognized and unacknowledged, driving him to alternate between withdrawing from everyone and striking out in seething resentment, mostly to me. That rarely happens now.

It's a relief and a blessing. My blog may change focus and direction as my own life changes focus and direction. I may even shut it down after a season, if I think it is not really serving a purpose anymore.

When I started this blog, I didn't know if we were going to make it or not. Now I am as close to sure as I think I will ever be about anything in this life. "Life is what happens while you're making other plans", so I am no longer one hundred per cent certain about anything these days. Age and experience will give you that perspective! =)

My spiritual journey is taking turns I never expected. I more fully want to follow Jesus than ever before, if that's possible. I have less confidence that organized religious institutions help much in that journey. I guess what I mean by that is that I don't believe pastors or preachers or seminary grads are any closer to knowing and walking in the truth than any other disciple.

I will always go to church: to share in corporate expressions of gratitude (worship), bear one anothers burdens, rejoice with those who rejoice, and remember the Lord's great love for us all by sharing communion with the saints. I will honor the work of the Holy Spirit in the church by allowing the Lord to minister to me through the gifts and insights He has placed in others, including the man standing up front. But certainly not limited to the man standing up front, or exalting God's work through him to a higher status than God's work in the "least of these my brethren".

I am digging into theology and broadening my field of inquiry. I am leaving fundamentalism behind. I recognize that it only hinders my walk with God and hinders the spread of the gospel of Jesus Christ on the earth. I can accept fundamentalists as my brothers and sisters in Christ, well loved by Jesus, but reject their doctrines as rules taught by men that crush lambs and drive away all but the most resilient true sheep.

I hope my readers have been helped by following this crappy home school marriage's path out of misery and on to the path of healing. If anyone is informed to make good decisions, reject damaging doctrines and practices, and helped to a better life in any way, then I am glad I blogged so honestly about such private matters.

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

Faith Suicide (or is it homocide?)

This blog post started as a response to this blog post at The Wartburg Watch. The author of that post coined the term "faith suicide" for the phenomenon that the Barna group recently uncovered. The cold hard truth revealed was that 61% of young adults stop going to church once they leave their parent's home. Here is my reply on that blog. Comments that I added later as I edited it for my post are all in italics:

I am both horrified and and strangely encouraged by the term “faith suicide”. Horrified for what should be obvious reasons, since my relationship with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit is life itself to me. Strangely encouraged because at least some few people are starting to understand that it is the fundamentalist rigidity and poor reasoning that are responsible for what is happening to our youth.

I am a Christian home school mom. I started home schooling (as any home schooling purist would say! ;-) ) on the day my first child was born. I was attracted to home schooling as a nurturing, creative, possibility-filled, liberating way to raise and teach a child. All of this is possible for a home school, and many people choose to home school for this reason.

(I am a Christian, and passing my faith on to my children is as important to me as any Christian parent. However, it was never my primary motivation for home schooling, as home schooling is not necessary to passing on the faith. A genuine living relationship with the Living Lord of Love is the only thing necessary to passing on your faith. That is something all Christians should live daily, regardless of who teaches their children their ABCs.)


BUT, once you start exploring the religious branches of the home school sub-culture, especially the “Christian” support groups, curricula, seminars, etc., you quickly find that it is a rigid, doctrinaire, fear-based lifestyle. Ken Hamm rules in this world. Apologetics are taught in every spelling lesson, math workbook, history text, and especially in what passes for science education. The most popular high school science textbooks supplier is even called Apologia.

I am a curious person, and I watched closely the families that had gone before me. One thing I began to notice after only a few years in the home school community, was that children were not turning out to be the principled holy warrior world changers the home school prophets were promising. I noticed quite a few home school grads starting families awfully young and not according to script, i.e. out of wedlock, and certainly outside of mom and dad’s master plan for the lives of their young people.

So what was the religious home school community's answer to this? More control! Vision Forum sprang up, and scared parents willingly shelled out the money and started putting a stricter milieu control into the lives of their children.

And now, what am I seeing? Starting a family young and outside of mom and dad’s master plan is the least of the home school community's problems. (That can hardly even be called a problem, if one believes in a God of grace and a life of faith, now can it?)

Cutting, eating disorders, suicide attempts, substance abuse, and atheism are (some of) the products of this impossible to survive religious paradigm. These are real problems. The insanity of trying to live up to impossible standards destroys hearts. The madness of denying the realities of life and trying to distort it all to fit into the doctrinal constraints of fundamentalist demands takes a toll on young minds. The spirits of these children are starved for the unconditional love Jesus spoke of, yet is rarely manifested in the daily experience of rigidly religious families.

It is this rigidity of thought and coldness of heart that is destroying the faith of our children. 61% of our young people are leaving the church? Jesus said in John 6:37 “All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away.”

So who IS driving these children away? Clearly it's NOT Jesus.

Rigid ideologues are driving their own children out of the faith. They are doing so by relentlessly insisting on a more and more stringent belief system. YE creationism is at the heart of this movement, but is only one example of doctrinal demands trumping truth and damning any deviation from the family party line.

Ironically, the tighter controls they are taught are necessary to keep their children in the faith are the very thing that is causing their children to reject the faith. These youth are not rejecting Jesus, they are rejecting the false Jesus and his ridiculously narrow and mean- spirited dogma that their parents are presenting to them.

These same parents insist that anything less than complete agreement with the whole paradigm is apostasy. So when broken and discouraged young people finally realize that there is no earthly way possible to be happy and healthy in that paradigm, they choose apostasy. The teaching allows for no other options.

Tragically, those late-comers to this fear based lifestyle are calling for the rest of the church to follow in the footsteps of these home school train wrecks: Why Young People Are Leaving The ChurchThis author thinks parents need to dominate their children's thought and social lives more completely, and that will solve the problem. Insanity.

YE creationsim is responsible for creating more atheists than Darwin himself, from where I sit. And that is just the beginning of the problem. Total subordination of women, adults living as children under their father’s “authority” for the rest of their lives, no birth control, women can’t work outside the home, college is evil, it’s considered sinful to work for anyone other than yourself, the medical community can’t be trusted- the list of verboten thoughts and practices just keeps getting longer and longer.

Total milieu control and attempted total thought control of our children will not produce disciples in love with Jesus and passionately devoted to Him for a lifetime. When successful, it will produce automatons who parrot back what their parents and church taught them to say. Only God knows if that can even be called "faith". If you have never had any real choice about what to believe...

But mostly it will fail, and produce angry, defiant, hurting and broken people who will logically conclude, if faith in God is so weak that it requires total isolation and continual indoctrination to survive, then it’s a sham.

Well, I have gone on long enough, but it is a subject I am passionate about. It is very encouraging that others see how damaging and destructive this rigid ideology is to the future of the church.

I'm Getting Better....

My hand is healing up, and so I hope to be back to personal blogging soon. I can't spend a whole lot of time typing yet, but I am bursting to share good news with the people who care- and to let you know how very precious your love is to me!

Things are working out very well with this therapist, in spite of the bad session we had when my therapist was in "relationship/communications therapist" mode instead of "EMDR therapist" mode. She was extremely apologetic when I explained to her how I felt after that session, and has recommitted her mind to being a personal therapist and not a couples therapist. I can and do trust her, and that is one good thing I have to report.

Another: EMDR works and is working, but a word of caution- don't try to rush through any of the steps! I had a hairy scary day last week because I wanted to hurry and get this process over with, and my therapist wisely let me be in charge of the process. I must admit it was not the best decision on my part, but experience is a great teacher. I am a humble tigger now, more than willing to take her advise about how to proceed and at what pace, and not eager to "get it over with" anymore. LOL

A third, only one minor PTSD episode on my husband's part since I last posted. I am so proud of the way I handled it, walking away, not trying to convince him to be reasonable or kind or well...anything. The bad part of that is that at the time, I was totally emotionally detached from him- good for my well being at the moment, bad for our marriage. But once he did get out of it, and humbled himself, my compassion and good will recovered fairly quickly. I do love the man, he is one of the best friends I have ever had. As long as he remembers that *I* am the best friend he has ever had, we'll be fine. ;)

Fourth good thing, my daughter is doing great! We are still praying about a scholarship that should be hers but might have disappeared in this horrendous economy, so that is a delayed hope. BUT I know God will provide in some way or another. She is loving college, loving her life, and she had a date last night with a guy who sounds like he walked out of a Dee Henderson novel. I am so happy for her!

My son is also making some serious progress in life, growing and maturing in love, learning and liberty. I am pleased as punch with him. He just applied for a job, on his own initiative, and though there is serious competition, I think he has a good chance. n_n The school year starts tomorrow, and he has goals, ambitions, dreams- all the things a healthy happy teenager should have. When I was his age I had hopelessness, addictions and heartache. It delights me that my son will never know that kind of pain! =D

I also adore his girlfriend, who could be labeled in many, many ways depending on the one assigning labels- compassionate, consistent, open-hearted, eager learner, morally upright, straight edge, intelligent, guileless- those are some of the labels I would assign. She is not a Christian, but then she is not against it either. If she ever does become a Christ follower, it will be only because she has had a living encounter with a Living God. I like that. :) I pray for that. That would be just like God to work out, too.

Even my little dog is doing well this week! Her back problems seem to have cleared up and she is back to spreading joy and enthusiasm every where she goes in an effort to get someone- anyone- to throw her toy. If successful, she just as enthusiastically tries to get them to DO IT AGAIN! LOL

So I will follow her lead, and jump up from the computer with my best smile, and go see what joy I can wring out of the day. Peace and good will to all. SS

Healing a Crappy Home School Marriage/Family

One purpose in starting this blog was to be honest- painfully honest- about the reality of what this Christian home school marriage and family was REALLY like behind closed doors. It is at times very embarrassing and scary. I am opening my life up to the world- a world that is not always caring and supportive. So please be gentle, dear readers.

I think that soon I will be able to repost all my previous entries. detailing the ongoing saga of my marriage and family. Remember that when I started, I had no idea how things would end up. I am seriously optimistic now that not only will we all turn out okay in the end, healed and wiser, but that I will be contentedly married to the same man! Well, the same man genetically, but a more whole and healthy version of that man. =)

Things could still take an turn for the worst. Our therapist thinks that when the trauma memories finally come, they will be hellacious. Actually, she thinks that not only will the memories be hellacious, but that living with my husband at the time could be really ugly and painful for our family too. I am hoping she's wrong, and that my husband will be able to deal with his anger and pain in a healthy manner, one that does not include transference aimed at me. But we'll see.

It has been one month with only three touchy situations, which is a new record! Also, in all three instances, my husband has worked his action plan for getting back to a good place, and his plan has worked! He takes his journal, Bible and Life Skills notebook off to a quiet place to spend 30 minutes doing whatever it is he does. Whatever it is, it has worked every time! This is great news!

But life is not perfect. This past Monday was the third touchy situation. It's highly personal, and since I already wrote about it to an internet friend, I will copy elements of that email here by way of explanation:

Honestly, we had a bad moment yesterday- it was setting up over a 24 hour period but it manifests as just a slipping away into himself so it's hard to point to a WHEN- but (and this is in complete confidence, por favor) it ended up with me coming on to him in bed yesterday morning, him brushing me off, me pointing out that all is not right in his responses/lack on interaction with his wife and him telling me I was acting like his mother!

I was able to say that his life was way more messed up than I know if his mother got into bed with him partially clothed and tried to initiate some romance!!!!

This snapped him back to reality, but I was already sobbing. I sobbed for like five minutes before I could stop. It's so heart-breaking how easily he slips away from me and becomes this mean/rejecting/judgmental/critical person.

At least I know what's happening now. It doesn't make me any less hurt, but it does keep me from trying to reason him back to being the man I married. Hence the helpless sobbing, which is actually an improvement.

These moments used to morph into hours long (days even) PAPD "discussions" in which he would give me just enough seemingly real positive feedback to hook my heart only to crush it with sarcasm/put-downs/denial and start me trying to explain myself better, blah blah blah. I really believed if I could only make him understand how he was hurting me, he would stop. Now I know it's not about me in the first place, so nothing I say or do can change it.

Now I just shut up, but I can't shut up the tears. =(

Happily, he did pull out of it. He hasn't always in the past. When he is in his trauma brain tears do not illicit compassion but contempt. It is good that when confronted with the irrationality of his belief about me (surrogate mom) that he came back to the present.

The trigger? His parents are coming this weekend. Ugh. But, at least we are in therapy now. In fact, he has an appt today, and I have one tomorrow. I know God will enable me to be kind to them, and this is one of the situations that explains why Jesus said "Love your enemies and do them good".

I blame fundamentalism more than his parents, but they chose to stay in that religion and they bear blame for that. They did leave the mission field when he was a junior in high school, so they wouldn't completely miss out on knowing their children. But even then, the religion was/is always in the way of real heart communication and love. Sux but that's their choice.

On the bright side, my husband has a new family now, and we really do love him! I tell him that a lot, and he is healing. Thank you Jesus for your unfailing love ! Enjoy the GIFT of GOD today- eternal life, life, life- rich and full and freely given! Love, SS

Peace and good will to all my readers, and if you think of me this weekend, say a prayer for my family!

So there's a snapshot of my marriage, but I wanted to write a bit about Hillary's book and my relationship with my daughter.

My daughter and i had a long talk yesterday, complete with raised voices, impassioned pleas and lots of tears. Long story short, I crushed my daughters heart with all my perfectionist moral demands on the one hand, and fits of frustrated bitching sessions on the other. Squeezed between the moralizing on one hand and mommy's bitchy meltdowns on the other, my child decided not to feel anymore.

I have referred to her time of depression before, so long time readers know that at about middle school my daughter just shut down. She was practically catatonic in passivity and refusal to enter into heart relationship with anyone, retreating to her room, stubbornly yet quietly defiant. It broke my heart, and started us on the journey to realizing the fundamentalist family paradigm of perfection was not a workable "vision".

There was more to it than just this giving up on her part. She had the whole opposite-gender-parent bonding going on at this time, which is unavoidable and appropriate. Sucked for me that my husband was depressed, in denial about his own heart, and emotionally/psychologically abusive to me on a regular basis, even eventually physically abusive to me on occasion. I may have been pleading with her for mercy and love, but Daddy was giving her props for rejecting me and making my life hell. It was ugly all around.

When my daughter got involved with a young man who had all of her Daddy's negative psychological issues, then and only then was my husband willing to take a look at himself and question what the hell was going on in our family. I thank God for Joel and Kathy Davissons' Marriage Intensive, where my husband was confronted with the fact that he was abusive, a habitual instigator of domestic violence in our home.

The healing began. My husband accepted responsibility for the whole mess, and my daughter's heart began to soften. As my husband has grown in love towards me over the past year and a half, my daughter's heart has been open to more and more healing from the Lord. She left the abusive relationship behind. She is growing in the Lord. And she is coming out of her shell.

But I have responsibility in all this too! Yes, I was unloved and under psychological and emotional battering that I did not understand. I was confused and hurt and crushed under the weight of responsibility for taking care of everything while my husband was on the road, persecuted when he was home. BUT I HURT MY PRECIOUS DAUGHTER! I crushed her heart. And I never wanted that to happen, but it did. I did.

I do accept responsibility. I told my daughter I was wrong and that she deserved better, and I cried because it is SO TRUE! And my daughter told me, "It's okay mom. It wasn't that bad. I got through it."

BUT IT WAS EXACTLY THAT BAD!!

I remember what it is like to be that little girl myself. Reading Hillary Mc Farland's book Quivering Daughters reminded me what it was like to be that little girl! In spite of my daughter's reassurance, I cried all the harder and insisted that yes it was bad! And it was wrong! And she deserved a whole lot better! And we both cried lots of tears.

I pray that those tears are healing to her heart. My daughter deserves to feel again. She vowed to stop feeling because of ME, because I hurt her so many times in her young mind not feeling at all would be better. I am so ashamed to type this openly. Yes, I repented afterwards, probably the next day or even that same day, but all those people who told me that would make all the difference, I've got news: it makes some difference. It does not make everything okay.

So pray for my daughter too. She needs love and healing and grace to be strong and whole and feel fully alive again.

Oh, and one more thing, as much as I want that for her, I can't make that happen either. Apologizing over and over, giving her advice to do this to be healed, or read that, will not help her at all. Having screwed it all up by human effort, I don't think I can use that same human effort to make it all better.

Nope, I have only one hope: the merciful love of Jesus! The Holy Spirit can bring healing to her, in the way and time that is best for her. And that is my prayer. I have no right to demand it happen quickly, so as to ease my pain and regret. I can only love and accept her as she is, and pray for her with a heart of love.

Nuff said. I think this is really three posts in one, but I have a busy day so I don't even have time to edit this. Please forgive any poor grammar, confusing construction, or anything else a good edit would have fixed. I have company coming in two hours! 0_0

The sign of success?

On one discussion group I frequent, another home school mom wrote recently that the litmus test of our parenting as Christians would be whether or not our children went to church regularly on their own as adults, and had an outward appearance of caring about the things of God. I humbly disagree, and I do mean humbly.

Such things might be indicative that our adult children have a living faith in the Living God. After all, I John 1:7 states:

"But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin."

So certainly if one is honestly walking with God they will "have fellowship" with other disciples also walking with God. I will leave aside for now the question as to whether this verse was talking about church attendance or something much more intimate and personal. It is enough to know that the early church met together regularly for prayer and the reading of the Scriptures. (Acts 1:15, 2:1, 2:42 are only a few references, though there are many more to meeting in homes than in public.) Still, as one of my favorite televangelists says, sitting in a garage doesn't make you a car.

And the next question is then, how do you know if someone is showing an interest in the things of God? Daily Bible reading? I submit that reading alone is not an indication of the Spirit-filled life. Bible memory then? That could just as easily be a work of the flesh as any other accomplishment of man. Volunteer work? Preaching? According to I Corinthians 13, none of this has any profit if it is not done out of love, agape love, the kind of love poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit. Certainly if it were not possible to do all the things listed in I Corinthians as a work of the flesh rather than as an outpouring of the Holy Spirit, then Paul would not have cautioned people about it.

I think regular church attendance can just as easily be an indication of how well you were able to dominate your children's life choices, not how well you raised them to know the Living God. Ditto for volunteer service of all kinds, up to and including martyrdom. According to Paul all that can be accomplished apart from the Holy Spirit and "the love He has shed abroad in our hearts(Romans 5:5)."

By the above standard, my in-laws did a stellar job as parents. All four of their grown children go to church, donate time and money to religious charities, and show an outward appearance of being good Christian people. In my opinion, only the youngest, their only daughter, has grown up to be a (seemingly) healthy and emotionally stable adult. Church attendance and a religious orientation to life did not have to come with such cruelty and emotional damage. But if the goal was mere church attendance and religious orientation, then they get the grand prize. Woot!

On the other hand, the three boys are all messed up inside. The oldest wins the prize for passive-aggressive vengeance in a Christian family, if anyone is giving out prizes. The next in line is patriarch of a family cult. Then there is my man, who is at least coming to terms with reality, though at the high price of admitting the truth about his family of origin-that religion trumped every other consideration, including people's hearts at any and all ages. His personal pain has caused his own family much pain, so the dysfunction is a(n unwanted) gift that keeps on giving.

I do not think that the fact that he grew up knowing that he must always attend church and appear religious means much in the greater context of faith.

The oldest son gave a classic example of underground rage finding a fissure to escape from later in life. His parents should be proud at the subtle and two-faced way their son pulled this off, really. He smiled all the way through, feigning sincerity and honor like the professional actor they raised him to become. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree, you know. And keep in mind as you read the anecdote below, the oldest son is an AWANA commander (or whatever they call the Big Cheese in AWANA).

My father-in-law went to the fiftieth wedding anniversary of an old college classmate. This man's children had organized the surprise event and it was grand! Invitations went out to all of the couple's acquaintances, from the college days in which they met and to everyone else they had befriended along the way. Olan Mills was there to take professional portraits as gifts to all the attendees. The banquet was held in the grand ballroom of an elegant hotel. It was extravagant.

My father-in-law called his eldest son and told him that he expected similar treatment for his upcoming fiftieth wedding anniversary. He described it all, listing every detail that he so admired from the other family. (I offered to help, but I was told no, the eldest was taking care of it.) So I can only conclude that the eldest agreed to take on this commitment, and knew full well exactly what his father wanted and expected.

I bought expensive clothing for my children in anticipation of the event, as I was expecting something grand. In reality though, the eldest did absolutely nothing to prepare any type of celebration at all. He did not even go so far as to make a reservation for a meeting room at the local steak house. The definition of passive-aggressive behavior: to vindictively punish people by leaving undone what ought to be done, or by delaying it so as to be useless to the recipient, thereby maintaining an appearance of innocence and getting revenge at the same time. Lovely.

When the big weekend came, we wound up at a free campground (and worth every penny!)-old, dirty and infested with biting flies. We had delivery pizza one night and hobo packets around the campfire the next. Come Sunday morning, we all gathered in our finery for a nephew with a nice camera to snap group portraits. My heels sank in the sand, everyone was sweating profusely, and all of our bug bites itched like fire. The pictures reflect that reality.

Don't you think my brother-in-law pulled off the greatest passive-aggressive payback ever? He even sent out an email the next week bragging about how well he believed it all turned out. My father-in-law was MAD. but of course, no one said a word about it that weekend. We all danced around the obvious truth that grandma and grandpa were getting shafted big time. Everyone smiled and made nice small talk. Ah, Christian families! Such sweet times.

Does that sound like the oldest son is okay to you? Is that the outworking of the Holy Spirit in a heart fully alive? I don't think so. I think it is a very human reaction to a controlling, abandoning parent who was untouchable and unaccountable because all his abuse was under the banner of "Serving the Lord".

But my in-laws parenting passes the test laid out by the other home school mom. This son is very active in his church. He volunteers at AWANA. All his children went to Christian school, most of them to Christian college. A job well done.

My other brother-in-law lives out in the mountains, as director of a campground associated with his cult church. His three adult children all work for him. They also all live there. It is unlikely they will ever leave.

It is the best deal his son can get, since after graduating from home school, he was coerced into taking correspondence college courses from a Christian school. After the son was married and wanted to finish his degree, get a job and move away, the poor kid discovered that the credits he had earned were worthless. With his home school diploma, working for Dad, complete with a place to live and access to the cafeteria, was the best deal he could get. Three kids and four years later, he is still there.

His sisters were allowed to go to college: the only college associated with their cult sect of Christianity. They graduated empty-handed. They had Bible degrees but no man. So Daddy swung into action, inviting a young man from college to come out and join him in ministry. With the right persuasion and opportunity, this hand-picked suitor eventually married the oldest girl. They also live and work with Daddy on the compound. And yes, they had their first child within a year of getting married. No need to see a doctor even, as the EMT training the husband had gave him the confidence to deliver the baby himself. Everything they will ever need is right there on Daddy's compound.

The youngest daughter, who does not fit American standards of great beauty, has no beau. She is trying to raise money to go to Iraq as a missionary. With the extreme misogyny practiced by the cult sect of Christianity she ascribes to, she should fit right in. Still they are all very poor, and it costs a boat load of money to go to Iraq. She might very well stay with Daddy the rest of her life.

The way this son grew up to embrace a cult does not fit my definition of successful parenting. Neither he not his family show any of the fruit of the Spirit that I can see. In fact, I get a lot of hatred, condemnation, and shunning from them personally since I do not line up with their cult's definition of what a Christian woman is allowed to be/do. The mom/grandma is so full of anxiety she was unable to leave the house for months (maybe years- nobody tells me much, remember?). Love, joy, peace? I don't see any.

But they all go to church regularly. And they are very religious, as far as things like volunteering with the church and giving. I am guessing they all read their Bibles regularly and pray, though when you do these things without love the apostle Paul said it has no profit.

My husband's parents also believe that the sign of the great job they did as parents was that their adult children all attended church and have an interest in the things of God. In other words, they all live exactly as Mom and Dad demanded they live, and they brought no shame to them by living an immoral lifestyle. Lukewarm, hypocritical, even leading a cult is okay, just don't smoke, drink or chew and don't go with girls who do!

I have a different standard. My standards are for myself, not my adult children. I have endeavored to love them with the same extravagant love that God has for me. I pray that they will never settle for any mere outward displays of religion, but that they will seek God from the heart. I hope that they will learn to live the life of a true disciple, who does nothing for outward show, but gives their alms in secret and prays their prayers in private. I hope that I have shown them enough authenticity in my own faith and life, that they wouldn't want to live any other way. But they do have a choice, a real choice, about how they will live.

And if they "stray", I hope they do it honestly. If they are angry, I hope they express it openly and not deceitfully. And if they fear abandonment when their own children grow up, I hope they will confess the fear and conquer it, not live in its shadow. And most of all, I hope they live their lives fully alive, not weighed down with unresolved pain and anger like their own father was taught to live.

The goal of my home school? As it relates to education, that my children have the skills and confidence to set goals and attain them. As it relates to their hearts, that they know that they are loved just as they are and that life was meant to be lived to the fullest. As it relates to society, that they fulfill the law by doing no purposeful harm to their neighbor.

And finally, as it relates to their Christianity, I met my only goal a long time ago. That goal was to live a transparent Christian life in front of them, to be that "living epistle known and read by all men (2 Corinthians 3:3)." Both of my children do have a relationship with Jesus Christ, sheep to shepherd. The rest is up to them, sheep and Shepherd. The Good Shepherd has never failed me, and I don't expect that it will be any different for my children.

Maybe I'm not a very good Christian mother. That has been suggested before. I am earnestly trying to live a sincere faith, I can attest to that much. I also sincerely want my children to have an authentic faith that they come to on their own, not a mere tradition passed down by we parents with so much gravitas that they instinctively know it is the only way to live if they want our approval. I think they have that now.

Church attendance? Only if it is out of a real desire to get together with other grateful disciples and celebrate Jesus. If it is out of habit, or a desire to make mom and dad proud, then no, I'd rather they not. Ditto for every other outward sign of faith. But Hebrews 10 kind of church attendance? Yeah. That's the stuff. Let it be, Jesus, let it be.

19-25 Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is, his body, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds. Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.

Bonhoeffer, iguanas and Jesus

"Our enemies are those who harbor hostility against us, not those against whom we cherish hostility… As a Christian I am called to treat my enemy as a brother and to meet hostility with love. My behavior is thus determined not by the way others treat me, but by the treatment I receive from Jesus." The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer

The following story is a bit of my husband's past as a missionary kid in South America, living at boarding school with all the other lost boys, er, young missionary kids:

The clay basketball court was hot, hot, hot in the afternoon. It lay baking in the equatorial sun, absorbing radiation that could be felt and seen as heat waves rising in the air.

A group of boys were walking in the grass and one of them disturbed a large iguana. The boys chased the iguana onto the basketball court. Quickly they surrounded the perimeter.

The iguana was getting burned. The boys laughed as its claws frantically scratched acrosss the court. The lizard tried to escape, hauling tail to the far side of the court. A boy ran to that spot and blocked his exit. In pain, the animal then ran in another direction only to be denied relief from the burning again as the bullies blocked its every attempt to escape.

I don't know how long they kept this up, or if the iguana was only tortured for a short time. My husband doesn't remember. He doesn't remember much at all from his childhood.

But I do know those hurting boys were acting out their rage and experiencing a cathartic release of repressed anger by tormenting the lizard.

The iguana certainly harbored no hostility against these boys. The lizard simply had the misfortune to catch their eye.

The hostility lay in the boys hearts long before and long after that moment of release, which I am sure brought only a momentary relief.

Jesus said many things about enemies. One verse in particular was used as a proof-text justifying the missionary lifestyle of the 1950s:

Matthew 10: 36-37

36a man's enemies will be the members of his own household.' 37"Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; 38and anyone who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me."

Verse 37 was the verse used to demand the true disciples abandon their children to religious day/night/weekend/months-upon-months-at-a-time care in order to pursue their noble careers as missionaries. I guess they didn't read down to verse 42 where the Lord says that meeting a child's needs in his name is an act truly worthy of reward. Ironic, no?

42And if anyone gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones because he is my disciple, I tell you the truth, he will certainly not lose his reward.

You want more irony? As Focus on the Family, home schooling and being a SAHM became the new Christian standard, my mother-in-law (yes the same one who sent her five and six year old little boys to full-time, twenty-four/seven, around-the-clock, ten-months at a stretch childcare!) confided how lucky she was that none of her daughters-in-law wanted to work outside the home.

She was the ultimate career woman, but because that career was religious then it was not only okay, it was proof of her commitment to Jesus?! But her daughters-in-law were considered good precisely because we didn't have a career outside the home? Confused yet?

The truth is whatever the Christian culture glorified as the most righteous, the most committed, the most spiritually earnest course of action, that was the one my mother-in-law wanted to be associated with. She chose her career path right after Jim Elliot's death, when all the truly committed seminary students were being urged to take up Jim's calling as their own. Going to become a Bible translator to Stone Age tribal peoples was what the most righteous, the most committed, the most spiritually earnest evangelicals would do.

Many, many seminary students responded to that manipulative calling. It was the QF/homeschool movement of its day. That's why there was a whole pack of angry, wounded little boys walking in the jungle that day.

Today the most righteous, the most committed, the most spiritually earnest evangelicals are the QF/patriocentric crowd. But some things never change. It is still the children who suffer.

The days of my husband's exile to boarding school are over. The pain and anger of abandonment are not. So if you read my blog, please say a prayer for my husband,that he would find true healing.

And if you are living your own life trying to please God by doing whatever the Christian culture glorifies as the most righteous, the most committed, the most spiritually earnest course of action today-

STOP IT RIGHT NOW!

All you need to know about pleasing God is found in Hebrews 11:6

6And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.

Pretty simple: believe he exists, try to get to know Him. God speed on your journey, seeker! The iguana and I would like to ask you to keep it simple. Love God. Love people. Live loved.

Devoted things

Joshua 6:15-18
On the seventh day, they got up at daybreak and marched around the city seven times in the same manner, except that on that day they circled the city seven times. The seventh time around, when the priests sounded the trumpet blast, Joshua commanded the people, "Shout! For the LORD has given you the city! The city and all that is in it are to be devoted to the LORD. Only Rahab the prostitute and all who are with her in her house shall be spared, because she hid the spies we sent. But keep away from the devoted things, so that you will not bring about your own destruction by taking any of them. Otherwise you will make the camp of Israel liable to destruction and bring trouble on it.

I Samuel 15: 17-21
Samuel said, "Although you were once small in your own eyes, did you not become the head of the tribes of Israel? The LORD anointed you king over Israel. And he sent you on a mission, saying, 'Go and completely destroy those wicked people, the Amalekites; make war on them until you have wiped them out.' Why did you not obey the LORD ? Why did you pounce on the plunder and do evil in the eyes of the LORD ?" "But I did obey the LORD," Saul said. "I went on the mission the LORD assigned me. I completely destroyed the Amalekites and brought back Agag their king. The soldiers took sheep and cattle from the plunder, the best of what was devoted to God, in order to sacrifice them to the LORD your God at Gilgal."

These passages fill me with a holy fear as a parent. I did not participate in a religious ceremony in front of the local church, like so many evangelical parents do, when I dedicated my children to the Lord. I prayed a personal prayer of dedication the moment I found out I was pregnant each time. My husband, also, laid his hands on my belly and we gave our children to the Lord, committing ourselves to doing our best to serve him as parents. We did this in holy fear, aware that putting a stumbling block in the life of one of His little ones is a serious crime. We did this reverently, aware that even the giving of a cup of cold water to a little one in the name of Jesus is noted in heaven and considered by God a worthy act.

No that it matters where you are when you dedicate your children to the Lord. I have no argument against having a ceremony about it in church if someone feels led to do that. We had our reasons for keeping it private, but that is not the topic of this blog post. Maybe someday, but probably not since it is so personal and not terribly important in the grand scheme of things. :)

What is so very important, extremely important, is that the dedicated things belong to the Lord! Once you dedicate a child to God, they belong to the Lord. You may not keep them to yourself. You may not keep them for righteous religious purposes. They are not yours anymore.

The devoted things belong to the Lord.

It is a grievous sin to hold on to devoted things. It is a grievous sin to take the devoted things and decide for yourself how they can be put to righteous use.

In the above passages, the devoted things were to be destroyed. I have often questioned why that is, and I think it is because the temptations to take the devoted things for ourselves is too great. Also perhaps in these instances of devoted things in war,it was to eliminate the temptation to take other people's things (lives?) and give them to the Lord in place of our own sacrifices. After all, Samuel wasn't upset that the people had grateful hearts and wanted to sacrifice to the Lord. He was upset that they were sacrificing the things devoted to God as if they were their own.

This speaks to me about parenting very strongly. The devoted things belong to the Lord.

The devoted things are not mine to keep. My children do not belong to me. Whatever good I have done as a parent, whatever damage I have done as a parent, in all events I was only a steward for a season. I dare not attempt to keep my children under my "authority". They have been dedicated to the Lord from the first days of their lives. They are under His authority. They have always been under His authority. That's why I am accountable to God for the cups of cold water and the stumbling blocks both.

My children are devoted to the Lord. I take my hands off in holy fear and commend them to the Lord again today. He is able to care for His own. I submit to you, Lord. I do not dare attempt to keep the devoted things for myself.

The devoted things are not mine to use in religious devotion to the Lord. I may not keep my children under my power in a misguided attempt to offer up their lives as a sacrifice to God. Their lives are not mine to offer. They already belong to the Lord.

No, any holy sacrifices I offer to the Lord will have to come from MY LIFE, not the lives of my children. I will have to bow MY heart to the Lord. I will have to sacrifice MY pride to the Lord. I will need to yield MY praises from MY lips, MY gratitude from MY heart. The only obedience I can offer up to the Lord is MY obedience.

It is no credit to me that I demand my children serve the Lord. In fact, it is taking the easy way out. It is offering up the already dedicated things as if it were a real sacrifice on my part. God forbid. The devoted things belong to the Lord.

When I hear or read of parents who demand their adult children's lives as their own- to make decisions for their children, order their children's lives as if those lives belonged to the parent, choosing their children's clothing, where their children will go, who their children can associate with- I am filled with holy fear. It would not suprise me at all if fire fell down from heaven and consumed such parents. They are keeping for themselves what is dedicated to the Lord.

These parents claim that since they are controlling their children's lives in order to offer those children up to the Lord, that their good religious intentions make it alright to keep the devoted things for themsleves. I tremble.

Seriously. I tremble. I fear God, and so I fear for these parents. It is a grievous sin they are committing against the Lord: keeping the devoted things for themselves.

If the above passages were truly written for our learning, then such parents can expect that they are bringing about their own destruction. Parents trying to offer up their children's lives as a sacrifice to God can expect to suffer loss.

Saul suffered the loss of his calling, Samuel told him that the Lord had rejected him as king. Saul suffered the loss of his peace of mind and became plaqued by evil spirits. Soothing Saul's troubled mind was a major reason that David was at the palace of Saul. Probably the greatest loss, though, was the loss of the promised legacy of kingship and annointing which should have belonged to Saul's children and grandchildren. Sad.

That is a lot of loss. I don't even want to guess how much would fall on my head if I kept the devoted things for myself. I will simply back away from the devoted things, rededicate MY life to God in prayer, and enjoy His presence as my life continues to unfold.

I think He can do a much better job with what belongs to Him than I ever could anyway. :)