A Death in the Family

We have a funeral tomorrow.  My step-father-in-law's step-father died.  I know.  That's a lot of hyphens.  That's enough hyphens that he probably doesn't even count as family by most measures.  However, family is who you spend holidays with and care about so no matter now many hyphens were needed to introduce him, Jess was family.  So tomorrow we are going to put on appropriately somber clothes and sit in the funeral and get teary and listen to a lot of people say a lot of really nice things about a very good man that none of us said to him when he was still alive when it really would have mattered.

None of us had the vulnerable heart to sit on the couch beside Jess and hold his hand and look him in the eye and say "Jess, you are the best man I know.  I aspire to be a Christian like you.  You epitomize the love of Christ to me. Your soul is solid gold, Jess.  You are the kind of man I hope my daughter marries.  We are blessed to have you in our family."  None of us did that because it just isn't done.  We are not raised to be vulnerable like that until its a funeral and they can't hear us anymore.

The thing is, I can see Jess saying something like that to someone.  Maybe that's what made us love him so much,  Like Jesus, he never seemed to feel that having a vulnerable heart made him weak. On the contrary, he was a very strong man.  He was a powerful man who empowered others.

So I am reminded yet again to say what needs to be said now rather than later and this shell that I hold around my heart isn't really protecting me.  It's making me lose out on what really matters while it matters. Lord, teach me to have a vulnerable heart.

Though She Be But Little, She is Fierce!

So my second little darling just turned 3 today.  I guess it's normal for a mother's thoughts to turn to the birth experience on the anniversary of her child's birth.  With the plethora of videos all over Facebook right now showing a couple of men going through a simulated birth experience, I automatically thought of my own not simulated birth experience. I couldn't help but feel sorry for them.  While it was funny (to women) there was always this thought for me that these poor guys are experiencing all of this pain but they don't get the joy at the end.

Don't get me wrong; my daughter is a pain in the butt a lot of the time. She's loud.  She goes through about 10 pairs of pants per day.  She has no respect for the starving children in Africa because there is constantly a  pile of food under her chair at the table and in her car seat.  She constantly loses her Blankie and Pink Kitty and Pacie and she REFUSES to go to sleep without them.  She still doesn't sleep through the night all the time.  She is very curious and tactile so taking her to the grocery store is an adventure in "look with your eyes not your hands!"  Things get broken around her an awful lot.  Magically.  It's always an accident.  The poor dog is going to get a complex if she doesn't stop trying to poke its eyes just to see what happens.  All of her friends her age are boys and she seems to make them cry every time they play together.

With all that said, she is a great joy to me.  She says or does something heartbreakingly cute every single day.  She went to school in the backyard yesterday with one of Conner's old backpacks.  Apparently her school only lasts two minutes and she got a "green day."  She goes through her day singing.  It's usually the wrong words but it's cuter that way.  She's an awesome mix of girly-girl and tomboy   She wants me to call her Cinderella while she plays with her brother's Iron Man toy in the mud.  She's stubborn and opinionated.  Even though that can be a source of great annoyance to me there's a part of me that kind of loves it.  Kalen won't ever be called a pushover.  Peer pressure?  Kalen is the peer that puts on the pressure.  Kalen wants to know how everything works.  Sometimes I think that's so she knows how to break it more efficiently but that's neither here nor there.  She has Daddy wrapped around her little finger.  She knows the exact cute look that just melts his heart.  I love that she's smart enough to know when to use it and not to use it too often or it loses impact.  She has funny little names and sayings for things.  It's not "I don't want that" it's "I can't want it." Cupcakes are shortcakes.  She disciplines herself.  She was LOSING HER MIND in the back seat of the car one day because of some disappointment or other and was just inconsolable.  She smacked herself across the face and calmed down.  Weirdest thing ever.

When I was going through childbirth for my daughter 3 years ago today, I had a baby and all this joy to look forward to. It was pain with purpose.  Happy birthday, my sweet girl.

From the Other Side of the Desert

Man.  We sure do our best to screw up our kids, don't we?  I recently read a post made by someone in an alumni group for the "small private religious college" that I went to.  She referenced how afraid she was in her childhood because of the ... pardon my French here but I can describe it no other way... complete and utter bullshit that was crammed down our throats by the cult in which I was raised.  There was just enough truth thrown in to make you think it was real but it was absolute shite intended to gain wealth, power and God knows what else. 


I had similar experiences.  She referenced crying at school because she was afraid that she wouldn't be "chosen" like the rest of her family and she would be left alone to fend for herself when the rapture came.  She was in 2nd grade.  I never cried in public but I had the same fears of not be good enough and therefore not worthy of salvation.  I remember being threatened with "the lake of fire" when I was bad.  Apparently, I was headed right to it.  I used to pray that I would die in a long fall so I'd have time to repent before the end came so I wouldn't end up in Hades.  (We weren't allowed to say Hell.  How's that for hypocritical?) God was vengeful and angry and I was probably the one who made him mad more than most because I was such a bad little 8-year-old.
I could spend days listing all of the legalistic crap that was required of us to be a member in good standing but I won't.  Believe it or not, it wasn't all bad.  Because of the down right crazy nature of the religion I was in and some unspoken rule about not having good friends outside of "the church," we tended to bond rather closely with the other people in our church.  I know this is a symptom of cults that outside influences are discouraged because they might actually wake you up from your kool-aid drinking tendencies.  Still, it created a lovely sense of community that I still miss greatly to this day. 
I made many life-long friends, some of whom I haven't seen for years,  who were closer than a brother. Not everyone's experiences were as bad as mine and some were WAY worse and not everyone has dealt with it in entirely healthy ways. Most of them no longer believe the way that we used to and all of us have spent years working through all of the baggage that came with our upbringing but we have, in even small ways, had each other to lean on through it.  However bad it may have been, I wouldn't give up the friendships I made through that experience for anything.
These experiences also created in me some pretty loud legalism alarms in my head.  Mankind seems to naturally gravitate to rules.  It's what we know.  It's orderly and makes sense to our flesh.  It makes it easy to separate the "good" from the "bad." Rules are much easier than grace.  Rules don't require love.  Modern Christianity is RIFE with legalism.  We have separate sects of Christianity because we can't agree on what to be legalistic about.  My early experiences have really caused me to search for the "basics."  I resolve to know nothing more than Jesus Christ and Him crucified. That has become my Truth.  I'm not saved by my works or condemned by my sin.  Jesus's sacrifice on the cross has made me unpunishable.  With the fear of ultimate punishment that I and everyone around me grew up in, I cannot convey to you how freeing it is to be told that.  Freeing isn't even a good word for it.  It's not strong enough but I can't find a better one.
So what's my point?  I guess it's this. I wouldn't wish that upbringing on my kids.  However, I can't regret it.  I fully believe that my experiences will prove useful. "If I can survive that, I can survive anything" is my mentality, I guess.  Plus, I'll probably meet someone along the way who will benefit from some knowledge of someone who has been in that circumstance and lived to tell about it.  There's no benefit to living with bitterness and allowing it to poison the rest of my life.  Was what was done to us wrong?  Absolutely!  However, I refuse to allow the men responsible any more place in my life than they've already taken.  Forgiveness has been released for my sake and for the sake of my children because I needed to get past it so I could grow.  Time to move on.