How Star Wars changed what I pray

I recently went through all of the Star Wars movies again, and had something new (to me) strike me. Rey was trying to connect with past Jedi. She would sit and meditate and repeat, "Be with me. Be with me. Be with me." Each time, she was left feeling empty and alone. Rey's problem wasn't that the Jedi weren't with her. The problem was that Rey had not yet committed to being with the Jedi. The difference between the two really spoke to me. 

When the kids were little, and I had to go to the grocery store, I would give Nikki the job of keeping one hand on the cart to prevent her from straying while I tried to figure out where Walmart had moved the Pop Tarts to this week. She was with me. If she wasn't with me, she panicked, I panicked, and nothing was okay until she was with me again. 
In the grocery store of life, have you wandered off to look at the toys while God is busy planning your meals for the week in the produce section? And if so, does God need to be with you, or do you need to stop, turn around, and go back to being with God? When we go through a season of not feeling the presence of God, we tend to panic. Without fail, people get stupid when they panic. We pray on repeat to be able to feel God with us, when in reality, we should probably be asking God to draw us back to Him. 
This is the moment. Your name is being called over the store's PA system. Please return to the front of the store and be with God. 

My son wisely pointed out, as I was reading this through to him, that wandering around the toy section without your mom is how you get kidnapped. There is a lesson in that too. The last thing any of us want is for God to have to call a Code Adam on us. (Too obscure? Do people still know what that means? Have I lost you? It is a kidnapping thing) 

The Curse of First Comment

 Not long after the greater internet became mainstream, it was very common for the first five or six (minimum) comments on a video to be "first comment". It was annoying and stupid, but it was also foreshadowing to a cultural shift. Everyone wanted to be first, to see it first, to react to it first, and to tell it first, all on a global scale that was unavailable to us before.

Being the first with the news took a big hit when George W. Bush ran against Al Gore, and we had the infamous election of the hanging chads. In the media's rush to be the first to call a state's results, they predicted wrong. I was working at a small tv news station at the time, and the behind the scenes panic was off the charts. Big questions got asked about the media's rush to be first being put ahead of responsible journalism. These discussion were still ongoing when the unthinkable happened on 9-11. This sent use into a new kind of spiral, and desire for any and all information. The "Breaking News" crawl was invented and became a permanent fixture on our screen. A graphics trick that had formerly been reserved for national emergencies was now being used for anything and everything. The rules of responsible reporting slowly drained out of reporting. It was more important to tell it first, and correct it later if you got it wrong, but no one listens to the corrections. 

Social media then turned us all into mini reporters. We started by reporting what we ate for dinner and what silly things our kids did. At some point, social media became about sharing outrage. Headlines are geared towards it. They bank on people not reading past the opening paragraph before hitting that share button. On top of that, when a shocking story gets shared, we jump to comment based on limited facts so that we can be within the first people to react. 

The problem with reacting first and researching never is that more and more people have very firm opinions on subjects they have a completely false picture of. We have created an artificial multiverse within our lives, and when another person is not in the same fake world as us, we react with intolerant rage. 

One recent example that comes to mind is the banning of a book. With a look at only the headlines, the entire state of Tennessee banned a book about mice living through the Holocaust. That sounds insane, I am pro-historical mice and anti- book banning. How dare they?! However, I have a rule that I teach my kids. If a book gets banned, ask why. Find out what the book is about. Why were its ideas deemed dangerous. There are places that banned the Bible, which I consider a holy text, so I don't blanket trust a government telling me not to read something. As it turns out, the book wasn't banned from the state, it was taken out of one state funded school system. They have that right, but again, what was the reasoning? Well, the ultimate reason was because it was a graphic novel with drawings of graphically naked mice in somewhat human form in it. Now the question becomes, what school librarian stocked a book with naked pictures for underaged children? To properly react to this story, you should ask how many schools actually had this book, was it assigned reading, were there complaints, can the book be obtained in ways other than getting it in school, who made the decision, what was the opposition's defense of stocking the book? If all you read was either the "book banning" headline or the "nakedness" headline, then you probably didn't know enough to react responsibly, and yet everyone did and if you disagreed you were a prude or a pervert. Shockingly, I think the truth lays somewhere in the middle, but no one likes to be in the middle. 

Outrage has gotten out of hand. In our rush to react we have removed politeness and reason and no longer give people the benefit of the doubt when their first reaction is different than our own. I feel like the plague and the last election brought us to a boiling point, and we have all just stayed on a rolling boil for the last several years. I think the antidote is grace and compassion paired with facts and details, and most of all, a good dose of humility. Don't promote a cause you haven't researched. Don't share an article you haven't read. Don't look for reasons to be mad about everything. Take a breath, pause for reflection, and ask yourself if you have looked at the whole story or if you are just seeking "first comment" status. 

*This post was pointed directly to a specific person. They know who they are because they are me. I have been guilty of this. I have jumped in with opinions too soon. A national event I was involved with changed that, and I have been trying to do better for the last couple of years. That being said, if you saw yourself in this, I hope it helps you find a reset of your own. 

Catching Up

 I was considering trying to write again. We had some lean years of death and bad health and global insanity, and in all of that, I kind of lost my voice. I was lucky to be able to write something fun as a social media post, so I certainly wasn't writing in blog length. 

I checked in today to see if the blog was still here, and to my surprise, I had several blog posts in draft form that I had totally forgotten about. I have since hit the publish button on them, so I apologize if you just got hit with several notifications on that. I kind of assumed no one was looking. 

I guess I was holding them back because for whatever reason the time didn't seem right. It probably still isn't the right time, but I didn't want all the posts that showed up to be full of sadness. 

So, let's recap what has happened:

Global pandemic

Nix got married

JD got accepted to college and starts in the fall

 We sold our house and moved for the first time in a lot of years

I think that pretty much sums things up. Maybe I can convince myself to take up writing again. 

How a pineapple changed my view

I love a good analogy. It is so much more fun to learn from examples than by doing things on your own and learning the hard way. With that in mind, I have a story to share.

I have a friend who had the cutest pineapple decor for her front porch. Very fun, summer, decor. She moved to a new state, and carried her pineapples with her. After she had been in her new home for a little while, one of her new neighbors told her something rather unexpected. In this area, pineapple welcome mats were code for couples who are looking for other couples who like to, um...., "make a temporary partner swap" as a "lifestyle". I hope you follow me because I'm not going to explain beyond that. Let's just say it was something my friend was most certainly NOT involved with. She was horrified and changed out her decor. It then became a funny store of that time she had to take the "swing" off her doorstep.
She did not give the neighborhood facebook page a lecture on the history of pineapples. She didn't buy more pineapples. She didn't dismiss it as one person's opinion. She didn't want to risk anyone knocking on her door thinking that her and her husband were up to something. She wanted no association with it at all. 
I like pineapples. I like their color. I am a fan of delicious flavor. I enjoy the show Psych and their regular bit about pineapples amuses me. However, if someone told me that pineapples were associated with puppy drowning, I would never display another pineapple again. It would be an instant change.

It is important to know your lines, why they are there, and if you can really justify not changing. 
I won't be apologizing for holding onto my faith or my family, but everything else can be negotiated because times change, symbols change, and people corrupt innocent things all the time. 

Has the symbol you hold onto been corrupted? Is it time to drop it and realize it isn't a battle that benefits anyone? 

Why You Shouldn't Force Your Kid to Go to Church

The title of this post is a tiny bit misleading, and I apologize for that. I am about to give you a list of why you shouldn't force your kid to go to church, but it isn't a condemnation of dragging your kids to church at all. In fact, I do have the rule that if you live in my house, you go to church. It is just that I think that rule should come with a giant *.
Not too long ago, a famous church lady posted a mini rant about how you should always drag your kid to church especially those rebellious, moping, too cool for church, teenagers. No excuses. No whining. Get yourself in the car and go to church. It came at a time when I had just allowed my teens to sit out, so it struck me wrong. I am not looking to justify my decision. I just want to politely point out that there are valid reasons to not force your kids into church. So here goes...

When you have a child who starts putting up a fight about going to church, it is vitally important to find out why. Here are a few things that might make it justifiable.

The most important one to talk about is one of the ones no one wants to talk about. Abuse. More often than not, children are abused by someone they know in a location that the parents feel is safe such as their own homes, school, and yes, church. There is nothing magical about walking through the doors of a church that suddenly makes a person not a predator. Someone being made a Sunday School teacher or a deacon or even a pastor doesn't prevent them from being humans who do bad things. I am not suggesting that you ask your kid if someone at church is molesting them. What I am saying is that kids are incredibly perceptive and you should ask them if there is anyone at church making them feel uneasy, even if they aren't sure why. If the answer is yes, don't freak out. Just make sure your child doesn't interact with that person alone, and be observant of their interactions. I hope I don't have to say this, but just in case I do, if you do know of actual abuse, report it. Do not hesitate. Do not worry about what people will think. Report it. In most cases the kid being abused isn't the first and won't be the last unless someone stops them. Speak up. Don't gossip about it. Just go to the police and let them sort it out.

Another thing we don't like to talk about is church cliques. Most churches have them even if they try not to. All youth groups have them. Everyone seems to think that their youth group is different. I assure you, it is not. I have seen exclusion in youth groups that was so bad that even Regina George would be taken aback. "Everyone is equally invited to everything, and the kids are encouraged to make sure everyone feels included." How nice. Do you see that kid who spends their time talking with the adult? How about the one who is always so helpful and cleaning up? The kid who seems to always be late and never comes to the more social events? The kid who talks the most during class time? Watch their interactions with the other kids. The body language. The eye rolls. The sighs and excuses to walk away. They deal with not sitting at the cool table everyday at school. Why would they want to deal with that at church?

Finally, there is actually a chance that your kid sees a spiritual problem in the church that you don't, or more likely, one you have been ignoring. Drawing from my own experience, kids can see things in simple terms which can be a real benefit. For example, say you've noticed that your class study guides have gotten kind of thin. They don't really help you grow as a Christian. You gain more from class discussion, but only if the class is in the mood to discuss. Otherwise, you sit through a lame talk for an hour to then move to some form of music and another lecture that maybe has gotten a bit watered down or redundant. As an adult, I get that these things tend to ebb and flow, but if church has been more social interaction and concert time for you than actual spiritual growth, then your kid might know it and feels the lack of authenticity. To their mind it is a simple question. If church isn't helping then shouldn't a change be made? 

Church hurt is real, and it is a struggle for mature Christian adults to process. So, if your kid is making every excuse in the book to not go, maybe ask them why before assuming you need to drag them in. 

Dear Christian Parents and Youth Leaders

 It is one week until my daughter's wedding. I am full of nervous energy and checklists and making sure the one day goes right, or at least as right a possible. I have avoided any talk of how much things are about to change, but watching her slowly move out of her room in preparation has forced my hand. So, I am trying a little creative avoidance in the form of blogging an insight that hit me fairly hard yesterday.

Nix was packing away her bookshelves, and brought a stack to me of all the books that were required reading in high school. She knew that JD might be required to read them, so it would be nice to have easy access to them. As I looked over titles like Slaughterhouse Five and Street Car Named Desire I realized that we require a lot of our kids in school. Within this stack there are a lot of complex emotions and life concepts that I probably wouldn't have introduced on my own or wouldn't have known how to. That has its pros and cons. From there I flashed to the books that I did bring into her life. We took her to Narnia and Middle Earth, taught her the best ways to hitchhike through the galaxy, and showed her what is on the other side of the looking glass. Then there is the most complex and important book of either stack, the Bible. 

All too often, we look at the happy fluffy parts of the Bible with our kids, and never dig into the deep parts. In the early years it is all about Noah's rainbow and fishing with the disciples. As they grow older, we tend towards teaching them behavioral concepts. We talk to them about being trustworthy, loyal, helpful, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent. We don't talk to them about the guy that was eaten by worms or that time David's child died as punishment for having slept with another man's wife and then had the guy set up to die.  We talk about Lot's wife turning into a pillar of salt for looking back with longing over the sinful world they were leaving behind. We don't talk about Lot's daughter's getting him drunk and having sex with him so they could get pregnant. No, that's an ugly story with complex ideas that we don't think our kids could grasp. So, Shakespeare and Tolkien, but not Leviticus? Then we are going to throw them out into the world to encounter atheists, or worse, cults? Do you know what part of the Bible atheists love to quote? I'll give you a hint, it isn't out of Roman's. If all you have taught your kid from the Bible is that God is love, but not the full weight of what that means, or "Judge not", and not the concept of discernment, you are setting them up for failure of the worst kind. 
I guess what I am saying is that we can not sugar coat and dumb down the Bible because "they are just kids" but then expect them to give a detailed analysis of The Catcher in the Rye. Either they can handle it or they can't. You can not keep giving kids only half of the story. Besides, finding out the Bible probably should come with a parental guidance tag and MA rating would probably get their attention. 

     

Family Feud and Fake News

I recently saw this old clip from Family Feud that got me thinking about the current state of reporting. It is probably a weird connection to make, but when has that ever stopped me.

First, the clip. 

The lesson I took from this is that if you ask 102 people a really simple question, you run the risk of getting a couple of really stupid answers.

On the same day I saw this I also read an article about candy ducks being pulled from the market due to outrage over them being racist. Had I stopped at the headline, or even the first paragraph, I might have walked away thinking that there had been actual outcry over the term "ugly duckling" being applied to a duck shaped piece of milk chocolate. That wasn't the case. One person wrote something on twitter about it. That one person didn't even seem all that worked up about it. They might have even just been joking. It is hard to tell.
Next, I read an article about another outrage. After reading the entire thing, I got to the last paragraph and found out that a grand total of 2 unnamed people were the ones complaining.
Do you see the connection now? We have stopped reporting on what most people think, and started looking for the one guy who would say alligator. Before long, you start to think that the world is filled with the alligator and frog people and you must be the last rational person who knows that the answer should be dog or cat.

What does your billboard say?

This started out as just a regular Facebook status, but then it got long and I remembered I have a blog, and can actually express my thought in more than 40 characters (or whatever the twitter number is now).
This is mainly to speak to my Christian friends. The ones who are suppose to be united in love and truth and share the goal of spreading the message of the Bible. However, I want to hold myself more broadly accountable, so I am posting for all to see.

Social Media gives us an opportunity to convey who we are and what we are about to people who might not otherwise know us very well. I'd encourage you to take a minute and look at your own profile page. Scroll through as if you were someone you barely knew, someone considering hiring you, someone trying to decide if they can come to you for guidance, wisdom, and safety.
Have you presented yourself the way you want to?
Would you ask this person to pray with you over a private matter?
Would you trust this person to have a firm foundation in Christ?
This is the really hard one. If you wanted to know what a Christian lives like on a normal day, would your profile page encourage you, or scare you off of "church people"?
After you have scrolled a bit, has your blood pressure gone up seeing all the things that have upset you over the past few days, or do you have a warm fuzzy feeling from the love and joy before you?

With love and respect and concern, I have to say that I see so many people doing nothing on social media except reposting articles that reinforce whatever political opinion they hold to an extreme.  So much so that I have seen more than one of you post a clearly satirical article as fact because it affirmed your fears. That's not okay. That kind of thing hugely damages your testimony. How can I trust you to know anything about something as enormous as the subject of the kingdom of God when you fell for the classic blunder of going up against a Sicilian with death is on the line?

I love you guys, and love that most of you will recognize the not so subtle Princess Bride joke I just slipped in. I want what is best for you all, and I just don't want to see you hurting your ability to do your most important job for the momentary relief of trying to show up strangers on the internet.

4am Grief

Before the actual post starts, I want to explain that putting words on paper is my therapy. It gets the hard thoughts out of my head and onto something I can see. It heals me. I have been told a time or two that these words help others know me better, and sometimes helps them put words to their own thoughts. It is with that in mind that I publish an unplanned therapy session from a couple of nights ago. It was good for me, and I feel so much better today.

For the past few weeks, life has been nonstop for me. I had more than one person comment on how well I was handling it all. My standard joke was that I was running on adrenaline and denial. I knew it would all catch up to me "next week", but I had been successfully pushing back "next week". That is, until 4am. That is when it all crashed in. I woke up hoping it was just my middle aged bladder, but it wasn't. Then, I hoped it was just a crick in my neck I'd been battling, but that wasn't it either. My mind was racing with thoughts of my kitchen being torn up for an unplanned remodel thanks to a leaky faucet, but I knew that wasn't the real issue either. As I sat up crying, having lost control of the one last thread I had, Rocky gently rubbed my back in the same way she rubbed my back when I was a little girl, awake because I was spending the night in a bed other than my own, having a sleepover with my favorite person. It all came flooding out. Too many emotions to name, tripping out of my mouth between sobs. My fears, my worry, and then finally, the real reason I was awake, my grief. It finally found a moment that I couldn't fight. The middle of the night. With my conscious thoughts at rest, the door was now open and it wasn't closing until I named it. It's name is grief and it is hard.
It took me a half hour to cry it out, and another half hour to write it out. I'm sure this hour of sleep I have missed will catch up with me tomorrow, but that's okay. I have safety nets during daylight hours, and it won't be so scary then.
Now, I can drift back to sleep having beaten my grief ninja attack with tears and prayers and my husband's gentle hand making circles on my back.

A Tribute to Rixie the 2nd

When I was thinking over how best to pay tribute to Mamaw, I was reminded of a chance encounter I had in my early twenties that really opened my eyes to who she was.

A woman, who was the mother of a childhood friend of my mother’s, came into the place I worked. After speaking to me, she asked who my family was because I had a familiar look. I told her, and she said that she thought of my grandmother every time she drove past her house because she greatly admired how strong she was and how she had carried on her life after my grandfather died. From that day forward, I knew “strength” as my grandmother’s defining characteristic.

She was literally physically strong. For example, she did her own yard work well past the age that most people stop. There was a section of privet hedge that she frequently did battle with. She overcame a heart defect, colon cancer, and fought her way back to being independent more times than is believable.

Her strength of heart was unmatched. She faced more tragedy and loss than most of us could bear. Even in the face of being widowed so early, she picked up and carried on. I don’t think I ever saw her cry, not because she didn’t, but because she didn’t cry in front of the children. She always wanted to be strong for us.

She was a strong role model. She was not only the picture of a 50’s housewife, but she was also a working mother. She held various jobs over the years, and most probably remember her work in the Andrew Jackson school cafeteria because her rolls were amazing, but the one that made an impression on me was that when Papaw got his real estate license so he could sell houses part time, she got her’s too so that she could support his work and run things while he was at his other job. All of that with three kids to take care, and a hot dinner on the table every night. Then when my parents started dating, she added my dad in as her fourth kid, showing him what it was like to be a loving parent. It changed the course of his life and by extension, my own.

Most importantly, she had strength of faith. Isaiah 40:31 says, “But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.”

Her unwavering faith and trust in God touched us all in one way or another. When many would have sat down, overwhelmed by the changes life had thrown at them, she relied on God to help her stand knowing that He would see her through whatever came next. It is the reason we can all have peace today. We can trust that she rests with the Lord no longer having to be strong.

I will remember how she took me to the movies and made me bacon and French toast for breakfast. How she always sat at the kids table, and how she could have a full Sunday dinner on the table in the time it took the rest of us to change out of our church clothes. I still haven’t figured that one out. Most of all I will remember her strength and try to live up to the standard she set for being a Rixie.

Why We Track

A couple of years ago, when Nix was working on getting her driver's license, our family made the decision to use a family tracking app through our phones. It had absolutely nothing to do with trust or some need to know where my kid was 24/7. It was for safety and peace of mind. When you have a new driver, you spend a lot of time worried about the million things that can go wrong while they are in the rolling death trap surrounded by bad drivers. You can tell them to text you when they get where they are going, but then they hit traffic and you hear there was a five car pile up on their route and you have to wait to find out if they are okay but they forget to text. The next thing you know, you are having ridiculous thoughts of driving past their work like a crazy stalker to see if they made it okay. OR, you can download an app that lets you know they just forgot to text you.
The next benefit came after Nix went to college. Some of her friends were giving her a hard time about being tracked. We got labeled as helicopter parents. Nix was seriously considering turning her's off. And then it happened. She got lost in her new town. She got lost driving home on the weekend. She got lost a lot that first couple of months. In fact, every time she started thinking of ditching the app, she'd have to call me to look at the app to see where she was and how to navigate back when her phone map directions were failing her. It was the dreaded "proceed to the route" instructions when you have no idea how to get to the route.  I admit that it is tempting to check in and see if she is staying out late or making it to class, but that urge eases up after a couple of weeks, and you start to only use it when you need it.
It turned out to be useful with Rocky. Most days he works from home, but he does go into the office from time to time. I like to time dinner so that he can eat with us on those days, but to do that, I need to know when he leaves. I set an alert to ping at me when he leaves the office so I know it is time to start cooking.
The most amusing benefit of family tracking came from my parents. My father sometimes goes to all day woodworking events. With equipment running, it can be hard to hear your phone. My mom's phone isn't compatible with the app we use, so she asked me to add my dad to our's. That's right, I track my dad so that my mother doesn't worry about him. I may check it occasionally when they are traveling here so I know how much time I have left to clean the guest bathroom. My dad likes to check it so he can call and ask me if I bought anything when I was at Ikea and laugh.
When we first started this, JD didn't really go anywhere without us, but we decided to go ahead and put him on it too so it wouldn't be a big deal to add him later, and also so if he left his phone somewhere we could narrow down where to look. He used it to see where I was in carline so he would know when to move to the front of the line and when he had time to talk with friends. I was recently reading about a kid about his age that went missing. Although there is no guarantee that his phone would remain on him if he went missing, it does give me a little extra peace knowing that we would at least have a place to start.  I also read about a kid, also his age, that almost died of alcohol poisoning. Although having the app would not have prevented this kid from being stupid, when someone picked up her phone to call her parents, they could have known where she was and had the ambulance meet them there instead of having to beg someone to drive her home first.     

There are several apps like this. If you want to consider one, I recommend doing a little research to find one that fits your needs. We use Life360 because we all have different types of phones and it was available for all of us. There is an option to pay extra for reports on the comings and goings of your family (this includes a list of how fast they were driving), but that seemed like overkill to me.  If you do decide to try it out, please be honest and don't try to sneak it on your kid's phone. If you try to be sneaky, they will be sneaky too. It isn't hard to disable it or cheat the tracking, so you should really discuss it as a family and get everyone on board for the right reasons.
For the record, if Nix decides she doesn't want to be on the tracker anymore I would absolutely remove her.