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.