I Am a Drug Addicted Prostitute

Today we were riding in the car to town, and my 17-year-old son heard a song on our local soft-rock radio station and turned it up.  (Yes, gasp all you like, but there is only so much KLOVE repetitiveness this person can take.  In fact, given their playlist, it would seem there are only five Christian songs written each year, and the 35 that have been recorded in the past seven years will take us well on into the next millennium.)  As usual, I digress...  The song he cranked is called “The A Team” by Ed Sheeran - you’ve probably heard it, unless of course you’ve been locked in a padded room with only KLOVE as your "positive, encouraging" companion.  Austin said, “I kind of like this song for some reason.”  As we listened to the lyrics a little bit I said, “I think this is about a drug addicted prostitute.”  He agreed.  I got to thinking about that saying, “There but for the grace of God go I.”  People don’t say it much anymore, but I think it should go back into circulation.

I had a striking thought during that ride:  I am a drug addicted prostitute.  I know the sins of which I’m capable.  I know that I am easily addicted to things.  I don’t gamble or take illicit drugs - not because I don’t want to do those things or because I’ve reached some sort of morally superior Christian high ground.  I don’t do those things because I know that if I did do those things, I wouldn’t stop doing those things...maybe until I was broke or dead or both.  The only difference between me and a prostitute who shoots meth are two things:  financial security and Jesus.  I don’t say either of those things flippantly - as if I deserve them.  God knows better than anyone that I don’t.  God provides the Holy Spirit to help me restrain my ugly flesh - the flesh being that which wants so desperately to do and say all the despicable things that pop into my mind.

Drug Addict Me

I can’t remember a time when I didn’t like the feeling of anesthesia.  From early recollections of nitrous at the dentist, to a tonsillectomy, to my recent neck surgery... counting backward from 100 and only getting to 98 before being lulled into a peaceful slumber - not a care in the world - is one of the best feelings I can imagine.  I’d gladly endure an IV (which I really hate) or two for that kind of effortless relaxation.  The last time I was under anesthesia (December 2013) I remember being in the recovery room and feeling like I couldn’t breathe.  The nurse kept saying, “Breathe... BREATHE... BREATHE!!”  Her voice getting more urgent with each plea.  I could hear her voice, and I obviously eventually managed to take a breath, but I had no fear of not breathing.  As I stabilized and was sent out of recovery, the nurse said, “That girl is hilarious.  She kept saying, ‘Thank you, substitute autonomic nervous system,' ” every time I told her to breathe.”  I actually liked the feeling of not feeling able to take my next breath.  I still do.  

I have been struggling with a prescription drug dependency since my first back injury in 2010, and it doesn’t get easier.  I say dependency, because, by God’s grace, I can go without prescription drugs when absolutely necessary, but I don’t want to go without them.  I choose not to go without them most of the time.  Chronic pain is something I’ve lived with as long as I can remember.  Consequently, getting the relief that I can get with an occasional prescription opiate is indescribably difficult to give up to God.  I don’t want you to offer suggestions.  This isn’t a cry for help.  Man-made fixes aren’t a cure for a heart that wants what it wants.  In time, like everything else, God always asks of me what He wants, and what He wants is any "fix" - any “thing” - that I depend on more than I depend on Him.  Then He enables me to give it back to Him moment-by-gut-wrenching-moment.

I remember going to a divorce recovery group once and hearing a lady who was a new Christian say, “I was told before I came to Christ that I should come as I am - sin and all, and that God didn’t ask me to change to come to Him.  Then, as soon as I became a Christian, I was immediately told all the things I needed to change.  They had no idea all the things God had already changed in me since the Holy Spirit began to work in my life.  I had quit a lifetime of swearing, drinking, and carousing.  Yet all people could talk about was my smoking... of all things.  I am confident God will take that too - in His timing.”  

I hear all of you people who think you’re open minded saying, “Those Christians! (Or those other Christians) They’re so judgmental!  What a bunch of hypocritical bigoted jerks.”  FLAG... yes you - 50 pew penalty for being a hypocrite yourself.  You just judged a bunch of Christians as hypocrites.   We are all judging every day of our lives.  It’s called decision making - exercising good judgment or bad judgment.  You must judge in order to survive.  The trick is not to make up your mind about a person and decide whether or not he or she is good or bad - according to your self-righteous, unbending standards.  You are your own little god, you know, and you want to be everyone else’s.  Do you like to judge others for being judgmental?  Stop it.  It’s ironic, and it’s annoying.

People are crippled by various enslaving lusts.  The only difference between a Christian and a non-Christian is that we have a “crutch”, as Jesse Ventura once said.  Our crutch is an "Old Rugged Cross" - blood-stained and beautiful.  We don’t always use our crutch.  There are many times we think we can get along without it, and we try - only to fall and make ourselves ridiculous to people - as though we don’t know how crippled we really are.  Sometime we don’t.  When we do use our crutch, however, we are capable of things which we were never capable (nor even desirous) of in our pre-crutch days.

Prostitute Me

I have long prostituted myself for much less than a few dollars.  I’ve prostituted myself for something so counterfeit that it isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on - the approval of others.  I have pushed myself far beyond what I should in many circumstances, and I am often undone by my desires to make others like me.  I have done (and am likely to do again) things of which I am thoroughly ashamed in exchange for counterfeit love and support.

You shouldn’t like me.  Truth be told, if we knew what was in one another’s minds, the human race would have died out a long time ago.  We would never have tolerated each other.  I am not often stunned by the ugly in humanity.  I am often stunned by the good.  Those are the things that make me cry.

Jeremiah 17:9 says what we all know to be true about ourselves, “The heart is deceitful above all else and desperately wicked.  Who can understand it?”

Paul acknowledges this truth in Romans 7 when he laments about his own struggle against the wickedness of his heart:  “O wretched man that I am!  Who will deliver me from this body of death?”  

Philippians 2:13 was an encouragement to the people of Philippi as it is for us who recognize our need for a crutch: “...for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.”

I once heard it said that, “The worst thing a person could say is true about me is nothing compared to the worst thing I know to be true about me."  This is me saying that I won’t forget that I am a drug-addicted prostitute, but God has made me His daughter, and He daily works to weed out the ugliness that enslaves me and causes me to try to enslave others. His kind of grace is worth any sacrifice I might be called to make. 

I’m a drug-addicted prostitute.  What are you?  If you have the grace to admit who you are outside of God’s goodness bestowed on you, consider putting it in writing - comment on this blog or just write it on a post-it and keep it somewhere close.

10 Commandments for Co-Parenters

“Where are you REALLY?!” I half screamed, sobbing into the phone.  I was in the closet - losing my sanity... my control... and every ounce of composure I had ever had.  He was “working late” again, and maybe he really was, but how was I to know?  I was so desperate to be able to trust the man I had called my husband for nearly 7 years, but I just couldn’t.  We had both done plenty of things to regret in our marriage, and there was zero trust between us, and I can remember not only not feeling love for him.  I began to hate him... and it wasn’t because he was a wretch - it was because I was.  I remember not wanting to feel stupid.  That was the biggest reason I hated when he lied or when he cheated... I didn’t want to look foolish.  I didn’t want to be foolish.  It didn’t matter how many times people said, “Well, if he cheats or lies it’s on him - not on you.”  Lip service... triteness... these were not what I wanted to hear right then.  I needed one thing that I could not have:  CONTROL

A few months later, when Brett left me and our daughters (aged 3 and 9 months), he changed his telephone number and left no forwarding address... both of which I had begged him not to do.  I knew where he worked, and that was all I knew.  I didn’t know if he’d keep putting his paycheck in our bank account.  I didn’t know if he was seeing someone else.  I didn’t know if he planned to file for divorce.  It was my right to know where he was!  Wasn’t it?  I needed one thing I could not have:  CONTROL

I had no choice but to do one thing I had mostly avoided doing - pray.  I had prayed very little for awhile now, aside from some desperate pleas with God to give me my favorites back:  my husband, my marriage, my family unit. They were mine, and I was demanding them back, and I was “walking in faith” that God would restore them to me.  After all, naive Christians like to tell other Christians, “If you have enough faith, God will fix this.”  As far as God went, I went from demanding, to begging, to crying, to whining, to pleading, and back again.  In fact, as far as Brett went I did the same things.  IF ever he contacted me (which was rare), I begged, whined, played the “God put us together” card, and then started over... and he called less and less.  I talked to my friends.  I shared my woes.  I whined and complained.  I talked and I talked... until finally I was talking to my friend about Brett and something funny happened.  Instead of saying, “Brett is just destroying me,” I replaced his name with “God...” completely by accident, and with that error God showed me that I had for years put my husband in God’s place.  I had expected him to make my happiness complete.  I had expected him to love me unfailingly.  I had expected him to anticipate and meet my needs.  I had expected him not to fail me.   

With that simple verbal error, my lack of control over my situation finally swept me under:  I wept, and I broke.  I finally broke.   After a few months of not knowing where my husband was, I began to sincerely seek to love him instead of loving myself and trying to force him to love me too.  I genuinely prayed for him... for my daughters... for God to do His will in our lives for His glory - no matter how that looked for my personal happiness.    My sister and her husband (who is also Brett’s brother) offered to find out where Brett lived, if he had a mistress, etc. - a chance I would have jumped at just a few months before that moment.  I asked them not to do that, and my sister snapped, “Why not?!  You’re just burying your head in the sand and not dealing with the reality that this is really happening to you.”  The fact was that I was finally starting to learn what I had needed to learn for 7+ years of our marriage... to stop trying to control my marriage.  God had allowed my husband to cut off contact with me in order to teach me that I didn’t really have or need control over my life... that I could trust that the One in control was worthy of my faith in Him.  He taught me to trust Him in a way I would not ever have been capable of doing otherwise.

The result of that trust was that I learned Who God was... I asked that He provide for me and my girls in Brett’s absence... because He was the only “husband” I had anymore.  What followed were sheer miracles of provision - from Brett continuing to put his paychecks in our joint account up until our divorce... to his having it written into the decree that he would pay me maintenance in addition to child support - together amounting to $2,000+ per month... to cash and food donations from people in our church... to a man from church coming to mow our lawn for free each week... to another man from church providing free oil changes while my daughters and I visited with his wife and children in their home.  The list could finish go on for a good many pages.  The fact of the matter was that I never had been in control of my life.  I just hadn’t acknowledged that God was good and was in control.  In fact, His was presence was more felt and His goodness more palpable in Brett’s absence than it ever had been in his presence, and I was happy.  I sometimes cried myself to sleep at night in the arms of Jesus, but I was never more complete or fulfilled or truly peaceful and joyful than in those moments - from that day to this.  I thank God for taking away Brett... not because he wasn’t a good husband or because our marriage was not meeting my needs... but because in those moments of sheer desperation and terror I got to know God in His utter adequacy for the meeting of every need.

This past Sunday morning, my husband Mark said, “When is Brett bringing the girls home?”  I said, “I don’t know... sometime in the afternoon he said.”  “What’s he doing with them that he’s bringing them home so late?”  “I don’t know,” I said, “I didn’t ask.”  I never ask, truth be told.  Back when Brett changed his number and left us wondering what came next he had refused to tell me a single thing about his personal life and choices.  I never found out what he was up to, and it wasn’t for lack of trying.  I wanted to know the details... even if they were hurtful to me.  However, he never told me a thing.  One day... one wonderful day, I stopped asking.  I never ask him what he’s doing with our girls.  I never ask him where they’ll be.  I only ask when they’ll return if it has to do with drop-off or pick-up locations.  It’s not because I don’t care.  It’s because I am not worried.  I know God is good, and that He is fulfilling his purpose in and for my daughters, and I am certain that their dad is a part of that purpose and process.  He has been since the moment of their conception - in fact, from the moment time began.  His ability to own his relationship with his daughters is God’s gift to him, and I have no business usurping that.  I cannot fully express to you the extent of how that blesses him and, in turn, blesses the girls.  They are free to tell me about their time with their dad and step-mom, but they are not compelled.  Forgiveness has been a huge part of the process of me letting that all go, and if you don’t know how to get there from where you are, here’s a link:  Forgiveness: A Step-by-Step Guide


Brett and I recently had the following text conversation when I was leaving our daughters (ages 12 and 10) off with him at a local restaurant before they went to Florida for a vacation:

This is typical of our relationship, and it’s weird to say that we often say things to one another like, “I’m so thankful for you and for how you parent our girls.”  We are able to - in completely appropriate ways - bless one another for the sake of our girls.  Mark and I minister to single parents and divorced people, and we often see people who are in the throes of custody battles.  There are precious few incidences where true abuse is taking place on the part of either parent, but good parents can often get into battles over the children in order to hurt one another.  One of the biggest culprits is TMI.  For those of us who are not “cool” enough to know what TMI is... (yes, there’s the fact that I’m using the word “cool” instead of “sick” or “epic” which means that I’m officially not sick nor am I epic) TMI= too much information.  If you know where your former spouse is, what that person is doing, who he or she spends time with, who he or she vacations with, where that person spends his or her free time, what’s in his or her bank account, or what he or she posted on facebook ten minutes ago, etc. you know too much.  That knowledge - every blessed piece of it - corrupts your feelings.  It tears you up.  It gives you evidence to use against the other person - but moreso it gives you the motivation to use it.  It makes you look ugly, and it makes you and feel ugly.

If you want to increase your own happiness and that of your children in your joint parenting lifestyle, here are 10 commandments for co-parents who are no longer in a relationship with one another:

1. Thou shalt respect thine ex’s time with his or her children and not interrupt it for any reason aside from thine own demise (in which case someone else shall do it for you).
2. Thou shalt not be friends with thine ex on facebook neither on other social media outlets.
3. Thou shalt not follow thine ex’s blog nor his or her twitter account.
4. Thou shalt not google thine ex’s name.
5. Thou shalt not text or call thine ex unless it has to do with pick up or drop off times or medical emergencies.  (Letters or e-mails would better handle “housekeeping items” like medical bills and child support payments.)
6. Thou shalt not ask thy children about their visits with their other parent nor shalt thou ask thine ex.
7. Thou shalt not ask thy children about their other parent’s friends or romantic interests.
8. Thou shalt not send photos of thy vacation or other social exploits to thine ex.
9. Thou shalt not create drama around drop-offs and pick-ups of thy shared children.
10. Thou shalt not discuss child support issues in front of thy children ever - for any reason. period.

I need to clarify three things: 

1. I don’t like to use the word “ex”, but it just fits better than “former spouse” in a list.  
2. This list does not apply in cases of true abuse or neglect - in which case DCFS or a like department should be able to determine if that is the case.  If the court or DCFS do not make a determination of abuse, give your former spouse the benefit of the doubt... believing that they love their children like you do - until and unless there is concrete evidence to the contrary.
3. I understand their are nuances in each situation, but I guarantee that if you make the first move to start respecting your children’s other parent, that respect will be reciprocated in time.  You may find that, given some time, you will have become very content to trust that your children are happy and basically well-cared-for when they are with their other parent.

Trust God that He has all of your children’s activities, feelings, and future in His good plan, and that He cares much more for them than you do.  He gave them you as a parent.  You love them madly.  He also gave them another parent who, despite manifold imperfections (much like yourself), loves your children and makes up 50% of his or her gene pool.  That 50% belongs to a person you once loved - for their laugh, their smile, their sense of humor, their eyes, their encouraging spirit, their gentle ways, their gregarious disposition... those same sweet things you might just see in that child from time-to-time.  Respect their parenting - just like you want to be respected as a parent.

Shower Epiphany

About a year ago I stood in the shower and contemplated the blessings of my life.  I mean, I often (like you) think about all the good things that God has given me.  I, perhaps like you, live in fair comfort.  I have lived in significant want, and I have no doubt (nor do I have fear) that I might likely live in great want again in my lifetime.  However, that day... that day I was faced with one truth:  God has always been just as good as I know He is today, and I didn't even know it.  I had been completely unaware of how gracious He was to the undeserving wretch - me.  

If I have done anything right in my life, it has been rare.  I have seen in myself those who spit in the face of an anguished Savior... with no remorse.  I have been wrong so much more than I've been right.  I have hated God with my actions, and I have defamed His name carelessly.  Yet...

Yet... that was the moment when the tears came so effortlessly... so painfully... so gratefully.  I had heard tell of God's grace for sinners, but what about His grace for saved ones?  What about that grace? This was the grace that plucked me out of desperation and sin and death (yes, even when I was redeemed) and placed me in a wide open space... a green pasture - so lush and wide in its scope that I could not dare have dreamt it for fear of waking up in a dung heap again.

The deepest pain I felt at this realization that God did not take into account my past when He was planning my future was this:  I had spent 34 years being taught of God and His love for His lost and had totally missed His character toward and love for His FOUND.  Had I known, how different my life might have looked.

This morning I talked to a dear friend, and she shared with me that she had recently listened to a sermon series on grace and law.  The speaker had touched on a truth so simplistic and yet so deep that I had to go back into my mental curio cabinet and open it - just to touch that truth - just to make sure it was really mine now.  This is how it went:

The grace of which Christians so easily speak - which rolls off our tongues with great passion and fervor when we encourage the non-Christian that Jesus loves him or her lavishly (which is true but only half of the truth).  The speaker had announced that such grace (the kind of which we speak so poignantly about to the unsaved) is not truly meant for them at all yet but that it is meant for Christians - those who are "in Christ".  In turn, the law is for non-Christians.  The law is for the purpose of showing non-Christians their desperate need to be saved from their own nature for the purpose of encouraging them to become a recipient of the same grace.  After they come to know Christ's saving power then they are under the same "Amazing Grace" that we are.   We Christians tend to mix this up.  We tell the sinner, "God is gracious.  Come to Christ and He will take you as you are - no strings attached.  He loves you."  Then as soon as they come to know Christ (by His revelation at work within them) then we start to pummel them with all of their sins and give them the law (the do's and don't's), because that's how a Christian should act.  We tell them they're graced and should come to the gracious Christ, but then we sic the law on them as soon as they step foot in the church door.  We thrash other Christians for their sins... or because they still sin (gasp) even after salvation.  Where is the message of God's grace then?  Nowhere to be found.  

I submit to you that the opposite should be happening - we should be loving and living as the graced people we are - fully accepted in Christ and sure in that identity and making sure the world understands that they are subject to God's wrath as a result of their own sin (just as we once were) and that they would love being under grace - just as we do.  We should share hope.  What I see all over Facebook and all over Christian magazines and websites is Christians destroying Christians for their perceived faults.  Who in his right mind would want any part of a people that give each other NO grace... only criticizing one anothers' feeble attempts (as all of our earthly attempts are) at living out Christ's example on earth.  Half the time I want out of this whole thing myself.  We don't show the world the beautiful grace of which we are undeserving recipients, because we haven't believed it's true.  We haven't trusted God is truly good and that He truly has dowsed our paths in the richest scents of His grace - so deep that we are dripping of it.  We don't even know it... and thus we can't give it to others - Christian or non-Christian.  Well, we are under grace, because our lover (Christ) wants a bride who is lavishly loved and free to give him the same unconditional love  in return.  What a gracious God we serve.  What a blessing to be His bride, and how lovely to bask in the grace that is ours because we are in Christ and, better yet, give that hope and that grace to one another.

How to Fall in Love

About ten years ago now, I sat on the my basement stairs alone after having put my girls down to bed.  My younger sister, who had very recently met the man who would later be her husband, was calling me from thousands of miles away in a virtual panic. I’m pretty sure it went mostly like this:

“He told me he loves me!” she lamented.

“So?” said I.

“SO!!  I didn’t say it back, because I don’t love him, and I’m not going to say it unless I mean it.”  

“Well, good for you.  Wait, how do you know you don’t love him?”

“Because...because we just met like a month ago.  What the world?  You can’t love a person in a month.  He’s really nice, and he’s taken me on some great day trips, but I don’t love him.”

“Maybe you could love him, right?  I mean, give it some more time.”

“I don’t want to drag it out.  There’s no fireworks... no intensity.  That pretty much means there’s no future, right?”

The irony of the fact that she was asking a divorced single mom of two for relationship/love advice was palpable.  After all, my husband of 7 years had walked out on me and our daughters a few short months earlier.  In fact, I didn’t even know where he was living at the time.

“I don’t know.  I’m probably not the right person to ask.  I’m all about the fireworks, but then again none of my relationships have ever amounted to anything but pain.”

“I don’t know what to do.”

“I’ve only ever had fireworks at first, and I never wasted time with guys who didn’t inspire those, but obviously that hasn’t worked out very well for me.  I mean, if you start the relationship with the most intense feelings you can imagine, where do you have to go from there but down?  It’s kind of hard to improve on amazing.  What if... What if the relationships that last start with friendship, then a few sparks, a flame, and then the fireworks?  What if you could work to ensure that the fireworks moments - the deepest emotional (if not physical) intensity - happened in the years down the road?”

I was pretty much just thinking out loud, but I told her not to give up on him because of a lack of initial intensity.  The ability of two people to choose to love one another with their actions even if that person doesn’t inspire sleepless nights, sweaty palms, and butterflies initially is perhaps one of the most beautiful things of which humanity is capable.  

I am pretty much in love with the movie Picture Bride on Netflix.  It’s about a trend that happened in the early 1900’s in which Japanese men immigrated to Hawaii to work in the sugar cane fields.  Many of these men wanted to marry Japanese brides.  So they would send a photo of themselves to a matchmaker in Japan who would match them with a girl who was eligible and willing to move to Hawaii.  It’s a touching story of a woman who married a man who had unintentionally represented himself to be a younger man (by sending the only photo he had of himself - which had been taken about 15 years earlier).  She had initially been disgusted by him, and, despite his attempts to win her over, she remained determined to return to Japan as soon as she was able to save enough money of her own.  It’s based on a true story, and it’s truly touching to see how he sacrifices to win her love, and then how she ends up sacrificing her own identity in the end in order to begin to return his love.  Watch it.  That is all.

My sister called me back a couple of months after her first panicked call.  She said excitedly, “I love him!  I really do!  He asked me to marry him, and I’m going to do it!”  I’m sure she could tell you stories of how their love has grown and changed, but I can tell you that I had to take a big dose of my own advice about two years later.  I was seriously crushing on a man from Springfield.  He was handsome, and he loved God.  We had these deep, intense conversations that went on for hours.  By contrast, although I thought Mark was tall and cute... I couldn’t talk to him for anything on the phone.  He was so quiet and reserved, and yet he pursued talking to me relentlessly, and I avoided his calls for months.  I hoped Mr. Fireworks would work out, but relationships like that burn hot and fast, and it did.  My parents, all the while, encouraged me to give Mark a chance.  I dreaded his phone calls more often than not, because he was too good... too nice... too quiet... to be passionate enough for this notorious romantic - or so I thought.

I remembered that advice I had given my sister years previous.  I decided it was time to take my own advice, and, when he asked if we could meet just once to see if it would go anywhere, I agreed to meet.  I’ve told the story of our first date in previous blogs.  So I won’t rehash that sweet night.  It also started out pretty lame but picked up speed and, within about 5 weeks of our first meeting, we were engaged.  

Honestly, when we got engaged it wasn’t particularly romantic.  It was practical.  In fact, instead of a true proposal, Mark’s way of asking me to marry him was to tell me not to take a job that I had recently been offered because he wanted me to come work for him.  

“Work for you?” I had asked.  “What does that even mean?”  

“It means, you want to keep staying home with your girls.  Austin needs a mom.  I need a wife.  We both love God.  I think we should just get married.”  

Not the most romantic proposal for this girl, but we decided that, given our situation as single parents, we needed practicality way more than we needed desperate, passionate, feverish love.  (I’m not sure how we could have developed that in 5 weeks anyway.)  We discussed whether or not moving across states to marry was feasible for either of us.  We discussed that divorce would never be an option for us, because of the fact that our children needed to be able to be stable.  We discussed what kind of work I would do, and what school the kids would attend.  We discussed waiting until we were married to start our physical marriage.  We didn’t have time for fireworks.  Ours was *gasp* a marriage of convenience.  We were becoming great friends and dedicated partners in raising our children.  We shared an uncommon amount of like interests,  but we were certainly not deluded into thinking that our love would conquer all.  I imagine we had both experienced much more intense feelings throughout our lifetime than the love we felt for one another when we got engaged.  However, we agreed at the outset that the order of our priorities would be God, our marriage, our children, and others, and God shoved us through that door.  I cannot imagine ever being more overwhelmed or grateful for anything more than I am for that.

We will have been married eight years this coming April.  That is not a long time.  However, I can tell you that today I am on fire for my husband.  He is amazing. He is respectable.  He is strong.  He carries the load of responsibility that comes with our large family with dignity and integrity.  We search for one another’s eyes across crowded rooms.  We hold hands for no reason at all.  We text.  We call.  We kiss... a lot.  We laugh... all the time.  I have never had the kind of fireworks that have developed with my husband since we said, “I do.”  There have been plenty of trying times, but we have weathered them by God’s grace.  

So many singles look for “The One” that inspires goosebumps... the one with whom they seem immediately compatible and whom they “love” at first sight.  I think these unrealistic expectations lead to a lot of people overlooking a forever companion who is right under his/her nose.  I maintain my belief that the best of marriages come from being the best of friends.  The fireworks come along in due time, and they are the kind that last forever.  Marry your friend... your companion... your helper... your buddy, and you might just fall in love.

How I Learned to Like My Kids

  It will have been thirteen years ago this coming April, on a lovely spring day, when my husband and I brought home our beautiful baby girl.  Forty weeks of pregnancy, MAJOR stretch marks, preeclampsia, and thirty-seven plus hours of labor and she was finally here!  I remember the tears that had so effortlessly streamed down my face the second she was born.  I had never just loved someone so much whom I had just met.  It was truly an unfathomable, emotionally-dense experience.  

  Sadie loved the nightlife... like so many other babies.  She was seriously tongue-tied and couldn’t nurse at all.  Every feeding was a nightmare of her screaming and me crying. They had sent me home with a baby who couldn’t nurse, and I didn’t even know how to change a diaper.  I remember being flabbergasted that they had trusted me to take her home... without adult supervision.  I remember one night sitting up with her feeling so sleep deprived I felt like I wouldn’t be able to draw another breath.  She was crying.  I was crying.  I felt like a total failure, because of this one, scary realization.  I didn’t like being a mom.  I didn’t like my baby.  I loved her more than my own life, but I didn’t like her.  Rather, I liked myself too much.  I liked me, my body, my hobbies, my job, my routine, my peace-and-quiet, my solitude, and my “life”.  She had taken all of those things and turned them upside down.    The realization hit me hard: that I would never have another day, another hour, another minute when someone else’s well-being was not in the forefront of my mind and overtaking my sense of responsibility.  Mom-guilt was threatening to drown me, and it was certainly stealing any joy I had in the experience of motherhood.

Sadie at 9 months

     I had no other friends who were mothers.  I had just turned 23, and the only advice I received was from a very few seasoned moms.  Most of what I heard was from elderly women who looked fondly at my baby and told me how blessed I was... to “cherish those years, because they pass so quickly”.  GOOD, I thought.  Then maybe she’ll be able to talk and tell me what’s wrong with her!  Then the next moment all I could wonder is what was wrong with me?  What kind of awful mother was I that I couldn’t wait until other people offered to hold her... feed her... soothe her?  The conflicting emotions made me feel like a crazed lunatic of a mother.  I didn’t realize until later that I was experiencing what many would call “postpartum depression”.  Part of my problem was likely hormonal.  Most of my problem was selfishness.  

     I grew up a quiet child who mostly liked playing by myself.  I could play with other children for awhile, but then I liked to withdraw to my own make believe worlds.  I liked to read.  I liked school.  I liked adults.  I was not in the least socially awkward.  I had a lot of friends that I liked and who liked me, but I didn’t like younger children, and I didn’t like being expected to entertain younger children.  Babysitting was something I did for money and out of obligation, but it was not something I ever enjoyed or at which I felt easy.  I maintained well into my high school years that I would be a happy spinster who (despite the obvious impracticalities) would have a high-rise city apartment, lots of dogs, and a high-paying job.  I didn’t ever imagine wanting children.  However...things rarely turn out the way we anticipate.

     Claire was born in August two years after Sadie.  An experienced mother had wisely told me whilst I was pregnant with Claire that, since Sadie had insisted on being walked around the hallways all.night.long, that I should try rocking in a rocking chair while I was pregnant with Claire... hoping that it would cause Claire to enjoy the rocking motion and make it easier to transition to being rocked when she was born.  It worked... too well.  Claire was an easier baby... she was in a good mood almost all of the time - under one condition:  that she was being rocked.  Whether it was her swing or our rocking chair, she had to be rocking to be happy.  I felt so terribly guilty that first night putting her in the baby swing so that I could stop rocking her and try to get a couple hours of sleep in an acutal bed.  The home visit nurse came over a few days later and scolded me for putting her in the swing at her young age, but I just tearfully said, “I don’t know what else to do.  If she stops moving, she cries.”  It reminded me of a Twilight Zone episode I had watched years previous in which the lead character had contracted some type of illness in which he had to be in motion at a certain speed at all times or his head would explode.  It didn’t end well for Twilight Zone guy.  Only I felt like it was my head that would explode if I didn’t keep her in constant motion.  She slept in her electric swing every night - for a year.  Let’s just say I wasn’t winning any “mother of the year” awards that year.  (On a somewhat amusing side note, Claire fell asleep every time I put her in a swing at the park until she was well past 4 years old.) 

Claire at 2 minutes old

Claire's first Christmas

     Like it or not, by Claire’s arrival, I had at least become a little more confident that I might know some answers to some basic baby issues.  I didn’t feel quite as inadequate to the task as I had with Sadie.  I was in the midst of serious postpartum depression once again though when my first husband decided he’d had enough of our admittedly-difficult marriage.  That threw me into what I can only describe as more extreme selfishness than ever... as I could only think about how I was feeling.  I could only consider my daughter’s pain in relation to my own and how it affected me.  I spent several of the next few years making more poor choices than good ones.  I think people often think that self-loathing has one cure:  SELF ESTEEM.  Feel bad about yourself?  You need self-esteem.  Lonely and isolated?  You need self-esteem.  Suicidal?  You need self-esteem.  I submit to you that my self-loathing was just the flip side of the SELF coin that I was holding onto so tightly.  Self loathing is something one only experiences when he or she values self too much.  When we think constantly about what people are thinking/saying about us...  When we consider ourselves in our almost every thought - even to self-deprecate...  When we are feeling down and depressed and like nobody likes us or needs us, we are merely wondering why the rest of the world doesn’t recognize and acknowledge how very valuable we know we are.  

Claire, me, and Sadie during singleness

     Fast forward, and by God’s grace, I met and married a man who loved his own son with the most selfless love I had ever witnessed from a dad to his child.  Sadie was now kindergarten age, and my husband’s son was 9.  We put them in a local private school for a year, and I realized that they were gone... a lot.  Claire was home with me, and I was pregnant again, and I really liked my days - starting to feel like they were a little more my own.  I liked the solitude I got during Claire’s nap time.  I liked getting a couple of hours in a quiet house to use the restroom without interruption.  I liked it - maybe too much.  A year in school had Sadie loving her teacher.  I remember going to our first parent-teacher conference, and feeling this strange, “How does she know more about my own child than I do?” feeling.  There it was again - that “mom guilt”.

Mark and our kids one month after our wedding

Our Beloved Austin

     

Mom guilt happened to me every single time an older woman would tell me how lucky or blessed I was to have such a sweet family - only I didn’t feel so lucky many days.  I felt overwhelmed and inadequate, which had become a way of life for me.  

     I’m not sure when the idea of homeschooling came up between my husband and me, but it did.  I felt God was leading me to it, and I dreaded it.  I think that is often the way I know most certainly that an idea is not from my flesh.  If I begin to consider and contemplate a course of action that is totally outside my comfort zone and about which I feel the most dreadful sickness in the pit of my stomach, I know it didn’t originate with me.  Remember that self-coin I’m holding onto so tightly?  

     It became clear to me that unless I forced myself to spend time with my children, one-on-one, I wouldn’t choose to do it.  As I said before, I loved my children and, by God’s grace, was most often able to act in their best interest.  However, if love is a choice to act in another’s best interest I knew I would have to force myself to make a choice to spend time and energy with my children on purpose - a choice that I couldn’t cut out on when I felt too tired or too overwhelmed or too selfish.  So we dove head-long into the intimidating world of homeschooling.  

On our first anniversary - Levi's birthday

My all-time favorite of Mark and Levi

     Two more children and six years of homeschooling later, and the result has been one I never expected - I have learned to not just love my children but to like my children.  Much like every other choice a human might make to create a better life - choices like working out, going to church, eating healthier, or volunteering more time to worthy causes, the choice to be an involved parent was not easy.  It was not fun.  It was hard work that has paid off in dividends that will have immeasurable value to me forever.  Often I have been approached by a person at a store who comments on the 5-6 children crowded around my grocery cart or trailing behind me.  For years people would say to me things like, “Wow!  You have your hands full with all of those kids.”  I remember once uttering - by faith alone - a phrase that God has brought to my mind and mouth at that most difficult of times, “Maybe my hands are full now, but my Thanksgiving table will never be empty.”    

     Labor doesn’t end at 37 hours or 26 hours or 3 hours... it goes on for a lifetime.  By God’s grace, I have learned to choose to love my children with my actions, my time, my efforts, and my whole being, and I have come to like them more than anyone else on the planet.  These days, when I say I’m heading to the grocery store, although most of my children are old enough to stay home if they want, they offer to come, and I welcome the company and the help.  They carry bags and boxes.  They load and empty the van.  They are a joy and a help.  They have blessed me beyond my wildest expectations.  We laugh.  We play.  We talk.  We enjoy one another, and I am lost when they aren’t with me.  Much like people who exercise feel sluggish when they don’t get their exercise in, I feel lonely when I haven’t connected with my kids.  

     Most people would not have to force themselves to homeschool in order to achieve a goal of spending more time with and learning to like their children, but it was what I needed to do, and I’m so glad we made that choice.  Anyone can choose engagement or disengagement with their children on a daily basis, but I had to force myself to, in a way, “buy the membership”.  If you buy the membership to a gym, you are obligated to go.  You can’t skip out on it easily.  Through everyday interactions, I’m met with dozens more reasons to like each one of my children - to spend that self coin I have held so tightly on someone(s) better than me.  

     Psalms 127:3-5 says, “Behold, children are a heritage from the LORD, the fruit of the womb a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one’s youth. Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them! He shall not be put to shame when he speaks with his enemies in the gate.”

     Arrows they are, and I need God’s grace every day to help me like and love my children and, by directing them (as I would an arrow), they are not only my greatest earthly asset but my most treasured companions.  Liking my children did not come naturally to this failing mom, but I am so thankful that God is more than sufficient to love my children through me, and that He lets me reap the benefits.

Violet - the last biological addition to our family

Our complete family

Homeschooled Freak

“You might want to take those off,” I said to my then 12-year-old son about the sunglasses he was wearing.  

“Why?” he asked, incredulous that I didn’t see the magic in his obviously amazing sunglasses (a roadside find from his paper route).  

“Well,” I said quietly, not wanting to hurt his feelings, “just because it’s almost dark, and you won’t be able to see your way around the corn maze.  You know, honey, when you’re homeschooled sometimes you don’t know what’s cool (yes, that’s what we said in the 80‘s and 90‘s) and what’s not so cool.  I’m just trying to tell you what I think before someone else tells you in a not-so-nice way.”  

Well, he pressed on and wore them as the sun was going down behind the horizon.  As he exited the car and joined a group of nearby acquaintances, I waited with the windows down, and I heard, “Why are you wearing those?”  

“Because...” he responded semi-confidently.

“Because it’s dark, and it’s stupid to wear sun glasses in the dark,” said one of the group of kids.

“I know,” he responded much less confidently as he returned to the car to put his beloved sunglasses back.  

It probably was about a year later when we had the same conversation regarding a pair of sweet, weight-lifting, fingerless gloves he was so keen on that he wanted to wear them to his first basketball practice.  He stubbornly insisted, once again, that my fashion sense was thoroughly outdated.  I was, once again, vindicated by “popular” opinion.  You know what?  Fingerless gloves and sunglasses are cool... under the right circumstances and in the right context.  

The strange part?  I wanted him to be able to wear those things, because I wanted him to feel confident and good about who he was and what he liked.  Why did I advise against it?  Aside from practicality and (in the case of the sunglasses) pure safety, I was afraid of the cruelty he would almost certainly encounter at the hands of his peers.  On the other hand, I find him truly peerless.  

I was not homeschooled, but I remember those kids.  The boys always wore high-waisted high waters, polo shirts with the tiny alligator on the right pectoral (yes, just call me a nerd - I love it), and penny loafers.  The girls (and moms) wore the t-shirt, long jean jumper, and white tennis shoes.  I could see them coming a mile away.  It was almost like a nerd uniform.  They came to the private school I attended for standardized testing and sometimes sports - awkward sports.  Their bizarre way of not even seeming to notice or care what everyone else in the whole world was wearing and how they were acting was great fodder for jokes.  While everyone I knew was wearing Air Jordans, Oakley sunglasses, B.U.M Equipment sweatshirts, Guess jeans, and Paris Sport Club anything, homeschoolers didn’t even seem to know that they could buy a pair of $70 jeans.  They were really missing out - poor things.

Enter these 17 (as my oldest son likes to remind me) years later, and I am a homeschooler.  My older sister became one fairly recently and started to head up a local homeschooling group.  When the former leader of the group handed her the reins, she said one thing my sister laughed about with me later, “Homeschoolers are rebellious by nature.  So don’t be surprised when they buck the system.”  She thought that was hilarious... “rebellious by nature”?  That was truly the last thing she said she would ever think about homeschoolers.  I laughed too, but, honestly, I’m realizing that we are!  I don’t want to do anything I’m told to do.  I like my flexibility.  I like answering to God alone.  I like freedom.

We recently welcomed a foreign exchange student from India.  We love him.  His name is Joel.  He rooms with our oldest son, and he is truly becoming part of our family.  A stipulation of the organization through which he came to the USA was that he would need to attend school somewhere.  I thought this would be good for all of us - getting in a normal school routine... getting a dose of another reality - one that most people already deal with if they have school-aged children (and for which I truly applaud them).  I’ve discovered something.  I.hate.school.  I’m trying to figure out why.  After all, I went to school.  Many schools are great.  Many teachers are amazing.  I think I just really am rebellious.  I don’t like being forced to do things about which normal people don’t even thing twice - like having a non-flexible schedule, baking cookies, volunteering for various school duties, raising funds, signing permission slips...  

One of the biggest questions I field (and so do all other homeschoolers) aside from, “Who monitors you?” (as if I and my kids are a danger to society if our educational style isn’t monitored) is “How do you get them properly socialized?”  Well, as new homeschoolers 6 years ago, my husband and I were very concerned with making that a priority.  After all, we didn't want our kids becoming home-grown weirdos like all of the homeschoolers we'd ever seen.  I remember reading an article at the time in which a man mocked the idea that putting uneducated people who lack impulse control with other uneducated people who lack impulse control (children with other children) would somehow make both groups of people smarter and better... that this somehow constitutes "socializing" children.  His argument was that the best way to socialize children for maximum maturity and sociability was with more mature and experienced people - people with more confidence in their identity - people less likely to be harsh and unkind with them - namely adults.  I saw his point.  In general, I find that children who socialize often with adults are more easily able and ready to talk with me and feel comfortable just carrying on conversation with me as peers would.  I have had some of my best conversations with our kids’ homeschooled friends.  

I wear makeup.  I have since I was 11 years old and noticed that my mom and all the other girls I thought were “pretty” were wearing it.  I am still scared to leave the house without at least some measurable makeup on my face.  My girls could not be less interested in touching the stuff.  We went to a bling store the other day at a local bazaar.    Claire and I browsed all the cute, shiny hair pretties, clothes, hats, jewelry, shoes, and other accessories.  Out of all the things Claire could have purchased with her long-anticipated birthday money, she chose a plaid pink, green, and purple golfer’s flat cap and a matching green velour purse in the shape of a big flower.  She wears these with some cargo capris, a t-shirt, and brightly colored Chucks, and the kid looks like a million bucks in an outfit I would never have chosen for her.  Most of the time, she’s still just a kid... a marvelously unjudged kid.  She’ll wear two mismatching hair ties in her tangled hair, hole-ridden (and not stylishly or intentionally so) pants that are too short, a t-shirt that’s two sizes too big, and shamefully dirty shoes (to match her often shamefully dirty face).  These types of things used to make me cringe.  “What will people think?” I thought.  I love to see my kids coming into their own.  My handsome 17 year old and his “piece” as he calls the soul patch under his bottom lip... my cute adolescent daughters with not a self-conscious bone in their bodies, my young’n’s who wear whatever is their favorite color or is the most comfortable.  (Tonight Violet wore an old pair of secondhand pink stretchy pants, a totally different color of pink and black shirt, and dirty pink crocs.)  Nobody is there every day to make them feel like freaks if they’re not clones.  I’m not pointing at anyone else’s kids.  I was that clone... the one to notice the freaks that didn’t fit in with the rest of “us” in the “real world”.

One of my favorite things about the very diverse group of homeschooled people we know and with whom we associate is that they are largely uninhibited by social expectations and are, for the most part, unabashedly original.  It’s not uncommon to see kids in the local group we attend who have pink or purple hair, amazing/fun/original fashion sense, or unbridled passion for nerdery.  When we go to a group meeting (which is relatively rare), we will see kids with disabilities, a wide range of backgrounds and ethnicity, people who don’t “fit in” elsewhere.  In the home environment, they have the luxury of remaining "safe" and unjudged most of the time.

As Joel started his first week at the local school, he was confronted with the fact that he did not have a cool phone.  Smart phones were everywhere... in the lunch room, in the classroom, on the bus, etc.  Partly due to this, and for other unknown reasons, he found himself very lonely there.  We don’t provide a phone for our own kids.  We haven’t needed them to have one until they were driving.  When Austin began to drive, got a job, and paid for his own addition to our monthly contract, he got a phone.  If he messes up, his phone is our phone.  We wouldn’t let him have a smart phone even if he paid for it himself.  The rest of our kids don’t have phones either.  We make the kids leave technology of all kinds in the living room when they go to bed at night.  We want them to associate with God and with other humanoids.  We want them to feel a little lonely or bored at night.  After all, that was always when I did the best reflection on my day and my self and prayer about both.  If they went to school, a phone would likely be more of a necessity... adding mega cost to our bill.  What they don’t know other kids have, they don’t miss.  We don’t find it necessary to waste money on brand name clothes they’ll outgrow in 3 months.  We don’t feel obligated to spend on electronics and toys they don’t know exist.  Not until recently did I realize how much money we save by having the kids here all day and not having TV to show them what they’re “missing”.  After only a week at school, it was clear that if Joel did not have a smart phone, buy school lunch (instead of taking his own), and wear what the others were wearing, he would never be cool enough to socialize - no matter how original or fun or friendly he was.  He would always be set apart - and not in a good way but rather in a “freakish” way.  This would likely not be his experience at many schools, but it was in the one he attended.

Please understand, I know that there are people in all schooling options who display this type of originality, and I know some that come to mind as I write.  I applaud the ability of those people to stand out - which is much easier for us to do in the safety of our own accepting home-environment than it would be for us if we were daily faced with the reality of not fitting a mold.  However, I am embracing the fact that, at least for awhile, their originality is being appreciated and is growing unhampered by negative comments, embarrassment, or criticism from the outside world.  They may not always be able to remain completely oblivious to what is expected of them from the standpoint of society in general, but they know what we expect of them... to be kind, to respect others, to forgive, to ask forgiveness, to laugh, to work hard, to be a friend... to be a kid.  The rest will come soon enough.  Is that sheltering my kids?  I hope so.

A few years ago, my son and a friend of his watched a movie that contained the line, “I’m not some God-loving, homeschooled FREAK!”  Since then, they laughingly call one another and their other friends variations of that line.  “You homeschooled freak” has become one of the staples around here in such a funny way that Levi (5 at the time), actually called one of his friends that attends regular school a “homeschooled FREAK” in a not-so-nice way during an argument they were having over a video game.  It was so hard not to laugh that I admittedly burst out laughing really hard and said, “Um, Levi... you’re the homeschooled freak here,” and then I made him apologize.  I called this boy’s dad and told him what happened, and he laughed about it too.  After all, I think normal people all feel like freaks sometimes.  We feel deep down that inadequacy:  We’re not doing enough.  We aren’t enough.  

The Psalmist said in Psalm 139:13-14 that God created us, knit us together, in fact, in our mother’s womb... making us “fearfully and wonderfully”.  These things make me realize that - just like the rest of creation - after God made me, He looked at me and said, “This is good.”  That was before I ever did a thing.  If He was happy with what He made when He looked at me, who am I to be unhappy with it?  If He was happy with what He made when He made my neighbor, my co-worker, my boss, my classmate, my friend, my enemy... who am I to say otherwise?  Can I ugly up what He made good?  Yes, and I do every day.  Maybe I am even doing it right now.  I hope grace covers me.

When confronted with the idea of having to shave his beloved facial hair for a school dress code, Joel balked saying that he would look like a girl without it.  We tried to reassure him that he would not and that it was very common to have a shaved face in the USA, but he would not be consoled.  Austin said, “If you have to shave, so will I.  And look, the dress code doesn’t say we can’t grow some sweet sideburns.”  “Yes!”  I added, “That would be awesome!”  Joel was not as buoyed as we’d hoped and responded sardonically, “Yes, because I want to look like Wolverine.”  I said, “I was thinking more James Dean than Wolverine.”  Neither of them knew the screen legend to whom I was referring, and then it was my turn to be disappointed.  However, I realized that every culture has its expectations for appearance and behavior.  Not all of this is bad.  It's in us to want to fit in with other people... to be part of a group.  Emulating what has been accomplished by others is an essential bent of humanity, but it's what has never been seen before that truly has the power to move the human heart.  That is why originality is so essential.  We live in such a marvelous day and age - in which we can instantly see, via the internet and television, the amazing things people do... from over-the-top marriage proposals, to amazing rescues, to musical talent...  These things can be so pervasive that we forget that merely being the human God created you to be is truly amazing.

I hope I am encouraging you to not just encourage originality in your own kids and the ones you love but to help your kids appreciate it in others too.  If we see a rainbow mullet at Walmart or a giant red afro walking down the street or some sweet lamb chop sideburns, we are the first ones to stop and let the kids admire it... take it in... love it, and maybe even tell the person so.