liberation

Dear one, dear one
hush now
your mother's burden
is not yours to bear
your load is light
hush now
you cannot ask
for less

Hush now, child
stop your nettling
we don't need your voice
we need your body

Quiet, baby
don't make a peep
you have so much
already

Sleep, sweet.
Sleep deep in twilight
fevered dreams
silly fears
There's no one here
but us.
No one will hurt you
but us.

free

We're so much better off today than yesterday. Yesterday we were property, bartered and traded. Yesterday we were beaten to death, we were bred like cattle. Today they've granted us our humanity. Could we ask for more?

We're so much better off today than yesterday. We can seek out torturers and butchers to rid us of the rape's seed. Crippled for life is still alive. Could we ask for more?

We're so much better off today than yesterday. Yesterday we were denied cesareans because they were birth control. Today is a much better day. How could we ask for more when others have endured so much?

Today we have the right to influence our husband's vote.

Today we have the right to work outside the home.

Today we have the right to equal pay, though no one pays attention. Today we can vote for ourselves and are allowed ownership. What is it we would ever want? Why are we not grateful for progress? For modernity? Our rights so graciously granted?

Today they drug us and violate us without consent. Today they abuse us and call it care. Today they hire men simply for their lack of a life-giving belly. Today they dismiss us as unstable because we're as human as they. Today they let us fight, and rape us for the fun of it; cast aside as insane for speaking the truth.

But why should we ask for more? We're liberated. So shut the fuck up.

good intentions

Being the spouse of a depressed person who is unable to find a job is a very difficult place to be. When telling someone about the problem, they immediately ask for what he's done or not done, where he has and has not applied and give me their opinion on what my husband "needs" to do. I appreciate the desire to help, but they are not helping. I am not my husband and I can send in an application here or there, but I am not picking up his phone, I am not scheduling interviews and I am not the one interviewing or following up. I have little to no control over his situation and I really wish people would meet ME there. I wish they would treat me as someone who cannot fix his problems because they're just adding to my burdens when they don't.

In testing walkie talkies for emergency evacuation & general communication around our workplace:

"I just think that's overkill."
-coworker who keeps loaded guns in drawers scattered throughout their home

The prejudice of love

“If it seems to you that you have understood the divine scriptures, or any part of them, in such a way that by this understanding you do not build up this twin love of God and neighbor, then you have not understood them” (De Doctrina 1:36:40)

Postmodernity is a necessary corrective to the idolatry of human knowledge. We can use it to deconstruct modernity, but then move past it back to a premodern respect for God’s mystery.

a most intimidating question...

Is this love big enough to watch over me? 
Big enough to let go of me 
Without hurting me, 
Like the day I learned to swim?
-Kate Bush

How would I answer this to my child?

"I really like her, but...

I don't agree with everything she says."

Rachel Held Evans recently came out with a book, A Year of Biblical Womanhood, and lots of friends and acquaintances have tentatively recommended her blog and book using the exact phrase above. Every time I've heard someone say this, it has rankled more and more. At first I thought it was just that it seems unnecessary - "oh really? you don't agree with everything someone says? obviously I thought you liked everything about everything." It was like someone saying they enjoy Dexter but don't approve of serial killers - is this really a distinction that needs to be made? Turns out it isn't simply the assumption that I'm a dunce and think you incapable of disagreeing with someone you like, but in fact has its roots in what I believe is spiritual abuse.

We, the ladies I love and myself, come from a background where everything recommended is "vetted." We're coming from a lifestyle where to recommend something is to say "THIS IS RIGHT" and pastors and certain writers are labeled trustworthy (and to question them is unthinkable) - this is a cultish veneration of the Leader. It disturbs me that we are assumed too weak and gullible to discern wisdom or to test the spirits. I am no longer a child in middle school. I know to be wary in this world. I've seen what manipulative teaching looks like. I don't follow blindly. I don't need your protection. My decisions are made carefully and prayerfully. I feel like this phrase is a shorthand for - be careful, she's dangerous. That in and of itself is a judgement of her salvation in my eyes - you think giving her a recommendation might lead someone astray?Of course, she and I differ on some stuff. I differ with EVERYONE on some stuff. I don't see this qualification as necessary. I have a brain and I like using it.

Rant over.

Precision

The statement "Mangoes are annoying to me," and the statement, "mangoes are annoying," are different. One is a personal "I" statement saying "this is something about ME," very clearly. The other, because of it's simplicity, says "this is something inherent in mangoes," clearly and it takes interpretation (i.e. positive intent) to twist this slightly to add the clarifying phrase "to me."

Don't accuse people of trying to make you simperingly sweet and force you to deny your inner self or your feelings simply because they want you to be CLEAR with your statements and avoid misunderstandings.

This is non-negotiable.

:pant pant:








Okay, it is negotiable, but I won't engage in the discussion right now.

gardening

Gratitude is the sun.

Love is the soil.

Patience is the rain.

Grow their roots deep.

I am.

A wound - in all its fresh intensity and dull, age-worn nature - is at all times an integral part of who you are. God's grace and healing don't change that, they don't undo the past and sometimes they don't even give you the strength you need. Sometimes they simply give you the strength you'll get and time drags you along, burying the past in other memories. You'll never forget, you'll never reverse the wrongness, you'll just end up with more and more and more life between now and then.

I was always a woman who lost her pregnancy. I was always a mother. I was always a child. I am always my past and my future. We simply have the blessing and the curse of not knowing who we fully are yet.

Having love for and communicating love to are different actions entirely.

I've come across several subjects regarding God's provision and love for us and how it doesn't always look how we want. One is the discussion of the story of Esther and how it is a story of how God works for good even when we seem abandoned. The other was a sermon on how our circumstances are not symbolic of our "worthiness" or of how much we are loved, they are simply our circumstances and God's love is greater than all of those and is so much more than him "making" us happy with an easy life.

Really wanting to read more about this.

That's a nice opinion...

Did it come preinstalled or did you upgrade to the TOTAL bitch package?


Some days my "ignore" button doesn't exist.

an interruption

I feel like these posts are jarring. I like the flow of my blog and then I get all petty and mean. But right now I am teeth-grindingly frustrated about something. It might be too much sugar or not enough fat or it might be dehydration, but i'm angry at everyone around me. I'm angry at the walls. I'm angry at the air and the clammy, humid fabric against my back. I'm angry at my job and I want to run away and just spend time being a mother. I'm angry at MDO for potty training kids too early so that my child looks like the odd one out. I'm angry that other people want the world a certain way. I'm angry that I don't feel trusted or important. I'm angry and hurt and sad.

There are deep secrets in the world. In the silence I hear their whispers. In the dark I see their shape. In the stillness I feel their presence. They are near. It is not thought or logic that hunts them down. They cannot be tracked by such bluntness. Stillness of the soul invites them, the leaves of intuition flutter in their wake. They are near. The veil is lightest as the sun rises. Wait for them just before the dawn.

Good days turn to train wrecks in an instant. How do you do this life thing? I think they forgot to ship the manual.

There is but one way for life to proceed. "If" is an illusion... a painful, painful illusion.

If you ask for more patience, be ready to practice lots of self control.

I'm wandering down a path of learning and self-discovery. Driven onward by my INFP tendencies and needs, I find myself deeper and deeper in the woods when others have stopped to make their camp. Most of them dropped off the trail miles before, or took less-desirable paths. Yet here I am, wending my way. Few fellow travelers are not NF types now, and most are NFPs.

It is a comfort to know I will not have to walk alone.

In the community I work in, grandparents buy $250,000+ houses so their grandkids can live in them.... o.O

Guess most people here are too good for bootstraps...

Dear world,

I do not think you know what love is. Love must be taught, it must be practiced, it must be done. Affection is felt. Infatuation "happens." Love is done. Love is the hard work behind affection. Love is the greatest task, in both weight and glory. To love is a very great responsibility.

Best parenting keywords EVER.

Natural consequences and logical solutions. BOOM.

I came out on facebook

It's not really something I'd realized I was keeping a secret. However, to make a point about judging others by our standards and our perception of their failings and sin, I announced to the world that I do not believe in punishing children.

Where do I go from here?

I have an impulse to explain myself, to say things like - I was almost never punished as a child and I'm not a serial killer, or talk about the latest psychological findings in the area, quote books I've read, even point out where in the bible translations, assumptions and culture have marred the very message of our Lord to our hearts. But I don't think I will. Not now, at least.

Suffice to say I think punishment is a sinful desire to control the behavior of another. I have never been punished by my savior or heavenly father, nor have I always been saved from the natural course of my decisions. Christ has taken all my punishment. I am simultaneously worthy and unworthy, guilty and blameless. In this tension, I hope to grow closer to my creator.

Our pastor, Joe, said one day he brought his three children into his study - one by one. His first, his son, he asked "What is the most important thing I've taught you? What is most important about life?" "Always do the right thing," his son answered.

I have failed, Joe thought.

He brought his second son in and asked again. "What is the most important lesson I've taught you about life?" "Always do what's right. Follow the rules," said the second son.

I have failed again.

His youngest, his daughter, came in next. Again he asked, "what is the most important thing?" he asked. "Jesus will always love me," she said.

Truly, I want the most important thing in my son's mind to be that Jesus loves him. I don't want him spending his life trying to mimic the fruit of righteousness. You can paint a rock red and tie it to a vine, but it's a far cry from a ripe tomato. You cannot punish a child into loving God or himself or you or his neighbors you can only punish him into feigning such things. Therefore I hope to disciple my children in the limited ways a sinner can so that they are pointed to God's mercy and love. The world has enough pain to teach the lessons the world demands. Mercy is not taught through a lack of grace.

And that's my opinion.

My flesh is made of song.

tight

When I say things are tight right now and you say "I hear ya!" I don't think you quite understand. Tight is not "on a budget" or even trying to grow your own food. Tight is not cutting back on eating out or saving less than normal. It's not buying one pair of boots instead of three.

Tight is leaving a grocery store in tears because you don't have enough money to pay for groceries and have to eat from the dwindling pantry for another week and a half.

Things are tight. You're comfortable.

someday far

one boy never home
in the time mother's door
gave away every mountain
in the last well garden
and dead things' bones
taught fallen boys to sing
to the sea-wind woman
sing with the blood bairn

we've seen winter men
lay broken words down
with hands born in water

God found every mountain
and named the snow river
whose water gave singing
and the words carried time
to face birds in the morning

Music dances in my blood.