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.

not feeling much outside of anger and numbness today. hooray.

a borrowed ear

I log on to social networking sites, but the truth is I don't trust a lot of people anymore.  I don't trust them to not be cruel.  I much prefer the few who know me here, along with any wandering strangers.  It's a mess, you know.  I feel caught in a jacob's ladder of second-guessing others' impressions.  Some days I don't know who or what I am, other days I'm as sure as salt.  I feel as though one mind occupying separate bodies of emotions & concerns.

So friends and strangers.  I'll tell you what I couldn't tell fb or g+:  I'm soaking oatmeal for the morning.  Enough water to cover it and a bit of buttermilk to acidify it should be enough.  I have high hopes for waking up early and fixing it all up before church.  I know my record for high hopes, but I choose to have them regardless.

I greatly enjoyed the act of pulling out my little kitchen scale, the clink of the glass bowl on its glass plate.  I love the word and meaning of tare.  It makes things seem weightless - it seems to mess with the very physics that hold the world together.  Anything can be nothing.  It makes the world feel minorly unsolid.

I like the perfect numbers as well.  One point zero zero.  For a moment it read one zero one, but a generous pinch corrected it's error.

Scraping the smushed oats out of their cardboard cylinder bit by bit.  It's a cousin to the feeling of plunging your hand into a bag of smooth grain, or scooping cool softness of a well-turned bed of earth.

Tomorrow I look forward to folding in dried fruit and pouring maple syrup into the thing and pressing it to the corners of my pyrex pan.

The baby burned his finger today.  Just a little - on a pan that had been out of the oven a couple minutes. He was barely upset & I was glad for a real example of the word "hot."

The past couple weeks have felt so difficult, so full and heavy despite the fact I was off an extra two days.  I feel so wobbly and tired.  Now this house is making noises and it's freaking me out a bit.  

friends.

They're knitting a web.  Close and comfortable.  Private.

It hurts my heart that I'm on the outside.

I don't feel loved.

My son qualifies for early intervention speech therapy.  There isn't much in this world that is more frustrating than being told to get him on medicaid when you've been doing everything you possibly can to make that happen, yet still been denied twice.  The government is just so well run that they make things due on days it's impossible to turn them in.  Like Sunday.  Perhaps the only thing more frustrating is being told to talk to him about everything... when I already do.

I took dev psych, people.

My son could also have a very bad blood disorder.  I don't know because I can't afford the tests without his medicaid.  See, even as he sits here in my lap, the iron in his blood could be building up in his tiny organs, damaging them beyond repair.  There's no cure - just a lifetime of blood transfusions (and the risks associated with those).

It took me a year to get a (free) eye exam.  Because so many other things are more important.

We're getting kicked out of our house.  My husband plays video games instead of packing.  He turns on the TV to dull my child's brain and he dicks around on the computer.  He won't take care of his loans even though all he has to do is make one call to the school to get them to fax one piece of paper.  Then he gets mad at me for not doing my lab time for my spanish class.  I've accepted that part of my classwork is going to suffer because of this move.  Our credit and finances are infinitely more important than 5% of my grade in what is essentially an elective.

I should leave and take my son to the museum.  I should take the modem and his power supplies with me.

He dicks around and wastes time while getting to do what I desperately want to do.  Stay home with my son. I try to convince myself I don't know why I have the dreams I do - but it's a lie.

A cold and spiny creature nests beneath my breastbone.  It pushes my organs aside for a bed, lining it with hatred plucked and gnawed from its body.  When it stirs, I clench my jaw, sending pain through my teeth.  It infects me. Like some horrific fetus fatally misplaced, it writhes if investigated.  So I leave it.  It can't get out.  For now.

The Quakers ruined holidays for me

but in a good way...


"Friends have also eschewed the traditional church calendar of holy days, not observing religious festivals such as Christmas, Lent, or Easter at particular times of the year, but instead believing that Christ's birth, crucifixion and resurrection should be commemorated every day of the year. For example, many Quakers feel that fasting at Lent but then eating in excess at other times of the year is hypocrisy, and therefore many Quakers, rather than observing Lent, live a simple lifestyle all the year round (see Testimony of Simplicity). These beliefs tie in with Quakers' beliefs on sacraments and the belief that all of life is sacred."

I leave my kitchen light on at night.  The dim light illuminates the sink with its soaps, scrubs and colander in a warm, yellow glow fading to gray in the room's corners.  My mom left her kitchen light on.  I would wander toward it for a cold glass of milk on occasion.  I remember the floor being much too cold; I remember shivering to move the sleepy, sluggish blood in my veins and the pain that shot through my dilated eyes to the back of my head. 

I never need the light anymore since my body has outgrown milk and water is never quite worth the journey.  My son will make the same little midnight pilgrimages in only a few years, but until then, his midnight milk is warm and snuggled next to him. 

But still, my kitchen light is on. 

The drops settled heavily on the glass. My skin pricked as the sun rubbed uncomfortably up my arm. The night's chill slowly settling down, drawing itself into the clamminess of the air as the summer's morning sun warmed the world too quickly. I was lost. In that cast iron chair on the porch, chilled by the dawn, I soaked in the sunrise. Watching another day fall over my small, unruly stretch of grass, gravel and brush was comforting, in a way. It was the regularity of it, the promise, the constancy of change. Time bloomed forward effortlessly, simply. I always felt like I was meeting face to face with a deep and beautiful truth when I stayed up this long, waiting out the darkness. Waking up to it was never this way, I was always too dazed with sleep to really feel anything other than the clocks ticking away. The urgent push to move, to ready, to leave. No, it was different this way - like we were equals, like I'd kept in stride with time. I even sort of loved the tiredness that came a few hours later. The true weight of sleep always fell so heavily after these mornings. The crushing force of it reassuring me I really am human. I loved giving in to that feeling.

I'm not a mother I'd like to have.

My mother isn't who she used to be. I can't trust her anymore. She's letting the wrong voice in.

My father is so fatigued. You would be too.

My grandmother is blinded by hate and lies. She'll live forever, but I'll never really know her.

My brother may not survive over there. It really wouldn't be fair to him, he deserves so much more out of life... I wish he knew that.

My friends are thin. All we talk about is how we should get together more. That's hardly having anything in common. One of them, I feel like I never talk to her unless I've got something informative to talk about. I feel awkward and am overly aware of my elbows and how congested the skin on my face feels. I feel sick when I talk to her, because I know we probably aren't friends. I just need a friend so badly, but can't step out of this shell anymore.

I feel like I'm always reaching.

I feel remarkably sad that some of you are so far away from me, physically or emotionally.

I'm sorry for being a bad person. Perhaps I'm just bad at being a person.

Mon enfant

Every hour I am away from you
I want to draw you closer
But I still can't understand
the reality of you
You are still but an extension
of my being
Must I love myself before I can love you?

On Motherhood

But the strength of God is sewn in my seams;
binding this patchwork being.
Stitching the skin to heal
in silvered scars.
Like a punctured wineskin
I pour forth into you
my child.
You rent and tear my heart.
He holds us together

His seams weave my being anew.

Homeschool moms with their WIC & their libraries, their SUVs guzzling govt-subsidized gas, babies all covered by Medicaid, complaining about the slackers living off the system - it kills me.

a highly sensitive child

In first grade, the boy I gravitated toward cut the back of his hand. He came to school with a white bandage wrapped around it. I remember feeling so sad that my chest hurt. He was perched in the homemade treehouse in the playground of the school and I stood at the base of it. Wanting so bad to comfort him and show him how sorry I was that he was hurt, I picked up the broken handle of a plastic spoon, quickly studied it to find the sharpest spot on it, and repeatedly scraped it across the back of my hand. The pink, ashen scratch rose slightly off the back of my little 6-year-old hand. I showed him how I'd hurt myself to make him feel less pain & he just turned away. He didn't understand. No one really did.

Do you?

soul.

soul.
sole.
bottom-down.
underneath.
that which presses into the ground.
that which is closest to the earth.
center.
stillness.
axis.
foundation.
support.
strength.
rest.