The Night of Questions

I had the most wonderful evening with my family -- hubby and two daughters -- the night before Thanksgiving. After dinner (a late one, because I was a bit disorganized), hubby got out an old Book of Questions he's had for two or three decades and started asking away.

Would you enjoy spending a month of complete solitude (food and shelter provided) in a beautiful natural setting? Hubby was a definite yes; the rest of us were not so sure.

Does the fact that you have never done something before increase or decrease its appeal to you? This one definitely showed up the differences between our daughters. Those of you who know them don't even need to ask who said which.

If your friends and acquaintances were willing to bluntly and honestly tell you what they really thought of you, would you want them to? I said no -- I would obsess over any criticism I heard and ignore the positives.

Assume there were a technological breakthrough that would allow people to travel as easily and cheaply between continents as between nearby cities.  Unfortunately, there would also be 100,000 deaths a year from the device. Would you try to prevent its use? We ladies said absolutely . . . until hubby pointed out that there are at least that many deaths a year from automobile accidents. Which then brought up the question: if we had lived at the time of the invention of the automobile and knew how many people would die each year in car wrecks, would we have tried to prevent its use? Much more interesting question, because it's hard to conceive of modern life without the automobile.

Would you like your spouse to be both smarter and more attractive than you? Hubby, of course, had to get smart-alecky with this one.

When did you last sing to yourself? Uh, a couple hours ago, in the car.

What was your best and worst experience with drugs or alcohol? Hubby asked this one as a joke, knowing neither of our girls uses -- and yes, we are sure of that. But we did get some interesting responses. The youngest remembered with disgust the church we visited a few weeks ago that used real wine for communion (seriously, the look on her face was priceless). The oldest mentioned a night when I gave her an Ambien and she was Skype-ing with a friend before she went to bed -- apparently, she was quite entertaining, her friend told her.

Would you give up half of what you now own for a pill that would permanently change you so that one hour of sleep each day would fully refresh you?  I was the only one that went for this one enthusiastically. There's a lot I would give to get fully refreshing sleep. Overall, though, I noted from many questions that money is not a big pull for me or my girls, which is good to hear.

Would you be willing to murder an innocent person if it would end hunger in the world? Oooooh . . .

Since adolescence, in what three-year period do you feel you experienced the most personal growth and change? The girls couldn't really answer this one . . . but hubby picked the ages of about 23-26 (interesting, because that's when we first met). I picked the ages of 26-29 -- my eldest was born when I was 27. So much in those years that changed who I am.

If you learned you would die in a few days, what regrets would you have? Surprising to hear the regrets my daughters have already in their short lives.

We spent about four hours sitting talking about this stuff. No TV. Just talking. It was wonderful. I will probably treasure its memory for years -- when the girls are gone and I'm remembering the joy of living with them, last Wednesday night will be one of the moments I remember.

Too bad I have no photo to put in the scrapbook.

We, Like Sheep, Are Not All That Bright, You Know

A couple years ago, I wrote a play for the younger homeschoolers in Sioux City that was about sheep and the Good Shepherd. Basically, I made a list of every sheep reference in the Bible -- and there's a LOT of them -- and pulled them all together into a storyline. It was more of a challenge than I was expecting when I conceived the idea. I didn't like the script at first, but in the end, I had several people tell me it was one of their favorite of my plays.

All this to say, I am well acquainted with the Biblical discussion of sheep and have developed a fondness for the analogy. So when I read in Matthew in our BSF lesson that Jesus told the disciples he was sending them out "like sheep among wolves", I perked up.

Amy, our teaching leader, noted something about sheep last night. They're dumb. Really, they're not all that bright. In fact, they are not even able to forage and find food on their own, like a goat would. Sheep have to be taken to places where food is readily available, or they will starve.

They also, I learned in my own research for writing the play, can't distinguish a safe plant from a poisonous plant. A shepherd has to go ahead of them and pull out any grasses that would be dangerous for them to eat. This is actually what is meant in Psalm 23 when it says, "You have prepared a table for me."

Sheep NEED a shepherd. Sheep literally can't survive on their own; they only survive when they depend entirely on a good shepherd to take for them. (Which makes one wonder how they ever would have evolved and continued to propagate before humans were around to care for them . . . but I digress.)

In my play, I had one rebellious character, Felicia, who insisted that there was no such thing as a good shepherd and kept "crawling the fence", trying to find a way out of the sheepfold. When she finally got out, she immediately got herself lost and stuck in a ravine. And that's when she discovered that her shepherd was truly a Good Shepherd -- he sought her out, rescued her, bound her wounds, and lovingly brought her back to the fold. Because he loved her and knew her for what she was: a dumb, dependent, but beloved sheep.

And WE are sheep. We are made to be dependent on someone else. Dependent on God, of course, in the greatest sense. But I think we are also supposed to be dependent on each other -- our families, our neighbors, our churches . . . the American Way aside, we are not meant to live individualistic lives.

It's not coincidence, I'm sure, that in Jesus' analogy of the sheep and the goats, the self-reliant, independent goats are the ones sent to damnation, while the dumb, dependent sheep are welcomed into the kingdom. Pride is the root of all sin, after all. Not only is God unimpressed with the work we do on our own apart from him (even if we're doing it FOR him) -- but we simply prove that we have missed the point of the gospel completely.

One should be cautious of any value being promoted to us that begins with the word "self": self-reliance, self-esteem, self-actualization, self-worth . . . you can't ever get to genuine relationship or community -- with God or anyone -- if you begin with self.

New Life Growing From the Top of my Head

I realize it may seem a bit vain to spend an entire blog post talking about my hair, but hear me out.

Growing up, my hair was straight as a board, and I hated that. I had a long, thin face, and I thought my long, straight hair just accentuated that and made me look like a horse. So, I tried desperate maneuvers with a variety of curling irons and rollers to change the shape of my coif. All to no avail. By lunchtime, all my curls would disappear.

Then during my junior year, when I landed my big theatrical lead of my high school career (Ruby in “Dames at Sea”), the director asked me to perm my hair. Hallelujah! I loved this! I continued perming my hair for years – many years after the style was in any sense fashionable. It was an EASY style. I washed my hair, put a little mousse in it (maybe) and let it dry. Glory! With two little ones in tow, I hated the hassle of messing with my hair.

Then my friend Maria in Jersey offered to color my hair for me to save me the money I was spending at the hairdresser's. As she was finishing up, she said, “You wanna see what your hair would look like straight?” And she pulled out this remarkable little flattening iron and proceeded to make my hair straight and amazing-looking. I was so excited! I immediately bought myself one of those handy little tools and had her teach me how to do that with my hair.

That was my last perm. I let the kinks grow out and took to straightening my hair after every wash. And I did find it interesting that even when the perm had grown out, there was enough “wave” in my hair to require the flattening iron. But I didn't think much of it.

Until we went to Panama . . . and my hair took on a life of its own. I may as well have left my beloved little tool at home because my Panama hair defied it with vengeance. That hair was big and curly and flyaway and I'd have had more luck bottling the waves of the ocean than taming the locks on my head. I chalked that up to life in a different continent, one of the many things that would be new in my world if we decided to make that move. Everything was so different in Panama that my hair being curly seemed to just fit right in.

Imagine my surprise, however, when I found the same to be true in Texas. It's not quite as bad – I can force my hair almost straight right after a wash, but it's not worth the effort. The picture above is my own little head. My naturally curly head that still doesn't feel like it belongs to me. I paid good money for this look twenty years ago, and now it's given to me as a gift. No, it's not the climate -- the climate isn't THAT different here -- it's just my freaky hair.

I don't get it. I've heard of a woman's hair changing dramatically after pregnancy, or growing back differently after chemotherapy, but I've just been living life and suddenly my hair has decided to create a new life for itself.

As if it were inviting me to do the same. Weird.

Thoughts While Playing Bunko at the Neighbor's House Last Night

- How do you play bunko again?

- Dang, women are loud.

- The evening's theme is PJs and breakfast food. I think this is the first breakfast event I've been to in San Antonio that didn't include salsa.

- And I've never drunk wine with my breakfast, either, but that and water are the only beverages available this evening.  Oh, wait!  Someone just brought in a pitcher of orange juice.  Awesome!  I love orange juice.  Wait . . . this isn't just . . . sigh! Glad I walked here.

- I got a bunko and a boobie, both in the first round before I had any idea what I was doing and understood the significance of either.

- Our new neighborhood seems to have a nice mix of ages.  We haven't had opportunity to meet many folks yet, so this is nice to see. All lily-white, though -- which is surprising in a town where anglos are in the minority. And a little disappointing to me, because part of the appeal of coming to San Antonio was that I might hook up with someone willing to talk Spanish to me and help me learn (Panama is still in the back of our minds).

- I love breakfast food. I wish my tummy wasn't acting up so much. What did I eat for lunch that's coming back to haunt me . . . ?

- Bunko's an interesting phenomenon. A friend in Sioux City invited me to a bunko night, so this is my second go at it. The game seems to be created simply as an excuse to mingle and chit chat. Frankly, it almost feels like speed dating.

- Dang, women drinking wine are LOUD.

- And these drinking women are not fond of Obamacare. One lady just found out their insurance is being cancelled -- the suggested replacement policy will have an $8000 higher deductible and cost them $3000 more a year.  Three women in the group work in healthcare (one's an occupational therapist, don't remember about the other two, if they said). They all say they knew this was coming from the moment Obamacare started being discussed. And they all say they are losing doctors at their places of employment (I want to ask if those doctors quit or were let go, but I'm not drinking enough wine to be loud enough to get a word in).

- Finally starting to remember how this game works. Not that it matters -- there's no skill involved whatsoever. But at least I can keep up with the competitive ladies who are really into this, of which there are a couple.

- A former first grade teacher in the group (who's expecting her third son in a couple months) and a mom of a first grader are talking about money and math. The mom's daughter is anxious to learn how to count money, but the first grade teacher tells her she won't learn that until second grade. That was her biggest frustration teaching, she says; she had some kids who were ready to move on to counting money and beyond, and then other kids who couldn't even name the coins. So many levels she had to accommodate . . . and the ESL kids mixed among them.  Yep. We give public school teachers an almost impossible job.

- And the hostess decides she's done with bunko after eleven rounds; time to stop and just drink. (These women aren't drunk or anything, I should clarify; it's just clear that some of them are really only here for the wine and the talk -- maybe they had rough days.) So, I end the night with six wins, five losses, one bunko and one boobie. Which wins me nothing out of the $5-a-lady pot. Oh, well. I didn't come to win money. Or to drink wine.

I came to meet my neighbors. And that's why I'll be back in December . . . with a $15 white elephant and a plate of hors d'oeuvres. Maybe I'll bring the salsa this time.

Moral Pagans at Your Local Church

My youngest popped up with an interesting observation the other day. She said (and I paraphrase), "Sometimes, I think it would be easier to be a Christian if you weren't raised as one." I suppose many Christian friends of mine would have been shocked at this remark, probably dismayed, and perhaps even a bit horrified.

But I told her, "You know, honey, I've been thinking exactly the same thing."

The Biblical stories become old news rather than amazing revelation. God's love becomes a fact to be presumed upon, rather than a cause of wonder. At a drama rehearsal with my homeschoolers last spring, we talked about how even the resurrection of Christ doesn't seem so amazing when you've heard about it every week since toddlerhood.

But not only can truth become humdrum . . . it can become warped.

I read (and reposted) a great article on Facebook last week called "How to Raise a Pagan Kid in a Christian Home".  (For those who are picky about such things, Johnson, the author, has a disclaimer about his broad use of the term "pagan". Don't get hung up on that and miss the point.) Johnson writes about a concern I've had for years: in our churches in America, we teach our kids legalism. We teach them that God loves them and wants them to be good -- and that's NOT the Gospel. The Gospel tells us that we can't be good, at least not good enough to earn the favor of God. The author says it so well:

The gospel is not about making bad people moral, but about making dead people alive. If we teach morality without the transforming power of the gospel and the necessity of a life fully surrendered to God's will, then we are raising moral pagans.

The gospel is about making dead people alive. And one thing I've noticed about people raised in the church is they often aren't aware of their deadness.

My daughter's concern -- and mine, also -- is that, the Bible teaches that we are a new person when we surrender to Christ.  The old is gone; the new has come. But when you are raised with clear and explicit knowledge of what this kind of new person looks and behaves like, you can do a pretty good job of faking it without ever experiencing the real transformation. I've done it. I bet many of you have, too.

Back when we were first married and moving around a lot, joining new churches on a frequent basis, Hubby and I used to playfully bemoan the fact that we had pretty boring testimonies. Raised a solid Baptist . . . baptized as a kid . . . faithful in church attendance and service . . . yawn. Not that we wished for a past drug addiction or something to liven up our histories, but you know -- just a better story. That's what I was -- here's what I am now, thanks to Christ.  No big dramatic changes to talk about when you've been "raised right".

I'm not arguing that we shouldn't raise our children "right" or raise them in the church -- I'm just saying that we need to be certain that we're raising them in the truth. And that requires us having a really solid grasp of the truth so we don't accidentally communicate something else.

As the author quotes Phil Vischer saying, we need to stop worshipping the "Oprah god", stop drinking the "cocktail that's a mix of the Protestant work ethic, the American dream, and the gospel." We need to stop believing (and thereby communicating) that the Christian life is about keeping yourself clean, working hard, and being nice to everybody -- and that when you do that, God just blesses us with comfortable, easy, prosperous lives and all our dreams comes true. Plus you get to go to heaven when you die.

That is NOT The Gospel, and it will only make us -- and our children -- moral pagans.

Self-Inflicted Torture

When I first met my husband's new boss and fellow employees at a dinner last spring, someone told me that the boss goes to the gym every single morning and works out for an hour before he goes in to work. My second thought about that was, That shows a lot of discipline. My first thought was, Man, that sounds like HELL.

Maybe it's because of my years of sleep deprivation, but there is almost nothing -- well, let me rephrase that -- there is no first-world habit that sounds more completely horrific to me than getting myself out of bed at 5am and driving to a gym to work out for an hour. There have been times in my life when just dragging myself out of bed at all would feel so torturous as to bring me to tears. To do so voluntarily . . . and to make myself go exercise immediately after . . . impossible. You may as well have asked me to cut off my own finger.

I've been trying to exercise at least a little every day this fall -- primarily, I've been running.  Okay, it's more a walk/jog, but I call it running to sound cool. My daughter's cross country adventure inspired me; with the good weather here, the safe neighborhood, and my open schedule, there's really no excuse for me not to do it.

But I still hate it. I learned about a week into it that I can't have a mental attitude that I'm going to push myself on my run -- you know, make myself run longer or further than I did last time. Then I end up hating and dreading it all so much, it's too easy to talk myself out of doing it altogether (I'm amazingly good at rationalizing -- that is, lying -- to myself). I have to give myself permission to run when I'm up to it and walk when I need to.  Otherwise, it would never happen at all.

But it's not just the actual running I hate. I hate dressing for it. I hate putting on my workout clothes first thing in the morning rather than real clothes . . . but I hate even more having to change into workout clothes later. I also hate being sweaty and gross for a while afterwards. And I hate having to take a shower when I'm done. If exercising was just about the 15-20 minutes I actually exercise, it might actually be tolerable.

Nah, I'd still hate it.

Sometimes, I wonder about Adam and Eve in the garden. Did they go jogging around Eden to keep their bodies strong and in shape? Maybe the work they had to do in the garden was enough exercise for their bodies. Actually, I have a different theory (one that many of you will poo-poo straight out, but that's okay). I don't think they needed exercise. Their bodies, before the fall, were perfect and uncorrupted. When sin entered the world and creation began to groan under the weight of it, human bodies were included in that groaning. Our physical deterioration is a result of sin, and therefore, so is our need to work so hard to fight the deterioration.

So, I blame Mother Eve. If it weren't for her, I wouldn't be sitting here in my sports bra, t-shirt and shorts trying desperately not to think about going out to run when I get back from dropping the eldest off at school. All for a stinkin' piece of fruit.

Now, if she'd done it for a Krispy Kreme donut, I'd understand.

WDGT - What Does Gwen Think?

Because I feel a tremendous responsibility to my readers -- many of whom, I know, hear of a current event or a piece of news and immediately find themselves wondering, "What Does Gwen Think about this?" -- let me give you a run-down of my opinions and feelings on a few items:

- Ritchie Incognito and the Miami Dolphins.  As far as what went down with Incognito and Jonathan Martin and whether Martin's departure was justified, who really knows. But I have been shocked by what this incident has revealed about the culture of football in our country. Former players and coaches keep being interviewed on the matter, and they all seem to say the same thing: yeah, Incognito got carried away, but this type of behavior is just what happens in the NFL.

So, we pay grown men OBSCENE salaries (players and administrative types) to play a game violent enough to require so much safety equipment covering their bodies as to completely hide their natural body shapes (and they still have horrible -- even life-threatening -- injuries).  We encourage this violent attitude to the extent that behavior and conversations which the rest of society would find extremely offensive and which might land them in jail are normal among these men. And we allow our boys to idolize and try to emulate these men. 

And we allow it all to happen for the sake of being entertained by the game. Are we really that much better than the Romans with their gladiators?

- Black Friday.  I've never shopped on Black Friday because I hate getting up early on a holiday, I hate big crowds, and I don't enjoy shopping in general. But it has gotten a bit ridiculous how early stores are opening. I'm not so upset about the employees having to work on a holiday -- there are thousands of people out there who have to work on holidays. But it just cheapens Thanksgiving Day to make it about shopping now. Nothing is meaningful anymore.

The thing is, the only reason those stores open so early is because they know somebody will show up to shop -- scads of somebodies, in fact. Kind of like how the politicians only use dirty tactics because they know they work. We get what we deserve.

This is related to the football item. The Marketplace is morally neutral, but it makes our societal moral weaknesses so apparent.

- Kennedy and Lincoln. Both on my mind lately. I've read Bill O'Reilly's books about them this year (yes, Killing Jesus is on my Christmas list). Excellent, excellent books -- whatever you think about O'Reilly. The Kennedy movie being on the National Geographic channel (and all the other discussion about the anniversary of his assassination) has led to talk with my daughter about marriage fidelity, communism and the cold war, presidential safety . . . good discussions. (The book is very frank about the president's affairs, but interesting to note, it also says that the Cuban missile crisis struck such fear in him about losing his family that the other women lost much of their appeal.)

The Lincoln book I read a while ago but has been fresh in my mind because my daughter is memorizing the Gettysburg address for school, and they are going to film the class reciting it at Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery for a presentation at the Christmas program. Such an amazing speech.

- The Obamacare ads.  You know, the ones with the women excited to get birth control so they can hop into bed with the guy they just met. Seriously. I mean . . . ugh. It's just . . . it's so . . . I'm sorry.  I can't even find words to communicate my contempt and disgust for this.

- Texas weather. It got down to freezing here the other night, which is apparently extremely unusual for around here this early in the season. My daughter's math teacher had frost on her windshield in the morning and had to sit and think what to do about that. It really has been quite chilly, which is refreshing. My new Texan friends tell me that we have cold spurts like this once in a while, for a few days, all winter long, but then it warms up again. I'm curious to see how we like the winter weather in Texas.  Part of me thinks I'm going to miss having at least some snow. I'll just pray for a white Christmas so I get my snow fix when we're in Kansas for that.

- The President's speech yesterday. Refreshing to hear his more humble attitude. Unfortunately, I don't think this fix is going to fix a thing. And that's all I'm going to say about that.


There you go, friends. This is what I'm thinking these days. Go forth and think likewise. ;)