Okay then.......

I had an eye opening conversation with someone today. I have an aquantaince, a young lady in her twenties, has 2 kids from an ex who evidently has several other kids, and is marginally involved in these kids lives. She also has a long time boyfriend who is present and involved in her life, helps with the care of kids, household expenses etc. She became involved with a coworker, a guy about her age, who is not attached at this time, is a big flirt, and is known for hitting on every girl he encounters, and is also known to be a bragger/exagerator about many things. Her take on it was, they were friends and decided to become physically involved in her words, on a "booty call' basis x approximately 4 months. I heard only after the fact when she commented that at least he was talking to her today, evidently he had not been since she revealed to him that she was beginning to have feelings for him.

Ok, this has so many thins wrong with it, I don't even know where to begin. Why would someone sleep with a person they were friends with unless they were really interested in being more than friends? I simply do not believe that (at least for girls), we get sexually invovled with people we aren't attracted to. Since she wasn't interested in having kids with this guy, only wants to be friends in theory, and works with him, and has a boyfriend, why would a booty call be needed? Why would one risk a friendship, and they have been friends for quite a while? I don't get the logic. I have to assume that she was not being honest with herself or him and really was attracted to him, and hoped it would blossom into more. So, when she revealed how she felt he stopped talking to her. If he was a good friend (and incidentally, a committed Christian, by his report), why would he allow that to happen? We don't treat our friends like trash, and we don't let our friends treat themselves like trash. I find the whole think reeks, it smells. I find the integrity of everyone questionable. I just don't get it. Maybe I do, but it makes me sad.

I remember what it was like in Jr high and High school. I am not so old that I don't remember. I remember that if I had had any principles I owuld not have done some of the things I did, and that if I had had any self respect I would have been embarrassed. I also remember that it didn't matter to me because it was more important to feel liked, to feel someone cared about me and wanted me, even if I knew inside that what they really wanted was what they were getting. Heavy sigh. I guess that is what is so sad, I don't want to understand but I really kind of do. It just looks so silly in retrospect. I want to shake her and say "what are you doing!!". Friends love us and care about us, they don't sabotage our relationships and use us for sex. Guys are not a substitute for self respect. We are worthy of being loved and we must know it. We are worth more than a booty call.

I wonder if this is where Roe V Wade has taken us? It's my body and I can do what I want with it. Except, what I want to do with it is abuse it and treat it with disdain and give it away to whoever will make me feel good about myself, and if I happen to get pregnant along the way it's ok, because I can get an abortion or keep it and use it as leverage against him, in case he thinks he is going to just dump me like trash. If we had respect for our own lives we could not help but have repect for the lives of our unborn, and perhaps even respect for the guy. Enough to know that if we really don't want to build life with him or he with us, a sexual relationship would be a bad idea. No life is leverage and no life is worthless. I think RVW has helped to foster a culture of disposability in human relationships, tragic. It fools us into thinking that the consequences of our actions are lessened, They aren't. The emotional and spiritual toll of becoming intimate with strangers is unchanged, no matter whether you get pregnant or not. God made us for relationship, our reason for existing is because the creator of the universe has a nature that is Love itself, and didn't want to be alone in that love. He wanted to share it, that is the nature of love. It's like denying we are human, saying we can have relationships like that. Relationship requires trust and committment, and vulnerability. Each time we allow ourselves to be hurt in
that way it takes a bite out of our souls and we wither. Real relationships build us up and make us more than we were alone. Why would we defend the right of anyone to make amockery of their humanity and the great gift God gave us to be human and to love.

What's new

Well, I haven't really written much lately about how things are going at home, at school and so on. I have been kind of busy, and with the holidays, time is short. Now that they are over and things are settling down, I can catch my breath.

My daughter is now off the Prozac, which I am kind of glad of. I don't know that it was doing much good and sometimes it seems sort of a panacea, the snake oil of our day. I do think she has some depression, but I feel she is helped more by how we deal with her and by encouraging a kind of cognitive behavioral therapy approach. She perceives the world in such a negative way, oftenw hen things happen, no matter what the cause she assumes a negative, why me or everyone is out to get me attitude. She doesn't even try to make things better in the areas she does have control over because she thinks, what's the use? It is a very helpless, dependent position to take. We encourage her to replace negative thought patterns with positive ones. When she says "I am stupid" we remind her that that is a lie. She isn't stupid. This is a very Christian approach, when we remember that God tells us that the enemy is a liar and that we combat that by replacing the lie with the truth. We don't argue about the validity or viewpoint etc, we replace it. What is true? God tells us what is true, not the world, not the Dr, and not even our circumstances. We know that he says we are created for a purpose, our lives have meaning, that he desires good things for us, we were meant for good not evil. That is the truth. So we try to help her with this.

We had a very disturbing event after Christmas, while they were on break. We had gone round and round about her room being a pigsty all weekend, and late in the evening, just before bedtime after nothing had been done with the room, she was getting ready for bed supposedly. I went in to tuck her in and found her standing in the closet with a belt around her neck, tied to the rod. Needless to say, the night got a lot longer. We had her in to see the psychiatrist after this, and I really think it was more a case of wondering what would happen if, rather than an actual attempt on her life. He agreed. She is a dramatic kid, and I can kind of see her thinking to herself, I'll show them, boy will they miss me when I'm gone, or even, I'll make them sorry they push me around, all the while going through the motions. Had I not come in and found her, I believe she would have undid it and stepped out before she actually did anything, realizing what a silly thing it was. ADD kids have poor impulse control. They act out before their minds really process what they are doing, it's what causes alot of their behavior problems. It's not that they don't know right form wrong, their emotional brakes suck.

I suppose it seems silly to take her off the Prozac after that, but it really was not making any difference in her mood, and that waskind of an anamoly. But it is a perfect example of how hard it can be to parent a kid with ADD. You can't predict alot of their behavior, it seems like they are acting immature and in a way it is, but they don't have the ability to manage themselves as well as other kids their age. People assume they are just poorly disciplined, but that isn't the case. We disciplined the kid 10 ways to sunday and it just never did any good. That's the problem. They need structure, but not neccesarily more discipline. There is a difference. People who criticize these kids or their parenting really don't understand. They try to apply logic that would work with the average kid to a situation where it just doesn't work. They don't really believe you, and I think that even the most well meaning freinds and family secretly harbor a suspicion that if they were the ones dealing with the kid, the problems would not be as bad. I understand, we told ourselves that for a long time, but you begin to realize when it happnes day in and day out that these are not kids that function like other kids. It's like blaming a VW for not going as fast as a mustang. They just don't respond the same way. You only understand that when you see them every day in every situation. Maybe if either of us had the same problems we would have seen it sooner, I am sorry it took so long. We just kept telling ourselves that she needed more disciplining, that she was just stubborn, etc. We had to face the facts. If it took us 12 years, I don't suppose anyone who only sees her occasionally can really grasp what we go through and what we have seen. You can't imagine your kid sitting in their room, screaming over and over again, in rage and frustration, because of some small mishap that most kids would brush off. You can't picture them hitting the walls or banging their head against a wall, because they are mad. You watch them make the same mistake over and over and over, and you can't imagine why they won't change their behavior. They are so filled with frustration and anger, and you can't imagine where it comes from. Never the less, there it is.

We completed the assessment by the district for special ed, and they decided she did qualify under "other health problems", becuase of her emotional disturbance. I listened to the eval results and they said the over all theme was that she has this learned helplessness, "poor me" which impacted her motivation more than the ADD affects her ability. It does but more than that she just doesn't try. I know that. They said she doesn't ask for help, I explained that that is because in the past when she asked for help the teachers would tell her no, because she asked too often. They would get tired of helping her, because they wanted her to try on her own. She just got to the point where she wouldn't ask and wouldn't try. She shut down. It's a lifetime of failing at everyhting you try and being told it's because you aren't trying hard enough. They said she kept talking about how she is disabled, that was a crutch for her as to why she couldn't do something or why she should be treated special . I tried to explain that she jsut found out about the ADD last year, and for several years she has been told it was her fault. Finding out there was a reason for her problems was a relief and I am not surprised she clings to that right now. I would too. Anyway, the be all and end all is, she will have an IEP and more hlep than she has had before. YAY! We have our first IEP meeting at the end of the month. I am looking forward to it.

Something to think about

It's kind of an extensive list of scriptures, but I wanted to point out how many time, at least that I know of, where God says he put his name on Jerusalem as "his" city. There is one piece of real estate that God has chosen as special to him, indeed, the "Earth is the Lord's and the fullnes thereof", but there is one piece that he put his name on. I think that is provocative and that those who would lightly say that God isn't involved with what happens to that city are not paying attention or haven't really read their bible.There isn't any other city he has said this about, so it isn't as if it's God speaking in general terms, if hedoes much of that. Jerusalem is special to him, and those who would mess around with it should be very cautious.

36And unto his son will I give one tribe, that David my servant may have a light alway before me in Jerusalem, the city which I have chosen me to put my name there.

1Ki 14:21And Rehoboam the son of Solomon reigned in Judah. Rehoboam [was] forty and one years old when he began to reign, and he reigned seventeen years in Jerusalem, the city which the LORD did choose out of all the tribes of Israel, to put his name there. And his mother's name [was] Naamah an Ammonitess.

2Ki 21:4And he built altars in the house of the LORD, of which the LORD said, In Jerusalem will I put my name.

2Ki 21:7And he set a graven image of the grove that he had made in the house, of which the LORD said to David, and to Solomon his son, In this house, and in Jerusalem, which I have chosen out of all tribes of Israel, will I put my name for ever:

2Ki 23:27And the LORD said, I will remove Judah also out of my sight, as I have removed Israel, and will cast off this city Jerusalem which I have chosen, and the house of which I said, My name shall be there.

2Ch 6:6But I have chosen Jerusalem, that my name might be there; and have chosen David to be over my people Israel.

2Ch 33:4Also he built altars in the house of the LORD, whereof the LORD had said, In Jerusalem shall my name be for ever.

2Ch 33:7And he set a carved image, the idol which he had made, in the house of God, of which God had said to David and to Solomon his son, In this house, and in Jerusalem, which I have chosen before all the tribes of Israel, will I put my name for ever:

Jer 3:17At that time they shall call Jerusalem the throne of the LORD; and all the nations shall be gathered unto it, to the name of the LORD, to Jerusalem: neither shall they walk any more after the imagination of their evil heart.

Behold, I will make Jerusalem a cup of trembling unto all the people round about, when they shall be in the siege both against Judah and against Jerusalem.

And in that day will I make Jerusalem a burdensome stone for all people: all that burden themselves with it shall be cut in pieces, though all the people of the earth be gathered together against it.

Zechariah 12:2, 3

And I scattered them among the heathen, and they were dispersed through the countries: according to their way and according to their doings I judged them.

And when they entered unto the heathen, whither they went, they profaned my holy name, when they said to them, These are the people of the LORD, and are gone forth out of his land. Ezekiel 36:19, 20

Therefore say unto the house of Israel, Thus saith the Lord GOD; I do not this for your sakes, O house of Israel, but for mine holy name's sake, which ye have profaned among the heathen, whither ye went.

And I will sanctify my great name, which was profaned among the heathen, which ye have profaned in the midst of them; and the heathen shall know that I am the LORD, saith the Lord GOD, when I shall be sanctified in you before their eyes.

For I will take you from among the heathen, and gather you out of all countries, and will bring you into your own land.

Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean: from all your filthiness, and from all your idols, will I cleanse you.

Ezekiel 36:21-25

So, we know that God has put his name on Jerusalem, and he says that he protects Jerusalem for his names' sake, not because the people are particularly great, but to protect his good name.

A winter's drive on a snowy day, Mt Hood

Movie reviews

Just wondering, but would the movie critics be slathering so much over a cowboy romance if it involved a man and a woman? I think not, but then, who knows, I'm not a movie ciritc.