Let's learn about reasonable confrontation

1.
So, one good thing about blogging is that you begin to notice patterns of behavior that are potentially problematic.

For instance, in the past 48 hours, I've had several moments of panic in which it seemed that something was out of order:

• Man lying flat in Walmart
• Elderly woman wandering around without clothes
• Schools and institutions casually supplying babies with computers

The first thing I do is bounce my response off other people.

Oh, no one's freaking out? Everybody's cool with this? I guess it must be ok.

And then I glide forward, comforted that no one else has a problem with the problem.

I'm looking around, I'm judging that this family over here has well behaved kids who are respectful and smart--and they let their kids have iphones.

Or on a different day, when I'm feeling differently, I'll look around and say, that family over there has disrespectful poorly behaved children, and their children have iphones.

Either judgement can be a salve to my mood, depending on the day. What I'm mostly concerned with, the thing that most influences my decisions, is whether or not I feel alright. I have a predetermined idea of what I sort of want to happen, and I seek out the evidence, and the particular witnesses that support the conclusion I want to live with.

2.
Yesterday, I had this whole theory written up about about how it's all the fault of the media that I cannot hang onto a conviction for longer than ten minutes. Because I have empathy fatigue, you see, and in those times when I've allowed myself to really FEEL the horror of what's happening in the world, when I've cried over the kitchen counter and behind the steering wheel about the culture my kids will inherit, and the potential horrors they may encounter--I end up feeling so wasted and helpless. And it's exhausting.

It's true that I am at the age where many of my friends have encountered real sorrow and loss, and I want to walk with them in the reality of their experiences. It's difficult to do that while also shriveling up into a puddle of hopelessness every time I read the news, so I've developed coping mechanisms, which include just limiting the amount of empathy I can exude for people I don't know in real life. Click on through to the heartwarming story of triumph, to the video of goats dancing, to whatever makes me feel that the world is a livable place.

3.
Plus, I don't like confrontation. Real confrontation anyway. My husband's convinced, "We're dumping pre-school."

But I've expended all my outrage on two unsent email drafts and a blog post, and now I'm wondering if maybe I overreacted.

If I'm going to be a grown-up about this issue, I'm not going to send the apocalyptic email drafts schooling the principal on all the research I've done on the effects of technology on early childhood education (research which included telling my husband "If we're going to ask for our money back, can you at least Google up a couple of peer reviewed critical articles that make our point so it looks like we have no choice?").

I think I must be able to have a non-reactionary real life conversation, where I calmly express my concerns and ask if they have any suggestions about how they might be able to work with us.

But that makes me nervous!!!!


4.
Just like having a real encounter in real time with a suffering person at Walmart makes me nervous.

Why? Because it's moving forward in blindness? Because my whole day might get sucked into it?

What exactly am I protecting when I am unable to remain faithful to the initial horror I feel in the face of suffering?

Maybe it's just resistance. I see the good, but I do not do the good I wish to do.

5.
Or maybe it really is that I'm not empathy exhausted, but that I've always been a little empathy limited.

I kissed my older kids off to school this morning with a poison tongue.  ....Because we have one shower for the eight of us, and they are always, every one of them, waiting for the last minute to use it.  And once they're in it, they stay in it for.....ev.......er. So I shut the water off on my oldest after several warnings, even though he had soap in his hair, and he just didn't have time to rinse!!!! 

I gave everyone a big lecture on how I have no empathy for this argument, because I used to have to take three minute showers in cold rusty water, and how many people don't have running water, and yada yada, and if your hair is crusty today, it's your own fault.....! And I'm leaving at 8 no matter what, and if you miss your ride, you ride the bike, and you were still in the shower at 7:55, blah blah blah...

Save your tears for a time when you really are suffering. I mean, maybe that's a legitimate message they need to hear. No one is persecuting them by asking them to plan ahead, to shower during "off" hours when no one else needs the bathroom, to limit shower timing out of courtesy to the rest of the family.

It's just the way I deliver the message that is unsavory. These are the blind, reactionary confrontations I never avoid. I go in for the HARD correction at the exact moment I discern a need for it, with little plan for getting out of the conflict, and no thought to a charitable delivery. And it really does eat away my whole day, because I repent of my poison tongue the second they're out of the car, and I weirdly miss them, and think Oh, they're just kids. And I loooooove them! But I'm SOOOO BAAAD At showing it.

6.
One small victory:

My new Freshman was not waiting outside the door when I'd made it through the pick up line after school. I'd already spent 20 minutes in the cattle pen at the elementary school, and I needed to be at the Middle school simultaneously to pick up my daughter who would be waiting in the 90 degree heat (to say nothing of the poor AC in my car).

Couldn't wait because there were cars behind me, so I went ahead to get my daughter, which meant long lines at two four-way stops. The after school traffic is so bad, that it takes about 20 minutes to travel around the corner a mile away. Finally made it back to the high school to get my freshman, and the gates were locked so I had to send my daughter to look for him inside.

And of course, every minute that passed was another minute for my irritation to grow. I was planning a big lecture again about courtesy and timeliness.

When she finally came back with him, and he was smiling this big apologetic smile, I was able to say when he got in the car: "First I would like to hear about your day, and after that I'm going to deliver a lecture about after school protocols, because what happened today does not work for me."

And that really was all that needed to be said on the issue.  He knew it. I knew it. If I'd lectured first, there would have been no way back to pleasant conversation.

That's the problem with confrontation, I think, is that I haven't developed peaceable exit strategies.

7.
And I wonder, outside of therapy, how this is done: How do you speak your truth, calmly and rationally, while providing everyone involved with a dignified pathway forward?

What tools do I need in my toolbox, aside from expecting everyone to subjugate themselves to my demands?

Help me, internet!

Maybe I'll die alone on this hill, but computers for kids are a bad idea

Today I am incensed, which is a funny word to mean angry, since I associate it with thuribles and sweet smells rising to Heaven.

It was pre-school open house this morning, and I've never, ever started a child in pre-school this early--three years old. The older kids didn't start school till Kindergarten. I'm not sure what made me think this was a good idea. Lured by the two mornings a week I'd be able to exercise, plan appointments, write without interruption, just be alone.

But I discovered this morning that the three-year-olds (and the four-year-olds, of course), USE IPADS!!!!!!!

PRE-SCHOOL IPADS!!!

Maybe it went over my head in the promotional materials, all the "letters, play time and fine motor skills" they'd be learning, and the parent app where you can watch your child's progress. I thought, oh no, that's just the teachers uploading their finger-painting... It showed a book icon and said something about keeping a journal--both of which were apparently figurative.

How often do they use them?

"Well, it's a "station" they rotate into, but I can hold your daughter out of that station unless it becomes a problem and she feels left out, or you change your mind. Sometimes kids who need help focusing use them in the morning as well."

Is there any three-year-old on the planet who does not "need help focusing?" And have you ever been in a room with an iPad where every child in the room wasn't hovering around it, jockeying for a better view?

This is a Catholic school, which --my children unanimously voted--has the worst library in town (And we've attended four different schools, plus the public library).  It's volunteer staffed and donation only, but somehow the school has funds to put iPads in the hands of three-year-olds.

In June, when the kids were released for the summer, my husband and I bought a lock box and put all the tech in the house in the box to be "checked out" only with permission. Our hopes were that the kids would have a normal summer, riding their bikes, digging in the dirt, calling friends, just being horribly, horribly bored.

Of course, in their boredom, over the course of several weeks, they:

• Stole the key to the lock
• Jimmied the box
• An finally, cut the lock

We had no choice but to evacuate the computers completely from the house. My husband put them in the trunk of his car, and took them with him to work.

Here's the thing about people (not just kids): they always increase the intensity of their rebellion right before they concede. If you can bear the worst kind of acting out, the worst tantrum, the worst stonewalling, name calling, etc.-- there is peace on the other side.

When the kids realized, without a doubt, they weren't going to get what they wanted, they dug in and made the best with what they had. Which happened to be nerf guns, matchbox cars, books and bicycles.

Really, after the first couple weeks, I think we had the best summer of our lives. My oldest, who is fifteen, spent his "lame" summer doing nerf gun modifications, custom spray painting, re-wiring, making his own nerf darts out of foam pipe insulation and hot glue. When he needed tools, he rode his bike to the hardware store himself. Learned more electrical information than in a year of engineering tech class (incidentally spent on screens).

I even talked to the engineering tech teacher, and was like, "I thought this was more of a shop class, where they'd be doing hands on work with tools and machines."

And he was weary, completely weary: "Yes, I used to teach a lot more of that," he said, "but the standards have changed. The tech is online. You can't even begin a project until you to know CAD." Forget the drafting table. Forget the math.

Which, speaking of math, my fourteen-year-old completely faked Algebra for half a year, because the whole class was online. He used Mathway ("an exceptionally smart calculator"--he said), which allows you to plug in any math problem on earth and get an answer.

At the semester exam, the first time they used paper and pencil to assess student knowledge, it became clear that my son had acquired no skill in Algebra in five months.

"We're not raising thinkers anymore,"--this from the AP Biology teacher, who also shrugged his shoulders, helplessly.

Even the new DRE at our church proposed moving the Confirmation program online because there are only four students in it (two of them would have been mine).

This is where we leave you--Religious Ed Program in Waning Small Town Church. Perfect solution for community failure: virtualize what little community you have left. (Have I mentioned we used to have Catechesis for the whole family, including dinner with plenty of volunteers?)

There's just no other way to steer this sinking ship. The parents, the employers, the test writers and curriculum developers, all demand: start the tech AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. And be sure to solve every problem you encounter with more tech.

"Drill these things into your children, day and night, when you are home or away, when you lie down and when you get up. Bind them on your arm as a sign and let them be as a pendant on your forehead." (Dt 6:7-8)

....OR....DON'T.

Don't put your kid in the dumb pre-school class, even though you've pre-paid. Maybe they can use her tuition to buy some books for their stupid library.

It only took most of the summer to surrender, but the kids finally played in the dirt.

Hits and Misses (mostly misses) for the first day of school

1.
The first problem is that every year the school board elects to make critical changes in the schedule, so we've switched to early releases on Wednesdays, and a balanced vacation (which means decreased summer vacation), and this year, the high school kids begin class at 8:30 rather than 7:30, which felt really late.

Late enough that after everyone was ready for school, I had time to sit down and fold some laundry--because I like to pretend that I, too, am getting back to business at the start of the school year.

Sitting down is a bad idea with teenagers around, because they all sat down as well, and then at that moment when I'd intended to stand up and rush out the door, nobody budged. One of them was working on his summer assignment for AP history that he started last night at 9 P.M. [that's 75 vocab words, and 10 research charts (don't know what those are) to be completed before falling asleep. Unsurprisingly, he did not have the adrenaline to pull the Ace out of the hole]. So we all had questionable intentions, and no aces. The kids were late.


2.
I had so much confidence going into this week that all we were missing was the glue sticks. But this morning I realized that I'd forgotten to consider lunch.

The older kids had money to carry over from their accounts last year, but the younger kids are back in Catholic school, and there you have to order lunches on the 25th of each month. If you fail to do this, you must bring your lunch, which, theoretically is not bad, but if you're not planning to pack a lunch, good luck finding fresh fruit in the house, or a portable beverage, or a sandwich bag, or your lunch box from three years ago.

The easy fix here was to send the kids without lunch, run to Walmart after the drop-offs, and deliver lunches to school before 11 A.M.

3.
Walmart was vaguely interesting this morning. When I rounded the checkout lane, a man was lying in the middle of the aisle with a woman giving him chest compressions and mouth to mouth.  A smattering of people intermittently looked on and went about their business.

"Has anyone bothered to call 911?" I thought, followed by, "Surely, everything here is under control," and I went ahead and unloaded my groceries on the conveyor (I said a Hail Mary too, because I'm not a complete animal).

But it seemed like a long time before anything happened. My checkout person was oblivious. Other patrons just looked at each other and shook their heads like there was nothing to be done.

Remind me not to die at Walmart.

Fortunately, I passed the man on the gurney on my way out, and he was sitting up looking a little stoned. EMTs were not particularly hurried, so all's well that ends well.

4.
Also passed an elderly woman not wearing any clothes. Really, she had on a slip, completely see-through, down to her wedgie grannie panties. And again, "Should I intervene? Is this woman lost?"

But nobody else seemed alarmed, so I soothed my conscience that all was as it should be. She was pushing a cart, after all. She had direction. And while I was currently dressed in real clothes, since it was the first day of school--I have more than once pushed through Walmart in sleepwear.

Because this is Indiana, Baby. Who could live anywhere else?

5.
This morning is reflecting rather badly on me, so I'd like to note a couple of small victories:

I was initially registered to attend a writing conference this week, which would have left all the first week of school mistakes up to my husband. Of course, he's a man of excellence who probably would have at least gotten the kids to school on time.

But I am here, fully available, to enrich the lives of my children with my partial attention to detail.

One decision and course of action, not completely marred by self-interest.

6.
Speaking of writing, it turns out, I have another post at Image up today. I wrote it in 2010, but it still holds, I think.

7.
I remembered to put a frozen roast in the crock pot, which could potentially be thawed and cooked by dinner time tonight, if we eat at our habitual 8 p.m hour (should probably start scooting that up).

I may also make some bread for this afternoon, which is the only way my kids will eat the prolific yellow squash in which I foolishly invested a whole row of our garden. I can't even pay my friends to take this stuff anymore. I dropped off a load at Salvation Army, and they were like, "Woman, we will take your squash. If no one takes it from the food pantry, we'll mix it into dinner."

Sorry.


8.
Now that I've done a quick examination of what went right and what went wrong with the morning routine, I will go forth, and likely change nothing. I still didn't see glue sticks at Walmart--because their school supplies are thoroughly picked over. I cannot guarantee that I won't sit down in the morning during the hurry up and wait part of it.

I do have lunch foods that I can pack now, but I'm going to continue to regret not ordering school lunches for the month, because that's one guaranteed hot meal a day with vegetables that I don't have to choke down the kids' throats (We've got a tomato barf-er here, and just try not cooking with tomatoes this time of year. The squash I can negotiate, but there are people drooling on insta-feeds for tomatoes such as these.).

9.
And look, I never got to Jesus this morning. I knew blogging was a bad idea.

A blogger reflects...

Write every day. I agree. I want to write every day. I keep thinking I'm going to light up one of my old blogs again, was thinking of doing scripture meditation or something, not because I'm especially insightful, but because I want to devote time to meditation. I want to devote time to writing in general, which I haven't been doing at all.

It's been restful. And other things besides writing have been interesting. I suppose the cat's all out of the bag to my family now that I've been playing cello and banjo in a Grateful Dead cover band. I don't have much more to say about that other than It Is SOOO fun!

I did always think I'd come back to music--that a lot of writing over the past decade was a function of being home with toddlers and that as soon as I could blow this joint (you know, for a few hours at a time) I probably would.

 I now have two, almost three teenagers in the house. My oldest gets his driver's license this year. This summer has been quite wonderful, because I both enjoy being home with them all, and can also pop out on my own if I need to go to the grocery, or for a jog (or to band practice!).

My youngest starts preschool this month and for the first time in fifteen years, I will have actual hours of the week where no one is in the house but me. I don't know whether to rejoice or panic.

So...I suppose it's time to cast around again for an identity:

• What do you call a forty something stay at home mom, who has no kids left at home during the day? 
• What if she now thinks she's a musician in a hippy band, while also being a blogger who meditates on scripture? 
• Does she maybe need to grow up and get a real job? 
• And if so, why--presuming her husband's job meets the financial needs of the family? 
• Is it ok for her to blog if she is privileged, and spends most of her life in pursuit of frivolous  artsy-fartsy things? 
• Is it ok for her to blog if she has nothing profound to say to the many dreadful cultural concerns of the day, and accidentally posts something shallow on the same day as a terrorist attack? 
• Is it ok for her to like life pretty well, and to have no messy, messy, complicated, personal/spiritual problems to discuss online? 
• Would you really want to read what this woman has to say about anything, much less about Jesus?
• AND! What if she perpetually disregards blogging best practices by posting irregularly, using boring titles, omitting pictures, and failing to promote her blog on social media?

These are questions I'm asking myself.

Until I have answers, here's a post I wrote at Image a couple weeks ago.

Eden at the Indy 500

I managed to live in Indiana for forty years before visiting the Indianapolis 500. A friend offered my husband and me tickets on our anniversary weekend, which also happened to be the 100th anniversary of the race itself, an event that was expected to draw half a million people.


“Oh, why do you want to do that?” My family has used this rhetorical question for many years to discourage wanton desires.


We have shared a long-standing prejudice against the race, because it is a place people go to sit in the sun too long while consuming too much alcohol, and my family largely consists of fair-skinned people who do not drink. We have also casually directed this disdain at amusement parks, cruises and the state of Florida for the same reasons.


My dark secret is that I sort of like drinking in the sun. Like nearly all the forbidden things I’ve tried, it feels quite good, until it’s horrible.

Read the rest

The day is beautiful. I have nothing to say.

And I'm tired of my own voice, even though I keep talking... about prophecy and the native place, wherever that is.



I don't know who wrote this piece on praise bands, lipstick, and futility, but you might.

The problem with imitation

St. Therese once wished aloud that her own mother would die. When her mother scolded her, Therese explained that then she could sooner go to heaven.


My children received this anecdote with perverse joy, telling their siblings to jump off a bridge, run out in the street, and let go of the tree branch…that you may sooner see paradise, of course.


Given a choice between heaven and hell, they will gladly choose heaven. But faced with a choice between heaven and earth, they start hedging: Are there Legos in heaven? Who’s going to be there? Is the music any good? Why do they have a gate that keeps all the fun people out?

Read the rest