Mean Mama Walking

We have a sick mama among us. She’s sick in a way that she isn’t ready to face yet.

I was surprised that her secret was so open. But then I learned there’s another mama who is making sure everyone knows.

And not in a nice way. She is actively and purposefully making sure people know.

This kind of stuff takes me by surprise because no one in the important part of my life is like that. I make dang sure.

But every now and then someone on the outer edge, like this mama, makes a wave in my peaceful circle. And since I’m not looking for it, it smacks me sideways.

I called Dana to rant and rail: Is she new here? Doesn’t she know that we don’t act like that in this place? That we are space-holders and second-chance-givers and call-down-the-power-of-heaven-pray-ers?

Dana said Who is this again? One of the moms at your new school?

And I said Oh.

The new one here is me.

Making friends is hard. We just want people to know us already. We want to trust that people are who they seem to be the first time we meet them. But there are wheels within wheels in any community, from small town schools to big city corporations—unspoken rules by which everyone plays and the new folks have to figure out through trial and error.

It’s good for us to know about new places and new people, but it’s exhausting.

For months, this mean mama showed me what she wanted me to see before she showed me the truth. When I finally saw it, I turned to the other mamas, who told me that I was for sure the last to know.

I’m glad I know. I will be careful around her, but if she comes my way, I will be challenging and honest. I can ask hard questions with kindness to find the truth, because I believe we have to use our powers for good. We absolutely cannot be each other’s competition or entertainment. It’s not about shutting people out, but folding them into a network of love and support that all mamas can and should be to each other. I am not saying we walk blindly into the fire, thinking if we can just be nice enough, the fire won’t burn us; but there’s things we can do to lay the fire down so it provides warmth instead of scorching the earth.

I think that mean mamas are hiding something, creating a diversion over there, so no one will look too closely here. They are hurting and insecure. They may never have known true sisterhood friendship.

We have to show them what it means–and how our lives and hearts can grow–when we have truth-loving, prayer-saying, light-spreading, space-holding sister women in our corners.

Ignoring the Elephant

About Planned Parenthood.

The Senate voted 52-47 against defunding the other day, with 8 Republicans breaking rank. They aren’t going to defund it.

Americans have strong feelings in both directions of this debate. But that’s having no impact on the lawmakers. Oh, they’re talking and holding hearings. But the Senate vote tells us this is a moot point.

So why the Congressional circus?

It’s a really important question.

Back in July when this all started, a local minister published a blog post helping his congregation understand his position on this issue. My warning bells began ringing at a line (since removed) that referenced the fetal parts being sold to China, or other Eastern countries.

It felt like a hollow and racially charged dismissal of what was to me a huge piece of the puzzle: Why does anyone want fetal parts?

(Let me just state now that I know the position of Planned Parenthood is that they did not “sell” anything, since that would be against the law. They were simply charging for processing and shipping of donated parts. I have read the justifications over the high fees. I understand what is happening there and why.

But since there is an undeniable market for fetal parts, I am sticking with “sell”. Call me stubborn.)

I did some very basic research, which led me to Stem Express and this inconvenient truth: the fetal parts are sold to research universities and firms in this country. You can read the New York Times article for yourself, but you need to know that most of the top universities in this country—from which many of our top politicians graduated and some of which are tax-payer supported public schools—are doing business with Stem Express, and therefore Planned Parenthood.

While there was early chatter about Stem Express when this all broke, they have disappeared from the targeting around this issue. The sights have settled firmly on Planned Parenthood.

Why?

I don’t mean why are we targeting Planned Parenthood—I get that part. I mean why are we ONLY targeting Planned Parenthood?

Why not the laws that make this type of transaction legal? Why not the universities who sponsor this research? Why are we not defunding all of it—and yes, our tax dollars fund fetal tissue research, in some estimates to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

Well, the universities are using the fetal tissue to do stem cell research. To find cures for diseases which plague us. To make the blind see and the paralyzed walk and the cancer ridden rise from their beds healthy.

To save man from that which he fears most: death.

That’s another inconvenient truth.

There’s big money in this research, biggest of all for pharmaceutical companies. Just last week we saw what a whimsical racket that can be. And while some are howling that Planned Parenthood is using their lobbying money ($856,000 in 2012) to bully politicians into supporting them, that financial leverage is small potatoes when we start to understand the powerful machine that is Big Pharma ($148 million in 2012).

And that’s when I decided that this is a faux argument.

It’s the perfect set-up, where everyone gets to flex their beliefs. The pro-life folks can picket and pray. The pro-choice folks can stand shoulder to shoulder in defense of women’s rights. The presidential candidates can fire up their stump speeches and get cheap and easy cheers from their base. Everyone walks away with a “we showed them” fist in the air.

It’s easy. Too easy. And anything that is this important should not be easy.

If I said that Big Pharma will not allow Big Abortion to be defunded because then they would lose their supply of research material, I might sound like a conspiracy theorist.

So I won’t say it. But I will say that we are having a costly and headline-generating discussion on Capitol Hill about something that sure looks like it will never happen. Babies will continue to be aborted. Their parts will be sold to researchers in the US and used to create medicines and procedures that might save lives but for sure will make everyone involved a ton of money.

It’s awful to consider that our leaders think we are that stupid.

But maybe we are, clinging so tightly to our notions of pro-life and pro-choice while the elephant in the room gets rich off our single-mindedness.

Super (Crazy) Mom

I have thirty seconds that aren’t even really spare to write this because I am in the midst of Gabriel getting dressed for football–which is like a WWF event since eventually I will have to threaten to body slam him before he’ll believe that he can IN FACT tie his own dang shoes—and preparing for whirlwind Kate to get home from tennis to switch her school uniform out for her Brownie uniform and head to Scouts.

At this point in the day, I can only pray that I remember to high five Shea as we pass in the garage and make sure that Annie gets into someone’s car.

Although I recently showed her how to push the stool over to the fridge to reach the food, so if she does get left behind, she will be able to feed her 3 year old self. Plus, she’s a third 3 year old, which means she’s resourceful.

Annie is the one prompting this post because in between emptying backpacks and skinning a butternut squash that will get cooked at some point this evening, my brain said “Hey, what happens when Annie needs to be somewhere too?”

I said “I don’t know” with a capital F.

When Gabe handed me the Join Beginning Band form last week and said “I think the trombone would be cool”, I just barely managed not to laugh in his face.

Oh really? You think I want to be at school by 8 to drop off, 11 to pick up Annie, 3 to pick up Kate and 5:30 to get you?

We told him no, just like I told the altar server coordinator no on Sunday. “After football, for sure” I said. “So football is more important than God?” he asked, predictably. I rolled my eyes at him. My mom will tell you guilt hasn’t worked on me since way back.

“He will be at Mass and Sunday school. It’s no sin to not be an altar server” I told him.

I know there are super moms out there who can make it all happen, but I am not of their ilk. Not to mention that shuttling kids from one activity to the next on a schedule with Tick Tock precision, fueled by OCD and Starbucks, makes one neither super nor a mom.

We call those people “handlers”. I didn’t have kids to handle them. I’m trying to build a family of God-loving, kind human beings who eat as a family at the table and discuss ways to make this world a better place than we found it.

Please.

Right now we’re lucky if we can eat Taco Bell in the same car once a week without squirting hot sauce on somebody.

So if you’re the mom who swore you would never over-schedule your kids, knows how to say no and still finds herself split into a hundred car-pooling pieces?

You are not alone. I don’t know what the heck happened either.

At this point, there’s nothing left to do except salute each other with our water bottles full of (vodka) Gatorade and soldier on.

When It Stops Being A Game

By now you must know the story of the high school football players who clocked the ref.

For some insane reason, Good Morning America and Outside the Lines hosted these boys and their lawyer on Friday morning so they could rationalize their behavior.

Impossible.

When someone shows you who they are, believe them.

The ref may have used racial slurs when referring to the players. The coach may have told them to take the ref out. If those two things are true—and I am of the opinion that at least one of them is—then, so what?

The two boys would like us to believe that they didn’t want to hit the ref, but they were following orders. And that the coach who told them to make the hit is like a father to them, so they obeyed.

I laughed out loud because this approach is typical to their generation. Nothing is ever their fault–even when we have them on tape. Hopefully some adult in their lives will seize on this moment to teach them about personal accountability.

It’s not just what the kids said. It was the comments underneath the article, too. A lot of commenters were of the opinion that if the ref said what the players say he said, then he deserved it.

“What were they supposed to do? Let him get away with it?” Or “If they hadn’t hit him, he would have gotten away with it.”

As if there aren’t rules and governing committees and administrators who can handle this very type of thing.

You know what would have made real, lasting waves? A coach pulling his team off the field to protest racist comments made by the official.

Instead, a forfeit was more costly in that moment than integrity.

When someone shows you who they are, believe them.

After twenty years of playing and coaching, I can say with certainty that these kinds of things do not come from nowhere. Everybody knows when a program is off the ranch. From coaches to parents to the school and district administrators—they all are lying if they say they had no idea this was the tenor of that football program. Also when they protest “This is not who we are, this is not what we stand for”.

Yes it is. The NCAA calls it “lack of institutional control” and it is never a surprise. Only a regret.

If you are going to let your child get mixed up in the world of sports to the extent that they are wearing a varsity jersey in high school, then you have an obligation to know what kind of a program you are sending them into.

People talk, and where there’s smoke, there’s fire.

When someone shows you who they are, believe them.

Called to Less

Last weekend we met the coolest family camping.

The kids met first, as kids will do in a campground. Kate and Ezra were a perfect match, two cuties in glasses laid out on a blanket playing with their dolls. Her younger brother Phoenix, and Annie, just a year apart, took to each other like fish and water. There was a dump truck involved, and lots of giggling. At one point they were just laying on their backs in the sunshine, laughing up into the clouds.

Even the older ones, Micah and Gabriel, found kinship in their reading habits. As I listened to them talk about books, I felt the sweetness of a conversation between a boy and girl just on the edge of being too embarrassed to talk to each other.

Mom and Dad—Amber and Sundance—made the most amazing decision a year ago.

It’s not for everyone. But it confronted Shea and me, in a good reflective way. So I’m going to share it.

They sold their house and bought a trailer.

Sundance has a job that travels for weeks at a time, and Amber and the kids got to missing him. So Amber did a little research on homeschool and talked Sundance into making their lives mobile.

Usually they go where he goes, but Amber wanted to spend the summer among the redwood trees, which is how they ended up in Klamath, camping across the row from us.

All of the questions that may be popping into your head can be answered over at Amber’s blog, www.notsopermanentpillow.com.

I will tell you that when I asked if it was forever, she shrugged and said that was the beauty of it. If they are done, they’ll just go back home. In the meantime, they are together, having adventures and learning how to function as a family in a 28 ft trailer.

That was the part that confronted me. They down-sized their quantity of life to up-size their quality of life.

No big house where everyone has their own room, tons of toys and three TVs. Just one shower, one toilet and one closet.

It made me think What would it take to get my family down to one closet? The answer is a lot. It would take a lot. And that made me sad.

It’s been on my heart for a while now. Our home in Oregon is everything we thought we wanted in a home, brand new and beautiful. Our So Cal money went far in Oregon, but the truth is, we could have chosen something smaller. Something less. That would have allowed us room to travel more, tithe more, share more of what we have.

But when we bought this house last year, we let our egos make the decision. That’s a hard and humbling thing to admit. And now too much of what we have is tied up in the house.

I don’t think it was by chance that Amber and her family were camped across from us at the mouth of the Klamath River. I think God was saying Look. Listen. See what life can be when you stop trying to keep up. You already know that keeping up is not what I want. But you have to find the courage to let it go.

I’m not packing up my kids and heading off into the sunset, because homeschooling is not my gift. No, no, no.

But Shea and I have some praying and listening to do over the next year.

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