Me Don't Have To

Laney has discovered a new phrase recently. She tells me defiantly when I ask her to do something, "Me don't have to" or she uses the excuse "My tummy hurts me." I'm trying right now to teach her that like it or not there are things in this world that you have to do. Especially when your mother tells you to.

This morning I heard on the radio about a mother who is failing miserably in teaching this to her daughter. Evidently the high school from which the young lady is about to graduate has asked for all the girls to wear dresses for the commencement exercises. Her mother is considering pursuing a lawsuit claiming that such a request is descriminatory. Horrors! For once in her young life this girl may have to do something she thinks is unpleasant.

In what way does a dress demean someone? In what way does it hurt anyone to dress up for certain things--like graduation, weddings, funerals? I could see her point if out of all the students graduating, this one was asked to put on a dress. I could see her point if the young men attending graduation were not asked (which is not likely) to wear dress shirts and most likely ties to graduation. Young men don't usually like wearing ties any more than some young ladies like to wear dresses.

But this young lady might have to do something she doesn't want to do for at the most 2 hours and her mother is planning to tie up our courts over it.

I wonder how the mother in question survived the toddler years with her daughter. Did she immediately give in to every demand and never ask her child to do anything? If so, she has raised a child that is grossly unprepared for what she will face in the coming days. How sad.

Even sadder is the fact that this young lady is not alone. There are hundreds of thousands of people in the coming generation that see absolutely nothing wrong with the idea of a lawsuit over this sort of thing.

Let me tell you the philosophy of parenting that my dad handed down to me from my grandfather--If a child wants to do something that is neither destructive or hurtful to themselves or others, it's probably okay to let them.

If a child never learns that there are some things he or she will have to do, no matter what their mood, if they never learn that there are authorities we must submit to in our lives, that is destructive to their character, hurtful to others around them (because it breeds selfishness) and ultimately hurtful to themselves because they will believe that the entire world is out to get them--over a little thing like whether or not to wear a dress.

How nice would it be if this young ladies mother, instead of claiming that it is discriminatory for the high school to ask her to wear a dress, would instead tell her daughter how nice she would look in a dress, or even take her shopping to help her find something flattering? All the while insisting that she live up to the requirements the school has set forth. Would it really be so hard to do? Are dresses really that symbolic? No it isn't hard. All you have do is enforce the rules.

The End of the World

Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.--Matthew 26:41

Are you creeped out that today is 6/6/06? Me neither.

The media seems to be preoccupied with that silly little fact today. It's been on every news report I've heard. "Today is the sixth day of the sixth month of the sixth year. What does it all mean?" Which is absolutley ridiculous, because while it is the sixth day of the sixth month, it is not the sixth year. Go back and ask Adam how what kind of day he had on the actual sixth day of the sixth month of the sixth year--that date wouldn't have been 6/6/6 either. Even less accurate, is the year 6 A.D.--which historians estimate to be about the year of Jesus' birth. I could get into why the date and the signs of the end are not related in any way, but that would take too long.

But the date--or more accurately--how we write the date today seems to be on a lot of minds. Even the pastor of the church where I work asked me if I thought the rapture would occur today. With so many people expecting it to, I think the chances are higher for tomorrow. After all, Jesus said no one knows the day or the hour. So while the rapture could occur today, I don't think it will because God wouldn't want any smarty-pants people saying, "I told you so."

But the end of the world will come. Don't worry about that. At least if you do worry about it, worry about it in the sense that you live your life the way you should, always expecting that each day may be your last. Because we never know.

A family in our community lost their little boy last week. He was only five years old and he died in his sleep. No one knows right now exactly what happened, but the fact remains, we are only given a certain amount of time. Don't wait until tomorrow to do the right thing, you may not have a future here.

It's difficult to explain how we can be homesick for heaven and so earth bound at the same time. We cling to life for so many reasons. We want to see how it all works out. But reality is that life is like a t.v. show or book that we never finish. Hardly anyone dies with all the loose ends tied up. We forget that we will have all the answers we need when we are ushered into paradise.

Thinking about this is tough, because I know that at any moment I could be snatched from the lives of the people I love. I wouldn't want my children to grow up without knowing me, for my husband to have to raise them without me, or for him to miss out on growing old with me. We've spend the difficult years of getting to know each other, raising small children and financial struggles together so I'd like to think that our happiest years are ahead. Even the rapture is tricky. Because while I know that heaven will be great, and my children (too young to be accountable) and my husband will be there with me, I still in some way wonder what the rest of my life would be like.

We always have to remember that the end of the world, is not the end of everything. It's like the REM song says, "It's the end of the world, as we know it." And really that can be said of everyday, because we don't know what is ahead. We only have sketches and shadows of what is to come.