Only a couple of weeks ago, I was wondering out loud how wonderful it was that I haven't been sick in a long time. The flu fairies must have heard me. I got sick Monday before last, while I was painting (but of course) and by Tuesday (while I was painting, of course) I was fully-blown sick. It is now a week and a half later and I slept little last night because of all the coughing.
Yeah, I know.... waaaaaaaah. Get over yourself. We've all been sick, and I have been sick before. But this time I was more contemplative about it, ha! Ken happened to have taken off work a few days for our anniversary. He spent those days pampering me, bringing me hot soup and movies. Some vacation?!
I thought about people in my life who have really suffered.....struggling with cancer, a dying spouse, the death of a child, dementia. My Mom's good friend Elaine has deteriorated very far into Parkinson's recently. She called me one day, not too long ago, looking for my Mom. Her sentences were fragmented and she couldn't remember enough to make much conversation. My heart broke for her, as she was very dear to me. I used to enjoy getting her sassy opinions on things. She was smart, funny and wry in her observations. That part of her is gone now, but I remember her and hold those memories as precious parts of my life. She is not physically gone yet, but that is not long in coming. Even though her body is failing, her spirit remains and will go to be with the Lord, where she will see it all clearly and know freedom for the first time.
Our bodies just cave in on themselves, eventually. Some people grow old easily and then die gently, but it is highly unusual. When I was younger, I cringed at the hopelessness of it all. It seemed a travesty, to grow old and lose your function and dignity. People have fought it from the beginning of time. In this day, we cling to the fountain of youth like it's the gross national product. Well, I guess it is.
My body is aging, faster than it would naturally, because I am often bad to it. I eat the cheese instead of the green stuff. I throw caution to the wind way too often. Either way, I am aging. I feel the bones groaning, the elasticity fading. Sometimes getting out of a chair is plain embarrassing.
The world is tainted with sin's fallout. My body is tainted with the same. But I pray that I will not be sorrowful for lost youth. I don't want to gaze back too much. Glance back, yes, be thankful, yes.... but continue to embrace the present, the moments that God gives me and us to savor while we can, and to look forward to any plans He has for our future. Old Dr. Denmark used to say that life is good, even if all you can do is look up to the night sky from a gutter. What a good perspective. Maybe that's why she lived to be 113 years old.
Thursday, February 21, 2013
Monday, February 4, 2013
Pansy boys and capable women
I am looking around and I am very concerned. I decided to take a personal straw poll.... over the last few days and weeks, my purpose was to observe boys and young men, to notice their hands. Yes, their hands. Not something I would necessarily notice unless it were my own sons and husband, checking for engine grease or yard dirt, on our way out to dinner or church....and my sons are grown and married now so that's not my jurisdiction anymore. Okay ya'll, if the Apocalypse comes, we're in big trouble. Because honestly, in my week or so of doing this, I didn't see one set of hands that I felt could whup a zombie. I'm a 52-year-old fluffy gal, and I am absolutely certain that I could whup any one of these boys with my hands tied behind my back. Now that is plum scary.
And I am not joking when I say that you young mothers need to wake up and smell the coffee. Yes, we got the vote a billion years ago. Yes, we can be a Senator or run for president or do "anything" we want to. Yes, there are things that have changed for the better since the great Female Emancipation. But I wonder if we have not exchanged freedom for slavery.
My children's pediatrician, Dr. Leila Denmark, who died last year at the ripe old age of 113, reminded me of that ancient adage, "The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world." And that is where we got off track. Women are raising their boys to act like women, and they are raising their girls to act like princesses and soccer stars. Most people are using Hollywood and their peers to get their parenting cues. We really are in big trouble.
I do not have anything against a girl being an athlete. I was a child-to-college athlete, playing softball, running track and playing basketball up into college. My own daughter is a college athlete; thankfully it is helping pay for her tuition. I learned a lot of intestinal fortitude through athletics: how to endure pain and exhaustion, how to go beyond what I thought I was capable of doing....lessons that have helped me immensely in life, particularly in motherhood. The thing that my parents did right through that was that they also encouraged me to be my feminine self. Many of my athletic friends, particularly in college, seemed to want to be a man. Many were looking for approval from their fathers that they were not getting in any other way. There are a lot of issues here that I am not going to talk about now; I am digressing again. My point is.....
MEN.
Our society is turning most everything upside down these days. We were watching the Super Bowl last night and I was struck once again with what has happened to men and women's roles. Any commercial with a family in it, the man is changing the diapers and cooking. And the men are always idiots. The woman is all-wise, all-knowing, and the final authority on pretty much everything. The only one capable of rational thought between the couples is the woman. The man is capable, all right, but only if he is being subservient to the woman. We've all seen this metamorphosis, but it happened so gradually, we just accept it as normal.
We should be raising both our daughters and sons to be multi-faceted people, who are able to do many things. It is plain stupid to raise children that can only work on the computer or that can only cook or that can only do school. I work in a lot of private homes, and it seems to me that most people are not even doing that. They are raising their kids to be parasites whose brains are stuck on a TV or in a computer game. Hardly anything is expected of them and when it is, you see whining, stomping, fuming....and then the request is withdrawn. I have seen 4-year olds screaming at their mothers and teenagers that won't even take out the trash. Sorry folks, but if my 21-year old (much less a 4-year old) screamed at me like that, she'd find her head laying on the floor beside her body. Perhaps that's why she or her brothers never behaved in that manner.
It is a huge responsibility to make sure that they can SURVIVE. Are we forgetting this? Things may not stay the way they have been the last 40-50 years. Your children may have to actually work for their food. What will your sons do if they have to dig a ditch or hoe a row? The girls are probably more capable at this point, because at least they've all been playing soccer. Please forgive my sarcasm.
The boy/man hands I have been seeing are soft, girl-like, and with nails that I'd love to have. But I've got my hands in soap and paint and fun stuff all the time, so that's just envy. I guess I could change that, but I'm too busy living. Many women are afraid, yes, afraid, to let their husbands get involved in the direction of their boys' lives. They don't think their husbands are spiritual enough or that they won't do it right. Then there are husbands who don't act like they want to have anything to do with their sons. But I know men. They give up when they see that nothing they do is acceptable to a woman. It takes some work to get them to trust women again. I hear women saying all the time that their husbands are "just not the leader" in their home. I wonder sometimes what those women would do if the guy really tried. It would be thwarted by her tweaking and yapping. If Mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy. So oftentimes it's just easier for Daddy to let her run it. He's sick of trying, 'cause he's not gonna make her happy doing that. Better to just be quiet and turn on the TV.
How do I know these things? Because I've been married to a man for 31 years and I've made a lot of mistakes.
Thankfully, my husband, early on, wanted all of his children to know how to do everything. I am not kidding when I say that Ken would take two-year-olds up on the roof with him. He would hand a five-year-old a hammer or a shovel and happily expect them to get to it. It wasn't mean or harsh, just matter-of-fact. I would protest such things. I would protest 8 year olds who were up in trees, 20-feet up. I would protest them chopping down a 60-foot tree, laying it right down there in the driveway next to the house. I would protest them climbing under people's houses, in 3 feet of mud, to help a friend fix the joists under his house. Ken would not hear of my protesting.
I remember years ago, a friend was concerned because she felt that we worked our kids too hard and that Ken expected too much out of them. I loved her and her family, but when we would get together, I actually felt sorry for her children. They were whiny brats with soft hands, who didn't know how to work and subsequently didn't know how to play. They were, and are, very miserable children. They still live their lives expecting everything and everyone to give them a "yes" to any demand they make. That's not working out so well as adults.
When my kids were playing, they were having a full-out blast. Many a person has commented that the Norton kids really knew how to play (and how to work too). I'm bragging here. If Ken had not pushed the Mommy-unhappiness-button with going past my protests to both expect our kids to work and to also allow them to explore and play, I might not have learned these lessons. But he might have quit, if I had continued my protests. Over time, I have seen other Dads attempt to do the same thing, and the Mom does not realize what she is subtly doing. Eventually he gives up, sometimes sooner than later. All-wise Mother becomes the driver of the bus and she ends up with girly men. And oftentimes, no husband.
Maybe that's what society wants. Apparently that's what it wants. We are left with men who are not capable of being leaders and women who feel they have to take up the mantle. God made us different from each other. Uniquely different. If we choose to sidestep His Word and go our own way, making our trails and our rules based on base affections and whims rather than what He outlined for us, then we are just reaping what we have sown.
Yeah, we can do a lot of things. We women can take over the world in a generation or two. Then we get mealy men and frustrated women. I think about the Middle East and the pendulum that has swung way the other way. But who raised those men? and who perpetuates that lifestyle?
"The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world."
I ask you, who is rocking the cradle?
And I am not joking when I say that you young mothers need to wake up and smell the coffee. Yes, we got the vote a billion years ago. Yes, we can be a Senator or run for president or do "anything" we want to. Yes, there are things that have changed for the better since the great Female Emancipation. But I wonder if we have not exchanged freedom for slavery.
My children's pediatrician, Dr. Leila Denmark, who died last year at the ripe old age of 113, reminded me of that ancient adage, "The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world." And that is where we got off track. Women are raising their boys to act like women, and they are raising their girls to act like princesses and soccer stars. Most people are using Hollywood and their peers to get their parenting cues. We really are in big trouble.
I do not have anything against a girl being an athlete. I was a child-to-college athlete, playing softball, running track and playing basketball up into college. My own daughter is a college athlete; thankfully it is helping pay for her tuition. I learned a lot of intestinal fortitude through athletics: how to endure pain and exhaustion, how to go beyond what I thought I was capable of doing....lessons that have helped me immensely in life, particularly in motherhood. The thing that my parents did right through that was that they also encouraged me to be my feminine self. Many of my athletic friends, particularly in college, seemed to want to be a man. Many were looking for approval from their fathers that they were not getting in any other way. There are a lot of issues here that I am not going to talk about now; I am digressing again. My point is.....
MEN.
Our society is turning most everything upside down these days. We were watching the Super Bowl last night and I was struck once again with what has happened to men and women's roles. Any commercial with a family in it, the man is changing the diapers and cooking. And the men are always idiots. The woman is all-wise, all-knowing, and the final authority on pretty much everything. The only one capable of rational thought between the couples is the woman. The man is capable, all right, but only if he is being subservient to the woman. We've all seen this metamorphosis, but it happened so gradually, we just accept it as normal.
We should be raising both our daughters and sons to be multi-faceted people, who are able to do many things. It is plain stupid to raise children that can only work on the computer or that can only cook or that can only do school. I work in a lot of private homes, and it seems to me that most people are not even doing that. They are raising their kids to be parasites whose brains are stuck on a TV or in a computer game. Hardly anything is expected of them and when it is, you see whining, stomping, fuming....and then the request is withdrawn. I have seen 4-year olds screaming at their mothers and teenagers that won't even take out the trash. Sorry folks, but if my 21-year old (much less a 4-year old) screamed at me like that, she'd find her head laying on the floor beside her body. Perhaps that's why she or her brothers never behaved in that manner.
It is a huge responsibility to make sure that they can SURVIVE. Are we forgetting this? Things may not stay the way they have been the last 40-50 years. Your children may have to actually work for their food. What will your sons do if they have to dig a ditch or hoe a row? The girls are probably more capable at this point, because at least they've all been playing soccer. Please forgive my sarcasm.
The boy/man hands I have been seeing are soft, girl-like, and with nails that I'd love to have. But I've got my hands in soap and paint and fun stuff all the time, so that's just envy. I guess I could change that, but I'm too busy living. Many women are afraid, yes, afraid, to let their husbands get involved in the direction of their boys' lives. They don't think their husbands are spiritual enough or that they won't do it right. Then there are husbands who don't act like they want to have anything to do with their sons. But I know men. They give up when they see that nothing they do is acceptable to a woman. It takes some work to get them to trust women again. I hear women saying all the time that their husbands are "just not the leader" in their home. I wonder sometimes what those women would do if the guy really tried. It would be thwarted by her tweaking and yapping. If Mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy. So oftentimes it's just easier for Daddy to let her run it. He's sick of trying, 'cause he's not gonna make her happy doing that. Better to just be quiet and turn on the TV.
How do I know these things? Because I've been married to a man for 31 years and I've made a lot of mistakes.
Thankfully, my husband, early on, wanted all of his children to know how to do everything. I am not kidding when I say that Ken would take two-year-olds up on the roof with him. He would hand a five-year-old a hammer or a shovel and happily expect them to get to it. It wasn't mean or harsh, just matter-of-fact. I would protest such things. I would protest 8 year olds who were up in trees, 20-feet up. I would protest them chopping down a 60-foot tree, laying it right down there in the driveway next to the house. I would protest them climbing under people's houses, in 3 feet of mud, to help a friend fix the joists under his house. Ken would not hear of my protesting.
I remember years ago, a friend was concerned because she felt that we worked our kids too hard and that Ken expected too much out of them. I loved her and her family, but when we would get together, I actually felt sorry for her children. They were whiny brats with soft hands, who didn't know how to work and subsequently didn't know how to play. They were, and are, very miserable children. They still live their lives expecting everything and everyone to give them a "yes" to any demand they make. That's not working out so well as adults.
When my kids were playing, they were having a full-out blast. Many a person has commented that the Norton kids really knew how to play (and how to work too). I'm bragging here. If Ken had not pushed the Mommy-unhappiness-button with going past my protests to both expect our kids to work and to also allow them to explore and play, I might not have learned these lessons. But he might have quit, if I had continued my protests. Over time, I have seen other Dads attempt to do the same thing, and the Mom does not realize what she is subtly doing. Eventually he gives up, sometimes sooner than later. All-wise Mother becomes the driver of the bus and she ends up with girly men. And oftentimes, no husband.
Maybe that's what society wants. Apparently that's what it wants. We are left with men who are not capable of being leaders and women who feel they have to take up the mantle. God made us different from each other. Uniquely different. If we choose to sidestep His Word and go our own way, making our trails and our rules based on base affections and whims rather than what He outlined for us, then we are just reaping what we have sown.
Yeah, we can do a lot of things. We women can take over the world in a generation or two. Then we get mealy men and frustrated women. I think about the Middle East and the pendulum that has swung way the other way. But who raised those men? and who perpetuates that lifestyle?
"The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world."
I ask you, who is rocking the cradle?
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