The Year Of Lasts

I knew this would happen…the day would get away from me and I wonld not have written anything.  It was a busy day. I’m getting ready to go out of town and my youngest son, Noah, had a Varsity Basketball game, (that’s him in the picture, nailing a three point outside shot) that was supposed to start at 8:00, but actually ended up starting at 8:30 and before I did that I had to go to the gym and before that make dinner, so he would be able to eat before the game.  Why, oh why can’t I be one of those mom’s that says, “Here kid, here’s five bucks go to Subway.”   I just can’t seem to do that, especially this year.  It’s just kind of a special year for us.  It’s my baby boys’s (he’d kill me if he heard me say that) senior year.  It’s a year of excitement and challenge, a little stressful and filled with lots of lasts:  The last soccer game, the last year to be team mom, last basketball game, and driving a car load of smelly, hilarious boys, last Winter Ball, last Prom, and the last of four high school graduations.

I was always the one to scoff “empty nest syndrome.”  I made sure that I always had a life separate from my kids.  I have never been a mom to live vicariously through any of kids.  I always thought, “What’s the big deal? This is what they are supposed to do–grow up and move out, geez!”  I always said that I looked forward to them being “up and out.”  I, for one,  could hardly wait.  Then something weird happened.  It started at Soccer orientation this year.  I had to fill out all the usual forms and as I wrote, grade 12, I felt a little start inside me.  I suddenly realized that my youngest son would be graduating from high school and that would be that.  How could I not have seen this coming?  He was just this little freckled face boy with disheveled hair, riding his tricycle naked down the street , waving at the neighbors as they drove by.  He was the little fatty that snuffled at my breast and slept in my arms…What the fuck?  What the heck was going on?  I was going to have my freedom soon.  No more laundry, no more dirty jerseys and stinky shoes.  No more making sure there was dinner on the table.  I had prepared myself for this…I had!  I needed to get a grip, and yet, there I was, getting weepy at soccer orientation…great.

For a while, I was fine, I hadn’t really thought much about it until the last soccer game of the year.  They stood in their usual huddle, at the end of the game, they put their hands up together and chanted, “Knights on three!  One..two…three..KNIGHTS!”  It hit me like a ton of bricks.  I teared up, I got the biggest lump in my throat…”This is the last time they will do this together,” I thought– the last time.  I see now that it’s going to be this way for the rest of the year.  It’s going to hit me over and over again, the everyday things that this kid has done all his life, are going to end at the end of this year.  I’ve decided that for the rest of this year I am going to embrace every memory as if it were a precious jewel.  As I now watch him play his last basketball season, I drink in every moment, every win, every loss, every three pointer he makes, every smile he flashes when he does, every high five and slap on the shoulder these boys share, I am tucking them all away in my heart, because when the buzzer sounds on that last game of his last season and they chant, “Knights on Three,”  the realization that this part of our lives in coming closer and closer to an end, is going to  wash over me like a tidal wave and when that happens I want to feel certain, that I took in every precious moment of it all.

I no longer scoff at the idea of empty nest syndrome.  I get it now.  Sometimes the idea of coming home to an empty house that lacks stinky shoes and dirty jerseys and a young man’s  voice saying, “why don’t we ever have any food in this house and what’s for dinner?” makes my chest tighten a little.  It’s so enlightening when you realize why people do things that you never understood until you are there yourself, then you have this aha! moment.  It’s great.  I still don’t get why older people wait until their groceries are all rung up and bagged before they start digging in their purse for their checkbook, but hey! Maybe some day I will!    I do look forward to a different season in my life.  This what every mother works for, right?  Raising a child that is healthy and independent, able to get out there and make it on their on…but I am going to miss this, the turkey sandwiches and scrambled eggs before school.  Man, I’m going to miss that boy!

Here, Take the Virgins…as a Parting Gift.

A friend of mine, Bill, posted this on his facebook wall this morning with commentary:  “Words from the Bible:  Numbers 31:17: Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him.18: But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.-Moses”

His commentary included a question that I believe any rational human being would ask: “Is there any excuse that justifies this kind of thinking in a book billions of people claim comes from a loving god, written by men held in favor by this god?”  The answer, of course, is no.   Well…at least one would think that would be the answer.

I thought about what I would have said when I was fully immersed in Christianity.  Then one of Bill’s Christian friends commented:

“The context of that verse was/is?  Christ is the fulfillment of the law… OT observances and etc no longer apply.”

Hmmm, interesting. I hope I would not have responded in that way.  I hope I would have been taken aback by those passages and questioned my belief system.  I don’t think I did though, because I have read the Bible many times cover to cover, and somehow those passages never even raised an eyebrow; proof to me that I was completely brainwashed.  I mean, what context could possibly excuse this type of horror? Plus, I’m no scholar, but I see no “law” or “observances” referenced in those verses.  It was just the God of Moses, pissed off at people who didn’t believe in him.  Well, in actuality, it was a god made up by Moses so he could destroy the infidel and get some virgins in the process, but I digress.

I try to imagine what it would have been like to watch my father, my brothers, and my mother being slaughtered, and THEN, to have been turned over to ruthless men as a sex slave. How could anyone take comfort in the idea that “God” really is a “god of love” because Christ is the fucking fulfillment of the law? I can’t tell you how angry I got reading the response from that Christian man (and believe me, it is a common response from Christians).  I can’t tell you how the horror of that story strikes me to the core, even now. Guess I just care more about humanity than the God of the Old Testament did. Christians comfort themselves and defend their god, by saying Jesus came along to “fulfill the law.” They may have a point. Wait a second; doesn’t that same Bible say that Jesus and God are one and when you see Jesus, you see God, and doesn’t it also say that God is the same, yesterday, today and forever?  Well now, that’s awkward.

Precious Shift of the Paradigm

Paradigm shift:  “A radical change in underlying beliefs or theory.”  I have been saying for the past, oh, I don’t know, four years, that I experienced a mid-life epiphany. I suppose I did sort of, but I’ve come to realize that what I really experienced was a paradigm shift—several, actually.  I did have the insights that accompany an epiphany, but with that came something much more permanent:  The paradigm shift—change that stuck. I’m not just speaking here about my exodus from Christianity (no pun intended), but there have been a few aspects in my recent life where paradigm shifts have occurred and one such shift took place at the end of my marriage.

I had been married just over 25 years when my divorce became final.  There had been some major problems for years, but the three to four years leading up to the divorce had been eviscerating.  Going through divorce is usually destructive, painful, scary, and isolating, and ours was all of those things at first. Divorce can also be hopeful, strengthening, freeing, and a relief and that is what ours became and remained.

If someone would have told me back in 2008, that after my divorce, I would not only have a civil relationship with my ex, but we would be good friends, I would have never believed it. We had known a few couples who had divorced over the years and they were nothing less than destructive enemies, causing irreparable damage to each other, their friends, and sadly, their kids. My ex and I are not only civil, but we are friends that can talk over things, even argue over things and still depend upon our friendship to remain.  How did this happen?  There are many reasons and I want to eventually cover all of them, but today, I want to start at the beginning.

Every morning it was the same.  I would wake up and as the fog lifted, I would remember:  I have been betrayed.  I have been betrayed by the one person I knew I could always trust and now I am alone.  My chest would tighten my throat would close and I would end up sobbing. Everyday, I was a walking, breathing empty shell.  I couldn’t eat; I couldn’t think.  The pain was all encompassing.  I would desperately seek comfort in the arms of my husband, but for the first time in over twenty years, he couldn’t comfort me. This time he had been the one to cause the pain. I would reach out to him, wanting desperately for him to make it better, to make the pain go away.  I was fucked up. He was the strong one, the one in control, the one who held all the keys, the one to make the decisions.  Then one morning, that all changed.

It started out like every other morning had, but this time as I laid there licking my wounds, a voice inside my head said, “His loss,” and I listened.  Friends had been telling me this, but I couldn’t take it in, not until that morning.  I repeated it out loud, “His loss.” Over and over again, I said, “It’s his loss, his loss.  He has lost me and it’s his fucking loss!”  I got up that morning, took a shower, made breakfast for my kids and life began again for me.

Don’t get me wrong.  It wasn’t a cake-walk by any means, but it was a bit like I had been crawling naked on shards of glass, and now I could at least stand up and walk, and after crawling, walking felt pretty good.  Had my circumstances changed?  Had my husband changed?  No, neither of those things had changed.  What was the difference?  What had changed to give me clarity, strength, and hope?  Why the only thing that I had the power to change:  Me.

Same Title–Different Blog

Why do I do this?  I have at least five half-finished blog posts and none have made it to the point of completion.  A couple were good too:  “Why Can’t We Be Friends?” and “When you see Sharia Law, You see the Old Testament.”  There are more that also have potential, but there they sit in my Word draft file.  Look at my last post date…geez…us!  It’s embarrassing. I don’t typically procrastinate in other aspects of my life, but when I do, there’s always a reason for it. I’ve struggled with the reason I do it here.   As I sit here at almost 2:30 in the morning, I think I know why:  I’ve lost focus and passion and I have no idea where to go here.  I don’t want to leave “Blinders Off.” I just don’t know how to transition, you know?  The only way for my blog to be successful is to be consistent and yet, I will say in a post what I am going to write about next and then I don’t.  I’ll be working on some other writing project, my brain will get a blog idea, I’ll jump on it and then Bam! I go back to the other project and I will let time slip away, until it’s been weeks and then months…This has got to stop.  Maybe it’s lack of discipline.  We writers struggle with “idea ADD” at times, jumping from one idea to the next.  That may be part of the problem, but I truly think it’s that I have passions other than de-conversion and all that that entails and I want to write about those..

I’m thinking now that  much about life, about living and growing has to do with taking off blinders.  I don’t have to just write about removing religious blinders I suppose. What about the blinders we wear that prevent us from seeing ourselves, imperfections and all.  We know ourselves better than anyone else and yet there are things we turn a blind eye to and those blind spots stunt us and keep us from break throughs that may change our lives.  One of the struggles we face, those of us who have broken free from religion, is trying to now figure out who we are–who we really, truly are.  I have observed how we try on different masks, after flinging off the religious one.  We try on one after the other even though they feel uncomfortable or foreign.   I think we do it because we are afraid to let ourselves be naked, raw, completely unbridled, maskless.  We were told how, what, and who to be for so long that peeling everything away and just sitting with ourselves is extremely difficult–painful actually.

The truth is, whether it’s leaving a religion, or watching our children become adults and leaving home, caring for and helping our parents die, repairing a long-term marriage, or finally leaving one, what ever journey we are on in our lives, there are blinders to be taken off, things we need to see and do in order to be real, and wholly authentic.  I’m thinking there is plenty to write about without leaving my “Blinders Off” blog.  Perhaps I am wrong, maybe I’m just being sentimental, or I don’t want to leave my comfort zone, but for now, I’m going to give it a go. So for now, it’s going to be the same title and a different blog–sort of.  One thing I am NOT going to do at this ungodly hour is to reveal the subject of my first post, because we all know how that will go and to be honest, hell, I don’t even know. I’m just going to let The Fates blow through my mind and see what flies onto the page.  Weeeee!

What’s the Harm in Heaven?

Religious bumper stickers always catch my eye and elicit a strong reaction from me. Recently when I saw “Life is short.  Heaven is forever,” on the back of a car, an audible sigh escaped my lips.  I remember thinking, “Yes, and no.”  Yes, life is short, but Heaven not only is not forever, Heaven simply is not.  I wish Christians could understand that life is short and heaven doesn’t exist.  Sometimes I want to grab them and shake them and say, “Stop hoping for Heaven!  Live now!  Dive in now! Love others for who they are now! Make the world a better place now! This is it!  Make it count!”  Then I’d slap them in the face of couple of times and then let them go…just kidding…I wouldn’t let them go. I’d fling them to the ground :-).

Sick kidding aside, at first glance, the belief in Heaven seems harmless enough, like most Christian doctrines, when analyzed, its harmfulness becomes evident. The idea that this life is short, but don’t worry about it, paradise awaits after death, is a destructive belief.

What is my evidence for such a strong statement, you may ask?  Why, of course, I have much evidence, but for today, let me offer up to you one of many personal stories that will support my thesis and then perhaps my statement about slapping Christians and flinging them to the ground (figuratively of course) will make more sense.

I was having coffee with a Christian acquaintance and during the conversation she shared with me about her youngest son. A few years before, at the age of 20, and still living at home, he had become “rebellious.”  He was refusing to attend church, and was spending time partying with his friends. (Wow, I’ve never heard of a 20-year-old doing that) Anyway, she had informed him that as long as he lived under her roof, he would go to church. When he continued to refuse to go and continued to party, she kicked him out.  A week later, living on the streets, he was struck by a truck and killed.

I cannot imagine what it must be like to lose a child, but to lose one under those circumstances, one would think, would be devastating. When I reached out to her, telling her how sorry I was and how awful that must have been for her, I was floored by her response.  She calmly, and without much emotion, explained to me that she knew she had done the right thing, (what God would have wanted her to do) in throwing him out when she did and she knew, because he had accepted Jesus, she would see him in heaven one day.  She told me that she had such peace about it that she didn’t even cry at the funeral.

It’s not that I don’t understand why she believed that and  continues to believe it to this day.  It’s probably the only thing that keeps her sane—if in fact she is sane.  It must take an awful lot of energy to bury the unrealized pain and guilt she must carry with her on a daily basis.   Like many Christians, she is one of the walking wounded, unable to have her wounds attended to because they must remain covered and hidden.

I walked away from the conversation feeling extremely sad.  This woman had rejected her son because of religion. She had missed out on truly loving him and sharing her life with him because of religion, and now she feels exonerated and at peace, because one day she will have the opportunity to build a relationship with him when they are reunited in Heaven. Sadly, that reunion will never take place.  She missed an opportunity she will never get back and all because she believes in the myth of a personal god and a literal heaven. It gets worse though. Because she continues to believe she was doing “God’s will,” when she rejected her son, due to his lack of church attendance and “rebellion,” her belief, and the support she receives from the Christian community for that belief, keeps her on the same destructive path today.  Just last year, she kicked her 18-year-old daughter out because she is a non-believer.  Thankfully she was kept safe because she came to live with us for a time, but their mother/daughter relationship is severely damaged. How very tragic.

Since rejecting Christianity, I have gone back and forth as to whether it has some redeeming value or is just plain damaging.   More and more it is becoming extremely difficult for me to see how there can be any redeeming value in a belief system that causes such pain.  It seems to me that the Christian idea of heaven prevents people from giving life all they’ve got here and now.  If I could create my own bumper sticker and I do in my mind quite often, it would read:  “Life is short.  Give it all you’ve got.”

In Memory of Sue

My sister in law, Sue, died of breast cancer two days ago.  I wrote a poem about it, but before I post it, I want to say something about her.  She was stronger and braver than any other woman I have personally known.  She loved her husband with a vengeance and  the rest of her family too.  She loved to take pictures and would include them in letters she would send to the people she cared about and I was one of the lucky recipients of those letters many times.  She had amazing red hair and a killer smile and was typically the last one off the dance floor. She loved to garden–to plant things and help them grow and even that she shared with others.  There are beautiful purple Crocus flowers that bloom in my yard every year because I had once told her that I wished I could grow saffron in my backyard because it was so expensive. I didn’t know saffron came from Crocus flowers…I do now. (Thanks Sue) When you talked with her, she would listen and she would remember the things that you said. She was a believer, not in any religion, but in life.  She lived it up until she simply couldn’t live it anymore and then went to sleep forever and I know that I speak for many people when I say that she will be greatly missed.   As I reflected on her life and death, and how I felt about it, this poem came to me:

One Last Embrace 

 

Grieving, I sleep and fall into a dream.

She is there in her garden.

Not sick and weak and dying but

Healthy and strong and living.

Her red hair golden in the sun–

Peaceful and happy.

She turns to me and asks,

“What do you need?”

I say, “I need to know why—why this, why now, why you?”

Smiling she says,  “There’s no answer.

It simply is what it is, but what do you need?”

“I need to know you are okay” I say,  “and not suffering—at rest.”

”Deep down, you know I am,” she answers and asks again,

“What is it that you really need?”

Suddenly, tears come and with them, the answer:

 

“I need one last conversation, one last laugh, one last embrace.”

 

Standing and putting her hands on my shoulders, she lovingly says,

“We’ve already had those. We just didn’t realize it at the time and it’s okay.”

Waking, I knew that it was, or at least it would be…in time

God Where are You?

I was listening to local talk radio the other evening and the subject of the program was the tragedy at Virginia Tech.  A caller was saying that we, as a country, need to pray.  The host said, “Okay, that sounds good, and what do we pray?  God, where were you?”  I remember thinking that those are two very good questions:  What do we pray, and God, where were you? When I was a full-fledged “believer,” I would have thought that those would have been horrible questions to ask.  I would have thought, who are we to question God?  His ways are not our ways.  Now, as a nonbeliever, I realize how relevant those types of questions are. What should we pray and, yes God, where were you?  Where were you when a psychopath mercilessly gunned down thirty-two students, just beginning to live their lives?

The day after the shooting, I received an email from the daughter of a friend.  She was on a “fact finding” trip in Europe (letting “God” lead of course) to see about going into missions there.  She wrote about how her god had answered her prayers, how “God” had brought some new friends her way and how “God” had provided a place for her to stay and even how “God” had allowed her to get her package onboard her flight, even though it was 3 lbs. overweight.  She had prayed to her god, and “God” had done all of these things for her and now she is in Greece waiting for “God” to show her the way to go (not a bad place to be waiting on God, I might add).  All I could think of was how can she believe God would do all these little things for her and yet not intervene to spare the lives of those Virginia Tech students? Did she even consider that?

Most Christians would say, God could have intervened at Virginia Tech, but chose not to, and that we will have trials in life, and that “God works all things for good for those who love him,” and “His ways are not our ways,” and don’t forget about the free will of the shooter.   That is how Christians rationalize the obvious evidence that prayer does NOT work, and that there is NOT a personal God that intervenes in any of our lives.   Sadly, when I was Christian, that’s how I rationalized it too.  Now I think differently, perhaps more rationally.  What about the students who didn’t believe in God or Christ?  According to Christianity, they are now all burning in hell—forever, by the way.  How in the world does that exemplify a loving God?  What about their families?  Even if they believe in God and Christ, is their suffering somehow lessened because of that?  Absolutely not.  How could a benevolent God, who could, not intervene and spare his children such horrible pain?  How can Christians not ask these questions of their god?  How can they not ask, “God where were you?”  The truth is, they can’t let themselves do that, because deep down they know all they will get is silence…stone cold silence.

Saved?!

As I mentioned in my last post my mother in law passed away.  What I haven’t mentioned is that even though I was raised a Christian and have gone to church pretty much all my life, I am in the process of de-converting for many reasons.  As I have begun to take the blinders off, I have been shocked at what Christians say to other Christians when they try to comfort them.   It has been painfully apparent since my MIL’s death.  The hardest thing for me is that I have done the very same thing and I am appalled that I have.

When I have shared with Christian friends about my grief over the loss of my MIL, it seems like the very first thing on their lips is, “Was she saved or was she a believer?”  Why do they ask this?  I try to figure out why I did it as well, and for the life of me I have no clue.  I guess, if by biblical standards, she was a believer then they could comfort me with the idea that she is now in “paradise.”  On the other hand, if she isn’t considered “saved,” then they have just reminded me that she is “burning in hell.”

Most of my Christian friends aren’t yet aware that I don’t embrace their beliefs anymore and so I can’t really respond the way I would like to, but what I do say is, “Well, I’m not really qualified to make that call.”  Then I tell them that I believe she is at peace now.  Some are fine with that answer, some push further:  “Well, did she make a profession of faith?” Or, “Did you share the gospel with her?”  Why, oh why, on god’s green earth would people do that?  I want to scream at them, “Why do you care, she’s dead now!?”  It’s not like we can bring her back and save her. In my heart of hearts I know they are, in some strange way, trying to make me feel better, but they need to stop and think about what they are asking.  Oh, wait a minute, that would mean they would have to think and…well…for some reason evangelicals have a hard time doing that outside of their box.  I have a suggestion though, why not just say, “Wow, I’m sorry for your loss, hang in there.”

I have encountered this strange behavior when I have shared with Christians that my sis in law has terminal breast cancer.  Instead of comforting me and realizing how hard it is to think I will probably lose her soon too, they instruct me on how to save her, to “Make sure” she totally understands she has no other way to get to heaven then by believing very specific things.   They remind me it’s my responsibility to tell her how to get her saved–that I may be her last hope.  All I want to do is love her and spend as much time as possible with her and to comfort her and her husband.  That is what the Christian God is all about…right?  Dear Christian friends, please, just say, “Wow, I’m so sorry.  I’ll pray for her and you and if I can do anything, let me know.”  How hard is that…gosh!