Every Friday my syndicated column appears in a bunch of newspapers in southeastern Ontario. Here's this week's! Sorry for the Canadian slant for my American friends, but I think you'll understand anyway:
Before children understand the birds and the bees; before they can make their beds or tie their shoes or choose clothes that match; even before they venture forth to school, they have already grasped one simple concept: fairness. If Jimmy gets cake, everyone should get cake. M&M's should be shared equally, as should jelly beans and gummy bears. In fact, it's this attempt at fairness that's usually the impetus for many children learning how to count beyond ten.
Yet as they grow, their definition of fairness often changes. If one child saves his allowance for months so that he can buy a new video game, and one child squanders money on chocolate, it’s not fair that the first child should have to let the second child play said video game. If one child practices piano, and one never does, it's not fair that both get to watch equal amounts of television. If you don't follow the rules, you shouldn't get the rewards.
Thus, fairness can be defined in different ways. It certainly can mean that everybody gets the same number of gummy bears, but it can also mean that people receive rewards commiserate with their effort. When people work and study harder, they get more. When they work less, they get less. And interestingly, the two definitions of fairness are ultimately diametrically opposite. Tell a child who has just purchased a packet of M&M's with her chore money that she must share them with her sister who goofed off and didn't get any allowance and she'll cry, "That's not fair!" But tell a union leader that seniority should be based on merit rather than just years of service, and he or she will cry, "That's not fair!", too. We may use the word "fair", but we mean entirely different things by it.
So which definition of fairness do you agree with?
That's essentially the debate that our country had last week. The difference between left and right usually boils down to concepts of fairness. The left thinks everybody should have equality of outcome; we should all have basically the same amount, and it's not fair for some to have much more. The right, on the other hand, thinks that people should get what they put into something. We should be responsible for our own actions.
Looking at the new map of Canada, surprisingly divided into blue and orange with only dots of red, it's interesting to see where the colour lines are. The one province of the country that is always clamoring for the government to do more--Quebec--is almost completely orange. The one province of the country that just wants the government to leave them alone so they can work hard and grow, all on their own--Alberta--went pretty blue.
Perhaps I'm being too simplistic in drawing the political lines like this, but I think the difference between left and right isn't just about spending; it's about philosophy. What is the role of the government? And what is the role of citizens? Personally, I think the more government does, the less citizens do. We start relying on the government too much, and it distorts family relationships, economic decisions, and even, in my view, the moral health of the community.
The problem the Liberals had was that nobody was quite sure what they stood for. In the next few years, the Liberals are going to have to pick a side: which vision of fairness do they stand for? Do they want everyone to have the same, so they stand for higher taxes, more regulation, and more government, or do they want people to be responsible for their own outcomes? And the rest of us should ask the same question, too. It's only fair.
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All of us want brilliant kids. We all obsess when our kids are two and they're not counting yet. We worry about when they will say their first word. We want to know that we have geniuses for offspring.
But is genius really all it's cracked up to be? I read an interesting article quoting William Katz on Power Line blog recently, which said this:
Now, let me ask you a question: You've all read about the great men and women of history. Do you recall ever reading that a major historical figure was "bright"? Of course not. No one would even think of describing anyone of significance that way. The issue is not whether someone is "bright." The issue is whether that person is competent and wise.
And yet, brightness has become its own virtue. We're impressed by candidates who appear "bright." I think this reflects the fact that this is the age of the college graduate, the age where "brightness," or the suggestion of intellect, is considered a fundamental requirement for even getting up in the morning. In order to be taken seriously, one must show the kind of mental agility popular with college admissions officers.
No one debated whether Lincoln was "bright," or Washington, or Franklin Roosevelt. And yet, in modern times, some pundits anguished over whether Ronald Reagan was "bright enough" to be president. They'd learned nothing from Harry Truman, who'd never graced a college campus.
That is so true! What matters in history is not one's IQ or one's SAT score; it's what one has actually DONE with one's life.
We live in an era which prizes right thoughts over right actions. If people FEEL the right way about an issue, they are praised in public, even if they don't do anything about it. So thinking the government should increase welfare payments, for instance, is considered more generous than actually helping at a soup kitchen, if you happen to also advocate reduced welfare payments.
One's political thoughts tend to be equated with intelligence and worth, rather than what one has done to make the world a better place or to accomplish something. We had the spectacle of Paul McCartney announcing at the White House last week that "at least now we have a President who has actually been in a library, unlike the last eight years". See, Obama is supposed to be "bright", and Bush is supposed to be "stupid". Leave aside the fact that Laura Bush was a librarian and that she made literacy a key part of W's administration.
I don't want to argue politics, and I'm sorry if I've wandered into there, but I do think that we have come to value someone's level of genius far more than we do accomplishment because the intellectual elite tends to praise people's thoughts more than people's actions. If you are for peace, you're praised, whether or not your actions bring you closer to peace. If you oppose poverty, you're praised, whether or not your policies or your actions help to eradicate poverty. It is not what we do; it is the posture we take. Hence, Clinton could be praised for being brilliant (and indeed, I believe his IQ is exceptionally high), even though he made major mistakes in office and had an affair with an intern.
What does this mean for us as parents? Let's stop taking pride in our children's intelligence and instead work towards building character. You can have all the intelligence in the world and use it for the wrong things. Stalin was smart. Hitler was smart. Mao was smart. Who cares? They are condemned to the ash heap of history, and sit condemned with God today.
It is very dangerous to praise innate gifts rather than efforts and achievements. Our gifts are ours by virtue of God's grace. It is what we do with them that determines our worth for the kingdom. If you have a gift and don't use it, you are worse off than one who does not have the gift at all. And many who have changed the world have done so not because they were brilliant, but because they saw injustice and wanted to do something about it.
Be careful how you praise your kids. Be careful how you worry or obsess over your children's school marks, or their timetables at reaching milestones. What counts is whether they have developed a compassionate heart and a willingness to work when it matters. Intelligence cannot be taught (though it can be nurtured). Motivation and compassion can be taught, and that is what we need to be working on.
I do not care how smart your child is, or how smart my children are. What I care about is this: do they have a heart which is turned towards God? And will they listen to God to do what He is calling them to do?
So let's develop leadership skills in our kids. Let's develop compassion, and a work ethic, and a love for God. These things ultimately matter far more than intelligence, and the child who has these things will go far indeed.
I don't usually mention politics in this blog, but I just have to talk about something or I will just burst.
As many of you know, I am Canadian. And up here in Canada, the opposition Liberals and NDP are making a huge issue out of the fact that some prisoners that we captured in Afghanistan were ALLEGEDLY handed over to the Afghan army, where they were tortured.
I don't agree with torture, but here's what I don't get: What would the Liberals rather we do instead? We can't keep them ourselves if they're dangerous, because the Liberals are also against Guantanamo Bay like facilities. We can't release them, because they're really dangerous. And the Liberals don't want us to stay in Afghanistan. They want us to get out. Which means that the Afghan army is going to have to be looking after these prisoners anyway.
I just don't like it when people criticize something when they don't have any better ideas. Our troops are doing an amazing job in Afghanistan (I have several friends who are over there right now). They deserve our thanks, not the defense critic of our nation calling them "war criminals".
And now, an end to my political time-out. I promise not to stray too far into politics again soon!
And I get paid for sharing those opinions. So I tend to constantly be thinking about things in terms of right and wrong, should and shouldn't, what works and what doesn't. I find it difficult just to think about issues without trying to fix them, or see them from almost political or religious angles.
I'm also a very strong Christian, so I tend to measure everything in terms of what I believe God wants or things--which is a good thing. The problem is that I'm also a very political person, with strong political views about most issues. And because I can see these issues in terms of black and white, right and wrong, I tend to equate my political and religious views.
I know that's wrong, but it's a tendency I have, and I always have to push myself to say, "good Christians can disagree about this issue." I honestly do believe that, but I still find it curious when Christians hold positions that are completely the opposite to mine. For instance, I strongly believe in welfare reform, because I think that giving people something for nothing does not encourage people to turn to God; it encourages laziness and all sorts of negative things for society and children. Besides, one can only truly repent when one sees the repercussions of one's actions. If one doesn't think one has done anything wrong, how can one repent? But so much of the entitlement society moves against anyone seeing that they have done wrong, because they begin to think "I deserve this".
I also believe strongly that most Christians should give until it hurts, but I don't think that government necessarily should be involved in a lot of charity. I think most foreign aid ends up hurting countries, while personal aid through NGOs helps.
I don't actually want to argue about welfare or charity; I'm only trying to say that most of my political views also come out of my understanding of God. And I think that's natural.
The problem that I often get into, though, is that I know and love many very strong Christians who have exactly opposite views from me. My response has been to simply never, ever talk about anything in their presence which might be a source of difficulty in our relationship. So I don't go near Israel, or welfare, or health care, or crime and punishment, or other subjects remotely like that. We don't talk taxes, or politics, or elections.
Or I should say, I don't talk about them. But I have several people close to me who insist on bringing all these things up, and speaking about them as if it's obvious to everyone what the Christian answer is. I've had people say to me in my home that oen can't be a Christian if one doesn't believe in completely socialized medicine.
So how do I handle that? I would prefer we just agree to disagree and focus on the things that unite us, but it seems that just isn't going to happen. And I'm always feeling a judgment that I am less Christian because I support the Conservative party in Canada, for instance.
Don't tell me to just get rid of the relationships, because for various reasons I can't get into that's not possible, and I don't want to. I sincerely love these people. But I find our interactions increasingly strained, like I'm always walking on eggshells.
It's not that I can't hang out with people of different political or religious viewpoints, either. Later this year my husband and I are leading a team of 25 to a Kenyan orphanage, and most of them, I would think, would fall far away from me on the political spectrum. But we get along great, because we focus on what we do well together.
What do you do when you have a person who refuses to do this? Any suggestions? Have any of you ever dealt with this with your families or at work? I'd love to know!
I have mentioned before on this blog that I am hopelessly addicted to political blogs. I tend to read conservative political/economic blogs, and find them very interesting. I've learned a lot. It buoys me to know that there are others that feel the same way that I do about so many things.
And then something remarkable happened to me on Tuesday night of this week. A Canadian blog, a big one, that I've been reading constantly for eight years, posted a tongue in cheek comment on an article saying that the rate of obesity in African urban areas is increasing.
Not really a big deal, except that the comments quickly devolved into what I thought was racist.
I feel very strongly about Africa. I've been to Kenya twice to work at an orphanage, and we're heading out again this year leading a medical team. I'm passionate about micro-finance and the potential for helping lift people out of poverty. I don't believe in government aid, since it tends to enable corruption and keep the population oppressed, but I believe providing clean water in conjunction with NGOs, and using micro-finance, can work wonders, along with providing a culture that is more in line with what God wants.
My heart breaks when I think of the small children on their own in the world, searching for food in garbage bins, having nowhere to sleep, and being raped. I have met some, and it pierces your soul.
So I commented on that post and told the people that they were being heartless. Conservatives should be compassionate, and stand for real-life, common sense solutions to problems. Instead I was told by many other commenters that by working in Africa I was part of the problem. It was a hopeless mess there, the IQ is low anyway, if you rescue orphans, they'll grow up to have too many babies and likely start wars, and we should leave it to its own devices.
I fought on valiantly through several more comments, but then gave up. A few others defended me, but most said that by helping I was prolonging the problem. Better to let the whole place sink into a hellhole.
Honestly, there are few times in my life where I have felt more shame. I didn't feel shame for being attacked; I honestly don't care about that.
What I felt shame for was that for 8 years I had identified with these people. I had agreed with them on almost every issue. But when it came down to it, our values our fundamentally different.
For almost a decade, especially since 9/11, I have thought of myself as a conservative. That really hasn't changed. But what I've realized is that the big gulf in values is not necessarily between conservative and liberal; it is really between Christian and non-Christian. It is a compassion gulf.
Without compassion, we are nothing. Even if helping Africa did no objective good, I would rather spend my dying breath helping some girl who is in danger of being raped than valiantly ignoring her pleas because "what good is it anyway?" I don't want to be a person who ever turns my back on people in need, or who dismisses people as "not worthy" of our compassion. That, to me, is evil.
And so, after a nine year battle of trying to break my addiction to blogs, I think I have just done it. I don't want to be associated with that, even if we agree on so many policy issues. We may agree on politics, but we don't agree on heart issues. And it is those heart issues that matter most.
I realized then that my real community online is not my political one. It is this one. I get such encouragement from you, my readers, as I look through my comments and emails and Tweets and Facebook. I love having debates in the comments! I thought yesterday was particularly productive, as we wrestled through a difficult issue to try to help a reader, and we did so with gentleness and grace and compassion, rather than blaming each other or calling names. We didn't agree on every issue, but it was a time when people could at least make their thoughts known.
I'd like to get to know more of you, but I think we agree far more fundamentally on the important stuff than all these other blogs I've been reading! So leave me some comments. I'm going to try to make it a point to visit more of your blogs. Ask me questions, and give me some ideas for posts. Let's make this a place where we can come for "real" answers to problems, and not only platitudes. Let's let this be a thinking and encouraging place.
I'm glad you're along for the journey, and I'm glad I finally figured out my place in the world.
Here are some of my favourite children's books she has:
Anyway, Jeannie also sends out a beautiful prayer every Monday that I subscribe to, and it starts my week off right.
Recently, though, she had been praying for the unborn, and got some rather nasty emails back from people who are Christian. I'm not privy to what these emails said, but here is her response, which I just love. I asked for her permission to post it, because I thought it was so well put, and encapsulates how I feel exactly.
I am not political. Had you asked me thirty years ago which party I favored, Democrat or Republican, you'd have gotten a blank stare. ...
And yet, despite my political-neutrality, several people have recently accused me of the exact opposite. It started when I sent an article on abortion to my Monday Morning Prayer List. Instead of appreciating the well-reasoned arguments in the piece, one friend wrote back and requested I please not talk politics with him. Another two people huffed off my email list demanding they never get anything else from me. Not ever. Not even the Monday prayers -- because I had offended them with political propaganda.
I was stunned. Political propaganda? I don't think of abortion as a political issue, it's a moral issue. Isn't it? It used to be.
Sadly, without most of us even noticing, moral issues have morphed into political concerns. ...Same-sex marriage, the day after pill for seventeen-year-olds, embryonic stem cell research -- there's no space to list them all, but every one of those ethical and moral issues have become political matters, and as a result morally-neutral. Porn on the Internet is nothing more than free speech these days. See how easy it's become? ...It's all good, guilt-free.
Unless you come down on the politically-incorrect side of a topic. More often than not, that unpopular side is God's side. ...Make no mistake, the sharp divide in our nation that has become so apparent in recent elections runs along moral lines even though disguised as political division. Recognize that! Learn what God expects of you. If you recognize that something is politically-correct, stop and analyze it. Ask what God says about it. Is it really political or is it an ethical matter?
Study the Bible until you can recognize right from wrong. Pray for wisdom and clear sight. Make decisions based on what the Bible says and not on what feels right. Instead of voting based on party, look at morals and ethics. Any time you have the opportunity to do it, speak up for right. You will suffer for it, but God will reward you in heaven. You and I must summon our courage and do what we can to stop evil now. ...Even if it means friends and family label us "political."
What she's saying is true in my own country of Canada, too. So often we see things that should be moral issues in terms of political issues. But if they're moral imperatives, they're moral imperatives. And we shouldn't confuse the two.
I guess I feel so strongly about the abortion question because I was once pressured to abort. I was pregnant with my baby boy, and they detected a serious heart defect. I let my baby live, and I am eternally grateful for that. You can read his story here.
I get way too into politics. I fret over elections, and polls, and the news. And yet, when all is said and done, political parties don't matter. They don't last beyond this world. But abortion does matter. God matters. How we handle our own charitable giving matters (rather than leaving it all to the government). How we live out our own marriages, and encourage other people's marriages, matters. So let's reclaim the moral, and stop trying to make things into political issues just to silence others. Let's do what we can to live out our values and morals in our homes, in our workplaces, in our cities, and in our countries. Maybe I sound political; I don't mean to. But these things matter. And we had better make sure we don't sweep them all under the rug because they're just about "politics".
I know from the title of this post it sounds like I'm going to write one of my typical posts on family time, but I'm not. I'll get back to those soon, since they're closest to my heart, but I want to take a little detour and talk about Prince Harry. (In the meantime, if you'd rather read about marriage or housework, feel free!)
Not that Prince Harry's important; far from it. But over on Bookworm Room there's a great discussion on the moral outrage at Prince Harry referring to a Pakistani as a raghead.
Were his choice of words good?Absolutely not. But at the same time, I completely agree with this analysis:
The level of anger and hysteria about everything nowadays — absolutely everything — just puts me off, especially because it leaves no room to paint with the real brush of outrage. If calling your enemy by a pejorative, or using a very low level slur in a sarcastic way to refer to someone who is obviously a comrade in arms, is exactly as horrific as using children as human shields, you’ve rendered your moral compass useless. To use an analogy only those of us over 40 understand, if you play all your records at 78 rpm, they all sound like indistinguishable gibberish. We live in such a hysterical era.
As Wendy Kaminer wrote years ago (I think it was in her book called I’m dysfunctional, you’re dysfunctional), in a therapeutic age we feel obligated to give everybody’s’ ow-ies equal sympathy, whether the injury is a hang nail, hurt feelings, or an escape from the Cambodian Killing Fields. I feel as if I’m perpetually surrounded by nervous Victorian maidens fainting on couches at real or imagined insults. It’s exhausting.
It's like when everyone starts throwing the "Nazi" word around. Remember when people were calling Bush a Nazi? Oh, wait. They're still doing that. But here's the issue: people listening to that may think, "Oh, yeah! Bush is a Nazi!". And then they hear that Stephen Harper, the Canadian Prime Minister is a Nazi, and they think, "Oh, yeah! Harper's a Nazi!". Because they don't like Bush and Harper, they agree with their assessment.
But here's the problem. Even though they don't like Bush and Harper, they do know that the reason they don't like them is because they disagree with their policies, and they think Bush and Harper are hateful (I don't share their assessment, but follow me for a moment). So if a Nazi is simply someone you disagree with whom you also think is hateful, a whole bunch of people could be Nazis, including your mother-in-law.
Then, when you hear that Hitler was a Nazi, you forget about tossing 6 million Jews in the ovens, along with a million Poles and a million gypsies and countless others. You forget about the medical experiments by Mengele. You forget about the teenage girls who were used as prostitutes by the Nazi officers, and killed them when they got pregnant. They don't think about the German Jews who had to hand over their children to complete strangers to smuggle them out of Germany, knowing they may never see them again, because it was those children's only chance of survival. They forget about the emaciated ghosts of human beings that were found in liberated concentration camps.
They forget so much that we can have protests all over North America, like this one in Toronto, attended mostly by Muslims and union workers, who can hold signs saying, "Jews back in the ovens!", or "Jews = Nazis", and we think nothing of it.
No matter what you think about the war in Gaza (and I happen to think Israel has a right to self-defense), bombing people who have bombed you is not the same as choosing identical twins so that you can do medical experiments on them. It is not the same as gassing babies to death, or dashing their heads against walls in front of their mothers.
Have we no conscience? Have we no ability to think critically anymore? Have we forgotten what real evil is?
Real evil is with us. It was demonstrated on the streets of Toronto on Saturday by hateful people, but even they are not Nazis, though I disagree with them. Let's keep the ability to identify to real evil, rather than diluting evil to simply mean something we disagree with.
So let me take a moment and use "evil" to really mean something vile and disgusting, and not just mean something that I disagree with.
I think it is evil to mulilate the genitals of little girls. I think it is evil to marry four wives. I think it is evil to say that it is okay to rape a woman caught in a war, as long as she is not a Muslim, and then pass her around for everyone else to use. I think it is especially evil to say that God Himself condones this sort of rape. I think it is evil to say that it is okay to marry a little girl, as long as you don't consummate the marriage until she is 9, like Muhammad did with his wife Aisha. I think it is wrong to demand that women cover themselves from head to toe, or else they risk beating.
And when people who believe in these evil things start protesting on our streets against Israel, under the banner of a terrorist flag, and no one says anything, including our political leaders, I think that's evil and wrong, too. So consider this post my attempt to speak out in the apparent media silence against these protesters: calling Jews Nazis is evil, and demonstrates your lack of morals and of logical ability. Calling for the death of Jews is also evil. Such things have no place in a civilized society, and the fact that they can happen here, without any real denunciation, is sobering indeed.
Do you remember Jesus' admonition that we are salt in the world? And if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again?
I've been thinking about that lately in terms of the changes that are coming to the government in the U.S.
What does salt do? It preserves, and it flavours. But it doesn't change the essential property. What it does is to stop it from rotting so quickly.
It doesn't make it fresher; it just slows down the rotting process. The direction is still the same: it's still rotting. But it's going much more slowly.
Now I don't mean to be a pessimist. And please forgive me for being political, as I'm about to do in a moment.
But I've been upset at both the Bush administration and the Harper administration in Canada because they haven't gone far enough. There's so much more they could have done to revamp welfare, to save the public school system by getting back to basics, to clean up our culture, to cut down on corruption. But very little was done.
In other words, little progress was made.
But salt doesn't make progress. What it does is prevent stuff from rotting. So maybe the sign of a productive and good government is that things don't get worse! It's not so much that they get better; it's that the rotting stops or slows. So if things stay the same, we're doing okay.
Of course, we'd like it to get better, and there are other biblical passages that point to the difference that we can make when we speak up for God. But when you're running a government, with an entrenched bureaucracy you can't do much. You can just simply slow the descent.
Maybe we expect too much out of our leaders. Transformational leaders are few and far between; Reagan was one, and I don't know if we'll see another in our lifetime. But we should all appreciate the fact that under Bush and Harper, certain things didn't disintegrate faster than they already were.
What will happen under Obama? I'm worried, especially given his picks for Education Cabinet Minister. Chicago, for pity's sake? What is he thinking?
I expect will see an accelerated decline in some areas in the next little while because no one is trying to stop that decline.
So it's up to us. We can't rely on the government to make it better. We have to reach out ourselves, and love our neighbours, teach our kids well, instill values and morals. No one else will do it.
It's up to us. We are the salt. We are what prevents decay. If the salt has been removed from the government, it's up to us. We may not have felt the urgency before; we will feel it now. So let's do something about it.
Instead of complaining, let's talk to the neighbourhood kids. Let's volunteer in youth groups. Let's make our communities better places. That's what you can do. It's within our grasp. And you are salt!
Every Friday my syndicated column appears in a bunch of papers around North America. Here's this week's. For all you Americans, forgive my references to our election! I think in your election, people did talk about the issues more, though with a lot of spin. Oh, and for translation purposes, Canadian RRSPs=401ks. Anyway, read on:
Lately in these columns I’ve been trying to write about light and happy things. My life has been pretty busy and stressful lately, and I need a chill pill. Unfortunately, I am not really a light and happy person. Things bug me, which is probably why I wanted to become a columnist in the first place and get stuff off my chest.
So in that vein, I thought I would take this opportunity to write a cathartic column and list some of the things that are really irritating me today.
To start, I wish people would stop having meetings that don’t actually get anything done. And even more than that, I wish they would stop expecting me to attend these meetings. Most meetings are entirely unnecessary, but people who get paid to go to meetings don’t realize that. Just send me a list of what you need me to do and I’ll do it. But don’t make me sit somewhere for an hour and a half discussing it first.
I’m angry at how ugly our media is. The other night I walked into Blockbuster Video to see what was new. I started at the Z’s and worked my way down the alphabet, growing increasingly more desperate as the number of possibilities grew smaller and smaller. I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw 27 Dresses, the very last movie on this alphabetical tour. Luckily, it ended up being kind of a cute. But why did I have to scour the entire store to find a fun movie? Why do we have to glorify the ugliness of life so much?
Speaking of ugly, I’m angry at people who wear t-shirts venerating mass murderers. Why do people like Mao? The man is the biggest mass murderer in human history, massacring one hundred million of his own people. And before anyone starts saying that the Americans kill people all the time, there is a big difference between people dying unintentionally in a war, and people being massacred by their own leaders. I’m angry that people don’t get that. If you don’t get it, then you must think Churchill was just as responsible for World War II as Hitler, and that’s just wrong.
Before we leave T-shirts, can I please put in a request that teenagers stop wearing Che Guevera ones? The man was Castro’s executioner. By his own admission he ordered the killing of several thousand, and murdered some himself, including some as young as fourteen. Would you wear a Paul Bernardo T-shirt? A Timothy McVeigh T-shirt? A Muhammad Atta T-shirt? Then stop wearing Che ones. Just because he’s a communist doesn’t make him cool. It makes him evil. Learn more about the guy before you wear him on your chest.
I’m also ticked that my RRSPs have plunged, and my parents’ RRSPs have plunged, even though we were doing everything we were supposed to do. I know stock markets have their ups and downs. I’m fine with that. What I’m not fine with is a financial crisis caused by imbeciles who work in banks and imbeciles in the American Congress who decided that giving out dumb loans was a smart thing to do. I may not have an economics degree, but even I know that qualifications for loans should include more than “can I see your welfare slip and your note from your parole officer?” And I’m angry they won’t go to jail for plunging the world into this crisis, where the poorest will be hit the hardest.
I’m angry that we can have an election and barely talk about the real issues. We tip toe around the stuff that’s really important and never really say what’s on our minds, in case people might disagree with us. No wonder so few people voted! Maybe if someone opened up their mouths and said what he or she was really thinking, more people would have realized that politicians are real people, too. Instead, they seem far removed, and they all have really bad hair.
Other than that, I’m pretty happy. I wish more people would take responsibility for their actions, and be good to their families, and I’ll keep hammering those points home. But now that I’ve got these ones off of my chest, I can breathe a sigh of relief, and wait until next week when something else is sure to bug me again.
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To all you Works for me Wednesday people: sorry I didn't abide by the theme this week! I wrote this post first. But I left a comment there about toys, so I hope that makes up for it! So please read on. This is something I really needed to say.
Are you addicted to anything? I am. I'm not talking about cigarettes or alcohol or gambling, though those are common and bad enough, but I don't think we can label some things as "bad" addictions and others as "good" addictions. The fact is, they're addictions. And we need to get rid of them.
An addiction, I think, is a compulsive habit where you do things that you know aren't good for you because you get some sort of a high from it. For some of us, like I said, that can be shopping. For others it can be romance novels, or television, or even gossip. I have two. One is to Diet Pepsi. I need my caffeine, and I hate coffee. But I really need to stop!
But the one that impacts my life the most is politics. I am just addicted to political blogs. I spend so much time online reading them and getting righteously angry. And it robs me of time to write, to homeschool, to spend with my friends.
There was a time, many years ago, when I was addicted to television. One day I realized how much time I was wasting, and I quit cold turkey. It was only after that that I suddenly found the time to start writing. And write I did!
But ever since September 11 I've been glued to political blogs. Sure, I've still written, but my life has still been spent with too much time everyday looking at these blogs.
And last night, as the election results came in, I started to realize something. I am relying on politics to solve the world's problems. I look at abortion, and I want to fight for new laws. I think about terrorism, and I want a government that will protect us. I look at teen pregnancy, and I want a government that will do something about the schools.
Ultimately, though, Jesus didn't leave the world in the hands of the Roman government. He left it in the hands of a hodge podge group of men and women who had followed Him no earth.
Some issues, like the 13-year-old girl who was raped and then stoned that I reported on below, seem only to have political answers. What can I do about that, sitting here in Canada, except elect leaders that will intervene? But even there, maybe I rely too much on those leaders, and don't do enough to give money to support indigenous Christian work there, or pray enough for these girls, or reach out to the Muslims living here so that they can take the gospel back to where they were born.
And so if I want the world changed, even the parts of the world that are so far removed, it still starts with me. But how can I change the world if I'm so wrapped up in the internet?
I do believe that we should be well-informed on current events, and we should be well-informed when we vote (to tell you the truth, I'm worried that many weren't). But where will most of the good in the world come from? It won't come from government. It will come from individual people deciding to change their families, their communities, their country, and their world.
I've been consumed with prayer for this election, and I'm not saying that's a bad thing. But have I prayed as much for my brothers-in-law, who don't know Jesus? Have I prayed for my nieces and nephews? Have I prayed for the teens at my church? If I'm honest, I'd say I haven't, except for perfunctory prayers at night.
I have let my interest in politics take over my commitment and responsibility to those that God has placed in my sphere of influence.
Today I erased all the bookmarks to my favourite blogs. I changed my home page from a news page to Facebook (want to be my friend? I collect them! Just search for Sheila Wray Gregoire and I'll add you!).
I can change the world, even without being fully in the political know. I can change the world through the three precious children I homeschool. I can change the world through the teens I coach at church. I can change the world through my nieces and nephews, my neighbours, the doctors that my husband works with. I can change the world through this blog: by encouraging you all and pointing you to God.
And that's what I intend to concentrate on for now. Maybe one day I'll be able to go back to politics. I certainly will have to before the next Canadian election so I'm informed about the issues. But since we've recently had one up here, too, I think I'll bow out gracefully for a while and concentrate on those I can change.
Are you addicted to something? And is it taking away your real calling from God? Think about quitting cold turkey. My mother-in-law quit smoking after decades by just deciding to one day. It wasn't easy, but she is very glad she did it. I'm going to quit politics today. Diet Pepsi is another story, but I'm working on it. But don't let something steal you from what you've been called to--even if it seems like an innocent thing.
And I don't think we can just "decrease" the amount of time we spend on addictions. If we're addicted, we have to quit. It's as easy as that. So try a lot of prayer. Try taking it just one day at a time. Let others know that you're trying to quit so they can encourage you. But most of all, go to God and ask Him for a vision of what your life would be like if you let Him have control again, rather than compulsively going and doing something that isn't good for you.
I wish you all the best!
Thanks for stopping by! Why not look around a little? I have lots of posts on marriage, family, parenting, and more!
Now that I've had a few days to digest what happened in Canada's election, I thought I'd leave my take for those of you who are interested, since it isn't always what the media portrays.
Stephen Harper, our Conservative Prime Minister, won another minority government. We have a multi-party parliamentary system, which means that whichever party has the most seats forms the government. But in this case, and before the election, the Conservatives were short and didn't have a majority. So they couldn't automatically pass anything.
They won pretty big, though, up about 17 seats I think. They're a lot closer to a majority now than they were before.
They gained seats in the crucial 905 area (the area code surrounding Toronto, where they needed to break through), a few in Vancouver, and in New Brunswick and Anne of Green Gables land. They just hit a wall in Quebec.
We have a weird system where Quebec, which has a quarter of our parliamentary seats, votes overwhelmingly for a Quebec separatist party to represent them, even though they don't actually want to separate. It's very strange. They just want a strong Quebec voice in Parliament. We were hoping the Conservatives could break through in Quebec (they do have 9 seats now, I think), but the big breakthrough didn't come.
It's too bad, but that's Quebec.
The main thing is that nobody wants another election, so the opposition parties will likely support a lot of what Harper is doing. And right now our banks are the strongest in the world and our country is bearing up well under the financial crisis.
So I'm very encouraged. That's probably going to work out to at least three more years of Harper appointing fair judges (rather than overly liberal judges), three years of Harper appointing key Conservatives to the ministries and the Bank of Canada; three years of Harper running the military. Even if he never passed another law or budget, that's a big legacy you can leave in a country.
One of the key responsibilities in both the U.S. and Canada is appointing these key people. That's where you make your mark. And let me say, that given who Obama's friends tend to be, I would much rather be in my position where Harper is appointing fair judges than in the position that the United States may soon be in when Obama is left to appoint his allies.
But that's just me needling you guys about your election! Sorry about that. Can't help it. I'm going to stay away from any more election news for a while because I can't handle it. We came through our own election quite well, and for that I am grateful. God has given us a good government.
But no matter who runs Canada, or who runs the United States, God is still in charge. And whichever party wins is still a whole lot better than what most countries of the world face. So I am counting my blessings, and praying for a continually better world.
Tomorrow Canadians go to the polls. Our election was called six weeks ago, so we haven't lived through two and a half years of an election circus like most of you readers; we have only lived through six weeks of it, and that's enough for me.
Currently we have a Conservative minority government, which means that the Conservatives have the most seats in our Parliament, but they don't have enough to guarantee that anything they want passes. So they've had a hard time getting their agenda across. The called the election hoping for a majority; at the time, the polls seemed to support it. Today it looks much more bleak.
One of my favourite columnists, Michael Coren, wrote this about our election, and I think it applies to the American one, too (just insert "America" rather than "Canada"). So I give this to you to muse over today:
It's about people who bemoan the lack of public childcare as opposed to those who know we already had the best childcare and it's called parenting.
It's about those who feel Canada as a home and a heart as opposed to those who think of Canada as a concept and a social experiment.
About those who view taxation as a necessary evil to be used to help the most unfortunate as opposed to those who want to use taxes to change the very nature of Canadian society.
About those who believe that Canada is public broadcasting, state education and the Charter of Human Rights as opposed to those who see it as pioneers, personal initiative, sacrifice and courage.
About those who want a clean environment for the sake of their children as opposed to those who want a clean environment because they prefer the planet to its inhabitants.
About moms and dads rather than caregivers and nannies, about real communities as opposed to artificial communes, about having a thick skin and a sense of humour as opposed to being constantly oversensitive and complaining about and demanding an apology for any remark that offends your politically correct sensibilities.
About a Canada based firmly on our traditions and values as opposed to a Canada destroyed and then rebuilt on notions that are entirely foreign to our way of life.
I'm always amazed by people who switch back and forth between parties at each election. I suppose if you're truly in the middle it doesn't matter. But most of us have a concept of how life should be; we either want more government to take care of the problems, or less government so that fewer problems are caused in the first place. You must fall on one end of the spectrum or the other! I think it's just that people don't always realize which side of the spectrum the political parties fall on, because they don't always articulate it easily. But it is simple: Republicans (and Conservatives) in general want less government and more personal responsibility; Democrats (and Liberals and the NDP) want more government to solve our problems. So which are you?
I know that's an overgeneralization, and that Republicans have done little to curb spending, but that is the ideological framework the parties fall under.
And I think of it like this: the main way that people learn is through consequences. There's a reason for that, too: God set up the principle "you reap what you sow". It's present in nature; and it's present in human nature, too. We are supposed to reap what we sow, and that is how we learn.
That's also how we turn to God. The Prodigal Son returned to the Father after he had reaped what he had sown. When he had completely hit rock bottom he realized how much he needed the Father. He repented. And he returned.
When we interfere with the whole reap-sow continuum, I think we interfere with a very important part of human nature. If we try to seal people off from the consequences of their actions, it's highly unlikely they will learn from them. And it's even more likely that they will develop a victim mentality, where everybody is supposed to fix my life for me. If things go badly for me, people should pick up the pieces. And that's not right.
But there's another philosophical problem that divides the two parties, and it's this one: which is the basic social unit, the family or the government? Does it take a village, or does it take a family to raise a child? I believe it takes families. In fact, I believe that without families, villages will fail. The basic social unit must be the family. It is how we were created, it is where our allegiance lies, and it is family that keeps us rooted.
Not all families are great, of course, but we have the ability to form new families as adults, and to escape dysfunctional ones. But who should we rely on in times of trouble: the family or the government?
Right now the government is getting so large and failing so miserably because it is attempting to do things that the family should be doing on its own. So many family functions have been offloaded onto the schools. Many health issues have been taken up by the government. And so on and so on. And it's no wonder that families are now very fragile.
If the family is the basic social unit, then people's outlook towards government and society is one of responsibility. I am responsible for myself, and I am responsible to act appropriately. If the government is the basic social unit, on the other hand, and it solves all problems, then people's basic outlook towards society and culture is one of rights: you owe me, you can't criticize me, I have the right to do whatever I want.
Now rights, of course, have their good sides, just as government has its good side. I realize that I have painted a very black and white picture here, and I know it's not as simple as that, but this is a blog, not a treatise on government.
That, however, is what informs my political views, and it's why I'm voting Conservative tomorrow in Canada's election. I hope more Canadians join me, but I know that ultimately every election is in God's hands, and He knows the outcome. He sets up kings and deposes them. I have to keep telling myself that right now as I look at both elections.
I feel so privileged to be able to vote. And as much as I disagree with the other parties, all the parties we have to choose from are infinitely better than the governments that run many of the world's repressed countries. We are truly blessed.
And since today is Canadian Thanksgiving, that's one of the thing I'm saying Thanks for. Thank you for the freedom to vote; and thank you for our good, though imperfect, political system. We are blessed indeed.
I'm around the net in a bunch of places right now, and I thought I'd point you to some of them!
First, Wild Parenting has run my "It's Not Easy Being Green" column. An excerpt:
I was green before green was hip. In the mid 1990s I used cloth diapers on my babies. I have always used both sides of 8 ½ by 11 paper before recycling it, so I’m one of the few who actually likes junk mail. Free paper! In my old house five composters were biodegrading all at one time, which is probably driving the new owners nuts. I love my clothesline. I have always loved hunting through thrift stores. I saved empty milk bags to use as freezer bags. And I take my bicycle, complete with the child trailer behind, to the grocery store. It’s too small for my kids, but it will do when I just need to pick up a few things.
I did all these things before David Suzuki started lecturing us about them. But I didn’t do these things just for the environment. I did them because I’m cheap. The environmental benefits were just a nice added bonus.
And at the Homeschool Blog Awards I've published a bunch of new links today, including those awesome School House Rock videos. Remember Conjunction Junction? And How a Bill Becomes a Law? Make sure you watch them with your kids!
The political blogs (which I am trying to avoid, but not quite succeeding; I'll try to break the habit again tomorrow) are all awash with Obama's comments about putting lipstick on a pig.
Some people say he was talking about Palin; some say he wasn't; some say it's a big deal; and others say it's much ado about nothing.
To be honest, I don't know what to think, except that I wish the McCain supporters would be quiet about it. It just makes them look like whiners.
I'm sure Sarah Palin doesn't let her kids whine!
So honestly, I'd like to know, what do you think? It's my suspicion that most of my readers aren't overly political.
I don't want everyone's opinion about the election, because I don't want this to become a political blog. I just want to know, as a woman, what did you think about that comment? A big deal, or way overblown? Offended, or not? I'm curious!
There's been a lot of talk lately that there are two Americas. John Edwards started it saying that there was a rich America and a poor America (presumably he was saying he belonged to the downtrodden America, even though he's a multi-millionaire, but that's another story).
In the last few weeks, the "culture wars" supposedly have come back with a vengeance, showing the two Americas in a different light: small town America vs. community organizing America; hunters vs. bureaucrats; people who shop at Wal-Mart vs. people who eat arugula. However you want to define it, it's seen as a culture war.
But I think the real culture war, and that which has the left in a tizzy, is about the meaning of children.
Take this video clip from Sarah Palin's speech, for instance:
What was your reaction when you saw that for the first time?
I saw it when, in our homeschool, we decided to watch the speech. I didn't even know that clip was coming. We were just watching the speech when all of a sudden the camera cut to Piper, and that's what we saw. And all of us, all four of us (Rebecca, 13; Alex, 13; Katie, 11; and me) immediately said, "Awwww, that's so cute."
In the press galleries at the convention, journalists wrinkled their noses in disgust when Piper, Ms. Palin’s youngest daughter, was filmed kitty-licking her baby brother’s hair into place. But to many Americans — including some I talked to in the convention hall — that looked like family church on Sunday, evidence of good breeding and sibling regard.
They thought it was disgusting?
I think those without children probably do find the "sharing of spit" thing disgusting. But as any mom knows, you get over that pretty quickly as soon as you have kids. You start finishing their half eaten meals because you can't let it go to waste. You feed babies; they want to feed you back, sticking their hands, all covered with spit and half chewn food, in your mouth. And it's just easier to let a child drink out of your cup sometimes than to have to refill it.
These are things that are really only done between parents and children. Even with spouses we don't go that far. I kiss Keith, and I may drink out of his glass, but I don't really like using his toothbrush. I have, on occasion, when desperate, but it's not something I like to think about. But with kids? Who cares. Spit is a communal family thing.
And I think it's this family thing that makes the left so mad at Palin. It's not just that she's pro-life (though she is); it's that she's actually lowered herself to having five kids. She didn't stop at a respectable one, like Hillary, or the traditional two, like the Obamas. She just kept having them.
Why is it that people hate large families so much? As far as I'm concerned, the greatest regret in my life will be that I didn't have more.
After Katie was born I was in no shape to get pregnant again. I'd had a miscarriage, and then watched my son die. When I was pregnant with Katie, they told me she had fatal defects, too (she didn't, but worrying just about did me in). I just didn't think I could face the uncertainty again.
Besides, we were sure we were going to adopt. In fact, we went through the whole home study process, and were accepted. We started fostering a family of girls that were up for adoption, assuming that we were going to take them.
And then I discovered something.
I can't kiss another baby's bum. I kissed my own girls' bums all the time, but as much as I liked these poor tykes, I couldn't kiss the baby's bum. And I didn't want to add girls to my family who were of similar ages to my own girls if I wouldn't be able to love them equally.
So we thought we'd wait to adopt (and I still pray that God may lead us to the right children, some day, once my biological ones are older and there wouldn't be comparisons).
But in the meantime, we really lost our window to have more kids. And that has haunted me for the last few years. I keep thinking of the babies I could have had, and wondered why I was so selfish (because that's how I see it). It's the thing I am saddest about in my life.
So even though I only have two living children, I really do identify more with the five kid families than with the two kid families, even if I will never understand the amount of laundry in a five children house!
All of this being said, I think the real cultural divide is over where your priorities are: are they with children, where your desires take second place; or are they with self-fulfillment and your own dreams, so that, if you have kids, you try to make sure they mess up your life as little as possible?
Please understand, I don't think this is a number of children issue. Many people with only one or two kids (or no kids at all!) don't put their own advancement first, but think of others. But I do think a sizeable proportion of the news media, where they tend to be more childless than the average population, and certain political parties, where children aren't as common, just don't understand the value of a close knit family life, where things are messy, unpredictable, and chaotic.
But still beautiful and valuable.
And that's the real cultural divide: children/family or intellectual sophistication. And guess what? The children/family group is much more fun!
It turns out that the economy grew at 3.3% last quarter, even though 90% of Democrats think we're in a recession. I don't really understand that, but let's leave that for a minute.
One thing that disturbs me, whenever elections come around, is how politicians talk about "the poor".
In Canada there will likely be an election call tomorrow, so we'll be going through an election at the same time as you Americans will be, though we'll likely be done earlier.
But don't you find that everytime a politician speaks, and especially a politician on the left, they talk about "I met a grandmother with only one leg who had no health insurance whose house burned down and she lost her cat"? It's always one tragedy after another. And the blame? It goes to the government. The government did not do enough. This woman can in no way be blamed for what happened to her, because it was the government's responsibility to care for her.
I once wrote a column based on William Galston's research that says that if you want to not be poor, you only have to do five things: graduate from high school; take a job, any job; stay out of jail; don't have children before you're married; and get married and stay married. If you do those five things, it is very unlikely you will be poor in the long term. You certainly may be for a few years, but in the long term you won't be.
And I think there's a lot of truth to that.
That doesn't mean it will always be easy to make ends meet. But we make ends meet by deciding responsibly how to spend our money. If you buy a huge house on dubious credit, it shouldn't surprise you if you lose your house. If you live in a small apartment, even when your babies are born, so you can save for a downpayment, then you'll likely be okay.
If you forego the cable and get videos out of the library, you'll save a lot of money. If you don't get a car, or survive on only one, you'll do even better.
But we have this idea that anybody who doesn't have two cars and a three-bedroom house with a yard and a large screen TV is poor.
Most of our grandparents grew up in houses that were less than 1000 square feet, and they had four or five kids! We don't understand how good we have it.
Instead of blaming government for all our problems, maybe we should start just being more responsible ourselves.
I am so sick of hearing how all these poor people need the government's help. That makes it sound like you will never get out of debt, never succeed in life, never get a decent job unless the government helps you. You can't do it on your own. You can't look after yourselves.
No wonder we live in a world where parents don't look after their children; where schools won't discipline; where people don't live up to their responsbilities. So many political parties are framing it to say that these things are impossible! That people can't live up to their commitments, can't raise kids (remember It Takes a Village?), can't save for their retirement.
Life is not always easy. It takes sacrifice. It takes hard work. But whether or not you succeed is primarily up to you, not the government. And the more we blame government, and elect governments to fix all our problems, the more we give up moral responsiblity for own lives. And that is not taking our society on a good road.
I would much rather hear the message from a politician that, "Life may get tough soon. The economy is proving remarkably resilient, but we're in a transition time. There are going to be layoffs. There is going to be uncertainty with war, with gas prices, with food prices. But we can get through this, because we have proven ourselves as a nation to be go-getters. We are survivors. In the worst of situations, we have not only triumphed, we have helped others.
So don't despair. Plan for the future. Get yourself a good education and some retraining. Stay close to your family. But keep dreaming those dreams. Keep risking things! That's what has made our country great, and it will continue to be great, as long as we give our best. The government is here to help you by getting out of your way; by letting those dreams you dream fly!"
Wouldn't that be better than an endless litany of all the little people who are desperate without the government's help?
By the way, if you want to see real poverty, visit a Third World slum. There they have no hope. They have nothing with which to make their lives better. Us complaining because we don't have enough stuff really grates on me after working in overseas orphanages. That's where the truly poor live.
Around the blogosphere there's a lot of talk that maybe Palin isn't a good pick because she should be home with her baby.
I'm sympathetic. I really am.
But here's where I see it.
When I look at Palin, I look at almost a Deborah figure.
She didn't set out to go into politics, unlike Hillary Clinton. She didn't have some master plan of her life. She was just a mom who was upset at things at the school, so she joined the PTA and tried to fix them. Then she ran for city council for the same reason, and started to fix things.
Then she was asked to run for mayor, which she did, and she--you've got it--fixed things.
Then it was the Ethics Committee for the Oil & Gas Industry, where she discovered corruption, and reported it. And then it was the governorship.
She never asked to be on the VP list. But she is determined to do a good job, and from what I hear (though I could be wrong) her husband is home lots with the kids.
She's not running on behalf of women's rights, or downplaying stay-at-home moms, the way a lot of female politicians do. She's not saying that women need to take a more public role in life. She's just been in the right place at the right time in Alaska to get rid of some very entrenched corruption on the part of the Old Boys' Network.
Which is why she reminds me of a Deborah. Or a Margaret Thatcher, for that matter.
I'm uncomfortable with the baby being so young, although I think he's been with her in the office a lot. But I guess you can't help the timing of the election. And I do think that she is the best candidate from McCain's point of view, because she is so big on anti-corruption and on energy.
On the whole I think women should stay at home, although, as a physician's wife myself, I know many female physicians whose husbands stay at home instead, and it works quite well. The children still have a consistent parent for a caregiver.
I think this is a really tough one, for several reasons. Many of us women do feel called to things outside of the home as well as to childrearing. And certainly being a mom has to be a top priority. But what happens when God asks you to do something that isn't ideal for your family?
I think of this a lot with Billy Graham. He wasn't there when his kids were growing up. Certainly Ruth was, but would you take a job that would take you so much away from your kids? I also have a lot of friends in the military, and several who are overseas right now. Being overseas for six months isn't great on your kids, either. But is it wrong? Or is God calling them to something extraordinary, where He will also provide the extra grace for their family?
The truth is that some jobs are not good for families. They really aren't. But somebody has to do them, and some of them are absolutely vital for our well-being as a nation and as a society. So unless we want all of those jobs--police officers, military members, politicians, missionaries, evangelists--to be done by people who don't really love their families, who don't have families, or who don't even love God, then we have to admit that God may ask stuff of some families that doesn't seem fair or right.
It's a tough one, and as a busy speaker I have to balance a lot of this, too. I don't have an answer, but these are the thoughts that have been going through my head.
In the case of all these jobs, I don't think any of them should be taken unless one's whole family feels a definite calling. It's not enough for just one person to feel a calling--the whole family has to feel it, and it has be after a lot of prayer. But there will be times when Christian parents will have to take jobs that require being away from home a lot. And then they're not able to put their number one priority as number one. I do think God provides the grace when He also provides the calling. But it's not just Palin who is doing this. It's all over the Christian church in many different homes.
Even in my own family, when the children were young my husband wasn't home much. He worked about 110 hours a week at the hospital, and he was chronically exhausted. It worked because I was able to be home full time and take on the burden of parenting. And because of that, the kids are still very close to him, because when he as home, I didn't need him to spell me off. We did family things. That's why it has to be a family calling. If I were also working it would have been a disaster. But having Christian pediatricians is an important thing, so I think God called our family so that Keith was away a lot, and didn't parent a lot in the early years, but it was for a greater good.
And, in Palin's case, let's not forget that if she had stuck with two children, as I did, none of this would be an issue. Her oldest two are 19 and 17. But because she went on to have five, and obviously wasn't that enamoured with birth control, she now has two younger ones (and one middle one). In my case, at 44, I'll be fine to be VP if anybody wants to call me. But that's because I didn't have as many children as I probably should have had (more on that some other time when I feel like being especially honest).
So those are my Saturday thoughts. And I must now get to work finishing an article I didn't do at all yesterday because I was glued to the news!
..of Sarah Palin's nomination, I let my children make homemade whipped cream and eat it with chocolate chips, since we were out of ice cream.
Now, I know one shouldn't let one's children eat such crap very often, but I wanted to make sure they remember this historic day since, whether or not McCain wins, I think there's a very good chance we just saw the future President of the United States enter the national stage. She is an impressive speaker, an impressive woman, and an impressive politician. Even if she doesn't become VP, she can run for President in eight or twelve years and still win.
I'm also celebrating an "I love your blog" award from Terry over at Ornaments of Grace! If you don't know her blog, check it out. She writes such interesting things that always make me think.
She likes my template, and she says I have great content, too. So I'm lifting a bowl of whipped cream to you, Terry! Sorry about reminding you of that on your quest to lose weight. Now I feel a little guilty. But nothing can bring me down on Palin Day!
This summer, when we were in Alaska, I met some crazy people. People who race dogs for 1000 miles. People who willingly choose to live in the bush with no electricity in minus 50 degree weather. People who fly little float planes instead of drive cars.
And I loved them all.
What an awesome state! Everybody there seemed independent, responsible, motivated, fun, and definitely a character.
Plus they had great yarn shops.
And great scenery.
But on with my story.
When our cruise ship stopped in Juneau, I saw a little handmade soap shop called "The Glacier Smoothie". They make awesome creams and soaps using silt from the glaciers, which acts as an exfoliant. It is really luxurious.
I bought some gifts there, and as I was paying, I happened to look on top of the door. There, in calligraphy, was a Bible verse--I look to the hills, from whence cometh my help. The white-haired man smiled at me when I commented that it was a beautiful verse, and he went on to say that without God you can't really do anything.
I agreed with him, and we talked for a bit.
Then, to show my dazzlingly amazing knowledge of American politics and bond with this kind gentleman, who reminded me of a Matthew Cuthbert, I said, "I've just been praying for Sarah Palin, and I hope that McCain names her VP."
All of a sudden his eyes lit up, and he said that he believed that God had put her in this place for a purpose, and that he's been preparing her for something greater. She has stood for God through thick and thin, even through some big attacks on her for her faith. He told me that he believed that when you stand for God, God gives you more responsibility. And she has proven herself worthy of that.
The main attack, he said, came this year when she chose not to abort her son with Down Syndrome.
Here's what the Wikipedia entry says about Palin's children:
From Wikipedia:
On September 11, 2007, the Palins' son Track joined the Army. Eighteen years old at the time, he is the eldest of Palin's five children.[10] Track now serves in an infantry brigade and will be deployed to Iraq in September. She also has three daughters: Bristol, 17, Willow, 13, and Piper, 7.[11] On April 18, 2008, Palin gave birth to her second son, Trig Paxson Van Palin, who has Down syndrome.[12] She returned to the office three days after giving birth.[13] Palin refused to let the results of prenatal genetic testing change her decision to have the baby. "I'm looking at him right now, and I see perfection," Palin said. "Yeah, he has an extra chromosome. I keep thinking, in our world, what is normal and what is perfect?"[13]
(I don't think it says that today; her post is being changed with the news).
Anyway, she was lambasted for having a fifth child, and then for not aborting, but she held on anyway.
As this man told me about Palin, and her integrity, I shared with him my own story about my child with Down Syndrome. And he looked at me with compassion, and said, "So you understand."
More customers came into the store then, so I took my things and left. I didn't want to. You knw how sometimes you encounter someone and your heart just yearns to sit with them and talk for a lifetime or two? I don't get that very often, but I did with this gentleman. But my father-in-law and mother-in-law were waiting for me, and my husband was hoping I didn't spend all our money, so it was time to go.
Talking with him just made my day, and even my cruise. It's such a little thing, but when I think of all the people I met in Alaska, this quiet man with deep conviction about "I look to the hills, from whence comes my help" is who I recall. I look forward to meeting him on the other side.
I suppose McCain sat up this morning, and perhaps said the same thing about Palin--"I look to the mountains, from whence comes my help." And hopefully he saw behind those mountains to the One who made them, too.
I have no idea who will win the election. I do think Palin is a good choice. It's time a woman was VP pick again, and she brings the energy issue front and center, where it should be. Certainly I would prefer McCain, it's true, but I know God's in charge, and I'm Canadian and can't vote anyway.
But to have Palin there, on this day, is so meaningful to me. After being told again and again to abort my son, and choosing to give him life, and still having people second guess me, to have her there is like God smiling on me.
I can't explain it, but thirteen years ago today we were sitting in the Intensive Care Unit watching my son post-surgery. And he was not doing particularly well. We would only have him for another five days.
Usually this week is one of the hardest in the year for me.
But today, I think that a woman who deliberately stood against both the abortion lobby and the group that would belittle Down Syndrome people is potentially in a position of great moral authority. And I'm so glad she's there. May God be with you, Sarah.
About Me: I'm a Christian author of a bunch of books, and a frequent speaker to women's groups and marriage conferences. Best of all, I love homeschooling my daughters, Rebecca and Katie. And I love to knit. Preferably simultaneously.
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