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blogging, culture, insanitybytes, life, motherhood, parenting, politics, racism, rage, rants
Uhhg, this little meme got me right in the gut. It’s true, cuts right to the heart of the matter. I’ve felt this truth myself many times over the years, as if to say, “my kids are being taught things that are not going to serve them well at all.”
I kind of walk in two worlds, I come from some pretty dysfunctional parenting. Many of the people I know did not grow up loved and nurtured. There was often a lot of abuse, chaos, and trying to be caretakers of our own broken parents. So one role I have is that of a child recovering from bad parenting.
Pay attention to what that kind of recovery looks like though, because there is this huge difference going on. It’s healing, restoration (as much as it is possible,) and a determination to not be a victim, to go forth and honor your parents by being the best that you can be. It’s a lot of hard work, a lot of leaning on the Lord, but that’s the mindset.
Then I walk in this other world of parents bound and determined to give it their all and to invest everything they have in their kids. Nobody is perfect, we all have our flaws, but I am speaking of the parents who decided to actually invest in fully loving their kids into adulthood. So my other role is that of a parent recovering from, well recovering from some real abuse from the culture that did not respect me, that did not support me, and that kind of taught my kids to do the same.
I’m kind of angry about all that abuse, that disrespect over the years. Angry at my kids, not so much. I’m more angry at the public school system, political narratives, a corrupt medical system, and child protective services. A community that has worked in tandem to teach kids how to disrespect any and all authority, even the authority of those who love them unconditionally, who would likely lay down their very lives for them.
I was talking to a mom the other day with a grown child. She lost her when she was 13 to a system that tells kids that they need the government to protect them from their ignorant parents, and that their medical records are private. A system that put a 13 year old on birth control, treated her for STD’s, and never said a word about the 30 year old man who was plying her with drugs and sexually exploiting her. Then the system “helped” some more by prescribing opioids for her pain which lead to addiction. Today that child is fairly stable thank God, on Suboxone, but mom sure isn’t. Mom isn’t okay at all.
And neither am I.
How do you even process the fact that the system, the government basically, treated your child as a commodity? A cash cow. They made a ton of money off of making her dysfunctional, getting her addicted to opioids, and now they get to make a ton of money off of getting her sober?
I know that story so very well, that grief and frustration, that sense of powerless, because I too feel as if I basically lost a daughter to a system that taught her that I (and her dad) were the bad guy’s she needed protection from, and then proceeded to use her as a financial commodity. Everybody knows better then mom because mom is just an uneducated hick, sexually repressed, and probably a racist, too. Yep, my kids who never set foot on a reservation, never lived in the projects, have no idea where their mother even comes from, were actually taught that it was okay to dismiss and disrespect me because, probably racist.
Today I am stuck on the sidelines, my kids are now on their own journey, and my grandkids too, but it is still excruciatingly painful stuff, there is an anger within that threatens to spill out sometimes, an anger that just wants to crush this soul wrenching evil and gleefully feast off it’s bones. It’s a deep betrayal that wants revenge served cold with a nice chianti and some fava beans.
I’m telling you, I really need to go drink some blood out of the skulls of my enemies.
My kids, misled, deceived into foolishly calling their mom a racist, do not realize that my story is really not much different then the story of so many black women, moms trying desperately to hang onto their kids in a world working so hard to make them victims, trying to use them as commodities. Trying to get them killed. It’s the same story told by so many Indian moms, kids taken away and sent to government schools, many who did not return, many who did not even survive. It’s a story told down through the generations, from grandma to grandma, a story those of us from the wrong side of the tracks know very well.
Somewhat ironic, bitterly ironic, but the very essence of “white privilege,” the motherlode of all cultural entitlement, is the blissful ignorance of not knowing that story, not understanding the nature of the war, having no awareness of who the enemy even is anymore. Hint: it’s not your mother.
I hope these words encourage someone. I hope they are a balm for someone’s soul, a truth that needs to be spoken in a world gone mad. I know so many mothers who have had their hearts ripped out and chewed up by our culture, so many who are fighting a battle they know they cannot win, tormented by regret and guilt that does not even belong to them.
Doug said:
Have you tried to “fix” it? Nothing like a “been there, done that” person to lend their passion to a cause for reform. I’m not being trite to your past experience… I will never walk the mile in your shoes to understand one iota of what you’ve been through. Compared to others, I reek with white privilege (although not anything remotely in being a rich one) and the worst of my life is only suddenly now being told “my kind” is the cause of everyone’s racial victimization misery. No big deal for me compared to the lives of others. Engage with me the problems you’ve had as a “human being” and I can work with that because that’s our collective common denominator. Other than that, I would never qualify to even comment about governmental agencies and institutions that made portions of your life a living hell because of your race, poor parenting, or just being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
My “have you tired to fix it” remark was aimed at what I see in here… you have a command of the written word so why not use it to call attention. If you are graced with similar verbal attributes, even better. Politics… activism.
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seekingdivineperspective said:
You’ve said so much here that needed to be said. I watched my friend (Christian, home-schooling mother of five) go through the nightmare of being investigated by Social Services, living in fear for a year or more that her children would be taken away from her. When the whole ordeal was over, she requested the report (They hadn’t told her she had the right to it, but she knew she did.). Part of the report said that two of her daughters were “subjected to substandard living conditions and substandard food for a period of two weeks.” As serious as the situation had been, we had to laugh.
Folks, it’s called a MISSION TRIP. The girls saved up to go, and they couldn’t wait to go again the next summer. God help us.
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insanitybytes22 said:
Exactly! I am so sorry for your friend’s nightmare, but yes, it can be just that ridiculous, just that laughable.
Sadly what sometimes begins to happen is the kids themselves start to believe it, start to imagine they are being abused, or deprived in some way. Some people around them have been abused, the authorities are saying they are being abused, and kids often really want to fit in, and to please the adults around them (not their parents so much.) It’s a recipe for disaster. Meanwhile try to get help for a kid who is actually being neglected and abused, for real. It’s nearly impossible.
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seekingdivineperspective said:
Yes, I know a social worker who had that frustration. She’d see a kid whose mother was strung out on drugs and whose diaper hadn’t been changed in days, and would get blown off when she’d try to report it. Insanity.
We have reason to believe that the anonymous tip against my friend (I thought in America you were allowed to face your accuser..???) came from an at-risk kid they took into their home for a while. After a couple of weeks of being coddled, she was told that if she was to be part of the household, she would have to start doing chores like everybody else. She thought that was unfair, and she left shortly after, and shortly before the complaint came in. (eye-roll)
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Julie (aka Cookie) said:
Hear hear I say!!!— well said IB
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Geno said:
The “system” is certainly a wretched, flaming mess, but I can’t help but believe… deep down… that the “church” plays a much larger role in how messed up modern society is, globally.
The church has evolved, through the centuries, into the institutional, religious, emasculated, anemic and powerless THING we see now… that even the unbelievers can see is phony, hypocritical and unworthy of attention.
Consider what the apostolic church, and even bodies of believers down through history have done when they took the Lord and His word seriously.
The world is going to live and act as the world does, in ever degenerating measure. We should expect nothing else or less.
Paul even tells us to not judge those who are on the outside.
What is OUR excuse for utterly failing to be salt… and light… a city on a hill… a people called to express and demonstrate the reality of a NEW CREATION in Christ?
I’ve had some tastes of that reality. I have linked to a story of some of that.
NOW, I’m back to wallowing in defeat, failure, and memories of life in Him that seems like ancient history.
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insanitybytes22 said:
Very cool! Yes, we so need an empowered church willing to step out in faith and share some good news! Jesus changes everything. There is such power in His name.
I get really frustrated and discouraged, too. I have to constantly remind myself that when I say “the church needs” to do something, that “we” are the church, us as individuals. So I have to be the one to step out and rock the boat a little bit.
We really need one another though, we need fellowship and encouragement. Your story was about team work, a series of people and events lining up tp make ministering to those women possible. That is how His Spirit moves among us.
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Geno said:
Thanks for your positive response. I don’t get many of those, and I can see by your “rave reviews”, you don’t appear to get too many, either.
I’d like to expand on a few of your thoughts.
1. Yes, we ARE the church, as individuals…. but I believe it’s essential to grasp the reality of the CORPORATE expression of Christ. This is something the western church has lost to a huge degree, in my view.
We’re too much of a “Marlboro Man”, pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps, John Wayne kind of people.
We also don’t care too much for knowing others, or being known. How else to explain “pastors” who are unknowable? And who have little interest in knowing their “flock”?
Why was I able to experience the dynamics expressed in my story with young, non-western, new believers? I believe it was due to the fact they were WILLING to move along a path of DISCIPLESHIP, rather than one of Church “attendance”, programs & projects… the usual western path.
2. Yes, teamwork was a real factor in what the Lord was able to do in and through us. A bigger factor, though was simply availability. Having that availability, He guided & directed every step.
One final thought… If you DO end up “rocking the boat” withing an institutional church setting, don’t expect better responses than your “rave reviews”.
Grace in Him.
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insanitybytes22 said:
Ahh, Geno, I so hear you! There is truly nothing more painful them being right in the middle of your Christian family, your brothers and sisters, and feeling so disconnected, so far away, so alone! Ley me tell ya, I got some scars myself… 🙂
A big part of our problem in the Western world is this rugged individuality, this fierce independence and complacency. In other parts of the world, when the Lord is all you got, you really learn how amazing He is, how significant.
I love that “pull yourself up by the bootstraps.” That saying actually originated as mockery, as shaming of those who were promoting that kind of rugged individualism. It originally went something like, “don’t tell a man with no boots to just pull himself up by the bootstraps.” Todays the meaning has become almost completely reversed.
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Geno said:
[“A big part of our problem in the Western world is this rugged individuality, this fierce independence and complacency. In
other parts of the world, when the Lord is all you got, you really learn how amazing He is, how significant.”]
You make some great points, although you’d be shocked at how deeply the westernized, man-centered “gospel” has affected & infected the rest of the world.
People just eat up easy-believe-ism and the prosperity gospel, and this is, by far, the fastest-growing segment of the global “church”.
Unfortunately, complacency and self-centeredness have ALWAYS been big problems for the people of God, Old and New covenant. Scripture is crystal clear on this.
That’s why common vision, counting the cost, community and accountability are stressed so heavily in the word.
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seekingdivineperspective said:
I hope I’m copying and pasting this correctly, it’s a perfect song for this discussion.
https://www.bing.com/search?q=do+something+matthew+west&form=EDNTHT&mkt=en-us&httpsmsn=1&plvar=0&refig=cb768cb21151475fa64bae259094a316&PC=LCTS&sp=1&qs=AS&pq=do+something+matthew+west&sc=8-25&cvid=cb768cb21151475fa64bae259094a316&cc=US&setlang=en-US
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Geno said:
The song expresses good intentions and nice, fluffy ideas. Sadly, the Mormons and JWs do a better job along these lines. True believers tend to smile, clap, nod & proceed on their merry way, Bible tucked under their arms.
Personally, I’m convinced that “Be Something” is a far more concrete idea than “Do Something”… biblically & historically.
Those who have chosen to put off Adam and his cursed race… put on Christ as new creations… and allow this newness of life to flow through them as sap flows into the branches of the vine and bears fruit… have been far more “successful”, although vast numbers of them have had to pay with their lives.
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ColorStorm said:
Lots going on here. 😉
;(
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SLIMJIM said:
You on fire with this post!
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SLIMJIM said:
“I’m more angry at the public school system, political narratives, a corrupt medical system, and child protective services. A community that has worked in tandem to teach kids how to disrespect any and all authority, even the authority of those who love them unconditionally, who would likely lay down their very lives for them.”
I feel you!
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