I see monsters

As I've mentioned before, I work at a daycare.  A job, I love by the way, but I just had to go through my annual learning certificates (which help me keep the job I love, but I don't love quite as much as the job itself).  Turns out, the state requires that I know certain things so I'm fully equipped to work with children.

Will I remember anything I learned?  Almost certainly not.  Sometimes I get panicked when I realize that I've been issued a CRP certificate and I might one day be called upon to perform actual CPR on an actual person.  I feel like I would be one of those people who just like start hyperventilating and don't accomplish anything helpful.  Though one time I was in a situation where someone's foot got run over by a car, and I was the only person who kept her cool and got the situation sorted out.  So... maybe I'd be okay?

But that's not what this is about.

In addition to superfun times in my Communicable Diseases class (sarcasm alert) I took a class on child abuse prevention.  I add the "prevention" because I kept referring to it as just "child abuse," but those conversations got awkward.  "What was that thing you had last night?"  "Oh, I had this child abuse thing I had to do.  I mean, I didn't abuse children.  I learned how not to.  Not that I ever did before.  Just...  prevention.  It was a prevention class."

Anyhow, it was sort of terrifying.  As we all know, I work with kids all the time.  During the week at my daycare, I work with fabulous children who have (from what I know, anyhow) solid homes and loving and nurturing families.  On the weekends with Sunday School I work with fabulous children who have slightly less happy homes.  I mean, they might be happy homes, but they're not stable.  They might be loving, but I can't help but think that they're probably not very nurturing.  It's a sad fact, but a lot of broken families are exactly that; broken.  I spend time with kids who have these unavoidably warped views on life, who mistrust men, authority figures, and basically everyone.  Kids who curse like sailors and stay up till four in the morning watching questionable movies because nobody ever tells them they shouldn't.  That's life for them.

Something else they have to deal with?  Abuse.  I won't go into the specifics, mostly because I take the mantle of trust that they've placed in me very seriously, but I know kids who have been abused.  In various ways and by different people.  But it's horrifying.  No child should have to worry about things like that.  But these kids, my kids, have to worry about this.  Nobody is there to protect them--mommy works two jobs to support them and her boyfriend (who is on disability, you know, because of his back, because I've learned it's always the back).  These are kids who are raised by sheer force of will, guidance from TV, and the occasional grandmother.

It shouldn't be like that.  In my child abuse class they talked about the different indicators and whatever of child abuse.  Kids you should keep your eyes open for because either they are showing indications of being abused, or their home life is such that would lend itself to abuse.

It made me upset at the world in which we live.  That we have to learn to look for the monsters in the closet.  That I work at a daycare, with only kids who are younger than school-age, and we are mandated by the state to keep our eyes open for kids who might be abused at home.  I'm not saying there's ever a good age to start abusing kids, but the little defenseless ones are especially not okay to abuse.

This is rambley and doesn't make much sense, but I just...  have been feeling sad about the whole thing.  That I know kids who have told me about being abused, that I live in a world where I have to look for it, that I live in a world where there really are monsters in the closet.

And it makes me hope that in my small corner of the world, I can maybe be another influence in these lives.  I can't pretend to be the changing force in anybody's life (that is, in fact, the Lord's job, I'm thankful to say, and not a burden on my shoulders), but I know that I can be there for the kids I do have.  These are kids who move a lot (which always makes me muchly sorrowful), but while they're here, living in "my" neighborhood, my prayer is that the Lord can use me in their lives in whatever way I can.  If that means waking up early on a Saturday morning and going to a track meet, I'll be there.  If it means helping with homework, I'll be there.  Hugs, the occasional birthday party, and basketball (some of my favorite memories from last summer are actually being coached in basketball by some of my older Sunday School boys--because secretly I love basketball), those are things I can be there for.  Some kids will never share the deeper parts of their lives with me.  But for the kids who do entrust parts of their lives to me, I want to be able to cope, and to share with them the only One Who could ever handle the pain they've been given in their short lives.  It's only through God's grace that my life is so together.  I can't reverse their lives and somehow change it to make sense.  But I so greatly desire to help them see that through God, their lives can make sense.  We so often mourn, at my house, the lives we see with so much potential to be something, yet equally with so much potential to go off-course and become one more statistic.  Not like we expect the worst, per se, we're just pretty practical about it.

And it's sad.  Sad that we live in a world where we have to be practical about kids who might one day become statistics.  Kids who know monsters personally and try to leave the ugly parts of live behind when they get older, but end up making a mess of their lives, because they don't know how to do differently.

So that's the rant of the week.  Life makes me sad.  I mean, I know there's so much more to life, and I'd like to think that the real and perfect power of God will make a difference right now, today, in some of these lives, but I know that a lot of these stories have a lot of twists and turns before surrendering to the Lord.  And I know I won't always be there for these parts of their lives.  As much as I want to somehow be there for them, always, I know life doesn't work like that.

But I'm so thankful for these days I have been given with them.  For the privilege of being able to be with them in these days, even if they're numbered.  That's okay--the message of hope never dims.  What they learn about the Lord now will never change.  When their lives have changed, when their circumstances aren't what they always dreamed of, Jesus Christ will be there, the same yesterday, and today, and forever.

And that's a lot more than I say for myself, any day of the week.

Evolution. Pfft.

A few weeks ago I was picking up my newphew(ish) from school and I asked him what they'd learned that day.

"Oh, nothing really," he said.  His usual response.

Naturally, I always give him a hard time about learning nothing, so I badgered him for a little more information.

"Well," he mused after a minute, "they were talking about volcanoes.  That was cool, but they said that it was because of evolution.  Can you believe that, Auntie Jo?  Can you believe that my teacher believes in evolution?  The Bible even says it's not true!  And she thought it was real!"

Oh, childlike faith.  I hope he never loses that staunch faith in the Bible.  Not like I think he's at risk to, but as a child I tended to say "Bible says it?  Count me in!" but once people started asking for specific examples of something, I never knew what to say.  I remember giving someone a gospel tract when I was little.  Just sort of wandering by myself when we were at a historic village one day.  Anyhow, the person to whom I gave this tract asked me if I believed in the Bible.  Of COURSE I did!  I was probably eight or so, which was old enough to know that I believed in the Bible wholeheartedly, but as soon as this grownup started asking me about the flood, and about creation, and all sorts of specific things that he said weren't true, I had no idea what to say.

It was sort of traumatizing, actually.

To this day, I'm not sure why I was wandering by myself, nor do I know why that adult thought it was okay to start grilling me about my beliefs.  I guess I did give him a tract, so I sort of asked for it.  Details, details.

Anyhow, I smiled when I heard my nephew(ish) talk about the folly of evolution, because of course it's not true.  The Bible says otherwise!

Tru dat, my friend.  Tru dat.

She said yes

I recently read The Martyr of the Catacombs for the first time in maybe a dozen years or so, and it was way better than I'd remembered it being. Honestly, when I was younger I read it and thought, "Wait, why does my mom like this so much?" but this time around I was absolutely captivated. I'm hoping it's because the story was that good, and not just because (wait for it) I'll be seeing the catacombs for myself in about a week.

(YYYYYYYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!)

Sorry.

But since I've been reading that book, I've been thinking a lot about persecution and martyrs and the such, and I ended up discussing this with my Sunday School class on Lord's Day. We started by talking about Stephen, how in doing his humble work of serving the widows, he attracted enough attention to be killed for his faith. Then we talked about Antipas, who didn't deny the faith. It was here that the conversation got really interesting.

One of the girls knew about Columbine, and Cassie Bernall, so we started talking about that. The girls were interested when I told them that Cassie had been asked, point blank, if she was a Christian. At the reply (which was a Yes), she was fatally shot.

"But... did she have to say yes?" asked one of the girls, "Wouldn't she have still been a Christian even if she'd said no?"

It was interesting to me that she asked this, because I'd been trying to make the same point earlier, in discussing the catacombs and the book, The Martyr of the Catacombs. In the book (and in real life, obviously), the choice was given to some of the under-trial Christians--either sacrifice to the gods of Rome, or be killed for your Christian faith. I had been trying to talk to the girls about what that meant, and whether it was "wrong" to sacrifice to the pagan gods if you didn't mean it. We never got too far with that, until Cassie came up.

Now all the girls had questions. Several of them said that they would always say YES, because it's like a lie to say otherwise. I tried to bring it to more practical terms, asking if they'd feel comfortable speaking up as a Christian among friends, even if you knew you were going to lose your friends (the girls said no problem, they could do that), or speaking up in a job situation, if you knew you would probably lose your job for being a Christian (they're young, but they'll probably do the summer job thing sooner rather than later, so I thought I might as well mention that problems like this don't go away because you grow up).

Most of them kept saying that yes, yes, they'd absolutely say yes, stand up for their faith in Christ. Most.

One of the girls seemed a little more hesitant. "Would it be wrong, do you think? Wouldn't God just forgive you, and you could keep on living for Him?"

There's where it got sticky. Yes, God would forgive you, He's always willing to, but defy His name in preference for something else? Why would you?

"You know... to live."

Another girl kept on saying that it was wrong to even think about saying that you weren't a Christian (even if you knew you'd be forgiven), because then you're not really doing any good for God.

Interesting, but that was one of the points I was trying to make. I asked the girls what being martyred accomplishes. They thought it didn't do anything, nothing but kill people. Then I started talking about the outward display of devotion to the Lord and I think I saw some little light bulbs turn on. We rounded out the class with a discussion of what it meant to be a Christian--what good we could be for the Lord, what our lives even mean if we're not doing anything for Him.

Not bad for a thirty-minute Sunday School class!

That was a scattered bunch of words, but I just wanted to share. The girls seemed so interested, which was really cool to see, since they're frequently easily bored with subjects like not punching each other or something else so "lame." I have an odd bunch.

Anyhow, if you haven't read that book, I would highly recommend it. It was most excellent, and food for thought. Plus, who knows? Maybe you'll get a chance to make it food for thought for those around you, as well!

The Funeral Planner

In days gone by, I used to go to school. "Go to" being the operative words in the statement, but we'll worry about that another day. Anyhow, I had three delightful friends, all of whom I've almost entirely lost touch with since those days. Life comes at you fast.

Anyhow, one late evening we young ladies were discussing the ins and outs of our future lives. One young lady, named Chrissy, was supposedly looking for "James from British" on a map, and could never find him. I'm pretty sure, in this highly preposterous story we were making up, that she died from lack of food and water, so intense was her search for this place named "British" on the globe. For those who are confused, I actually have a slide show explaining the story in all its glory, should you care for a gander.

The point of this little tale is that I decided (uh, "decided" being the operative word) that my lot in life was to become... The Funeral Planner. Actually, I'm not going to lie, I'd still like to have that job--go visit terminally ill children, chat with them about their likes and dislikes, get a feel for their parents, figure out a funeral fitting for a child (you know, balloons, candy, Bible verses read by best friends instead of pastors, that sort of thing) and then be responsible for organizing it once their sickness has gotten the best of them. It may sound morbid, but it actually sounds like a job I'd like.

Moving on, however, to the fact that I tend to think about funerals a bit much. I don't entirely have the details for mine down yet (I'm getting there) but I actually do ponder it sometimes. Well, not a lot, since I figure the rapture will have long since happened by the time a regular person would have needed a funeral, so it's more like a little thing I sometimes wonder about.

For instance, my funeral can't be boring. Nobody likes a boring funeral. If that ol' speaker rambles on for even one moment about the funeral of their own dearly departed mother (who is known to none in the audience), then he has failed, and someone should tackle him. My funeral should be about, I don't know, the Lord? That's what I'm thinking. If they're talking about me, it should be in a sort of off-handed "isn't it great that Joanne loved the Lord and was saved?" type of way. If they want to tell precious little stories about how one time I picked up someone's hankie with a smile on my face, fine. But really? It's not about me, people, it's about the One who made me. And happened to graciously welcome me into His Home, even though I really wanted to be raptured instead.

Stipulation number two. No congregational singing. I mean, seriously, none. I've been to only one funeral where that worked out well, and they had instruments, so it hardly counted. But if it has to be done, sing at the graveside, but not in the funeral home, please. I'd like for random friends to sing, if songs are needed. If there has to be a congregational singing of "Praise Him for all that is past, and trust Him for all that's to come" for the sake of my mother, that's fine, but only because I love my mom a lot. Otherwise, friends of mine who are good singers may sing. Oh, and a friend who's not such a good singer, because I promised her. But only if she really wants to, otherwise I'll spare the excessive singing.

I want an open casket. Unless I've died a vicious death that included animal paws or very large vehicles, I figure my face can handle it. I don't like closed-casket funerals. Weird, I know.

At the visiting hours, I want background music playing. Not boring type, but nothing crazy. Like... that Chris Rice CD with piano hymns? That's a good one. No classical music, though.

I want my friends to have a say in who my pall-bearers should be. My brother is an obvious shoo-in, but my parents and friends should confer and decide who the others should be. I think a lot of times random people are selected. So not cool, people, we're talking about a dead body in a wooden box--only special people should get to carry that!

I liked the open-mic format they had at my brother's, however, if anybody were to do that at mine, we'd need a larger funeral home. I'm just saying.

There are more things, but I just realized that in light of all the funerals that have been going on recently, this most likely isn't the appropriate time to be sharing this with the world. Guess the rest of my funeral plans will have to stay hidden away in my stash of papers. I didn't even get to whom or what I wanted my in-lieu-of money to be donated. So many things that the rapture will preserve us from having to figure out. Isn't that a joy?

What wilt Thou have me to do?

For years, I've struggled with the concept of "What wilt Thou have me to do?" Basically, I understand the question, but how do we really know what the Lord is telling us in reply? I think it's just my stubbornness that has made me ponder it so much (want to talk about consecration? I am the wrong person to talk to that about, stubborn ol' me...), but it just seems... difficult.

One thing that always sort of got to me was about the whole when-I-grow-up-I'll-be-a-whatever question. For school, at the end of every year, my mom would have us write what we wanted to be when we grew up. For the first few school years of my life the answer was, without fail, "a missionary or a nurse," but once I was in about third grade, I realized that I didn't really want to be a missionary or a nurse. I wanted to be a "wife and mommy." By the time I got to twelfth grade I made it all sophisticated and wrote "homemaker" but the idea was essentially the same.

Which is all good and well, but that's the sort of thing that the Lord has to determine for you, at an appointed time (also good and well, don't get me wrong). So I've spent the last few years sort of floating around, doing random jobs and enjoying myself thoroughly. Also fine. But there was one thing that always sort of got to me--what was I really doing with my life?

Well, I still have no idea what the answer to that question is, but this isn't so much about what I'm doing with my life as what I'm letting the Lord do with my life.

Last Wednesday there were a lot of remarkably helpful comments made, one of which sort of eased my mind about what I was doing with myself these days. They were reading from Ephesians 2:10 "For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them."

They were pointing out that every work we do is specialized and prepared, and God has a very specific path He wants each one of us to travel. Basic stuff, true. But then someone made the remark to the effect of, "You know, kids today try to decide what to do based on what they're good at, which doesn't make a bit of sense, because they're really supposed to be doing whatever God wants them to do, not what they want to do."

As an aside, anybody who knows anybody in my meeting can guess who this might have been (one hint, it wasn't my dad).

Anyhow, there was more to it than that, but it was a good thought for me, one I needed to be reminded of. I'm in insurance right now, which is weird, and certainly not something I would have chosen of my own accord. But that's OK, because for some odd reason, this is where the Lord has me. I was enjoying the verse from Ecclesiastes 9 about, "whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might." For some reason, my hand has found insurance, and I need to make sure that I do it to the best of my ability so that I might honour the Lord.

Which is scary to me, honestly. Because it means that I've got to work extremely hard to make up for what I lack in common insurance sense. But... I can do all things through Christ Who gives me strength!

All for the sake of posterity

Some people keep journals as a record of their life for the sake of posterity. Others, like me, keep a journal to keep from exploding from the excessive amounts of words inside of them. Honestly, I like my way better, because it seems more interesting, plus, I can write or not write whenever the Spirit so moves me without worrying that a grand-niece of mine might one day wonder what I did on that illusive missing Tuesday. Even better, once I burn my journals, they'll never be the wiser as to the fact that my Tuesday was missing in the first place.

But... should the Lord wait a while before rapturing us, will posterity actually want something through which they might be able to understand what sort of person I was? Not that I think I'm that interesting (because trust me, I don't), but because history is so deeply ingrained into us humans that I feel like somebody should would want to have a part of my life just because it was a life that was lived. For instance, I love to look at pieces of my grandparents' and parents' lives. Mind you, I've certainly never been allowed to look at journals of any of my relatives (maybe they've burned them?) but I like other parts of their lives, like a pair of my dad's baby shoes, a childhood book of my grandma's, my mom's old school projects. I love to look at things like that!

But those things are collected as we live. By virtue of the fact that I was a baby, I have baby shoes (actually, I'm pretty sure we don't have any more of my baby shoes, but since I've never liked shoes I've never worried about whether or not that particular item was preserved in any capacity), and because I did school, I'll have old school papers. The fact that I come from a hugely readerly family indicates that I'll have plenty of my childhood books for my descendants to have. But sometimes I like to write random things that I think would be fun to look back on, should someone care.

But what I wonder, while doing things like this: will anyone really care? Because things about me aren't that interesting, neither do they really have a historical factor. For instance, I have a love/hate relationship with carrots. But such jumbled feelings regarding carrots isn't really something I would care to know about my great-grandpa Harry (I have no idea how he felt about carrots, just so you know). Or is it? My great-grandmother used to love licorice and she would give one piece a night to her kids while their dad (aforementioned Great-Grandpa Harry) was away Bibleing around. I think that's fun to know. But carrots aren't quite as interesting.

For at least 20 years of my life I managed to never break a bone or get stitches--though I'm a klutz, and expect this to change momentarily. But... that's not really interesting. I just wish I had more things from my own past (AKA, more information about my great-grandparents and such), and wish I could somehow create something that would be a part of life right now, in 2009, to show what they (which is to say, posterity) missed by having the misfortune of being born later on in life. I mean, I was around when we had nine planets! I remember the day Pluto got plutoed! Is there a way to portray that, and still be able to burn my journals?

I guess this is what scrapbooking is for. And stories. Maybe the Lord will tarry and I'll grow up and have some younger relative who loves to collect and file away family stories. Or maybe I should collect and file away family stories. I've got enough memorized already--This is the pond where we got our fish, Freddy. This is the pond where mom almost died. This is the silo dad used to climb around on when he babysat grain during harvest. This is the tree under which mom and dad got married. This is garage where dad backed up with the car door open and removed the car door. This is the old couch we used to have in the dining room where all of us kids used to sit on, half-asleep, while we waited for breakfast. This is the typing program we all used to learn to type. You get the idea.

But I feel like those are things that would be insanely boring to collect and preserve. Especially the typing thing. Yet... when my nieces and nephews grow up, will they even know about typing on computers? We laugh to think of things beyond computers as we know them, but my parents used typwriters in school (not that I view that as too crazy--my dad still uses a typwriter at his office, no joke), and I think it's interesting to hear them talk about "erasing" stuff on typewriters and such.

Clearly I go on too many bunny trails to be able to accomplish such things as these. I'd be discussing my parents' wedding tree, and then I'd ramble about how it was so early in the morning... but they got crapes for breakfast, so it was OK... and how one of the groomsmen was so tired he forgot to wear a vest like the rest of the guys... and my dad forgot to wear actual nice shoes, so he just wore his ugly ol' everyday shoes to the wedding... and how the dresses were lovely for that day, but frightfully unattractive to my eyes at current. Which says nothing about the tree under which my parents got married. Which is mostly acceptable, I guess, since the tree just sits around at the park and gets more and more bug-eaten year by year.

I'm not sure why I wanted to write about that tree, after all. It's nearly dead these days. Which doesn't seem nicely symbolic, like I first thought it would. Oops.

I never did like to brush my hair...

Sometimes I have these little epiphany moments in life wherein I realize that I'm pretty much exactly the same now as I was when I was a child, only, well... taller. Most times these moments strike me due to things I do or say that remind me that you don't cease to be a child unless you're willing to put away those childish things (Paul was way ahead of me). Sometimes I find these childish vestiges of me in old essays, notebooks, or journals of mine, but I recently managed to find a quote from an old school paper of a sister of mine that made me laugh. She had done character sketches of each member of our family, stating how old they were and a little thing or two about their life at that moment (K was sixteen, just gotten her drivers license, C was a baby and just sort of hung around, etc.), and reading mine was like reading something she might have written about me today. It was in the fall of 1996, and this was her perception of me:

"Jo is six years old and in second grade. She enjoys making lunches and singing more than brushing her hair!"

Switch out "lunches" for "suppers" and "six" for "twenty," and it would be as believable now as it was then.

Of course, now I'm plagued with questions about whether or not posterity can get a grasp on what I was really like without having access to the papers and musings of all of my siblings. I've been considering staging a takeover of all relevant papers, but have determined that since the Lord is coming soon, I don't have to worry about such not-entirely-kosher activities. I shudder to consider the full extent of damage I could cause to all of my familial relationships...