A Culture of Hate

This post is going to be inflammatory.  It shouldn’t read that way, but it will.  I am not coming from a place of being inflamed, just tired.

I have really grown exhausted with this culture of hate that we live in.  What hate?  Take a look out of your kitchen window.  Hate rides on the air, looks for cracks and seeps into our homes.  Hate travels into our eyes and ears, saturating our minds and hearts.  You may say, “Well I don’t hate anyone!”  I’m sorry, you do.  If you did not hate, your life would be an unmanageable mess.  Some people hate injustice, some hate curse words,  some hate PBS.  Hate is the excuse we use to eliminate things from our lives.  Sometimes the excuses are valid.  Most often, they are not.

Western culture has fought hard to eliminate the need for God to exist.  In many ways it has succeeded.  We hold ourselves to a basic moral code at best.  Kind of like, don’t murder (unless you HAVE to),  and uh, well, don’t murder.  One could get up in arms and say, “I believe that everyone should be treated kindly!”  No, you don’t.  Sorry, I don’t either.  Let me illustrate:

I believe in the Creator.  I believe life begins at conception and that abortion is MURDER.  I think evolution is ludicrous, bunk science, with natural selection being the only part that kind of makes sense.  I think liberals are misguided and are leading us into communism, which in turn leads to dictatorship.  I think public schools should be called government schools.  I believe there is an active, enforced, program of indoctrination going on in universities.

Are you angry yet?  If you presented the flip side to me.  I would at the very least be highly irritated.  I may even want you treated unkindly.  Not by me, of course.  And I would only want you punished enough to “show you the light”.  Thus begins the process of me “hating” you and eliminating you from my life.

If you hate, dislike, are uncomfortable, or disagree with something, that makes it okay, easy, necessary to destroy eliminate or ban. Hating God makes it okay to brand Christians as morons.  Hating atheists makes it okay for them to burn in hell.  Hating people makes it okay to kill them,  their culture,  their belief system.  Hating the unborn child makes it okay to remove it. Hating abortion makes it okay for a woman to die during one, or in the least for it sterilize her.   Hating the oil companies makes it okay to kill 9 million jobs.  Hating the President makes it okay for all of the Solyndra employees to go down in flames.   Hating big agriculture makes it okay to shut off their irrigation water and starve people around the world.  Hating independent farmers makes it okay for the Health Department to descend on a dinner party and forcefully throw all of the food away.  Hating vaccines makes it okay for vaccinated children to get autism.  Hating anti-vaccine parents makes it okay for children to die of whooping cough.  Hating the boy who is dressed like a typical teenage punk makes it okay to shoot him.

Well, THEY should know better.  Be better informed.  Be more intelligent.  Be more resourceful.  Be less stupid. Be like ME.

The arrogance.

I know it is easy to look in the mirror and think of all the beautiful things I THINK I have done for mankind.  But I haven’t.  I do more harm than good.  Daily.  I can turn on a news channel that will back up my views.  I can get the spin on any story and go spout “my” opinion to my friends and neighbors.  I can even make it sound really great.  I appear so informed.  But, I am so naive.  So are you.   We are chasing the wind.  We have too much knowledge and very little wisdom.  (Maybe we should quit hating our elders and locking them up in a closet somewhere.)

The basic biblical concept of loving your neighbor as yourself is lost on today’s society.  Why?  Because we have expunged anything related to God from our lives.  If we hadn’t we would remember that ALL have fallen short.  ALL of us are in the same boat.  We would KNOW that whoever is the least is the greatest.  Jesus, Others, You.  In that order.  That is where true JOY comes from.  We would know that hating someone in your heart is the same as murdering them.

Here we are.  We are here.

Unless hate is eliminated we will come to the same conclusion.  I am sorry to report that hatred will not disappear.  This is a broken world.  Only One will fix it. Until then, we hate.  Even if we raised our children to never judge (hate) a person for the color of their skin, hatred would just take another form.  How virus like!  Even if we raised our children not to hate others because of their beliefs, hatred would morph itself around another cause.  Hate can be so subtle and prettily packaged.  (I’d rather go naked than wear fur, you fur wearing troglodyte!) (Choosy moms choose Jif!)

Sigh.  It’s hard.  I think that’s why the Bible says “Faith, hope, love…but the greatest of these is love.”  Love is much harder, but I am willing to try.  Are you?

A little update.

I haven’t written about my husband and his struggle with addiction for a couple of months, so I figured it was time for an update.  Yay!  Updates!  Well, the progress report is very good.  When I last wrote about him, really, I was pulling my hair out and ready to move back to California.  I was soooooo ready.  I was also kicking myself for not having some sort of financial back up that would let me leave at a moments notice.  So that was then.

The church stepped in and took Jon under its wing.  I had so much support from the ladies.  The pastor and his wife met with us several times, then the pastor put Jon in his back pocket for a few weeks and got down to the nitty gritty with him.  He took the time to lay out what alcoholism was doing to Jon spiritually, the danger it was putting him in.  Not just physical danger, but eternal danger.  The pastor charged Jon with getting into God’s word every day, listening to Christian music, and reading Christian authors.  Basically, he wanted Jon to wash his spirit clean.  This may all sound hokey to you, but so far, it’s working.  The changes are amazing to see.

My impatient, stressed out husband has become more understanding and tries to not sweat the small stuff.  I am NOT saying he is perfect and is Mr. WON-der-FUL.  He still sweats a lot of small things. He still can get snappy. ( I do too.) But, overall, he speaks differently.  He carries himself differently.  His eyes and smile are different.  There is change.  He is bearing fruit!  It’s such a difference from before.  No more trying to desperately patch things up.  No more wrestling furiously to keep the alcohol monster at bay.  The attitude that life is unfair and doesn’t make him “happy” is dwindling.  I love it.

The Bible reading, and prayer have been number one in his healing process.  I would have to say a very close number two in the process is our church.  Every week we are recharged with such amazing messages of hope.  We don’t HAVE to live the American dream.  We can throw off those shackles!  We were not put here to serve ourselves, but God and others!  We have the HOPE of eternity!  We have a calling on our lives that makes us different.  We have the responsibility to be a light that shines for people, and draw them near to God.

I don’t know about you, but when I look at the world through the eyes of God, and His plan, my own selfish desires become trivial.  I know that  same force is at work in Jon.  He can’t drink, feel sorry for himself, and then have the joy of the Lord.  He is learning, and succeeding, so far, at letting himself go, and letting God work.  So, I am glad that God has been working behind the scenes. I’m glad that I did not take off with my kids and a wad of cash.  I’m thankful for God’s love…even if Jon stumbles again…even if the world says I am bonkers…even if the stars fall on my head.

Confessions of an Epic Fail

Well, I didn’t make it.  A thirty day flippin fast from the internet and I couldn’t make it. Sure there were extenuating circumstances, but still.  I failed.  I was sooooo lonely for Facebook.  Sad.  What an eye opener.  I have no tangible friendships.  I live too far away from them, or they are too new for me to call up and whine, thus putting them off.

Jon also had an epic relapse.  I say had but not really.   He is still in the middle of sorting it out.  I jumped into the familiar pattern of sounding the alarm and then curling up into the fetal position.  That was working as well as it has been all these years until my mom called me and told me the problem is me.  I am an enabler.   Yep, after getting hurt and looking up all the definitions (Again, really?  This is like a broken record.) to prove her wrong,  I had an epiphany.  Even though I am not doing most of the things that qualify one as an enabler, I am doing some.  If I am doing some, I might as well be doing them all.  I am making life pretty easy for Jon.  That has to stop.

I make threats.  I don’t follow through immediately.  By the time I am able to follow through financially, Jon is Mr. Golden Boy, so I stay.  Now we are in such dire financial straits, I have no business making them at all.  Unless I am walking out the door with bags and kids in tow, threats are useless.  Threats are especially dumb to make when I so desperately want to keep my family together.  I have created a lot of stress for myself.  Now comes the slow mountain climb of re-learning detachment and how not to enable.  Literally, I have to put first things first.  I have to let go of my obsession with Jon’s drinking and let God deal with him.

I also have to let my obsessions with other people go as well.  I get so hung up on what people are doing wrong.  I want to fix everyone.  I want them to fix themselves.  Good grief.  They don’t need me or my fixing, when I am clearly broken.  I’ve got to let them go and let God deal with them as well.  I read to0 much gossip.  I care too much about what the Kardashians are doing.  I’m trying to fix me, really I am.  So, please, bear with me.  I come from a place of extreme care, not hate.  If I have come off as hateful, I am so very sorry.

As long as you are here, I might as well fill you in on what I have been up to.

We had the best Christmas we could.  See, we have a house fly problem of biblical proportions.  Thousands on the outside of the house, hundreds on the inside.  Believe me, we have tried everything.  Our only option left on the table is moving.  Because. Of. Flies.  It’s so gross.  Several times I have poured a cup of joe, turned to get the milk from the fridge and BAM, a fly is doing the backstroke in my mug!  When a meal is served, we have to cover it in napkins like we are at an indoor July 4th picnic!  I hate to confess this, but I have had to tell Jon that I refuse to cook in the kitchen because several flies flew out of the fridge.  Not eating at home gets expensive.  The flies fly around like tiny drunks.  They end up in my hair, they dive into my eyes.  When I walk and swing my hands like an ape, flies hitch a ride on my swinging palm.  Jon runs the shop vac for an hour when he gets home at night.  Its ridiculous.

For Christmas I got a pitchfork.  Yes, you read that correctly.  My husband gave me a pitchfork and a Case knife.  I am well equipped for farm life. I also received some crafty goodness.  I might have also become a little bit obsessed with a video game involving magic and dragons.  Whoops.  Without further ado, here are some Christmas/Break Time highlights.

Unedited goodness plus pitchfork=merriment!

Imaginext was HUGE this year.  Go Fisher Price!

Gift opening may cause eyes to roll to the back of head.

Naughty or Nice jj’s.  Epic.

A turquoise knife.  Yes.

We foresaw many battles over the Batmobile.  We made sure they had matching ones.  Peace on Earth.

Crafty books.  I can’t wait to dig into them!

Crafty tools to beef up my arsenal.

I may be a little bit cray cray over Skyrim.  NERD ALERT!Been working on this wrap too.  This picture does it NO justice.  It’s unreal.

I’ve been seeing lots of these too.  God is the Master of all sunsets.