Faith

Millennials and religion – maybe the problem isn’t the churches, after all.

millenials and religion

In the past six months or so, several of my friends shared an article on social media inviting churches to consider why millennials are dropping out of church attendance at alarming rates.  The author listed his own 12 reasons for this phenomenon.

I read the entire article.  I considered it.  I found nuggets of wisdom within, good suggestions for ways to approach millennials and make church more palatable for them.  I agreed with several of the criticisms of the way in which churches go about things.  There’s always room for improvement in any institution, religious ones not excluded.

And yet I couldn’t ignore the nagging irony of the author’s complaints.  He claims that church isn’t doing enough to woo millennials into coming while simultaneously bemoaning their lack of commitment to “making a difference”.  He believes they spend too much time crafting “mission statements” and not enough time helping the least of these.

While I agree that churches should allocate the majority of their time to making a difference in the lives of the most needy, it seems so self-centered (so… millennial, shall we say?)to suggest that churches go about business your way instead of just doing it yourself.  If the author were truly altruistic, he wouldn’t be asking the church what it can do for him, he would be asking what he can do for the church.

millenials and religion

For example, in his words:

“My heart is broken for how radically self-centered and utterly American our institution has become.  Let’s clock the number of hours the average church attender spends in “church-type” activities. Bible studies, meetings, groups, social functions, book clubs, planning meetings, talking about building community, discussing a new mission statement… Now let’s clock the number of hours spent serving the least of these. Oooooo, awkward.”

First of all, not true.  Not in my church at least.  Second, the very suggestion that a church bend over backwards to attract more millennials is self-centered not to mention contradictory.  Perhaps the author meant to say that “the least of these” that churches should serve is millennials?

There are plenty of religious institutions with a deep commitment to aiding the poor.  Feel free to do your homework and throw your energy behind those causes.

The author claims that “Millennials value voice and receptivity above all else. When a church forges ahead without ever asking for our input we get the message loud and clear: Nobody cares what we think. Why then, should we blindly serve an institution that we cannot change or shape?”

The very nature of most religious institutions, in a way, is to tell people what to do.  Religion gives people a framework by which they can evaluate their lives and offers a path that (presumably) leads to joy, happiness and greater meaning.  To suggest that a religion should change based on the whims of the rising generation devalues the tenets long-established as true by a particular religion.

That’s not to say that institutions don’t adjust based on the circumstances of the world.  But core beliefs and doctrines aren’t typically ones that anyone can reasonably expect to change simply because they don’t sit well with him or her.  Perhaps the better attitude would be to decide whether or not one believes a particular religion to be true or right(or of God), then humbly evaluate what adjustments the individual can make to come to better understand more challenging doctrines or tenets.

As much as millennials complain about the stereotype that “it’s all about them” some of them certainly make ample demands for everyone else to change to accommodate them.  Case in point: another quote from the article: “We need a church that sees us and believes in us, that cheers us on and encourages us to chase our big crazy dreams.”  And also:

“You see, church leaders, our generation just isn’t interested in playing church anymore, and there are real, possible solutions to filling our congregations with young adults. It’s obvious you’re not understanding the gravity of the problem at hand and aren’t nearly as alarmed as you should be about the crossroads we’re at.

You’re complacent, irrelevant and approaching extinction. A smattering of mostly older people, doing mostly the same things they’ve always done, isn’t going to turn to the tide.

Feel free to write to me off as just another angry, selfy-addicted millennial. Believe me, at this point I’m beyond used to being abandoned and ignored.”

It’s laughable, really.  The petulance in his attitude makes it sound like attracting millennials is the “be all and end all” and that somehow the older generations are irrelevant.  To be sure, I believe that all religions should be concerned when a generation is dropping like flies.  But not because that generation is any more important than another, as the author seems to believe.  It’s not helping his cause to frame his argument with obvious disdain for older generations.

Perhaps religion isn’t the problem.  Perhaps it is, in fact, the individuals who leave them who are the problem.  Should religions care about those people?  Yes, they should.  And, in my experience they DO.

But most people who disdain religion have already made up their minds that they don’t want to be preached to. They want to do things their way. They expect a certain standard from the people who inhabit those religious institutions and are disappointed when those people fall short.  They believe that instead of being organizations that contain truths that have stood the test of time, those “truths” should be dusted off and reshaped to suit their own purposes.

It’s simply contrary to the very nature of absolute truth to do so.  While I acknowledge the need to differentiate between truth and tradition, I also reject the idea that churches should change drastically to suit a largely impatient, demanding generation.

To be sure, not all millennials fall into this category.  There are plenty of millennials who believe in God and want to do His will.  I know many such millennials personally.  The characteristics that seem to define their generation are equally suited to religious involvement as they are rejection of it.  I simply take issue with the theory that religion is the problem.

I expect we will see many millennials add value to religious institutions for years to come.  Most millennials I know are faithful, energetic and service-oriented.   Whether they channel those traits into religious service is entirely up to them.  It’s not the job of a religion to baby them into joining the throng.  Anyone who has to be cajoled into participating in religion is probably missing the point.  But those who participate selflessly are pretty much as good as they come.

OI Regional Conference – Portland edition.

Last weekend Tim and I attended a regional conference in Portland organized by the Osteogenesis Imperfecta Foundation, an organization that supports those living with brittle bone disease.  I didn’t really know what to expect, and to be honest, I can’t say that I learned anything mind-blowing with regard to Jack’s condition.  After all, I scoured every corner of the internet to find information on it within the first month after his diagnosis so I feel pretty informed.  Still, it was overall an pretty awesome experience for a number of reasons.

First, the presenters were primarily medical professionals who treat individuals with OI, far more OI patients than any of our providers treat.  Many of them have a particular passion for this tiny segment of the population and for finding treatments that will improve their quality of life.  They’ve also been involved in some of the groundbreaking research that has enabled certain “experimental” treatments to become mainstream.  So mainstream that our doctors here in Boise knew precisely which course to take, a course that has enabled Jack to far exceed our expectations for mobility and fracture reduction.

We had several opportunities to sit down with a few of these doctors and just pick their brains on the best course of action to take with Jack in the future, which armed me with significantly more information than our local providers have been able to give.  Our providers have been great, to be sure, but having treated a much smaller population lack a breadth of experience that I felt these medical professionals had.

Second, it was fantastic to see other individuals with Osteogenesis Imperfecta with a wide variety of health limitations.  Several people did not even appear to have the condition, aside from a bit of stunted growth perhaps.  But they could simply pass as short.  Others were what I would describe as stereotypical – with pretty much every indicator of the condition.  Some were wheelchair-bound, others spend a portion of time in a wheelchair but could also walk, one little girl even sported a pink cast for her most recent fracture.  It was heartwarming to see how resilient these awesome people are – their commitment to maximizing their lives and improving it for others with the same condition.  Several are faithful attendees of these conferences and have a deep commitment to raise awareness of OI so that this disease does not go ignored by the medical community simply because of its rarity.  They are weak in bone but strong in spirit.  They are truly inspirational.

A small number of them had a bit of a chip on their shoulders (understandably).  They had been treated as guinea pigs in the early days of their disorder, and were weary of participating in studies that may/may not be beneficial to them (or anyone else, for that matter).  They’re tired of the pain, tired of doctors who don’t understand, tired of insurance companies and hospitals bickering over who should have to cover the cost of their care.  It was sobering to see their struggles and to feel their frustration.  It filled me with an enormous sense of compassion for the crummy hand they’ve been dealt and equal admiration for how they weather it all with grace and grit.  They are a special group, and they deserve every bit of praise for enduring their condition so resolutely.

Finally, and this was the benefit of attending that most surprised me, I was renewed with a sense of gratitude for the factors in our lives that have made this whole OI experience much easier to bear.  We talked with several parents of kids with OI.  One family, in particular, approached us and asked us a bit about Jack (who was not with us).  They said, “We couldn’t help noticing based on some of the questions you’ve asked during the presentations that you have a son with OI.  How old is he?”  “Almost two,” we answered.  “Wow,” they replied.  “How are you doing?”

It was spoken with a tone that implied the heaviness of the diagnosis, an offering of deep empathy and support, and a slight skepticism that one could be doing well under the circumstances.  And, to be fair, their son appears to have a more severe type of OI than Jack does, though his initial diagnosis was pretty much the same.  When we indicated that we were doing great, and we showed them a video  that my sister Jill had sent us the day before (she was helping my mom take care of the kids at home), they were baffled.  Not so much at the video of Jack jumping and dancing around our family room, but that we were so okay with the fact that he has brittle bones.  It sort of caught me off-guard.

Certainly, those early days and weeks after Jack broke his femur were some of the most difficult of my life.  Occasionally, they almost feel like a dream.  I can reflect cognitively on how challenging they were – the strangeness of caring for a newborn with a spica cast, the fear of mishandling Jack and wondering whether each prolonged crying session meant he had broken another bone, the foreboding thought about what the future might hold for Jack and how that would change the dynamic in our family.  It was tough stuff, to be sure.  But even as I think back to those days, I can’t really feel the pain – I feel mostly gratitude.

They say hindsight is 20/20, but even as I was in the thick of my experience breaking Jack’s femur and all that followed, I was surprisingly lucid despite my incredible fatigue (I was, after all, a 38 year-old mother of a fragile newborn and four other kids, to boot.  Bone-tired, I tell you.)  I had the presence of mind to process all the medical jargon the doctors were throwing at me, to keep my head when they confirmed the worst of my fears, and to put on a happy face for my kids when we had to explain to them what it all meant.  I wrote down a list of the “tender mercies” I could see – evidence of the Lord’s love for me and His assurance that all would be all right.  There were too many “coincidences” to be coincidences.  He was mindful of us and assisted us in viewing this whole experience with an eternal perspective – a gift that I don’t think I fully appreciated until we talked with this couple at the OI conference.  I shudder to think of how harrowing their own experience had been, without the perspective a firm belief in God and his eternal plan gave us.

I also could not reflect on those early days without appreciating the overwhelming support we received from our family, friends, neighbors, and church congregation during the weeks after Jack’s first hospitalization (and beyond).  One of our next-door neighbors was devastated by the news, reflecting on it again and again, and took the time to bring us meals and shovel our driveway despite the multiple heart attacks he had suffered in previous months.  Several sweet friends from church came in and cleaned my house, a service initiated by a mother whose own significant family trials at the time were swallowed up by her selfless desire to lighten my load.  A few of my mission buddies, who live from Washington D.C. to Hawaii pitched in for gift cards so that we could buy pizza, which we did for months and months afterward – thanks to the generous sum the cards contained.  I did not cook a single dinner for a month thanks to meals brought in, I didn’t have to purchase diapers for four months, my kids got rides to school without my having to lift a finger for who knows how long, people did my laundry, they referred me to medical resources, they fasted for us, they prayed for us.  The hours others spent on our behalf by those far and near was innumerable.  And it was truly humbling.

So, when this couple asked how we were doing, it was eye-opening for me.  It made me wonder at the enormous burden that was eased immeasurably by the service of those around us.  And it also reminded me what a gift it is to know that this life is simply a small portion of eternity, that our experiences are opportunities to learn and develop Christlike attributes, and that Christ Himself rose from the grave so that our imperfect bodies may one day be resurrected.

So how are we doing?  Thanks to that knowledge, and the many loving individuals who serve us daily, we’re going to be just fine.  Mighty fine.

Meridian temple open house.

During the month of October and early November, the Meridian Idaho LDS temple, which was recently completed was open to the public.  Our family scheduled a tour and brought Lily’s cute friend Katherine to tour it with us.  This was our third time to tour a brand-new (or renovated) temple, which I consider quite a blessing, considering that all three temples we have toured are within a 1 1/2 hour drive of our home.  How we got to lucky to have three temples so close is beyond me.

The temple was beautiful, and it was fun to talk with the kids about the significance of each of the rooms and the ordinances that are performed there.  It’s always a humble reminder of how closely linked heaven and earth are and our connection with our Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ.

We took a picture at the end of the tour to commemorate the experience.  It was fun to add another face to our “family” picture.

LDS-themed escape room.

For our combined youth activity at church during September, we crafted an escape room.  Our class (the Laurels) were in charge of planning the activity, but since I wanted the girls to be able to participate, they were limited in what they could actually contribute to constructing the escape room.

Constructing seven virtually identical escape rooms to accommodate over fifty youth took loads of time, not surprisingly.  I based the design on a download I obtained from Latter-day Breakout.  I tweaked it a bit to suit our purposes (and to save a bit of money) and am delighted to say that it turned out great!

Peeking in each room to see the kids interacting without the use of smart phones, digging into their scriptures and using their brains made me absolutely giddy.  I love these young men and women!  Each group made it out just shy of the allotted one hour time limit and, if I’m not mistake, they all had a good time.  Mission accomplished.

2017 Total Solar Eclipse – not to be missed.

Our family went up to the zone of totality in Stanley, Idaho to witness the Great American Eclipse on August 21, 2017. To be honest, I wasn’t entirely convinced that it would be worth the effort of dragging everyone out of bed at 4 in the morning to make sure we missed traffic and got an adequate viewing spot.  I thought to myself (and out loud), Boise will have 99.4% totality.  We can just watch it from our backyard in peace.  How different could that possibly be from a total solar eclipse?

Fortunately the drive to Stanley was rather uneventful(though the 4 a.m. wake up time was brutal).  The crowds that the media had warned about, virtually non-existent.  We parked in a field that had been designated for eclipse viewing that could have held thousands of cars.  There were fifty.  Maybe.  Apparently, our surrounding states were pretty non-plussed about the whole idea of a celestial event and didn’t bother to make their way to Idaho.  We could have slept in until 7:30 and made it to Stanley with time to spare.  Regardless, we enjoyed time with cousins and the surrounding views for the hours leading up to the eclipse.

Watching the moon slowly make its way into the path of the Sun through the safety of special glasses was exciting.  We marveled as it inched across the Sun and could see and feel changes in the amount of sunlight as it did so, so slow that they were almost imperceptible.  Still, the light of the Sun was powerful enough that, without our safety glasses, we could not actually view the solar eclipse.  Until that brilliant moment when the two were perfectly aligned and we could remove the glasses and witness a singular event that we will never forget.  It was absolutely incredible.

Tim experienced a solar eclipse as a missionary in Colombia years ago.  On the Sunday thereafter, he teased the local members of the church there for scrambling to the podium during fast and testimony meeting to bear their “testimonies” concerning the eclipse.  Having viewed totality myself, I completely get it now.  There are so many spiritual parallels in life’s events, notably the ones that God provides through nature.

Here’s what was so remarkable to me about this experience.  I had never paused to contemplate the effect the light of the Sun has on the earth.  It was mind-boggling to me that the Sun’s light is SO powerful that even when 99.6, or, 99.7 right up to 99.9 percent of it was covered, the light was still blinding to behold with the naked eye.  The eclipse lasted less than 2 ½ minutes, during which time the entire horizon 360 degrees around looked like dusk.  We stared and stared, soaking it all in, knowing that time was short, and, sure enough, at the very instant the moon was no longer perfectly aligned with the Sun, its light burst out suddenly and we all had to turn away to avoid eye damage.

The Sun, or the Light of the World is a symbol for a very important figure in the plan of salvation.  Jesus Christ is the Light of the World, and, much like the Sun, his power and influence can drive out all darkness.  Even when the encroaching darkness obscures 99.9 percent of His light, it can still penetrate the earth in a way that is blinding to behold.  The world can sometimes feel like a dark place.  Contention, pain, suffering, hate, fear, confusion and sadness are very real to the human experience and can inch into our lives so slowly we may not even notice how much “light” they obscure.  How grateful I am to know that light will always drive out the darkness.  Our Savior Jesus Christ is the source of all light, and as we look to Him, pain is eased, burdens are lifted, and confusion is dispelled.  Instead we find hope, and truth and peace.

Marriage-putting off “the natural man”.

I’ve been reading a lot of articles on marriage lately and, all of a sudden, more articles start showing up in my news feeds.  A little creepy, to be honest.

Lately, Tim and I have been taking out our stress on each other more than usual.  Chalk it up to the five kids and their activities and needs, the sleep deprivation having teenagers and toddlers affords and the demands of work and heavy-duty church assignments. There’s no excuse for it, but there’s no shortage of things to which nurturing our marriage sometimes takes a back seat.

Last week we had a full-blown tizzy, ahem, minor disagreement.  As is often the case when Tim and I don’t see eye to eye, I start hunting for any and all marital advice, searching the scriptures, reading counsel from church leaders, and yes, scouring the internet for related content.  Hence the uptick in marriage articles on my newsfeed.

So today I stumbled across an article with this title: Scarlett Johannsen says “marriage a lot of work, monogamy unnatural.”  I clicked on it, despite my usual distaste for celebrity opinion.  It was disappointing, as one would expect, to hear a high-profile individual simultaneously state the obvious and then pooh-pooh the greater good.

Yes, marriage can be a lot of work.  And sure, monogamy is unnatural if you want to lump ourselves in with the rest of the animal kingdom and ignore the fact that we were endowed with complex brains and the ability to make moral decisions.  (Incidentally, several animal species employ monogamy, perhaps with more consistency than humans.)

In any case, why is it that we’re so quick to absolve ourselves of moral character?  Why do we assume that when the going gets tough, the tough get going?  As in going, going, gone.  What makes us think that we should do what comes naturally instead of what is right?

“For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam and will be forever and ever unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Ghost, and putteth off the natural man, and becometh a saint through the Atonement of Jesus Christ”.

I believe we are so much more than what the world would have us believe.  We are sons and daughters of God, created in His likeness, and endowed with potential to become like Him and inherit all that He has.  And I believe that marriage, with all its “work”and “monogamy”, is the perfect training ground in which to do so.

Everything of value in my life has required work.  What a convoluted view to suggest that marriage would be any different.  Monogamy provides stability and satisfaction to a relationship, and, by extension, to a family.  How ridiculous to think that we can experience any real measure of joy by doing what comes naturally!  What comes naturally to me is sleeping in every day and eating chips and chocolate around the clock but, last I checked, that isn’t exactly a recipe for a life full of meaning.

So eat your heart out, ScarJo, and set that bar low for yourself and humankind.  Me?  I’ll take work and monogamy with a huge helping of joy and happiness on the side.

Young Women/Young Men Jeopardy Game

Update:  A lot has changed in the youth program of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints since this post was written in 2017.  I have updated the Jeopardy Game at the bottom of this post to reflect these changes and to include the Young Men program in the questions and answers.

I’ve been serving as the president of the Young Women organization for a couple of years now.  We pulled off our third New Beginnings last week and incorporated the 2017 Mutual Theme – James 1:5-6.  Our theme was, more specifically, “If Any of Ye Lack Wisdom” since the whole point of New Beginnings is to help the young women learn the basics of the program.  We used a “wise old owl” to add a bit of cute factor the refreshments, invitations and decorations.  Throw in a couple of speakers and top it off with the Laurel class, who put together a skit and game of Jeopardy to test everyone’s knowledge of the Young Women organization.  It pretty much went off without a hitch.

Conservatives are racist. Or so I’m told.

I recently attended a gathering where my husband and I were chatting it up with a guy who had grown up with some of our current circle of friends.  As we swapped stories about some of these mutual friends, this man commented on one, saying, “You know, I’m kinda surprised she married a black guy because, judging by her Facebook posts, she is way conservative.”

I didn’t know the dude well enough to say something snarky, besides the fact that such a comment caught me off-guard, but here’s what  I wanted to say:

“Because conservatives hate blacks, right?”

Or, “You know, her husband’s probably conservative, too.”

Or, if I really wanted to get into it, I could launch into how his characterization is a gross oversimplification of conservative views on race in America.  And how racist his comment was.  And how living in the echo chamber that is California has done nothing to enlighten him on the true views of conservatives in our country.  Gosh, he’d have to leave L.A. to find a real live conservative and who wants to do that, anyway?

Stop telling us conservatives that we hate people who aren’t white.  Stop suggesting that we can’t possibly care about the LGBTQ community.  Stop insinuating that our policies are not minority-friendly.

It’s such an asinine argument really.  Not to mention manipulative.  Calling the opposition “haters” in an attempt to make them feel stupid for even thinking differently than you.

My seven-year-old does that when I don’t give her exactly what she wants.  “You don’t love me, mom.”  “Why are you so mean to me, mom?”  All in the hopes that I’ll feel badly that I’ve hurt her so deeply and will, against my better judgment, cave to her demands for perceived justice.

Guess what?  Liberal social policy is like bad parenting to me.  Giving people what they want to appease them, or to maintain a voting bloc or to be able to pat yourselves on the back and say “See everyone?  I’m not a hater.”  All the while implementing short-sighted policies that provide incentives for poor behavior and don’t improve society in the long run.

All in the name of appearing “fair”.

The welfare system, affirmative action, social security, just name the entitlement program.  Designed to promote equality but resulting in anything but.

I was born in New York City, lived in Asia long enough to think I was Asian, had a stint in Texas, attended early college in Boston, graduated from Brigham Young University and have hopped around the intermountain west ever since.  My friends are both rich and poor, black and white, gay and straight, married and single, liberal and conservative.  I’ve lived 39 years of life rich in diversity and I am not a hater just because I am a conservative.

I’ll be darned if I let someone bully me into believing otherwise.

Motherhood: nice work, if you can get it.

We’ve heard that “the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world.”  But Oh, let me count the ways in which the importance of mothers and fathers is discounted in favor of worldly power,money or prestige.

When I was first married, I spent a few weeks a bit lost and somewhat wallowing in self-pity.  I was on the brink of graduating and, instead of having a job lined up in an exciting city on my favorite side of the country, I was working a dead-end full-time job to support my husband while he finished school.  While marriage itself was fun and fulfilling, I was grieving the loss of the possibilities that had once been mine but were temporarily sidelined in favor of our new family unit.

In a conversation with a friend from my early college years, who was a single, working professional at the time, I was given a moment of clarity.  She said(after my updating her on my perceived lowered status), “Susie, you are a smart, talented woman.  You were not made to shelve your ambitions for dish cloths and home-cooked meals.”  Something inside me recoiled.  Maybe it was my pride.  Or maybe it was something deeper.  Something telling me that she was wrong.  Dead wrong.  That laundry and baking, cleaning and supporting my husband financially did not make me subordinate or apathetic.

I turned a corner that day.  That day, I discovered that the dominant narrative in the world was fundamentally false.  Here’s what I’d been hearing, and continue to hear this day.  Women in traditional roles are weak.  Don’t waste your college education to stay at home with your kids.  Influence in the world is superior to influence in the home.  If you’re not getting paid for it, it must not be worthwhile work.  Your list of accolades determines your value to society.  Equal rights supercedes everything else.

Don’t mistake me: I’m not reigniting the mommy wars.  This is not a working mom vs. stay-at-home mom debate.  I have friends with paying jobs who “get” this.  They “get” that while they spend time outside of the home each week fulfilling a need within themselves or their families, that their most important and valuable work lies within the home.  They’re not buying the so-called progressive agenda that women with the greatest influence are sitting in board rooms and corner offices, or featured in news articles, or getting the most likes on social media.  They’re not swept up in the falsehood that to “have control over one’s body” trumps sacrificing one’s body to house a human for nine months.  They understand that while the benefits of parenthood are not easily quantified, intrinsic rewards matter.  And.  The net benefit of good parents to society is fundamental to its stability.

For all our parading about, touting the fact that we finally had a female presidential candidate, or that women command respect in a wide variety of careers across our country, or that the majority of college graduates in the U.S. are now female, we have forgotten what is truly important.  Don’t get me wrong.  I am grateful to live in a country where the possibilities for women are virtually endless.  I’m just not enamored by the insinuation that to not pursue those possibilities is being complacent.

Case in point: I read an article in recent years that said that daughters of mothers who work outside the home are more successful and their sons are more caring.  How did they measure success in the girls?  By their employment status and income status, naturally.  See what I mean?

First of all, it kind of goes without saying that whatever was modeled by the parents in a home would have a statistically significant effect on the choices of the offspring in that home.  Stay-at-home moms are more likely to breed daughters who will stay at home and likewise for working moms.  Kind of a no-brainer.

But then.  They attach the word “successful” to those who ended up working outside the home.  Because you’re not “successful” unless your collecting a paycheck or in a supervisory role at work, right?  At least that’s what they keep telling us.

This narrative is not helping our kids. It’s not helping society as a whole.  Modern feminism, for all its victories, should have stopped short at securing the right to vote, to gain an education and to have equal opportunity in employment.  What has evolved is completely anti-marriage and anti-family,is it degrading a unit that should be preserved at all costs.

Some may say my traditional view is an antiquated one.  Maybe it is.  But it works.  I am living, breathing proof of it.

I believe that marriage functions best with two equal partners-a wife who uses her gifts to bless her family and a husband who does the same.  I respect my husband’s role in our home and he values mine.  We try to complement each other, not compete.

That’s because one role is not superior to another.

Every job has some measure of drudgery, whether you get paid or not.  Raising children is no different.  Still, I’m tired of hearing that somehow I’m oppressed, or simple-minded, or complacent because I don’t have a corner office or six-figure salary.

So excuse me, I’ve got bottoms to wipe, books to read aloud, dinner to cook, art lessons to plan, piano to teach, laundry to tackle and wisdom to impart.  I don’t get paid a dime for it, nor am I guaranteed a simple “thank you”.  But it is deeply satisfying and vitally important.  And I’ll keep busting my buns to be “successful” at it.  No matter what anyone else says.

Your kid has an incurable disease, now what?

osteogenesis imperfecta

In January, when we discovered that Jack had Osteogenesis Imperfecta, it was nothing short of traumatic.  Just a month earlier, I had gone through unmedicated labor for the fourth time.  I was much older than the last time I’d done that and frankly, it was miserable.  I’d spent a day in the hospital, trying to keep it together as I sent my baby off for a circumcision for the very first time and again when we discovered that Jack’s legs were unmistakably bowed and his left arm not moving properly.