Maria Keffler's Blog, page 2

A Few Questions For "I'm Your Mom Now"

[The following post is from the parent of a child who identifies as transgender.]
Hey, “I’m Your Mom Now”:That’s sweet that you want to give my kid a hug because you think I’m a lousy parent and should be replaced by you.Are you also going to feed this kid all his meals from now on? pack his lunch for school every day? buy him clothes? drive him to his activities? pay his activity fees? cover his library fines? buy his medication? replace the retainer he lost? Are you going to attend the parent-teacher conferences? field calls from the teacher, the principal, the school clinic? take care of the hermit crab he brought home from a trip to the beach with friends and then lost interest in?Were you there back when he got pushed off the swing and came running to Mom for comfort and justice? Did you take him to the pediatrician when he ran a 104-degree fever, or when he fell off the jungle gym and hit his head on the way down? Did you clean it up when he barfed all over his bed—or all over you—in the middle of the night? Did you get the ketchup out of his favorite white shirt? Did you mediate fights with his siblings? Did you cover for him so his dad thought you were the one who broke the remote?Did you teach him how to use the toilet? make scrambled eggs? do long division? slow dance? write an essay? a check? a cover letter?Will you be putting him on your car insurance? health insurance? life insurance? paying for college?Are you going to be there for him, years after people like you tell him, “You should absolutely pump your body full of synthetic hormones and surgically alter your genitals,” when he grows up and wakes up and realizes he’s infertile, incontinent, and incapable of experiencing sexual pleasure? when he’s devastated and angry and asking you why you didn’t protect him from himself and from society because that was your job as his mom?Nope. I know where you’ll be then. You’ll be on to hugging the next confused and misled kid, demonstrating your valiant wokeness in the public square, telling yourself that you’re the real mom and that those of us fighting with everything we have to save our children from people like you are bigoted and hateful and bad parents.You’re not my kid’s mom. You never were and you never will be. Go screw up your own kid’s life and stay away from mine. I’m not his problem. You are.
✽
If you or your child need help responding to the transgender narrative, know that you're not alone. These organizations can help:

The Kelsey Coalition
Parents of ROGD Kids
Arlington Parent Coalition
Transgender Trend
The Parent Resource Guide: Educating & Equipping Parents to Respond (Free Download)

From a Kelsey Coalition Mom

Your beloved child has been kidnapped by a sadistic cult.The cult brainwashes her to believe you are the enemy.The brainwashing erases her entire childhood.Every good memory is replaced with memories of abuse that never happened.The cult convinces her to inject poison in her body and to get her healthy body parts amputated. You panic. You scream. You sob. You beg. You are reduced to nothing. You search for help everywhere. Nobody will help. Nobody will stop the cult. In fact, the government investigates YOU and tells you to approve of what the cult is doing to your daughter. The world has gone mad. You find out the cult is kidnapping thousands of other young girls and boys.And the government is funding the cult.You grieve with other parents going through the exact same thing.Society celebrates the cult and ridicules parents who fight back. Some parents are willingly handing their children over to the cult and cheering their child’s destruction.The child you love with everything in you, the child you would die for, is now unrecognizable, replaced by someone who holds you in contempt. She is now part of the cult.You sob day after day, night after night, wondering how many tears one human can cry. You scream when you see her severed breasts and collapse, sobbing, “My God, my God, what have they done to my baby?” You nearly drink yourself to death when you find out the cult cut out her entire reproductive system. “No No No No No NO NOOOOOOOOOO! They took my baby’s womb, they took her eggs. She doesn’t know any better. She’s still a little girl.”You reach out to every government agency you can think of and every organization fighting the cult.You think there is nothing more the cult can do to her.You are wrong.You fly to go see her, twice within 6 weeks, to beg and plead with her to not let the cult do this next terrible thing. You beg the cult to stop torturing your daughter. You beg authorities to help you.Nobody will help your daughter. You cannot stop it, so you beg, “Please don’t hurt my daughter. Here, take my arm instead. All of it if you need to. I don’t need it. Just take it.” Your attempts are futile. You cannot stop the torture.So you sit alone in a motel room, sobbing until you choke on your own tears, praying with everything in you, hugging a pillow, rocking back and forth, pretending it is your baby, while you softly sob a song, “You are my sunshine. My only sunshine…”For a while, your mind is gone.You call another mother who has a daughter whose breasts have been cut off by the cult.You sob together. Then you wait in a room, knowing that nearby, the sadistic cult is skinning and mutilating your baby. Sure, she’s legally an adult now but the stuffed animal you bought her yesterday that she picked out says otherwise. Rage builds with each passing second and you contemplate what life in prison would be like. You now see very clearly what kind of things you are capable of. Fire boils through your veins, with bloody carnage dancing violently in your head. But she needs you now more than ever, so you can't....This is just one mother, one child. There are thousands of more cult casualties. Daughters, sons, mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, aunts, uncles, grandparents, nieces, nephews, cousins – all casualties of the sadistic cult. Oh, and let's not forget wives with suddenly stunning and brave husbands, all of the lesbians under attack, and the erasure of women's rights. My beloved child was kidnapped by a sadistic cult. Will yours be next?
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Today's guest post was written by a mother whose child believed transgender activism's lie that one can change sexes.If you need help for yourself, your child, or someone else, please know that you’re not alone. The Kelsey Coalition, among many other groups dedicated to truth, health, and the protection of children, is fighting back.For further reading: If Your Child Says S/he’s Transgender

God & the Transgender Narrative

Image by Prawny

At last week’s Parent & Child Loudoun conference, Uncommon Knowledge: How Transgender Ideas Affect Our Children, the speaker panel was asked, “How do I respond to Christians who say that there’s nothing wrong with transgenderism?”Very simply:To accept transgender ideology—the notion that someone can be “born in the wrong body”— a person must believe one of three things about God: 1) God is cruel.2) God is incompetent.or 3) God doesn’t exist.Let’s take a look at what these three perspectives reveal about our own theologies. God Is Cruel One of the claims that transgender rights activists frequently make to support belief in a gender spectrum (infinite genders), as opposed to a gender binary (male and female), is diversity. They argue that gender is like skin color or like the variety of animal species in nature. They assert that God—if they address God at all—isn’t a limited or limiting God, but a god who celebrates diversity in every aspect of his creation.However, if God is sovereign and omnipotent (all-powerful), and he intentionally creates persons whose inner landscape (their “gender”) is mismatched to their outer landscape (their physical sex) then we can only conclude that God is cruel. To specifically design a creature whose mind and body are at odds with one another is to create a lack of integrity (here meaning integrated-ness, or symbiosis of the system) which must by definition cause the creature pain and suffering.The transgender narrative explains this pain and suffering as a result of societal non-acceptance. But no matter what one experiences at the hands of others certainly the very state of existing at war with oneself creates its own inherent pain and lack of peace. To believe that God would deliberately curse someone to live in disharmony with himself, or be required to undergo extensive and life-long medicalization through human-handed surgery and hormone treatment in an attempt to achieve harmony, is to paint God as a sadist. God Is Incompetent Another explanation transgender activists offer, especially when indoctrinating young children—is that “God made a mistake.”The Bible is clear on three points: God is omnipotent (all-powerful), God is omniscient (all-knowing), and God is omnipresent (all-seeing): “Ah, Sovereign LORD, you have made the heavens and the earth by your great power and outstretched arm. Nothing is too hard for you.” (Jeremiah 32:17)“Who can fathom the Spirit of the LORD, or instruct the LORD as his counselor? Whom did the LORD consult to enlighten him, and who taught him the right way? Who was it that taught him knowledge, or showed him the path of understanding?” (Isaiah 40:13-14)“Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?” (Psalm 139:7)To claim that God can err is to negate his power, perfection, and perception. We may rightly claim that sin has corrupted creation via man’s will to exalt himself as his own god, but to believe that God lacks the power or competence to initiate creation without flaw is to try to bring God down to man’s level, which can never be done by one who calls himself after the name of Christ—the son of God.If a person believes that God is incompetent, that person does not subscribe to the most basic tenets of the Christian faith. There Is No God This is the only theological position in support of transgenderism that is intellectually honest.If I do not believe in an ultimate creator and authority over that creation, I am free to be and do anything I want. This anti-theology is at the very heart of the transgender narrative: people are nothing but clay that can mold itself into any shape it desires. The clay was made by no one, has no meaning to its existence other than self-satisfaction, and owes nothing to anyone or anything outside itself.
As a gender-critical advocate dealing with school policy, the atheist position on transgender rights is the only one I can give respect, because its argument derives from the genuine belief that there is no such thing as ultimate truth. When working from that foundation (or lack of a foundation) transgender ideology is the logical conclusion to the question, “What is the sexual purpose of humankind?” The atheist’s answer: “Its own happiness.” Without the constraints of any kind of theology, nothing more can be required of a life than self-actualization.But for someone who claims Christ as truth, affirming transgender ideology as acceptable requires denial of one’s own faith. It underscores a greater desire for self-satisfaction and/or approval from others than for approval from God. It points to the elevation of the self as its own god, and the relegation of God to irrelevance.In the case of transgender ideology one is either for Christ or against Christ. Trying to ride the fence only drops a person on the latter side, no matter how passionately he claims the former.

HRCF Dusts Off an Old KKK Strategy to Bully Corporate America

The Human Rights Campaign Foundation (HRCF) has done astonishing work getting LGBTQ priorities mainstreamed into public life. Their latest drive is to indoctrinate students in the public schools with transgender ideology. If you think redefinition of human sexuality and child development isn’t happening in your schools, think again.Where does HRCF get the funding to push their agenda so boldly and comprehensively? It comes largely from the businesses below, listed on HRCF’s corporate partners page, copied here for your shopping (or not shopping) consideration.But why do so many businesses fund LGBTQ priorities? Because they’ve been bullied into compliance by HRCF’s “Corporate Equality Index,” (CEI) a number ginned up and assigned to each company based on how much the company does to further HRCF’s goals. Their rubric includes mandates such as:·     The company’s policies include sexual orientation & gender identity expression for all operations.·      The company must conduct HRCF-approved cultural training for all employees.·      The company must include gender identity and sexual orientation in professional development training.·      The company must utilize LGBTQ suppliers when available.·      The company must perform outreach to, marketing to, & financial support of LGBTQ interests.There is also a negative-points section of the rubric called “Responsible Citizenship”. This amorphous and subjective category allows HRCF to deduct points from a company’s CEI based on “a large-scale official or public anti-LGBTQ blemish on their recent records”.What exactly does that mean? It means HRCF will deduct points from a company’s CEI score if the company does anything the HRCF doesn’t like.CEI scores are announced annually, and companies are lauded or excoriated by the LGBTQ community and its allies based on their scores. The HRCF has also created the Buyer’s Guide, a handy app for your phone that lets you know exactly how LGBTQ-friendly an organization is, according to the HRCF. So if you’re shopping for shoes, and you see some kicks you like, you can easily find out whether the brand is agreeable to HRCF or not, and purchase—or not purchase—accordingly. Whether or not you agree with HRCF’s ideology, this kind of corporate blackmail is akin to the Ku Klux Klan’s activities in the 1920’s, when if you didn’t hold a KKK card you likely couldn’t get a job.The bullied have become the bullies.
Financial Supporters of the HRCF
AccentureAlaska AirlinesAmazonAmerican AirlinesBank of AmericaBoston ScientificBPCapital OneCargillCarnival CorporationCentury LinkChevronCitibankCoca-Cola CompanyCoxDanaherDellDeloitteDiageoEyGoldman-SachsGoogleGuardianHersheyHyattIBMIntelJ. CrewLexusLincoln Financial GroupLyftMacy’sMastercardMGM ResortsMicrosoftMitchell-Gold & Bob WilliamsNationwideNikeNordstromNorthrop GrummanPepsicoPfizerPNCPottery BarnPrudentialShellSmirnoffSymantecTargetUBSUPSU.S. BankWells-FargoWest ElmWhirlpoolWilliams Sonoma

Will the Church Choose to Be Relevant?

After months of pushing back with all our might, the local school board and administration have made it clear that they intend to keep funneling more transgender propaganda into our schools, introducing kindergarteners to sexual orientation, gender identity, and the possibility that who their bodies and their parents say they are isn’t really who they are. Our school system is doing this already, via activist teachers, counselors, and staff who are slipping rogue sex-ed into whatever curricula they can, which is surprisingly quite a lot. The school board and administration have now decided to codify this ideology in a policy implementation procedure that they’re launching in the fall, despite dissent from a large number of parents and community members who find it unacceptable.I’m discouraged. I know discouragement isn’t where I should live. I know God is still in charge, and he isn’t blindsided by anything. But I’ll admit that I’m struggling to hold onto that in the face of everything else.I’m not discouraged about the amount of active deception around this issue, nor about the depth of foolhardiness, shortsightedness, and hypocrisy among the pro-trans folks who crow about “love and acceptance for all” while hissing over public speakers whose message they don’t like and trashing with words I won’t print here anyone who questions them. I’m not discouraged by the barbs and nasty-grams I’ve had fired at me, or about the “friends” I’ve lost, or about becoming a pariah in my left-of-the-left, blue-to-the-core community.I’m not discouraged that the committee which wrote the transgender position statement for the American Academy of Pediatricians is headed up by two doctors who work in gender clinics, and who therefore have financial incentive to drive children to gender clinics for medicalized transition, rather than to counselors or therapists for help getting comfortable with their natural bodies.I’m not discouraged that the school board and administration are being deceptive and arrogant, and care more about their “optics” than about the children to whom they now refer as “customers.” I’m not discouraged that left-leaning publications and websites are suppressing debate by deleting comments (and petitions) they don’t like. I’m not discouraged that my colleagues and I are demonized for speaking truth and believing that biological facts are more valid than a nine-year-old’s feelings about her philosophical existentialism.I’m not even discouraged to be “suffering” for a righteous cause.Nope, none of that.Instead I’m discouraged that a great many Bible-foundational churches—where is preached the valiance of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego; where is preached the blessing of God upon persecuted believers; where is preached the holy necessity of personal and sacrificial righteousness—won’t even put a blurb in their congregational newsletters about what’s happening in our public schools, or call for corporate prayer, or hold a fast, or do much of anything at all. They’re silent, they’re scared, and that’s discouraging for those of us on the front lines of this.At the last school board meeting, where this policy was handed to the school board for implementation, forty speakers commented. More than three-quarters had been organized to speak for the pro-trans side, including a pastor from a local Presbyterian church.No clergy stood up with us.Does the Church have anything to say outside its own four walls? Is the Church still relevant to public life? What will the Church’s witness be to a world that already considers faith irrelevant, hypocritical, and outdated?We’re all listening for the answer.

It's Okay to Feel Not-Okay

I have a secret to tell you that can change your life, if you’ll believe it: Nobody is normal.If you’re in high school or middle school, or even if you’re a fully-fledged adult, and you think you’re the only one who doesn’t fit in, or measure up, or get it like everyone else does—you’re actually just like everybody else.Nobody feels right in their own body at thirteen, or even fourteen, and sometimes fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, and beyond. You’re a butterfly breaking out of a cocoon, dear one. It’s hard, and it's painful, and it feels impossible. But that’s just— NORMAL. And beautiful, in the end, if it’s accomplished as it’s intended to be.A lot of us feel like square pegs on a board of round holes, like fish trying to ride bicycles, like ugly ducklings bumping around in a world of swans.But most people—especially when they’re youngish—are just faking the appearance of being well-adjusted, confident, and in control of life.Sadly, the most ill-at-ease people in the world often try to make those around them feel less-than, wrong, a mistake. Because misery loves company. If such people can draw you into their pain by making their misery look like happiness, or if they can push you to feel worse about yourself than they do about themselves, they think it will elevate them and will make them feel and look and be better.(It won’t.)You’re a masterpiece already. Don’t ever think you need to change who you are.You say you don’t look like other people?Nobody does. As much as people claim to want to be one-of-a-kind, most spend their lives trying to copy whoever they think has it most together. You don’t need to do that. You’re more than enough just the way you are. You were fearfully and wonderfully made.You argue that you don’t like the same things other people like?I promise that somewhere there’s someone similar to you—but not exactly the same—who likes that too. When I was a kid I liked to draw maps. Not real maps, imaginary ones. I have no idea why. A friend’s college roommate chilled out by looking at typesetting fonts. There are boys who macramé and girls who weld. Don’t buy into other people’s strict, stereotypical definitions of what a girl or a boy is. There’s no hard drive in the world that could hold all the myriad variations of personhood on it. So how could “Girls like pink” or “Boys like trucks” ever be able to sum up a human being?You worry because you have, or might have, a diagnosis—autism, depression, anxiety, OCD, or something else—and you think that could mean you’re not actually who you thought you were, or who you wish you were. Everyone has something that’s gone awry emotionally, psychologically, or physically. Every. Single. One of us. Some of us are just lucky enough to have a word for our particular combination of abnormalities, and some professional guidance for managing it.You may have been told that you need to change something about yourself in order to feel better. But here’s another secret:It’s okay to feel not-okay.Sometimes life hurts. Pain exists as a red flag or signpost, to alert us that something needs to be attended to: I need to remove my hand from the hot stove; I need to find friends who care about me rather than use me; I need to find out the truth rather than continue to believe a lie.I’m sorry if you’re hurting. I’m sorry if people have hurt you. I’m sorry if life feels like a battle every day.But drugs can’t fix your heart. Surgery won’t fix your feelings.They just won’t.Can I offer you a novel thought?Try working on your feelings instead. Find someone trustworthy—someone without a horse in the race—who can help you figure out why you hurt, and where that hurt started.If you want to sort some of that out, here are a few good places to start:Inspired Teen TherapyThe Kelsey CoalitionPique ResilienceBenjamin BoyceFourth Wave NowParent and Child Loudon: Support GroupsYou’re amazing, young one.Believe it.

I Am Not Jazzed

I got disinvited from speaking to a local middle school’s student book club last week. The librarian who arranged the event was instructed by someone higher up to cancel when that administrator noted my status as an indie author. I get it. Who knows what kind of controversial influence I might exert on impressionable young minds.So the irony is rich that the school board at this same school system is working to fast-track a transgender student policy that will, among other things, require instruction on transgenderism and homosexuality in the Family Life Education curriculum for grades K-12.You read that right: This policy would mandate that five-year-olds be taught at school about transgenderism and homosexuality.I make my indie status up-front and first-page. That this policy is currently in development is buried three links deep on the county’s public school website.Also last week two kindergarten classes at a local elementary school received a read-aloud of the books I Am Jazz & Julian Is a Mermaid. Parents got a verbose, enthusiastic, and disingenuous lettera few days before the event, with the single word “transgender” buried in the middle of the second paragraph. No opt-out clause was offered, or any suggestion made that some parents might have concerns about the reading. The letter flew under the radar of many over-paperworked parents’ attention until the Washington Post ran a storyon it, after which the elementary school reportedly got slammed with calls from furious mothers and fathers.Why so much subterfuge about practicing gender and sexuality politics at school? Because as one staff member said at a working group on the policy, the school needs to “help parents who are unsupportive or who aren’t quite there yet… help to move the parents along.” These school administrators seem to think they know better than parents the values and beliefs with which children should be inculcated.I may not be allowed to speak to students about my books, but I will be speaking to administrators about their role in my kids’ lives and about their policies regarding my kids’ education.Because right now, I am not jazzed.

Valentine's Day Raffle (Everybody Wins!)

Hi Readers!



Through Valentine's Day when you buy an ecopy of "40 Graces for Forgiveness: a Healing Journey" (devotional) for the limited-time special price of just $1 (a $2.99 savings) you'll be entered to win a signed print copy, which includes questions for thought/discussion and pages for journaling your own journey.

Just send me a screenshot of your transaction at Smashwords (or Amazon, but it's $3.99 there) here on Goodreads, or at MariaKefflerBooks on Facebook) to enter.

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view...

Happy reading, and Happy Valentine's Day!

MK

40 Graces for Forgiveness: A Healing Journey

How to Offload Takers

About ten years ago I realized that I’d collected in my life a lot of Takers. Takers are people who, as the word suggests, take things without giving anything in return: parasites, freeloaders, mooches, leeches.(Okay, those might be strong words.)I reflected on why this might’ve happened, and I realized that Dr. Phil is right: we teach people how to treat us. I’d created this dynamic by trying to live out two very good and truthful statements—1. Do unto others as you’d have them do unto you, and2. Be a friend in order to have a friend.—but I’d never coupled these mantras with appropriate boundaries.Boundaries help keep good stuff in and bad stuff out. No matter which side of the MAGA-Build-The-Wall debate you’re on, you probably have an understanding of how fences work. (If you’re outside the US and you don’t know what I’m talking about, God bless you and can I come live where you live for a while?)So how do you know if you’re feeding a flock of Takers?You have friends/family members who only contact you when they want something.Your own calls/texts/asks for attention or assistance are met with crickets.Serving these people often feels like pouring your love into a sucking black hole.Before we talk about offloading all these Takers, it’s important to take note of one other thing: not all Takers should be offloaded.There are two kinds of Takers in the world: those who DON’T give back, and those who CAN’T give back.People who can’t give back are genuinely in need. They are physically, emotionally, financially, mentally, or in some other way unable to take care of their own needs well enough to create the overflow that characterizes healthy, two-way relationships.I have people in my life to whom I give—attention, time, love, resources—because I have the capacity to care for them, though they do not have the means to return the favor. I recognize this, and I expect I will get nothing back. (Sometimes I actually do, which is gravy!)But people who won’t give back simply because they don’t want to? Those people don’t get my time or attention anymore.Here’s how I shed them:1. I identified them using the bolded statements above.2. I stopped asking them for anything.3. I started saying, “No,” when they asked me for things.That last one, No. 3, was really hard. I’d spent a lot of time doing a lot of things I didn’t want to do, and a lot of time being mad about doing those things. But I’d had no real training in how to say, “No,” i.e., to establish boundaries around my time and resources.So I got a coach.K. knows how to refuse a request, and can do it with a smile on her face. She agreed to be my boundaries Yoda. When I got a request to do something I didn’t want to do, but I didn’t know how to refuse it, I called her.“You just say, ‘I’m sorry, that’s not going work for me,’” K. explained.The earth stopped moving. “I can say that?”“Of course you can.”I enumerated all the arguments I expected this person to throw back at me, explaining why I could, in fact, do the thing asked of me.“I don’t think you’re going to get that kind of pushback,” K. said. “But if you do, call me again and I’ll tell you how to respond.”So I hung up, held my breath, and texted, “I’m sorry, that’s not going to work for me,” to the person who requested my services.“Okay, no problem,” they texted back. “Thanks anyway.”Hurricane-force exhale.Holy Not-Gonna-Do-It, Batman. It worked.If you’ve never tried this, you will not believe the freedom it gives you when you do.The Takers vanish almost immediately. They aren't used to hearing “No,” and when the script gets flipped they're suddenly thrown into foreign waters in which they’ve never swum before. Sadly, they'll probably flail over to get rescued by someone else’s lifeboat. But at least they’re not swamping mine anymore.Real relationships get better. When I agree to do something, I mean it and I find more pleasure in it. When I don’t agree, others respect my time and resources even more, because they recognize that those hours and assets are indeed finite and valuable.I resume authority over my life, and no longer feel at the whims and demands of other people. I discover that I don’t need anyone else’s approval or appreciation to feel that I and my life are worthy of being. I can give out of my abundance, rather than out of a need for validation.Yes, I’ve lost some people.But I don’t miss them at all.
Give me more Wasting My Education!I’m offloading you, Wasting My Education.

The Promise of Pain

My thirteen-year-old daughter lost three checks from her employer, the neighbor lady whose dogs she walks five days a week. My girl only gets around to submitting bills to her boss once every four or five weeks, so these are large-ish checks. After much searching we managed to find two of them. “I guess you gave Miss Ann those other dog-walks for free,” I told my daughter, who scowled and grumbled.Yes, we could ask Miss Ann to write a replacement check. But I’m absolutely not going to, and if Miss Ann offers to do so, I’m going to discourage it. Not because I’m a mean parent, but because my daughter is currently very disorganized and a little irresponsible. And she won’t work toward improving in those areas if she never suffers because of them.People only change when it becomes too painful to stay the way they are.That’s the very core of discipline: we make our kids’ lives a little uncomfortable by taking away something they like or giving them something they don’t like so they are motivated to change an unproductive or unwelcome behavior.It’s the core of natural consequences in adult life too: If I don’t fill up the gas tank, I may end up stranded; If I fail to show up at work, I won’t get paid; If I don’t secure the ladder before I climb up onto the roof, I may fall and break my legs. No one likes pain; we would all prefer to avoid it (which is why motivation theory works). Incidentally, it’s one of the points people often use to argue that there must not be a God, because why would a good God allow all this pain in the world? I won’t go theological here, but let me just ask: If you never persevered through pain, what would your life be like right now? Would you have finished school? Would you have stayed through marriage troubles? Would you have run that race, learned that instrument, or lost that weight?If a person never persists through anything difficult, it’s probably because s/he never had to. It never became more painful to stay the same than it was to grow and change.The father of an adult son once complained that his son wouldn’t move out or get a job or contribute to the household in any way. I suggested the father start to charge the kid rent. The man spoke to me as though I had an IQ a little lower than Forrest Gump’s: “He can’t pay rent,” Dad said slowly. “He doesn’t have a job.”Right. And as long as he gets free room and board, he’ll never get one.(Seven years later he still hasn’t, incidentally.)I want my kids to live good lives. Honestly, I wish they could live pain-free lives. But a pain-free life is a stagnant, immature, and growth-free life. My kids (and I) must suffer some pain in order to learn, mature, and become wiser, better, and more responsible people. This is true until the day we all die.And I’ll bet that the next check my daughter gets from Miss Ann will not be stuffed into a backpack or back pocket, but will get signed, sealed, and sent to the bank immediately.Learning that life lesson is worth picking up a month’s worth of dog doo for free.
May we have you over again? Yes, please! No, thank you.