I find I have an interesting pattern here on my blog. Interesting to me, that is. The more real life stuff I have going on the less I either can or want to write about it. Sure, I process the world and everything in it by writing, but that does not mean I need to or should share that with anyone else.

Last month, I started writing for God’s World News again. It’s writing I enjoy and I mostly have adequate time to get it done on time. It’s meeting a need for our family as well, which is a great thing. Last week, I stopped writing for WORLDMag.com. I cried. I laughed. I’m moving on. Disappointments, relief, and future promise, all wrapped up into one.

Two weeks ago Craig met a guy hanging from the very end of his rope. One week ago that guy called Craig, reaching out for help. We took him in for the weekend, made more coffee than our Keurig coffee maker pot has ever been asked to make before, and the girls drew pictures for him and ministered to his weathered soul in a way most of us will never be able to. Even our dogs loved on this man in a significant way this weekend. Yesterday, Craig checked him into a rehab place for the next 10 days. We’re praying for him. We’re planning a (very small) party for him for when he gets out. We’re hoping. Disappointment, relief, and future promise, all wrapped up into one.

One of my kids is really struggling with Latin. This same kid, who has previously really struggled in math, is carrying an A- right now, seven weeks into the school year. Disappointment, relief, future promise.

We have an amazing house that isn’t nearly as close to the city as we’d like it to be. It’s also never as clean as I’d like it to be, but again, it’s an amazing house that holds much potential for refuge and strength. Disappointent, relief, future promise.

August was a bad financial month for our family. September was a good one. October is a big fat mystery. Disappointment, relief, future promise.

I think somewhere in my life I used to believe that if I could only do all the things good Christian girls are supposed to do, I was owed something. Of course, I understood that Christ paid it all and only through Christ could salvation be obtained, but I think I wasn’t just interested in salvation. I wanted good and safe and secure and I wanted it now. I wanted it because I was good. Because I followed the Christian rules. Because I earned it.

I wonder now just how long it’s going to take me to stop trusting in myself for my sanctification.

I have no idea why life plays out the way it does. Why are hard things really HARD? Why do some people seem to have it so easy? Why do some people have lives that suck so much you can hardly stand to be around them? Why do we condemn everyone around us who we perceive ourselves to be better than for fill-in-your-own-twisted-blank?

I needed a reminder of reality today of the Isaiah 53 variety:

He had no form or majesty that we should look at him,
and no beauty that we should desire him.
He was despised and rejected by men;
a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief;
and as one from whom men hide their faces
he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

Surely he has borne our griefs
and carried our sorrows;
yet we esteemed him stricken,
smitten by God, and afflicted.
But he was wounded for our transgressions;
he was crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,
and with his stripes we are healed.
All we like sheep have gone astray;
we have turned—every one—to his own way;
and the LORD has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.

And I’m forced to ask myself the question, “So do you still feel like you are owed something for good behavior? Because let’s take an honest look at your heart, shall we?”

I am not owed a life free from hard things. I can’t earn safety or security because I follow the rules. I do not deserve either the life I’ve been given or the promise of things to come.

Disappointment, relief, future promise. It’s the story of redemption. It’s the story of the cross. And it’s the story I need to have read to me over and over and over and over because when I put it back on the shelf I forget how the ending goes. In Christ alone.

Have you seen this?

My head has been in the sand for far too long. In hunting around for some info on China’s one child policy, I found this report from a Chinese family a year ago.

This Sunday is the 31st anniversary of the implementation of this horrible event. I wrote about it for WORLDMag.com today.

Be sure to check out All Girls Allowed for more info, links, videos, and thoughts on what we can do. But the main thing is…pray.

=====

This Sunday marks the 31st anniversary of China’s one-child policy. Created for the purpose of improving social, economic, and environmental problems in the country, it was supposed to end in 2010. Instead, believing it has contributed to China’s economic prosperity, the government has decided to keep it in place indefinitely.

Economics aside, the policy, combined with China’s strong preference for sons over daughters, has most definitely contributed to a multitude of horrific practices, leading to the loss of millions of girls through abortion, prenatal sex selection, infanticide, abandonment, and trafficking.

In June 2010, a woman named Chai Ling founded All Girls Allowed, a humanitarian organization devoted to restoring life, value, and dignity to girls and mothers in China.

“As Christians, our only reaction should be deep sadness and outrage that leads to desperate prayer,” says Ling. “We are standing up to a massive communist government and saying that every baby deserves to live. This is God giving us an opportunity to pray more desperately than we ever have before.”

This coming Sunday, on this deadly anniversary, churches around the world will watch a short video produced by All Girls Allowed (see below) and pause to pray for China and the 37 million girls who have been lost since the policy was implemented in 1980.

When asked why this anniversary is so significant, Ling starts with basic math: “You know, the policy was only supposed to last 30 years, and already China says they have ‘prevented’ more than 400 million lives. Many scholars and experts have said that China will fall apart unless the policy is not only abolished, but education and effort is put into reversing some of the effects of the policy, like China’s massive gender imbalance and aging problems.”

But with the anniversary being on a Sunday this year, Ling goes beyond the arithmetic, issuing a call for Christians to take notice and pray more desperately and helplessly than ever before. She reminds us that this is an issue we really can’t do anything about, even if we had billions of dollars or a bill passed. It is going to take prayer to stop China’s one-child policy.

Today I posted on the long-popular, sometimes-debated, oft-duplicated Barbie doll for WORLDMag.com. You can agree with me (like some did) or you can roll your eyes in my general direction (like others did). You can choose. Just be intentional with your choice. *wink*

=====

Shortly (or so it seemed) after we had one daughter, the next thing we knew we had four of them. Four girls means four times the opportunities to bring Barbie, the plastic dream queen, into our home with all her luggage . . . or should I say baggage?

Our oldest daughter received her first official Barbie doll when she was 5 years old. She hadn’t asked for it, nor did she seem particularly attached to it, at least not any more than she was to the other plastic paraphernalia she acquired that year. This made Barbie an easy sneak-out-the-back-door item.

Why did we do it? I wouldn’t say I had totally developed a complete rationale against all-things-Barbie, but I did have a sense that Barbie stood for a lot of cultural misrepresentations with which I didn’t necessarily want to bombard my girls. So out she went.

Soon we had another 5-year-old on the scene. This one actually requested a Barbie for her birthday. This was right around the time I found a new line of soft-bodied cloth dolls with proportional anatomy that were about the same height as Barbie. We bought two.

My second-oldest didn’t mind. Granted, these dolls were harder to dress than traditional Barbies but were still fun to play with and-get this-they looked like young girls, not magazine pin-ups.

Fast-forward five more years. We still have a toy bin filled with old-fashioned Barbie clothes and we still have the two soft body dolls. We also have one actual Barbie doll, another unasked-for gift. I think she is Princess Barbie, and she has managed to pay her rent and secure a spot in the bin.

We have some ground rules for Barbie: She has to remain clothed while living in our house. And Ken is not invited over . . . ever.

Last week, Terry Mattingly wrote an interesting article for GetReligion.org about “God, Barbies, and girlie girls.” He didn’t just stop with Barbie but follows her down the path of her natural progression. He wrote:

“Will you buy your daughter a Barbie doll? Other questions follow in the wake of this one, linked to clothes, self-esteem, cellphones, makeup, reality TV shows and the entire commercialized princess culture.”

These are great questions to ask. I’ve had conversations with more than one mom who, after battling over the bikini question with her teenage daughters for years, finally gave in. It wasn’t the battle they wanted to fight anymore.

I’m inclined to think that if the bikini question is a battle at 17, some key conversations on modesty and the heart were missed while the girls were 7.

Mattingly pointed out that the problem with Barbie is not uniquely religious. He quotes writer Naomi Schaefer Riley, who said:

“Mothers are divided on this whole issue and some can get very upset just talking about it. Yet others are not upset. You’ll see all kinds of women, religious and non-religious, who are taking their 6-year-old daughters to get manicures and to get their hair done, trying to look pretty just like the girls on TV and in all the magazines.

“Then there are women who are the total opposite of all that. They may be evangelical Christians or they may be feminists, but they see this as an attack on what they believe.”

Riley went on to say that though this commercialized, highly sexualized culture has a dominating presence in our society, the real question for us now is whether or not we as parents are willing to dare challenge it.

Philippians 4:8 provides us with a nice grid for running the ways of our culture through:

“Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.”

I’m not saying Barbie can’t fit through that grid, but our daughters need to see discernment modeled for them. Even over toys. Even at the age of 5.

 

There are plenty of things in life I regret. I regret attitudes I’ve copped with my family in the past. I regret words I’ve spouted at my children in moments of anger. I regret ordering magazines that were being offered for $5/year because even at $5/year, I still don’t have time to read them and they waste away in a stack in my living room.

I wrote a piece last Thursday and posted it at WORLDMag.com. I don’t regret posting the piece, but I do regret posting it at WORLD.

If I could go back and change a couple of things I wrote, here’s what I would change:

1) I would have done better by my friend Wesley. I wrote him to get his thoughts on the issue and said I would probably quote him, but I did not not tell him I would most likely use the entire email he sent me. I used most of his email because I thought he had some really good things to say. Had he known I was going to do that he would have said some things differently. I wronged Wesley in that way and I am deeply saddened I did that. I regret doing it. I asked him to forgive me and he did. Wesley is a very grace-filled man.

2) I likely would not have used the term “celibate homosexual Christian” to describe him. I would change that term to a celibate Christian who struggles with same sex attraction. Most of the readers of that piece would have understood that a little better than the phrase I used and I get why.

3) I would make a one-word change in the middle of the piece from “should” to “can,” going from “I’m understanding a little better that what is commanded of Christians is simply not the same as what we should expect from those who do not follow the ways of God” to “…I’m understanding a little better that what is commanded of Christians is simply not the same as what we can expect from those who do not follow the ways of God.” It’s subtle, but it makes a difference.

4) I would have clarified more than once that my struggle wasn’t in what I believe to be true about homosexuality or what I teach my kids regarding it: I do not agree with the way the world and culture are going with the practice of same-sex marriage. I would have made sure my readers all knew my struggle was in understanding what to expect from an unbelieving world on issues of morality. I didn’t make that clear and I regret that.

I won’t lie and say that being taken to task by “big dogs” around the internet (I’m talking to you, Douglas Wilson) doesn’t sting. It does. But, in the words of someone wise tonight,

“I know this is discouraging. I would encourage you to ignore it and just keep blogging. Jesus loves you! The gospel is true. You’re a worst poster than you thought. You’re more ‘muddled’ than you ever dared to believe. You’ve become more liberal and tolerant and a product of your culture than you know. But Christ loves you more than you ever hoped. He loves bloggers like you, moms like you, thinkers like you, heart reactors like you.  He died for you and your kids and people that are ripping you and people who like you. I don’t mean that to sound silly or trite, but to encourage you that your confidence is not in what World Magazine thinks or those commentors think, but it’s really, really rooted in Jesus and what he thinks. And he thinks you are awesome!”

Those are some words I don’t regret hearing tonight.

I’m holding my breath and jumping in the deep end today at WORLD. Care to join the discussion on explaining same-sex marriage to kids?

PS: If you haven’t read Wesley Hill’s book, Washed and Waiting: Reflections on Christian Faithfulness and Homosexuality you really really should.

=====

My oldest daughter, who is 12, was checking her email the other day. Before she logged in to her account, she saw the headlines on Google News and took notice of the legalization of same-sex marriage in New York. She asked me later what I thought about that.

Some sins are worse than others, right? Not in the eyes of God maybe, but certainly to most of us. For better or for worse, we tend to place degrees on sin. In doing so, cheating on a test isn’t nearly as bad as-murder, adultery (whether heterosexual or homosexual), stealing a car, or perjuring ourselves in a court of law. I don’t mean to teach my kids that some sins are worse than others, but I do it every day by my own reactions and responses to sin in both their lives and mine. They are learning early from me.

For the longest time I’ve struggled to put my finger on just what I believe about homosexuality and whether or not same-sex marriages should be allowed. Five years ago, I think I would have come down pretty solid on the line of “absolutely not”-under no circumstance should this mockery of what God ordained as union between one man and one woman be given the same status.

I’m not sure I can say that anymore. Wait a minute: It isn’t that I think homosexuality is OK and is something Scripture overlooks or agrees with. But it is that I’m understanding a little better that what is commanded of Christians is simply not the same as what we should expect from those who do not follow the ways of God.

Because of my Christian worldview, I do not agree with the practice of homosexuality, but I do not expect the government or most of our country or world to share that view. The trick for me right now is how do I explain that to my kids?

My friend Wesley Hill is a celibate homosexual Christian. His book Washed and Waiting: Reflections on Christian Faithfulness and Homosexuality has been formative in helping me understand the struggle of Christians who find themselves wondering what it means that they struggle with a homosexual orientation. I asked him for his thoughts on the legalization of same-sex marriage, and he responded in this way:

“I tend to think the church shouldn’t behave as if its viewpoint on same-sex partnerships resonates, deep down, with everyone . . . because it doesn’t. We tend to think everyone really knows gay sex is wrong, but when we say that, we’re just not listening to gay people well enough about how their (my) orientation is ‘hardwired’ and not ‘chosen.'”What that means in terms of specific policies, I don’t know. I’m inclined to think that Christians shouldn’t have much of a problem with American governments (state and federal) granting recognition (e.g., ‘civil unions’ at least) to non-Christian same-sex partnerships. . . . Even Focus on the Family is admitting that conservatives have pretty much ‘lost’ the culture war on this issue. (Wasn’t there a recent interview with a Focus employee in WORLD to that effect?)

“The vast majority of my generation is in favor of gay marriage, and I suspect it’s only a matter of time before it’s made legal across the board. Which should be no cause for despair among more traditional, Bible-believing Christians. As Paul Griffiths says, ‘What the Church ought do . . . is to burnish the practice of marriage by [Christians] until its radiance dazzles the pagan eye.’ Our best apologetic for ‘traditional marriage’ is the beauty of the Christian lives we live. We ought to woo people towards it rather than legislate its acceptance.”

1 Corinthians 1:18 says:

“For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”

Lord, how do I-and my kids-pray for Your power on behalf of the perishing?