Equal Rights: Two Steps Forward and...

My facebook page has been flooded with a plethora of profile picture changes recently. I find that most of my friends have changed their picture to reflect support for LGBT rights, and fewer of them have changed their picture to vocalize their support of the unborn.

 

I look at this divide and think to myself that I wish we could all just get along.

 

I am a devout Christ follower. And what I am about to say will offend, shock, and probably ostracize me further in the Christian community. #idontcare

 

I believe firmly in equal rights for LGBT’s. Many of my friends are members of this diverse community, and they are beautiful people! I love my gay barista. I adore my lesbian friends. They have a perspective on life that identifies with suffering, and add a punch of quirky to my life. Plus? They are people created in the image of God.

 

Our society is no longer predominantly Christian. If you don’t believe that, you are in serious dee-ni-al, my friend. Yes, I have moral opinions on the LGBT lifestyle. Yes, I believe it is sin. But so are the thoughts that swirl in my own head about my parents. So is the irritability that I dish out on my children on a daily basis. But as soon as we look to take the speck out of our brothers/sisters eyes, I have a plank the size of the Titanic I need to remove from my own. Many of my LGBT friends know how to love and accept in ways that I can learn from. And I find members of the Christian community who treat these beautiful people with contempt, disdain, unacceptance, and horror reprehensible and a disgrace to the name of Christ. Sin is no respecter of persons, and I am so tired and weary of the Christian church “scaling” sin. Sin is sin. Doesn’t matter how you slice it, my sin is no different than, and no less entrapping than, theirs (or yours).

 

I identify with the LGBTs. I often wonder if I were to invite my gay barista to church. Would he come? Would he bring his spouse? Probably not. Fear of unacceptance, of feeling judged, grips them. I have felt this way for far lesser things. Christians, we are to blame for this. And we have thrown the opportunity to shed Christ’s love and grace on them away. And we keep them at arms length. This is so wrong! They have a story to share, and rarely do we give them the opportunity to share it.

 

So my opinion on this whole equal rights issue is that it should happen. Firstly, because we are not a Christian society. We cannot hold unbelievers to the same standard of living that we expect from ourselves. This is wrong. Second, because I believe that we are due. Honestly, I believe that a heterosexual couple did more damage to me, subscribing to Judeo-Christian beliefs than would have been done to me in a homosexual one. Obviously, not all families are like this! My situation was extreme I recognize that. But it illustrates my point. Thirdly, because in America, it is simply unjust. It is unjust that a dying LGBT can’t have their partner notified. It is unjust that they can’t file jointly on their tax returns if they want to. We are all entitled, under our system of government (put your moral opinions aside) to the pursuit of happiness, are we not? And the Christian community is the first to take even an issue like this, and spin it around to equal rights for the unborn. They want it for the unborn, but they can’t recognize the importance of granting equal rights to those in our society who live with the sting of it every day? Really Christians, your hypocrisy is stifling. And finally, it is needed. There is still so much injustice in our culture. This is a huge step in recognizing that. Our society has granted equal rights to races, but that’s as far as it has gone. I have been told by employers that if a young female comes in to interview for a job, if the female does not mention that she is done having children, and is of childbearing age, that she won’t get the job. They say that technically they aren’t supposed to do this, but they do it because it costs them more money to hire a woman who would have a baby. Women are paid less. Women are victims of rape culture. LGBTs are victims of a different kind of racism and discrimination. So I hope this amendment passes, and I will rejoice with all of my LGBT friends and wear a rainbow to honor their victory.

 

Here’s another group in our society that is underrepresented and victims of inequality: Children. Children are at the heart of God. The kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these. And they are our future. They should be invested in and listened to.

 

Yet daily, children are subject to live in our world with inequality and injustice. Our coffee and chocolate industries are supported on the backs of children trapped in slavery in Africa (buy fair trade!). Do we care? Christians, we should be the first ones to speak out against this. This is inequality. Children throughout this country have next to no rights. Our country is the only developed, first world country that has not adopted the UN Rights of the Child (the other one is Somalia, guilty of actively engaging in child slavery). Before you bristle, it’s a beautiful document, crafted with the best interests of children in mind.  This is injustice.

 

Children are subject to the will and whims of their parents, no matter how well intentioned or heinously abusive they are. If a parent wants to homeschool their child, the child has no say so whatsoever. I was thirteen when I was asking to attend our local public school. And I believe that that is old enough to be able to have a voice, and for that voice to be taken into consideration. Yet, there was no system in place that would have allowed me to speak this voice (say, for example, to a social worker). Yet school would have been the best thing for me. This is injustice.

 

Children are not empowered. When asked about abuse that goes on in the home, that is generally reported and found out by teachers and counselors in a school setting, they cower, being told by their parents not to say anything. I have sat in on a hot-lined event, and watched my student speak out of fear, recanting his story. He was six. He went home, with no rights, that day into his father’s abusiveness. This is injustice.

 

Now, here’s where it gets sticky. It’s hard to talk about societal progress in the areas of child maltreatment and abuses when we have failed to recognize the lives of the unborn. Granted, we don’t live in a Christian society. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t believe that even unborn babies deserve an equal opportunity to grow up and pursue their own happiness. Having said that, I understand the gut-wrenching agony that would come from the realization that you were pregnant with your father’s child. I get it. And honestly, I would choose to end that life. That is not something that I could live with. And Christians, before you go and judge, don’t. Most of you have never experienced abuse of that nature, so reserve them unless you have. I believe that while the choice should be there, that if the Christian community changed their dialogue about how children caught up in abusive homes, in unhappy homeschooling and cultic ones, trapped in the sex and slave trades, is wrong in the eyes of God, that maybe, just maybe, the rest of society would pick up on this concern and opinions and hearts would be softened. Children are not a commodity or an asset. They are a gift. Abortion is simply a reflection of that overall societal belief. And the Christian church is probably the guiltiest of contributing to these beliefs.

 

“For all” in the Constitution means just that: For everyone. Babies, children, teenagers, adults, regardless of race or sexual orientation. Equal rights for everyone. So while the Equal Rights issue that is swirling in D.C. at the moment is two steps forward, our society still has so far to go.

 

Makarios,

 

Chandra

Of Valentine's Days...

I am writing this when I should be writing a paper for school. Sometimes, my blog or book serves as a great warm-up to get my academic writing juices flowing. Tonight’s one of those nights.

I don’t really know what I want to write about tonight. So bear with me. Its pretty random, or, at least I have a feeling it will be.

I have been thinking a lot about my early childhood, mostly my childhood prior to my family moving away from their birth home in Fairfax, MO. Aside from some very dark and disturbing memories, I was close to my grandmas and I knew they loved me. The stirring of my heart came because I was re-reading my grandma’s diary doing some research for my book. Her writing qualified my heart’s memories and solidified them. She wrote…

 

Of countless sleepovers with cousins…

Of a tree house built by my grandpa…

Of family dinners not too far removed from a Braverman get together...

Of her crying for hours after I moved away…

Of me chasing kittens…

Of a meal served in the tree house in the orchard among the fireflies…

 

I always thought of Fairfax as home. I cried every time I left, even at the age of 31 when I said “good bye” to my beloved Grandma for the last time. St. Louis has never been home to me. And on the one holiday of the year when we are beckoned to think about love, the word love applies to both of my grandmas. It always has and it always will. And with them gone, a piece of my heart is gone as well.

I remember Valentine’s cards in the mail, filled with stickers and cards that could be punched out into paper dolls. They never ended, and they were always filled with a wonderful letter in my grandma’s signature penmanship. Her letters were the highlight of my month. When they were opened, they spelled home to me. I can still remember every single one (I am one of those individuals who have been cursed gifted with a photogenic memory). Her cards were the salve to my heart when I needed to be reminded that I was loved.

Valentine’s Day was usually a dismal effort in my immediate family to display some form of resemblance to love. It was never a holiday where my brother or I was celebrated, it was usually just for my parents. As we aged, and the homeschooling movement grew and became more entrenched in our lives, February always centered on Richard Little Bear Wheeler’s Courtship talk. As is typical of this oppressive movement, us girls were oppressed and controlled. Our minds were brainwashed, and we were trained to be pure, to not glance at the opposite sex, to be obscenely careful in choosing our clothing, and to be certain that we were not flirting in any manner. The boys of course were just boys, and us girls would file out of the church, somber, taking our commitments that we had made seriously. We felt like a failure if a boy ever paid attention to us, though we longed for it. I still remember the oppression that I felt and the penitent prayers that would ensue that night in my journals are heart wrenching to read. The very essence of the beautiful creature, woman, squelched. And if a young man so much as looked at me, I was a failure and a whore. I knew that when courtship became a concept that my parents were married to, that I would either have to leave the house and date, or die alone. Courtship would have never worked for me and I am proud of myself for realizing that then. Courtship for me would have ended in a lonely single life or married to a man who was every bit as abusive of me as my father.

The February of 1999 was the month I nearly died with pneumonia. While the world celebrated love, I was fighting for the will to live one more day in a home where love was a foreign concept.

 

Then I hit 20 two years later and had gained my freedom from my home. I had a job and discovered the power of feeling beautiful through a wonderful store that I still have a passionate love for: Neiman Marcus. Designer clothes, colored hair, manicured nails, pierced ears. All those things that I was told would turn me into a home wrecker, but were in fact, aesthetic needs that fed my soul. And this guy just happened to notice me. That Valentine’s Day was different.

 

I had 2-dozen long stemmed roses delivered to my cubicle, and this amazing boyfriend. And I knew as certain as those stars in the sky that night as we walked our picturesque neighborhood, that I would never be without love again.

 

Valentine’s Day was once a depressing concept, an eternal reminder of the love I longed for and didn’t have, of the dismal and bleak future that looked like a never-ending road in Kansas. It was painful and lonely but it’s not any more. My boys hand out Valentines to their classmates. We design boxes for said Valentines. My boys are made to feel special by Mom and Dad. My husband is the best Valentine a girl could ask for.

 

That amazing boyfriend just surprised me with pink roses and a love note. He has every year for the past eleven. And even though this particular Valentine’s Day was spent in taking care of our Asperger son who still hasn’t mastered the concept of getting sick in the toilet, my heart was full. It was full of love.

 

Makarios.

 

P.S~ I know I have readers who wonder when their time will come, readers who are well into their late 20’s and early 30’s wanting-wishing-that next year would bring the desires of their heart, wondering when their time for love will come. Dearest, I can assure you that it will not come unless you make a bold move for love. It will not happen if you are waiting for your parents to arrange a courtship. If you are still in your parents’ home at this age, it will never, ever happen. Love requires boldness, and the first step in finding a soul mate, is to love yourself. Get out from underneath your parent’s home. Don’t wait for life to find you; you have to make it happen. And love cannot be controlled. Love must be free in order to flourish. And love cannot be afraid. Please contact me if you need help.

Desires of the Heart

“And her desire shall be…”

 

Shoes, half dirty pairs of blue jeans, a basket of socks waiting to be matched, and desperate to be vacuumed floors surround me as I write this. I have been battling a nasty respiratory flu for the last week and a half. Between trying to get over it, trying to squelch the urge to sue my parents for medical neglect, and keeping up with school work not much else has gotten done around here in the last week. The bathroom sink is covered in toothpaste. The litter box needs to be cleaned. At least the laundry has been washed, but I know it won’t put itself away.

 

Things like that leave me feeling like a failure. And fill my heart with desire.

Desire to not be in school so I can spend time with my family. A desire for a clean house. Desires to find the time to cook organic healthy meals for my family instead of our old standbys: MCFroPicks (Mac n Cheese, Frozen Pizza, Fish Sticks). A desire for a clean house that sparkles, beds that are made, laundry that is freshly folded, shelves that are dusted, homemade snacks in the pantry, and a freezer full of healthy meals. A desire to read aloud more at night, with boys in their jammies listening on the couch.

Enter reality: My pantry looks far more like a walk down Wal-Mart’s snack aisle than I care to admit and the snacks are GMO packed granola bars and goldfish crackers. Meals in the freezer consist in the abundance of frozen pizzas and lean cuisines. Evenings at our home look like a mad scramble out of a scene from Parenthood, homework papers flying, dusting off a table to consume a said frozen pizza, three boys in underwear wrestling or engrossed in a DSI battle, and us falling into a heap of sheer exhaustion, anxiously waiting their early bedtime. Did I mention the kitten has now scrambled up the table to forage for the left over table scraps?

 

My desires and reality so often don’t mesh. And much of the disappointment in my life I believe can be traced to the fact that I want to fight to keep my desires and make them match my reality. So often, I fail to see that these types of desires that I have are a part of the curse. I get bitterly discontent, assume false guilt, and cry in my heart for the loss of these desires that I believe should be mine.

 

I see this everywhere. I see women who are burdened with desires. And these desires go well and beyond a desire for a husband. We desire our family to be close, so we will do anything we possibly can to achieve that vision. Even if it means over protecting, home educating when it is no longer a healthy option, forcing traditions that no one wants to participate in, or try to force family relationships in unhealthy ways.

We desire our family to be fed. We listen to the swirling news and fear-laden data that our children or husbands will die of cancer if they consume too much of a given preservative. Hours are devoted to the planning and preparation of these meals and we experience false guilt when they don’t hold up to a certain standard, desiring in our hearts that next time will be better. And we feel somehow better than the next mom who doesn’t do all of these extra things for their family and feeds them on processed peanut butter and jelly.

 

We desire our children to be happy and healthy. The natural birth movement, the cloth diapering movement, the breast is best movement, are all well and good. But our hearts seek after these things like a thwarted idol, desiring the best birthing experience, the environmental concerns of cloth diapering, the health benefits of nursing as though somehow these experiences will bring to our hearts the fulfillment of our desires.

The flip side of the above mentioned cultural movements are of course that those of us who have been unable to have such experiences (like myself), find our hearts desiring for them as we pine over the garden gate longing for an experience like the one we read about. I feel a false sense of guilt that I didn’t have a natural childbirth with any of my boys, even though in 3 of the cases, that was not even a medically viable option. I feel guilty that though my last baby was my healthiest baby by far (and a tiny preemie born in RSV season), that he was bottle-fed. My desires have never been quenched. And I desire more.

The more desire I feel, the more guilt I feel. And it is false guilt. I feel guilt from the moms who are able to achieve a perfect experience, who are feeding their families healthy, who are able to create what I perceive as a desirable family life. I know in my heart that its not real, rarely is anything you see on Pinterest a true depiction of reality. Facebook statuses are glammed up and shared amongst us moms, doctoring the reality of our families to make us feel better (guilty, as charged). We place false guilt on one another for not doing things our way, and in turn adopt false guilt when we are not doing what we perceive that we should. Sisters, this should not be!

 

Some things are good to feel guilty about. Like the amount of time we spend in self-indulgence, selfishness, obsessions, and unhealthy patterns of behavior. But these minute details, that we devote so much of our heart and lives to, are not what God has in mind for us as His daughters.

He wants us to spend these countless hours that we spend desiring these worldly things differently. He wants us to spend them in desiring Him. He wants us to spend it in service to Him, engaging our world and touching lives for His glory. He wants our desires to be centered on eternal things, things that matter.

 

It doesn’t matter that my house is cloaked in a layer of dirt right now. It doesn’t matter that my freezer is filled with frozen pizza or that my socks aren’t matched. My boys went to church today. We pray for one another at the end of the day. They ate McDonalds for dinner, but they know that they are loved and accepted. Our house is filled with laughter. We worship together at home, we work together, we have fun together, and my boys love Jesus. These things are good. These are my treasures in heaven, not whether or not the things that are in my home are organized, or the things that I feed my family have met a perfect standard of health. Not that these things shouldn’t be done. Its just that that is not where my heart’s desires should focus or my allegiance lie.

 

Heart of Worship

It’s Sunday morning. I enter worship waiting expectantly.

I love worship in music. I literally wither away when I am not singing. It is through singing that my heart is able to commune with my heavenly Father. In my life, He has used music in countless ways to encourage, heal and mend. I know when I enter that God will speak to me. I just am not always prepared for what He wants my heart to learn.

For the last month, my heart has been squeezed. It’s like a ball of tightly wound up emotions trying to unravel. Worship gives voice to those emotions. And I have been continually struck with awestruck wonder and heartache in the last month.

 

Awestruck wonder because of the simple childlike question of, “Why?” Why did Christ choose me out of my family? Why did He choose to protect my heart from leaving Him, even when I wanted to? Why has He pursued and protected me? Why me? He has not kept me from all things, but two times He has miraculously intervened to thwart death on my behalf. He has protected my heart from becoming hardened towards Him, though Satan wanted a far different outcome. He protected me from my dysfunctional and abusive past and gave me wisdom to see how to prevent repeating the generational cycle.

 

And heartache because in the midst of my wonder at His grace, my heart still aches because it is in this world and I must find a way to reconcile my heart to the reality it refuses to accept. I have no family. My parents are living in willful sin and rebellion against God. They don’t think that they need to repent, yet they parade around as the Pharisees did believing that their motives and acts of service will somehow fool either themselves or others of their lack of genuine faith. I have never been able to experience reconciliation with them, though I have tried a thousand times (and that would not be an exaggeration!). Christ chose me, yes. But I had to leave my family behind in order to follow Him. Like Lot's wife, I was looking back on "the former life" yearning for a family I would never have. It was an idol. And I had to forsake them so that I could devote my heart to the Savior of it.

Sunday brought a constant flow of tears. Being encouraged to remember His love for me, makes me cry. How can I need anything else? But yet my heart yearns for the warmth of family and is continually reminded how very desperately I miss my Grandma.

 

I sang the honor of the One who plucked me out of mire, shame and misery and saved me. And my mind was lost in prayer as I poured out this song, remembering how Jesus Himself visited me the night I was going to die. And I couldn’t get the image of Him sitting there by the gates of heaven telling me it wasn’t time for me to go home yet.

 

Living He loved me, Dying He saved me,

Buried He carried my sin far away, Rising He justified…

 

Justified. That word, though I fully understand its theological applications, makes my heart yearn for justice of my own. And wondering, “When will it come, Lord?” Then my heart is taken back to thankfulness that I did not receive the justice that I deserved.

 

Thankfulness and heartache. Reverence and wanting justice. Love and hurt. Relationship and loneliness. These are the themes that are within my heart in the past month.

 

I don’t understand it, this dichotomy. But I believe that these very real struggles are placed in my heart for a reason. They are to cultivate a heart of worship within me, to keep me seeking Him, and longing for hope. I don’t anticipate them ever being resolved this side of heaven. I do however, expect that Christ will heal over time and that He will use these struggles to spur me on towards love, compassion and good deeds. And if that is all that is ever accomplished through this mish-mash of confusing emotions, I believe that my perseverance will most assuredly pay off with a crown of life. And I will fall at His feet and worship, once again reminded how very undeserving I am.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CoxopsRSfdU
 

 

Makarios.

Matthew 5:3

 

A New Year~

It’s a new year. Apart from the obvious cliché, it is a great opportunity to begin fresh. Start new. Adopt change. Part of that change is my blog.

 

I have so much that I want to write about and for a while now, I have been kind of bored with Dispelled. I felt boxed in and I hate feeling that way. I want to have the freedom to write about anything that I am thinking about and changing the look and name is, for me, an amazing chance to do something exciting, fresh and purposeful.

 

So, why Naked Wildflowers?

 

A wise woman once said to me, “Chandra, when you come out of the movement, it feels like you are running naked in a field of wildflowers. It is amazing. But about halfway through the field you realize that you are naked. That’s when you look around and start to decide what clothes are absolutely necessary, what you need and what you don’t.”

I want to write about shredding shame and being clothed in grace. I want to write about throwing off those things that hinder. I want to write about the lack of support in churches for survivors of abuse. I want to write about any educational issues that need addressing, especially as they relate to the legalistic homeschooling community and the need for better laws and regulations so these precious kids aren’t hurt. And I want the freedom to write about anything and not feel boxed in. My book is still in progress, but I just needed to change my voice in the wireless world. Comments will now be opened.

And there is another less serious reason for the title. It completely plays to my newly reinvented hippie self.

I hope you come along with me as I try something new. My hope is that Naked

Wildflowers will remind you to not cloak yourself in shame, but in the liberty that comes from Christ.

Makarios.
Matthew 5:3