The problem with first world problems

A few days ago I wrote about my seeming invisibility to God.  This post stemmed from that one.  As you can see, prayers and doubt in God's desire to answer them are a reoccurring theme right now...

I’m having a hard time praying lately.  Every prayer I bring to God carries with it this little phrase “First World Problem.”

When I first heard the phrase first world problem I loved it.  I liked using it sarcastically, cheekily.  I like the perspective it gave me, particularly in my whiney-er moments.  Ug, I had to leave a cart full of groceries at the check out at Target and drive all the way home and back (with two kids!) because I forgot my wallet!  #FirstWorldProblems man, #FirstWorldProblems. 

Over time, however, that phrase has turned and banged around my psyche like sneakers in the dryer.  It’s become a voice all of it’s own, a voice that is condescending and sneering, angry and condemning.  This voice first inserted itself in my prayers and a dialogue began.

Please, Lord, please let this showing be the one.  Let these people be the buyers.

FIRST WORLD PROBLEM.  Do you really think God cares all that much if you sell your house?  You should be thankful you have a house at all!  That guy standing there on the expressway begging for change would probably love your house.  Don’t you know there are starving kids in Africa?

And then, slowly but surely this voice, the First World Problems voice, became the voice of God and I imagined He was the one sneering and angry about my requests.  It spiraled downward and eventually God became an angry god, furious with me, his whiney petulant child.  Haven’t I given you enough already?  Do I really need to help you with another problem?  Can’t you just leave me alone already?  I have other more important things to do. 

Little by little, day-by-day I find myself going to God less and less, feeling more and more undeserving of his provision.  I rationalize that in the grand scheme of things I have so much.  God has given me so much.  And I really don’t have any right to expect Him to give me any more.

It’s as though I’ve come to believe that the blessings of God are finite, a limited currency doled out to each person and I wasted all mine on iPads and new clothes and dinners out.  Not only that, but since God has given me so much, since I am so blessed I really should be able to do things on my own.  I am not worthy of depending on God.  If I can’t make it work with all that he’s given me I’m a pretty worthless disaster.

And so I stop praying. When it comes down to it, all my prayers, all the problems I want to bring before God are really just first world problems. 

There is danger in this phrase, this #firstworldproblem.  It creates a spirit of cynicism in me.  Cynicism about God and His love for me.  Cynicism about my place as a daughter of Christ.  I'm drowning in this cynicism.  Because of this phrase I've cast myself as the spoiled daughter, the one who has everything and still wants more, even though her other siblings are struggling with a lot less.  But is that really my role?  Is this really the part I am playing with God?  Are my needs and fears and anxieties no less real because they are the needs and fears and anxieties of a first world person?

When I think about my kids, my two sweet precious pals, would I deny them help because they already used up their requests for the day?  Sorry Monster, I know you want that toy up on the high shelf, but you have a thousand other toys down here.  First World Problem man.  Uh, listen Toots I’ve already changed 5 poopy diapers today.  That’s my quota.  You’ll have to wait until tomorrow for a clean one.  I know you want another glass of milk, but you know what, kids are dying in Africa because they don’t have any milk.  Deal with it.  GOSH!  Are you seriously asking me to read you ANOTHER book?!  How can you be so selfish?!  Don’t you know there are kids who can’t read any books?

I would never do this to my children.  Why do I expect God to do it to me?

Perspective is good, and for some of us, those prone to think a chipped nail is the end of the world, the idea of first world problems is probably a good thing.  I need the reminder when I'm struggling with the seatbelt in my daughter's car seat cursing the day I was born into this horrible lot in life.  I need the reminder that there is a lot worse out there than a few days where everything is not sunny all the time always.

But for those of us prone to internalize our blessings with a guilty conscience for those who have not also received them, for those of us trying to deny dependence on God because we don’t think we deserve to lean on Him, there is danger in this phrase.  God’s blessings are not limited.  They don’t run out because you wasted all your coins on cheaper, lesser blessings.  God is not limited to the third world as much as he’s not limited to the first.  He wants all his children to come to Him, to depend on Him, to pray with open, honest hearts to Him regardless of whether those prayers include a desperate need for food for the table, or the sale of a perfectly good home.

The God who sees me

I have a sign in my office that says “You are the God who sees me.”  It’s from Genesis, from the story of Hagar, poor, mistreated Hagar, a chess piece in the game between Sarai and Abram.  Cast out and pregnant, alone in the world, God showed up and showed Hagar that she was not alone, not invisible.  And she met “the God who sees her” in this encounter and was forever changed. 

I caught sight of this sign today as I hurriedly packed up my things, rushing home to beat the impending storm.  For some reason these words provoked a strange reaction in me.  I felt a rush of hope rise from my gut and then my heart immediately pushed it back down.  Ha, it said.  I am not seen.

I’m in a season of unknowns right now.  We don’t know where we are going to live, when we will move, where Monster will be able to go to school.  Life feels like the complicated domino set ups I used to create where one piece, one unknown becoming clear, will set off a chain reaction knocking down the other unknowns.  As we wait in this holding pattern for something to happen I find myself absentmindedly running through all the possible outcomes, going through them over and over as if some sort of answer will become clear and our wait will be over.  If this happens then we can do X.  If that happens we’ll be able to do Y. If and then and if and then.  Too many combinations and possible outcomes.

And then, of course, we got news last week that hit our domino setup like my brother's basketball bomb, scattering all the unknowns, changing nothing and changing everything all at once.

And lately I’ve wondered if I’m invisible to God.

We’ve lived in this land of unknowns for months now.  I have prayed big prayers during this time.  I’ve vacillated back and forth from calm and trusting to panicked and fearful.  I’ve asked others to pray, an act of faith and vulnerability I don’t often exercise.  I’ve prayed expecting God to show up and prayed expecting Him not to.  I’ve mostly behaved like a high school girl with the boy she likes, desperately trying to play it cool so as not to reveal how much I care about these outcomes, how not ok I will be if it turns out God does not see me.  I tell myself that my problems are not that big, first world at best.  My kids have food in their bellies and a roof over their heads.  I can afford all the things I need and even a lot that I want.  Maybe God is frying bigger fish, like ending world hunger or human trafficking.  Just be cool and take one for the team on this already.  Or maybe the reason God doesn’t see me right now is because I’m not holy enough, not good enough.  If I were living more righteously, doing more for God he would see me.  I know plenty of people who were in the same boat as me, in the exact same situation, and God did not answer their prayers.  Why do I think I’m any different?

And still, at my deepest core, I want to know that I am seen.  I want to believe that God sees me, sees my problems and cares.  The story of Hagar is the story of a mother and a son.  Of God seeing this mother and providing for her so she could provide for her unborn son. All of these outcomes boil down to my son, to what is best for my son, and I need God to see me as he saw Hagar, to allow me to help my son.

So I am praying today to be seen.  I know that God sees me.  I know this logically, but today I want to believe it wholeheartedly.  I want glimpses of being seen by God.  I want to trust that what I can’t see about our future, God does.  I want peace that we are on the right track.  My girlfriend texted me this line from Shauna Niequist’s book Bittersweet, and it is my prayer today “maybe there’s something I can’t see.  And that’s the core of prayer: admitting that just maybe, there’s something going on that we can’t see.  So when I’m afraid, I pray and ask for God’s help, that I will be able to see something I wasn’t able to see before, or at least trust Him to do the seeing.”  Praying to see and be seen, to banish my invisibility and trust God with what remains to be seen.

NYC

It’s been a year and a half since my feet touched New York City pavement.  When too much time has passed since I’ve been to my city I start to experience withdrawal symptoms.  I find myself daydreaming about New York, running through as many memories of my time there as my mind can conjure.  I hone in with laser like focus on any picture, TV show or movie featuring the big apple, looking past the focal point to the city in the background, aching for its energy and searching for clues as to the specific location.  I experience strong feelings of jealousy and anger towards those lucky individuals living there.  And oh help the poor NYC resident who happens to cross my path during this period of withdrawal.  I will sit them down and force them to tell me all about what they are doing, where they are eating and how much they are loving New York, New York. 

At a wedding this fall I full on embarrassed myself with a couple of my husband’s friends who had flown in from NYC.  I couldn’t stop talking about it, couldn’t stop peppering them with questions trying to see if some of my favorite haunts still existed.  And then the embarrassment continued when I admitted that it had been five years since I’d lived in New York.  And then I hit an all time low when I had to further admit that I’d only lived there for two years.

I talk about New York like I’d lived there a lifetime.  In the grand scheme of my life two years is a remarkably brief period.  College was twice as long for heaven’s sake and I don’t wax on about that in the same way I do about my city.   I mean at what point will it be an unhealthy attachment to a place I once lived?  In ten years?  Five?  Two years ago?

Some of it has to do with all the years leading up to my time living in Manhattan.  I don’t even remember when I decided I wanted to live in New York City, I just always remember wanting to live there.  When I was a little girl New York represented Broadway and all my dreams of becoming an actress.  As I grew older my career ambitions changed, but the dream to live in NYC stayed the same.  The whole of my life leading up to my move at age 22 seemed to be moving towards that moment. 

My embarrassingly intense connection may also have to do with the beautifully intense life I lived there.  They were two very full years.  The first year in New York was the best hardest year of my life.  I don’t mean that it was the best and hardest year of my life but rather that it was the hardest year in the best possible ways.  I had no money, knew no one and was living really far from home with out any real safety nets for the first time.  At first, because I had no one to go out with, I would spend entire weekends watching Law and Order SVU marathons until I was too afraid to leave my house for fear of being attacked, kidnapped and sold on the Russian mafia black market.  (I finally got too scared to even watch SVU when I saw the episode with the woman found in her building’s elevator shaft.  She hadn’t even left the apartment!  I didn’t stand a chance!)  Then, as I finally had a few reasons to leave the house, I was so broke I would nurse one drink all night and walk everywhere.  I remember a night at a bar that was way too artsy and cool for me on the lower east side.  I stayed out too late to walk or take the subway home and I had to find an ATM with only a $2.00 service charge because my bank account was down to $22.50 and I had no other cash for cab fare.  But I lived in New York City and all I had to do was walk a few blocks to remember that this was my happy place.

If the first year was hard in the best way then the second was just best.  I finally hit my stride, made friends that would become lifelong loves, and started making just enough more money to enjoy things every once in a while.  I loved everything about that year and would need much more than a blog post to do it justice.

And then it was over.  At the time it felt right to move, it felt like I was getting out while I still loved New York, before it had a chance to make me jaded or angry.  Now though I wonder if I shouldn’t have stayed another two or three years.  I never expected to be a life long New Yorker.  I love my Midwest family too much to stay away (and I married a country boy).  But a strong part of me wishes I had given myself a few more years and memories with my city love.

Now, two kids later, I still wonder what it would be like to live there now, in this stage of life.  On good, non-withdrawal days I think about the chaos of two kids and all. the. things. that come along with them and I am deeply grateful for my house and car and quiet little life.  But on days like this, when my absence from the city I love has caused me to romanticize it and everything about it, I think about how much better the grass would be on the Central Park side, how much more I would love my life, how much better everything would be.  It’s not true of course.  The rich and beautiful life I’ve built here is such because of the people that exist here, not the geographical location in which I live.  And I wouldn’t trade this life for anything.  Not even a big apartment over looking Central Park West… well, maybe.  How big are we talking? J

For Charity

This is my friend Charity.  She’s pretty beautiful right?  The thing about Charity is that for all the beautiful exterior she has been blessed with there is an even deeper, truer beautiful going on in her heart.  And when I think about Char that is the first word that comes to mind: beautiful.

Charity is one of those people who make things beautiful.  She has an eye for beauty and a knack for creating it.  Her home is just lovely, but not it a stiff magaziney kind of way.  It’s more of a comfortable, cozy, plop yourself on the couch and soak up the georgous décor while you enjoy even more meaningful conversation.   She brings out the beauty in others as well.  Generous with praise and encouragement, you can’t help but feel good around Charity.  It’s as though Char has special glasses that allow her to recognize all the beauty God has created in this world and instead of just coveting all that wonderfulness Char spends her days reflecting it back to everyone and everything all around her.

Another word that comes to mind with this dear friend is home.  We joke with Charity about her ability to nest.  She makes things feel homey.  Even better though, she makes people feel at home.  Deeply intuitive and empathetic, Char goes above and beyond to make people feel comfortable.  She knows how to put people at ease and who in the room needs that the most.  While I’m sure in awkward situations this can feel like a curse, she’s the kind of friend you want at your dinner party, particularly when you’re worried the guests may not gel.

Intentional.  That’s my final word for my friend.  More than anyone I know Charity lives with intention.  She asks the hard questions and wrestles with the answers.   Intentional with time and words, Charity fosters community with those around her so well.  She is intentional in her own journey too.  This past year life has thrown a number of punches at my sweet friend.  With grace, patience, forgiveness, thoughtfulness, humility and carefulness Charity has risen above what would likely have crumbled a lesser woman.  It certainly would have wrecked me.   And yet with each hurdle Charity faced it head on, intentionally and purposefully, learning and growing from every hard conversation, frustrating moment, horrible news, and painful problem.  I have learned so much watching her this year.

I could go on for pages about this lady.  I could tell you about what an awesome wife she is.  Or overwhelm you with examples of the kind of incredible mother she is.  I could probably write books about her gift of friendship.  I’m pretty sure she is my son’s first crush.  At least once a week he asks to look at “Aunt Chariby” pictures on facebook.

  

“She wears life well.”  That’s a phrase that pops up and bumps around the life of my sweet friend Charity.  Charity wants a life well worn. For the past 30 years she has done just that.  Evolving and growing and changing, learning from each triumph and heartache, soaking up all the love, laughter, joy and beauty God has bestowed on her, Charity has worn life well.  And I have no doubt that she will continue to do this all the rest of her days.  I’m excited to see what her well-worn life will look like at 40, 50, 60 and beyond.  Beautiful I’m sure.

This weekend Charity turns thirty and I’m excited to celebrate this dear one.  Happy birthday sweet friend.  

Let's talk about SEX, part deux ('cause French is sexier, ya'll)

On Monday I started talking about sex.  Or rather about how we shouldn't talk about sex.  Today I'm wrestling with how we should talk about it.

I’ve written and rewritten this post about sex too many times.  I’ve wrestled and struggled with what to say.  I’ve typed and deleted and typed.  I’ve put ** marks next to incomplete thoughts with the intention to return and flesh out again later.  And I’ve opened a new document and started again.

If I were to only speak from my own experience on this subject I would have very little to say.  I was a 24-year-old virgin on my wedding night.  I’ve been with one man my whole life and I have very few sexual encounters of the awkward, painful, negative variety. 

And if I’m being truly, deeply honest- there is a part of me that wishes I had more stories.  I know this isn’t what you are supposed to say, but when I watch movies or hear my friends retell their tales there is a small part of me that wonders if I didn’t live enough.  I wonder if I missed out on experiences because I followed the rules.   I wonder if I could have ended up in exactly the same place only with a few more interesting stories to retell in my old age.

Because the truth is I have plenty of friends who had sex with multiple people before they were married and are doing fine.  I have plenty of friends who didn’t get STD’s or pregnant.  Who met and married the men of their dreams and weren’t disqualified from happily ever after.  Who had sex and weren’t left feeling damaged or vulnerable, used or manipulated. 

So when I start to write about why one should save sex for marriage these friends come to mind.  When I think about a different way to talk about in contrast to the shaming of the purity culture, every logical reason gets shot down by an example of someone for whom this wasn’t true.  And this is why I am struggling with what to say.

I work with teens.  We talk about sex all the time.  And my kids all want to know why.  Why should they wait? 

I think about my own kids.  My two small children who will one day be teens.  What do I want to tell them?   There is a part of me that panics when I think about my kids having sex outside of marriage.  It’s a voice of fear that worries not about how sex may hurt their hearts or put them at risk for STDs or unwanted pregnancy but rather what that says about their faith and commitment to God.  This is the voice of a recovering fundamentalist.  And so when I think about sex I have to quiet this voice and give it a lot of grace.  I have to sort through what is Pharisee speak and what is true.

And as I’ve sifted through this and thought about how I want to talk to my own children about sex I want them first and foremost to know that no matter what they decide to do on the matter nothing would or could separate them from the love of Christ.  That no matter how much the Pharisees try to bring them center stage and hurl stones of shame and guilt and grief, Jesus condemns them no more.

And I want them to know that physically sex is dangerous.  There is the risk of STDs or AIDS.  Sex can get you pregnant.  (And if I’ve learned one thing in the last two and a half years, it’s that kids are dangerous.)

And I think God made sex physically dangerous for a reason.  It’s physically dangerous because it’s also emotionally dangerous.  We pay attention to the physical dangers because we can’t always understand the emotional danger.  Sex is vulnerable and exposing.  We can manipulate and abuse each other with sex.  With sex, especially casual sex, it’s really difficult for two people to really be on the same page.  What is a fun but maybe unimportant encounter for one can be a deeply intimate, vulnerable experience for the other.  What is no big deal for her is actually a huge deal for him.  What was not far enough for him was too far for her.

And I want my kids to know this.  To understand this.  To hear this.

But I also know that it is entirely possible for my kids to have sex outside of marriage and remain pretty unscathed.  I understand that they will be surrounded by people who will be telling them, from their own experiences, that sex is not actually all that dangerous, physically or emotionally. 

To which I say, you’re right. 

But here’s what else I know.  For some reason, God tells us to keep sex within the structure of a committed, monogamous marriage.  This is God’s desire for sex.  He created it to be fun and powerful and intimate and enjoyable and bonding and healing and all around great.  And it is his desire that we experience all that wonderfulness with our spouse and only our spouse. 

And so maybe, just maybe, we wait to have sex quite simply as an act of trust that God’s ways are better than our ways.  Maybe we wait because not doing so could temporarily damage the intimacy we have with Christ.  Maybe abstinence is a (difficult) act of faith. 

At the end of the day I don’t want my kids to save their virginity as some sort of a gift for their future husband or wife.  I don’t want them to believe their abstinence somehow makes them better for their future spouse (or worse yet, better than others!).  I don’t want them to abstain from sex because they think they aren’t real Christians if they don’t.  I don’t want them to care more about their virginity than their tendency to gossip or judge or lack compassion. 

I do want them to value intimacy with Christ.  I want them to love Him so much that they desire to honor Him with their words, thoughts and actions.  I want them to trust that God’s plans are best for them and to live up to that in every way, whether it’s His plan to unleash unprecedented compassion on the world, to care for the poor and the orphans, to spread the word about the Prince of Peace and the love He gives, or to keep sex within the confines of their marriage.

Here is what I can speak from experience.  When I was flirting the line of physical intimacy with my husband before we were married I found it very hard to find intimacy with God.   It was hard to come to God in the morning when I had played with fire the night before.  Sex is like any other kind of sin; when we are entangled in it we are not free before Christ.  And I desire for my children to live lives free in Christ. 

If I’ve taught my kids to worry more about what exactly they can and cannot do than whom they are doing it for I’ve got them asking the wrong questions.  I think we need to take the focus off the shame of the sin and put it back on the One who saved us from it. 

So I guess that’s what I would want my kids to know about sex.  And I’m sure that both ends of the liberal/conservative spectrum will be able to find something wrong with what I have to say.  Which again, makes me thankful that no one is really reading this anyway.  

Lent

It's a good thing no one reads this blog.  I can be at peace knowing that no one is holding their breath waiting for part two of the sex talk.  'Cause it ain't coming today.  I'm having a hard time finding the words.  I will follow through.  Just look for it in the next few days.

In the meantime, in light of Ash Wednesday tomorrow here are some much more easy to digest thoughts on Lent.  

I have varied amounts of success with Lent traditions.  One year in college I fasted from food one day a week.  It began with very pure intentions and ended up being a very sweet six weeks with God.  It also led to weight loss.  Now that the connection between the two has been made I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to fast without underlying ulterior motives to drop some LB’s.  Every year I say I’m going to fast from French fries and every year I forget about this proclamation by about week three.  Last year I fasted from television.  It was a long forty some odd days friends and I hated most minutes of it, but it ended up being super necessary and life giving.  I’m the kind of person who constantly has television on in the background of things, mostly so that I don’t have to be left alone with my thoughts.  It turns out silence is golden and my thoughts needed time alone with me.  French fries aside, I don’t want to just give up some physical thing (like chocolate or whiskey) and turn Lent into a show of my will power.  I want to give something up for Lent in order to make more room for God. 

My plan for Lent this year is a little odd.  It came to me months ago but now that Ash Wednesday is upon us I’m finding that it all sort of crept up on me.  In short I’m giving up all forms of non-personal shopping.  This means online shopping.  It also means going through the human operated check out lines rather than the computer automated ones.  It will also mean no drive through ATM’s.  (Can you even withdraw money from a real live bank teller anymore?!)

I did this for two reasons.  One, online shopping has allowed me to be a very careless steward of money.  It’s so easy to spend money.  I can buy new clothes without leaving my house.  Amazon.com has everything.  Even condoms.  Er, um, so I’ve been told.  Not because I looked it up after being too embarrassed to ask the CVS clerk to unlock the family planning section with my kids in tow.  (I mean, I don’t know why I was embarrassed- I have two kids.  Obviously I’ve had sex.)  Anyway, these two said kids make it hard to leave the house.  And they sometimes leave me feeling empty.  Emptiness I can fill with all the things I can buy online.  Without leaving the house with two kids.  It’s a cheap fill though.  A wrong fill.

My other motivation had more to do with a shift I’ve noticed in myself of late.  I’ve come to see other people as a hassle.  Annoyance rises towards the chatty check out girl and Jewel and I find myself preferring to do it all in the self-check out line.  Even then I grit my teeth and bear the 20 second wait while the one clerk assigned to all 4 self check out stations comes to check my credit card and id since my purchase is over $50.  (And yes, it’s ridiculous and selfish that with over $50 of groceries I would clog up the self-check out line rather than just go through the regular lane.  This is why I’m addressing this issue during Lent friends.)  I rush through my days trying to avoid any inconveniences that may slow me down.  Like people. 

And I don’t want to live that way.  On a philosophical level I don’t want to live in a world of computer automated machines.  I don’t want an automated self check out stand to take someone’s job away.  Practically, however, I’ve come to want whatever is convenient and easy for me, me, me.

So this year, in order to make more space for God during this Lenten season I’m trying to intentionally slow down and think before I spend.  If it’s not worth loading two kids into a car to pick up a purchase myself then I probably don’t need to spend the money on it.  I need to fill the emptiness with God and not more stuff.  And I need to see people as God does.  If I am serious about loving people like Jesus loved them then I probably need to pick the line with the chattiest check out girl and spend the extra four minutes seeing her, really seeing her as Jesus did.  Valuing her and her work.  Talking to her and listening to her.  It may be easier and faster to just do it myself in the automated self check out, but an easier and faster impersonal world is not what Jesus came to save.  It will not make me more loving or able to deal with the messiness of people.  It will not make me kinder, gentler or more patient.

So that’s my plan for Lent.  What about you?  Any Lenten traditions?  Rachel Held Evans shares her ideas for Lenten practices every year.  Here are some years past. 

Let's talk about SEX (part one)

Around the World Wide Web there has been a lot of discussion about s-e-x.  Sarah Bessey wrote a truly beautiful post about no longer believing the lie that she is damaged goods.  Rachel Held Evans and Elizabeth Esther chimed in as well.  And suddenly everyone everywhere is speaking up about the damage the purity culture has done and the unnecessary shame it has brought.

When I read Sarah’s article I wanted to stand up on my chair and shout YES!, fist frozen in the air a la Kenneth on 30 Rock.  I wanted to sit next to her 19-year-old self at that youth meeting and tell her that she was not a cup full of other people’s spit lugies. 

Because I get it.  I spent college thinking my faith amounted to not committing the two big sins: underage drinking (and general drunkenness) and shacking (which included, most obviously, sex, but also sleeping over at a boy’s dorm/frat house/apartment).  My faith was all about my witness to the love of Christ.  And somehow during those four years of college the love of Christ was encompassed by abstinence from alcohol and the opposite sex.  They shall know we are Christians by our sober mornings waking up in our own beds.  That’s how the hymn goes right?

Then I turned 21 and was allowed to legally drink and suddenly my status as a Christian was a little shaky.  I wasn’t that Christian girl who didn’t drink anymore.

Once I got married and sex was allowed the crisis of faith really set in.  Suddenly I had nothing left to witness.  All those things that had set me apart from others were no longer forbidden.  How was I supposed to bear witness to the different life Christ calls us to now?

I had bought the lie that in order to be a “real Christian” you had to stay a virgin until your wedding night.  Of course, if you happened to have had sex before meeting and falling in love with Christ, then you were ok—as long as you abstained from sex from that point forward (until your wedding night).  And it seemed to me that if something happened, and you slipped up post-Christian life, well then, as long as you confessed it to everyone you knew and never did it again then I guess you could still be a card carrying Christian. 

But to be a practicing, Jesus loving Christian while also be having continued sex?  No way.  You just couldn’t be one while doing the other.  In the early days of my faith I was told that just wasn’t allowed.  You were lying to yourself and God if you tried to claim both.

And also, sex was the only sin that really mattered to God.  So just don’t do it.

The irony is that while I held on white knuckled to my virginity until the ripe old age of 24, I wasn’t exactly the poster child for purity.  The virginity I was holding on to was somewhat of a technicality.  Technically we didn’t do anything before our wedding night that would have gotten me pregnant.  But practically we did a whole bunch of stuff that I’m pretty sure Jesus would have put in the “lust category.”  But since my technical virginity was still in tact I figured I was fine to still call myself a Christian.

Now I obviously see the ridiculousness in this.  I’ve walked this road with many friends who’ve struggled with sex and loved God at the same time.  But first I married a man who spent most of his 20’s doing exactly that.

In the begining I wrestled with judgment over my soon-to-be husband’s past.  He wasn’t one of those Christians that had just slipped up once.  He was someone that loved Jesus and also had sex outside of marriage multiple times, with multiple people.  He was someone that in college I would have written off as “not a legit Christian.”  I would have brushed off any wisdom he may have had to offer because I had mentally wiped him of his official Jesus follower status when I realized he was fornicating.  I would have viewed him as a project.  Someone I could pray, influence and persuade into the serious, chaste Jesus following club. 

The reality was simple though: he was someone that struggled with sex, failing time and time again in the same way that I struggled with gossip, failing time and time again.

Only gossip is a much more acceptable sin. 

And so you see, I really do agree with Sarah, Elizabeth and Rachel.  As Christians for too long we’ve held sex on this pedestal as the ultimate no no.  We’ve made sex a very black and white, in or out sin.  We’ve withheld grace from people who struggle with it, and allowed it to be the qualifier for your title as Christian.  Are you a horrible, graceless, angry, selfish person?  As long as you’re still a virgin before your wedding night you are welcome to call yourself one of us!

In this regard I stand on my chair, fist in the air and shout yes!  Yes!  Let’s abandon this lie and open the doors to Christ’s kingdom wide open!  Let’s put down the stones and remove the heavy garments of shame we’ve heaped onto our brothers and sisters.  Let’s find the freedom in Christ from shame and guilt and darkness.  Let’s stop telling the lie that you are damaged goods.

And yet a still quiet voice reminds me not to trade one lie for another.  If the purity culture has gotten it wrong then how should we speak of sex?  What does God have to say about our bodies?  How should we handle this all?

Because the reality is I work with teenagers who are asking for answers to these questions.  I have two kids who will one day want to know when they should have sex and with whom and why and I want to be able to talk about it in a way that doesn’t idolize the throne of virginity but also still takes very seriously God’s opinion on the matter.  What exactly do I tell them?

This is a two part-er.  Tomorrow I’ll tell you what I’ve been thinking in regards to these questions.  In the meantime, what do you think?

Our Priviledge

* let me apologize upfront.  this one is wordy.

I need you to know something about me before I dive in today.  I need you to know that I have always had a heart for social justice.  My favorite units in elementary school had to do with the civil rights era.  In high school, before I was a Christian, and before gay rights was talked about in the Christian circles I went toe to toe in a classroom debate against another (Christian) student arguing for gay rights, knowing in my heart that there was something so wrong about mistreating, slandering and maligning in the name of Christ.  My first jobs were teaching English in inner city high schools and I am still passionate about education reform and the fact that the poorest of the poor should not be denied a proper education.  As a youth pastor I revisit the themes surrounding God’s heart for justice again and again with my students, challenging them to find where God may be calling them out to bring heaven to earth for those that are oppressed or hopeless.  I geek out over new fair trade products and could give you a list of companies that are selling ethically made products or providing real, sustainable jobs to women in third world countries. I wrestle with my privilege and mourn the absence of that privilege for others.  I do not think your whole life, and all of its advantages, should be determined simply by whether you were born in the ghetto or the suburbs.

I need you to know this about me, not because I want you to think I’m awesome.  (I’m totally, assuredly not).  I say this not to shame you into taking up the cause of social justice (though I would passionately and fully encourage and support you if you decided to).  I need you to know this about me so that you don’t think me awful when I get to the next part.  And so that you can understand the conflict in my heart. 

Big breath in…

So Monster is almost three.  For the past year he has been going to a special, private school for children with hearing loss.  A school we love and one that has helped him so much.  

As any mother of a kid with special needs knows three is a very important age.  At three children age out of the state run early intervention program and their care and services are turned over to the city, and its school district, in which you live.   These cities vary on the kinds of services they will provide and where they will provide them.  Typically, richer school districts will provide whatever the parent asks for without much of a hassle.  Other districts are notoriously stingy about providing services and can require parents to jump through many hoops, only to recommend the barest of minimum services at the final IEP meeting (IEP- individualized education plan or the sheet of paper that determines by law what services the school district has to pay for).

We live in one of the latter districts.  My parents live in one of the former.  (Keep that in mind.  It will become important in a minute.)

So, over the course of the next few months our family will have numerous meetings and school tours and sit downs to determine exactly what services our school district will provide for us.

(Are you still with me?  I’m sorry.  I know this is a lot.)

 Our desire is for our son to move to the full time pre-school program at the private school that he has been attending.  We’ve seen this school, the kids that come out of it and the amazing teachers that work there.  It is awesome.  Amazing.  Phenomenal.  We know that this is the best place for Monster to be if he is going to successfully mainstream into regular elementary school.

Our district has never sent a kid to this private school.  They rarely send kids to any group therapy school, opting instead to recommend an hour of therapy a week instead.  But when they do agree to send a child to school it is always a public school for kids with hearing loss in a town near by.  They will likely not send Monster to the private school (that is if they even recommend a group therapy program at all) because they do not want to set the precedent of sending a student to a private school.  (Even though it costs the same amount to attend either school.)

Both private and public schools are fine.  The public school takes students that have other, more significant needs than just hearing loss (autism, downs syndrome, mental and physical delays, etc.).  The private school focuses on high functioning kids with hearing loss who plan to be mainstreamed with no additional support besides their speech and hearing services.  The public school doesn’t have as great of a reputation as the private school.  And, in the words of our hearing therapist, “it usually breaks down to this: the rich kids go to the private school and the poor kids go to the public one.”

Because the rich kids can and do move to rich districts who have no problem sending kids to private schools.

Which is what we can do.  If they won’t send Monster to the private school we could rent out our house and move in with my parents who live in a district that has sent numerous kids to the school of our choice.

And here is where my wrestling begins.  Because my social justice heart screams this isn’t fair.  Why should poor kids go to a school that’s considered less than?  Am I a hypocrite for participating in this system?  Why is this public school not “good enough” for my kid?  Am I awful for wanting my kid to go to the school that has the highest functioning kids?  Do I think my kid is better than them? 

But my mom heart knows that my son, who has been given a tougher hand than a lot of kids, will have the greatest chance of success at the private school.  He will be challenged more, grow more and succeed more.  It is a better place for him.  And I can do something about it.  I can change our situation so that he can have the best.

But my heart breaks for the other mothers who can’t do that.  Who are unable to work the broken system.  Who are so bogged down with other fears, worries and concerns that they don’t have time to research, and move and change their hand.  Who love their kids as much as I do but aren’t in the position to do what I can for my son.

So what do I do?  Send my kid to the public school in an act of solidarity and hope for the best?  Move to a district that allows him to go to the private one and live with the tension it creates?

What do you do when your ideals come in direct conflict of the reality for your kids?  Is wanting the best for my kid selfish?  Where is the line between hypocrisy and doing what you have to do? 

What do I do?