I realize this post may be controversial for those who do not have the faith that I have. If that’s you, then you can take a pass on this is post, BUT let me say that I care about your soul and that I don’t wish for anyone to spend their eternal life in hell. I pray that everyone comes to know Jesus as I do, but it is a personal choice.
The Movie “Wicked”, in theaters now, is based upon the Broadway play of the same name which is based upon the characters of L. Frank Baum. There is much most of us don’t know about these books and this man that we ought to know. For most of us our knowledge stops at the 1939 movie “The Wizard of Oz” starring Judy Garland. The movie is a mixture of song, dance, charm, a bit of eerie fear, and a heartwarming ending. But the author and these books carry a much darker and more evil foundation.
L. Frank Baum and his wife Maude were members of a religious sect called Theosophy. Theosophy is a religious and philosophical system that originated in the United States in the late 19th century. It is based on the writings of Russian mystic Helena Blavatsky and draws upon the European philosophies like Neoplatonism and Asian religions like Hinduism and Buddhism. Theosophists believe in a deeper spiritual reality that can be accessed through meditation, intuition, or revelation. He believed in the theory of elementals (invisible, vapory beings) popularized in Madame Blavatsky’s Isis Unveiled (1877), and like the Rosicrucians’ belief in the combining of God and nature, and not unlike William Butler Yeats’ (Mason and Fabian) search for a new mysticism. They believed in reincarnation, karma, and did not believe in Satan.
Further, the Baums believed that mans time on earth was but one step on the path towards enlightenment which passed through many states of consciousness and many universes. Baum believed in essentially a religion of nature. He believed each element: water, earth, fire, air could be broken down further—Air, sylphs; Water, nymphs or undines; Earth, gnomes; Fire, salamanders, for example. Then each of these could be broken down into smaller categories based upon the four states of matter: gas, liquid, solid, and energy. In his writings, science and magic are one and the same.
Women played a critical role in the belief systems of the Baums. Mrs. Baum and her mother, a radical feminist named Matilda Gage, often had seances and clairvoyants in their home. Mrs. Gage was so radical that she believed the suffragettes of her day were too conservative and she created her own suffrage organization, The Women’s National Liberal Union. Mrs. Gage was also interested in palm reading and astrology.
The Land of Oz was composed of 4 triangular pyramid shaped countries pointing inward like a Mason rose croix or a Rosicrucian cross. The “Emerald” color may have been chosen because it was Baum’s birth stone or because it is considered by some to be a stone of prophecy, which leads to another interpretation of the story. This interpretation suggests that the journey to the Emerald city is simply a journey to the center of ourselves because the Emerald City was the center of Oz. It was here that Dorothy, the Tin Man, the Scarecrow, and the Cowardly Lion would find the answers they were looking for. When the Wizard gives his trinkets to the travelers, he tells them that they had the answers all along, they just had to “look inside themselves”.
Unlike the newest adaptation of the story, Wicked, which revolves around the witches—The Wicked Witches of the East (the Black Witch) and West and the Good (White) Witch of the North and South known as Glinda, the original book is quite different. The MGM movie also took some liberties with the story. For example, there was no Professor Marvel in the book. As we know from the original story, Dorothy kills the Wicked Witch of the East when her house lands on her upon her arrival in Oz. The Black Witch represents the darkness of humanity which exists in all of us. Dorothy is then challenged by the Wicked Witch of the West who wants to retaliate and avenge her sister’s death. Glinda helps Dorothy to navigate around her sister along the yellow brick road to arrive safely in Emerald City to see the Wizard so that she can ask the Wizard to go home. But the Wizard requires that she first kill the Wicked Witch of the West and bring him her broom. Dorothy does as he ask by showing courage and standing up to the Wicked Witch and throwing water on her.
The story behind Wicked, however, attempts to portray a different perspective to these witches and was not written by Baum. This adaptation was based upon Gregory Macguire’s novels and it is complete rewriting of the story of the witches in an attempt to make them more relatable and likable, as if we need to like and relate to witches. The main character is the Wicked Witch of the West, now known as Elphaba. The story aims to explain the contentious relationship between Elphaba and the Wizard. The Good Witch of the North and South starts out in this story as “Galinda”, and the two are neither sisters nor friends.
Elphaba has a chip on her shoulder because of being green and being treated differently because of her green skin. Galinda, on the other hand, is considered beautiful and the popular girl in the college of magic. The revelation comes when the Wizard is discovered to be an evil man out for himself to the detriment of the green people. He manipulates the Ozian people to discriminate against the green people leading them to become called “wicked”. This all sounds like a treatise on systemic racism in America set to music, doesn’t it?
Like with most movie adaptations much from the books have been left out, and it should. The books written by Macguire are not for children, if they’re really for anyone. USA Today’s review of the books had this to say,
“The “Wicked” book by Gregory Maguire has key adult differences from the stage adaptation. One of the opening scenes is puppets having sex. When we first meet Elphaba in the book, she’s a feral infant who is muzzled after biting off people’s appendages. The book contains drinking, drugs, sexual assault, prostitution, crime and wild sex parties between humans and animals.”
There are so many problems with the Oz stories and the Baums, but what made me walk away from the stories and movie was when I discovered its connection to the CIA’s Project MK-Ultra. MK-Ultra is the CIA’s program to create various methods of mind control. One of these methods was using trauma. Trauma based mind control, also known as Monarch Programming, uses horrific mental, physical, sexual, and emotional abuse to cause mental disassociation which then would create a mind controlled slave. It creates an amnesia barrier between the person’s ordinary identity and the new identity or other personality. While the CIA claims that the program ceased, there are those who believe it continues covertly under a new name.
Almost all documentation relating to MK Ultra mentions the importance of the movie Wizard of Oz in the creation of mind control objectives. One of the ways they supposedly used the Wizard of Oz to control people was to dress was the victim according to the programming use on them. To trigger a victim, they could put red shoes on someone. This would cause the victim to enter a dissociative state. Dissociation is known as “going over the rainbow”.
In the process of traumatizing the victim, drugs like LSD, cocaine, and opium were also used to aid in the dissociative process. Some people consented to the drug testing through programs at universities and in hospitals in the United States and Canada. Others were tested on without their knowledge or consent, like prisoners. Some like Cathy O’Brien have openly spoken about their expenses in this program. I recommend this YouTube video with Cathy. https://youtu.be/-ouRmUm7cM8?si=Nr9yZTIC3Bd2Y1h7 There were 144 subprojects under the MK-Ultra Project at the CIA. It would be difficult to almost impossible to know if all had been disbanded or if some continue to this day.
Knowing that stories like the Wizard of Oz and Wicked incorporate demonic and occult themes, that they have been used to torture people and children is enough for me to stay away. My father always told me that “you get out what you put in.” If you open yourself up to evil, you’re likely to get evil out at some point. That isn’t a risk that I am willing to take for myself and certainly not for my children. I hope you will stay away as well.
“Enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise; give thanks to Him and praise His name.” Psalms 100:4 NIV
So much has happened in the past couple of weeks. The election is over and we will have a new (old) president in the New Year. For over half of the country, that is terrific news and a burden has been lifted. For the others, they are unhappy, but they shouldn’t be any more worried than those over half were for the past four years were, right? After all they thought the past four years were awesome when the other over half thought it was horrible. Some of the behaviors I saw in videos after the election was over were absolutely ridiculous; adults having temper tantrums like 2-year old children. I do not recall any other time in my life seeing adults behave in this manner. What we really need to do right now is STOP! I mean really STOP! STOP all the noise, politics, bickering, division, anger, etc., and we need to GIVE THANKS for everything we have because WE HAVE A LOT TO BE THANKFUL FOR.
If you consider everything you see and hear online and on video these days, we sound like the most ungrateful nation of people on earth. We complain about the most minuscule nonsense. We have taught our children and grandchildren to complain about things we would have never been allowed to complain about because these things would’ve never been issues in our homes. Our parents and grandparents did not cater to every whim we had. They did not ask us what we wanted to eat for dinner. Our mothers and grandmothers cooked and we ate what was on the plate in front of us. We either ate for dinner or we ate for breakfast (or the next dinner); it was our choice. There was no complaining about it, or that was a butt whooping.
We also wore the clothes that were purchased for us, or that were given to us; many times those were “hand me downs” from older siblings or family members. There was no complaining about that either. You may or may not have liked your “hand me downs”. I didn’t mind mine so much because they came from my cousins who I thought were really cool. They didn’t live in the same town as me, so no one else saw them wearing those clothes. Now, if you had multiple siblings of the same gender and those clothes went through multiple kids, that could be embarrassing, but you couldn’t complain about it where your parents could hear it. You just got used to sharing…sharing everything clothes, bikes, books, everything. This just doesn’t happen today. Everyone has their own things and no one truly knows what real sacrifice is like, at least not the greater majority of this country.
For the 37.9 million (11.5%) of the US population who lives in poverty, this is not about them. We know that they know about sacrifice and about saving every penny to do what you can for your family. This is about teaching our over privileged children the real value of what they have and to respect it because from where I sit, they do not.
Recently, I was watching some videos on YouTube that reviewed videos by “influencers” on TikTok. The reviewer was criticizing the “influencers” for lying about their lifestyles in order to make money. It wasn’t news to me, but it did get me to thinking about this whole fake world that the Internet has created for “influencers” that generates millions, if not billions, of dollars of income. It truly boggles the mind because these young people create videos of fake lifestyles to sell products that they may or may not use to make money. The viewer, I assume, watches these videos believing that these “influencers” live like this, or do they really understand that the video may be false and they don’t really care? If they don’t care, what does that say about them? It all sounds like this creates, promotes, and sustains mental illness. Even more disturbing is when these videos involve families, especially those where children are forced to participate by their parents. I recall when my daughter watched a family with two children, a son and a daughter who reviewed toys, food, and games. I thought it was very strange. I thought the parents were strange. They did not have regular jobs. They had quit their jobs to YouTube full time with their children. That was strange to me. How could make money doing that, and why would you want to do that to your children? It did not seem healthy to me.
This is not healthy. All of these unhealthy lifestyles being promoted via the Internet and going to drive us further into a very dangerous place. That is why I believe it is time for us to STOP! We need to take account of what our priorities are for our families, especially our children. Somehow we have to stop promoting these fake lifestyles and start promoting what is real, what is authentic, what truly matters to the heart and soul of human beings. The election was only one part of the needed change in direction for the United States. If we do not continue to pivot and repent, taking account of all we are doing wrong, nothing will truly change. This means not just looking at what’s wrong with the nation, but also with ourselves and our individual families. Some of us will have lots of work to do, and others not so much, but we will all have work to be done. My guide is found in The Word…The Bible. Everything we need to know is found there.
As we gather around our tables this Thanksgiving, we MUST THANK GOD for all HE has done for us this year. We MUST ask him to continue to guide us in the RIGHT DIRECTION and AWAY from the dangerous path we have set ourselves on. We MUST ask for HIS protection for our families and our country and we MUST ask for HIS forgiveness for how we have gotten ourselves in this predicament. We cannot stop there, either. We MUST continue to pray and we MUST teach our children to pray and to find their strength in the Lord, not in the things of the world. Everything that this nation has comes from the blessings of the Lord, not from anything we have earned or could ever earn. Share the Gospel of Jesus Christ with your children. The more we pray, the harder the evil one will work against us, so that makes all the more important.
“Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.” Ephesians 6:10-17 NIV
I wanted to apologize for the lack of posts recently. It isn’t for not wanting to, but I have been suffering from a persistent health issue called gastroparesis. I have had this struggle periodically since 2014 when I became very ill. It was a situation I had never experienced before and my life has never been the same since.
In mid 2014, I began to feel a bit off. I wasn’t sure why. I was in my mid-40s and I knew that things start to change about that age with the body. I had my daughter in 2008 and it had been a bit rough on my body. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but it was something I had the back of my mind.
As the months progressed, I felt worse. It took a significant turn in late August. I felt awful. I had a migraine that lasted 3 weeks. I was exhausted, but I couldn’t sleep. When I did sleep, I was having horrific nightmares. I was living on melatonin to sleep and caffeine tablets to wake up. My appetite was gone.
In September, I went to my OB/Gyn for help. At first, he told me that he thought it was psychological and suggested that I see a psychiatrist. Let me tell you, this did not go over well and I was unhappy. He did agree to do extensive bloodwork. Three days later, he called me and apologized for his statements. He said that my TSH was 19 and my estrogen level put me in menopause. This is a significant reason for my symptoms. He put me on Synthroid immediately. I knew that it would only take a few weeks and I would feel better…except that isn’t what happened.
At the same time, I had started vomiting every time I ate. I couldn’t keep any food down. I also had a terrible cough. I would cough until the point that I would throw up. Three days after the vomiting started, diarrhea started. This continued for over two months. I went to my gastroenterologist for help. He started running tests. I had upper and lower endoscopies, both of which were normal. Every test I had came back normal. I then talked my husband into taking me to Emory University to their GI Department.
The day before Thanksgiving 2014 we drove to Atlanta to meet with a doctor in the GI department at Emory. It was not the appointment we expected to have. We met with a young female doctor. She spent the first 30 minutes of the appointment telling me that I needed a psychiatrist because I was depressed. Then, she told me that she recommended a gastric emptying test. I asked about my cough and she told me to see a pulmonologist.
We returned home and I had the gastric emptying test at our local hospital. We finally had a diagnosis…Gastroparesis. By the way, one of the symptoms of gastroparesis is a cough!! I didn’t need a pulmonologist. I was so angry that this woman had wasted my time and money to lecture me about being depressed after being in bed for 2 months, throwing up everything I ate, and gaining 45 lbs in the process, and she did not know that coughing is a symptom of gastroparesis? I wrote a long letter to her supervisor at Emory about her behavior and her lack of knowledge of her own specialization.
So thus began my struggle with a condition that I will have for the rest of my life caused by my thyroid getting so out of whack. The nerves that stimulate the muscles of the stomach to move food out of the stomach are essentially paralyzed. It takes medication to help stimulate the nerves to work. To help, the diet has to be restricted to foods that do not require long digestion time. So, no raw vegetables or fruit and cutting back on red meat (stinks because I love steak).
There are periods that I go through when my stomach works fairly well and I can eat what I want just in much smaller portions. However, like now, there are times when things are not good, and I cannot eat solid food at all. It can get so bad that I throw up everything I eat. This time I have not been throwing up because I have not been eating much in order to not throw up. I have mostly been living on water and very little food. It can take its toll on my energy level and, sometimes, my emotions. I can actually get a bit depressed and frustrated with it. Who wouldn’t?
I find it exceptionally frustrating because I gained a lot of weight in spite of the fact that I wasn’t eating anything, and I still don’t eat a lot, but because of my thyroid disorder I have no metabolism either. This year has been the worst year since 2014 for my gastroparesis, which leads me to believe that it may be getting worse. There are not many medications that help. I have tried several over the years and none of them are great and some have some yucky side effects. I am lucky to not be in a situation like many who have gastroparesis from diabetes and get to a point where they have to have feeding tubes. I hope I never get to that point.
There are some new devices that are coming into the market, but they are expensive. One of these devices is an implanted electronic muscle stimulating device. Electrodes are implanted onto the wall of the stomach and when needed the electrodes can stimulate the stomach muscles to work to aid in digestion. One of these devices runs about $30,000.00 and is not yet FDA approved, so not yet covered by insurance either, though I go to VA for my healthcare now because of the high cost of my conditions and no insurance company wanting to cover me.
So in closing, I apologize for my in ability to post regularly. It is not my intention and I hope that in the next few months I will recover and will get back to a more regular schedule.
For many people what I am going to blog about today will be considered highly controversial. There was a time in my life when I would have believed this to be so. When I was younger and before I became the mature Christian woman that I now am, I would have become angry and, perhaps, confrontational with someone of my age who spoke to me on this idea. I get it now, so I thought that I would write about now and put it into terms that the younger me would have understood better and might have considered before completely dismissing it.
I was not raised in a home to be this type of woman—a submissive woman. I was raised in the church to be a Christian, but in the churches that my family attended, I do not recall ever studying about the Biblical woman or the Biblical wife. Because of being adopted at the age of five, I already had an immense sense of independence. I did not like being told how to act or how to think by anyone other than my parents, and even with them I was skeptical.
My first five years was not a pleasant time. I did not trust people to have my interest in mind. It took me a considerable amount of time to trust my adoptive parents. I trusted my father first. He was easier because of his outgoing and loving personality. He spent time with me, reading to me, playing games, and riding bikes. My mother took more time. She was the disciplinarian and was not as affectionate. I was an adult before I realized that she was that way because she came from people who were that way, even though my grandparents were amazing people who I adored. But as is with many mothers and daughters, we butted heads a lot. My mother did not spend as much time with me doing things with me, so I did not feel a connection to her. She was always cleaning, cooking, or doing something that seemed to be more important than me (at least it seemed to me in my child mind).
My mother was fiercely independent. She did what she wanted when she wanted and how she wanted. Now that doesn’t mean that she took advantage of my dad because she didn’t really. He got upset with her when she spent too much money. Boy, when they fought over money, it was bad. They fought like a foxes in a hen house. Where that became a problem for me was when they would bring me into their arguments. That has a way of destroying a child’s trust in their parents. Children should be able to confide in their parents and not have their words used against them or against one parent or the other. It shows immaturity in the parents. Other than this, though, my parents had a nice, respectful relationship; though, I rarely saw them be affectionate with one another.
Although it took me time to trust my mother, I came to admire her for her independence, intelligence, and tenacity. My mother went to work full time when I was in junior high school, working as the manager of a retail store. Before that time, she had always worked part-time when my father needed her in his store during inventory, moonlight madness sales and other times when he needed her and she worked for a brief period of time at our church. I watched her open that store on day one and make it successful. She knew how to design the displays and arrange the merchandise to be pleasing and fit everything in the space. She understood the mathematics and accounting, the technology, the Human Resources, the customer service needs, the shipping and receiving requirements, and then she would come home and cook dinner for us. I was astounded and awed by her. I wanted to be just like her. (But not in retail!)
My father was a staunch supporter of a college education. He graduated from the University of Virginia with a degree in economics. Both of his sisters had college degrees and were teachers. When I was about eleven, he began going to the public library and checking out books on various careers and bringing them home to me. At first I was not so keen on this. I wasn’t against it because I didn’t want to have to read the books, but because of the careers he kept bringing home—teachers, nurses, secretary. They were all careers that were generally thought of as “girl” jobs. At the time I was all about Nancy Drew. I wanted to be Nancy Drew and I was not interested in hearing about nurses and teachers. He would frequently say to me, “Deanne, no daughter of mine is going to have to depend on a man to take care of her. You need to be able to take care yourself because you never know what could happen.” I did not understand why he would say that at the time. Of course, I do now after having gone through a divorce, but also because I have had several friends who have lost husbands to unexpected deaths. He was right to prepare me for this, but he also should have prepared me to be a Biblical wife.
When I went to college, I was determined that I was going into International Business. I wanted to be a diplomat. I was going to major in Business with a minor in French and then I was going to graduate school of some kind. It was great until I took my first accounting class. I hated it. I couldn’t imagine a more boring class in my life. Then I took economics. It was worse. I had the most horrid professor. I was lucky to get out the class with a D. I had never made a D in my life. That same semester I had Calculus for business majors. I was not strong in math. At mid-term I went to my dad and told him that I was not doing great and that I was concerned about my grade. On the day of the final, I started the exam and looked it over. I couldn’t do it and I started crying. The prof came over and rubbed my back. She told me the find the first one I knew how to do. She said, “others will start to come back to you. Just keep doing the ones you know. The rest will come back to you.” She was right. I finished the course with a C. It was the worst semester of my whole college career. So, I had to sit down with myself and regroup. I changed my major from Business to Political Science. I still had the same goal, just a different way to get there.
It wasn’t long after this that I reconnected with the young man who would become my husband. I only wish that we had been better prepared for marriage. If we had, maybe we might not have done it, or maybe we might have done better and not made the mistakes we made and not have destroyed our relationship. At any rate, it did not last because neither of he was an abusive alcoholic and I made the choice to raise our child away from that environment.
When we married, we believed that the key to a good relationship was to make everything 50/50. That sounds good, right? That means both of you put in your opinion 50/50. However, this is not the way God established marriage to be. Although God took the rib from Adam’s side, God did not make Eve to at the side of Adam; he established Eve to under the protection of Adam in the same way the church is under the authority of Christ. “Wives submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.” (Ephesians 5:22-24 NIV) This doesn’t mean that men can dismiss the opinions of their wives, or that they get to abuse their wives; this not what it means to submit. The word “submission” is a misunderstood word and often abused word by feminists as a means to harass men. The following verses on Ephesians men are instructed to love their wives as Christ loves his church and as he loves himself. If a man loves himself, then that means he’s not going to yell at himself; he’s not going to slap himself around; and he’s not going to bully himself. This not what it means to be a Biblical husband.
In my second marriage, I have a traditional, Biblical marriage. I submit to my husband. What does this mean? All it really means is that if he wants me to do something, I generally do it unless there is some good reason for me not to and then I am going to explain that to him and he is going to consider whether I should or shouldn’t do it. Upon that consideration of my reasoning, he decides and I proceed accordingly. Because I love and respect him, I will do as he says. Someone who might not understand submission might ask, “But what if your reasoning was sound? Why should you do as he says?” To them I would respond, “A family cannot have 2 bosses. He is our ultimate boss in the same way a business has one manager. I am the assistant manager. The manager says ‘no, I need you to do it this way, then you’re going to do it how the manager says.’ It’s no different. Ultimately, if the decision doesn’t work out, then he’s responsible. He takes that on as the head of the family. That is how God intended it to be.” For me, this second time around, I have so much less stress. I’m not constantly worried about situations and I know I can trust him. I have absolutely no reason not to trust my husband to make the right decisions for our family.
There’s also the Proverbs 31 element of being a Biblical woman which many “modern” women protest, but it is a misunderstood chapter. It was written by the mother of King Lemuel. The first 9 verses are said to be advice she gave him about how to rule as a just king. It is the rest of the chapter that gives many women heartburn because so often it is presented as a list of qualities of Biblical womanhood. However, this part of the chapter wasn’t written for women; it was written to the king and to men. The purpose is to underscore the preeminent nature of man’s responsibility to act wisely in establishing a foundation for women of noble character to arise—man empowers woman to become the person that the Lord designed her to be. If we only see Proverbs 31 as a list of characteristics or actions, then it is a list of works by which we cannot be saved, which would be a false gospel. (See https://saltandlight.sg/devotional/hear-the-sober-truth-proverbs-31-was-not-written-to-women-it-was-written-to-a-man/)
I have to agree that when men love their wives, love the Lord, and live as the Lord has willed them to live, it makes it so much easier for everyone else around them to do the same. That does not mean that life is perfect. We still live in a fallen world and there will be times when things go wrong. There will be disagreements, but when the Lord is at the center of everything you do, you do not have to worry about the types of behaviors you see on the evening news. I would never want to go back to the kind of marriage I had the first time. You cannot have two bosses; someone has to make the final decision. There has to be trust between both partners.
There’s nothing wrong with a division of labor. Each one doing what they are good at and that does not necessarily mean girl things and boy things. If the husband likes to cook, let him cook. If the wife likes yard work, let her do the yard work. Those do not have to be areas of contention, but they have to be agreed upon. However in regard to child rearing, most often mothers are best equipped for this task because God created us for it. Everything about women was created for the purpose of birthing and raising children. There may be some exceptions, but those are rare. Some women fail to understand what this power really is. I recall a time in graduate school when I was in a course called Peace Paradigms. We were given an assignment to do a project on a life altering time in our life. Of course mine was my adoption. I remember some of the projects were really crazy, but one that stood out what a girl who talked about how women were oppressed by being forced to be wives and mothers and forced to do cook and clean for the husbands and children (and I didn’t know how that related to her and any change in her life), I just put my face in hands and rolled my eyes. In my opinion, women can potentially have more power than men if they recognize that potential and take steps to use it. Let me explain, because we have children in our care for approximately eighteen years, we have direct influence over their worldview, beliefs, and behavior for those years. Of course, you want that influence to be positive and uplifting and not that of a cult leader, but a mother, with the right tools, love, and passion can influence a child to become the next president, a surgeon, a missionary, or whatever she believes her child is capable of being and that is exceptionally powerful. I think of mothers like Sonya Carson who raised son Ben to become one of the preeminent neurosurgeons of our time. She could not read, but she made Ben write essays on books he read from the library each week. She is one of millions of mothers who worked hard to provide for her family and to make sure that her children succeeded in school so that they wouldn’t have to worry about their future like she did.
Finally, once I heard a minister say that, in a marriage, if you can prioritize each other as WE, YOU, THOU, you can head off many conflicts—first, think of how the situation affects you as a family; then, how does it affect the others; and last, how does it affect you. I have always thought those were wise words and I think of them often.
I have always thought of myself as fiercely independent. I believed that I had to be this way because of being an orphan. I never felt that I could truly trust anyone. After I met my husband Michael, this independent spirit began to wane. I used to think those Christian women who believed in submission were crazy. Why would anyone want to do that? When I married the first time, my husband and I always said that we would do things 50/50. It never worked out that way, but that’s what we said. After that marriage fell apart and I began to do soul searching and I read more of my Bible and I talked to people, got counseling, my mind slowing began to change.
I was single for eight years before I met Michael; he had been divorced and single for fourteen. I had my son from my first marriage. He had no children. I was very concerned for my son because his father was not involved at all. I needed someone who was going to be a good father and someone on whom I could depend. I began to see how God’s plan for his family made sense and that was what I wanted. I wasn’t raised to be traditional. My parents did not have a traditional marriage in the sense that my mother really ran the show more so than my father. They both disciplined me. I was far more scared of my mother than my father. My father was more affectionate and spent more time with me, in spite of the fact that he worked so much, than my mother did. Once I was in high school and college, I did not see either of them much because they traveled a lot. My parents raised me to go to college and get a job and marriage was not necessarily a life goal to aspire to because I could do it all myself and didn’t a men to take care of me or my needs.
When Michael and I met and fell in love, I was absolutely sold out on a traditional marriage because I absolutely trusted him to be a Godly husband. He has not given me any reasons not to trust that he will always make decisions in the best interest of our family and that God is at the center of it all. This is such an enormous stress relief compared to how my life was in my first marriage. But the world is changing now and we are encountering social issues that are throwing us curve balls we never imaged having to think about.
Unlike the majority of couples, we do not have conflicts about money. We don’t because, for the most part, we are in agreement on those issues. The problem we have now is that, even though our income is more now than it has ever been, costs are also more than they have ever been. Even though we should be in a situation where life should be fabulous, we feel more stressed about money now than we did years ago when we made so much less. So, I am trying to find more ways to save. Obviously, I am trying to cut expenses where I can. I try to cut unnecessary spending where I can, but you know how that goes…just when you think you’re doing great up pops an expense you were not expecting like a medical bill, or a car repair, or a vet bill. There is always something. So, you never feel like you are getting ahead.
So, now, I am learning to make some of our food at home. Trying to making things like yogurt, butter, cream cheese, sour cream, etc which can be cheaper and better for you made fresh at home instead of buying at the store. We have lost our knowledge of how to make these food items because food makers wanted to make everything for us, convince us it was cheaper and more convenient for them to make it for us, and then they poison us with their chemical concoctions. It is truly a mess we have gotten ourselves into. I remember is college I got to be friends with several international students and I had three of them over for dinner one night. My mother asked them what was the most unusual item they found in America. They all said the same thing…Dough in a can! They were shocked that we did not have freshly baked bread every day like they have in Europe. It is crazy because bread really is not that difficult to make, it is delicious, and homemade is so much better than the preservative ridden, seed oil filled grossness sold in our grocery stores. So, I am learning the skills of my grandmother and great-grandmother. This week I am learning to tinder fat for beef tallow so that I can throw out my seek oils. I made a few mistakes, but they weren’t fatal. I’ll be better on the next batch and on down the road. Gardening and other skills are on my to-do list for this year as well.
We feel the health and welfare of our family is worth the sacrifice of a little time and maybe a little money here and there. Some may save us some; some might be a tad more, but be a health benefit. Progress isn’t worth it if it’s the progress that is killing us, right? All these forever chemicals, plastics that are inside our bodies, and we wonder why we have more childhood cancer, more autism, more obesity. But the same people who protest these things are the same people who jumped on board with an unproven COVID vaccine and multiple boosters and who promote “food” made inside laboratories. The shift from calling “meat” to calling it “protein” is not a coincidence. It is a strategy. Over time, the powers that be hope you forget the word “meat” altogether and that you will eat anything called “protein”, so that means you will eat anything they put in front of you called “protein” whether it is actual “meat” protein that comes from an animal or protein that comes from insect, plant, or chemical created in a lab and you will not question it. I say, “No, I will not.” And be assured, those same powers that be will not be eating the same food as you. They will still be eating whatever they want and it will not be lab created because they are better than you.
The only way to beat their system is not to play in their system. It is to buy local and to make your own; to make as much of your own as you can and to work with your neighbors as you can. It is time to get back to 1930-1960s America where we knew our neighbors and we worked together. Women worked together gardening, picking fruits and vegetables, snapping peas, canning, making cheese, butter, sewing, working together to raise our families. This how our country survived wars and hard times. We can do it again in the face of all the craziness going on, we can do it again, but it requires an American spirit of tradition. What do you say?
The new wave in education today seems to be a enormous push towards science, technology, environment or engineering (I am not sure), and mathematics. While all of these are worthwhile endeavors, I fear that the appreciation and love of our language, reading, and writing will be lost. One only need look at the decline in knowledge of grammar and punctuation over the past 20 years. Cursive and legible handwriting have disappeared completely…except in my homeschool.
As a genealogist and author, I writing and reading are my passions. Nothing thrills my heart more than to find an interest, research the topic and its issues, and then write about it. I love the construction of writing a novel. Researching the time period, place, and history of where my novel will take place is just as thrilling as writing a nonfiction, news/editorial type story. To do any writing assignment well, though, the writer must know grammar and punctuation rules. A “texting” type language exists nowhere else except in our Internet driven social media driven world. Artificial Intelligence may degrade that even further as it becomes more dominant. (A time I dread!)
It is unfortunate that the laziness of this new world is destroying our language. Punctuation is nonexistent in texting. The formality of writing a business letter is being replaced by the more informal email. As an “old” lady, I, of course, type messages in complete sentences and use appropriate punctuation (though, if the message is one sentence, I may pass on the ending punctuation). I refuse to do otherwise because I appreciate our language, as I would hope Germans, French, Dutch, etc., appreciate theirs.
I do not know what is taught these days in high school literature courses. My daughter, who is entering 10th grade in the Fall, read classic, mostly American, literature this year. She read Hawthorne, Twain, McCullers, Wells, Lee, and others. Next school year, we will read international authors to correspond with our world history course.
The greatest part of reading, in my opinion, is the ability to envision the places and people as you read the story. You can transport yourself as an invisible observer in the story as it is unfolds. As a child who spent many hours alone, reading allowed me to imagine myself as the part of a large family, to live in an exotic location, to be a princess. While you can do this while watching a movie, it isn’t the same because movies often draw conclusions where the book may not have. Movies today leave little to our imaginations, which is disheartening.
When we read books, regardless of who wrote them or where they were written or where they take place, we read the story with our own world view and perspective. A story can have hundreds of different versions depending on the reader. To me this is one of the most amazing aspects of reading and writing.
As a writer I want to describe my characters so that the reader fully understands the character and his/her importance to the story. However, an author shouldn’t go too far with description because you want to the leave room for the reader to imagine the character for himself/herself.
For our children to fully understand and appreciate the written word, they have to learn to use their imaginations. This begins at birth. We immediately begin to show children how to play, how to imagine being a mommy or a daddy, how to play “house” or “work”, how to be a superhero. This education should really never end, except that, of course, they must also learn to live in reality, but that is a topic for another blog post.
As I have watched children over the past 15 years and the changes in education, I have seen difficult subjects being forced down upon younger and younger children; children who do not yet possess the necessary skills to do that work. We know that a child’s brain goes through well defined stages of growth which do not end until around the age of 25. Children are losing their playing time. This is the time when they learn by playing. Instead, they are being forced to sit still and listen to instruction which their little bodies are not able to do. When they inevitably move around, talk, or fail to pay attention, we punish them. Later, we become aggravated because our children are not able to cope, to appropriately interact with each other, or to modify their behavior to the situation. It is because we have robbed them of the most important socializing period of their lives…pre-k to second grade.
I agree that math, science, and technology are important, but if the student cannot write in a logical, well reasoned and structured manner to communicate what they have learned about these topics, what good is it? There are no subjects in education that are not important. All of these skills and knowledge work together to create the well-rounded student. Children need to be challenged to learn the subjects that they do not like as much as they need to focus on the ones that they love. As with most situations in life, we learn far more from the accomplishments made in those difficult times than we do when things are going easy.
Challenge your children to read. Challenge them to write. Challenge them to practice their handwriting. Make it a contest with your handwriting. Show them a letter written to you from an older person and see if they can read it. Print out a document from the 19th century before printing became commonplace. Read it together. These are wonderful bonding opportunities and another way to challenge them in their education because, after all, we parents are responsible for everything they learn.
Author. Political Analyst. Family Historian 
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