Bedtime for Amy this year in third grade is 8:30 p.m. and for Reed in fifth grade is 9 p.m. So I stay up later than them, but not by much. (I usually aim to go to bed at 10 p.m.) Each night I still kiss both kids as they sleep, when I'm on my way to bed. I wonder how much longer that'll be the case? I think it won't be long before Reed is staying up later than me. From time to time, Tod and I reminisce about the old days when the kids were both in bed at 7:30 p.m. That gave us so much "free" time to ourselves in the evenings! So now we get more time with the kids, but less time to ourselves to watch TV or whatever it is we do as boring grown-ups. It's the extremely rare occasion when we'll watch a movie after the kids have gone to bed, even on a weekend...when you can't start the movie until after 9, it's hard to talk yourself into staying up late enough to watch it! Heck we hardly have time to watch an hour-long TV show as it is.
It's hard to imagine that it won't be long before the kids will even be staying out until close to the time when I'm wanting to go to sleep. What then?!? Or when they want to stay our until AFTER the time I want to go to sleep! Ay yi yi! I guess we all have time to adjust before then.
Monday, October 28, 2013
Friday, October 4, 2013
Getting deep
This post is kind of random and weirdly organized so keep that in mind. I tried to wind it all together but I'm not sure I was so successful!
Growing up, both Tod and I attended church regularly. Well I guess I should amend that slightly to say that once Mom and Jim got married (I was 10), I attended church regularly. For me, it was semi-torturous. The church we attended, Sterling Park Christian Church, had a small congregation (even smaller now) and I was not fond of the pastor's style of preaching. He was a screamer, and in my mind, religion should have been something loving, not something angry. He also did a lot of literal dissections of the words of scripture, which I got nothing out of. But I dutifully went to church as required every Sunday, dragging myself out of bed to make it to church at the "early" hour of 11 a.m. I made a lot of trips to the bathroom during the service.
When I got married the first time around, when things started going badly, I started attending Leesburg Baptist Church. The pastor there, Alan Stanford, was terrific. His messages were about kindness and love and how the messages in the Bible could be applied in real life situations. Sometimes I felt like his sermons were meant just for me, they hit so close to home. As I went through my divorce, I met with Pastor Stanford a couple of times and it was really helpful to me. I was grateful to have that church home that made me feel less lost in the world. It was really there for me at the right time. However Dr. Stanford left the church for a job with a national Baptist organization, and I never felt the same connection at the church after that, so I stopped attending.
I was so grateful, though, that when Tod and I were preparing to get married, I was able to contact Dr. Stanford and he was available to do our premarital counseling and officiate our wedding. It felt like coming full circle.
As I said, church wasn't a great experience for me growing up. As I've gotten older, I am less and less inclined to believe or subscribe to the Christian faith. There just doesn't seem to be the science to support it. Not that I've studied it extensively but as I understand it the New Testament was written between 15 and 70 years after Jesus' death. That long after something has happened, who remembers it accurately? And then add in multiple language interpretations...how accurate could it be? I have also read that some parts of the Bible might have been written in a way that it would fit prophecies. I don't pretend to know a lot but what I do know makes me skeptical.
So for me, I just try to live a kind life. I wouldn't ever begrudge anyone their faith – I think church and religion are a tremendous support for a lot of people and that's great. If there is a God I hope I won't be judged too harshly for not believing in him/her. And I reserve the right to change my mind. But honestly I don't believe in an "afterlife" other than my belief that when you're gone, you live on in the hearts of the people who loved you.
I get that there's a tremendous sense of community when you belong to a church and I wonder if we're doing our kids a disservice by not attending church. Ultimately I want them to make their own decisions about religion, but I'm really not giving them any information about it as they're growing up, am I? And is there value in the regularity and predictability of ongoing church attendance, even aside from "salvation"? I'm sure there is. I hope we're providing Reed and Amy with that sense of community in other ways – through scouting, for example.
One thing that I've realized as I've grown up is that the traditional gospel songs I listened to (and occasionally sang along with) in church are now comforting sounds from my childhood. I don't particularly ascribe to the messages of the music, since I'm not really a believer, but nonetheless the music feels a bit like an old friend. I have some country/bluegrass gospel music on my iPod and if one of those old standard hymns comes on, like "What a Friend We Have in Jesus," or "Wings of a Dove," or "Amazing Grace" comes on, they have a calming effect. Though the singing in that old Sterling Park Christian Church wasn't terrific (in fact at times it was downright awful! but it was heartfelt), it definitely is dug in to my memory. I worry a little bit that the kids won't ever have those same comforting feelings about hymns. Or perhaps they'll make it to that feeling all on their own one day.
(Don't get me started on the "contemporary" worship services that are popular now, though – I can't stand that music! Way too cult-y sounding for my tastes.)
Well I guess that wraps it up. All over the map but some things I wanted to get "out there"!
Growing up, both Tod and I attended church regularly. Well I guess I should amend that slightly to say that once Mom and Jim got married (I was 10), I attended church regularly. For me, it was semi-torturous. The church we attended, Sterling Park Christian Church, had a small congregation (even smaller now) and I was not fond of the pastor's style of preaching. He was a screamer, and in my mind, religion should have been something loving, not something angry. He also did a lot of literal dissections of the words of scripture, which I got nothing out of. But I dutifully went to church as required every Sunday, dragging myself out of bed to make it to church at the "early" hour of 11 a.m. I made a lot of trips to the bathroom during the service.
When I got married the first time around, when things started going badly, I started attending Leesburg Baptist Church. The pastor there, Alan Stanford, was terrific. His messages were about kindness and love and how the messages in the Bible could be applied in real life situations. Sometimes I felt like his sermons were meant just for me, they hit so close to home. As I went through my divorce, I met with Pastor Stanford a couple of times and it was really helpful to me. I was grateful to have that church home that made me feel less lost in the world. It was really there for me at the right time. However Dr. Stanford left the church for a job with a national Baptist organization, and I never felt the same connection at the church after that, so I stopped attending.
I was so grateful, though, that when Tod and I were preparing to get married, I was able to contact Dr. Stanford and he was available to do our premarital counseling and officiate our wedding. It felt like coming full circle.
As I said, church wasn't a great experience for me growing up. As I've gotten older, I am less and less inclined to believe or subscribe to the Christian faith. There just doesn't seem to be the science to support it. Not that I've studied it extensively but as I understand it the New Testament was written between 15 and 70 years after Jesus' death. That long after something has happened, who remembers it accurately? And then add in multiple language interpretations...how accurate could it be? I have also read that some parts of the Bible might have been written in a way that it would fit prophecies. I don't pretend to know a lot but what I do know makes me skeptical.
So for me, I just try to live a kind life. I wouldn't ever begrudge anyone their faith – I think church and religion are a tremendous support for a lot of people and that's great. If there is a God I hope I won't be judged too harshly for not believing in him/her. And I reserve the right to change my mind. But honestly I don't believe in an "afterlife" other than my belief that when you're gone, you live on in the hearts of the people who loved you.
I get that there's a tremendous sense of community when you belong to a church and I wonder if we're doing our kids a disservice by not attending church. Ultimately I want them to make their own decisions about religion, but I'm really not giving them any information about it as they're growing up, am I? And is there value in the regularity and predictability of ongoing church attendance, even aside from "salvation"? I'm sure there is. I hope we're providing Reed and Amy with that sense of community in other ways – through scouting, for example.
One thing that I've realized as I've grown up is that the traditional gospel songs I listened to (and occasionally sang along with) in church are now comforting sounds from my childhood. I don't particularly ascribe to the messages of the music, since I'm not really a believer, but nonetheless the music feels a bit like an old friend. I have some country/bluegrass gospel music on my iPod and if one of those old standard hymns comes on, like "What a Friend We Have in Jesus," or "Wings of a Dove," or "Amazing Grace" comes on, they have a calming effect. Though the singing in that old Sterling Park Christian Church wasn't terrific (in fact at times it was downright awful! but it was heartfelt), it definitely is dug in to my memory. I worry a little bit that the kids won't ever have those same comforting feelings about hymns. Or perhaps they'll make it to that feeling all on their own one day.
(Don't get me started on the "contemporary" worship services that are popular now, though – I can't stand that music! Way too cult-y sounding for my tastes.)
Well I guess that wraps it up. All over the map but some things I wanted to get "out there"!
Wednesday, October 2, 2013
Join Girl Scouts!
What?
I said "Amy's been a Girl Scout since kindergarten! What did you think the Daisy and Brownie meetings were all about?"Apparently he thought it was all related to tae kwon do somehow.
As the kids would say, SMH (shaking my head).
Then I thought about it a little more and realized that we never really call it Girl Scouts - it's always been "Brownie workshop" or "Daisy meeting", never a "Girl Scout meeting". Plus the way Girl Scouts work is so different from the way Cub Scouts has worked – there really aren't any family events that our troop has participated in. Amy's gone to many Cub Scout outings, campouts, and Pack meetings. Reed hasn't gone to a single Girl Scout event.
So I guess it isn't all that outlandish after all that Reed didn't know Amy was a Girl Scout!
P.S. It seems to me that Cub Scouts is organized in a much more family-friendly way than Girl Scouts is. [Well, other than their anti-gay stances, which I am strongly against.] It feels like Cub Scouts is an activity that frequently involves our whole family, not just our Scout or not just our Scout and one parent. I really like that. So far our Girl Scouting experience has been entirely about either just our Scout or our Scout and a parent - as a result, our involvement in Girl Scouting feels so much more limited.
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