The other day I went to put on some of my lip gloss. I had forgotten that a day or two earlier I had taken it from her. As I went to apply some it normally has a very sweet smell to it, but this time it smelled cheesy. I thought to myself, "has it expired and gone bad? I know I've had it a while". Then it hit me. The picture of taking the opened tube of glossy goodness away from her. Now see, since starting to potty train this exploratory child she has become very aware of certain parts of her body and now seems to like to put things there. I don't think I need to go any farther with why my lip gloss had an offish smell to it. Thankfully I hadn't put on more then a dot of it before pulling it away from my face to investigate it's funkiness.
Now on to today. I got a phone call earlier in the day. As I was on the cordless phone it started to beep from low battery, so I switched to the regular phone and was no longer mobile. She went into the bathroom to go potty and that was the last I saw of her until getting off the phone. I went in to discover she had smeared all my facial cleanser on the surface of the scale, opened all my lip glosses and swirled them in the cat box, and one of my favorite eye shadows is now missing completely from it's case. She had also used my eye liner to draw pictures on the side of the tub and yes, herself too. As for my missing eye shadow, perhaps I should have done a full cavity search considering her fascination with putting things "places".
I said to a friend just tonight that if I can survive this stage of her childhood then I can survive anything. Last night it was throwing popcorn at Jer and running away as she laughed hysterically, and today my entire line of beauty supplies ruined. The funny thing about her is that when she gets into trouble for doing these things she has an utterly shock reaction. She seems to act so surprised at times when she gets scolded, spanked, put on time out, or all three! Now I probably should have known better then to be on the phone, but she wasn't back there very long for the amount of damage she caused. I guess from now on I'll pay better attention to keeping the phone on it's base to charge.
All in all, I've decided to come to the conclusion that this one little child who wrecks havoc where ever she goes will some day do great things. I have to believe that...I just have to. Some day she will accomplish great things. She's obviously proven she has the balls to do it, now all she has to do is harness her power for good instead of evil. I've often worried about what kind of teenager she will be, but I think she is the type of girl who if a boy got too "touchy feely" with her would haul off and punch him in the face and I'm o-kay with that. In fact I'm more then o-kay with that. She will not be a follower but a leader of her time. Please God guide this strong willed creation of Yours and mold her to want to do GOOD things.
 |
| See the bits of cat litter stuck to the glosses? |
 |
| The empty eye shadow with facial cleanser smeared on it. |
 |
| Bathroom scale covered in facial cleanser. |
 |
| Her morning diaper she left lay after taking it off. Ewwww. |
>>She will not be a follower but a leader of her time. Please God guide this strong willed creation of Yours and mold her to want to do GOOD things.
ReplyDeleteI only wanted to underline the brutal irony of wishing Evangeline's willfulness lead her away from the very mold you would inflict upon her, or rather that god inflict on her in your stead. Is it not the definition of spirit and vigor that it is not be able to be contained in a mold? Do not the best examples of leadership break any mold into which they are thrust? And conversely it is the followers who adhere to the molds of others?
But aside from that, isn't it even more ironic that you should need to ask god, who presumably made this person in the first place, to complete the task as if he might have forgotten to do so if you hadn't? Or wouldn't have cared to bother until pressed?
Bryan,
ReplyDeleteQuestioning/critizing another person's prayer (including your sister's) is not your responsibility. Not even mine. Only the One to whom the prayer is directed has the option of critizing and He's too perfect of a gentleman to do so.
I'd hoped that it was very much more apparent that my derision was aimed at all prayer, not simply this prayer. I also think it useful to say that had my sister said that she simply hoped that Evie directs her energy towards "good" I shouldn't have expected to see your comment follow mine. But because it was made a prayer, invoked to lobby the divine for special attention that heaven in its impotence, incontinence or incompetence might otherwise overlooked, the irony is not to be noticed or remarked upon no matter how obvious its fallacy might be.
ReplyDeleteI'll concede the point that god, whether he is a gentleman or not, is indeed silent on the matter of prayer. I am myself convinced that regardless of the amount of time or number of prayers he receives will he ever speak a word of praise or criticism in response to anyone, anywhere.
Play nice boys.
ReplyDeleteBesides, I am not trying to inflict a mold of any kind onto Evie. Her curiosity and experimentation are not bad things. They are relatively normal for children of her age. She does seem to be blessed with a little extra of it though.
ReplyDeleteI think we can all agree that children need to be taught boundaries concerning their curiosity. I do not want to put Evie into a stifling mold but rather shape her as she grows. It's natural curiosity that causes a child to stick a fork in the electrical outlet, but they need to be taught that it's not a safe choice.
Evie is just the type of strong will that would reserve the right when being miss treated to say, "f^@& off". Not that saying that literally is appropriate...my point is she has something in her at the age of two that's taken me nearly 30 years to attain. And as she grows older she needs to be taught "how to use it" appropriately, especially for whatever age she is at.
The end of my post was me trying to say that despite all the frustrations that I have with her at the age of two...I accept the person she is, but also understand that the road to her maturing may be a long one. I want her to keep all her character, personality, and attributes as they are guided into maturity.
I wrote in an earlier post that being a Christian doesn't mean that we are mindless drones marching to onward Christian soldiers. I fear that you have taken how man has misrepresented Christianity and run with it. There is prove of God if you look for it. "Case For Christ", by Lee Stroble. The hard part about that is coming to a place of humility and accepting the fact that if there is a God perhaps He knows more then me and is smarter then me. Perhaps in my fallible mind and thinking I am missing something important. Christ is a liberator. He was the first to fight for the rights and respectable treatment of women and has freed us from our fallibility through our sin.
When it comes to facts and proof of anything there can be many theories the facts point to. You have to find the theory that most snuggly fits to what facts there are. There is proof for a theory of a God if you look for it and it's not found in the research of a person who is sick of organized religion. Christ was crucified for teaching something other then organized religion. I think if enough time were given to understanding His teaching it would go against the organized religion that is taught in His name today.
Man has been putting God to the test since the beginning of time. This is nothing new for Him. May I be bold enough to say, "Put Him to the test and see."
Becky Andrus wrote:
ReplyDelete>I fear that you have taken how man has misrepresented Christianity and run with it.
I don't think I could have been tricked into disbelief, and I'm happy to discuss it at length to your satisfaction that this is the position I arrived at genuinely without coercion. In lieu of that debate, I think the issue at hand is that christianity is man-made in all its forms. Any misrepresentation of one cadre in its ranks by any of its others is nothing more then men misrepresenting one failed hoax with another failed hoax.
>There is prove of God if you look for it.
I can't claim credulity that such proof exists, because, if it did it would surely be the very first thing the religious pull out of their hat when challenged. Yet to date, religion very much has maintained an aloof relationship with anything resembling evidence. I observe you've claimed it exists without actually verbalizing any.
>When it comes to facts and proof of anything there can be many theories the facts point to.
You are right in saying so, because this is the basis of the scientific method. However, it so happens that amongst the facts known about the universe the fewest of these support any theory which would even make religion plausible, or none at all.
In the discourse between Pierre-Simon LaPlace and Napoleon after having been shown LaPlace's model for the variations in the orbits of certain planets in the solar system:
Napoleon: How can this be! You made the system of the world, you explain the laws of all creation, but in all your book you speak not once of the existence of God!
LaPlace: It works without that assumption.
This post is long enough, but I'd like to come back to you about the immorality of christianity against woman at a later time.
Becky Andrus said:
ReplyDelete>Christ is a liberator. He was the first to fight for the rights and respectable treatment of women and has freed us from our fallibility through our sin.
Although there are numerous scriptural examples of prejudice and bigotry against women, I wanted to share just this one in particular.
Deuteronomy 22:28-29
If a man find a damsel [that is] a virgin, which is not betrothed, and lay hold on her, and lie with her, and they be found;
Then the man that lay with her shall give unto the damsel's father fifty [shekels] of silver, and she shall be his wife; because he hath humbled her, he may not put her away all his days.
I don't even know where to begin. I don't need a god to imbue me with his spirit to discover the heinousness of this passage (although I might indeed need one to in order to suspend conscience long enough make believe that it isn't). Not only does god say that a woman who is violated and raped must be forced to marry her attacker, she is not due any consideration, apology, or compensation for her brutalization. No, the only compensation considered necessary by god goes to the father of the victim, who is paid off for the loss of his property, which isn't actually his daughter as a person, only the bargaining chip of her unbroken hymen from which he might have profited.
Her attacker does have two punishments for his barbarism. Not only must he pay off his victim's father, but then must take on the financial responsibility for her for life (isn't this more of a punishment to the woman?). She isn't actually given any value as a person, because after having her virginity ravaged, she isn't worth anything to her father, not even to be given shelter and kept safe from a sexual predator.
These rules optional by the word of god. They aren't something the bible says that he suffered in spite of his better judgment. They are his direct commandments to his people! Where was christ in all this? How can you say that christ is the liberator of womenhood when it was he himself who instituted such severe cruelity and malice in the first place?