People ask me how it is to take children in and then have to let them go. People tell me that they could NEVER do foster care because they could NEVER let the kids go. It would be too hard. I tell them that life is hard no matter what you do.

But, I’m not going to lie.

It’s hard.

I’m saying it right now.

IT IS REALLY HARD.

Back when they took my three babies, the ones that are my three youngest adopted children now, back in the summer of 1995, a month before I went to camp the first time, I just laid on my living room carpet, pressed “On Christ the Solid Rock I Stand” at least ten times, the ten minute Vineyard version, and I cried.

I cried

and I cried

and I cried.

I didn’t think the tears would ever stop for the rest of my life.

After they stopped I didn’t think they would ever come back for the rest of my life.

I felt numb. I was so depressed that I didn’t go outside. God and my husband kicked me out the door to go to camp that summer and that changed my common little housewife life forever, but whenever I thought of my babies, gone, all gone,…..I died. I died a little more inside everyday.

My mother was happy they were gone.

“Can’t you just do your ‘volunteer work’ OUTSIDE your home, dear?”

How could I explain that this was NOT volunteer work? What can one say to another who does not feel the burden of life beating down on their soul….

their mind, their will, and their emotions… every single day…..with nothing to stop the memories, the pain of another on your heart?

You love your Mom. You do. Without her you wouldn’t be here in the world. You will always love her and treat her with respect for who she is to you. You know that even though she didn’t teach you right things about God, that she did the best with what she knew to do and your little Beaver Cleaver life was so much better than the lives you are stepping into now. Lives filled with abuse, and unspeakable atrocities that you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemy, let alone your babies……………..Oh God.
OH MY GOD!

How do I live through this? How do I live the rest of my life knowing what I know and not being able to do anything about it? It would have been better for me not to know. But I can’t go back. I have put six years of my life into these children. How do you forget? I need to forget. But I can’t. I need to sleep. But I can’t sleep. They are in my dreams. I need to stay busy. But I can’t focus. I can’t stay awake. The pain is too great. I can’t go to sleep. The dreams are always there. I just want to die. God, I know I shouldn’t feel that way. God, help me not feel that way. But I can’t take the pain, and I can’t take the dreams, and I can’t……………

How do you explain all this to the woman who worked for Planned Parenthood for twenty years and probably thought the mother of my babies should have just aborted them anyway? The mother of my babies has three older children. She had six altogether. The three older ones were taken away from her before mine were born. So she went and had three more. Any abortion clinic counselor would have counseled an abortion for her, all three times, and everybody, maybe even some anti-abortion people, the ones that think that it’s not okay for their own, but they wouldn’t tell someone else what choice to make, would have thought that the right choice.

My mother wouldn’t have said it like that NOW, now that they were born, but I know she would have counseled that to the mother of my babies if she had come into her clinic while she was pregnant.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my Mom. She just doesn’t get me.

How do you describe the ripping pain, the almost physical tearing? The knife in your gut that just doesn’t go away. After a time it starts to heal AROUND the knife, but the knife is still there. All it takes is for someone to make an insensitive statement, even if they don’t mean to, and the knife turns. Just a touch, but that’s all it takes. You’re bleeding again.

“No, Mom, I can’t.”

There was nothing left to say. I knew she would never get it. Even my husband didn’t completely understand. While he cared about the babies, he was not bonded to them quite the same way I was. He didn’t change their diapers, or give them baths. He didn’t feed them, give them bottles, or dress them. I did all of that. He knew how I felt….he just didn’t feel it himself.

My first year of camp took my mind off them a little. Getting the new foster kids gave me something new to focus on. Youth group was fun and Hardcore Worship was even more fun. I was busy, excited, running around getting everything done during the day so I could run around all night having a blast.

But my babies….ooooo, I wanted my babies. They weren’t really babies any more, they were 4, 5, and 6. Once a baby, always a baby.

A woman who knew me told me that she couldn’t imagine me being so interested in babies. She looked at my comraderie with the teens and said, “God created you for teenagers”. She thought she was making me feel better. I just curled in on myself and said, “You just met me. I have another side.”

People kept trying to make me feel better by saying that if they hadn’t gone home I wouldn’t have been able to be used by God with the youth group. I bristled at that.

“Bring ‘em on”, I would snarl, “I’ll STILL do the all the stuff with the teens and take care of my babies too.” I actually said that. I would tell them “just as I taught the teens to worship God, if I get my babies back, they can all come over here and help me, and I will teach them to SERVE God.”

Well, that pretty much shut the naysayers up. Nobody knew what to say after that and I was glad. Don’t say anything, ya dummies. I’d rather have that. Like I said before, I got a little snippy attitude for a while there.

I had hoped that going home in the summer like they did would make it so hard on the mom that they would come back before school started. I know how bad that sounds but I didn’t care. I had always helped her whenever the kids went home before. I brought her clothes from the Blessing Shop, milk, even though I knew she was getting food stamps and was spending it on cigarettes. I took the kids every weekend. She loved me for it. I was giving her a break. She didn’t realize this was my life. I waited all week for these weekends. It was not a chore. No more than my own biological children were chores. They were my existence. I know it may sound sappy, but it’s true. Like my purpose was gone.

This was then and still is, an unrepentant mother, who couldn’t or wouldn’t change and I was getting sick of her. It had been almost seven years that I’d been dealing with her and she was stubborn, lazy and unwilling to change. Even for her kids. I was sick of it.

I wanted my babies...not her babies...I potty trained them, I disciplined them, I took them to the zoo, I heard their first words, I recorded their memories with video tape and scrapbooks. I wanted MY babies back. Maybe they weren’t born to me but they became mine with every bath, every diaper, every meal served. Summer passed, my first year at camp ended, the new foster kids settled in, all came and went, and my babies were still home with their mom.

After five months, by Christmas, I realized they weren’t coming back. Not right now anyway. My husband tried to make me feel better telling me that they would be back when they were teenagers. We had been through those years and he said the mom would never make it.

"Thanks alot!" I said. "I get ‘em in diapers, and then when they are at their snippy worst, 13 years old!"

I caved in and started bringing her food, clothes and picking the kids up for the weekend again, just so they could get a bath and their long hair brushed out.

They didn’t come back into care again for five years. It was a very long five years for me. The county knew how “over involved” I was and they didn’t like it. Having Marine and Deandra in the house and the altercation with their caseworker didn't help matters either. They tried to talk to me about my involvement with the little kids.

I tried to tell them that they shouldn't call it Foster CARE if they don't want the foster parents to CARE. They even sent me to a psychologist about it! I went to the counselor anyway and just LOVED having a whole hour to talk about my self and my family to this woman who actually was genuinely interested (she really was) and it was paid for by the government! Not as good as the blogstream (love you guys) cause it was only once a week, but good. I liked it. But the underlying problem was that the county thought I had gone off the deep end.

When we had taken the other three, back in the summer of ’95 I told the county that I would only take them under one condition…that they never tell me I can’t have the other ones if they came back into care. They agreed at the time, but then they forgot, in May,2000 when they called me to tell me the babies, 9, 10, 11, they all were now, were coming back into care. Yeah, they were coming back into Foster Care, but....not to my house....not to me.

When does love come? At what point do we learn how to love? It is a learned behavior. Babies are so cute, aren’t they? They are so cuddly and soft and don’t they smell so good? They snuggle and they hug and they laugh the most infectious little laughs. But all of that is not love. That is selfish ‘all about me’, ‘take care of me’ love, which isn’t really love.

A loving child cannot be taken for granted. Love must first be ministered. A child who does not receive love will not know how to give love. Love must be taught. A child who is not taught how to love will react from his base instinct.

Our base instinct is...power. Selfish, self-serving, everything is me, I am the King of the World, power.

Love is not natural to humans. It should be because we are made in the image of the Almighty Love. But that doesn’t take into account the fruit of disobedience that resides in our hearts ever since Mama and Papa ate the apple.

People think that they will take in foster children and those children will automatically love them, appreciate them, and reciprocate the love shown to them. This is mostly a fallacy and any would-be foster parents should be taught in the required training classes that this should not be expected. If it is one will become so disillusioned they will give up.

Theophileous writes on love quite frequently. When he is not going intellectual on us over there, that is. Even then, he always treats his detractors with love. Whit wrote a good piece on love a few days ago too. I was so excited. Whit was posting scripture!

People don’t want to read the Bible...for whatever the reason. It’s boring they say, but I find it more fascinating than a soap opera. It’s hard to understand, they say, but I find that with the discernment of the Holy Spirit, the One Who wrote it anyway, it is not only easy, it is revelational. How can you put it down?

People say they don’t agree with it, but as Whit proved, when you quote the Master, even the people who don’t think they would agree with something in the Bible agree with it.

Yeah, when it comes to love, no one describes it better than ol’ St. Paul under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. There are whole libraries full of books on love, how to love, where to find love, who to love, but no one, NO ONE comes closer to hitting it on the head than the Author of Love, the Creator of our hearts, the Reason we are even here at all and have the capacity to love.

We seek love in so many places. Our hearts yearn for it. To love and be loved is the greatest desire of the human soul. More important than even food, even sleep or even sex. Good sex is not indicative of good love. Boomers, the 'free luuuuuuuuv' generation proved that, didn't we?

The love of the Bible, whether it is eros (Song of Solomon), philo (David and Jonathan), or agape (Christ dying for us on the cross) is TRUE love. The love we REALLY want. The love we really need.

Summer fled into fall and it was almost 1998. Marine and Deandra’s stepfather had moved out leaving the Mom with just the step-sister. They moved back home and there was a sliding back into old patterns and old friends. We stayed in touch but any real sign of change would be years away…… or never.

My friend, the one that I had stuck with through thick and thin and her son’s rejection of mine, was slipping away. She was listening to the gossip and every time we talked she had something new to throw at me that made me feel very defensive and wary of her. I could tell she was eating up all the tidbits and there wasn’t a lot I could say to defend myself. She was having family issues and wanted me to side with her. I couldn’t. Not and stay in the Lord. Our relationship never regained its former vitality.

Junior was in his freshman year of college. The band kids were seniors in high school.

The band was still getting gigs and that filled my weekends so that I hardly thought of my loss. I still cried sometimes. The hurt and frustration at being so misunderstood ate at me once in a while and left me feeling very defensive, and a little paranoid. Someone who didn’t know me but was praying over me in church one day told me that I had a ‘spirit of rejection’. She said that like it was a ‘word from the Lord’. It sounded more like a ‘word of gossip’ she had heard.

I said, “no, I don’t think so. There is a difference between having a 'spirit of rejection' and actually being rejected”,

I continued to throw my burdens at the Lords feet and stopped going up to the altar for prayer. I wanted words from the Lord, I wanted the support in prayer, but after I started learning about ‘transferable spirits’, I decided that I wasn’t taking any chances. I would have to KNOW the person laying hands on me, not just know their name and their face, but know them and know that they know me.

We had finalized the first adoption back in June right around the time of the graduation. Farm Boy was in fourth grade. School had never been his strong point. Not just the academics but his behavior was so off the wall that I was getting calls from school everyday. Finally, by mid-year I just couldn’t deal with the calls anymore and told my husband that home schooling couldn’t be worse than this. He agreed and I called a woman I knew who home schooled her kids. She gave me the name of the person I should buy the curriculum from and by January I had removed him from school. He wasn’t happy about this at first, knowing that he could get away with a lot more in school than he could with me.

After a few days of second grade curriculum he realized this might not be so bad. I had intentionally started very low, covering all my bases, and he was speeding through the work. We would start at 8 am, right after his twin sister left on the bus and he was usually done before lunch. As much as I had always thought I was teacher material, I realized that I struggled with the special ed mind.

It was one thing to try to raise him, that was hard enough. Teaching him, the same things over and over and over, began to wear on me more than I realized it would. I taught one number into two day after day. As soon as I tried two numbers into three it was like hitting a brick wall. Every day it was like teaching it all over again and nothing was remembered from the day before. I home schooled for three years. I literally thought I was going to lose my mind. It wasn’t the home schooling itself that did me in. It was my inability to teach him. Or his inability to learn. Or both. Whatever it was I felt like I was a failure….and on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

The best time of the day was when I pulled out one of the many biographies I had bought to read to him. He was not a good reader, even now reads at about a third grade level, but he LOVED to listen, and remembered everything I read. Okay, he’s audio. I’ll switch gears. I’m a good out-loud reader, I’ve actually been known to make cassette tapes to match the books for some of my foster kids that have gone home. The only trouble is I can read, even out loud, and not be thinking about what I’m reading. I would read and after a few minutes my mind would wander.

I would begin to feel so sad….I don’t even know why….almost like everything was catching up to me, all my losses, all my troubles, all my brokenness and was caving in on me in that moment of quietness, with his eyes on me, listening to the story, and just my own voice filling the room. I didn’t realize how close to tears I was until he would stop me and say, “Mom, you sound like you’re going to cry”. I would stop for a minute and shake myself loose. “Oh, sorry, sorry, I’m just tired, I’m okay. Let’s read one more chapter.” When story time was over I would give him some work to do in one of his workbooks and find something to do….in another room

I found out how to teach this child. He didn’t learn by any rules I had ever learned. Everything had to be by rote. He would spell ‘completely’ with a B at the end. I made him write spelling words over and over and over until they were memorized. He could multiply because I used the multiplication ball and wouldn’t give up. I forced him to memorize all the tables up to 12. The problem is that division is backwards. It takes abstract thinking. This was NOT working. English was a nightmare, Math was almost as bad, Spelling was a force of the will. Only History and Science seemed to have some potential.. They were stories for the most part. I would read the workbooks day by day to him. Then he had to find the answers. The answers were taken pretty much straight from the sentences so it wasn’t that hard to find them. He would copy them word for word. Penmanship was actually a strong point. After a while even History was making me nuts. We spent TWO hours going over this one workbook so that he could take the unit test. I kept asking section questions over and over. Who wrote the Monroe Doctrine? James Monroe was always one of the four answers. I had asked the question twenty times and every time he said Benjamin Franklin or George Washington. He honestly wasn’t trying to frustrate me but I thought I was going to crack.

I just gave up. I couldn’t take it anymore. He was in sixth grade trying to do sixth grade workbooks but he couldn’t do the work. He would do his workbooks in the morning and I would correct them at night and write down his work in his assignment notebook for the next day. Each night I could hear the Lord telling me he was cheating. I couldn’t figure it out. When was he cheating? I was with him most of the time. He wasn’t even getting all the answers right. How could he be cheating? I thought it must just be my imagination. Every night for a week I heard the Lord clearly telling me that. I shrugged it off. Until Friday. I decided that I was just going to settle myself at my rolltop in the family room right next to the little desk I had given him to use. My little desk from when I was a little girl. It is small but it had a little secretary thing that came out on the side. I loved, I still love, my little desk. I gave him his work and told him I would be down in a minute. Actually it was two minutes. That is exactly how long it took me to get my oatmeal in and out of the microwave. I brought all my unread magazines, undone crosswords, my Bible and the daily newspaper. I was just going to sit there until he was done with his work. As I came down the stairs into the family room, I thought I was going to have a heart attack. There he was, on the floor, madly scribbling math answers into his book from the answer guide that was on my desk. I forgot he was there. I threw myself down prostrate on the floor, and asked the Lord to forgive me. I repented and told him that I was a hard head. And I was sorry. I cried and prayed and repented, right there in front of his shocked face. I got up and pointed my finger up the stairs. I said, in a low, almost growly voice, “go to bed. go to bed. And don’t come down until I tell you.”. I could barely speak I was so angry. He went upstairs and I followed him. I took all his pillows and blankets off the bed. Under neath his blanket he had hidden packages of cookies. That’s where the Betty Crocker icing went! He had a spoon. He had eaten and half eaten packages of other sweets. NO WONDER HE WAS NEVER HUNGRY FOR DINNER! All his stuffed animals. I put them all in a laundry basket and took them out of the room. He was left on his bed with only his sheet covering the mattress and nothing but his schoolwork to warm him.

I moved my little desk upstairs to the living room. I would keep my roll top downstairs but he would do his work upstairs. Until the day I came up from doing a load of laundry and found him dismantling the drawer. It was in three pieces. I took the desk away. My husband fixed the drawer but he never had a desk again. He was 12 when he did this.

By the third year, I was going to bed in tears and waking up each morning with a dread of the new day stretching before me. I didn’t know how to get out of it though. I had put myself in this position and now I was stuck. His behavior was so bad that he could not go to regular school. We kept him under lock and key at home but if we went anywhere else there were always problems.

Later, in 2000, we finally put him back in school, with a special tutor, and that didn’t work. He went to a special ed school, that didn’t work either. His behavior was becoming worse. He was going to a psychiatrist that the county had hooked us up with. I didn’t really like the guy and he told me that my problems MUST be because, since I had so many girls, that I just didn’t like boys….or something. I didn’t even try to defend myself. I was getting the impression that defending myself only made things worse. Kind of like ‘thou protesteth too much’. I knew he was wrong but I didn’t think I would change his mind so I left it alone.

One night he put rubbing alcohol in the bathroom drinking cup hoping a certain foster sister (who is now adopted) would drink it thinking it was water. He was 14. He had lived with us for six years.

I had laid myself down like a doormat for this child, given my life, 24/7 over to his home schooling, spent more money on him for curriculum and musical instruments (he had a gift for drums but we had to sell them back at half the price when he wouldn’t stop taking the skins off and was slowly destroying them. We bought him a second hand trombone and the band leader friend gave him lessons….until he put a pencil down the slide), than I had for any other child, biological, foster or adopted and felt like it was all being thrown back in my face like I was just another sucker. I tried as hard as I could to make life fun and interesting. I was at the end, the complete end of me. What the devil couldn’t do through the church he was almost succeeding at through my family.

A woman called me, out of the blue. She knew me enough to call me but didn’t really know me at all. She told me she had a word from the Lord for me.

“Okay……I’m listening.”

I was a little nervous after some of the dumb things that had been said to me from people who considered themselves ‘prophetic’.

She said that God had told her to call me and tell me that He “was not wasting my time”

That was it. Nothing else. But that was enough. I thanked her, hung up the phone and went to my bedroom to cry. I took that as a true word from the Lord and I wanted to thank Him for hearing my heart.

The next day, the next week, the next few months were a little anti-climactic. After all this emotion, I just felt kind of numb. On the surface nothing had changed. It was the spring of 1997, I had already stopped going to youth group anyway and the band was flourishing.

Within days, however, a letter went out from the church, effectively putting the gavel down on Hardcore Worship. The elder Elder did come through, in a way. I heard later that he had fought for me, after we left the meeting, about the letter. That was my main concern. He told the Pastor, flat out, that he couldn’t write a letter like that about me. I will always appreciate him for that and I don’t think he even knows I know. A letter did go out but surprisingly I was allowed, even asked, to see it before the final copy was printed and they never called me rebellious. At least not in the letter. I know for a fact that it is in my file.

It was over and I knew it. I could fight it, I could send out flyers, call kids, try to keep it going, but that’s not my style and it’s not how it worked with these kids. It was always the kids coming to me, not me chasing them down. Doing anything else didn’t feel right.

Junior graduated in June and made preparations to go to college at the school that is connected with the church. Camp asked me to come back. I was mildly surprised but didn’t think too much about it. I accepted even though the excitement of the previous year just wasn’t quite there. My band leader buddy was going and that was good. He had become a very good friend by this point. We didn’t just gab on the phone about his life, we had the band, he spent time with the family, we played chess. He was intelligent and funny. We were friends. I had never had guy friends in my whole life and now I had a bunch of them. It was a very strange feeling for me.

I found that having guy friends was easier somehow than having girl friends. Guys aren’t as easily offended. You can go to a gig, go out to eat after and just have a blast. They don’t care if you act crazy and will even do things to bring it out. Maybe adult men aren’t this way, but the guys didn’t care. I wondered what I would do, how I would handle it when they all became men. The whole thing was a little freaky for me so I just took a wait and see attitude.

Camp started out fun but by the second day I knew something was up. All the leadership was the same as before but they weren’t treating me the same. There was a decided standoffishness. I couldn’t define it but it was not my imagination. It didn’t occur to me that the church pastors had talked to the camp leadership. Duh.

On the second day there was a prayer meeting with the kids and counselors. We were encouraged to pray out loud. After a couple of other people prayed, I started to pray out loud. After thirty seconds I was told, from the podium, to stop. Stop? What? I just shut my mouth, but I could feel my cheeks blushing. No explanation was given, the leader of the meeting prayed and then said the prayer time was over. Now, THAT was weird! This was supposed to be a one hour prayer meeting and it was over, just like that! I didn’t know what to make of it but I wasn’t about to ask. Ignorance is bliss. That is the tactic I was taking.

Before lunch, the leader came up to me. He was the head of the whole senior camp. He took me aside and said,

“Connie, you must be a very hard woman to pastor.”

I couldn’t understand the boldness of this statement but I was getting used to people saying some really dumb things to me. It hadn’t occurred to me that he had been talked to by the leaders of my church who were also at camp. Ahh, okay, the coffee klatch. This man had known me two previous summers but all of a sudden NOW he had a problem with me. I didn’t really know what to say. Don’t you just hate it when you can think of all this stuff later, that you SHOULD have said but NOW it’s too late? I hate that.

I had no response. I was blown away by the question. He went on to say some other things. Just as judgmental, just as ignorant. He told me that I was the “type” that would be good to minister to “fringe” kids, kids that were kind of ‘out there’. I couldn’t believe he was saying this. I told him that I know how to love ANY kid, no matter what they were like, I would love them and accept them anyway, but, I reminded him that the pastors son and other church leaders children, were the main kids that had come to my group. He just kept looking at me, right in the eye. Was that a smirk? I couldn’t tell. I just could not believe this.

I had brought my CD player. I knew that the kids were not allowed to have discmans, etc. and I wasn’t sure if the leaders were either but I knew some counselors that had players and I brought it because I didn’t want to be without my worship music for a week. This was not a discman, it was a boom box style CD player. I knew we would worship in chapel, but I needed this for my afternoon private time. I NEEDED IT. Sometimes closing my eyes and listening to Blessed Be the Name of the Lord and Jehovah Never Sleeps is the only thing that calmed my frazzled spirit. I could have asked, but I guess I just didn’t think it would be such a big deal.

Somehow, my youth pastor found out about it. He came into my room when I wasn’t there and took it. Just flat-out took it. I came back to the room, and when I saw that it was gone, I thought a kid had stolen it. I went to the Youth Pastor and asked if he knew anything about it. He shook his finger at me like I was a naughty child. There was no smile. He wasn’t kidding. I had deliberately disobeyed a known rule. Naughty-naughty. He gave me my CD player back but he was NOT happy with me. Well, whoopdedoo, what else is new?

This year I was not given the cabin I had before. I was in the dorm. Man. I would deal but I wasn’t thrilled. This year just wasn’t going the way I wanted. I had a nice group of girls though, and there were a couple of girls from another group that took a liking to me. They began seeking me out during their free times. One had an eating disorder. We talked about that. The other girl’s counselor became furious, inordinately furious, that the girls were turning to me and not to her. I had made the mistake of thinking we were all in this together. She spoke to the head of the senior camp, the one that thought I was so difficult to pastor. I was told to stay away from the girls. Like I had sought them out in the first place.

Things were going from bad to worse and I didn’t want to be there anymore. My oldest daughter had just come back from a mission trip to Ghana. I talked to her on the phone. I asked the leader if she could visit me. He agreed. She drove three hours to camp and stayed in my group. The Senior camp leader liked her. He liked my whole family. He had met all of them, except for my husband.

He told me, “Your WHOLE family is SO awesome, they REALLY are…… but there is something wrong with you. There is something is wrong with YOU. I haven’t figured it out yet,there must be some sin in your life……but something is wrong with you.”

I have since come to realize what a demonic thing that was to say to me. He had no idea of my frailty in this area. Everyone ELSE is so awesome, but something is wrong with YOU. The devil had wanted to say that to me, maybe for a long time, and had found just the person to use

I just looked at him and said,

“Yeah, something’s wrong with ME, alright. I’m only the one that made sure my husband and kids went to church all these years. I’m the one that held Vacation Bible Schools in my house even after my kids had gone to three other ones that summer. I'm just the one that got on my knees and prayed, for years, until my daughter, the one you think is so awesome, recommitted her life to the Lord. Yeah, something’s sure wrong with ME alright! Whatevaaa!”

I sneered at him as I said it. I was getting mad. I was getting really sick of this. I was starting to get a serious attitude about the ignorant things that were being said to me. People needed to learn to keep their mouth shut around me if they didn’t have anything better to say than some ignorant, demonic, judgmental thing about my life of which they had no knowledge. The Lord has calmed me down now but after breaking me out of my shell, there was a swing to the other side of the pendulum for a time.

I figured that if he thought so highly of my daughter, I was going to take advantage of that. I asked if she could stay for the rest of the week and help me with my group. He said yes. Having her there was so much better. The girls really liked her and at times I would ask her if she could just take the girls so that I didn’t have to deal with the games and stuff. I didn’t even want to go to chapel anymore!

On the third day of camp, my band leader friend hurt his back during some kind of camp game his group was playing. By the time I heard about it he was already at the hospital. I asked the wife of the leader if I could go and visit him. She said yes. I asked if I could take one of the girls from my church who was in another group and was friends with the guy. She said yes! I was somewhat stunned at all the agreement I was getting. Maybe I was taking the onus off of them, and they didn’t have to go now.

He didn’t want to go home, so when he was returned to camp he was pretty much bed ridden for the rest of the week. He had pulled something. His counselor, who was a really nice Pastor from somewhere else, was trying to take care of the rest of his group and this kid too. I went up to him during breakfast and asked if I could take breakfast to my friend. He said yes! There was a rule about females being in Boys Town, including adult female counselors, but I got a free pass to visit him any time I wanted. I brought my CD player over there and played worship music for him. I brought him meals. He would sleep and I would just sit there. Listening to music. Reading. Hiding. This was my out. This was my comfort zone. I didn’t have to be a counselor. I could just be a mom. I was so glad when camp was over. I drove home with a van load of sleeping kids. I cried all the way. I’ve never been back. They didn't invite me and I didn't ask.

I didn’t tell you something about that picture in my gallery. The one of me smiling. That was taken at the very end of this week of camp. One of the reasons that picture means so much to me is that I knew how horrible the week had been but I still came up smiling at the banquet on the last night. The whole Yogi Bear blow up thing. I just kept popping back up.

We stayed at the church. We wanted to make it work. Where else could we go? If I went somewhere else I would probably need a reference from my pastor. At the very least, the new pastor would ‘klatch’ with the old and find out about me anyway. I felt very stuck. About a month after all the hullabaloo in the spring, my husband got a phone call. He had been on the usher team for several years and was suddenly asked to be the Head Usher. This was a big deal for him. I questioned the motive of the leadership to ask him but it hurt his feelings that I would think it was anything other than the fact that he was good at his job. He WAS good at his job, even today, when we are in a church setting his eyes are roaming and he is whispering to me about some window, some procedure, etc. He IS the usher MAN.

He took the job. The whole thing left me cold. I didn’t want to say anymore about it. He wanted me to be an usher woman. FORGET IT. Besides the fact that I don’t like being in front of people that much, I was terrified that I would trip and spill the whole plate of money all over the floor and make a complete dufus of myself! One day, at the yearly camp meeting, he was short a person and I caved in and did it, just for him. My fear almost came true when my foot hooked on one of the folding chairs off to the side and I almost went over. The change tinkled and the money almost fell. Yep! Right again! This job is definitely NOT for me! He chuckled about that and still wanted me to do it, but didn’t press anymore.

Life went into something of a routine at church after that. For the most part, people didn’t know about or question what had happened. One day during the summer, though, this woman I knew whose husband was a professor at the college, came up to me at a wedding we were at and asked what had happened to the worship group at my house. I could tell she already had some ideas. I begged off a little and said, “well, it’s a long story.” She really wanted to hear it, so I told her. After I was done I told her that I would give her a copy of the four page letter I had sent to each pastor and elder if she wanted it. She said, ‘no, that will only fuel my fire’. She was a very quiet woman and that was a lot for her to say. It gave me an indication of how she felt though. I am of the opinion that I am not the only one who has been through stuff with this church. At first I took it personally, now I know it wasn’t about me, it was about them.

I woke up the next day, Monday, feeling decidedly different. I knew it was the Lord, but I just can’t explain the feeling. My face looked better, well, except for a few broken vessels that Max Factor took care of, and I had had the best nights sleep in several days. I felt SO good in fact, that when I did my grocery shopping in the mid morning I picked up a ten pack of Reese Cups and put them in my cart. At 11:00am I stopped over at the high school.

I hadn’t been to the lunchroom since back before Christmas when my college daughter and I packed a brown bag lunch and went to the cafeteria to eat with the guys. The guys had been asking me to do that, thought it would be a hoot, me in there eating with them at this long row table they had shoved together to accommodate the Hardcore kids that ate at first lunch. Junior was oblivious to the invitations and didn’t know we were coming. When we showed up, so spontaneously like that, he high tailed it out of the cafeteria as fast as his cross country legs would take him. He truly was humiliated, so much so that he doesn’t laugh about it, even today, almost ten years later, when the story comes up. I think he’s forgiven me….it seemed like a fun thing to do at the time. I guess I was wrong.

Even though I had decided that what I had done that other day, way back in December was NOT a good idea, this day was different. Junior had graduated in the middle of his senior year so he wasn’t there anyway and was using the last half of the school year to work and get money for Bible College. He was glad to be out of the social aspect of high school and good riddance as far as he was concerned.

I was feeling SO good on this Monday after Easter, almost like a manic high after a deep low. I wasn’t bouncing off walls but, I felt peace, love, joy, all those good fruits of the Spirit feelings. I think I was just loving myself with the love that the Lord had for me, and it felt really good. I could feel myself glowing.

I KNOW how it felt! I just realized it just now as I am writing this. I’ve never thought of it this way! I felt like I was IN LOVE! It’s that exact same feeling! I’m not saying I’ve never felt ‘in love’ with the Lord before, oh no, I was always a little hyper like that. I guess the best way to describe it is like Theophileous’ drunkenness that he talks about on his blog. An amazing feeling. My cheeks were rosy like that first blush of love, I was smiling, joyful, and had a wonderful, every things all right with the world feeling that just pervaded my soul.

I fixed myself up. Curled my hair, put a little make up on, just enough to cover up the purple splotches around my eyes. I couldn’t stop smiling. I had this big grin on my face and I knew it was there even when I couldn’t see myself. I put on my long, black, wool coat. The one with the pin on the lapel. I looked like a different person from the day before. I think I was. I think I was different and I would never be the same girl I was before ever again.

I got out of the car with the Reese Cups and headed for the door into the cafeteria from the outside. I strutted over to the other side of the room. I could feel myself beaming like the sun. The guys saw me and their jaws dropped. They knew about the meeting, and they knew about some of my fears. They didn’t know everything , but they knew enough. They weren’t too sure what to make of this bright and shiny me.

“Hey, Con, what’s up?”

“You know very well ‘what’s up’”, I said in my most schoolmarish voice. I couldn’t hide the smirk.

They just looked at me, with dazed smiles of confusion on their face.

“I have a very important meeting tonight and I would like to know that each and every one of you are praying for me!” continuing in my schoolmarm tone. I was grinning so wide I thought my cheeks would crack.

“Are ya worried about it, Con?”

“Do I LOOK worried about it?”

“No, no, Con. You look good. You look real good. You’re doin’ real good, Con.”

“Thank you very much. Here is a reminder for each of you. When you eat them make sure you pray for me”

“Yeah, Con,…absolutely, whatever you want, you got it, Con.”

After school the band leader, the one who had, with me, been accused of having ‘inappropriate feelings for each other’ called me. He was worried.

“Whattaya gonna say, Con?”

“I don’t really know. You prayed, right?”

It was going into late afternoon and I was focused on dinner. Some fear tried to creep back on me and I just shrugged it off. As I got ready to go, fixed my hair and put on different clothes, I felt the apprehension returning. Not like the debilitating fear of the past weekend, just little nickerings of nervousness.

God had given me verse after verse over the weekend to strengthen me. If I listed them all here it would take up too much of the blog. Anyone that is interested can contact me and I will either do a separate blog or give it to them directly. It’s almost better, I think, that one finds it one their own, however, in a deep time of need. It becomes a rayma word to that person and they will never forget it. It is a powerful thing.

We live walking distance from the church but we drove over anyway. I could feel my hands going cold and my body was starting to tremble uncontrollably. I knew, even though my body was betraying me, that I had like this steel pole running down my spine. I may have felt like I was a scarecrow hanging off of it ready to fall if the pole was removed but it was still there. That strong pole ran through me and I could feel myself standing tall. Trembling, but tall. I knew I didn’t want to talk. I was afraid of talking too much, too fast, or my voice wavering and getting emotional. I wanted to appear strong, non-emotional, in complete control of my faculties, in this meeting of all men.

My husband and I walked into the low-ceilinged room to see a large square table, probably a combination of several large square tables put together, with seven or eight men sitting around it. There were three pastors and four elders, I think. I can’t remember. All I remember is that as a woman, an emotional one at that, this was the most intimidating situation I had ever been in. The youth pastor looked uncomfortable. The Senior Pastor looked stern. The Associate Pastor looked me in the eyes and I saw compassion. The elders didn’t look at me. My husband and I sat down in the chairs at the head of the table with the rest of them spaced around the table all facing us. I felt like I was in a courtroom ready to testify.

My husband and I had come in the hopes of whatever the problem was we could work it out. No one wanted peace more than we did. His father had done the legal work on the groundbreaking of the tabernacle where services were held until the new multimillion dollar building was constructed. While we were just a quiet, hardworking, mind our own business couple, our name was still known by the leadership on this campus. The pastor had never known Papa but the elder Elder did. Subconsciously I was hoping that would count for something.

There was a minute of pleasantries that left me vaguely disconcerted. Let’s get down to business. One by one the ‘rules’ were laid out. I was given a piece of paper and a pencil and told to write them down. Like a school girl in the principals office. Follow these rules or we are going to have to discipline you.

1.) You may not change the time or day of the Saturday worship without first getting approval from the Youth Pastor.

I didn’t understand this one. Yeah, I had changed the day sometimes but was always careful not to conflict with any scheduled YG event even when it was on Saturday. I wrote it down and nodded that I was okay with that.

2.) You may not have any events at your house or elsewhere that has not been approved by the Youth Pastor prior to planning.

This rule took enough time out the meeting all by itself trying to figure out what is a Hardcore event, what isn’t, and when is mine and my families life private and when is it not. I was told that this included impromptu get togethers and kids just stopping over unexpectedly. I was informed that if they did come, I could call the Youth Pastor, ask if they could stay and if he said no, then I should ‘cheerfully’ send them home.

Wait, a minute. Wasn’t this MY home? My husbands and mine? What was THIS?

I told them that I considered these kids my friends, my son’s friends, and they weren’t just ‘the Youth’ to me. They were a big part of our family life. I said that I felt that if they did or did not come over that was a decision between them and their parents. Not the church. I also said that I would never hand over responsibility for the control of my child to the leadership of any church (I was referring to the boy with the inconsistent parents). I said that I did not believe that it was the churches right or responsibility to decide or even tell parents where their children could or could not go. I said that the Bible was clear that they should come to me first if they had a problem with me and then, as with any person in the church they can contact the elders. No parent had ever approached me first.

It appeared we were not finding any common ground on this so we decided after an hour of discussing it to leave it for a while.

3.) Every ministry you are involved with will be under the headship of the church or you are not involved.

Okay, now this is becoming a problem. I looked at the Associated Pastor. He looked like he was in severe pain. His face was contorted but he didn’t speak. I thought I might tear up so I looked away. I looked at the youth pastor. He seemed to be shrinking in his seat. In a minute he would be under the table. The elders just sat there not saying a word.

I said, “I don’t think I can follow that rule either.”

I told them that there was no doubt in anyone’s mind, including mine, that they were referring to the band. I told them that it was okay to ask but to insist in this way was going further than trying to control our private lives in our home. I told them that this was not scriptural and that when they could prove to me that it was, I would reconsider the rule. I was told to withdraw my support and leave it to the kids to make the decision whether to move in my direction or not. I told them that they would move on inspite of me and that wasn’t the issue. I told them that I press hard after God, not after a bunch of kids. I told them that the decision was not theirs to make, it was mine. I told them that I felt I was being coerced into making the ‘wise’ choice but it felt more like intimidation.

The Senior Pastor was getting really mad now. His face got beet red and he stood to his full 6’4” height. He leaned across the table kitty corner and put his finger in my face. He said,

“You will follow these rules or you will no longer be a youth leader in this church”

I looked straight at him. I wasn’t mad, I was confused.

I said, “I never asked to be a youth leader in this church or anywhere else. You asked me, remember? I don’t need to be a youth leader. I am a mother, just a mother, a professional mother.

He sat down. He was so angry I thought he was going to bust something. I think he thought he had me on that one. I think he had expected me to cave in to the rules in order to keep my position in the church. This was not the answer he wanted, but even more than that, this was not the answer he expected.

He said, “If you don’t follow these rules a letter will be written to every parent in the church telling them that you are ‘rebellious and unsubmissive to authority’”

I started to crack. My eyes got teary and my voice quivered uncontrollably.

“You can’t do that. That is a lie. I am not rebellious. I am not. You can’t say that because it’s not true.”

I looked at the Associate Pastor. He knew me…. he knew my heart. He knew how my whole life was wrapped up in children. He was the one that told me to ‘go for it’ in the beginning when I called him. I wanted him to say something. To stand up for me. To tell them they were wrong and he knew me and I wasn’t what they were saying and he would explain……..

He sat there like a stone, his eyes looking so sad, his eyebrows furrowed together, looking so concerned. I knew what he wanted. He cared about me. I knew he did. But he wanted me to cave. He cared about me, but he wanted me to cave.

I could not believe they would defame my reputation like this. I had lived in this town for over twenty five years. This little hick town that I never wanted to live in anyway. This must be a bad dream. I could accept their ‘rules’ and let them take headship over our home, my life, over my husbands rightful spot, or I could be branded rebellious for the rest of my life in this stupid town. The elder to my left saw me wipe a tear and said,

“Let’s not get emotional now”

I turned and looked at him, then I looked around at all these men staring at me. All of a sudden something rose up in me and I got mad.

“You invited ME here. I AM A WOMAN. When you invite a WOMAN in the room you INVITE emotion.”

No one said a word. Down to a man they were all married. They knew I was right. Maybe knew I was right about the rules too, they just couldn’t say so.

We went through the rest of the rules. Nothing else seemed that important anymore. I already knew I was out. The meeting had started at 6pm and it was 10. The pastor told me to take the rules home and consider them. I folded the paper and gave him the pencil. All the elders gathered around us, laid hands on us and prayed for us to have ‘wisdom’. I just wanted to go home, but when I heard that I mumbled ‘amen’ under my breath. “Wisdom, Lord, I’m receiving that!”

We went home and the more I thought about it the madder I got. After I cooled off and we were getting in bed my husband said that maybe we should have accepted the ‘no one can come to the house rule’.

“WHAT?”

He snickered and said, “We’ll just call them every single time the door bell rings and it’ll drive them nuts!”

I said, “What about the ones that just walk in and head for the fridge?”

He laughed and said, “We’ll call ‘em then too.”

I was still upset but the presence of the Lord I woke up with that morning was still strong and my husbands levity reminded me that my issues were so small. We chuckled together and drifted off to sleep. Sweet sleep. “He gives His beloved sleep.” Ps. 127:2