Not Silent

I've been thinking quite a bit on last weekend and how my blog went crazy. I got so much positive feedback from people saying, "You are saying what I am thinking","Your experience is the same as mine".

As I'm sorting through my emotions our family therapist was so polite, instead of saying your emotional from the immense amount of transitions you and your family have experienced  in the last 4 months ...  she said "Your emotions are dis-regulated."  You gotta love her!

I have not come to the conclusion that the easy path would be to put it all behind us. Least said soonest mended!  First Peter 4:8 comes to mind. At GFA I recall David Carroll serving this verse up (I'm paraphrasing) that if we are noble enough to love another, we protect our brothers and sister by covering their sin and not exposing it.  This is so reasonable, so easy to swallow.  Who would want their sin to be exposed? Not me! Do you?  Inherently we are human and want to keep the ugliness of our lives from being exposed.  It sounds so good doesn't it, I don't expose my family to pain by covering the sins with love.  This covering is a action of love ergo if I love my family I keep sin a secret.

But we have a family rule of No secrets. (This protects our kids from predators).
How do I reconcile this?

I believe this is one place that spiritual pain/confusion is originating from.  Here is a sampling of the thoughts running around my brain:

I love my GFA family "covering sin" loves them.
We are all sinners I need to forgive.
I don't want to hurt my GFA family.
If I stay quiet they won't hurt me.
If I speak out I have to show the world my errors and eat humble pie.
It's so easy to be silent.
It is what leadership desires.
Christ is my leader not man, I need to follow only him.

I wonder how many other ex-staffers are feeling this way?

I felt like a hamster in the running wheel, my thoughts whirl around me, running running but getting nowhere.  Much energy was spent on this thought train. Until the wedding dis-invite I thought if I stayed quiet they wouldn't hurt me or my family. I was wrong. That kicked me out of the infinite loop and into new thought patterns.

We left when we felt our integrity was at stake.  Core value number 2: Being a people of integrity and excellence.   I see the pain in my Knights eyes, how he feels like he has wasted 12 years of our life. How he feels like he has lied to people.  It had become a burden to him.  He believed in what we were doing so strongly. How could our leaders who hold these core values do this to him?

I know not all of these core values are going to be upheld at all times, we are human after all.  Deep in my soul I felt grieved each time my community did not show trust to us. For example this post  The Joy Thief  which I was "encouraged" but not required to take down because it "hurt people" and not "good for the ministry at this time." I find it so ironic that what got us thinking about trust and how important it is to any business for profit or not, was books from the ministries library.  (This library is full of required or recommended reading and only contains books the president has read himself.)

We used to check out a book before a long trip and I would read it to my husband. This is following the example of my parents. My mother always read to my father while he drove and discussed the material. My father and her had lively discussions every road trip we took.  Little did we  know we were bucking the norm at GFA. Leadership wives are encouraged to NOT be at all interested in the inner workings of the stuff at the top.  I recall KP coming to me after a Tuesday night prayer meeting  to encourage me about the report my husband had turned in.  He told me it was wonderful and I should be proud of him. I laughed and mentioned how I managed to cut it down by 6 pages, so he didn't have to wade though so much verbiage. His head came up and he stared at me. So I continued and said "You don't think anything hits your desk without me proof reading it do you? He is so wordy." His response was Ohhhh...

Later on when my husband was peremptorily assigned to the Ministry Leadership Team one of the things KP told leaders as Standard Operating Procedure to do was to not tell their wives anything regarding stuff at the top.  Is this the CIA???   I recall from the pulpit KP declared he never told Gisela anything, none of the burdens of his leadership were shared with her.  It was off putting to me, and made me understand KP's response to my "proof reading/editing of my Knights reports. Ohhh we bad... We didn't roll that way, our marriage is based on love, trust, and respect.  It is not respectful to say to your wife "Don't worry your pretty little head" while patting it, this is 2015!  This attitude of keeping people in ignorance further drives wedges in between groups, husbands and wives, men and women, ministry and church. I could see deep down a pattern of distrust that was repeating.

I could not shake the distrust displayed from the top and the core values we were all trying to follow.
Source: gfa.org

1. Knowing the Lord Jesus more fully and intimately
2. Being a people of integrity and excellence
3. Living in submission to God’s Word
4. Being a people of faith
5. Being a people committed to prayer and worship
6. Having a servant lifestyle
7. Being a people of grace and love
8. Serving sacrificially
9. Being a people sold out to win the lost at any cost
10. Being a people who work together with the Body of Christ

If you cannot trust people reaching for such lofty goals can you really trust anyone?

The Joys and Sorrows of Cooking With Children

Heart Of Dakota on Facebook posted some suggestions of what to do with your kids for breakfast. Since that first meal can set the tone of the day.

I replied saying I had trained my kiddos to make their own breakfast since I have a grumpy Gus, she has to be hooked up to her Vest Airway System for 20 minutes each morning. Letting her have control over this aspect of her life is beneficial for all parties involved. Not to mention the added benefit that Little Miss Sunshine now makes smashing omelets, and Sweet Potato makes great tho slightly wet scrambled eggs.

I have to admit this road was paved by my Mom. Can you guess who the grumpy Gus was in her house...can you? Huh Huh Huh? I was beyond annoying in the morning. I was hard to get out of bed and not fun to be around before 10am.  Oddly enough when Mom put breakfast squarely in my hands I became the pancake maker for my siblings. Looking back on the wisdom of my ancestors elders, I have followed suit.

I have to admit it took a good year to transition to self made breakfast.

The Sorrows... 

Look at that nice tiny dice and she's only 10!

 I lost sniff sniff my best beloved Calphalon Omelet pan in the process. I live in hope that when they grow up and realize how much one of those costs, they replace it. It's fine for other things now but no longer suitable for making omelets.

Letting kids in the kitchen means you will have large messes to clean up, and they might lose a bit of fingernail in the process. I'm a believer in giving a kid a SHARP knife to cut with. Once they have the mechanics of cutting down. Imho DULL knives cause more injuries than sharp ones. Sharp knives cut, dull ones slip off the red bell pepper and into child's hand, leading to a run to the bathroom for band-aids.

Was once a butter dish! Smashed 5 days after post. 

Don't forget if it's glass, it is going to break, expect things to fall and smash beautifully while your all walking around with bare feet.

They will put the $10.99 a pound cheese in their omelet and not leave any for you, because "MOM this Cheese is fantastic."  You will run out of eggs halfway though the week when you have no more money in the food budget envelope, because they burned them, dropped them and/or left them out.

Not to mention the time it takes to train them! When you can do it faster, and more efficiently by just kicking them out of the kitchen.  It's not easy having that little one with sticky fingers touching all the drawers and handles that will need to be cleaned up after. You know your not gonna be happy till all the honey is off the fridges handle, And your going to be the one to clean it. But as they age up they actually start putting away the eggs with out being told. Even soaking the pans.

The Joys...
The hard work of training them is beginning to pay off. No longer are my quiet times reminiscent of Nehemiah's emergency prayer requests. Quiet Time is in the morning before I get out of bed. I grab my itouch  and open up my bible reading program and read, think, pray. It's fabulous I can't believe I'm 62%  done on my bible reading plan!  It helps me be a slightly more patient Mom, and it gets me more awake and functioning. So I can face the math! Cause lets face it I'm still not really wake before 10am still! 

I have found my kids will eagerly show off their egg cooking skills, and make me a tasty breakfast in bed. Unlike some of the nasty burnt creations of my child hood. Those I lovingly carried up to my parents room. BTW Mom/Dad I'm so sorry for all the nasty eggs you had to secretly feed to the cat. My kids make food you can eat, delish even.

Allowing the freedom to fail, leads to creativity in the kitchen. It's amazing the MEALS yes I did say meals Little Miss Sunshine will make. I'm so proud of her when she asks to make dinner at 10 years of age.

Frying up spices to replenish our Garam Masala spice jar.

They can cook... think when they go to college they can cook for all their friends. Who are resorting to Raman cup-o-soup. 

They appreciate food more. If I made Sweet Potato eat eggs everyday for a week she would have a whine fest. Yet this same child can make herself eggs for 10 days in a row without complaint. Odd isn't it??? I think this falls under Giving Voice, in the ideal parenting model.  Like Burger King they can have it their way everyday as long as they clean up afterward. 

I now have helping hands, yes the pieces of green bell pepper may not be cut into OCD precise cubes, but hey you didn't have to cut them up!

I'm making memories, of failures fixed by a dash of this and that, or standing by and letting them cook it all by themselves. That first loaf of bread or batch of cookies they did while you "spotted" them in the kitchen.

The joy you feel when Daddy praises you for a great dish, and you nod your chin at the children and you coyly say "They made it." I swear their little faces beam back at you.
 
Update: Yup we have had a glass smash! added photos :-)