Why I Do It

Tomorrow is my Bible Study and I am gearing myself up for it. By this I mean that I finished all the study questions and I am trying to decide what to wear. I don't want to look like I am trying too hard, but my daily attire is usually jeans and Doc Martins and either a long sleeve t-shirt with a sweater over it or a long sleeve t-shirt with a short sleeve t-shirt over it (depending on whether or not I've recently been to a concert. Remember in high school when you would go to a concert and buy a t-shirt and have to wear it the next day? Well, I never really out-grew that. The day after I went to see Casting Crowns with my daughter and her best friend and her best friend's mother who is one of my best friends, I wore my t-shirt. On the front it says, "My crown belongs to Jesus." It was interesting to see the reactions I got. The girl at Starbucks who took my coffee order said, "Hey. Love the shirt." Some people looked at it and got surly...like I was going to try to "save" them immediately. I still try to wear that shirt to places where I think I will get the most reaction. In most cases it does improve the service I receive because no one wants to mess with a crazy Jesus-lady. It's bad for one's karma, man.)

Anyway, needless to say, with that attire and my short hair and my rectangular purple Prada glasses I look like a lesbian, albeit an artsy one. That's fine with me, but I am afraid that the women in the Bible Study would be scared. You have to dress for your audience, you know. So I will probably wear something less subtly confrontational. I have to mention here that in one of the first weeks of our study the "lecture" dealt with the abomination that is homosexuality and that it is not just morally wrong but perverted and unnatural. The lecturer then told us that her brother practiced homosexuality for years until he was "saved" and now he's okay with the Lord. I honestly couldn't believe that she was saying this OUT LOUD to a crowd of 250 women! Surely someone was going to be offended. Especially since our lecturer looks like a line-backer sized Ellen DeGeneres and wears white shirtwaists and a navy blazer every day. Talk about a closet case! Then she mentioned that she went to school on a volleyball scholarship and I almost lost it. However, I am sure that she is not a lesbian...but the visual is really funny.

In my small group I always notice what people are wearing. There is one woman in there that is about 6 feet tall and really blond and she dresses like a really wealthy hippie. She wears jeans with wool socks and UGG clogs and weirdly beautiful over sized hand-knit sweaters and ponchos in the damndest color combinations. She doesn't wear any make-up and her skin looks like she has spent a lot of time in the sun and wind. I bet she cross-country skis home. And her hair! It looks like a drunk monkey cut it...it's all chunky and sticks out all over and looks really, really dry. You know what else? She's gorgeous. She's just so genuine. Her faith is strong and not conceited. She has real questions and really listens when others are talking. She seems so content in her own body and with herself in general. She makes me uncomfortable because of this. So, imagine my reaction when she followed me out of our group meeting into the sanctuary for the lecture last week! She said, "I just thought we could visit for a little bit." I was thinking, "Oh great. What am I going to talk to Suzy Chapstick about?"

She asked about my dad because the group knows that I don't get together with them for the planned fellowship times because I try to help give my mom a break and hang out with my Alzheimer's stricken father on various weekday afternoons. I always make sure to sound like I would really LIKE to come to the fellowship things, but I can't because of this obligation to my family. Poor me, with the sick dad and the lack of free time, blah, blah, blah.

Well, we talked a little and then the lecture started. I always leave a little early to go and pick up Bronte from school, so right before I had to go I turned to this beautiful hippie and said, "See you next week."

She put her hand on my arm and leaned in towards me, looked in my eyes and sweetly said, "Enjoy this time with your father."

You know what? I almost started to cry. She was gently reminding me that this time with my dad is a gift. A GIFT. I get so frustrated with him and so angry that he has Alzheimer's. I am so sad that he doesn't know who I am anymore. I get annoyed listening to his same stories over and over. But I took him bowling once and he remembered that he used to enjoy bowling and for 10 frames he was happy and felt good. That was a GIFT. He still hugs me and says, "Thanks for having me over," every time he leaves my house. That is a GIFT. When my kids kiss and hug him goodbye and he picks them up and kisses them and they smile at him and throw their arms around his neck...well, that is the biggest gift of all.

That is what I got out of Bible Study last week. That gentle reminder from someone I hardly know stayed with me all week.

Heal Me!!

Well, I went to my Bible study yesterday. As you know, I am the secretary for our discussion group so I was all ready with my Sharpie...I mean, sharpened pencil so I could make the appropriate checks in the boxes (but not outside the lines!). The nice thing about being the secretary is that I have a really good excuse to look at everyone. I pretend to be looking at every person's name tag (yes, we have to wear name tags. I can't believe I never mentioned it before. They are the size of one of those big over-sized index cards and they hang around our necks with a thin satin ribbon. On the front is our first and last names and on the back we have the name of our discussion group leader and we had to write out our emergency contact information. And it's laminated. I assume that is in case I get so carried away with religious fervor that I go into convulsions and they can't do a "Benny Hinn" and heal me on the spot. This group is so backward I bet they have an emergency cache of leeches somewhere just in case someone needs to be bled. In any case, I feel like a moron wearing this huge name tag around my neck, but if I don't wear it then they give me a big stick-on one. I know this because I am constantly leaving mine in my car...and the woman who stands at the desk checking for name tags always catches me and makes me wear the stick on one. She always gives me a dirty look too. She probably thinks I use my special laminated name tag to cut my cocaine and I've just left it at home on my mirror.)

Anyway, so I am looking at every one's name tags, but I also secretly look at what they are wearing. Just to amuse myself I check a different item of clothing or accessory every week. One week I counted that 8 out of the 12 of us wear glasses. Another week I noticed that I was the only one wearing gym shoes. (Yesterday someone else was wearing gym shoes too...the first time anyone but me was wearing them! However, since she wore them with black socks I don't think they were functional gym shoes.) So, yesterday I was looking at people's necklaces. Guess what? Everyone but me had on a variation of the same necklace. A Star of David.

Ha! Ha! Just kidding.

Actually, everyone had on a cross. Except me. It's not that I don't own a cross necklace. Actually, Tony gave me a beautiful diamond cross once for absolutely no reason. I think it was after one of those discussions we had about how frustrating it is for me, a Christian, to be married to him, an atheist. I think he got it for me so I wouldn't run off with a preacher or something. No, really. I mentioned to him once how in the church I attended in high school our (married) youth pastor impregnated a 20 year old in our congregation and left his wife to marry this girl. The funny thing is, he was moved to another church in the Chicago area and a couple of years later he left the girl he impregnated from my church for a newly impregnated girl in his new church! I tell you, that man was full of Christian love! Preachers run off with people all the time! Isn't that what happened in The Thorn Birds?

So, everyone is wearing a cross, but not me because the clasp on my necklace is broken. I haven't worn a necklace in weeks. However, yesterday I was wearing one. Here's the funny part...Bronte has gymnastics on Wednesday afternoons and you aren't supposed to wear jewelry to class. Well, Bronte is always perfectly accessorized and on Wednesday she had on a necklace, which they made her take off. I just put it around my neck because I was afraid it would get broken in my purse. Needless to say, I had forgotten to take the thing off and was proudly wearing it in Bible study. I had on a white crew neck long sleeve t-shirt and Bronte's necklace was quite visible on it. The necklace spells out in half inch high letters encrusted with really sparkly black stones: ROCKSTAR.

Isn't that great? It reminds me of the time I went to a school district sponsored meeting for Gifted teachers and parents of kids in the Gifted program. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss the gifted program as it exists and see how it is working for the students and teachers and see what the pros and cons are. Well, people were talking about how their children didn't like being called "gifted" and couldn't we do away with that label, blah, blah, blah...like being smart is something to be ashamed of! I was pissed off because I thought we were there to talk about actual issues, not stupid minutia like what to call the program and labeling kids "gifted" etc. So I raised my hand to express this. Well, in the middle of my little speech in which I was basically saying that if the meeting was going to be about the pros and cons of calling our bright children "gifted" then this was a waste of my time because I wanted to make the program better before my next smart kid qualified for gifted, I realized how warm the room was. So, everyone was already looking at me as I unzipped my sweat jacket and took it off so I was just wearing my t-shirt. After I got done with my little speech about how stupid the discussion had been so far I dropped my pencil and had to bend down to get it. As I did so, I realized what t-shirt I was wearing. I had on a shirt that my friend Laura got me for my birthday one year as a joke. It says in big blue letters, "My kid is a genius".

So, in the spirit of wearing inappropriate clothing, I think I will wear a "Jews for Jesus" t-shirt to Bible study next week. Anyone know where I can get one?

Get your freak on

I am not a morning person. Anyone who has been with me in the morning knows that. My husband, who ought to know that, continually acts all chipper around me in the morning and I think he expects me to respond in kind in spite of the fact that after almost 8 years of marriage the nicest thing I've ever said to him before 9:00 a.m. was, "Go look in the drier, you have underwear in there."

Yesterday morning I woke up and had to get ready for church. I was running late, as usual, and I had a headache. Tony came upstairs to the bathroom where I was standing in front of the mirror looking at myself shaking my head and thinking, "Good thing I don't have my glasses on right now because I'm sure that if I could see myself in focus I would cry considering how shitty I look blurry," and he asked me if I wanted coffee. Stupid question. To be honest with you, I think he just does that to annoy me. There has never been a morning in the history of time that I have not wanted coffee. (Last year I flew (yes, on an airplane) to Kansas City for a Christian Music Conference. I went with 2 other women from my church and we were there to scope out music for the Children's Choir. In any case, we were all supposed to stay in the same room because that was what the church would pay for, and one of the women was all for that. She thought we would stay up late and watch movies and talk and braid each other's hair...but, being grownups and all, the third woman and I decided to get our own damn rooms and pay for them ourselves. In any case, there was one of those stupid little coffee makers in the room so you could make 2 cups of the crappiest coffee in the world in the comfort of your own room every morning and even though it was the worst coffee ever, I made it and drank it every morning we were there. However, I discovered that it tasted A LOT better with Bailey's in it. Believe me, if you ever go to a Christian music conference in Kansas City, you are going to want to have Bailey's in your morning coffee. It takes the edge off. Being surrounded by so much piety is nerve wracking. There was a short worship service every morning before we split off to go to our individual classes and people were standing up and swaying with their hands in the air. I took to bringing little bottles of Bailey's in my purse for emergency purposes.)

Anyway, so Tony comes back up to the bathroom, hands me my coffee and says, "Britney Spears shaved her head." Then he walked out of the bathroom. As he was walking downstairs I heard him query, "Can you believe it?"

What I couldn't believe was simply this...the first thing Tony said to me yesterday was about Britney Spears. He was the one who was so disgusted that the CNN webpage had the news about Britney partying with no underwear on as their lead story! Yet Tony himself made Britney his own front page news, didn't he? That just cracks me up. Now maybe Tony can see why Britney's crotch made the front page; it seems like she is newsworthy. Plus, now her curtains match her carpet, or whatever that stupid saying is. Know what I mean?

So, off I went to church without a thought in my head about Britney and her baldness. But, later on that afternoon when I saw a picture of her in the paper I decided to call my friend Laura and see what her take on it was. When I broke the news to her all she said was, "She's a freak."

I have to disagree with that. Michael Jackson is a freak. Tom Cruise is a freak. Mike Tyson is a freak. Britney Spears is just stupid. First of all, she doesn't even have a pretty enough face to go bald. What the hell was she thinking? Second of all, she has two babies at home and I am starting to think that Kevin Federline should grab them and leave the country pronto so Britney's stupidity doesn't rub off on them too much. How pathetic is that? I think Kevin no-talent-needs-a-belt-and-a-job Federline is the better parent! Those kids are doomed.

I can't wait to see why Britney shaved her head. She can't chalk that up to "being Southern, y'all" because I don't see a lot of bald women traipsing around Georgia. Maybe she's just trying take the attention off her horrible taste in clothes. If that girl has a stylist then that stylist must be a blind, drunk 21 year old boy.

So, what do you think...freak or stupid?

So far this week there has been a lot of exciting celebrity and pseudo-celebrity news. A female astronaut planned to kidnap and kill a fellow astronaut over the affections of a third. (Yet, strangely enough every single account of her story worked the fact that this deluded woman drove from her home in Texas to Florida wearing a diaper so she wouldn't have to stop to pee. Seriously, it was in the first sentence of some of the accounts. Like that proves she was crazy or something! To me, it just shows her determination.) In another "crazy Texan" story--the governor of Texas is trying to pass legislation that all 6th grade girls need to have the HPV shot. Needless to say, he is getting some flak for that. (Also, now that I have managed to call Texans crazy, I know that my friend with the Texan girlfriend will NEVER give her the link to my blog. However, if she actually had a chance to read my blog she might see that I insult EQUALLY and FAIRLY. I'm not saying that all Texans are crazy, just that the precedent has been set this past week so we should all be on the lookout.) Also, Anna Nicole Smith died. I think it was from the shock that her 15 minutes of fame lasted as long as it did.

The biggest news for me, however, was that the last Harry Potter book is coming out in July. This tremendous news was closely followed by naked pictures of Daniel Radcliffe (the actor who plays Harry in the movies) on the Internet. Turns out he is kicking the "child star" moniker by appearing in the stage play "Equus" in which he has a ten minute nude scene. Yep, he's totally naked on stage for ten minutes. He plays a stable hand (hence the horse in the photo above) who blinds a bunch of horses with a metal spike. I don't think he does this while he's naked, but...kidding. There's a love scene of some sort which I hope doesn't involve a horse, but that would be a hell of a way to shed that Harry Potter albatross, wouldn't it?? Now, I searched all over the Internet for a naked picture of Daniel Radcliffe, but couldn't find one to save my life. And I REALLY looked. (in the interest of this post, of course)

Now there is talk about this production coming to the States (it's only in London now). I figure if this happens it will definitely come to Chicago and I am SOOOOO going. I know it sounds weird that I would want to go see some 17 year old actor naked in a play, but the nudity is really beside the point. I just want to see Daniel Radcliffe act in something that doesn't involve a wand. (Go ahead and fill in the punch line here. I set it up for you.) Honestly, who really wants to see any man completely naked? The male body isn't that gorgeous naked. I would rather see a man just shirtless than all the way nude. Ask my husband about this...he'll vouch for me. (Ha!)

This leads me to the last interesting news story this week. Did you see the Super Bowl? Well, Prince did his half-time thing and when he had his guitar shaped like his stupid symbol and they put up the big white sheet with his shadow projected on it some people thought that in silhouette, the guitar looked phallic. My husband actually commented on this while we were watching the Super Bowl and I thought he was the only one who would think that. (Well, maybe all the 12 year old boys would too) Anyway, I guess NBC or ABC or whoever broad casted the stupid game has received some complaints.

All I know is, I would rather look at Prince's pretend penis than Janet Jackson's real nipple.

Pass me the Sharpie, baby.

You know what? This Bible study I am in is pretty much poised to kick me out, I think. Therefore, I do not feel bad about breaking yet another of their many rules. The rule I am going to break is the one that tells me I am not supposed to talk about the contents of the study guide and I am not to divulge what the questions for group discussion are. Honestly! It's like being in "Fight Club". ("The first rule of Fight Club is, you do not talk about fight club. The second rule of fight club is, you DO NOT talk about fight club. Apparently, none of the rules of fight club were you have to be as hot as Brad Pitt to be in fight club...or else it would have been a one member club. He was so incredible looking in that movie that he wasn't even a real person. If you have questions about this analogy then you obviously haven't seen the movie. Go rent it. Brad Pitt never looked finer. Unfortunately, I think Angelina is bringing him down. He doesn't look as good as he did with Jennifer. Too much traveling, I'd guess. They need to start adopting locally.)
Anyway. As I was saying, members of my Bible Study aren't supposed to talk about what we talk about within the walls of the church. I don't really get that, but I have been fairly respectful of that rule so far just because I have been learning so much and I am generally not a huge rule breaker. For example, I am the "secretary" of our 15 woman discussion group. All I have to do is take 2 attendance sheets with every one's names on it and make a check-mark in the little box under the meeting date if they are there. Pretty easy stuff, right? Not for this group. I swear to you I am telling the truth when they held a special little meeting for all of us "secretaries" to make sure we knew what we were doing. We were told always to use the pencil provided with the sheets. We were told to lay one of the sheets outside the door to our room with the pencil on top of it so the sheet could be picked up by the "head honcho secretary". Then we were told that if someone came in late we needed to go outside, get the sheet and mark them present. Under no circumstances was the late-comer to mark herself present because (and I shit you not) she might do it wrong! Then they told us how to make the check marks!! No kidding. They are not to go outside of the box. Check marks only, no "X". At the end of all this ridiculousness, they asked if there were any questions. Get this---5 women raised their hands. Honest to God, they had questions. I started to laugh and left the room.
So, let me tell you about the question in my discussion guide that is going to get me kicked out of Bible study. We are talking about the book of Romans and how Paul was telling the Roman churches that the only way to eternal life at the right hand of God is through your faith in His Son, Jesus Christ. No matter how much you followed the laws (like sacrifices and circumcision, etc.), following the laws alone was not going to get you to heaven. Only faith in Jesus would. So then we surmised that this was targeted towards the Jews who were the sons of Abraham, i.e. the "chosen" ones. OK, so one of the questions in my study guide was something about the promises God made to the Jews in the Old Testament...but since the Jews as a whole rejected Jesus Christ did that mean that God's promises to Israel failed? So far, so good. I have no beef with that because the main point was that God did give Israel the Law and chose them to be the receivers of many advantages. But, God also gave them (and everyone else who believed) Jesus.
Right. I'm okay up to now, but the next question on my discussion sheet caused me to gasp audibly and start shaking with anger. Here is the question, word for word:

What is your attitude toward Jews, and how could you help more of them to become believers?

Wait a minute!! What is my attitude towards Jews? Are you talking to me, or to a drunk Mel Gibson? Who am I to have an attitude toward anyone? Did we not cover the material in Romans a few weeks ago that said that God is the only one with the right to judge anyone?? I was so pissed off! Then, the idiot women in my group started answering it. SERIOUSLY!! ("Well, I don't know any Jews myself, but I wish I did." "I have a Jewish sister-in-law and it just pains me when I see her." "If I knew any Jews, I would love to ask them what they DO believe in so I could introduce them to the truth of Christ.") I just sat there with my mouth gaping open and finally I said something like, "What the hell kind of question is this? What does this mean...my attitude towards Jews? Are we supposed to have an "attitude" towards people?"
All these women started looking at me like I was a leper. Not just a leper, but one with Tourette's who was saying, "Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck..." over and over. If I had said that I think I would have gotten the same reaction. They TOTALLY turned on me and told me it was my duty to preach to Jews. It was my calling! I was turning my back on God's word! Yadda, yadda, yadda.
I just sat there silent the rest of the time, glaring at everyone. They just pity me, which makes me even madder because they are too stupid to see why that question was offensive! I don't want to be pitied by stupid people!!
In any case, next week I am going to put "X"s on the attendance sheets. In pen. It's just a matter of time before they kick me out.