For the past week or so, a lively debate has been taking place on the internet between Christians who believe it’s okay to refer to God with feminine pronouns, and Christians who believe that it’s not. I say “lively debate,” but that’s a poor description. What I have seen has been some debate, but mostly a situation in which Rachel Held Evans, who dared two years ago to use the phrase “God herself” in a blog post (and whose career is built on questioning gender expectations within the church), was turned into a punching bag, swung at mercilessly by the twin fists of I AM RIGHT and YOU ARE WRONG. The problem with treating someone as a punching bag has nothing to do with…
Living and Parenting as a Liberal Feminist Christian
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When Chalupa and I had been married for five years, we started marriage counseling. Your first reaction might be to think that our marriage was in trouble, or that after five years of being together, we were hitting some hard times. That wasn’t really the case at all. I’ve always heard so many people talk about how rough the first year of marriage is on a relationship. For Chalupa and me, it wasn’t hard at all. I think we only fought four or five times in our first several years of marriage. We eased well into sharing a life and a home. I wanted a dog and he didn’t, but otherwise, we were in good shape. We both had jobs we liked–he worked at…
Categories: Uncategorized
Tagged: Chalupa, chronic illness, counseling, marriage, marriage counseling, relationships
Moms, don’t let anyone make you feel guilty about the things they think you’re doing too much or too little of! Have fun with your kids in all the ways you want to, and if that includes television, then that includes television. It certainly does for us, and as you can see, I don’t think our lives are lacking one bit!
Categories: Parenting
I was working on a post this week about why Chalupa and I choose to have our children “dedicated” at church. For the unfamiliar, a baby dedication is kind of like a baptism for denominations that don’t believe in infant/child baptism. I have some thoughts on why we had Ruthie dedicated and why we’ll do the same for Neville next week, but I thought a more urgent blog post was this: what is it like for new parents to go to church. This is a step-by-step manual explaining how to go to church if you are me and you have a four-year-old, a baby, and a chronically ill husband. 1) Get up “early” on Sunday morning to nurse the baby and ask your husband…
Tagged: babies, Chalupa, church, instructions, Neville, Ruthie, step-by-step
At a writers’ conference I went to a few years ago, there was a session on finding time to write when you’re a mom. I attended, excited to hear from these women who were making it work. At the time, I had a two-year-old daughter. I had written a book when she was a baby, but that was during grad school. I had strict deadlines and an office I could go to during the day. Now that grad school was over and I was working full time as an English instructor, it was harder and harder to find the time I needed to write. My creative work was languishing. The only things I had time to read were student papers. The conference session…
Categories: Parenting
I have started researching and writing a new book this month! Three years ago, I completed my MFA with a thesis manuscript about leaving fundamentalism. It’s a narrative of my time in Nepal with Teen Mania Ministries when I was just 16 years old, and how, as an adult, I tried to make sense of the complexities of that experience. I love the book that I wrote, and I would love to see it published. Unfortunately, I get the same feedback about it that some of my other friends have gotten about their narratives about faith communities: not Christian enough for Christian publishers, too Christian for non-religious publishers. In light of that difficulty getting someone to take on Teen Maniac, I’m tackling a new…
Categories: Teaching
All About Ann, A documentary about former Texas Governor Ann Richards premiered on HBO this week. Before watching the documentary, I didn’t know much about Ann Richards, aside from the fact that she was a Democratic governor of Texas and her daughter is Cecile Richards, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood. The documentary, then, was both interesting and educational. I feel far more informed about an important woman in American political history. There was one moment in the documentary that probably wasn’t meant to inspire a lot of reflection, but that has stuck with me. While identifying as pro-choice, Governor Richards said in a clip, “I believe in a woman’s right to choose.” Now, this phrase has been around for my entire life. The…
Categories: Feminism
