We were created...repost

I read something recently that I found both alarming and not the least surprising at the same time. It’s surprising because I can’t imagine how anyone could feel the way the women in that news article apparently do. But it isn’t surprising at all because the thoughts of these women seem to be a reflection of American life in general.

Apparently women in America are choosing not to have children at higher numbers than ever before. The article I read cited the US Census Bureau and labeled anyone between the ages of 15 and 50 as a woman. The article said that according to the census bureau nearly 50 percent of women aged 25-29 were childless in 2014. It also said that 47.6% of women aged 15-44 were childless in 2014.

 

Apparently a good part of the reasoning behind women not having children has to do with delaying getting married and having children so they can focus on their careers and the economy. I’ve heard both reasoning’s personally over the years. I’ve heard women say they’d have children ‘someday’ when their career was established or when they saved enough money, or they made enough money, or they had a big enough house, etc. All my life my mother used to say ‘don’t ever wait to have a baby until you have enough money because you’ll never have one if you do. You’ll never have enough money.’

 

That was something I heard her say from the time I was little bitty and it was something that stuck with me all these years. I’ve never let money be a determining factor in having children. If the Lord gives us a child, He’ll give us the means to take care of it.

 

The article quoted a couple of women’s reasons for not having children, giving their names and a little bit of their story. The thing is the reasons these women gave for not having children had very little to do with wanting to be able to provide better for the child and a whole lot to do with what sounded like selfish reasons to me.  One woman said she wanted to be able to take risks and move. A psychologist is quoted as saying that she sees this in her practice more and more. That men and women are making the choice as to whether or not to have kids the same way they make any other choice. She said that many of her patients have other ‘aspirations’ than having children.

Can I point out that these people with these ‘aspirations’ that don’t include children are…seeing a psychologist?  Something must not be going right in their lives for them to be seeking that sort of help.

The same psychologist also says that it’s ‘totally acceptable’ to not have children.

And she’s right. But then just about everything these days is totally acceptable. In our anything goes society there is very little that is seen as unacceptable.

As I read the article I couldn’t help but think back over my own life. How I spent hours and hours and hours as a child playing with dolls, pretending that they were real and I was ther mother. My mom tells me that when I was a year old if she took me anywhere without a doll that I would cry until we either got back home again or until I had a doll in my arms.

Where we lived while I was growing up there were no toy stores. No big super center stores that sold everything. I didn’t get my love of dolls by being inundated with aisles of dolls that did everything but get up and do the dishes. As I got older I did eventually become influenced by TV commercials and friends but my love of dolls….of babies…started long before that ever happened.

When I was six my teenaged aunt had a baby that I was allowed to hold. She would let me hold the newborn baby unsupervised while refusing to let my older cousin hold the baby. I don’t remember why my cousin couldn’t hold the baby, there may have been a very good reason, I only remember that she couldn’t. And that this cousin used to tell me how she was never allowed to hold the baby. When I handed the baby to my older cousin…as soon as my aunt came through the room (yes, I had the baby without supervision) she immediately told my cousin to give the baby back to me. There have been people I didn’t want holding my babies and I had a reason for it every time so maybe that was the case here. I don’t know. What I do know was that even at the age of six I loved babies and could, apparently, be trusted with even newborns without an adult being present.

When I was 8 we went to visit a couple that had a not yet one year old baby. I was allowed to not only take this baby outside but to go roaming all over a mountain with her.

When I was 10 and 11 I imagined what life would be like when I had a baby. Many times I imagined what I would do with one if I had it in whatever situation I was in at the time.

Being a mother was simply something that was a part of me pretty much from birth. It wasn’t something I chose, wasn’t something I contemplated, thought about, decided on. I was born with the desire to be a mother. I didn’t choose it, it was just there.

When I was 16 I became yet another cousins mother. She wasn’t mine, but because I was allowed to have her pretty much 24/7 she became mine. I loved her as if she was mine. I worked and provided for her as if she was mine. She was a one week old, five pound bundle of baby when she was handed over to me the first time. And I was terrified. I’d never been responsible for a newborn before. And she was so tiny.

But in that terror there was also fulfillment. And love. I wanted her. While I juggled school and work…I wanted her. While I stayed up nights, set with her in the hospital, changed diapers, made bottles, did homework with her in my arms…I wanted her.

It made no difference to me that she wasn’t mine by birth. She was mine by love and that was all that mattered.

Years later when I had my first child, I had been through the pain of losing a child I loved as my own, I knew a new kind of fulfillment. This one I could keep. This one truly was mine. And I was happy. Over the years as I’ve had more children the sense of fulfillment, the completeness, has grown.

I’m not saying I haven’t been fulfilled or completed through other things. I have. But the things that fulfill me are the kind of things that people that choose whether or not to have children probably would say aren’t where I should be looking for fulfillment.

Marriage fulfills me. There is a sense of completeness simply in being married. It’s like it’s what I was made for. Marriage and motherhood are the two most fulfilling roles I’ve ever had. Without either one of those roles there would be something missing in my life, in me.

Could there be a reason for that?

Could it be that Scripture explains it well?

Genesis 1:27 says …male and female he created them.

That has nothing to do with motherhood but it does define the very basics of who and what each and every person on earth is. We are either male or female. Man or woman. Boy or girl. Whether we are male or female affects the very nature of who we are. It is what we were made for, what we were created for.

The Lord God said, ‘It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.’ Genesis 2:18

Again…this verse isn’t about motherhood but it does define the role of a woman. She is to be the helper for man. Not just any man but for her husband. Our society today does not want to acknowledge that women are here to support and help their husbands. There is so much on husbands and wives being equal, on women having as great a role as men, that most people, even ‘Christians’ don’t want to acknowledge that women were quite simply created for the purpose of being a helper to their husband.

Being a wife, being created to help her husband doesn’t get us into motherhood except that one should, and often does, go hand in hand with the other. Once upon a time marriage meant babies. Husbands meant wives became mothers.

There was no choosing. No deciding if a person, be it a man or a woman, wanted to have children. If a couple got married they more often than not became parents. Families weren’t limited to the American idea of the perfect family size of two parents and two children. No one thought of the idea that a couple should only have enough children to replace themselves when they die. If any thought was given to childbearing most likely it was taken from Scripture…

 And you, be fruitful and multiply, increase greatly on the earth and multiply in it.” Genesis 9:7

And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” Genesis 1:28

Times were different back then, people were different, the world was different. But was God different? Did His purpose for women change because the earth’s population reached a certain number? Did His plan for woman change because it became acceptable for women to work outside the home? Did His design for the family change because people changed the way they saw the family?

I’m not getting into the often debated birth control. I’m not saying whether it’s right or wrong. I’m simply pointing out the design for woman that started with the beginning of time. Eve wasn’t placed into the Garden of Eden and left to wander around deciding if she would become a wife or if she would live on her own, provide for herself, and remain childless. She was presented to Adam, given to him to be his helper, his wife.

In Genesis 1:28 it starts out And God blessed them. Why? Because as verse 27 says they were ‘male and female’, because as verse 28 goes on to say they were to be ‘fruitful and multiply’. These weren’t curses. They weren’t punishments. They were blessings. Being made a man wasn’t a curse. Being made a woman wasn’t a curse. It was a blessing. The roles given to each weren’t something to try and get away from, to be avoided. They were a blessing because they defined who each one was. Being fruitful and multiplying wasn’t a curse, it wasn’t something to look at as a hinderance to the life you wanted. Quite simply it was the life they were designed for. It was the first requirement God put on Adam and Eve. They were to have children, to fill the earth and subdue it.

God made a helper for Adam, presented her to him, and told them to have children and take control over all the earth and everything on it. There was no choice in that. He didn’t ask them if they’d rather have children or if they’d rather go about their business thinking only of themselves and the things they wanted. He told them to have children.

And God blessed them.

Scripture goes on to give certain roles to each gender. There are roles assigned to wives, to husbands. There are instructions given to parents, to mothers, to fathers. Verse after verse throughout Scripture gives instructions to families, gives them roles, tells them who they are to be, how they are to act.

Older women likewise are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good, ⁴ and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, ⁵ to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled Titus 2:3-5

Women…train the young women to love their husbands and children...

How can a woman train, or teach, another woman to love her husband and children unless she herself has loved her husband and children? I can’t teach someone how to build a house because I’ve never built one nor can I teach them how to repair a motor in a vehicle. Those are things I’ve never done. Because I’ve never done them I can’t teach those skills to someone else. Before I could teach them to someone I would first have to learn them, would have to do them often enough to know how so that I could teach someone else.

That same set of verses goes on to say that women are working at home. If we’re working at home…are we chasing careers? Are we putting a job above our family? Do we even have an outside job? We can’t work at home if we’re working in the world.

There are people that would argue that. People that would say you can work at home and in the work place. Maybe you can but our own society defines women one of two ways…you’re either a homemaker or you have a job description. Every form you ever fill out that asks for your type of employment gets one or the other. If you’re a teacher in the public school system you list teacher under employment. You don’t list teacher and homemaker. You can’t be both. You’re either one or the other. Either you work at home, caring for your family, or you work in some field. It’s an either or situation. There is no middle ground. Are you a homemaker or do you have a job?

Are you working at home or in the workforce?

Women were designed for a reason. We were given certain roles in life. We started life as daughters, we may be sisters. We are wives, mothers. This is the role the Lord gave to us. Whatever other plan He may have for us, whatever other work (I’m not talking about a paying job) He may want us to do, whatever else He has in store for us…

We were created to be woman.

We were created to be helpers.

We were created to be wives.

We were created to be mothers.

Happy to be a servant...repost

Paul said he was a servant of Christ…a slave of Christ. He not only claimed to be a servant of Christ, He said he was a servant by the will of God.

In just those few words He showed that he belonged to Someone higher than he was. He clearly said he belonged to another and that it wasn’t by his will but by the will of God.

Our society balks at the very thought of belonging to anyone but ourselves. I heard a preacher say that women today want nothing to do with marriage because feminists say it is prostitution. Can you imagine…being a wife is equated with being a prostitute? That’s how far we’ve come. It’s how depraved our society and the sin filled minds of people have come. We now take a holy state…a God ordained state…a state that was, in fact, the very first human relationship created…and equate it with the sin of sexual immorality.

If women in our society can’t even stand the thought of belonging to their husbands…how can they stand the thought of belonging to God?

I have a relative that has said many times that she isn’t impressed with marriage, that she has no desire to get married, that after seeing marriage up close she doesn’t want to become her husband’s slave. This was said in a conversation about my marriage. Has in fact come up in several conversations about my marriage. I have never felt in any way as if I’m a slave to my husband. He in no way treats me as if I’m inferior to him or as if I’m here to do his bidding. I do things for and with him out of my love for him and my enjoyment of doing those things for him, not because he requires me to do anything.

Being his wife is actually…an honor. So much so that I can’t even put into words what a special honor it is to be my husband’s wife.

Where this relative got the idea that I’m a slave to my husband I have no idea but it’s an idea that she is holding strongly to.

For her, marriage seems to somehow represent a loss of freedom and of self and the gaining of nothing. I can think of so many things that we become slaves to that most people don’t think of as our being a slave. Sin tops the list. Then the government and the taxes we must pay…even on our food. Anyone that works becomes a slave to their employer. They must show up at a certain time, do what they’re told, stay until they’re released to go home. Some aren’t even allowed to take sick days. Others are required to go to the doctor if they miss a single day of work. They may bring home a paycheck but that sure sounds like an institution of slavery to me.

So many people in our society see that as normal but balk at the idea of belonging completely to the Lord. Paul had no such problems. His very identity was that of a servant of Christ. It was how he introduced himself, how he defined himself. He started his letters with…I am a servant of Christ.

How much more profound could he have been?

What else could he have said that would have told who he was and Who he belonged to?

I belong to Christ because…I am His. It’s that simple and that complex. He created me and therefore what is created can’t help but belong to the one that did the creating. But I’m His…because my very soul longs for Him. It is within the depths of me that I feel Christ.

I once told someone that I can feel the Lord ‘in here’ with my hand lying on my chest. That person said simply…I can’t. I knew that even as I told them I could. Deep within me lives the Lord and because He lives there, He is everything that I am. Or I am everything that He makes me to be.

I am happy to be a servant to Christ. I am happy to belong to Him.

Observations...repost

Observations

It's kind of interesting the observations we make when we are put in situations where we have little else to do but observe our surroundings. I've found myself in this situation several times over the last couple of weeks and I have noticed some things that are rather surprising and not the least surprising at the same time.

Scripture tells us what life on earth will become. We are warned that things will become like they were in the days of Noah. If we think back to Noah, we should recall that God destroyed the earth because the people's hearts were evil. Through Scripture we are told that we are all, since Adam, born into sin. That means that our hearts are evil because we know that sin is evilness...it is the breaking of God's laws and any time we oppose God we are evil. But Scripture tells us that God destroyed the entire earth, except for eight people, so much destruction that he even destroyed all the animals but the ones that were taken into the ark, and he did it because of the evilness of men's hearts. Could that evilness have been the same evilness as the sin we are all born into? Or might it have been a deeper sort of evilness? Something that goes beyond the sin we are all born into? I'm just questioning this here, not saying that that was the case.

What kind of evilness would make God destroy the entire world? Kill all the people on earth except for eight? What in those people would have offended God so much that he wiped them all out? Even the babies? Babies couldn't have done anything that wrong. How many evil deeds can a child under six months old or a year old do? Newborns barely know they're alive, they care only for eating and sleeping and being dry and comfortable. They won't even protest not being held if you never get them used to it. Some babies lay in a bed all day without a whimper except when they're hungry or need their diaper changed. So what could these babies have done that so offended God that he did not allow them to be saved on the ark?

The answer lies not in what they did but in what lay in their hearts. Their hearts were evil. God knew what they would have become. And because of what was in their hearts they were destroyed right along with all the other people on earth. It was pure evilness that cost every last person, except for eight, to be killed in the flood. That flood was God's wrath. It was anger that he poured out on the earth, anger over the evilness of men's hearts.

We are told time and again of what those on earth will become. Just one example is 2 Timothy 3:1-5...

But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty.2 For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive,disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3 heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, 4 treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God,5 having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. 

Every single time I read those verses I can't help but marvel. I can't help reading those words, that warning, and seeing the world we live in today. When I think back over my life, which really is only a drop in the bucket for all the years that have passed on this earth, not my years but the space of time that the earth has been here, I see so many changes. I see the loss of morals, of consideration for others, of safety.

Logically, I know that the world wasn't safe when I was a child, and really if we think about what life was like in all of history...earthly life has never been safe. The 1800's had many outlaws, the government raided and stole, murdered and plundered, under the guise of war and keeping people safe. The 1700's saw the Revolutionary War which had it's own atrocities. The 1500's had Christian persecutions. Bible times had wars, murders, rapes, thieves, and all manner of tortures that we can't begin to fathom today. Life on earth has never really been safe, at least not since Adam and Eve, not since, for a time, the days following the flood when their were so few people on earth.

And yet, if we look back over just our own lives I think we can all see a downward spiral. In many ways it's to be expected, after all, we can't get to the point where Scripture says Christ will come back if we don't fulfill what Scripture says the world will be like.

It even seems that every generation believes that their lifetime is the end times, that they will see Christ return, and so many generations have been wrong. What we see as evil in our human minds and with our human hearts does not necessarily constitute the evil that the Lord says will be here when Christ returns, even if we think life on earth simply can't get much more evil than it is at any given time. History has shown us that it does get worse and that men are not a good judge of just how evil the times are.

And yet...I think every last person on earth, at least any person with access to any kind of news or to a broad set of people, can see that times are growing more and more evil. Society tends to get worse as a whole and not better.

A few days ago my husband was scanning over the headlines on an internet news site. I don't remember what he said to draw my attention but I remember questioning him about it. And I remember his response. He said something to the effect of how awful the news was, of how it was just more and more evil. And then he began to read the headlines to me. Someone killed here. A shooting there. A body found. A child abused. A gang attack. A peaceful protest turned violent. And on and on the headlines went.

I very, very, rarely look at the news in any way. I have my reasons, which I won't get into, for that, but yesterday was the first time in a good while that I had looked at the news headlines, and then I didn't read the articles. But I saw more of what my husband had seen the other day and I saw something else... I saw headline after headline about divorce. And I noticed a trend. It wasn't something I hadn't noticed before but there was no denying, if you simply read headlines without being bogged down by interest in the stories or trying to read any of the articles, that was easy to see.

Headlines about life in America or even in the world tended to be only about the horrible things that happen. This was an international news site so they had all kinds of news. There were the regular sports headlines, but even those now have a bent more towards promoting a certain ideal and not just on telling where games happen and giving scores. There were also headlines about financial situations but again I saw in those headlines not just financial topics but financial topics of how they pertain to a certain thing...and that thing was a disintegration of life as it once was, and something I will come back to in a minute. And then there were the same kinds of headlines that my husband had read the other day.

And so I found myself observing the news. In all fairness, I will admit that I observed the news through the eyes of my own beliefs. I know that not everyone see's things the same way I do and therefore what I saw as being awful, other's might think nothing of. But here's what I observed. 

There were numerous headlines about divorce. These headlines didn't speak of divorce in a shocking way. It was, at best, spoken of in a disinterested sort of, let me tell you how it is, and at worst it was spoken of in a good for you kind of way. There were headlines about entertainers that were getting divorced, some of them already seeing other people. There was a headline that said something to the effect of, 'I remarried my ex-husband and divorced him again', and showed a picture of a smiling woman. And then there was the headline, under the subject of finances, that was about protecting your money in a divorce.

Logically, I know that divorces happen and I know that money is an issue when they do happen. Some people go into a marriage with lots of money and divorce penniless. Some people have high paying jobs and want to protect the income they work for. Some people...I don't know what some people do, only that they love their money and the things that money bought and will do everything they can to protect it (them). 

But I couldn't help thinking, as I read that headline, that if a person was going through a divorce there are so many more things you should be thinking about than your money. Like whether or not you had done everything you could to salvage your marriage. I couldn't help thinking that anyone facing a divorce should be thinking about their children, grandchildren, even their parents and extended family long before they worried over their money. Money is money. No matter how much or how little of it a person has...it is replaceable. But what of the relationships that were formed because two people got married. How many of those married couples created children, some of them resulting in grandchildren...my grandparents divorced when they had great grandchildren...and how many of those marriages formed family ties, relationships...love...between people that would never have been connected if that couple had not married?

My husbands sister has children. Those children are related to me simply because I married their uncle. They had no say in any of that and yet those children love me. They know only that I am their aunt. They didnt' choose me to marry their uncle. They didn't ask for me. They simply got me as their aunt because their uncle married me. And because of that marriage, love was formed. Their love for me, mine for them. Most couples have relationships like that, with members of their husband or wife's family, where love exists, simply because the couple married. What happens to those relationships when a marriage ends in divorce. And is it fair to those that had no say in the marriage, no say in the divorce, to have to lose someone they love simply because a couple wants a divorce? And I guarantee most divorced couples do not want their ex having a familial relationship with their family.

But the news headline wanted to give advice on how to protect your money in a divorce. Why not have a headline on how to protect your marriage from a divorce?

I was grown and had a child when my grandparents divorced but I can still remember the thoughts and feelings that went through me, the adjustments I had to make, when my grandparents divorced. It was easier on me than it would have been on a child whose parents divorce but it was still hard. All of my life my grandparents had been there. They were...my grandparents. There was Grandma and Grandpa. Grandpa and Grandma. I will admit that they fought like cats and dogs. I think they may have argued over dirt...probably really did argue over dirt. But they were my grandparents. There was security in them. They were there. They had always been there. Even grown I knew I could go to them if I needed anything. All through my life people knew who I was because they knew my grandparents. When I went somewhere in the town, and often in other towns, where I knew no one, I could usually walk in and tell them my grandparents name, tell them I was their granddaughter, and just like that I was treated different. It wasn't just my grandparent's family that knew them as a couple but many, many other people. 

Thinking back on my grandparents as a couple, I must admit that they didn't have a great relationship. If nothing else all the fighting had to be bad. But all that fighting was just a part of who they were. And then...there came a day that my grandparents weren't anymore. I still had Grandma. Still had Grandpa. But I no longer had Grandma and Grandpa. 

And I was grown.

I remember the shock. The loss. The hurt. I was old enough to understand why they were divorcing but my heart couldn't grasp that thought. I was collateral damage in my grandparents divorce. And I wasn't the only one. My grandparents had five children, fourteen grand kids, numerous great grand kids. We were all collateral damage. We may not have lived with them but the damage was there. 

Gone were the family holidays at Grandma and Grandpa's house, in fact, gone were family holidays at all. With their divorce went all the family get together's that had always happened between my grandparent's children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren. There were no more Christmases. No more Fourth of July's. No more Thanksgivings. 

Instead we had to visit Grandpa at one house, where we eventually gained a new Grandma, and we visited Grandma at another house. There were no holiday's together. No family events. No security in just knowing Grandma and Grandpa were together. Instead we traded security for worry and comfort for caretaking. Where Grandma and Grandpa had looked after each other, now the kids and grandkids worried over them. Grandma had no one to do things with, she sat home alone, day after day. Grandpa did eventually fill his life with a new Grandma and there was less worry over Grandpa because he wasn't alone any more but Grandma...Grandma really never got over it. And neither did we. Neither did I. 

In my mind...Grandma and Grandpa still reside as a team. They were the backbone of our family. The heart of it. The center that kept us all together. They were the ones we could all depend on. At least...that's how I saw things and that was the security I grew up with. My grandpa is dead now and my grandma lives in a nursing home...but somewhere in my mind, Grandma and Grandpa still reside, sitting side by side in the living room or across from each other at the kitchen table. I can still see Grandpa kissing Grandma goodbye. He did that every time he left, even if they had just argued. Even after they were divorced.

But those were not the kinds of things that article wrote of, I know that without reading the article, because that news story was about protecting your money in a divorce. 

Who cares about your money? 

What about your marriage?

And so, as I observed the headlines, I saw articles all but applauding divorce. They say that there was a time in history when being divorced was a stigma. I've heard that during the 1800's divorced women were seen in about the same regard as prostitutes...that upstanding, meaning married, widowed, or spinster women looked down on them and would have nothing to do with them. I have no idea if that's true or not, I just heard, possibly read, it somewhere. But it makes sense. And if we look back over time we can see that divorce was much less prevalent than it is today.

I recently saw a question posted on a reformed Christian site. The question was about someone's friend that was being emotionally and possibly physically abused. I'm not promoting any kind of abuse here, not suggesting that anyone should have to live with any sort of abuse, I'm just going to share my observations. The responses to that question all centered on the woman getting away from the man. Now some of those responses did say the abuse should be reported to the 'church', I'm not real sure what good anyone thought that was going to do, but that seemed to be a genuine agreement between several people that replied. Thankfully, one person answered by saying it was highly unlikely that the husband in question was a Christian and therefore wasn't real likely to put any stock on what the 'church' said. But the rest...the rest suggested the woman leave the man, divorce him, and have him arrested.

I'm not promoting abuse, not saying it should be accepted, but I saw little in those responses that gave answers based on Scripture. Sure, taking a Christian before other believers to show them their sins is Scriptural, but as the one person said, it's highly unlikely that the husband was a Christian, but the advice to divorce the man...I did not see as being Scriptural. I don't even see abuse listed in Scripture as a reason for a couple to divorce. Divorce is only allowed in Scripture for two reasons, sexual immorality...adultery...and if an unbelieving spouse leaves. That's it.

We can, shockingly to our modern minds, even see marriages in Scripture that started with rape. Mistreatment in any way does not appear to be a good enough reason, Scripturally, for divorce. There is no 'out' in Scripture for a person in such a marriage.

And yet, these presumably reformed Christians promoted divorce. Now to be fair, not all of them suggested divorce, they didn't even all suggest the woman leave the man. And quite honestly...I don't know what else they could have suggested. 

What I do know is that even among Christians, our society has influenced our thoughts. Divorce is wrong and yet divorce or separation is suggested, even by Christians, when marital problems crop up. There was a time when society would have thought nothing of a man emotionally or even physically abusing his wife. There was a time that a woman literally belonged to her husband for him to do with as he pleased. And there was a time when no one would have dared ask for ideas of what a woman in an abusive marriage should do because there was nothing a woman could do.

We no longer live in those times. Women in abusive marriages can do many things. They have options. And our society puts no stigma on whatever choice they make, except maybe if they chose to stay with their husband.

If only the downward spiral in evilness were contained only to marriage and divorce...bad as that is...but it isn't. That evilness pervades just about every part of American life today. Society flaunts what the Lord abhors. It promotes evil...promotes sin...so much that it has filtered all the way down to the youngest children.  It lives in the hearts of people that live in direct opposition to the Lord and in the hearts of those that claim to belong to Him.

I have a family member that would claim to be a Christian in a heartbeat. She teaches her children about Jesus, takes them to 'church' because that is what she sees as part of being a Christian, reads them Bible stories, and helps them pray often, even over little things. I've seen her stop in a store and pray with her children. And yet...she watches movies that promote and esteem sin, lets her children watch movies, even those made for adults, about zombies and monsters, loves, and encourages her children to love, super heroes. Foul words roll off her tongue with little thought and she laughs when those same words come out of her preschoolers mouth.

I must adopt one of my husband's often said statements, 'I'm sure glad the Lord knows which ones are His because I sure can't tell'. 

I recently found myself at the local fair with my family, not once but twice. I enjoyed going, enjoyed spending that time with my family, but being there put me in a position to observe what was going on around me. I spent most of my time at the fair standing around waiting on family members that were riding rides. Out of two visits to the fair, I rode only one ride, the ferris wheel, which not surprisingly, still leaves you observing what's around you, only from a different vantage point.

Because I spent so much time standing and waiting there was little for me to do but observe what was happening around me. People coming and going, children laughing and crying. I saw men and women cuddling small children and babies. I saw a woman scream obscenities at her toddler and threaten to beat him. I saw children's hands lovingly held by their parents and children grabbed roughly and dragged along. I saw children obeying parents at their first command and children that showed no signs of listening to their parents. There were children that were closely guarded by adults and children that seemed to have no adult with them. I saw a woman swat a child for throwing rocks after the child was told not to and I saw another child swatted for throwing a cup. One child laughed when swatted and continued to misbehave, the other child stopped misbehaving. I saw couples that appeared to be enjoying their time together, couples that looked like they wished the other wasn't there. Families that were enjoying being together and what they were doing and families that acted as if they wished they were with anyone but who they were with. In other words, I saw the same kinds of things we can see every day of the week if we venture into an area where people tend to be.

But it wasn't those sort of things that kept me thinking about what I had seen long after I left the fair behind, no, what kept me thinking, still has me thinking, days later, is the other, less obvious until you start to see the pattern kinds of things.

Out of thousands of people, there seemed to be some kind of common theme. A theme I noticed again a few days later while looking at pictures of people on social media. In both cases, the fair and social media, there were exceptions to the general theme but the exceptions are few and far between. At the fair I saw a family that appeared to be Pentecostal. The women were wearing long skirts and had long hair, their shirts were more modest. I also saw a group of women that were wearing head coverings and they and their children were clothed in dresses that looked native to another country and another religion. On social media there were the women wearing more clothes in their pictures, posed in natural, relaxed, everyday life, sort of photos. But at the fair and on social media there seemed to be a strong trend toward barely there clothes among the women and even little girls. My husband pointed out a woman wearing a pair of jeans. The jeans should have been decent but they were far from it. They hugged every curve they touched and had the better part of all of the front of the legs cut out. What was there was more of a frame for the woman's lower body than a covering.

I saw more shirts that covered little and revealed lots than I wanted to see. I saw high heels, I saw spiked heels. I saw shorts that cover less than undergarments should cover. I saw children's undergarments because their clothes were too skimpy to cover them. I saw adults undergarments for the same reason.

But it wasn't just the clothes. It's a look they all seem to have, or maybe that so many seem to have. Their hair, no matter the color or style, is so similar that you'd be hard pressed to identify one from another. They stand in similar ways, walk in similar ways. And on social media they pose for pictures in similar ways. 

And the prevailing theme between them all appears to be provocation. As in, sexually provocative. Even their children, especially their little girls, are dressed in skimpy, skin tight clothes that leave little or nothing to the imagination. I had a small child stand before me wearing pants so tight that every outline under the pants was visible. I saw a little girl wearing heels that had to be four inches high. 

But it doesn't stop at how they're dressed. There is a theme in the skulls on their shirts, the ear rings in their ears that show up in other parts of their bodies too. Spikey balls in their eyebrows. Neon spikes in their noses. Metal things in their lips. What looks like rings for your fingers or buttons for your clothes in their ears. And then there are the tattoos. Everywhere you look there are tattoos. And women seem to have more tattoos these days then the men do.

I'm not speaking for or against anything here, just sharing observations.

Not all that long ago my husband and I were talking about a certain sport. I told my husband that in general the people that like that sport tend to be a certain way. And from observations it does tend to be that way, and not just in the sport we were talking about but in all sports. People don't usually associate short skinny men with football. Big men are usually what comes to mind when football is considered. Scrawny men in glasses that love to read books are not usually associated with bull riding. Women are not usually what comes to mind when one thinks of basketball.

That's just the way it is. We make observations on all sorts of things. In my conversation with my husband I told him that the sport in question was one that most people tend to associate with business men. That's just the way it is. Golf is generally looked at as a sport for those that wear suits and dress pants. Rodeos are seen as the sport for those in Wranglers and cowboy boots. We make assumptions based on our observations.

I did nothing different in observing those at the fair, although I tried not to assume anything about them as individuals. It wasn't each one as a person that had my attention but the whole of what the majority of them made up. Just as golf players, as a whole, are often thought of as being business men, at least they are among the people I have known, and cowboys are generally thought of in jeans and boots. It is the overall of what they are as a whole and not what they are as an individual. One golf player may not be a suit wearer or have ever worn a pair of dress pants but he is still going to be lumped in with those that do when he is thought of as a golfer. 

In the midst of all those thousands of people...I looked not at each person but what I was observing in the whole of the crowd surrounding me. The same with the pictures I saw on social media. I looked at what I saw in the whole of what was before me and not in each person. It was the same thing I saw in the whole of what was in the headlines of the news. Each headline, each person, made up only a single thing, a single story, a single life, but they all flowed together to create the whole of what was the news headlines, or the crowd at a fair, or a list of people one might wish to befriend on social media.

And it was in that whole that I saw the theme.

I saw it in the way the majority of the crowd dressed, age and shape of body seemed to have no bearing on the style or look of the clothes. I saw it in the way they pose for pictures to post online, whether they were taking them in front of me or whether they were posted on social media. I saw it in the way they walked. The way they stood. The way they wore their hair.

After that...if there was another theme under the one I was seeing, it was evil on their clothes or their bodies. The skulls on their shirts, their jewlery, their bodies. I saw it in the words painted on their chests. I saw it in the pictures of characters from television shows and movies on their shirts.

It was as if there was a general theme that ran through the majority of the crowd but you could peel away one thing or another and continue to see the same theme, evilness, sin, in every layer. 

And is it any wonder? Lets think again of the headlines in the news. Why are we fed nothing but divorce, murder, strife, fighting, death...evil...in our news articles? Why are those that have the tendencies to do those things not ignored instead of sensationalized in news and social media?

Just yesterday I saw a satellite image of a hurricane and what that image appeared to be was some kind of evil skull or monster. My first thoughts of it were that it looked like the grinch from a child's book. My husband said it looked like a fish. Our minds see what we are conditioned to see. I could see the evil face/skull but I could also see something else, something much less sinister. But social media was abuzz over the skull. Why? Why did everyone see something evil, and it did look evil when seen as what they described, instead of a bunch of clouds or a fish or a character from a children's book? What makes people, as a whole, see evil first?

The fair was only one place that I recently was in a position to observe what was before me. I went to the public library with family and was there only because they wanted to be there. I was not checking out books for myself so was not looking at books. I found myself in several different libraries over the last couple of weeks for the exact same reason, and therefore I observed what was before me in those libraries. During those library visits I walked the aisles in most of the sections, at least I walked through a good number of them. But in each visit I somehow found myself in or close to the children and young adult sections of the libraries each time.

In two of the libraries I found myself in an area of the library labeled as being for teens. These areas had comfortable looking chairs, posters on the walls, little papers with sayings from books or movies, and other things speaking of things that are of interest to most teens. The walls were lined with shelves of books aimed at teens.

In another library I found myself making copies at a copy machine. While waiting for the copies to print I looked at the wall of books behind me. That wall was geared for 'young adults' as a sign said and was part of the young adult section that began just the other side of the copy machine. I paid little attention to the young adult section so can't describe it but I did notice that wall of books behind me. And what I noticed was a common theme. The books all seemed to hold to a theme. 

I did not read each title, did not look over every book there, instead I scanned all that was before me, quickly skimming over titles and taking in words and pictures on the spines of books.

And that's where the theme came in. Those books were grouped together in what appeared to me to be series but could have been multiple copies of the same books, chances are it was a little bit of both. But as I scanned the spines of the books on that wall of shelves I saw a disturbing trend. It was a trend I had seen in the other libraries that had sections devoted just to teens. 

The titles of the books were made up of words like, 'ghost', 'wizard', 'magician'. The overall look of all the books, no matter their size or color, was such that they all looked like they belong together. They had a similar theme and that theme was not only fantasy but things that should be labeled as evil.

I noticed a similar issue as I scanned titles in the children's section. I admit that I looked a bit further, dug a bit deeper, in the children's section. After all, kids books should be clean, safe, right? Well, some of them were but more of them weren't.

I remember taking my oldest to the library years ago. We spent hours and hours there, days and days. We read book after book after book. We read books about teddy bears, trips to the zoo, bubbles, even food. We read books about kids and their lives. Yes, we had to pick through the books. There were books about ghost stories and myths, but we could find the books that were safe fairly easily. The mythology and the ghosts and whatever other vetoed books were few and far between and often had their own little section, separate from the other books. Halloween books were on their own shelves. Ghost stories in their shelf.

But as I perused the shelves upon shelves of children's books in the libraries I found myself in over a couple of weeks time span, libraries that for the most part I had never been in, I saw something disturbing. 

There in the children's picture books, in the baby board books, in the easy readers, and the early chapter books, were book upon book upon book of 'ghosts', 'monsters', 'wizards', 'warlocks', 'dragons', 'super heroes', etc. I'd pick up a book that looked okay only to discover the kid was in wizard school or ghost hunting. I'd skim through a book that looked like it might be decent and discover it wasn't.

These books, with their prevailing theme of evil, evil that is written of as being good, exciting, something to try and attain, are being put into the hands of thousands...millions...of children. 

I have always enjoyed reading. I've heard the sayings, seen the logos, encountered the agenda's that promote and push reading. I've read the articles on how to make readers of your children. I've seen the 'experts' comments that a child must not only be read to if they are to grow up to love reading but that they must also see the parent read, seen their comments that speak of lower crime rates, higher IQ's, better lives, for children that read. I've read books about books that your child should read. I've watched programs on getting kids to read. I've smiled at the posters that encourage taking a child to the library.

But...

After what I've recently seen in the library I have to wonder how good a library really is for a child. Children don't have the ability to discern things the way adults do. I was able to skim spines of books and immediately pick out books promoting evilness...zombies, murder...how about a children's book about dolls that murder?...witches, wizards...but a child doesn't have that ability. They don't inherently know that those things are wrong.

One of my trips to the library found me with my two year old grandson in tow. He kept pointing to a poster on the wall. This poster had a group of super heroes on it. It was strategically placed at a child's eye level and made to look appealing. I heard a librarian speak highly of books about dragons, books based off a movie that I happen to know teaches of gods that have nothing to do with the Lord. And the librarian's audience...a preteen girl.

I saw board books made for toddlers and babies that were about those same kinds of things. I picked up books that should have been simple stories, stories of right and wrong, stories that help a child figure out how to navigate their world, only to discover those books had more sinister plots.

I found a chapter book whose cover looked like it might be a sweet story. Upon reading the back of the book I discovered it was about divorce. Now, I know kids live through divorce, I know many, many kids must live with the consequences of divorce every single day and I know that sometimes it helps them to work through their own feelings to read a book or watch a movie about someone that has experienced what they are going through, or went through, but this book wasn't that kind of book. I don't recall exactly what it was about but it was something along the lines of the kid celebrating the parents divorce.

I did not personally see anything like this while I was in the library but I know someone that was approached by an author and offered a free copy of a young adult book that they had written and was in publication. This book was supposedly a romance. The person that was offered the book said she read only a small ways into the description before seeing that it was a homosexual romance between two teenage girls.

I've never seen that in any book I've picked up but I can well see how books would have it in them. And I would guess that there will be more and more of that and other things as time goes on. I remember reading a book in my teens that had a girl in it that had an abortion. I read many, many books about teenagers having sex. I read books about teenage mothers, some married, some put their babies up for adoption, but always the baby was conceived before marriage.

On the other hand I have read books that had teenagers as the main characters, teenagers that if you didn't know they were in their teens you wouldn't have known they were teenagers. The characters thought and acted as adults. They were mature. They made decisions. They did what needed to be done. They were people that, for the most part, were upstanding people, sometimes 'Christians', that most parents wouldn't mind their children emulating. Some of those teenagers married and had families in those books but the marriage came first.

I've read books about kids that come across the same way. They are kids that do what's right, or do what's wrong and suffer consequences that make sure they learn to do what's right. They are kids that, for the most part, parent's wouldn't mind their kids reading about.

But those kinds of books seem to be few and far between on bookstore and library shelves today. Those wholesome sorts of books...I could find not a single copy of Little house on the prairie...have given way to witches, zombies, and ghosts.

There is a popular children's company that makes clothes, dolls, and books for kids whose stories appear to be wholesome and safe to let your children read but I recently read an article that showed how that company is now backing popular social ideas that are anything but wholesome. How long before those ideas show up in their books and toys?

A number of years ago I used to occasionally rent movies from a video rental store. I was always careful of what I rented but it only took one visit to that store to see that I had to look through, and at, all manner of movies to get to the decent ones, or what I considered decent at the time. It took me only a few minutes in that store to discover I couldn't protect my then young children from the horror movies or anything else because kids movies and adult movies were all shelved together by alphabetical order. After that I tried only to go in there when I didn't have kids with me and eventually quit going all together.

But what I saw back then, horror movies and other things of evil, things kids nightmares are made of, has now filtered down into the children's sections. No longer are those things in adult movies and books only but the fill the pages and scenes of children's books and program's too.

And as a whole, it is across the board. It seems to be a social norm, a nations mindset. It is accepted and promoted among the majority of American's. It is seen as normal and acceptable. Babies wear look at me clothes and act in provocative ways. Their parents smile, laugh, applaud, and put them on social media, encouraging them and instilling those behaviors and clothing choices in their minds long before those children understand what they're doing. 

Monsters are now the heroes of little boys. Gone are the days when little boys wanted to be cowboys and went around chasing Indians. Gone are the days when they wanted to be...whatever man they emulated. Today little boys look up to men that are not men but some sort of mutant man. Their parents laugh and smile when they act as those so called heroes act. They dress them in Halloween costumes that make them look like monsters and talk of how wonderful it all is.

Then those same parents watch programs with their children about those mutant men, zombies, and so called heroes, they read those books to them, going to the library or the bookstore to buy them because they think they're cute and their children enjoy them. And then...those parents read headline news and wonder why that woman was attacked or that shooting happened or how that man could have become such a monster as to do what he did.

Evilness does not show up in things that go bump in the night or have glowing eyes. Evilness is not in a satellite image of a storm that appears to be an evil face with a red eye. Evil is in the hearts of men, women and children. Evil is in what a whole nation of people think they see when they look at a satellite picture of clouds, water and wind. Evil is in the lies children tell and the lies they grow up to tell. It's in the sexy clothes they wear and the poses they make that would have once been seen only in pornography. It's in the imaginings of being a monster and calling it a hero. Its in the costumes they wear, the movies they watch, the books they read... it's in their hearts.

And it's a diet that is now being fed to babies from birth on.