turning forgiveness on its head. which means, putting it back on its feet.

contrary to extremely popular belief, forgiveness isn't about you. it's about the person you forgive.


forgiveness, which is at its heart a religious concept, has been stripped of its religious roots and given a pop culture makeover.

blech!

once again, as if we haven't had enough of me, me, me and how i feel, here comes yet another very offensive, very screwed up twist on things. and in this case, as in so many others of our day, the thing that has been screwed up started out as a lovely, even sacred thing and we managed to turn it into narcissism.

my profession is largely to blame.

social workers - and those in related fields, such as counseling, psychology, and psychiatry - have polluted everybody's understanding of what forgiveness is all about. social workers - and those in related fields - have pandered to the cry that has been resounding in this country since the 1960s, that is, "if it feels good, do it."

blech.

the purpose of forgiveness, people, is to relieve the offender of his offense. to make him feel better. to release him from the bondage of sin and to give him a fighting chance to do better. not to throw yourself a party. and not even so that you can "move on."

oh, sure, forgiving those who have hurt you helps you, too. and that's a nice by-product. but that's not why you should do it. in fact, if that's why you do it, then somebody needs to forgive you. because you have just sinned.


sorry.

here's what happens when you smoosh the rules

when david and i were raising abby, we had a rule that if the two of us disagreed about something pertaining to her, usually having to do with the amount of freedom to give her, the person who held the more conservative view would win. so, for example, if david thought she should be home by 10 and i thought midnight was reasonable, 10 o'clock would win.

a second, related part of our rule was that compromise was not allowed. so, with the example above, if david thought 10 and i thought midnight, we could not settle on 11. it had to be the more conservative rule. period.

why? because the likelihood of problems is lessened (not guaranteed - but lessened)
if you're conservative.

period.

why? because God's rules are conservative. (notice His emphasis on "not.") and unless you're better than God, you better pay attention.

period.


consider the issue of "sexual freedom." (gag me.):

which circumstance is more likely to produce problems - having sex outside of marriage or not having sex outside of marriage?

having multiple partners or having just one?

approaching sex in a reverential, mutually-loving way or in a selfish way?


unless you're brain dead, you know the answer.


you know it, but you don't want to face it. you want things your way. you want to insert your logic, your intellect, your reasoning into it.

you want to be able to take the truth and come up with something different than the truth and not suffer any consequences.


next time?

come home at 10.

can you imagine???

i watched old "gunsmoke" reruns with my folks today and guess what - one of the episodes was about a guy who sinned on the Sabbath and how this other guy, who was a religious zealot who interpreted the Bible literally, wanted to cut the guy's right hand off.

the entire episode was about sinning and the Bible. the religious zealot musta quoted every verse in the whole dang Bible.

can you i.mag.ine a storyline like that to-day???? of course you can't.


john lennon wanted us to "imagine there's no heaven."


no, thanks, john. i'll watch "gunsmoke," instead.


and imagine that someone in hollywood still imagines there is a heaven.

two-faced

there's a lot of discussion - and controversy - out there about the benefits (or not) of social media. is it a good thing, a bad thing, a neither-one-it-depends-on-how-you-use-it thing?

yes.



why anyone should expect or want facebook (and any other form of social media) to be any different than "real life" is beyond me. life is good and it's bad and it's up to what each of us does with it.

period.


take high school, for instance.....


recently, one of my facebook friends from high school asked our other facebook friends from high school who their favorite teacher had been. i said i had been too unhappy in high school to even notice the teachers.

i received a lot of comments and private messages telling me how shocked everyone was to learn this about me. that i had always seemed so happy, so funny, so upbeat, so this, that, and the other that, well, they just assumed i was happy. for not being happy, i sure acted like i was!

yes, i did. acted like i was, that is.

how is that any different, really, than people who "act" like they're one thing on facebook when really, they might be entirely different in "real life?"

how is me faking it to the whole wide springfield north high school world any different than you posting a picture of "yourself" that isn't really yourself?


high school could have been happier for me - if i had let it. but i didn't. i didn't let the positive overcome the negative. i did the reverse. i let the negative damned near kill me.


i am glad, for lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of reasons, that i didn't allow high school to finish me off. one of those reasons is facebook.

because now.......now that all the angst of adolescence has finally passed........now that i finally know "who i am" (gag me), i can go back and be friends - on a computer -  with the people i missed the first time around - in "real" life.


and oh, by the way?


mr. pyle.

even roe thinks wade should have won

you know how obama said oh yes he could and then oh no he didn't? well......it's awful to think that maybe the one who really could might have already been snuffed out. thanks to roe v. wade.

or maybe the one who could finally establish peace in the middle east has been flushed away.

maybe if you get a really rare form of cancer and they don't have a cure for it maybe they would have had a cure for it if only the person who would have gone on to develop the cure for it hadn't been eliminated because his mother wanted to finish her college education first.

having choice doesn't trump thou shalt not kill.

"this is my body" doesn't trump murder.

i am woman, hear me roar shouldn't drown out the sound of a baby.


just ask the achingly regretful norma mccorvey.


aka jane roe.

do YOU have a nose for news?

schlepping triplets around town sure does draw attention. and then, when they realize that those two over there - that boy and that girl - when they realize that they're twins.......well........the paparazzi is everywhere.

actually, the paparazzi isn't anywhere. even when it's there it's not there.

take a couple of weeks ago, for instance.

a couple of weeks ago, abby and i took the twins and the triplets to lunch at a restaurant in the mall. seated next to us was the local anchorman for the evening news on one of the major networks. next to him was his wife.

his wife kept glancing our way and smiling and we kept glancing their way and smiling.....abby, is that cabot rea from channel 4? i don't think so/i think so/i don't think so/i think  so/who knows.

pretty soon, over to our table comes cabot rea's wife.

"are they triplets?" she asked.

"is it cabot rea?" i asked.

"yes," said abby.

"yes," said mrs. rea.

"they're beautiful!" breathed mrs. rea.

"he's thinner than he looks on t.v." i said. (ok.....so i didn't say it. but it sounds funnier if i said i did.)

"and those two right there.....ohmygosh, they're darling! how old are they?"

"they're 3," one of us said.

"both of them are 3?"

"yep. both of 'em. they're twins."

"OHMYGOSH! cabot! they have triplets and twins!"


so, cabot strolls over and smiles and oohs and aahs and does all the things we've come to expect of people when they find out that we have triplets and twins.

but he didn't  do any of the things we would expect a news anchor to do. he didn't see news when he saw it.

he didn't say, wait a minute, this would make a wonderful human interest story. would you guys mind?

he didn't say, my camera crew is right across the street, lemme call 'em.

he didn't say, our ratings are slipping lately and we need something that could go viral. you mind?


nope. he didn't do any of that. what he did was, he did what most husbands do when their wives are oohing and aahing over babies. he oohed and aahed, too, to keep peace in the house, and then he took his wife's arm and ushered her out of the restaurant. which totally ticked me off.

i hope mrs. rea made him hold her purse while she tried on every pair of shoes in the mall.

the best is yet to come

in discussing the wedding feast at cana yesterday, my priest pointed out that Christ didn't just turn water into wine - He turned it into better wine. He turned it into the top shelf stuff.

usually, as Scripture (and common sense) tells us, the reverse is true......you serve the best stuff first and then, when everybody's sloshed, you haul in the  cheap junk.

my priest said that this is a metaphor for the afterlife......that the best is yet to come.


i think the best is yet to come but i think most of us live as though it's not. so tonight, i think i'll buy a really, really nice bottle of wine.

and i'll pretend it's water.

because really,


it is.

sounds annoying

fire trucks. i never know where they're coming from. at first, i think it's the radio so i turn it down. nope, not the radio. it's getting louder but i don't see it. talk about distracted driving! and in an emergency, no less!

that "backing up" sound. that "beep beep beep" my-truck-is-backing-up sound.

someone clearing their throat. i mean, clearing their throat of what? eewww!!

the guys who live above me and either they a.) practice their gymnastics floor routine 24/7 or b.) they seizure and fall down. a lot. or c.) they are clairvoyant - they knew i was gonna one day write a post like this - and they wanted their 15 minutes of fame.

cell phones ringing. whose is it? nobody ever knows.

at last count, there were 1, 756 different beeps in the world. every last one of them an. noy. ing.


i visited joshua tree national park in joshua tree, california once. it was the quietest sound i had ever in my whole life heard. it sounded like......nothing. dead, quiet nothing.


actually, it sounded like snow.


falling.

toni baloney

i have been friends with toni since we were babies. if that makes any sense which really, it doesn't, because how can you be friends with someone when you're 3 months old. but you know what i mean.

being friends with someone since you were babies means that the someone is pretty old. it does not mean that i am old......just that toni is.

often, hand-in-hand with being old is being old school. and toni is.

this is how old school toni is: she just got on facebook yesterday. and she doesn't understand how it works.

toni doesn't realize, for example, that when someone leaves a comment to one of her posts, she can reply back to the comment. she doesn't realize that some people - who have been friends with her since they were babies - have pretty much nothing else to do on a cold, snowy saturday than to wait for her to comment back.

instead........toni makes a post and then someone  - who has been friends with her since they were babies -  comments on the post and then toni says that she is going to the grocery.

to buy baloney, i guess.

here comes the divorce

i am not sure that i can watch another episode of "say yes to the dress" or "four weddings." actually, i am sure that i can't.


the lack of proper priorities in this country is sickening. when a bride says that her dream is to have a "rock star party with a wedding on the side," it ought to make everybody throw up. but apparently it doesn't. because she won.

it also ought to make everybody throw up when a bride says that she wants to "look like a princess" on her wedding day. or when she says that she wants a dress so unique, so extreme, so attention-grabbing that her guests won't know what hit 'em.

brides don't end up at the bridezilla level anymore - they start there.


what happened to the marriage????? where'd it go????? surely it's there somewhere. maybe it's buried under the five thousand dollar centerpieces with the orchids flown in from peru.

or maybe it's baked in the cake. the cake that isn't intended to be eaten as much as it is intended to be oohed and aahed over.

the actual marriage doesn't appear to be in the vows. "thanks for showing up," said one bride to her groom. "thank you for showing up," said the groom, "now, let's get this party started!"

no mention of getting the marriage started.

just the 17 bright red with plunging necklines bridesmaids' dresses cuz "this wedding is gonna be bigger, badder, and hotter ass than any other you will ever see."


i should certainly hope so.

let it snow (but not inside!)

my neighbors love to leave their windows and patio door open. no matter what. including last night.

when i took pippi out at about midnight, sure enough, the neighbors had their windows and patio door open. despite the fact that it was snowing - hard.

and despite the fact that it was like 20 degrees or something.


if this doesn't qualify as odd behavior, i don't know what does.


actually, i do know what qualifies as odd behavior.......asking your cpr instructor if it really makes a clicking sound on a live human being when you're doing cpr correctly.

the cpr instructor looked at him like he was nuts.

i suggested that maybe we should do cpr on him, before any more brain cells die.

nobody thought that was a good idea.


now, that's odd.

ain't no mountain high enough

ain't no valley low enough. ain't no river (in this case, ocean) wide enough.

ain't no security guard tough enough.



my friend, marissa, and her husband, brian, spent the Christmas holidays in paris. they went, of course, to the notre dame cathedral.

marissa told me yesterday that the whole time they were in the cathedral, she was thinking of me. me! (i imagine God's gonna have a little talk with her about that, if He hasn't already.)

she said that her mind kept returning to me and her eyes kept crying.

(i heart marissa.)

although she didn't specifically say so, marissa meant that she had the heartbreak of the ending of my marriage to per on her mind. she meant that she knew the pain i have been going through.

she meant that she felt it.

(i heart marissa.)


before leaving the cathedral, they stopped in the gift shop, and marissa, still thinking of me (me!), bought me a votive candle.

(what marissa didn't know - but what the Holy Spirit was telling her -  was that i relied on lighting i don't know how many votive candles at my own church during this terrible time. there were days when those little white candles were the only light i could see. and the Holy Spirit was telling her so.)

(i heart the Holy Spirit.)


when they got to the airport, marissa got frisked out the wazoo. she said that she has never had a security check like that. she said they even put their hands down her pants.

she said it was the votive candle that had them worried. they thought it was an explosive.


well, it was an explosive.


it was the Holy Spirit.

loss=gain

i remember when i lost my "chatty cathy" doll and how i cried and cried. my parents bought me a replacement chatty cathy and whaddaya know......the second chatty cathy said more things when you pulled her string than the first one did. so, i was surprised. and happy.

all's well that ends well.

i also remember all the times when it has come time to buy a new pair of jeans and how much i dread those times because there's just nothin' like a nice pair of broken-in jeans. i never want to go out and start all over, looking for a new pair of jeans that i hope will be as good as the old pair of jeans which i know will never happen anyway. and then.......it does. invariably, the new pair turns out to be even better than the old pair that i thought were my best friend.

they say that you never know what you've got till it's gone and when they say that, they mean that what you had was pretty darned great and now that you don't have it anymore, you miss it like crazy and you wish you had appreciated it when you had it.

but it works the other way around, too. sometimes you think that what you have is perfect - or practically perfect - until you lose it and then you realize that it wasn't all that great after all and now, the new thing that has come along is even better than the thing you thought was so great.


in other words, my new life is turning out to be just fine.

what makes YOUR clothes fall off?

tequila, if i drank it, probably would make mine fall off - just as the song says -  and wine, which i do drink, probably would, too, if i drank enough of it which, thank the good Lord, i don't.

but, something is making my clothes fall off, or at least, my pants which, no, men......it is still not that kind of post.

my pants are too loose. i am not losing weight.

this is a mystery.

i thought at first that maybe my weight was shifting, so that, the weight that used to be in my bottom half is now somehow, miraculously, in my upper half. but.......trust me. it's not there, either.

my feet are bigger, i know that much. they've gone from a size 7, which they have been my entire adult life, to a 7 and a half. how that is even possible, i have no clue, but it's the God's honest truth.

still, you wouldn't think that your feet growing from a 7 to a 7 point 5 would make your pants fall off, now would you?

i know i'm not going to get much in the way of sympathy for this problem, but my size 2 jeans are too big. the only time they fit right is for about 30 seconds after they come out of the dryer. and finding size zero jeans isn't the joy ride it might sound like it would be.


is it possible that i drink tequila and i don't even know it????????

place

i am getting more and more conservative all the time which, yes, i know that makes at least half of you totally ticked off.

it wasn't always the case. there was a time when i would have thought that "pew races," wherein, as i understand it, you slide yourself under the pews of a church as fast as you can while your friends do the same thing and you see who can get "there" first.......there was a time when i would have thought that was fun. i would have thought, what the hell, God has a good sense of humor, God won't mind if we do sack races in the sanctuary, God won't even mind if we play poker in here! (ok. so maybe He'd mind if we played poker.)

i would have thought that having fun - and "expressing ourselves" - is part of what God wants us to do and having it and doing it right here under His nose would make Him, well, would make Him wanna do pew races, too!

no.

absolutely not.

when you come over to my house, do you jump on my furniture?

do you crawl under the tables at a restaurant?

if you went to the white house to meet the president, would you wear flip-flops?  (remember the flip-flop flap not too long ago?)

no, no, and no. why not? because it isn't re.spect.ful.


in a separate but related vein, i heard this guy on the radio the other day talking about how unhappy he is with the way that so many marriage proposals are being conducted these days. you know......things like asking her to marry you at the lakers game or parachuting off the top of a mountain with a sign on the balloon that pops the question (better to pop the question, i guess, than the balloon). things like that.

the guy on the radio was pointing out that a marriage proposal is - or at least, used to be and still should be - a serious, private, even holy occasion. not something for public consumption amongst a bunch of beer bottles and peanuts. and certainly not amongst a bunch of strangers.

a marriage proposal ought to occur somewhere quiet, personal, and reverential. he said that he thought proposing at church was probably thee best place of all.

i agree with him.

provided the pew races aren't that day.

my underwear

sorry, men, it's not that kind of post.


last week, while i was helping abby with the kids, olivia came into the bathroom as i was, um, going. (olivia often does this. olivia is very curious about all things potty, including whether or not i have a penis. practically every single time i go to the bathroom, olivia wants to know if i have a penis. i always tell her no (refraining from saying, "thank God!) and she, in reply, always says, "you have a 'gina?" and i always reassure her that, yes, my girl parts are still there.)

freud would love olivia.


anyway, olivia came into the bathroom just as i was zipping up my jeans and she noticed that my underwear were white. plain white.

this just wouldn't do.

olivia's underwear have ballerinas on them (brings a touch of class to the whole subject) and butterflies on them and hearts and stars and dora the explorer. personally, i think there should be a limit to what dora tries to explore.

anyway.......

so, olivia comes into the bathroom just as i am zipping up my jeans and she notices that my underwear are white and she asks me, simply, "why?"

"well," i said, "i guess i don't know. most of my underwear is white."

"i have ballerinas on my underwear," she boasted.

"i know you do, sweetie. and i love your underwear. but grammy just wears plain old white underwear."

you should have seen her face. it was some kind of combination of sadness and bewilderment. not to mention a boatload of disapproval.

"well, gram," she said, "you wanna wear some of my underwear?" she offered.

"oh, liv, that's very nice of you, sweetie......but i don't think your underwear would fit gram."

she eyed my bum and said,

"no. i guess you're right."



anyway......today i am helping out with the kids again and i am wearing an old pair of pink and blue flowered panties that i found in the back of my drawer, so i think olivia will approve.


now. if she'll just please not ask me that penis question.

some things you just can't ignore

like pine tree-scented dangling air fresheners for your car, for instance.

my friend in virginia just got picked up for driving with one of those. unbeknownst to her and to everyone with a brain, those things are illegal in virginia. three cop cars later and now my friend knows.

the seat belt on my car - driver's seat - broke yesterday. i briefly considered ignoring it and pretending it wasn't broken at all, which is what a lot of people do with their whole lives and which is why i have a job. but i decided not to ignore it after all.

about 3,000 phone calls later (it only took 3 cop cars for you, carrie), i learned a lot of things. one, i learned that it is illegal in the state of ohio for anyone other than a dealership mechanic to fix or replace a seat belt.

i learned that it takes 2-10 days for my dealership to get me a new seat belt. and then it takes about an hour to install it. somethin' wrong with that picture.

i learned that i have to pay up front for the new seat belt and the labor, even though neither one has yet happened. somethin' really wrong with that picture.

i learned that if you talk to the service department, they'll tell you you need a whole new seat belt. if you talk to the parts department, they'll tell you you only need the strap but not the buckle. if you talk again to the service department and tell them what the parts department said, the service department will tell you that they don't sell just the strap or just the buckle but only the whole enchilada. if you talk to the parts department again and tell them what the service department said, the parts department will say they really don't know.

that makes two of us, bub.

i learned that if you call Enterprise and ask them to pick you up, they'll say sure, what time? and you'll say 9 and they'll say 1? and you'll say, no, not 1....9. and they'll say, 1? got it.


i learned that, very, very likely, i won't be going anywhere today.

no, 70 times 7

no, not 490.........infinite. or as many times as it takes.

i'm no Biblical scholar by any means, but i like to think that at least part of the reason that Christ told us to forgive "70 times 7" is because He knew how hard it is to do it even once. He knew we'd need a lot of practice.

after 490 tries at just about anything, most of us could do it. i think even i could sink a free-throw shot if i tried 490 times.

it took me 3 tries to make a perfect crepe suzette. 5 tries to stick the landing on a spinach souffle. 15 attempts before i could legitimately call my sourdough "sourdough."

(i am stll trying to solve for 'X" in algebra. but.......i gotta admit.....i've never really tried all that hard.)


but, there is one kind of math problem we all better get serious about:

 "70 times 7."

holy days of obligation

today is a holy day of obligation in the catholic church - the solemnity of mary, the mother of God. a holy day  of obligation is just what it sounds like it is - a holy day on which you, as a catholic, are obligagted to go to Mass.

i remember back before i converted to catholicism and whenever one of my catholic friends said something about a holy day of obligation i was like, holy day of ob. li. ga. tion???? are you kidding me????

as if there was something wrong with obligating someone to go to church.

which there's not.


which. there. is. not.


let's  think about this for a minute......all you husbands out there? are you obligated to remember your anniversary? you bet your chestnuts roasting on an open fire you are.

valentine's day? obligated.

birthday? yup.


as well you should be.

and as well you should be glad to be.

yes. you should be glad to be obligated. because being obligated means you recognize that there is something outside of yourself that deserves more recognition than yourself.

but sadly.......most people don't get that.

how in the world do you people eat ORANGES??????

i hate fruit. hate. it.

but every new year, it's the same old thing......blah, blah, blah, eat-more-fruit-it's-good-for-you, blah, blah, blah. so once again, here i am, choking down fruit.

blech!

the worst fruit of all, hands down, has got to be the orange. how on earth do you people eat those things? don't you get all gaggy on the fiber and the texture and those little stringy white membrane thingamajigs which, right there......why are you eating something with membranes?

blech! oranges!

i even bought those cute little oranges this time around -  the ones that are called "cuties," thinking that would help.

cuties, my foot.

when you think about it, oranges are a lot like roses (which i'm not all that fond of either, thank you very much). roses have their thorns, which is bad, but they also have their roses, which is good. just like oranges have their membranes, which is horrible, but they also have, and i must admit it does taste good - very good - their juice.

is it any surprise i'm not that big of a sports fan? sports fan - you know. sports. fan? roses - rose bowl? oranges? orange bowl? hello????

never mind.

happy new year, eli's mom

eli's mom, debbie, and i co-babysat the twins and the triplets last night. i hope we get to do it again next year - and many years after that - because it was the perfect way to spend that one night of the year that nobody is quite sure how to spend.

for those of you who don't know debbie, let me say this: picture einstein morphed into kathy griffin morphed into the dali lama morphed into mother teresa morphed into roseanne morphed into mother-of-the-year . that's more or less debbie.

i'm not sure which of those personas she was last night - definitely not einstein - when the babies started crying and i suggested that we feed them.

"do they eat?" she asked. perfectly seriously.


after we picked our hysterically cracking up selves up off the floor, we fed them.


(those poor babies........thank God they hadn't a clue.)

:)