Its a tradition you know

Spring break. That means that the weather will turn nasty and I will be sick. I honestly would rather have the nice weather and have to work then have the break and the nasty weather and the beign sick. Not that I am complaining about having time off. ITs been nice. Makes me wich I could be a stay at home type. Other then the total lack of other adult contact. That gets hard after a few days.

Still feeling, I don't even know how to discribe it. over the the thing with the woman from church. I've called her my friend, told her my secrets and let her into my house and my heart (Not like THAT), and now I feel like that counts for nothing. Because the truth is that she is a wreck herself. Seh lives alone with a cat and is so bound in my her own issues that minor deviations from her routines cause major problems. She is a functioning mental case and the only reason seh functions is that seh has managed to regiment her life and that the people around her are highly tolerant of her idosyncaries.

And she likes to talk to me and treat me like I am about fifteen most of the time. She is highly dedicated to to biblical everything, and since she has read the thign front to back and back to front, she's an "expert". I feel like lately with the church crowd, nothing I do has been right. I don't dress the kids right, I don't wipe their faces right, I'm too hard on the oldest and not hard enough on the three year old. I'm a push over and not consistent with disiplene. I have th wrong values at home. Isaiah gets interogated about what happens at home when ever he goes to sunday school or awana (she is the sunday school teacher and the ride to awana).

I know I am far from perfect. I can have a hot temper. When it gets going I can even have a foul mouth. I'm a bit lazy, I'd rather watch tv or play with the kids then clean. I tend to over eat and under excersis, and I do enjoy my kids. I like to make them smile. If they ask for somethign and I have the ability to provide it, I usually do, freely and with out strings. I could be tougher. I could be s neat freak and run aroudn after them picking things up. I could be always wiping faces and changing clothes so that they never appeared to be dirty. I could have gideon on the potty every half hour so that he peed in the pot.

But I don't want to be like that. Kids get dirty. Kids make messes. Gideon will potty train when he is ready, making himlive on the toilet wont make him ready any faster. (Isaiah was the same way, wouldn't and wouldn't and then one day it clicked). I like us the way we are. My sons are happy and easy going and that is what child hood should be. Regiments and scheduals written in stone and have tos are for grownups.

And the whole point is that at some point, encouragment and friendship and mentorship has become somethign else. Something that I can't name but feels dissapproving and scrutinizing and shaming. Like I am constatly not living up to some example. Like not matter what I do, it isn't enough to gain acceptance ans approval. Like if I don't do things the way she thinks they shoudl be done, then I am an abusive mother.

I am not abusive, I am not neglectful. I do not need someone who can barely manage their own shit to be making me feel like I am failing at the most important thing in my life. And she woudl say that that statement is wrong. Jesus shoudl be the most important thing.

I love my faith and truly believe it. But It wasn't meant to beat people down and to make them feel like they are failures. I know people who were raised in faith and their lives are so much better then mine has been. I want that for my sons. TO know what being a man is, that its more then flashy toys and having a pretty girl hangign on their arms. I have put up with quite a bit of dogma that has rubbed me the wrong way so that the boys would have that benefit.

But now I think that the church will either look on me as a lost cause whose life will never be what it should have been and them as victims of feminsm and liberalism and singl motherhood, or it will look on them as undisiplened monsters who need someone to step in "before its too late".

I don't know if its a church wide thing, or just a bug that has gotten up this one person's ass, but I need to figure it out. There are other churches. They may not preach as much fire and brimstone as this one does, but that may be a good thing. I', tired of feeling beaten down. I'm tired of feeling like I'm never right, like I'm never okay, like I am never goign to be good enough to be accepted. ANd I'm not talking about god here, I'm talking about be accepted by the people who shake your hand when you walk in the door.

I hate feeling like this. I'm sitting at a cusp, I know that. I felt like this in the days before I left shane. I need to change somethign, but I can't see far enough ahead to predict what the consequences will be.

And the sad thing is this. This all happened right as I got the car and the liscense. They are all goign to say to themselves that I used them for rides and help and dumped them out of my life right as I didn't need them anymore. And that isn't true, but its a small church. If she is goign to continue to disrespect my role as the mom. and to continue to interoogate my son about did he do devotionals every night and what I let him watch on tv, then I can't have him around her, because I don't need the state coming down on me when ever she feels like stirring things up. And she was goign to that church long before I or even dad was, so if it somes to it, we are the odd ones out. And I think that is the really hard part. I thought I had a surrogate family, but the fact is I don't. I'm still an orphan and no one is going to come to me and say "I"m sorry this happened and hurt your feelings, it won't happen anymore, we love you and don't want yo to have this trouble."

Has it happend, nope. Just silence.