Jesus Take the Wheel

She was driving last Friday on her way to Cincinnati
On a snow white Christmas Eve
Going home to see her Mama and her Daddy
With the baby in the backseat

Fifty miles to go and she was running low
On faith and gasoline
It’d been a long hard year

She had a lot on her mind and she didn’t pay attention
She was going way too fast
Before she knew it she was spinning
On a thin black sheet of glass

She saw both their lives flash before her eyes
She didn’t even have time to cry
She was so scared
She threw her hands up in the air

Jesus, take the wheel
Take it from my hands
Cause I can’t do this on my own

I’m letting go
So give me one more chance
To save me from this road I’m on
Jesus, take the wheel

And the car came to a stop
She cried when she saw that baby in the backseat
Sleeping like a rock

And for the first time in a long time
She bowed her head to pray
She said I’m sorry for the way
I’ve been living my life

I know I’ve got to change
So from now on tonight

Jesus, take the wheel
Take it from my hands
?Cause I can’t do this on my own

I’m letting go
So give me one more chance
To save me from this road I’m on

Oh Jesus, take the wheel
Oh, I’m letting go

So give me one more chance
Save me from this road I’m on
From this road I’m on
Jesus, take the wheel
Oh, take it, take it from me
Oh, why, ooh

If your skerred, say you’re skerred (and then do something about it!)

You’re fired!

Those two words, spoken in this economy, will scare anyone.  Those are the words that make us question our stability.  Have you ever been fired?  I haven’t, but I might as well have been.  I have left many jobs because they really didn’t work out and I was disappointed or was given the heads up that if I didn’t leave, I was going to be fired (who said insider information isn’t helpful?)  Many years ago, I looked at my friend, Mike, and told him, “If things don’t change, I’m firing myself by September.”  That July, before I had the opportunity to leave, my entire division was laid-off.  I didn’t like that at all.  I was truly upset. How could they take that control away from me?  How dare they choose for me what I was going to choose for myself!  My boss, an avid baseball fan and lover of movies, just looked at me and said, “There’s no crying in auditing!”  He was right.  There wasn’t – but things were left unsaid and undone and I felt like the closing of our division was a big mistake.

Being fired, let go, or being asked to go all tell the recipient of the news a few things:

1.  Things aren’t working out the way you or the company (or both) planned.

2. Things can’t remain the way they are.

3.  Someone  would like to invite you to be successful elsewhere.

Let’s just face it, not everything is for everyone.  Just because it doesn’t work out doesn’t mean that you are a failure.  Even if you made some mistakes along the way, those who can truly identify what it means to be a success aren’t going to judge you that much differently than they did when you first came on board.  They too, after all, have made mistakes and, but by the grace of God, would find themselves in the same position.

We, as consumers, enjoy the benefits of those who were once fired or failed miserably in their lives.  To name a few:

Soichiro Honda

Akio Morita (Sony)

Bill Gates

Harland “Colonel” Sanders

Walt Disney

Albert Einstein

Robert Goddard

Isaac Newton

Thomas Edison

Orville and Wilbur Wright

Winston Churchill

Abe Lincoln

Think about that abbreviated list.  How many of those famous people eventually created products or services that we now use on a regular basis?  What would the world look like today if those people walked away from their passion?  What would have happened if they stopped searching?  What would have happened if they gave in to ridicule?  We would still be hunting down whales for their oil and walking to work.  We’d know very little about space – making it impossible to use everything from cell phones, GPS systems, and having cable or satellite television.  We wouldn’t be able to fly.  Heck!  Even the guy who created the Sony Walkman helped to make music a bigger part of our lives when his invention inspired Steve Jobs to create the iPod.  Where would we be without fried chicken on demand?  I know, a little hungrier and healthier!

The point here is that when something doesn’t work out, we have the opportunity to get back up and try again.  Nothing that we face in life has only one angle.  There is always an alternative.  We may fool ourselves into thinking that there isn’t another alternative, but there always is.

But, I’m afraid.

Sure you’re afraid!  Who wouldn’t be when what they see as comfortable is snatched out from under their feet?  If you aren’t just a little bit afraid, something is seriously wrong with you and new job isn’t the first thing you should be seeking.  Fear is an amazing motivator.  It gives us the sense of urgency.  If you need to have this verified, start a grease fire in your kitchen and see how quickly you react.  Fear is also a warning system, telling us that something is wrong and needs to be corrected.  Slam on your brakes at a stop light and once your heart falls back into your chest, you’ll figure out that you probably need to change your driving habits.  True fear is so uncomfortable that humans and animals alike will do just about anything to stop it.  Fear is, very much a gift to us.  It forces us into moving out of comfort zone.  Fear cannot be avoided and can only be acted on.  Delaying the consequences of whatever you are afraid of is not doing yourself any favors.  You have to do what is necessary to make it end and until you do, it will keep coming up over and over again.  As long as you plan on doing something about it, there is no shame in being afraid.

The challenge:

To be just an ounce more passionate than you are afraid!

Why Church: The Reason I Like Church Isn’t Because People Are Nice.

I found this blog this morning.  Just goes to show you that you don’t have to like the messenger to appreciate the message. 

 

 

The church where I grew up had hideous green carpet and high ceilings and I still remember the first time I attended there.

My mom dropped me off in the class for second graders and I cried because I missed my parents. One of the volunteers held me in her lap and told me it was going to be okay.

I was hooked.

This was a nice place for nice people who said nice things and made you feel nice all of the time. This place was safe.

Church had me.

In high school I joined the youth group which meant church on Wednesday nights and I looked forward to it, every week. My best friends and I had a bet to see who could make it through a whole semester without wearing the same outfit twice, so we would come with GAP bags in tow, full of our favorite clothes, so we could trade for the week.

My J-Crew sweater for your jeans, your cargo pants for my Abercrombie shirt, we would barter with each other, playfully.

Then we would sing songs and play games and meet in a small group where my five closest friends and I would talk about school and homework and boys and God (mostly boys). We’d laugh together, pray for each other, hug each other, lay on top of each other, kiss each other on the cheeks, and laugh and giggle some more. You know, best friend stuff.

Church was like home.

Then something happened.

I don’t remember all of the details, and to be honest I was a teenage girl with hurt and hormones and insecurity coursing through my veins and now I wonder how much those things could have tainted my perspective, but what I do remember is this:

My friends and I were confronted about our affectionate behavior toward each other and asked to stop. We didn’t listen. We didn’t think we needed to. Assumptions were made about us. Conclusions were drawn. No one really asked questions. We were called out publicly.

We weren’t asked to leave, but in our teenage minds we didn’t feel safe to stay anymore.

Suddenly the thing that I loved most about church — that people were nice and they said nice things that made me feel nice about myself all of the time — shattered into a million pieces.

Church was not what I thought it was anymore.

There were six of us who left that day, all girls, all young, broken, hurting, desperate to be given direction. We were sixteen-years-old and dying to belong to something, but each of us left with this message (though perhaps never spoken) ringing loud and clear:

You don’t belong here.

Church was never really the same for me after that.

In college, I started drinking and partying, thinking I could fill my need for community that way and, for a while, it worked. But when all was said and done I would wake up, the morning after, hung over and used, feeling more lonely and confused and isolated than ever.

I tried to go back to church on several occasions. But every time I stepped foot into the doors the same thing would happen. I would feel threatened. These people were not on my side, I would think to myself. They were against me. They could not be trusted.

I did not belong here.

The greeters would smile at me and shake my hand every time I walked through the door. They would tell me they were glad I was there. But I didn’t believe them. You hypocrites I would think to myself. You don’t care about me.

Who do you think you’re fooling?

One day, sometime after college, long after I had given up on the idea of church as a way of life for me, I overheard this guy talking on someone else’s computer.

A pastor, ranting and raving about girls who were sleeping with their boyfriends. I felt heat come up under my skin. Was he talking to me directly? This was not a “nice” guy saying nice things about people to make them feel nice about themselves.

I hated him. But I could not stop listening.

I was so mad at Mark Driscoll that day that I wrote down his name on a scrap piece of paper and took it home so that I could download as many of his videos as possible.

My plan was to listen to him, to get the ammunition I needed, and then rip him to pieces on my blog. He thought he could tell me how to live my life? I would show him.

But the craziest thing happened.

His words got me. I listened and listened and listened and they penetrated the thick skin that I had been growing. They cut through all the junk, so that I could hear them. His words weren’t nice, and they didn’t make me feel nice, but the did something different.

They woke me up.

It was not the niceness of church that drew me to it the second time, although I’ve found the support of all kinds of loving relationships since I returned. What drew me back to church was the truth that I found there, the sense of urgency that comes with that truth, the understanding that I’m not as nice as I thought I was, and an understanding that niceness is not what separates us from the rest of the world.

The reality is that niceness isn’t what I needed anyway.

 

About Allison Vesterfelt: Allison is the Editor-in-Chief of Prodigal Magazine, who believes that there’s more to life than meets the eye and she’s not afraid to prove it. She’s passionate about helping people to tell, hear and understand stories that inspire, uplift, encourage, and even convict by pointing to the truth of Jesus. She lives in West Palm Beach, Florida with her husband Darrell.

The lack of the “process” is what makes processed food suck

If I’m lying, I’m dying.

I swear this happened.

Scene:

My freshman year in college, I’m 17 years old.  I’m pretty far away from home.  Well, far enough away to forget my common sense (that is, if I had any in the first place).  I’m a super student and had been given permission to take 17 credit-hours per semester.  Meanwhile, I’m holding down 3 part-time jobs at the mall and still maintaining a 4.0 GPA.

I had one weakness, math.  But, I figured out how to skate around that one really well.  I marched myself down to the student support office and told them that I needed a tutor.  To this day, I can’t understand why they would let a 4.0 GPA student with 17 credit hours per semester on the books get a tutor for anything without asking questions. But, they let me do it – and I met the coolest guy in the world – my tutor.  For the sake of this story, I’ll call him Jay. Calling Jay a tutor is quite generous.  He was, in fact, my partner-in-crime.

Birds of a Feather:

You know how kids always seem to find trouble?  Well, we found trouble.  Jay and I had equally high opinions of ourselves.  Together, we decided that I wasn’t going to brush up on my college algebra.  Jay was a brilliant math major who could wipe out anything that Einstein sent his way in a matter of seconds (Einstein was a math guy right, not science?).  As long as Jay was around, I didn’t need to learn anything about college algebra because he was perfectly willing to cheat me through the course.  Now, here’s where it gets really weird.  He actually enrolled in my college algebra course with me.  He was a math major, tutoring other students in math, and he stepped down from his super-math courses to take college algebra with me.  The school didn’t ask any questions (again).  He wasn’t taking the course to help me or to get the professor’s perspective so that he could better communicate the hard stuff to me; he did it so that we could cheat.  Okay, he did it so that I could cheat off of him.  Day-in-day-out, we’d go to class together.  Every time there was a test, I’d sit just far away from him to get the same copy of the test and we’d secretly “handle it”.  I got an A in the course.  What was his motivation for helping me?  I was fun to hang out with and his day to collect on that bill was coming.

Don’t look now but it’s your turn:

The next semester, it was my turn to pay up.  We enrolled in our core psychology course together.  We both honestly needed that course.  Day #1, we walk in and we sit right by each other.  I guess I should take a second here to mention that both Jay and I were strong Conservatives in every sense of the word.  We even called ourselves Christians.  Are you barfing or, at least, laughing yet?  What a magical surprise we had coming our way when the professor, an incredibly liberal woman, got up in front of the lecture hall and told us that we didn’t have to attend her class at all.  All we had to do was show up for the final exam and accept whatever grade we received on that exam.  The mid-term didn’t matter.  Homework didn’t matter.  Research papers didn’t matter.  I looked at Jay, Jay looked at me.  We smiled, grabbed our backpacks and literally snickered as we left the hall. We didn’t even grab a copy of the syllabus as we strolled out the door.   I bet everyone in that classroom thought we were insane.  We never showed up again.  During the next twelve weeks, we met every morning for breakfast.  We went to lunch together almost every day. We went shopping, we watched a lot of Judge Judy at 9 AM, and then we got down to any homework we had any left from the night before.

That sounds fun but what happened next?

Finally, the end of the semester (and the liberal use of our benefactor’s credit cards) came.  The exam was literally three days away.   Jay looked me in the eye and asked me if “I was going to do this?”  The ever-invisible social contract that we had obviously been constructing for the last year had come to term.  I looked at him and said, “Yeah.  I’m going to do it.  Go get me the textbook.”  Between Jay and I, we scratched up enough money to buy one used copy of the textbook.  I took it back to the dorm, called in sick to work, and read almost 400 pages.  I read and I read and I read.  Back then, I had a photographic memory, which has since been destroyed by electronics that memorize everything for me, and I could soak information in like a microfiber rag.  Once it was in there, it was in there.  On exam day, we show up in the lecture hall and got a bunch of funny looks from other students who had no idea who we were.  I’m sure some of them thought that we were sitting in on an exam from another section of the same course that this particular professor taught.  As I walked in, I grabbed multiple copies of the Scantron answer sheets.  She didn’t even blink an eye.  Jay and I sat two seats away from one another, playing the odds that she would only have two copies of the exam.  The exam had 40 multiple choice questions on it.  I quickly filled out my answers, bubbled in my name, and put my copy to the side.  Then, I filled in Jay’s answers and slipped his Scantron sheet back to him so that he could fill in the bubbles with his own name.  I got a few longing looks as I did this and even a few questions about what the answers to particular questions were.  Never stingy, I shared.  Within an hour, Jay and I were both out of the lecture hall and laughing as we went to lunch.

I hope you got caught and publicly flogged.

Do you?  Well, that’s mean!

A week later, it was time for grades to come out.  Jay and I went to the registrar’s office to collect our grades (am I showing my age yet? We had to walk somewhere to get our grades!)  With more nerve than any one human being should have, I showed my student ID and opened my envelope.  There it was- my grade for Psychology.  An “A”.  I was elated!  Jay opened his packet to find that he had received an “A” as well.  We did it!  At this point, we didn’t have any shame at all.  We immediately went to visit the unsuspecting professor to ask what we gotten on the final exam.  She was proud to allow two of her most brilliant students to enter her office.  She told us that nobody had ever skipped the entire course and ended up with an “A” and that most students who do skip the course get a “C” and are thrilled to get that grade.  I had received a 97% on the exam.  Jay had received a 95%.  To this day, neither one of us know if we had the same copy of the exam or if she had just haphazardly aligned similar question responses to similar letters on the Scantron sheets.  I never asked Jay if he had changed a couple of his answers so that we wouldn’t “appear to be cheating”.

Good for you, you suck.  Is that it? 

Oh! But I wish it were!  My sophomore year was Jay’s junior year and we had to part ways so that we could actually get down to the classes that we needed for our major.  He was, as I said before, a math major.  I was…*drumroll*…a criminal justice major!  Jay’s participation in our little scheme didn’t have a negative impact on him.  Math courses are absolutely 100% objective.  Criminal Justice courses are anything but.  After that psychology course, I was slammed with sociology, two more advanced psychology course, criminalistics, juvenile justice, corrections, and a philosophy course.  Every single one of those courses was built on what I had failed to learn in that freshman-level psychology course.  I spent the last two-plus years of undergrad and the subsequent two-and-a-half years of grad school just a step behind everyone else.  I still pulled in exceptional grades but familiarizing myself with all of the different building blocks of a social science degree was so difficult and so tedious that I often considered dropping out.  I ended up having to drop down to only working one job and my social life went into the toilet.  By the time I finished graduate school; Jay had his PhD and was long gone.  He and I had gotten into a major spat on an incredibly personal matter before I finished my senior year and we never spoke again.  Fast food and Judge Judy couldn’t hold us together.

Well, I hope you learned your lesson.

You want such good things for me, thank you.  Sadly, that hasn’t been the case, but I’m working on it.  My “genius” didn’t start to fail me until my early 30’s.  I’m still pretty bright and can pull of some amazing stunts, but anytime that I do, I have to work harder at them then I did before.  Long gone are the days of memorizing the equivalent of an encyclopedia in a few nights.  Now, when I make a plan, I have to plan the plan that I’m planning.  If I don’t, it shows.  I’m still very stubborn and very resistant to putting in the hard work that is needed for the reward.  The lessons that I didn’t have to learn when I was younger always entice me and draw me in like the lights of a glittering city.

Do you finally get it?

I’m getting there.

Luckily for me, my overt brilliance has started to fail me.  Lucky for me, the impact of aging and not being as healthy as I would like to be have started to catch up with me.  Lucky for me, I now have to watch the children in my family struggle to grasp concepts and I am now the one that has to tell them that I can’t do their homework for them because they are eventually going to need to know what they are doing.  I am now learning to appreciate the process of pain, and sweat, and suffering – and I don’t regret it.  I still spend a lot of time bulking because the process sucks which only makes matters worse, but I can’t say that out loud – because I’m not 17 years old anymore and it only sucks if I decide that it’s going to suck.

You still suck.

I know.  I just suck a little less now. I could say that I’m better at sucking these days, but saying so would get me into trouble on many levels.  

What does processed food have to do with anything in this story?

If you can’t figure it out, there is absolutely no help that I can offer to you!

What was your GPA when you finished grad school?

3.68.  But it doesn’t matter.  I didn’t go to Harvard, so nobody cares about that number anyway.

Your friend.  Is his real name Jay?

Yeah.

Probably.

I hope he isn’t running for office.

Gas prices imperil Obama re-election bid

You don’t have to think back far to remember the Obama-maniacs swooning over his unrealistic promises of American-funded subsidies for everything.  The last few years have brought nothing but lower employment numbers, across-the-board inflation on all consumables, and less money available for government subsidies.  With a failing Health Care plan sitting in the hands of the Supreme Court of the United States, there isn’t much left that Obama can promise to even his most loyal followers. It appears as if skyrocketing gas prices may be the blow that will bring Obama down. 

Sorry, boys and girls, Obama is not going to pay your mortgage or put gas in your tank.  Good luck trying to find a job to pay those bills in the hostile environment that he created for employers. 

Gas prices imperil Obama re-election bid

By Dave Boyer

-

The Washington Times

The unemployment rate was falling and President Obama’s poll numbers were improving, but along came $4 gasoline.

Voters are giving Mr. Obama an emphatic thumbs-down for his handling of gas prices — 68 percent disapprove of his response to the problem in the latest Reuters/Ipsos poll.

The White House and Mr. Obama’s re-election team are acutely aware of the political danger, with the president giving seven speeches in March alone on energy and gas prices to persuade the public there is no “silver bullet” solution.

“The Obama campaign knows that high gas prices can sink his presidency,” said Republican strategist Ron Bonjean. “They are throwing the kitchen sink at this problem through advertising, campaign appearances and high-profile speeches.”

The latest salvo from Team Obama is a new TV ad by Priorities USA Action, the super PAC supporting the president’s re-election, that portrays GOP presidential front-runner Mitt Romney as a tool of the U.S. oil industry. “The money they make from high gas prices is going right into Mitt Romney’s campaign,” says the ad airing in eight battleground states, including Florida and Ohio.

And on Tuesday, the administration unveiled new procedures to speed up drilling on public lands, an area where Republicans and the oil industry have pressed Mr. Obama to boost oil production.

There’s some polling evidence that the rise in gas prices — the national average is $3.92 per gallon — has impeded Mr. Obama’s steady rise in job approval ratings from 40 percent last August to 48 percent this week. The risk posed by a continued jump in the cost of gasoline is a bit of deja vu for Mr. Obama, who campaigned in 2008 on voter anger over $4 gasoline and took office in 2009 when the price at the pump was about $1.90 per gallon in the depths of the recession.

In a Gallup poll last week, 65 percent of respondents said they worry “a great deal” about gas prices. Majorities of Republicans, Democrats and independents all disapproved of Mr. Obama’s handling of the issue.

The president has emphasized that he’s promoting a variety of energy sources, including renewable fuels and solar energy, to reduce America’s dependence on foreign oil. He’s also railed against Congress for failing to end $4 billion in annual tax breaks for oil companies.

But Republicans have countered that his policies are beholden to environmentalists, resulting in costly debacles such as the government’s $500 million loan guarantee for the defunct Solyndra solar energy company, and in short-sighted decisions such as the rejection of the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline that would run from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico.

The president also has continued bans on drilling in the eastern Gulf of Mexico; offshore on both the Atlantic and Pacific coastlines; and in some oil-rich fields in Alaska.

Some analysts say that Mr. Obama, with only seven months left before the election, has few options open to him but rhetoric in the short term. They say that even if Mr. Obama had an effective plan for lowering energy prices, it takes years for such policies to take effect at a level that consumers would notice.

“It’s an unfortunate reality,” said Catrina Rorke, director of energy policy at the American Action Forum. “OPEC controls the price of gas, growing demand in China controls the price. Tradition states the guy in office is going to be blamed. Unless he can win the rhetorical argument, it’s not good news for his job security.”

In making that rhetorical case, Mr. Obama has argued that domestic oil production has increased in each of his three years in office and is at its highest level in eight years. “We are drilling all over the place,” he told an audience in New Mexico last week during a four-state tour to promote his energy policies.

A spokesman for Speaker John A. Boehner, Ohio Republican, called it a “farcical, high-octane public relations tour.”

Ms. Rorke says the president’s claims about rising production are somewhat disingenuous, because production today was affected by federal policy enacted five to 10 years ago, and because drilling on private land — controlled by states — has increased dramatically. Production of natural gas from the Marcellus shale region in Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia has soared in the past two years.

“On public land, certainly nothing that Obama has done has increased production,” she said. “He hasn’t been in office long enough for his policies to actually create more oil. On private land is where we’ve seen the greatest development, and that’s because of hydraulic fracturing. States are regulating that.”

Another option available to Mr. Obama is dipping into the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which holds more than 700 million barrels of oil, about one month’s worth of consumption in the U.S. Ms. Rorke said it would send a signal that Mr. Obama is “wiling to take action,” but the effect on gas prices would likely be negligible.

Mr. Bonjean said the president and his advisers, in saturating his schedule with speeches on energy, are deploying a strategy that isn’t likely to work.

“They’re trying to pivot to get away from it being the president’s fault,” he said. “What it does is link high gasoline prices to the president. Nothing can beat the wince of families at the gasoline pump when they have to pay the bill. You can’t get over that.”

Matchbox Twenty – Bent

Can you help me I’m bent
I’m so scared that I’ll never
Get put back together
Keep breaking me in
And this is how we will end
With you and me bent

If I couldn’t sleep could you sleep
Could you paint me better off
Could you sympathize with my needs
I know you think I need a lot

I started out clean but I’m jaded
Just phoning it in
Just breaking the skin

Matchbox Twenty – Push

Jewel – Hands

What I would tell my father if I thought he would understand

Dear Dad,

I love you, but you make me want to scream!  This morning, you called me to say that your computer wasn’t working.  As you put it, your “Hotmail” wouldn’t go through.  Dad, you don’t get your email through Hotmail, you get it through Comcast.  When I told you that I was busy at work, you called again to remind me that your email still wasn’t working.  When I didn’t answer on the third call, you left me a 4 minute long voicemail about your Hotmail not working.  Two calls later, I just turned the ringer off.   The next time I picked up the phone to look at it, there were 3 additional voicemails about the computer and one about your TomTom not working.   

When I was finished with my workday, I was sitting in the parking lot of the gas station and I got a call from one of your friends.  This is your favorite tactic.  If you can’t get me to jump, you get your friends to gang up on me.  You’ve done this with all of your electronic problems and even had your friends ask me to join in on their multi-level marketing scams that zapped at least $100K out of your wallet in only a few short years.  I don’t take your friends very seriously, sorry.

When I got home and I was taking care of my own personal matters, your friend called again.  I almost bit his head off this time.  You’ve never had a “computer problem” that hasn’t taken me all night to repair.  I told him that once I was allowed to rest for 30 minutes, I’d go and look at your computer.  I couldn’t rest – so I just went to look at it. 

Dad, the batteries were dead on your wireless keyboard.  That’s why you couldn’t get your “Hotmail” or access anything online.  It’s fixed.  I know, I know, “Well, I’ll be damned, it was the batteries?”  Your TomTom is a TomTom issue.  We’ll get that fixed in the next couple of days.  You aren’t going anywhere new this week, right?  I’d really like to take your TomTom to the top of a roof somewhere and send it cascading to its not-so-peaceful end.  Can’t you get a Magellan?  Can I give you my Magellan? 

I know I give you a hard time, but I really love you.  I walk by an empty bedroom and I see you.  I can see your shadow sitting on a bed like my Pap did right before he died.  You’re only 62 years old but you are starting to act like you are 80 years old.  While I never got a chance to meet your father, I know how he died – alone and in the loony bin.  I don’t think he was loony, I think he had the same thing that you are getting and that scares me.  I can hear how hoarse your voice is and I can’t get you to go to the doctors.  You say it’s the ragweed and pollen.  You’ve never had allergy problems.  Remember what happened last time you didn’t go to the doctors?  You almost died and you had to be on Cipro for 30 days.  I had to take your temperature in your ear because you couldn’t hear the beeping sound after years of working on Air Force One.  Your stupid “girlfriend” is taking you down and all of these homeopathic Chinese remedies aren’t going to fix what is going on with you.  You need to go to the doctors.  I keep trying to tell you all of these things but you are no longer able to hold a conversation for more than a few minutes.  I don’t want to go to court to have to take over.  You and mom have already made me the executors of your wills – a cruel and unusual punishment for any who wants to have a life anytime in the next 30 years.  I’ll do it, but I’m already tiring of having to fight you every step of the way in the meantime. 

Dad, you don’t need to be working anymore.  Something really bad is going to happen.  You are an engineer.  You just can’t do it anymore.  You don’t know that because you don’t know what’s going on. Everyone around you can see that if you keep going to work, a disaster is inevitable.  I keep hoping that you are just on overload and that another vacation will fix all of your woes.  My hopes are always dashed when you come back from an overseas trip and you are worse off than you were before you left.  I don’t think I can let you go again in October. 

You don’t have to take care of your kids anymore.  We are all adults.  It’s been nice to have you helping us out over the past few years in this economy.  We all know that you can afford it, but that isn’t the point.  You can’t even keep up with your credit cards anymore.  You don’t balance a checkbook very well, and if I didn’t have your passwords, nobody would have them.  If you want to give your kids a big fat check and then be at peace, you can do that.  Otherwise, I wish that you would just relax a little bit because I don’t think you have that much time left in what’s left of your right mind. 

I don’t want to put you in a home, Dad.  I hear you talk about all of the good times that you would have at the veteran’s home, but I also know that it would drive you mad.  I want you to be able to live in your home and I will stick around the area to take care of you.  Parents don’t belong in homes.  I know that you think I’m going to do to you the same thing that your sister is doing to your mom.  I won’t.  I will never leave you behind.

I wish that we had a better relationship when I was a child.  I could have used a Dad back then.  But, I have a Dad now and I’m preparing myself to deal with the gift of having an aging father.  You giving me absolutely nothing actually made me a stronger person- stubborn as an ox, but strong nonetheless.  You’ve kind of made up with that in the only way that you know how over the past few years – with money.  You can’t buy my love – I don’t sell things that are free for the taking. 

Oh!  How I wish I could say any or all of these things to you and make you understand.  I wouldn’t want to give up control either.  I’ve been there before several times.  I wish you had a hundred more Octobers to go on vacation.  I’m so torn right now on what to do about you.  All that I can do is hope that you know that at least a couple of your children do love you and want you to be happy for as long as you possibly can be.

I love you (but you’re still going to the doctors).

Wendy

Anatomy of a Public Apology

Everyone has to apologize every once in a while.

It’s no fun.  And the more people you have to apologize in front of, I imagine, the less fun it is.

Public apologies have become a staple of our cultural diet.  Every month or two, we expect a celebrity, pastor, or politician to apologize to us.  In fact, we demand it.  We foam at the mouth.  We jeer and flaunt the person’s wrongdoing…

…And it’s really annoying.

You know that Rush Limbaugh apologized on his show on Monday.  He will not be the last person to apologize for saying something he should not have.  And so, the next time we all have an apology coming to us, here’s three super-annoying habits everyone can stop doing.

 

I Denounce You and You and You

If there’s one really annoying habit our hyper-politically-correct culture has, it’s how competitive we are at “denouncing” insensitive comments.

Seriously, every last blogger and reporter who has mentioned Rush’s comments has spent thousands of words making sure their audience knows how awful they think the word “slut” is.  Everyone has to outdo the last guy, do a little more denouncing than the last guy, throw a couple more stones than the last guy heaved, so everyone knows we really mean it…like way more than the last guy.  You think that guy’s pissed about the word “slut?”  Well, I’m really super righteously pissed off!  That’s how sensitive and politically correct I am!

Public apologies just become an easy opportunity to cash in and make yourself look super extra sensitive and politically correct.  It’s phony, it’s garbage, and I don’t buy it.

Never Accept It

Everyone knows when a kid is made to apologize but he doesn’t mean it.  He drags his feet, looks at the floor and mumbles, “I’m sorry.”  And Mom says, “Sorry for what?”  

Chances are, if you are not a fan of Rush, you’ve been eating this up.  You’re hoping and praying that this is the beginning of the end for him (it isn’t.)  And you probably listened to his apology and thought to yourself how insincere he sounded.  Surely, you said, he’s just apologizing to stop the sponsors from running off.  “He’s just saying sorry because he has to!  He really thinks that girl is a slut!”

And if you are one of Rush’s fans, you thought just the opposite.

People did the same thing when Ed Schultz apologized (and was suspended) for calling Laura Ingraham a slut, or when David Letterman spent seven minutes apologizing for calling Sarah Palin a slut, or when Don Imus or Tiger or Elliot or Anthony or Mel or anyone else apologized.  If we loved them before, we were quick to forgive and forget.  If not, there’s nothing they could say to earn our forgiveness.

Public apologies just show how willfully selective our hearing is.  We take someone at their word when they say something idiotic, we are righteously convinced that they really meant that terrible thing.  But there’s no way we’ll believe them when they apologize.  Forgiveness is not an option.

Now Apologize, Because You Hurt My Feelings

And of course, if there’s one thing whiny Americans love to do, it’s to demand an apology.  We want to be first in line because we have a right to never be offended!

Demanding an apology is a loud and satisfying thing to do.  Know what else?  It makes point #2 run rampant.  The quicker we are to demand an apology, the easier it is to never accept the apology.  We never give anyone the chance to apologize on their own accord.  We demand it.  Then we say, “He’s just apologizing because we’re making him!  He doesn’t mean it!  I do not accept that!”

Next time someone wrongs you, how about not demanding an apology.  Let them realize their mistake on their own and make a sincere apology to you.  Then accept it and let it go.

And as far as the famous people go, you don’t deserve an apology from them.  They didn’t do anything to you.  Quit this righteous indignation farse.

What do you think?  Is our culture addicted to apologies?  Are we able to accept apologies, or do we just like to demand them?  Do you demand apologies from the people you live with, or do you let them apologize?