In the Quiet

I woke up at 4:30ish today.

At some point during the day, I realize I'll be dragging, but right now, I'm enjoying the silence. Morning is the only time I really have that I can sit and take my time -- think, read, plan, drink coffee.

The other time that I have is the night, but there's always a little bit of weight hanging over it because I get stuck in that middle ground of not feeling quite tired enough to sleep, but knowing that I'll be sorry in the morning if I don't try. I usually watch some TV at night, so I have that same "stuck between" issue with that. The TV show helps me unwind, distracts me from the worries of the day. But also pours flickering light into my eyes, which sleep websites say keep me from sleeping deeply.

I used to not watch TV.

When Billy and I met, got married, and lived the next 9 years of our life together, we didn't have a TV with any shows on it. We didn't have cable, and not even an antenna for the local channels. We had a small TV and a VCR/DVD combo player. A few years down the road, we got a bigger TV. Then we got Amazon prime, but I rarely used it because it's not really user friendly. I still don't use it very much.

Regardless, when we moved to California, a friend started to let us use her Netflix account, and that was it. I was done. Over. Completely regressed into my childhood of sitting in front of the TV for hours.

Binging on shows was (still can be) a huge time zap for me. I know I'm not the only one, but I still don't like it. I've been trying over the couple of months to be more intentional about how I use my time... and my brain.

I've been reading at least 15 minutes a day, along with working 2 hours and doing household tasks for 2 hours. More recently, I cracked open the old Spanish learning tools (which are actually pretty heavy on TV shows, crazy enough). My biggest obstacle in Spanish is listening comprehension. I read well and can speak and write in simple, but effective Spanish. But listening is rough, and it's very hard for native speakers to be able to slow down enough to accommodate me. So, 15 minutes a day of Spanish listening. I work out daily, go on daily walks with Billy, and try to spend time each day in Bible reading and meditation/prayer.

This doesn't leave a lot of time for TV, honestly. But that hasn't stopped me from watching almost an entire season of Orange is the New Black in a weekend.

Borrow Mine

I've been pretty down here for the last couple of weeks. I've gone through some of the usual suspects only to find that there's no clear explanation in those. Which is a hard reality to face. When you're eating a bunch of junk, and you're feeling lethargic, it's simple. Not always easy to change, but simple to understand that you are what you eat, and junk food will give you junk feelings.

But when you have those junk feelings even though you're trying to get good sleep and exercising daily, going out in the sun, drinking lots of water, eating your fruits and veggies.  That's when it's hard.

It's even harder when your partner is feeling the same way.

There's a song that I have a love-hate relationship with. I love it because it's hopeful, but I hate it because it's idealist. I love it for the priority it puts on supporting one another, but I hate it because it's never quite that simple.

I agree that there is strength in numbers and that we need to walk beside each other when one of us can't get through on our own. In theory, it's true. In practice, it sometimes is, I suppose. I can definitely think of times in my faith life, in particular, that I've needed to rely on others for encouragement because I wasn't able to pull myself out of a slump. I think this is part of the value of a faith community.

And maybe that's my problem. Not so much that I don't have anyone, but more that I don't have enough someones.

Billy has been going through some similar things with feeling down. And for all the progress that I said we've made in our disagreements, we've both had a hard time stopping mid-fight to take the others perspective here more recently. It's hard when both people in a relationship need the other person to be the bigger person.

So, here I am in California with a total of ... few friends. The ones that I have live in our last town, so seeing them has become a hit or miss of "hey I'll be down there for a doctor appointment; wanna grab lunch" kind of thing. It's been more miss, honestly.

We haven't found a church home since we moved here. There are several reasons for that, the biggest one being that it's just a lot of work. I put the work in at the first church we landed at, but it wasn't really reciprocated. Again, just a couple of relationships there. The next church I went to was a Sunday morning thing. When I tried the small group scene they had, I got the lovely insistence that there was nothing wrong with my child with special needs. 

(Life pro-tip: when a child is in 15 hours of behavior therapy a week, 1 hour of emotional counseling, a special ed classroom because he is 3 grades behind in school, on medication for ADHD and self-harming behaviors, and he's still engaging in anti-social conduct, the last thing his parent needs to hear is that he's completely fine. There aren't a lot of things I would say I get offended at, but that is one of them. Please don't pretend you know anything at all about my child from a 2-hour small group every other week.)

We've been going off and on to a Sunday morning church near our new (almost year old) home. We haven't gotten past Sunday morning, though. There are times when I think it would feel really nice to fall into a place where I could borrow someone else's strength for a while. But when you're in the middle of the train wreck, people aren't lining up to start a new relationship.

Somehow, I need to find the strength to get myself together long enough to make a friend.

What is Morality, Anyway?

I started dissecting Andrew Yang's statement about the ridiculousness of people's beliefs about atheists and morality a couple of days ago. I'll admit, I'm already losing a bit of interest in it... mainly because there's so freaking much to critique and that seems pretty tedious. And we all know how I feel about tedious projects. (Okay, I see this self-referential tendency of blogging has come back pretty quickly to me.)

Anyway, I will go slightly into the next phrase of his statement, but allow me to make this disclaimer: there's a lot to unpack about the topic, and I'm not pretending or interested in exhausting the topic. I'm going to do a pretty cursory analysis on the topic of morality. It will leave a ton to be desired. You may walk away from this thinking it was the stupidest post you've read in quite a while, but this is what I'm willing to give, so you can take it or leave, as they say. (Who says that? No one really. But I am right now.)

Okay.

"people would think you are somehow less moral...because of your religious beliefs"

This is the next phrase. Remember, he thinks it's ridiculous that people would think this. I already discussed that I think the fact that he thinks it is ridiculous means that he probably hasn't investigated it very much. Or at least hasn't talked to people with the strongest arguments for this viewpoint.

This next phrase really solidifies that belief for me. Here's why:

While some religions might teach morals as an outward act, many view it as a combo double-punch package of outward action plus inward motivation. Some also add the impact created as a factor in how moral something is. That is, if the action is good or neutral and the intention is good, but the outcome is negative, this might rank lower on the morality scale.

But since we are talking about an American running for the highest office in the land, I'd like to put the context a little bit more specifically on the Judeo-Christian... er, actually just Christian... perspective of how a person comes to be moral.

It's kind of simple, honestly. This is a quality of Christian that we take pride in, so to speak. Except that pride is a sin, so ... we take whatever satisfaction or fulfillment in it that wouldn't be a sin. We like that our faith is simple. This is seen as a positive from the Christian point of view.

Romans 14:23 says, "Whatever does not proceed from faith is sin."

The immediate context of this statement is discussing whether Christians need to maintain a kosher diet, but the principle is relevant in anything we do.

So, from a biblical, Christian standpoint, a person that is not acting from faith in Christ is always acting in sin. Therefore, they are always immoral, even when doing nice things that have positive earthly benefits.

Ridiculous Opinions

A couple of weeks ago, I was thinking about how impactful it can be to steel man someone else's position for them. Funny enough, my husband and I have had more ... ahem... passionate misunderstandings in the last couple of weeks than we had been having in the recent past, so it's been sticking in my mind more. Unsurprising, then, that when I saw a short write up about a statement made by Andrew Yang about people's views on atheists, my interest was piqued.

(Side note: am I the only one that thought for years that the phrase was "my interest was peaked"? I still think it makes sense. Just like "deep-seeded" seems better than "deep-seated." Oh, well. No one ever asks me.)

Now, from this original post that I saw on Patheos, there were several links to more information, including a video of the original statement.

There are a ton of problems with this statement, and this has nothing to do with my politics*. Or my religious beliefs, really. I realize it seems like I am pointing this out because I am not an atheist, and I'll admit that this is probably part of the reason that the statement stood out to me. But I think my critique holds up regardless.

The main problems, I believe, can be summarized in that Yang doesn't seem to truly understand the belief system of the people he is criticizing.

I'm going to take this one statement at a time because otherwise I would be here all night. I only need 15 minutes of journaling to get my points, so I definitely don't want to take all night. Plus, if I decide to come back to it later, I can squeeze a few points out of this one video and have my journaling points for at least a week.

The first phrase of interest that Yang says is this:
"I think it's ridiculous"

Let's stop there because I can tell you right now that when someone says that someone else's viewpoint is ridiculous, it's a pretty solid indication that they have spent very little time thinking about the viewpoint or have very little curiosity about what drives a viewpoint or have approached their consideration of the viewpoint with a biased assumption that the people holding it are somehow "less than." (Less intelligent, less thoughtful, less consistent, less caring, less accepting.)

I can't think of a time when I heard someone with an open mind and a goal for understanding explained an opposing viewpoint by calling it ridiculous.

So, lesson one:
- When we encounter a viewpoint that is different than ours or challenges ours, we should attempt to understand the reasons behind it assuming that the adherents to this belief have reasons for adhering to it, even if our first impression is that the idea is ridiculous.

*I actually like Yang more than most of the Democratic candidates.

Task-oriented

Sometimes I feel completely frustrated by my own lack of drive, but then I look at my to-do list and I see a lot crossed out. But there's always more that's uncrossed. Always.

Through my adult life, I've struggled with the idea of being a task-oriented person. There's a deep understanding I have that relationships - not tasks - are what make life fulfilling. But try as I may, I hold a tension between what I'm naturally wired for and what I more deeply desire.

What's strange is that until recently, I've always had to remind myself to invest in relationships. It's a fact that homes need to have a level of cleanliness in order to be sanitary for living. My home is nowhere near the line of becoming unsanitary. I could never let it get there because it would just drive me crazy. So, in the past, I have needed to remind myself that while I'm getting after kids to do their chores, there was still opportunity to have shared experience and create positive relationship memories.

More recently, I feel like I've been more naturally drawn to relationships and have had to really motivate myself to get anything checked off my lists. Part of this is because I have some large projects with no real end in sight. Part of me understands that the more diligently I work on these things, the closer I will get to wrapping them up. But another part of me is so frustrated with the time and energy I've already invested with little result that I just want to abandon ship on some of it.

And that brings up more contemplating. What's the benefit of continuing a project that is getting me nowhere? It's hard to see it when I'm in the middle of treading water. With hindsight, I know that I usually regret dropping a project that has gotten frustrating. Most of the things that I work on are necessary. I mean, I don't just go around finding for non-essential ways to spend my limited time. So, when I drop a project that seems futile, I end up just being further behind on a project that still needs to happen.

This week, I've finally finished collecting medical records and therapy notes for a large project that I've been working on since last November. It's a little embarrassing, honestly. I think the old me would have had this done about 6 months ago. But in the last 8 months, it's just been so hard to peel myself away from time with friends, family, and so forth because the task seems so futile. The amount of time I've put in has been immense, and the outcome is a crap shoot. This will either result in an extra $6000 a year for the next 8 years or a big, fat nothing. And I have no way to really know until I give it a try.

All I know is that it won't go away. The need that we have is here to stay, and until I get this project completed, I just can't know whether it was worth it, but ultimately, getting it done (and done well) is the only option I have because it will continue to be something in my past that I should have done. When medical bills add up and I'm unable to work as much as I want because of appointments and school meetings, it will be nice to have a $6k cushion every year. And if I don't complete it, I will always think about how much therapy that would have paid for. Once I complete it, if we are denied the funding, at least I will have tried.

But man... these tasks are just really killing me right now.

The Man of Steel in Passionate Conversations

There's a debate concept called "steel-manning" that is an interesting idea. The opposite of the straw man fallacy, the steel man argument attempts to bolster the argument on the other side and then address that argument. I first noticed this concept in Tim Keller's book The Reason for God. I wouldn't doubt that I heard of it prior to that, but I don't recall anywhere else. It's been brought to the forefront of my thought more recently through an organization called Equal Rights Institute.

The reason for this concept is multi-facted, but a couple of the things that stand out to me are these:

1. It respects the dignity of your conversation partner.
I hesitate to use the phrase "debate opponent" because I think debate is an intellectual exercise to be saved for certain contexts, and in reality, few of us are ever in those contexts. Plus if we are to move forward (i.e. be progressive), we really need to be partnering and having conversations to understand rather than debates to argue and win. The steel man argument acknowledges that your partner has legitimate ideas that are worth understanding and addressing. When we straw man (or even when we answer an ill-articulated view without helping bolster it first), we fail to acknowledge that there are views contrary to ours that deserve consideration. By extension, we fail to acknowledge that the person we are talking to deserves consideration of their ideas and perspective.

2. It builds up a relationship.
I'm not sure if you've left a discussion feeling completely misunderstood, but I can tell you that I have. So has my husband. We have a long history of failing to hear each other, which we have both worked on intentionally, and I'm happy to report that we've had better disagreements in the last 6 months than we ever have in our 14-year relationship. Listening to someone and being willing to help them make their arguments stronger, even when you disagree moves from just respect for their human dignity to growing affection for one another. There's a good feeling in knowing you're heard. And there's an amazing feeling in knowing your partner feels heard. Even when it's not your spouse.

3. It sets up a more compelling "win."
In this sense, I mean "win" not so much as winning an argument or a debate because you scored the right kind of rebuttal points. I mean that part of being heard and part of hearing allows for everyone to walk away with a more robust understanding of an issue. This is already a win, imho. But even beyond this, if there's are topics that we are truly passionate about (for me it's pro-life, financial education, and constitutional law), then we want our conversation partner to have these positive experiences of feeling heard and appreciated because it will take away the hard work of plowing through the defensiveness that so easily creeps into discussions on sensitive and passionate topics. When those blockades are removed, people are more willing to acknowledge where they are wrong or at least where they haven't quite thought through their belief system.

A Forced Contemplation on a (More) Preferred Topic

I didn't journal much last week for a couple of reasons. First off, it was a brutal week. It was the 3rd week of summer, and my kids were sick with colds. They were tired of being cooped up inside and presumably feeling irritable from too much TV. I say presumably because how am I supposed to know, but that's the correlation I saw. The longer the TV watching went on, the grumpier they became especially when asked to move on to something else. It's the electronic drug, as my mom used to say.

The other main reason I didn't journal, blog, or even really think about much of any substance last week was because all my thoughts were consumed by special needs issues. I had a couple of waste-of-time projects that I needed to complete, only to find out that they were indeed a waste of time and I received absolutely no benefit from the time invested - perhaps with the exception of now knowing that those roads led to brick walls. The point is that I didn't have much to write about or think about except things that I just wanted to stop thinking about the moment I was done with my tasks associated with said thoughts. The last thing I wanted to do was actually journal and spend even more time in the misery of bureaucracy.

It seemed counter-productive to spend my time on those things when the goal of this time is to release some of the stress out of my mind through my fingers and into the ether. It wasn't going to happen, so regardless of the negative impact TV made on my kids last week, I found myself only wanting to crawl into bed and cuddle with Netflix in order to de-stress, so I did.

But today, I thought that I would try to make myself write about something that I care about, even if it's not a great amount of content. Because I'm so much more than a parent and a parent of a child with special needs to be specific. Though it takes a lot of me time, emotional energy, and general effort, it's not all-consuming. Or it shouldn't be.

So, here I am... I'm going to write about something else about me.

As soon as I can remember anything about myself that isn't focused around my children.

Books.

Okay. Here we go.

I've been trying to read for 15 minutes a day. I used to read voraciously and really enjoyed it, but recently I've found it hard to concentrate on much. So, I thought that 15 minutes a day would be a good start. I started my quest with Michelle Obama's autobiography.

The autobiography is one of my favorite genres. I think biographies are interesting, but autobiographies, when well written and honest, are compelling, for whatever that word is worth. I tend to find the word compelling to be overused and thus has lost a part of its power. Which is a bit ironic if you think about it.

Anyway, among my favorite autobiographies was The Private Life of Chairman Mao. It was an incredibly long, but interesting and heart breaking book. It was the story of intense fear and survival. It was set in a time when everyone was scared of being back-stabbed and standing up for oneself was a privilege that no one owned, not even Mao's closest advisors.

Obama's autobiography, so far, is very different. It is much more a story of supportive success. It is a story of opportunity and open doors. I find, so far, that I'm not enjoying it quite as much as Barack Obama's book, but I am enjoying it in a different way. I'm just not sure how to talk about that way yet.

And my 15 minutes of journaling is over, so I don't have to figure it out!