Free Republic

Here in NE Indiana, the church district is blatantly slow-walking disaffiliation requests. They refuse to supply filing requirements until the deadlines have passed. They claim not to have received documents that were filed on time. It’s just shameless. We’re documenting everything we can, in case we end up having to sue.

We’re seeing our denominational leadership’s true colors, and it’s ugly.

It’s written for caregivers. It helped me understand my own experience and emotions. For good or ill, caregiving really is a transformative experience.

The book also helped me better understand those around me. It’s easy to interpret the words and actions of non-caregivers as intentionally hurtful, but the book helped me to step back and see that intensive caregiving can only be understood by those who’ve done it, and I shouldn’t interpret others’ lack of understanding as intentional cruelty. If I had not undergone the caregiver “journey,” I might be saying and doing some of the same things my siblings are, so I need cut them some slack.

There's an excellent book, called The Unexpected Journey of Caring by Donna Thomson and Zachary White, that's helped me a lot. For one thing, I learned that many caregivers lose the ability to "see" the future. I'd noticed that in myself, and thought it was my own personal weakness. It's actually a survival skill. Caregiving may go on for years or it can end tomorrow; your loved one's health can take a sudden turn and your whole life changes in an instant. Caregiving requires you to focus on the present moment, work on the current situation, and block out everything else.

Your sibling has probably gotten used to being unable to plan for the weekend, and now she's suddenly supposed to plan the rest of her life. She probably needs time to rebuild the self-care skills that she lost while caring for others.

Your mom’s been gone less than a month? That seems to me much too soon to be making such important decisions. You’re all still grieving. Why not give everyone a few months to heal emotionally before trying to settle the estate?

I sympathize with your anxiety, and I appreciate your desire to do the right thing by everyone. But as a single, middle-aged caregiver myself, I absolutely ache for your sibling. Caregiving is an all-consuming, often harrowing, 24/7 responsibility that ends only with tremendous loss. Now here she is, alone, exhausted, ill, and faced with losing her home. She must be dealing with unimaginable pain and fear right now. Please, set the money worries aside for a while and make sure she’s okay.

My scripture reading for this morning was Psalm 105.

God's ways are higher than our ways. He is never defeated.

I loved Strictly Ballroom! Baz Luhmann makes the music almost an additional character in his stories. I'm still waiting anxiously for the Australia soundtrack to be released!

I work in a library that provides public Internet access.

When we first installed the computers, we assumed that they'd mostly be used by students, genealogists, people doing medical research, that sort of thing. What we got instead were creepy middle-aged men who'd sit and stare at the screen for hours. Once we learned how to check the browser histories, we found out why. They were accessing every kind of porn you could imagine. And this was in our reference room, with kids doing homework ten feet away.

Luckily, our board of trustees approved filtering as soon as we told them what was happening. Within two weeks of installing the filtering software, most of the perverts had lost interest and vanished. Only one person hung around complaining about "censorship"; he was recently arrested for posession of child pornography.

Now when students come in, there are actually computers available for them. The computers are being used for education and research, the things they were intended for when the library bought them.

The ALA loves to wring their hands and say "Oh, but filters are imperfect! They block access to legitimate information!" Sure, if you buy a cheap piece of software, you're going to get what you pay for. (I actually know of librarian at a nearby library who purposely bought the worst filter she could find, so as not to "censor any more than she had too.") But there are execellent, highly configurable filters on the market. I know, we have one.

I agree that parents should take responsibility for supervising their children. But the fact is that most of them don't. Parents assume that the library is a safe place and use it as free day care. I've seen kids so young they need help going to the bathroom dumped at the library for an hour or more while mommy goes grocery shopping. That kind of parent doesn't think twice about leaving a 12-year-old alone at a public computer for several hours. If we insist that kids under a certain age must have a parent supervising them, the parents look at us like we're from Mars.