Lessons from Teen Pregnancy (Not the Ones You’re Thinking)

This week I am thinking about two different TV shows linked by a common theme: teen pregnancy.

I should probably be embarrassed to admit that recently I have been watching Teen Mom 2 (MTV) and The Secret Life of the American Teenager (ABC Family)–whew! Plenty of dysfunction to go around there.

Let’s take them in order.

Obviously there is plenty of hair-raising material on Teen Mom. I could go on and on about the poor parenting, deadbeat dads, and bad decision making on that show, but what has really surprised me has been the way the kids use cell phones.

These kids use text messages (and let’s not even get into the topic of what cell phones they have, given that many of them are hardpressed for money) to drop absolute bombs on each other: I’m breaking up with you, I’m moving out, you need to move out, I hate you and wish I had never met you, etc. You need to insert a bunch of f-bombs in these messages to get the real feel.

It’s completely nasty. Obviously it’s like email—the absence of the recipient allows the sender to let loose. Inhibitions and social niceties go out the window, particularly when emotions run high. But it’s awful to watch the way these kids seem to have lost the ability to say meaningful things to each other face to face. They don’t even have the sense to know that some things JUST AREN’T DONE WITH A TEXT MESSAGE.

One of the teen moms, Cailynne, let the father of her baby know that she was seeing someone else by changing her FB relationship status. What passive aggression.

I seriously hope that these kids learn to talk to each other.

OK, I think I’ll have to handle my other show in another entry tomorrow…thanks for reading! And talk to that person –they’ll appreciate it.

Another Year of Wedded Bliss

Married seventeen years yesterday! That’s getting up there, almost reaching that point I couldn’t imagine before I got married.

In honor of our wedding anniversary, I am posting my “Top Ten Things I Have Learned from Marriage” to (no particular order, as that is too complicated for me at this point on a Sunday):

1. Children will not save your marriage. Building a family can ultimately help you forge stronger bonds and provide a shared joy beyond measure, but it will not save a troubled marriage.
   
2. Staying married involves a decision to stay married. You have to both have the solid conviction that your marriage is a union for keeps.
   
3. In marriage, I have learned what it really means to be loved unconditionally. I didn’t understand that before. Now I am able to better understand how my parents love me and how God loves me. My husband taught me that.
   
4. I have learned what it means to be blessed. I felt so blessed on my wedding day!
   
5. Kids get a kick out of seeing their parents kiss! Not a big smooch—just a kiss. Any kind of fun physical affection between us makes the kids giggle and puts a shine in their eyes.
   
6. My husband still loves me even though I eat M&Ms straight out of the peanut butter jar. And despite my million and one other annoying habits.
   
7. One of us usually feels like spending money, and the other wants to save. Thank goodness we don’t usually land on the same page on that one!
   
8. Remembering to listen and HEAR those you love is a daily challenge.
   
9. Being married for 17 years hasn’t made my husband and me look any more alike.
   
10. I hope I get at least 17 more years!
    

Happy anniversary and Valentine’s week to all you lovebirds out there!

For Writers, Words Happen. But How? (via Away with Words)

Just the very start of this blog (see excerpt below) made me begin to think about my relationship to language. Some people find beauty and constancy in math, in solid figures and the black and white way a math problem is right or wrong.

Before I developed math anxiety, I enjoyed that too. But language has been a constant for me ever since I was very young.

When I was in first grade, I raised my teacher’s eyebrows by telling her that she was being sarcastic. When I was in fifth grade, my “boyfriend” dumped me because my vocabulary was too big.

Yes, words and I go way back. Now when I write, I find that putting my finger on that exact word, the one that should go just there in a sentence, is almost as solid and black and white as working a math problem.

Hence a few dream jobs I have in the back of my head:
1. Naming lipsticks
2. Writing menus, or helping ESL writers compose menus in foreign countries
3. Running a “I can’t think of that word” service–can’t think of a word? call me–I swear I’ve got it on the tip of my tongue
4. Radio show–grammar and word choice call-in questions.

Yes, these jobs are ridiculous and not likely to come to fruition. But a girl can dream (especially about that radio show).

I am reading What Color Is Your Parachute now. I’ll let you know what real job options come out of that.

Do you have any fantasy jobs? Do they involve words?

As you write, do your ideas come to you in the form of words or do they come in the form of image, sense, or emotion?  If it’s the latter, how do you translate those sensual experiences into words that convey the experience for readers? Before Words: How to Think Like A Poet, from the Psychology Today blog Imagine That! explains how for writers such as T.S. Eliot, Robert Frost, and Virginia Woolf, “writing begins in a land without language.” Read … Read More

via Away with Words

God Working Behind Me

It’s been a long weekend after a long week, so I’m going to have to keep this short. I plan to blog more later this week, but I have to keep my “once a week” promise.

Today, when I was in church, I was feeling rather hopeless. Sometimes I get very distracted by worrying about the future of the church that I love very much. It’s been a tough road for my church for a while, and we are by no means a mega-church. It seems like we are swimming against the tide by persisting with a traditional style of worship, and everyone knows that the future of mainline Protestantism isn’t too bright at the moment.

So I was in church and wondering how we are ever going to make it in the long run. But I forgot to look behind me. And when I did, I saw that we had a family visiting our church, people I hadn’t even noticed. Right behind me. And that meant that we had two visiting families, and they were smiling, and someone had already given them visitor bags.

It gets better: one of the visiting moms spoke to me after the service, and she commented POSITIVELY on the small size of our congregation and seemed very enthused about returning another week.

God was working behind me, and I hadn’t even bothered to notice. I had forgotten that it wasn’t me. And I had forgotten to notice all that God had already done.