Parents and Teachers - The Powerless Ones

Early this morning I found a disheartening story in my Facebook feed. The title was "Mom Bonds Out of Jail". A single Mother of six was called by a neighbor when the neighbor saw her sons and friends going into her home with bags of undetermined items. The Mother drove quickly to her home to find her sons and their friends trying to run away from her by diving out of windows and running out the door. She knew what they had done and instinctively she grabbed a belt to discipline her children. This act of discipline landed her in jail?

This is a bunch of "cow pies"! If this is breaking the law, 99% of the relatives I have should have had a record by now and ALL of us would have had stints in CPS (Child Protective Services). The government determined that the physical discipline of a child is now felony child abuse. And you wonder why we have a massive amount of miscreants in the community? THIS is why! You've taken away disciplinary power from the parents AND the teachers. The two groups of adults that a child spends most of their time with until the age of 18 and what do you get? Child-size master manipulators and miscreants destined for incarceration.

Why is it that the U.S. government can not (or will not) see the error of its ways? How is it that we can "swear to tell the truth, so help me God" in court, but we pay no attention to God's Word of Proverbs 13:24, "Those who spare the rod of discipline hate their children. Those who love their children care enough to discipline them." In the current vernacular, we equate this passage as "spare the rod, spoil the child".

Discipline seen as abuse seemed to have emerged from the writings of Dr. Benjamin Spock. How one could be seen as an expert in parenting without having any children is beyond me and why people would instantly take his some of his writings as "law" in the parenting world is beyond me. Am I the only one that has seen a constant decline and degradation of parental discipline since the 1970's? Does anyone see the negative impact and progression this has had on our society? Does anyone care? Hello??? Am I by myself on this?

Shame On You, America! Your Greed Is Destroying You.

There are some days when I think of the country I live in and I want to cry...or escape. Then there are times (which are becoming few and far between) that I'm proud of the country I live in. I'm most ashamed of the extensive and far-reaching greed of our government. It's so deeply rooted, there seems to be no way of defeating it.

1. The Mayflower landing on Plymouth rock and horrifically confiscating land inhabited by others. Greed!
2. Turning indentured servants into bondage slaves for the sake of improving your own quality of life. Greed!
3. The REAL reason behind you agreeing with suffrage was because the families in power (who heavily influenced the government) deduced that allowing women to work meant more taxes collected for the government. Greed!
4. Being underpaid just because you are a minority or female. Greed!
5. Monopolizing the hair industry by not distributing goods to the minority hair care businesses of the very people you're selling to. Greed!
6. Church leaders in million dollar mansions and learjets while their congregation is struggling from paycheck to paycheck.
7. Selling athletic shoes at a 300% markup and your largest demographic happens to be minorities. Greed!
8. Destroying the manufacturing industry in the United States to move outside of the United States for cheaper labor. Greed!
9. The government creating wars for financial gain. Greed!

The list could go on forever and it's sad that greed has permeated every single part of our lives. Just the other day I heard of a middle-income person taking advantage of a low-income assistance program to pay one of their utility bills, just because they overspent on Christmas.

What we all seem to be lacking is the opposite of greed...honesty and integrity. May God have mercy on our souls.

Simply the Best

People have called me a perfectionist. I don't think that's true, however, if I show those tendencies it's because I require it of myself, not in others. When people around me think I'm attempting to apply that same tendency to them? Well...it used to hurt my feelings because I knew it was unfair of me to do that. When I asked GOD (two decades ago), "What am I doing that makes people feel that way?" That is when GOD began to reveal to me what a "spirit of excellence" really was.

I was reared to excel. "Try your best." is what I can recall my Mother saying often. So, if I attempted something I gave my all. When I completed a task (it could be a chore, a picture, a painting) and asked my Mother, "Do you like it?", she would reply, "Do YOU like it?" This helped me realize that I had to be satisfied with whatever I did before soliciting the opinion of anyone else. So, I always tried my best. In our household growing up, C's were bad grades. It wasn't until I entered junior high school that I realized the grade of C was average for everyone else. My Mother was also one of those,"If at first you don't succeed, try and try again." type of people. The caveat was, only try again if you really want it. I love that caveat. That caveat helped me to quickly deduce the things I wanted to pursue and the things I didn't...or shouldn't pursue. Case and point: In my neighborhood, I was considered a pretty good runner. In 4th grade, I went to a brand new school and was filled with confidence about almost anything. Our first gym class was relay racing. I raced against 2 or 3 people and won. Our gym teacher, Ms. Griffin began to race all of the winners of their relay. Finally, I was up against a really fast girl. Her name was "Shantel". I sized her up. She was long and lean. No matter. I will do my best! Ms. Griffin raised her hand. "On your mark. Get set." and the whistle blew. I flew from the starting line like usual only to see Shantel darn near the finish line. "Wait! What happened?" was my first thought but I quickly realized my best was not good enough...to beat Shantel. I had a priceless epiphany in the 4th grade. Everyone has a "best" and my best will be different than the best of another.

Never stop giving your best because YOUR best will and should always be good enough for you. That doesn't mean that someone else's best is necessarily better, it is simply THEIR best and not yours. So, I'm okay with MY best and I hope you're okay with YOUR best too.