I have no idea what was so funny, but this has to be one of my favorite sounds. When they both get tickled it cracks me up.

This particular year has brought quite a few Halloween revelations.

1.) You can’t really dress up as a cowboy or cowgirl in Texas because people will not be sure if you are wearing a costume or not.

2.) Apparently if you are a grown woman and you want to buy a costume you are also a prostitute because every costume description starts with the word “sexy”. In addition, it is amazing what normal vocations can suddenly become a sexual fantasy world – everything from witch to viking to nurse to teacher. Wow, what if I was a sexy septic tank cleaner?

3.) When decorating for Halloween do you go cute and fall generic? Or is your family a spooky, scary Halloween family? It is quite evident that you really need to choose sides.

4.) Even with children it is hard for an adult to justify wearing a costume without a party to attend

5.) Toys versus candy. I’ve opted for little toys this year. I ordered from the Oriental Trading Company (which translates into cheap toys made in China) and I’m going to mix those with a couple small bags of candy. This way I don’t feel guilty about having all that candy in my house and if I don’t give them all away I can reuse them next year.

6.) I’ve only had my Halloween mums a week and I’m already killing them. Wow, my black thumb follows me into every season. Perhaps I should try a fall cactus instead of mums

How is Halloween shaping up for you?

This is part 3 of my testimonial about my faith. You can find chapter 1 here and chapter 2 here. I’d like to say this is the last chapter but alas, I don’t think it is. When we last departed I had moved to the bible belt, realized it was full of people going to church and then I met my husband who was not going to church.

I Make Some Big Promises
As David and I closed in on the realization that we were probably going to spend our lives together we started having some serious conversations. One such conversation was around religion. Although David also was struggling with his faith he knew he wanted to raise any of his future children in church. I knew that I didn’t want to leave my children with no clear direction on this issue and so I agreed to raise our kids in the church. Of course I had no idea what this meant and I didn’t know how I would do that, but I loved him and love makes you do some crazy things. I promised David to raise our kids going to church and he promised that we could still celebrate Hanukkah and Passover. It was a good bargain. We decided to seal the deal on October 14th 2000. Rings were involved as well as an oath to love each other until we died.

I Read Two Important Books
At this point I still didn’t believe in the divinity of Christ. However, I liked going to church and I liked the idea of belonging to a church and so I began dragging David to churches. Around this same time I was given two books. The first book was from my father and it was titled “The Jefferson Bible”. Thomas Jefferson felt that the bible was filled with too many parables and peripheral information. He felt that the real point of the bible is Christ and that we should focus on what Christ says and nobody else. So Jefferson, being Jefferson, took everything out and only left Christ’s speeches. It is a very powerful read and it is from this book that I realized a couple things about Christ. He was an amazing leader. He understood how to motivate people and how to lead people. The first rule of leadership is to lead by example and be willing to take responsibility for the mistakes of your team. My father is what some might call a “management guru” and being raised around somebody who stresses the importance of good leadership and management skills it was easy to spot these two things in Christ’s words. He lead the Jews by example — showing them what being a good Jew really meant. And then, when trouble started brewing he didn’t point fingers. He stood up and said this is my responsibility or more specifically “forgive them father for they know not what they do”. I can respect that.

The same time I received “The Jefferson Bible” from my Dad, I received “Mere Christianity” from my mother-in-law. I love C.S. Lewis. I read the Narnia series several times and as a scholar you really can’t escape his critical essays and linguistic knowledge. It pervades the field. The thing I love about this book though is that it is logical and for an analytical thinker like myself that is paramount for me. There were several passages that really stood out to me, but I want to quote the one that made the biggest impact on me and my beliefs:

“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: ‘I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.’ That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.” 

And there it is. I had spent my whole life saying; “I don’t believe in organized religion. Jesus seems like a great guy, but I don’t believe he’s God. I mean, he seems like he had good things to say, but not divine”. And there was C.S. Lewis, a respected scholar, telling me that I was making the most absurd lapse in logic. He was right. I mean, if he’s not divine than why would you believe some crack pot who is going around saying “hey, I know what God REALLY wants. He told me.” No, you’d be like “that guy is a crack-pot”. So either he’s a total psycho or he really does understand the word of God.

This is the point where my education takes over. You cannot study the Medieval period without also studying the history of Christianity and what you cannot ignore is the far reaching and long lasting influence Christ has had on humanity. Like him, hate him, but ignore him you cannot. Which meant that at a minimum my life long assumptions and attitudes about Christ were wrong.

David is out of town and when he is I stay up late. I can’t stand going to bed when he isn’t here. I can’t really explain why but it all seems so lonely and desperate without him. So, here I am in bed, with both kids and my laptop. Lucy refuses to go to sleep so I’ve made her lie here quietly while I “work”. I figure I’ll bore her to death. In the meantime I thought I’d catch you up on a couple of things.

Kids and I went to the mall tonight and I bought two new make-up brushes for $60. Now, before y’all are like “$60 are your serious?” I’m going to tell you why this normally frugal person spent $60 on make-up brushes. Well, I’ve had my current make-up brushes for approximately 23 years and I read recently that more than likely they are probably covered in some sort of mold or fungus. Since I’ve had my current set for 23 years I figure the $60 is a wise investment. I bought them at Sephora, they were pricey, but I love them.

I’m really disgusted by this election. Every time either candidate opens their mouth I want to scream. I watched 40 minutes of the debate last night and I didn’t hear them address one issue that really mattered to me. They talked about name-calling. They talked about how they should be talking about the issues and they even made the shocking discovery that Americans aren’t too fond of politics as normal but neither one decided to address any of these issues. I finally turned it off in disgust and watched “Jerry Maguire”.

This is a continuation of my story about how God and I met and decided to be BFF’s. You can find the first chapter here. Last time we talked I was moving to Texas. Nothing like moving to the bible belt to really get you thinking about God.

I Figure It All Out
By the time I moved to Texas I had managed to really get my head around this whole God-thing in a way that not only made me comfortable but prevented anybody from talking to me about it.

My masters degree is in Medieval literature. This means that I studied the period when the bible was written. And when you study literature of that time period you realize several things. First, almost all of it is based in fact. Second, most literature of this time period began as an oral tradition and was only documented years later (and when I say years I mean hundreds of years later). Third, the law of “telephone” applies here. This means that as stories get retold the enemy goes from having one head and being 6 feet tall to having 10 heads and being 600 feet tall. It doesn’t negate that there was indeed an enemy only that perhaps he wasn’t quite as big as described in the story. This makes believing that the bible is the “word” – the infallible word of God, difficult. When you add this revelation to my combined religious experiences I settled on a very clear set of beliefs for myself that worked.

I didn’t believe in organized religion. It is a great thing to say because nobody knows how to respond to this, not even the professionally trained Mormon missionaries. After all, nobody can actually live the life delineated by any church or temple. It is obvious that the bible – much like many books – is not THE book so what is the point of basing an entire religion on it? I decided that organized religion was not for me and that I would focus on developing my own faith in God and leave the rules and regulations to everybody else. It seemed silly to say I was a Christian or a Jew or anything when it was impossible for anybody to live up to those standards.

I Meet The Religious Zealots
I will say that moving to the south was a bit of an eye-opener for me. There are churches EVERYWHERE. Seriously, they put up churches down here like some places erect McDonalds. There is a church on every corner and sometimes more than one. I’m not even talking about local, small churches but big, giant, mega churches. It blew me away. Plus, NONE of them were Catholic. People warned me. They told me that religion was going to get me in trouble down here and indeed it was amazing to see how introductions go in the south.

Person A: hi Beth it is nice to meet you. So you just moved here?
Beth: Yes, I’ve been here about 2 weeks
Person A: Wow, I guess the heat has been a big adjustment?
Beth: Oh yeah, it is crazy hot here
Person A: So, have you found a church yet?

Really? You’ve known me less than thirty seconds and you feel that it is appropriate to ask me if I’ve found a church yet? Honestly, I haven’t even found the grocery store yet otherwise a place for me to connect with God. For some reason people in the south do not think that it is an invasion of anybody’s privacy to ask about church affiliation because OBVIOUSLY WE ARE ALL CHRISTIANS! I kept to myself, delicately dodged questions of faith and marched forward.

I Meet My Second Important Person
Although I might have struggled with the idea of religion, my faith in God has never wavered and I have felt him with me every step of this journey. There have been several cross roads in my life when I have felt his presence more than others and moving to Texas was one of them. I had no real reason to move here. My job did not require me to move. However, from the beginning I felt something pulling me here and I could hear God’s words telling me to leave Michigan. I met David 3 months after I moved here. In December of 1999 we got engaged and I knew God wanted me here in Texas, because I needed David.

Up until this point my spiritual journey has been mainly navigated by myself. I neither sought nor found a lot of outside guidance. However, meeting David, and more importantly his family, would forever change me. Soon my journey would be crowded with people who will guide me, provide me with answers but most importantly did not judge me.

The Texas State Fair is what a fair should be. It is large, it is filled with fried foods, silly dog shows, barnyard animals and enough carnies to cause a year of nightmares. I have never attended a state fair as glorious as the one in Texas. In celebration of our anniversary we packed up the kids and spent the whole day at the fair.

I’m not sure if I could properly summarize the experience so I’ll let the pictures do the talking (make sure you scroll over the “notes” icon on the bottom right corner of the pictures to read comments). However, we spent about $125 for the day and at the time I was feeling maddeningly ripped off, but now as I sit in the glow of the day I think it was worth every penny.

On October 14, 2000 in Brighton, Michigan on a perfect fall day David and I were married. Eight years is not a milestone anniversary, but we are still married and we are still happy. I asked David last night why he thinks our marriage has been, and continues to be, successful and he quickly rattled off several qualities.

Communication
I’ve got to give David all the credit here. My form of communication is to bottle my anger and then passive aggressively express it by shrinking all of his underwear in the dryer. David is far more forthright. David wants to “talk” about things and actually gets frustrated at me when I don’t express my anger. Of course when I do express my anger he then gets mad that I’m so gosh darn defensive and then I stop talking. It’s a lovely vicious cycle that after 8 years we have completely mastered and can now replicate in an efficient 2-minute drill.

Compromise
David leaves his dirty clothes on the floor next to the bed. Does it drive me crazy? Yes. Am I going to argue about it every day for the next 50 years? No. David HATES that I box up little items of uselessness and then chuck them into the garage for a magical day when they will disappear. Is this a deal breaker? No. Why? Because every morning I make him a hot breakfast. And every month he sits down and pays all the bills, puts money into our savings account and makes sure that we are financially secure. He can leave his clothes on the floor. It really doesn’t matter.

Love
As corny as this sounds we love each other. Seriously, honestly, completely, unconditionally and without expectation, I love David. I don’t love him in spite of his faults, I love him because of his faults. I love him for being his own mysterious combination of good and bad. I love him and will continue to love him and I know without a doubt that he feels the same way. How do I know this? Because he bought me an iPhone so we can text message during the day. Because when I hurt my back he traded the Expedition in so I wouldn’t need to lift the kids up to get them into the car. Because he eats every meal I make – even when it is bad.

Commitment
We won’t ever divorce. Why can I say this so confidently? When you BOTH commit to taking divorce off the table as an option you become a great deal more willing to compromise, love, forgive, and communicate your way out of problems.

Family
David and I are so blessed to be surrounded by family that supports us. A family that has encouraged us through tough marital times. We’ve also had wonderful role models in our parents, both of whom have been married for 40+ years. It takes couples, who have covered the course before you to let you know what needs tending to and what can be let go. What is a reasonable expectation (he should remember your birthday) and what isn’t (he doesn’t need to throw you a party every year).

Finally, I want to thank David. I want to thank you for being loving, sensitive, gentle, kind, supportive and funny. I want to thank you for helping me to create a world and a life that is filled with love and joy. I want to thank you for standing by my side when I needed a friend and kicking me in the butt when I needed to be challenged. You are my best-friend, my greatest cheerleader and the love of my life. Happy Anniversary Baby!!

(Editor’s Note: This is my testimonial of faith. This is the first chapter of four. I provide links to the other chapters at the bottom)

Christians talk about their “testimonial” which is their story about knowing Christ. Even writing it down seems awkward to me. I never really understood the need to share such a personal thing with strangers. I have spent most of my life being asked “So, what EXACTLY do you believe?” and I have become very skilled over the years at dodging this question. I don’t like talking about it. My spiritual beliefs are about as personal to me as sharing stories about my first sexual experiences. I just don’t feel it is anybody’s business but mine and God’s. However, my journey is unique and it cannot be summarized in a few cliches or throw away statements about God. Perhaps my sudden need to share my story has something to do with my desire to solidify my beliefs in a way that I can share with my children. Perhaps it has more to do with my own on-going struggles with faith. I’m not sure but since this is a long story I will do this in several postings. Here is Chapter 1.

In The Beginning….
My mother is Jewish. My father is Christian. I was raised in a mixed-faith family. This was very unusual for my generation. My father found a lot of hypocrisy in the church and lost interest as a young adult. My mother also felt the Temple did not speak to her. She didn’t believe all the fairy tales and the difference between what was said in Temple and the actions taken by those who attended bothered her. They both abandoned their faith early in their lives. My mother’s rule was that we celebrated any holiday that revolved around a good meal or presents. As a result we mainly celebrated Easter, Passover, Hanukkah, and Christmas. My parents believed in God and the ten commandments. They also believed in psychic phenomenon, physics, and that ghosts were real (in a sense). I grew up surrounded by amazingly diverse, creative and intelligent people. I LOVE that about my childhood and I could not be more grateful that my parents created that environment. However, that really left us kids to find our own spiritual path.

In the meantime there was prejudice around me constantly. As soon as people found out that I hadn’t been baptized, that I didn’t believe in the divinity of Christ, or that my mother was Jewish I was treated differently. Friends would openly tell me that we could be friends but I was going to hell and they were not. When I got older and started dating I felt this from parents. Every boy I dated got the same speech from his parents “she’s a nice girl, but you wouldn’t want to marry her because your children would go to hell”. I was always viewed as a bad influence. When I would tell my parents they did what good parents do – they defended me. They would gently explain that religion is filled with hypocrisy and judgment and no group is worst than Christians. And I witnessed it every day. It is so much easier to stand in judgment then to see a heart that is actually seeking answers. The irony to this is that if any set of parents or friends had actually taken the time to talk to me with respect and love they probably could have converted me but they didn’t. By the time I was 16 I was attending churches by myself, always leaving with more questions than answers. Not one Christian took the time to reach out to me, they only wanted to judge me. When I entered college I only knew one thing — God existed and he loved me.

I Meet My First Important Person
I studied religion in college and became quite knowledgeable in regards to the history of religion. I loved it and grew passionate about why we believe what we believe. I was still trying churches and since most of my friends were Catholic that is usually where I ended up. Although no church has shown me the face of hypocrisy more than the Catholic church. (I love the folks who sit in the back and read the newspaper). After college I began attending the First United Methodist Church. I loved it there. They were kind people who really tried to reach out to me and make me feel comfortable.

I met with the Pastor and delicately described my situation. He was a rather short man with a 1960’s mustache and glasses. He had a kind demeanor, the sort of personality you would expect from a Pastor. I sat next to him on a low couch and as I nervously twisted my fingers and with a broken voice I said “my mother’s Jewish and I will never join your church.” He said nothing seemingly comfortable with what I said. I continued, “I’m proud of my heritage and that my relatives fled Nazis and other tormentors and I could never give up being Jewish. It would be an insult to their sacrifice”. I couldn’t look at him. I was anticipating the wrath, the judgment, the hatred that I had felt so many times before, but this time it didn’t come. He gave a soft chuckle and said “Beth, we have several Jewish members at our church. Knowing God and knowing Christ is a journey and we all must walk our own path. I can only take you where you are. It’s okay if you can’t join but we still want you to come and worship with us.” I loved that man for saying that. We had a couple of small conversations after that and then he left for a new church. Five years later David and I would stand in that same church and get married. I’ve always been happy that we were married in my first church home. I left that church and Michigan for Texas in 1998 and I then knew three things; there was a God, he loved me and I wasn’t alone in trying to find him.