Tuesday, May 27, 2014

About Moving On. Or Not.

I am no longer a bible-believer.  I suppose it shouldn’t bother me that some christians suppose I was never “saved” or never understood the gospel.  But I was and it does.  For an awfully long time I believed the bible and poured more energy into my supernatural beliefs than most people put into anything besides the Almighty Dollar.  

I have published a book describing my exodus from the faithful flock, my journey out of and reflections on christianity.  With the swipe of an ink pen I have signed my name to dozens of copies of this book, sealing the agreement that I must, perhaps forevermore, engage with people on the subject.  I could have just told my friends, family and blog readers that I was done with christianity and was moving on, is anything else they’d like to talk about?  There’s that supernova in M82 a few months ago that was pretty awesome.  And yeah, I think we should raise minimum wage.  Can we do something in America about teen pregnancies?  Who wants to learn permaculture homesteading with me?

Alas, no.  I stand before the world an opinionated ex-christian atheist.  A secular humanist.  Bring on the controversy, bring on the accusations, bring on the appeals and condescension.

A close member of my family was the first.  I’d called to tell her I was divorcing and explained, in the rocky course of an awkward conversation, that I no longer believed in the bible.  Did she offer sisterly consolation and comfort during this most trying time in my life?  Nada.  From her perch on high she suggested that I had never really been saved, never really trusted God, was always so caught up in all those biblical laws that I had missed the saving grace of Jesus.  It was something between a plea and an accusation, some of the most condescending words I had ever heard.  I didn’t even know what to say and ended the conversation quickly.

Others followed.  There was the lady with whom I used to do business but hadn’t seen in two years.  She hugged me and said she was so glad I was no longer keeping the Sabbath, that that road of bondage could only end one way.  She had watched me and seen this coming.  Jesus’ yoke is easy, she said; there is freedom only in Christ, she said.  I took an absurd amount of delight in explaining to her that I hadn’t actually come around to her way of thinking; I’d really gotten free; free from the whole kit and kaboodle; no bible, no god.  Hmm, I’d never seen her speechless before that.

For the most part, mainstream christians who never understood why I strove to keep the Torah (the instructions of God found in the old testament), all say the same thing.  They all say it’s no wonder I think the bible’s a disaster and that my faith is gone; I’d been doing it wrong.  Maybe I was never even really saved.  They say this to my face; I can only imagine what they say to each other as they gossip and pray over me.  I don’t lose sleep over it, but I wonder.

And this puts me in a very interesting position.  I want to defend myself.  It truly bothers me that people don’t understand me and I find myself wanting to make them see.  I end up expending gobs of emotional and mental energy coming up with ways to explain that I did believe in Yehovah God, I did believe every word of the bible, I did live my life in accordance with his will (as best as I was able) and, except at the very end, I did believe in the saving blood of Yeshua/Jesus, his atonement and forgiveness.

But what the heck am I doing?!  I am free of the bible!  Free of christianity!   Am I trying to convince people that I believed what I believed so I can convince them that I no longer believe it?  Really?  I guess in a way I am trying to validate my experiences.  If they don’t believe that I was sincere, my deconversion means nothing.

I don’t know what to do with that.  I don’t want to just not engage people and I don’t want to be condescending in return.  Most of these people are sincere and deserve my sincere attention (“we’re all just humans trying to find our way”—my mantra).  The bible, God, faith; it doesn’t mean anything to me anymore, but it does to them.  I think they don’t realize how they sound to me.  I want to meet them where they are and carefully explain where I was, where I am, to respect their position and have mine respected, but it gets so damned tricky.

Maybe my deconversion actually does mean nothing and I need to let it go.  Maybe I can learn to just smile and bring the focus around to something that matters.  I’ve engaged in enough theological and doctrinal discussions in my time to a) last me a lifetime and b) know it doesn’t get you anywhere.  I now have the freedom to brush past the details and either chip away directly at the roots of the bible and religion, if I’m feeling aggressive and well matched in my conversational partner, or completely redirect the conversation to focus on the aspects of humanity we have in common.  Or maybe a middle-ground; the things religions have in common.


One thing I know:  I don’t want to spend the next fifteen years explaining and defending my religious experiences.  Life’s too short.  I don’t have to ignore or deny it; it’s a part of me and always will be.  But there’s more.  And it will take a concerted effort on my part to put more of myself out there.  How would you like to get to know Kaleesha the Mother?  Kaleesha the Gardener?  Kaleesha the Philosopher?  Kaleesha the Astronomer?  Kaleesha the Lover?   Kaleesha the Crazy Goat Lady?  The options are unlimited. 

Friday, May 16, 2014

Sex Ed

Are you going to give your children sex education and how?

Okay, how about some random, rambling thoughts and interesting links?

I'm have been easing carefully into this sexual education bit. It helps tremendously to live on a farm with breeding animals. I know folks who've told their children, upon their surprise at witnessing the mating of chickens, "It's okay, they're just dancing." Seriously? How could you pass up a perfect opportunity to begin your child's education in reproduction and sex?! No, my children know about how sex works firstly from our around-the-farm conversations and events, secondly from my many pregnancies (at least, the older ones had that aspect). I chat with them about it casually. I don’t make a big deal of it and I don’t go into a lot of detail. Time for that later. For my eleven-and-unders this seems appropriate.


Tucker Creek Homeschool Sex Ed Teacher
But down the road? I don’t know. I am so conflicted still about my own sexuality and shame, as some of you have read here. I recognize the need to do something different with my children, to help them avoid some of the shame. I recognize that I may have already done some damage to my older ones by dragging them through the modesty mire, possibly, unintentionally, making them ashamed of their bodies. I can talk with them some, but I must lead by example. I’m still figuring this out.  I don't want to just swing the other way to get as far away from conservative christiandom as possible.

Only part of it has to do with the way we dress, but I still think the way we dress is important. We are projecting an image of ourselves and will be judged accordingly by everyone we meet. How can I present myself in a way I’m comfortable and also be respectful of others? Tricky balance. Frankly, I love long skirts, baggy shirts, and long braided hair, I always have, but I am tired of looking like a frumpy housewife. I am experimenting with clothing and hairstyles. I am feeling free to discover myself. You may be laughing or scratching your head; maybe this sounds curious to you. Maybe you’ve taken your freedom for granted. If you knew the culture I’ve been steeped in for the last several years you would understand.

Right off I'm thinking of this ultra-modest family we used to spend time with and how I focused so much on trying to dress appropriately for visits to their house. I became hyper aware of my body and my sexuality around them. I went to their home one evening wearing a button-up shirt I thought was very modest (read that: not attractive in the least) and had just stepped through the door and been greeted when my host discreetly pulled me aside and kindly buttoned the very top button of my shirt. She said nothing, but smiled a matronly smile. Of course, I was uncomfortable all evening; not just from the choking collar of my shirt, but oh my, what else was I wearing or doing that was unacceptable, immodest? I was ashamed of my skirt which came only to mid-calf instead of to my shoes like those on all the women in their family. I was sure everyone was staring at my legs the whole night.This is only a small bit of the type of shame I felt and the way christians, in my experience, focus on sexuality by trying to avoid it.

For myself and my children I want to find some balance between this shameful restrictiveness and flaunting of our sexuality. I am a sexual being, yes, but that’s not all I am and it's not necessarily the aspect of myself I want to bring to the forefront. How about a tiny bit of sexy with a side of humorous and large helping of brilliant? Yeah, that sounds good. Ha. Balance… balance… Who do you want to be? Create yourself. Put thought into it. That’s what I want my children to understand.

But beyond appearances...

I’d like to share a letter that I wrote to my children last December, after writing those bits about sexuality and shame. This is in Free to Be (page 217 in the paperback):

To My Dearest Children, 
Today you cannot fully understand how getting out of religion has changed the direction of our lives. Because we live in the midst of a culture of Bible-believers it may always be a part of your lives, but maybe that’s not such a bad thing. Seeing this culture around you will challenge you to think and make your own decisions. I guess that’s what I want most for you, the ability to observe and consider, to think critically and make careful decisions. This will be the key to your happiness and that of the people around you. 
Spending almost 33 years in a christian culture myself I learned some things I want you to be aware of, some things I want you to watch out for in your life. I learned that these things were true but now I know they are not. 
I learned that God was watching out for me. Now I know that I am in charge of my life and that I have to watch out for myself and learn to trust others in my life to watch out for me, too. 
 I learned that God would judge me. He would reward me if I was good and punish me if I was bad. Good and bad were decided by God and the rules written in the Bible. Now I know that the Bible was written by men who were just trying to make a culture (a group of people and the way they live) to be just the way they wanted them. It’s not for our culture today. We have many tools the writers of the Bible didn’t have, like our modern science, that enable us to make an even better world than they envisioned.
Not everything the Bible says is wrong, but some of the things it claims are good aren’t good and some of the things it claims are bad aren’t bad.
No one is going to judge you when you die. This is your life, here and now, and you can do whatever you want with it, but please, never forget that the things you do affect other creatures here on Earth! You will need to pay close attention and put thought into your actions. Decide for yourself what is good and bad. Does it hurt you? Does it hurt someone else? Does it hurt the Earth? 
I learned from the Bible and christianity that sexuality was something to be ashamed of, that if I kissed another person or had sex with them without being married to them that I was sinning, that I was doing something very wrong. Now I know that it’s not wrong, it’s a very normal thing to want to experience. Our sexuality is a very special part about being human; as far as we know, no other species experiences it like we do. Kissing and touching and sex are very beautiful ways to express our love for other people. Because it’s so special, we should be very careful with it. Though we are free to practice it with whomever we want, we should apply the same thoughtfulness to it that we do to other things. Ask yourself, will this hurt me or anyone else, physically or emotionally? Talk about it with the person you want to be with. Communicate.
Of course, you may decide some of this or all of this is something you want to wait to experience until you marry or find just the right person to commit to. That is a fine and beautiful choice, too! Just think about what’s best for you, what you want, and how to go about making it happen that way. Think.
Sex requires a little more thought than some other things in our lives. Because sex involves body fluids, diseases are sometimes passed from one person to another this way, sometimes very serious ones. Sex is also how we make babies, and babies shouldn’t be brought into the world unless or until you and your partner want them. So, be thoughtful and wise, get educated. There is much to learn to practice safe, healthy sex and the information is readily available. There are books at the library and you can always talk with an adult you trust. 
You know that I got pregnant with Farra before Daddy and I were married. We were just having fun and we didn’t think about the consequences. You may also know that we wouldn’t have gotten married if it weren’t for that. I felt a lot of shame because my culture, christianity, told me that what I had done was very wrong. I thought getting married would make it better; it did, as far as my culture was concerned, but it was not a good idea for Daddy and I. Of course, neither of us regret having Farra, but neither of us was really ready to be a parent. Also, we were not a good match for each other and shouldn’t have gotten married.
I wish someone had just hugged me and told me that it was okay that I made a mistake, that someone had helped me to see what the next best step would be for me instead of just trying to make things look better on the outside. But then, I cannot regret all of that because if we hadn’t gotten married we wouldn’t have the rest of you awesome kids!
That’s one of the funny things about life... it is what it is. Sometimes it’s what you make it, sometimes it just happens to you. If you don’t put the effort into making it what you want it to be then more of it just happens to you, which can be very hard! But, accept your mistakes and pick yourself up and move on to do your best. Surround yourself with good quality people who will help you do this. 
Anyway, it’s a lot easier to do the work and make life what you want than living under pressure from your culture and an imaginary God to be and to live a certain way, or to believe that a higher power is controlling things. It’s very nice to be free and I hope you all will grow up happy and confident in this freedom.
I love you so very much,
Momma

I don’t have all the answers. I’m still figuring out things myself, but I want to carefully lay foundation I can build upon later. I think I can do that even if my goals are as vague as “I want my children to be unashamed of their humanity” and “I want my children to think things through and to communicate.”

So many thing have popped up in my internet wanderings this week regarding sexuality. First, this breakdown of sex education in America, presented by Upworthy is shocking. It’s no freaking wonder we have the highest teen pregnancy rates in the world. Second, this absolutely amazing and articulate piece, The Failures of Sex Education, by tween activist Madison Kimrey, whom I have begun keeping my eye on since reading her feminist rebuttal to Phyllis Schlafly awhile back. She and her young friends are blazing remarkable paths in our world. True inspiration and hope for our youth. If you have nothing else to do tonight, and even if you do, go read this article. I’m just gonna share the first couple paragraphs to give you a taste:

High school is a complicated time in life. We’re preparing for college and careers, we’re defining and expressing ourselves, and we’re thinking about sex. However, the way many of my peers are thinking about sex is extremely unhealthy. Many of them are thinking about it as a way to level-up their relationships, as something that will make them more adult-like, and many view sex as something dirty. 
The messages teens get from many adults and from society do little but to reinforce these unhealthy views on the topic. It makes many adults uncomfortable to have frank discussions on the subject, either with or in front of teens, and because of this, teens are even less likely to engage in frank discussions themselves.
Even more disturbing and unhelpful are sex education programs designed to indoctrinate teens into a particular mindset regarding the most personal of topics. Abstinence-only programs are the manifestation of adult fear. In order to keep teens from making “bad decisions,” adults step in to attempt to control the decision making. The tactics used in such programs range from instilling fear into teens that any sexual relationship will lead to STD’s, pregnancy, or feelings of shame to directly trying to shame teens by comparing those who are sexually active to a piece of passed-around chocolate or chewed-up gum.


I won’t keep you because I want you to go read the whole article (and it's so hard for me to write about a subject when I've just read someone else's wonderful insights). Be sure to watch the video at the end of Texas Governor Rick Perry fumbling around, trying to answer a point-blank question about abstinence.

Girls like Madison inspire me. I don’t know yet what a complete sex ed will look like for my children, but I have reason to believe we’re on the right path.

Wednesday, May 14, 2014

On Home and Fruit Trees

Prizewinning French Evereste Crabapple
Denny and I ordered a crabapple tree in April.  It arrived today.  It’s raining now, but we’ll plant it in a few days.  Planting it will be deeply satisfying to me. Just having it sitting in a bag of damp shredded newspaper in the corner of my office is satisfying to me.  It’s sort of symbolic. (Not the damp shredded newspaper bit, but the tree and the planting of it.)  Symbolic of the love Denny and I share with each other and with the land upon which we live.

  I have always wanted fruit trees.  My ex husband and I moved to this property (my dream home in the country) seven and a half years ago.  There were a few neglected and dying fruit trees.  I did the best I could with them, but the inland hurricane in 2009 did significant damage.  Goodbye pears. Goodbye peaches.

I knew that the sooner I could get trees in the ground the better.  They say the best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago.  We never really had the money to invest in fruit trees, but more than that, my ex never had the heart to invest in this land.  He had no ties to land, to home.  He would rather our family live in tents, traveling like gypsies.  We were very ill-matched.  Not that I don’t see a tiny bit of the appeal of that life, if done properly and for the proper reasons, but it’s nothing compared to my desire to put down roots, to call a place my own, to work with the land to make it beautiful and sustainable, to encourage it to feed my family and other animals.  It’s tied in with my desire to be a part of a bigger community, to be surrounded by people and places I’m familiar with.

After the first couple years at this place my ex wanted to leave, to take us all on the road to live “free.”  This was probably the beginning of the end of us.  I tried to be the good, Christian submissive wife, but there were always many problems with his plans and I waffled between compliance and resistance.  He waffled between resentment and, perhaps, wanting to please me.  There were painful times when he was out of work and frustrated that he just wanted to sell everything and hit the road.  Being obedient to him by photographing and listing my beloved home at his request was one of the most agonizing things I had to do.  “It’s just a house,” I told myself.  “God will take care of you anywhere.  It will be okay.”  But I didn’t feel it.


Our shut-ins this evening during the rain, from up on the hill
Yes, it is just a house.  Well, not just a house.  There are five beautiful acres of mostly woods with a creek running along one side, a creek running through some of the most amazing shut-ins I’ve ever seen.  At this moment I can look out my dining window and see the creek, see the waterfalls rushing, hear them roaring from the last three days of rain.  It’s a marvel now and it’s a marvel when it’s tame and the children spend sunny afternoons in it, swimming, throwing stones, watching frogs develop from eggs and catching crawdads.  It’s a marvel to sit in the sun and dip my toes in the cool water when I’m feeling drained by other elements of my life.  It’s like tapping back into my power source, recharging my batteries.

The 1966 chateau style house sets back from the quiet state highway, nestled cozily on the gentle south-facing slope that forms the main yard.  The lower story is built out of cinderblock, solid and strong.  A steep roof perches on the upper half-story, boarded and battened by dark-stained, rough-sawn oak, probably from a local mill.  A large chimney rises regally out of the center and in the winter puffs gentle clouds of white smoke while we warm ourselves and dry our mittens by the wood stove inside.

The yard surrounding the house is dotted with huge old oaks and hickories.  The land levels out some between the house and the creek and there’s enough space between the trees to let the sunshine in.  Here is where I planted my vegetable garden; three 4x4 beds the first year, increasing after that until I had a 50x60’ area fenced in and primed for growing. The soil is naturally darker and richer here with fewer stones, I suppose because it’s the topsoil that washed down the hill over the course of many years.  I couldn’t ask for a better spot to cultivate tomatoes and children.

The day we moved in I remember standing on the back deck with my mom, overlooking the yard and what would become the garden, and gave my four children permission to play, that the place was ours.  We’d finally found the place I wanted to raise my children.  They trooped down the steps and ran laughing across the yard.  I glanced sideways at my mom and we were both choking back tears.  Just one of many beautiful moments of awareness tying my heart to this place.  
View of the yard and barn, also in this evening's rain

I worked countless hours and dripped countless beads of sweat creating an area to keep goats and chickens in the area around the garden; fence and barn and all. Beyond the barn is a gorgeous shaded area that we used to call The Orchard because the original fruit trees were there.  The word glen comes to mind, but the Webster’s definition isn’t entirely accurate.  Something about the protective semi-circle of forest, the lushness of the grass, the violets that cover the area in the spring.  There are clumps of Maiden grass left by some owner-beautifier along the way.  There are redbud trees and a glorious patch of honeysuckle the odor of which drifts into the barn on summer mornings while I milk goats.


Forest path to shut-ins, glades and observatory
And that’s only the half of it.  Follow a shaded path up the hill from the house and admire the forested portion of land, rich in oaks, hickories, dogwoods, redbuds, paw-paws, maples, elms and cedars.  The trees part on top of the hill to reveal an otherwise hidden rocky glade, replete with moss, lichen, wildflowers and sunning reptiles.  You can park yourself on a blanket here and rest for hours listening to the wind tickle the trees and the creek ripple over its rocky bed.

Back near the house, along the drive and at the edge of the forest there masses of daffodils and day lilies, tucked into the earth by some thoughtful person of yesterday.  Forsythias border the first part of the drive.  I’m told the house was built by a St. Louis couple as a summer home.  I could see that.

Witch hazel lines the creek banks.  Firepink, lily-of-the-valley, dutchman’s breeches, bloodroot, spring beauty, wild phlox, wild hyacinth and so many other flowers I don’t know by name cover the forest floor in the spring, if you can spot them hiding among the mayapples.  We even have a patch of morel mushrooms and a lone wild azalea. 

I can sit on my deck and view the garden, the chickens, the goats, the children, the creek, the curving drive.  I can look out any window and see some beautiful portion of nature combined with the work of my hands.  There’s a soggy-looking hummingbird perched this very moment in the mess of blackberry bushes I planted just outside my dining window.

Three of my children were born in this very house, each in the quiet darkness of a winter night.  With each I lay exhausted in the comfort of my bed, nursing my wee infant as the faint light of dawn crept in the eastern window.

This is my home.  It’s not all I am, not all I have in the world, nor would I be lost without it, but I will not downplay my love for it.
The reason I never set aside money to plant fruit trees was because most of the time I’ve lived here I’ve lived under the constant threat that I would lose it.  My spouse did not see what I saw.  What I loved, he resented.  I invested a lot, but I drew the line at fruit trees, something of which I might never see the payoff.

I splurged two years ago.  After much research I bought two good quality apple trees.  With a mix of fear and hope I planted them in my vegetable garden.  Did my heart know something I didn’t?  Had I made up my mind to stay even if my husband didn’t?  I don’t know.  Maybe it was one last grab at fleeting hope.


Trellis and flower beds, some of many improvements
Denny has lived here with me for almost a year.  He loves this place.  He gave up his cabin in the woods by a lake, a place equal in beauty to mine, a place he had put almost as much love and sweat into.  I have to say, his place was the only one I’d ever seen I would consider giving mine up for.  We chose this place, but seeing his made me to understand that this is a man who can appreciate land and home the way I do.  Together we walk in the woods and quiz each other on the names of wildflowers.  We sit by the creek and dip our toes as the children play and bring us smooth or sparkly or striped rocks.  We talk and dream and plan.  With the children we have made amazing aesthetic improvements to both home and property, and we’ve only just begun.

We must buy fruit trees and bushes as soon as possible, he says.  Apples, peaches, pears, blueberries, raspberries, black berries, hardy kiwi and more.  There is no time like the present!
  He has not hesitated to invest time and money into this place, like he has not hesitated to invest everything in the children and I.  My heart is healing.  My heart is satisfied.

We will plant this crabapple tree together.  It will be the first of many trees and shrubs that will nourish our lives in the years to come here at Make-It-Do Farm.  

Sunday, May 11, 2014

To Vaccinate or Not to Vaccinate?

I have long opposed the routine vaccination of children.  My seven never received a single shot.  I’d like to tell you why I held that position and why I don’t any longer.

At age nineteen I began my career as a mother. My world was suddenly filled with things I had never contemplated before.  Physical exams and tests, round-the-clock morning sickness, birthing options.  The possibility of having a home birth was something that wasn’t even on my radar until I met the midwife who worked at our rural health clinic.  It seemed so right for me, so natural.  For a variety of reasons a natural route appealed to me.

Fast forward several months.  I’d had a wonderful home birth with a super midwife and no pain meds.  My baby girl was growing fabulously.  I was learning to breastfeed, to change diapers, to interpret cries, to function without the precious sleep I’d been accustomed to.  I read books and magazines about child development and parenting.  My mind reeled with information.  Obviously I tuned into the items that sounded more natural and less invasive and became quite adept at scoffing in the direction of anything coming from traditional medicine.  I had defied modern medicine; I’d birthed naturally in the comfort of my own home.  Our bodies were made of stronger stuff than they were credited with.  God had made us, God had made everything, all we had to do was work within his parameters, ask his blessing and trust him.  

At my daughter’s two month checkup I watched other mommas carrying their screaming infants out of the exam room, asking those of us waiting to excuse the noise, that their babes had just received their immunizations.  I knew already that I would not be subjecting my baby girl to this. Not without doing some serious research, I told myself.

For a few years I told myself this.  I’d heard the word autism thrown around in connection with vaccinations.  I’d had a run-in with a power-hungry medical doctor during my third pregnancy.  I met other wonderful moms who chose the natural way.  My opinions were increasing, but my knowledge was not.  I thought I was playing it safe by not vaccinating; better safe than sorry.  Who knew what the pharmaceutical companies were up to?  Who knew what would happen if I got my children vaccinated, injected them with all these unnatural chemicals?  Did the vaccines even effectively immunize?  And against what?  A bunch of illnesses that were hardly even around anymore, at least not in my country.  And they were simply going overboard; my siblings and I had chickenpox when we were kids and we were fine; a friend of my parents had polio when he was a kid and was told he’d never walk again but he walked just fine.  Herd immunity?  My children are not part of a herd, they are my children!  And we were God’s children; his will be done.

Yet I was relatively quiet about my decision because I knew I hadn’t done the research.  I’d intended to, I just never found time, never made it a priority, not until my fourth child was born or sometime around there.  I don’t remember how I ended up with the book I did; a friend or the library maybe, but it seemed like a very balanced book.  I knew that I needed to read both sides of the vaccine debate to make a good decision and this book was written, if I remember correctly, by four or five individuals with alphabet soup after their names who were each attempting to make their case for or against vaccinations.  I felt like I was getting a balanced view, in a very convenient format, and that was enough for me.  

I talked with my husband.  He was completely indifferent, the decision was mine alone.  I considered the things I'd read.  There were risks either if we vaccinated, risks if we didn’t.  My faith in God was strong.  I trusted him to lead me.  I prayed.  I felt no leading of the spirit, no voice came from heaven, but I assumed he would guide me to make the best decision for my family.

The ultimate deciding factor was how I would feel if something bad happened either because I didn’t vaccinate or because I did.  I felt that, worse case scenario, I could more easily bear the consequences resulting from my being inactive than proactive.  Doing nothing and taking a chance felt better than actively taking a chance.  I mean, if I got my kids shots and they got sick, I didn’t think I could live with myself!  But if we should happen to be exposed to something, God would take care of us, we would pray, his will would be done.

That was as much logic as I could muster under the circumstances.  I just didn’t know better.  I was intimidated by the sheer volume of mixed information. 

How do you make any kind of logical decision when you credit or blame God with everything that happens?  When you believe he is guiding your every move?

Skip forward another few years.  I am pregnant with my sixth child (another area in which I completely trusted God, though I didn’t much want to be pregnant at the time).  My fifth child, eighteen months old, had a small but persistent cough for over week.  About the time this cough registered in my brain (with all the distractions of a homesteading parent of many) it disappeared and some of the older kids started coughing.  Within a few days they were running fevers.  They were up in the night vomiting and violently coughing with a terrible whooping noise trying desperately to catch their breaths.  I’d heard about this.  Pertussis, “whooping cough,” or the “ninety day cough."  I did some research and concluded that we were beyond the point that antibiotics could help (and I believed antibiotics were over-prescribed anyway) and the youngest and most vulnerable of our five children had been mercifully spared the worst part of the illness, so I ignored the advice of friends and family that we see a doctor.  Yes, it was awful to watch my children suffer, but what could a doctor do for us?  I found some herbs and over-the-counter medicine that barely helped with some of the symptoms and we hunkered down for three months of quarantine.

We survived, no permanent damage done.  I wore that fact like a badge on my sleeve, though I “knew" God had protected our youngest one; it could have been so bad for him.  My stomach turns a little now that I know we were completely on our own; no god watching out for us, just dumb luck.  Very dumb luck.

Can you believe it was another six years before I would vaccinate my children?

Today I do not believe there is any deity is watching out for us.  That changes a lot of things.  I’m telling you, I took the Bible at it’s word and I believed in the power of that God.  My life was shaped by that belief.  I lived in a bubble of sorts, shut off from much of the world and stuck in a Bible-centered culture where not much mattered as long as you served God with all of your heart and taught your children to do likewise.  I have a much broader worldview now.  Outside of the bubble I began to understand that we humans have to take care of each other (and our fellow animals).  God is not controlling these things.  It’s up to us to stop the spread of disease.  

I began to understand the scientific method.  I learned to think more skeptically.  I have learned to better weigh evidence, using tools like peer-reviewed science (see Denny’s blog post on skepticism).  My new non-Christian, scientifically minded friends frowned on the anti-vax movement and were very patient with me as I carefully and curiously explored the topic.  It seemed like everywhere in science that I turned I saw frustration and ridicule toward anti-vaxers.  "There must be something to this and it’s time to ferret out the truth," I said to myself.  I realized that years ago when I “studied” the topic that I had approached it with a strong bias and stopped when I found evidence that supported my existing view.  I had comforted myself with the idea that I was getting a balance of information, but I realize now the book was largely biased.  It looked good; the essays seemed to be written around well-founded reports, but I didn’t understand sources then, didn’t take the time to really look at the sources, I didn’t know how peer-reviewed science worked.

I’m also aware now that much of the anti-vax, “natural,” fundamentalist Christian culture I was part of was grounded in the assumption that the secular world was scheming against us, against God, against the Bible, and that this “science” was mixed in somehow.  It sounds so absurd now, but I thought They were out to get Us, that They had an Agenda and that if it wasn’t of God, well… Yeah, you know what team They play for.  They taught evolution, for crying out loud!  I am not a monkey and They are not to be trusted.

 Of course, and as I’ve written before, I understand now that the secular world just sort of does it’s own thing, studying evidence and bizarre things like that, and, for the most part, pays theists no mind.

Are there big pharmaceutical companies just out to make a buck?  Probably.  Science is a tool that can be used by anyone for any reason.  We don’t toss it out just because someone is abusing it.  Science is our one and only tool for discovering truth.  It is possible to sift through the information and find some presented without an agenda.  There are a few basic steps, some basic questions to ask.  Michael Shermer discusses ten such questions in the following fifteen minute video, a perfect example of skepticism and science, a must-watch:  Baloney Detection Kit 

I pushed the ignorance-based fear aside and tackled the issue of vaccinations with my Baloney Detection Kit in hand.  I discovered that the autism hype was false; the original author of the paper linking autism to vaccinations, Dr. Andrew Wakefield, later retracted his paper.  It didn’t hold up to peer review. His results couldn’t be reproduced, there was evidence that it was all set-up.  But the damage was done; a huge number of people stopped vaccinating and refused to vaccinate their children, largely in England but also in the U.S.  Pockets of diseases that had almost been eradicated by vaccinations began to pop up again; measles and mumps and pertussis, oh my!

It’s easy for our generation to fall for the anti-vax hype because we grew up in world a where the diseases prevented by vaccination were not prevalent.  It seemed long ago, something we didn’t have to face anymore.  But, these illness were under control because of vaccinations!  And they are coming back because we have stopped guarding ourselves against them!

I read a story about a mother whose two boys have auto-immune disorders that prevent them from being able to receive vaccinations against childhood diseases and also leaves them extremely vulnerable to those diseases; what would make one of my children sick would be fatal to one of hers.  I began to understand herd immunity.  I began to understand that I am not only risking my children’s health, but I’m putting other people at risk.  They are counting on the rest of us to stop the spread of disease; their lives depend upon us.

A few weeks ago I broached the subject with Denny.  I told him I was thinking about having the kids all vaccinated.  He said he would stand by that decision, would help me in any way he could, was very supportive.  I think he was rather waiting for me to come to that, but never pushed me.  So, I called up my local health department and together we took on the arduous task of forming a schedule for each of my children.  We discussed which vaccinations we would do.  I researched the ones I was unfamiliar with and decided to do just about every one of them.  When I looked at everything with a skeptic’s eye the risks were so minimal weighed against the remarkable science and success behind these vaccinations.  

I feel good about my decision.  My children were all brave and are all doing well.  I am pleased to live in a world where we are able to prevent the spread of disease.

Any questions?