BiPolar Bear

The most damaging thing for me is the concept of being born "into sin" "of a sinful nature" "carnal" all these words & phrases runtogetherweAREsin only Jesus' blood's beautiful crimson showers of snowy white redemption and love love love can keep us from the bottomless torture pits of the eternal flames of God's revenge. God who LOVES LOVES LOVES us so much he invented hell...and then "gave his only begotten son" so that we can still be with him in the end?
I never told my oldest son that I believe any of this stuff. I went along with it, however. I didn't have the strength to stand alone on this. I still don't.
What I really wanted to do was run away to some hippy commune out west & raise him on the land. Playing music & being free. But I was so dependent on my family, there's no way I could have done that. I told him this once when he was 19 & he said "I wish you had done that. You could've called me Beowulf or something!" I love this boy so much...
One Sunday morning when he was little, and once again, I wouldn't go to church, but my son went with my mama anyway, my daddy, who never went to church much himself, asked me why in the heck I was so stubborn about this. I asked if he wanted the truth & he, of course, said yes. I told him that I felt, deep in my heart, that being taught that we are born bad & prone to "sin" which hurts God's feelings, but we can't really help it anyway, was very very harmful to me & that I think it's a horrendous principle on which to try to make people do right, and that I wasn't going to teach my son those things, (and By this time I was crying, as usual) and he looked at me like I was an alien & said, "That's the craziest damn thing I ever heard anybody say!"
Well, I didn't think he was going to outright agree with me or anything, but I thought he & I were enough alike in our core beings that he would at least empathize with me or something, but no, he absolutely was thrown. I knew that I'd been too honest again. Ok, I knew how to keep my mouth shut to keep the peace. Don't always have to be so vocal...

I'm afraid in the end, that's what really ended my last marriage. If I had believed that stuff, or could have kept pretending that I did, I'd still be married to my last baby's daddy. But I still don't know if he really believes or if he does it for HIS parents. I really believe that's why he's now "bipolar".
"Bipolar Bear" - big Christmas 06 item...
love,
aza tb