I am going to brag, brag, brag!! My accounting/financial mentor taught me a hundred years ago that the IRS is NOT my savings account. You don’t over pay to get a refund to go on vacation. You try to pay just what you owe and sock the rest in savings and investments that then pay for your vacation with interest. Why pay the IRS interest to hold your money? Be responsible! Be disciplined! Make your money work for you. That’s what the experts say. Anyway, she told me I wanted to be within $500 of the bottom line. In other words, if I owed $500 or less or was due a refund of $500 or less, I was in good shape. So each year I would work towards that. This year, I changed our deductions twice, I know, I know, it’s work, but this year we are owed $21.00 for federal AND state. This is the closest I have ever been to being even.
I know most of you are rolling your eyes but to me this is huge news. I’m a goal setter so it makes me happy, happy, happy!! It’s the little things that are big! And of course, now the pressures on to get better for next year. Only…….
I can’t think about that right now. If I do, I’ll go crazy. I’ll think about that tomorrow. For tomorrow is another day!
This question was raised again in my life this week: “How can someone who commits suicide go to heaven?”
What is the difference between a diabetic saint who through poor diet and a refusal of a lifestyle change, begins to lose limbs and eventually dies, the overweight saint with high cholesterol who eats one more burger to a massive heart attack which kills them, the careless saint who reads the warning not to step on the top of the ladder and does and falls to her death, or the saint who suffers from major depression? Did they not all take their own life?
We tend to have degrees of suicide or rather, forgivable suicides and unforgivable suicides. Does God have mercy on the obese but not the depressed? Or can we determine that his measuring stick is not ours and that he ultimately decides what he forgives and what he doesn’t?
While the tiger mom is obsessed with raising brilliant children who can rule the world, the narcissistic mom is obsessed with making sure her children will forever need her. The tiger mom insists on perfection in every aspect of her children, the narcissistic mom tells her children they can’t do anything right without her.
The tiger mom and narcissistic mom both think they have their children’s best interest at heart, but both want to control on opposite ends of the spectrum. While the tiger mom is teaching her children that fear can actually motivate you to move forward, the narcissistic mom is telling her children that danger lies around every corner and what lucky children they are to have her as their mother who will forever protect them. There is no childhood in a tiger mom’s mindset and there is infantalization in a narcissistic mom’s mindset.
I have to be honest and tell you I cringed with both mothers. With the tiger mom because I could relate to much of it. I was focused on making my children prepared to take on the world and make something of themselves. I wasn’t as compassionate as I should have been as I was busy raising leaders.
With the narcissistic mom I cringed because she is raising children to be afraid to leave her. She makes sure to tell them that they aren’t smart enough to leave and the world is a super scary dangerous place without your mom. If they do happen to escape, she has a need to know everything about their life and she takes it in as if it is happening to her. This plays on my fear of my children marrying someone like this and being trapped by a mother-in-law who is hell bent on control. I have seen mothers who know every last detail of her adult children’s marriage and who interject their opinion and speak for their adult children. The person married to their child lives a hellish reality of being married to someone’s mother. ICK.
With Amy Chua’s book, she has a revelation and acknowledges her errors, although the media crucified her, I had deep sympathy and love for her (I know what you’re thinking, it’s okay). With the narcissistic mom, she believes she is right and you won’t convince her otherwise.
Makes me grateful for my mom! Thanks mom, for always trying to mind your own business, well for the most part, and for letting me grow up to be who I wanted to be.
I stopped writing at the end of November. Not just here on the blog but on my book as well.
Not that I had nothing to say. Only because life got in the way.
Familiar kid problems and a medical issue and having to face some reality moments sent me to dig deep and rather than fight it out with my words this time, I decided to take it private and pray.
Because sometimes it’s just you and God.
The stillness is a good thing.
I stopped writing and I got off of social media because sometimes things have to change and you have to get focused on the change and create new habits and ideals.
I’m back online and of course I have tons of opinions about a lot of things because, well, I just wouldn’t be me if I didn’t. So check back on Monday I’m going to tell you about what’s been going on!
Pastor Susan 