Moving out

Shannon is moving out.

Today I sat on her bed with her and we counted the money from an old piggy bank she’d found when she was going through her stuff. We needed a level place to stack the coins, so she pulled an old picture book off her shelf, a beautiful version of Puss in Boots that I used to read to the kids over and over when they were small.

The large green eyes of Puss stared up at me from over his ruffled collar on the back of the book jacket. I stacked pennies on his face in groups of ten. It takes a lot of stacks of pennies to make three dollars. We stacked, and then we started rolling, and then Jon called to see if he could get permission to go to a drive-in movie with the church youth group and I was pulled away, which was a loss and a mercy rolled into one.

Her room is different now, as she has boxed up her books, removed her clothes from the closet, cleared her shelves. I don’t think she has thrown much away, and for now, that is a-ok.

I don’t remember leaving my room like this. I just don’t remember. I don’t remember my mom crying, or shopping for me, or stressing out about whether I had a toilet brush for cleaning my bathroom. Maybe it didn’t happen. I think we borrowed Al and Jackie’s truck and loaded it ourselves.

When I go “home” to my parents’ house (and somehow, no matter how old I get, I think that place will always be home), I feel so young in my old room. I can be 27, or 32, or 44, and I still feel all the uncertainty of 14 when I sit on my old bed and look into the full length mirror on the wall next to the closet. Instead of seeing the wrinkles and the gray hair, I see the frightened eyes and trembling lips of a young girl, and I feel like I need somebody to tell me what to do.

I still feel like I need somebody to tell me what to do, and to help me do it. Even in my own home, I feel like I can’t handle it, I am not qualified. I never oil my woodwork or my dining room chairs. Somebody ought to make me do that... I would love if somebody would come alongside me and do it with me.

Maybe this is why I feel so overwhelmed for Shannon. Because I am overwhelmed myself and always have been. I was never able to teach her the things I didn’t know.

But that doesn’t mean she can’t learn them somewhere else. She is the bomb at chemistry, and I didn’t teach her that. I may have sparked her imagination with acid-base experiments using red cabbage juice. We did those when she was in fourth grade and I homeschooled her. We also used turmeric on coffee filters to make homemade base indicators. She wanted to do science every day. I should have had a clue...

But I did not teach her real chemistry, and I did not teach her how to manage a home, and I did not teach her to be mysteriously feminine. I did not know enough about those things myself. She will have to learn these things or not, on her own, according to the will of God.

I love her so much. I will miss her so much. Why does a happy, exciting time have to be so heart rending?

Shawn and I went for a walk tonight while it got dark. Under the glow of the streetlight, maple seed helicopters shone white and messy across the asphalt road. I picked a perfect one and brought it back to the house. Shannon and I played with it in the open foyer, tossing it from the top of the stairs and watching it spin down.

I hear the hose running water into our pool because a new liner was installed today, and I hope I remember this evening forever.

**very introspective (I'll do better next time)

Shawn bought me this little, itty bitty laptop for Mothers’ Day. It is really cute, and I can take it anywhere. For instance, I am sitting in the red chair in my bedroom right now, instead of in the study. Piper is scratching around in his dog bed in the corner under my bed, and the vacuum sits reproachfully at the base of my oval mirror, the one that is almost full length.

There are a dozen antique pink roses in a vase downstairs on the kitchen table. Ordinarily I discourage people from buying me roses for Mothers’ Day because at Wegman’s, where they sell roses for the everyday low price of $9.99 on 363 days of the year, they charge $34.99 on Valentine’s Day and Mothers’ Day. Even Aldi marked up their bouquets from $3.99 to $7.99 in honor of us moms. (Right.) But Shawn and I happened to be in WalMart picking up a prescription for one of the boys, and they had Mothers’ Day roses, twelve for $10. I was willing to accept roses on a major flower holiday if we could get them at that price!

The other morning as I was drinking my tea and staring absently at my flowers, I thought of how I would love to arrange flowers for somebody’s wedding sometime. There are websites where you can order flowers for close to wholesale prices. I would love to plan wedding flowers with somebody and place an order for a bunch of carefully selected flowers, and then arrange them when they arrived.

I doubt if I could ever do this for one of my own daughters if they got married, as there would probably be 10,000 other things I would need to be taking care of, and getting the flowers all set up would certainly impede my ability to get myself ready for the Big Event. So I would need to do this for somebody else.

It struck me that I would not want to do this for money. I would just want to do it for fun, and for love, and to be helpful (I would want them to pay for the wholesale flowers, but I would arrange them for nothing). I am terribly unambitious. I never want to do anything for money. I really hate being paid for things.

It isn’t that I don’t like money. I’d (on a certain level) love to have a job, a career, a salary. I’d love to be able to make a financial contribution to my children’s college expenses. But the things I like to do—teach Sunday school, teach Bible studies, watch people’s little children, arrange flowers—I don’t want to do for money.

There is a part of me that would love to be paid for writing, and then there is another part of me that recoils from it. I want to write what I write without regard to what people think or whether (for goodness’ sake) they would pay me. I’d love to write a book, a fiction book with chapters and a really fantastic plot, but maybe a children’s book and not a novel. But I don’t want to write it to be published, to sell. I just want to write it. Of course, I would like to see it in print. If people liked it, it would be rewarding to get money for it after the fact. But I don’t want to write it for profit, as a job, to make money. I want to write as a blessing, something free and beautiful and God-ordained. And then I’d like to let the chips just fall wherever they fall. If my book is only ever something I print on my computer printer and put into a three ring binder for my children and grandchildren, so be it.

I wonder if there is something fundamentally wrong with me, that I am so unmotivated, so unambitious. I am certainly un-American. So many of my friends work and contribute to their families’ finances. I have no desire to do this, no desire at all. And I do not even homeschool. I am a drone. I have not even been teaching Bible study or Sunday school for the past six months, and still I do not clean my house regularly or organize it or (now that spring has arrived) work on the yard or the flower beds.

I am satisfied, for one thing. If I really had a hunger to build that house in the country, I could be beating the streets looking for a job. But I am completely satisfied with the house I live in. I like my kitchen and my bedroom and the new shower in my master bath. I like my neighborhood and the fact that I am within five minutes of three or four grocery stores. I do not long for more clothes or more vacations (usually) or a new car. This is not to say that I don’t need a new car, just that I don’t want one.

I wish I could figure out what God wants from me, my calling, my vocation. Here I am, 45 years old, with no clue what I’m going to be when I grow up, no desire to grow up, and no desire to make money.

And I wonder why one of my kids is unmotivated.  Ha.

What I would like

I would like to go to bed early some night, with the sunset.

I would like to be in my own bed, yet have it be dark and quiet. No conversations in the hall or out on the street, no TV, no music, nothing but a gentle breeze in the leaves and maybe the sound of Piper wheezing softly under the bed.

I would like the sheets to be freshly washed but soft and broken in. I would like warm feet, a cool face, a soft pillow, and the scent of lavender, not too strong. I would love to have no headache, no neck ache and no aching in my knees.

I would like to sleep all through the night, deep and dreamless, and not wake up even once until the sun begins to rise.

I would like to get up when it is light, but before the sun is all the way high. I would like to step out of bed and stretch and still have warm feet and warm shoulders that do not ache. Then I would drink a glass of water and head downstairs to make tea for breakfast.

I would like to find that my house has been relocated to a beautiful tropical island so that I could sit at my kitchen table and sip tea while watching the sun come up over the ocean from my sliding glass doors. I would open the glass slider to the screen and let in the scent of wildly blooming tropical flowers, the ones canopying my deck.

After breakfast, I would put on flip-flops and shorts and head out my front door which, since my house has been miraculously relocated, now faces a stunning mountain bedecked with leafy vines and waterfalls. I would run up the mountain until I got to the top of the first waterfall, which would also be the bottom of the second waterfall, and I would stand in the spray with vines shading my face as I looked out to sea at bright blue sky and deep blue water.

I would run back down the mountain, and now it would be getting very warm, so I would go into my house and put on my bathing suit and head out to the expansive white sand beach that is now my back yard. My skin would soak up the sun without burning as I worked my way deeper and deeper into the warm, gentle waves of salt water. I'd sit down in waist deep water and let a wave knock me full in the face, and then I would laugh.

When I was pickled in salt water, sand and sunshine, I would head back to my house, my own house, and take a long shower in sweet fresh water. I would have time to put on lotion and essential oils, to brush out my hair and rub cocoa butter into my feet. I'd dress in a white cotton sundress and feel pretty and clean.

I would eat strawberries for lunch, and maybe pineapple. Also avocados and almonds, maybe almond butter on a banana.

Of course, my family would be there. But they would not need me to make their food, or to clean up after them, or to arbitrate their disagreements. They would just be there, enjoying the beauty alongside me, and there would be an abundance of peace and joy and love.

And in the afternoon we would read good books
and talk about deep ideas
and walk around in the sun
and the shade
and the sumptuous flowers
and the fine, white sand.

And then dinner would be ready, with no mess and no stress, delicious cold chicken sliced over tender young greens, served with nuts and a delicate, freshly concocted vinaigrette dressing. A small ensemble of musicians--strings, or perhaps a woodwind quintet--would play beautiful music at a distance, the sounds carried to us on the wind.

And then as the sun began to set, I would like to do it all over again.

But I may need to settle for a strawberry smoothie and an eight-pack of marigolds. Which is not half bad, especially if combined with a back rub. (*smile*)

Showers

It is raining again, but that isn't what this post is about.

I've been buying pots and pans lately. And measuring cups, rubber scrapers and dish sets.

Shannon's moving out soon. To an apartment. For graduate school. It is so weird to me.

She needs everything. Before I moved out, I had a bridal shower (actually, a number of bridal showers), and a wedding. I went to Dayton's and registered for everything I needed, and people bought it for me as gifts. I am still using most of that stuff today.

Shannon needs everything a bride needs (well, half as much, anyway). But I guess we're on our own here. There are no going-off-to-graduate-school showers.

And by the time she has a bridal shower, probably she will be fully stocked.

Life is so nuts.

Passover

Our family celebrates Passover. At least, we used to. For a number of years, we got too busy, and we allowed this precious tradition to lapse. Recently we have begun again.

We usually celebrate Passover on Maundy Thursday or Good Friday, rather than according to the Jewish Passover calender. Maundy Thursday is the best, because that is the day when Christians remember the Last Supper of Christ, which was, incidentally, the Passover. This year, we held our Passover Seder on Good Friday because Shawn was in Florida until then. We did it early in the day, about 1 p.m., which puts a damper on some of the questions ("Why is this night unlike any other night?"), but we dealt with that by not asking the questions.

Here is the table prepared for the Passover meal. We use a large pitcher of grape juice instead of wine because (a) it tastes delicious, (b) it is very affordable, and (c) we do not drink alcohol around here.



I try as much as possible to keep Kosher for this meal. Most of the foods are prescribed and symbolic, but we also have a salad. Salad is parve, which means it can be eaten with either a meat meal or a dairy meal. Passover is a meat meal, which means I have to cook everything without using any butter, milk or cheese. So... no Parmesan in the salad dressing tonight! We used an olive oil balsamic vinaigrette.



This is parsley and salt water. The parsley reminds us of the hyssop branches that the Israelites used to paint the blood of the lamb on their door frames. The salt water stands for their tears while they were in bondage, and also the salt water of the Red Sea that God parted for them.



Here you see homemade matzah. I bought the boxed kind one year and never heard the end of it. Boxed matzah is not particularly tasty. I made up a recipe that I used for years, just flour, water, oil and salt. But this year I found a new recipe to try, and everyone loved it.



The bitter herbs are possibly the most famous part of the Passover meal. They are supposed to bring tears to your eyes in remembrance of the agony of the slavery the Israelites suffered as slaves building the pyramids for Pharaoh. Since we are Christians, the bitter herbs also remind us of the bitterness that sin brings to us while we are in bondage to it. This year's bitter herbs (aka horseradish) were about seven times stronger than usual. David and Jonathan customarily have a contest to see who can load the most horseradish on his matzah. This year, it very nearly knocked them out of their chairs. I was worried for awhile.



Below, you see one of our very favorite Passover dishes. Charoseth. It is supposed to look like the mortar the Israelites used to hold their bricks together while they were building, which it does. Although it is not the prettiest stuff, it is absolutely delicious... apples, honey, cinnamon, walnuts and lemon processed in my Cuisinart. The sweet taste of this on a piece of matza--after the bitter herbs--soothes your mouth and reminds you of the hope of deliverance. Jewish people think of the deliverance from Egyptian slavery, but as Christians, we also think of the great deliverance from sin that Jesus provided for us through His sacrifice of Himself. A friend has called this dish, "Hope," because hope is easier to say than charoseth.



Another dish without any significance: roasted vegetables. Again, these are parve. It took me a number of years to get this right, something that tasted good and also kept the meal kosher. For a long time I was stymied over how to do potatoes and vegetables with no butter (I do not do margerine). These are carrots, red potatoes, red peppers and parsley, coarsely chopped. I shook them in tupperware with kosher salt, pepper, thyme, olive oil, granulated garlic and dried onion. Then I roasted them with the lamb until they were tender, stirring gently every 30 minutes until they started to soften.



Here is the lamb. Roasting. The aroma in the kitchen--roasting lamb, grape juice, horseradish all mingled together in the air--has a profound effect on us now. It is sort of the way the smell of pumpkin pie and turkey signify Thanksgiving, only much deeper.



Below you see the most amazing part of Passover. This is called the "Unity." It is three pieces of matzah wrapped together in a napkin. A proper Jewish mother would have a special piece of linen sewn to hold them in a pocket. Someday I will make one of these. For now, a paper towel suffices. One of the biggest problems Jewish people have with Christianity is that they say we are a polytheistic religion because of the Trinity (Father, Son and Holy Spirit), while they are entirely monotheistic, with one God only, no Jesus. So it is fascinating to me that this thing is called a Unity, when as a Christian, I see it as a clear picture of the Trinity. Right before we serve the meal, Shawn takes out the Unity and slips out the middle matzah. This middle matzah is called the afikomen (which, incidentally, means "I have come."). He breaks the afikomen into two pieces, and replaces one piece at the center of the unity. The other piece, he wraps separately and hides away somewhere in the house.




Then we eat dinner.



This year, our dinner was especially delicious.



After dinner, you send the kids on a contest to find the afikomen. Perhaps this is where we got the idea to do Easter eggs hunts in the Christian tradition. I hope that when I was describing the afikomen earlier, you caught how it symbolizes Christ, who was removed from His unity with God and separated from His glory. This is the bread that Jesus took after supper and broke, saying that it was His body, broken for us.

When the kids bring it back, you generally give them coins, or chocolate money. This year we didn't hide it (I set it in a different part of the kitchen), or send the kids to find it (they are just too big now), or have any chocolate coins. We only had chocolate. I am afraid it was probably not kosher; I think there was milk in it. However, that is what we had for dessert. Un-kosher chocolate. And almonds.



And coffee.



And here is the table after the feast. It was a good celebration.

Finally?

I think spring is finally here.

It is 71 degrees, for one thing. And humid! I went to the doctor this morning and I didn't wear a coat, only a sweater, and a three-quarter length sleeve sweater at that.

The best thing: the tiny leaves are starting to grow, spreading a soft green mist among the bare branches.

Daffodils are up.

Forsythia is blooming. Forsythia is not my favorite, crazy yellow shrub. But it is definitely a sign of spring, so I always welcome it, zany as it may seem.

The hyacinths are up, too. They always look a little forced and artificial to me, but they are undeniably pretty in all their varied pinks, purples and blues.

The grass is nice and green, and some people's yards have lawn mower tracks. (Not ours.)

It was a lovely day to drive home with the one working window in the van rolled down, blasting trumpet fanfares from the classical station. I am such a rebel.

If it just doesn't snow tonight, I think we'll be in business.

1984

I just finished reading Orwell's 1984.

I think we read excerpts in high school. There was a lot that I didn't remember, and a lot of sex. I read it because Jonathan has to read it for school. I am pretty sure that we did read Huxley's Brave New World, and I know I read We by Zamyatin in one of my Russian classes in college... I still have that one on the bookshelf.

1984 is a philosophically disturbing book.

The most frightening thing is the fact that a number of his predictions have come true and are surrounding us all the time, but we are like frogs in a pan of water that is slowly coming to a boil.

At its core, 1984 is about whether absolute truth exists. Winston Smith, the protagonist, believes that it does, and that he has proof that there is absolute truth which reveals that "the party" which rules his existence is evil, deceitful and dangerous. Because of his mistrust of the party, Winston rebels and tries to find a resistance movement. Instead, he falls into the hands of the party where he is tortured and brainwashed until he ultimately accepts that there is no truth outside of what the party teaches. There is a terrible scene where an inner party member, O'Brien, oversees Winston's torture while teaching him that 2 + 2 is not 4 if the party says it is 5. O'Brien somehow has insight into Winston's thoughts, and it is not enough for Winston to merely say that 2 + 2 = 5 if that is what the party decrees. He actually has to believe it, and O'Brien can tell whether he does.

Towards the end of the book, Winston is "intellectually purified," which means that he will accept and believe what the party says about anything. However, the last stage of his "purification" is emotional. He is not completely remade for the purpose of the party until he has utterly betrayed the woman he supposedly loves (at any rate, the woman with whom he has a satisfying sexual relationship; there is not any indication in the book that their relationship ever extends much beyond animal lust). He is subjected to a horrific torture that exploits his deepest phobia, and he has to wish that it would happen to her, specifically, instead of to himself in order to escape it. Of course, the pain and fear are so great, so expressly designed to be unbearable to him, that he betrays her in the first instant that he realizes that this is what will save him. He never even questions, "Can I betray her like this?" The only question in his mind is "How can I avoid this?"

Throughout the book, the party rewrites history to suit itself and everyone must always accept and believe the party line exactly is it is presented. There is a mantra: "He who controls the present controls the past, and he who controls the past controls the future." The party controls the present through fear, technology, violence and total control of all media at all times. The technology that Orwell predicted is laughable. Everything is in print, and old records are continually burned while revised records replace them as facts change according to the will of the party. Winston actually works in the "Ministry of Truth" burning old records and writing new ones, and the party expects him not to notice that this is duplicity.

One of the things that frightens me is this: they are already rewriting history textbooks. The Pilgrims, they say, came to America because they were unhappy about King George's taxation system. Freedom of religion? Religious persecution? Hogwash, they tell us now. That was just a cover to make the pilgrims (aka Rapists of Native American Culture) look good, except, actually, it was a pure fiction. The pilgrims were not Christian or moral people at all, and they committed every imaginable moral outrage both against the native Americans and against one another. This is seriously what the kids in school are being taught these days. This has been "discovered" and added to modern history textbooks, although for generations past it was "unknown."

And concerning absolute truth: in my experience in college, even though it was 25 years ago, there was already a denial of the existence of absolute truth. Philosophy classes scoffed at the idea that there could possibly be a universal, absolute truth outside of the perceptions of the individual. At one point in 1984, O'Brien tells Winston that he can do anything, he could float in the center of the room if he so desired, there is no absolute such as gravity. Later, Winston thinks back to the conversation and agrees with O'Brien because, he muses, if O'Brien believes that he is floating in the middle of the room, and so do I, then he is, it is true.

Modern philosophers believe this. I have met modern philosophers who believe this. They have already totally removed logic from the educational system. Logic is not only not encouraged, it is actively discouraged. I don't know what you want to call these people... liberals? modern intellectuals? philosophical educators? But whatever their name is, they scoff at logic and act as though it is nothing, baseless, useless. We are already living the nightmare of 1984, and we just do not know it.

Beyond that, these philosophies are fast creeping into educational philosophy. "Who are you to tell a student that his answer is not right?" This is commonly taught in secular education classes today. Teachers-in-training are encouraged (I am using passive voice because I do not know how to name the people who are doing this) to understand their students, to be open to any and every possible answer. If the student says that 2 + 2 = 5, then maybe there is some way that he is perceiving the problem that differs from your experience, and you need to be open to how his personal perception makes his answer correct. I am not making this up; I have a friend who actually sat through a college lecture where the professor presented this philosophy. And not only did the professor present it from a serious point of view, he was unabashedly critical of anyone who would be bigoted enough to insist that there was only one correct answer to a math problem.

This phenomenon is what 1984 society calls "doublethink." It has to do with actively accepting alternative truths in your mind without concern for how they contradict one another. The USA is on a fast track to adopting this world view lens. The abolition of logic was one of the first steps.

In 1984, the party is creating a new language, called "Newspeak." The point of "Newspeak" is to reduce the language to a minimum of words that will make it virtually impossible for anyone to express any thought that is not in accord with party doctrine. Imagery, abstract thought and analogies are strictly forbidden. Although our government is not actively killing words, our society is certainly regressing in literacy, particularly in regard to vocabulary. Today's average student at the high school level is incapable of reading and understanding many documents that were written as recently as 50 years ago. Nobody reads the Constitution or the Bill of Rights anymore. Citizens under the age of twenty have an appalling lack of familiarity with most words of more than three syllables. In my own community, people do not understand jokes from Broadway plays that were written in the 1960's, as evidenced by the lack of response at the local high school's annual musical drama performance each year. Words that used to describe feelings, appearances, tendencies, etc. have now been replaced with the crassest of curse words. Twenty years ago I heard a man boast that he could use a particular four-letter-word as a noun, verb, adjective and adverb. That was twenty years ago. Today it goes without saying, and nobody remembers what words anyone ever would have used instead.

Our society has rejected absolute truth, denigrated logic, and forsaken the very vocabulary of our language. Abstract thought no longer has purpose or value. I believe they even took the analogy section off the SATs (if not, they plan to do so soon). The people of our country are weak minded and unable to think. Have you seen any TV ads recently? They have nothing to do with anything; humor or sex is more likely to sell a product than actual facts about what something can do. Even churches, which should be bastions of truth, wisdom and illumination, cow-tow to the popular notion of super-simplifying everything because we don't want anyone to be bored.

The USA is ripe for something awful to happen. We have less defenses each decade. Those who try to think clearly are scorned and abased.

Our citizens think that "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" are theirs automatically. They think that these ideals are true the world over, simply because it is what they desire. They are surprised when people go to foreign countries and are not accorded the respect that they believe the American Constitution grants them. They think they have an automatic right to food, designer clothes, health care, and cable TV, regardless of their behavior, and that "somebody else" (probably the government, although they despise the government) will provide it.

I fear that we will have a rude awakening. I pray God protects His children in that day.

A couple of last things. In 1984 Orwell equates sexual repression with government totalitarianism, and unbridled sexual expression with freedom and love. He was completely wrong about this. Orwell thought that by removing the pleasure of sex, the government would break down the family structure and replace it with loyalty to "the party." He failed to realize that sexual purity--not repression, but self-control leading to faithfulness and loyalty--is what makes a family unit strong. If a government wants to break down the family structure, all it has to do is encourage the unchecked expression of sexual lust; the family will dissolve within a generation (this has already been demonstrated).

At one point near the end of the book, as Winston is being remade into a pure party member, he writes, "FREEDOM IS SLAVERY" and then, "TWO AND TWO MAKE FIVE" and finally, as the last step in his progression, "GOD IS POWER." This really bothered me. The whole process of "purifying" Winston seemed like a perverted, sacrilegious view of the sanctification that takes place in a Christian through the power of the Holy Spirit after the Christian has accepted salvation from God through the death of Christ. It seemed to me that Orwell was poking fun at the idea of Christ saving us from sin so that we could be free from sin and, as Paul explains it in the book of Romans, slaves of righteousness, beautifully conforming to the image of Christ.

Probably I have spent more time meditating on Romans than Orwell ever did. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and presume that he did not mean this as a direct attack on Christianity.

God does define the meanings of everything. God is power, or, as I prefer to say, almighty. But God doesn't change. He does not capriciously redefine things to suit His purposes. He doesn't need to! The Bible says more than once that God is unchanging, that He does not shift like shadows. His plans are perfect and eternal. God does not rewrite the past. Look at the Dead Sea Scrolls, and how God preserved them, intact, throughout centuries. God is truth. Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth and the life. No man cometh unto the Father but by me." Jesus also said, "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." At one point in 1984, Orwell contemplates the Catholic Church and wonders why it held out with power for so much longer than most governments. Of course, he was probably an atheist, unable to consider that the Catholic Church might actually be based on something absolutely true, that universal truth might have something to do with its longevity even if the truth was observed and acknowledged imperfectly.

In conclusion, I cannot help but contrast Winston's instant capitulation to betrayal with Jesus' perfect steadfastness in obeying His Father and dying for the sins of the world. Winston had to face his deepest fear: rats. Jesus, only begotten Son of the Most High God, had to face something even worse: the consolidated sins of all humanity. Jesus was God in human flesh, and God, the Bible says, cannot even look at sin. Jesus not only looked at sin, he bore it, in His body. He experienced Hell. He was disassociated from the Father who had to turn His face away while it happened. For Jesus, rats would have been mere child's play in comparison. But He never once considered betraying His Father, or us. Because of His great love, Christ died for us. How thankful I am that He did. How thankful I am that He is the truth.

In 1984, the girl (Julia) tells Winston at one point, "They can't get inside of you." The end of the book proves that she is wrong, they got inside of Winston. They controlled his mind. Well, God tells us that they can't control our minds, if we belong to Him. I pray that I will ever love Him, ever be faithful to Him, ever follow Him... if I encounter torture, persecution, "truth serum" drugs, or even Alzheimer's disease. May my mind always belong to the Lord of truth and the God of my salvation.

"Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, 'For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.' Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."
Romans 8:35-39