1. Give yourself a break—you don’t need to be so hard on yourself.
2. Just say no! What are your real priorities?
3. Take time to write it down. Journaling will bring clarity to your life.
4. Slow down and savor living in the moment.
5. Plug into your kids so you can really connect with them.
6. Don’t forget about your husband—intimacy is life-affirming!
7. Reach out beyond your family. It will enrich everyone.
8. Make your physical and mental health a priority.
9. Is more always better?  Simplify everything.
10. Be a little selfish—you deserve it, and it will make you a better mother.”

Okay, if I were to address all ten and answer them all, this blog would be transformed into a Creed, the Parent’s Creed. Actually, that doesn’t sound like a bad idea. But I don’t want to. So, I won’t. Instead, let me just break all ten down into one easy to understand sentence, and then attack the baksheesh out of that.

1-10. Parenting is a chore, but you deserves breaks every now and then, so be selfish.

Oh, I know that’s a little harsh. Let’s find the gold nuggets and then tear apart the rest. Point one is a no… Two… I don’t understand. I think prioritizing is great, as long as your family is the priority. Three, well, I don’t see anything wrong with it. Four is good, but again I think as a whole with the family. Five is the best one yet. Every parent should be involved with the ones they love. Oh, I stand corrected. Six… that’s the best one yet. So says Solomon, anyways. Seven can be taken in so many directions, I don’t know what to say about it. Eight… um… “a” priority, okay… but the family? Top priority. Yes, even more than your health. Pregnancy is not good for the body, but it does create new life. That is priority. Nine, I wish I knew just what you were “simplifying.” More children is always better! I do think that the simple life is a good life, however. Ten equals NO.

Yeah, I think that about covers it. So, what is the problem with what I left behind? (Oh, where to begin where to begin…) I got it! Okay, so we covered what Love was last time, right? It’s making your life, what you enjoy, what you desire the good of those said loved ones. Like God does to us, only, with us, on a small scale. I know a family that treat chores like a game so that the kids actually ask to clean the house instead of being forced to. I remember two of their daughters coming in to ask my mother if it was okay if they sweeped and cleaned the living room. Whenever I tell that story, my friends say, “Dude, that’s messed up! They shouldn’t be enjoying work, treating it like a privilege, they should be having fun doing worthless things, like slide, or swing, or running around in circles and falling face first on the ground.” Oh, they do those things too, but that doesn’t mean it should be any less gratifying raking a mop around the floor, getting water everywhere with a purpose.

It’s like, one time, I was working with my Dad, and he gave me a sledge hammer and told me to break concrete steps until he could get a jackhammer. I know you are all picturing me in a chain gang, singing blues and hammering to the beat, but, man, I felt like Thor crushing that stupid serpent’s head in. Was it tiring? Sure it was. Did I feel super powered? You bet your sweet tanned hide, I did! When those steps split in two after five hours of hammering, I lifted that baby hammer with one hand and screamed, “Righteous!” I could hear the guitar solo in my mind.

But does that carry over to parenting? I mean, it’s not always fun. Or is it? What is fun? Is it a thing? Is it a vegetable? Is it rest? It is hard? Can work and play truly be… attitude? In the Bible, and you knew I was going to bring that up, we find all kinds of things like this. Solomon, for example, writes in one place that there is nothing better for a man to do than to eat, drink, and be merry. But he also talks about work, and the criteria for a housewife and a husband. It sounds harder than those concrete steps I was talking about earlier. But what is the theme of the attitude? Have you ever seen a sad man in Proverbs that was doing the right thing? Someone dreading the hard, and lusting for the easy? Other than the fool, I mean, he didn’t end too well, with all the dieing and darkness and all. Man, what a way to go, beaten by a perfumy girl. Mighty men even.

To complete this voyage, I would like to rewrite those ten rules into three, making some well needed changes.

What to do if you are married and going to have the kiddies:

1. Read the Bible and do what it says, especially in Proverbs, Romans, Timothy, and Song of Solomon. That last one is not so much for the kiddies, but marriage is what is supposed to bring them along, you know!

2. Raise those kiddies up in the way that they should go by reading ALL of the Bible and teaching it to them all day and most of the night.

3. Selfishness is the root of all evil. Don’t do it. Being married means you are no longer you, but you are you plus 1, and your kids are an extension of that. Would you like it if your eyes said, “Hey, I’m tired of looking for the brain, let him look at the sunset himself. I’m taking a vacation.” No, you would not like that in the least. Unless you are blind and you did not have a choice. Than choose something else, a hand, a leg, a head… anything that is applicable to a part of you that you really need.

Okay, that won’t work. That is all way too long. Let me shorten those down to one easy to read sentence.

1-3. Love God and do what He says in the Bible.

Of course, that is really the answer to everything.

A woman named Rahna Reiko Rizzuto (I’m not joking) has decided to write a book about parenting. Or, er, anti-parenting, as it were. In her book, one that I will not deem worthy of naming, she explains how she was afraid to be a mother, never really wanting to be… and had a bunch of kids. That’s not such a bad thing when you are married. Everything is scary and new, just roll with the punches and be a responsible adult. It’s how you were born. But then she decided that she was fed up. That’s right, she walked away. She ended her 20-year long marriage and left the kids at home, ages 5 and 3. She says that her relationship with her kids has “improved,” demonstrating how divorce and living without a mother is actually good for kids. In fact, why do we have wives at all? If this is the case, let’s all just get the women to have the kids and ditch them on the side of the road to go into management or something. Ahem, sorry. Calming down. I didn’t mean that. Really, I’m getting married and I don’t want that at all.

The fact that anyone thinks this is a good thing makes me sick. Who is buying this book? I want to talk to you, because you and the author are both messed up. “Traditionalist!” you yell? Perhaps, but really? “In 2008, she chose to move 3,000 miles away from three of her four children.” I ask again, really? This is a good thing?

“When the time came to get in her packed car and drive away, she says, she felt “‪very mixed.” ‬

‪”Yes, there is a sense of relief. I would be remiss if I did not admit that,” she says candidly. But there was also pain: “‬I used to avoid Target, for instance, because it made me think of shopping for my daughter Serena. Little moments like that, and everything comes flooding in.”

Now a spiritual adviser who writes at Polaris Rising, Liera wrote about her experiences as a non-custodial parent at Literary Mama and Parenting Without a Manual. Her children are 15, 11, and 7 now and, after more than two years of long-distance parenting, Liera says she misses them but feels very connected to them. “‪Now we stay in touch by phone, IM, Skype a few times a week,” she says. “I hear about their lives and give support.‬””

Okay, now why is this a bad thing? Can anyone tell me why being mommy part time is a bad thing? She actually gives us the answer. “”This is the question people will ask me. The question that curls, now, in the dark of the night,” Rizzuto writes in “Hiroshima in the Morning.” “How do any of us decide to leave the people we love?””

What, pray tell, is Love? If we love someone, does that mean we help them out if we can spare the time? Does it mean we give them a little extra? A lot? How does God love us? What does He say love is?

“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son…” God gave up His only Son to be crucified. Christ himself took on the sins of the world, all of them, so that we might be saved. God says Love is all encompassing, a fire. The Song of Solomon is a great story of this love, a love that devours all else. If a mother refuses to love her children, the least they can do is not pretend they still do. Oh, sure, she feels guilty, she feels some God given desire to be a mom, but she refuses in order for her to have a… um… what does she get out of this? A different job? freedom to roam? to go to bars and party? Her kids are not as important as those things?

But, who am I to talk. She doesn’t sound like a Christian, though she might be “spiritual,” so I suppose she should take all the good times she can get. Her end is not going to be very pretty.

Your ranter from Romania,

Caleb