Rules, Schmules

Where do I begin?

This post was to enlighten those who feel that Dirt and I are all bunched up and are all about having a ton of rules for our daughters. And it still is. It is just that now it has a whole new muse.

And the muse’s name is John. John Sondericker the third of Colorado Springs, Colorado, near as I can tell from a bit of a google search.

He sent me a lovely comment on my blog post, A Room With a View , and while I am not in the habit of trashing New Readers, love ’em, I’m using this guy today cause he was sent to me and he did so willingly step right into the middle of my personal do-ins, no invitation, no easing in, just jump into my fire why don’tcha and see what happens.

There isn’t much to go by on John, except that gauging from the blog he participates in and the things I think I discovered about him, I’d place him in the humanist category and not all that fond of the Jesus thing. I’m not saying he’s a Jesus hater, can’t assume that much, but I’m thinking in Churchy parlance, he’s fairly lost but he doesn’t know it, he thinks he is fine and the Dirt and I are sad little narrow-minded folk, I’m sure.

But I dunno, he happens to be about forty-four or so and possibly married, his friends put him on the invite list on their little blog as Sonderickers (5) ? Gee would that be Dad Sondericker, wife and three little Sonderickers? But yet he pops over here tells me to “screw purity” ’cause my sixteen year old is totally hot? Hmmm. Not sounding very enlightened there, punked-up-hair-John H Sondericker III once a nuclear thinga majiggy guy, then turned lighting maker for all the big names in the “biz” and now jumpin‘ into epublishing. For such a big wig, you got time to waste checking out my silly little farming/raising daughters blog up in here in no count Roy, WA on a Thursday morning?

But for the record I’ll take John’s comment, trying not to think of how truly perverted it sounds coming from a forty-four year old possibly married dude, did someone down there in Colorado Springs want to put this fellow on a watch list? I’ll take his comment as a spring board into the deep pool that is here at Vicktory Farm and Gardens and exactly how free we really are and how the world that subscribes to John’s greymatter sustainer (self), is really not.

John goes on to say so very much in his brief comment that we’ll just take it real slow, word by word.

Like his first. Hi Lanny, man I had no idea when I chose my childhood nickname, Lanny, for this blogging thing, just how weird it would be for total strangers to use it on me. Bizarre. When I was little it was strictly a family nickname, I had another, even more personal nickname, but mostly only the men of the family called me by that one. Originally given to me by my Uncle who loved the fact that I turned brown and ate nothing but jelly beans when he visited, therefore Beaner, was my other nickname. Some of the women folk in my childhood would gently blend the two and call me Lanny Bean. But only the boys called me straight up Beaner and only family members called me Lanny. So to have this over-the-hill-lost-yahoo hail me as Lanny and then say I need to screw purity, uh, hard to see in print.

And how is that, screwing purity exactly? Well I suppose, if we are going to take screw like I’m thinking John means screw, and not in a Black and Decker sort of screw, ’cause trust me, John is thinkin‘ himself hip and so we gotta go with the hip definition of screw, then I gotta say really, I think that only when you screw in purity can you really ever be free to enjoy it, the screwing that is.

True enjoyment comes from living in the truth and the truth is, only does purity make you free enough to really enjoy the delights that the Creator made us for. I don’t care how crass and tawdry you try to make it, you John’s out there, it doesn’t matter how much you dress it up or dress it down, if not done in truth it will never be enjoyable to the fullest. And you cannot arrive at truth unless you first arrive at the Truth Giver.

Second set of words from John, “your daughters are totally hot.” Well, like Bet said, she is pictured in a near by post to the one John commented on, in her rain gear on a sunny day and yes, she says she was indeed very hot running the tractor in her rain gear. Anna on the other hand does not wish to grace your absurdness with even a humorous comment. She is the more serious of us all to a certain degree and finds it none of anyone else’s business the temperature of her insides. She knows, and her father and I know, that someday she will have a husband who will appropriately, Biblically, find her hot. It is the way, once again, that the Creator created things to be.

We humans did not stumble across something God made accidentally and now has been trying to keep from us. Some of the steamiest love stories are those God ordained ones in the Bible. Some of the saddest on record are the non-God ordained ones, the ones man thought he could steal away and have a better time because of it. Some of those are recorded in the Bible and some are recorded everyday in every walk of life.

So yes, John, my daughters are created by God to be hot, but not for you or other strangers to say necessarily. And their husbands won’t need to bolster their egos all over the place by making their wives parade around in front of their friends as their “totally hot momma.” That didn’t work out so well for a certain king or two and it isn’t what makes a great marriage. It might temporarily stroke an ailing ego or two but it is far from the reconciliation that Christ can bring into a person’s life.

And there is no repression at work here John, in spite of your assumption that Dirt and I are attempting such. Your line: “I seriously doubt that your attempts to repress and shield them from earthly pleasures will succeed,” could not be further from the truth of what we are all about here at Victory Farm and Gardens, what we have taught our two grown and married daughters, what we are teaching our two younger daughters, what we share with those who are curious about what we understand about things.

In Christ there is no repression. None.

There cannot be. Because in repression there can be no true reconciliation and that is the ministry of Christ and therefore our ministry. Reconciliation. Redemption of things lost, things divided, things parted at the Fall. Only through Christ is there true Reconciliation because what we are in need of reconciling is to the Creator, our Creator and only Christ can get us to the Father, the Creator, our Creator. Once we are reconciled to our Father through the Son, we can become reconciled to all things. He can then begin to restore what the locust have eaten, what we our very selves have given over to the enemy to steal and devour.

Only through Christ can we come to what the Creator had intended for us in marriage, comfort, pleasure, trust, intimacy, growth, multiplicity, refreshment, laughter. Others can play at the edge and imitate, pretend that they can find this themselves but they are short changed, because only in Christ are we given the freedom, the security to expose our very selves to another that the other may take us in and love us to the fullest. Comfort us, pleasure us, grow with us, refresh and restore us, recreate us.

My daughters will have that freedom, they are free to find that and not be burdened with baggage brought about from false pleasures that only increase insecurities and barriers to the truth and to the Father Himself.

There is a falsehood that wanders around, perpetuated by the enemy and often perpetuated by misguided would be followers of Christ. That to be Christ-like you must be a prude. This is blatantly false. You cannot be a prude and enjoy the things of God. Prudishness is not a virtue. It is a trap. Prudishness is not the opposite of promiscuity it is just at the other end of a distorted perspective. Prudishness is not of reconciliation. Prudishness is of laws and rules, fear and death.

So no, John, Dirt and I would make no attempt what so ever to repress our daughters, why would we desire to cripple our very own daughters and keep them from what God has for them? Shield them, yes, but not from what you say we are shielding them, we, like our Father in heaven, delight in giving our daughters special little pleasures and some day we will delight in the pleasure that they find in a relationship that God brings them into, one that, in their purity of heart for their very Creator, that they will find the wide open spaces of freedom to enjoy and explore for the rest of their days until they are called home to be with Him.

John, you ask that we not forget what it means to be truly human. And I don’t believe Dirt and I wish to forget what God our Father, Creator of all that is seen and unseen, created us to be. We desire, to the best of our ability in this fallen world, to live out exactly what He desires us to live out and live in.

I haven’t gotten to the no rules part have I? And yet here I am at the end of your comment for Dirt and I. There are no rules to our life John, it may seem like there must be, but there are not. And we would love to invite you in to a life without rules, a life lived out in truth only, lived by the Spirit not by the Law, because the Law kills but the Spirit gives life. But I’m sure we’ve lost you by now John. (no pun intended really) You are a very cool person, we can all tell by your cool language and your cool holidays taken at a llama ranch in Estes Park, Colorado with your equally cool friends. But if God sent you to take a second look and wonder what this weirdo-no-count little couple in podunk Roy, WA has got going for them, then step on board and in a day or two I’ll tell you why “no rules”.