Past Tense, Present Progressive

You know those people who go to college campuses, high schools, and even middle schools to hold enormous pictures of aborted fetuses?  I was one of those people.  For almost two years, starting at age 19, I participated in a local pro-life group made up almost exclusively of fundamentalist homeschooled teens, called "Teens for Life". I had never even been inside a middle school or high school, and was attending a church that actively discouraged women from going to college, yet there I was, holding bloody pictures and trying to pass out literature on the sidewalk in front of them.  I had no social skills , crippling depression , and was unable to carry on a conversation even with other members of my pro-life group, yet there I was, trying to interact with the public in the most aggressive and controversial way possible. It has been ten years since those days, but one thing has not changed: I still consider abortion a tragedy that we as a society should work to pre...

Sometimes, as my toddler and I cuddle together to read books on the couch, I can't help but imagine what our relationship might be like when he becomes a teenager.  On some days, I dread it like a slowly-approaching disaster.  On other days, I feel a sense of hope that, as I deal with my own issues, I'll be able to give him something better than I experienced.   I'm confronting my old ideas about teenagers head on, and replacing them with healthier and more accurate ideas. Growing up in fundamentalist homeschooling circles, I heard a lot about "Biblical" parenting-- extreme parental authority enforced through potentially abusive levels of spanking .  Because it was "Biblical", this parenting approach  was thought to be the onl y correct way to parent in any culture and in any time period.  In short, it was supposed to be universal.  I was constantly reminded that the increasing teen rebellion in America and elsewhere was the direct result of parents...