I Need Blinders

You have blinders.

You know Josiah, in response to that video, I do remember what it was like to be a little girl. Back when me mum would dress me up in Sunday dresses, I would go to the playground and me and my girlhoodfriends would play like we were pregnant and grown up. I'll never again have that innocence again. Seriously, that video offends me on a musical basis.

When I was a young lad, being homeschooled in the last great american wilderness of Virginia, we had our proto-Vision Forum compatriots. I despised them for a number of wrong reasons, but one of the right reasons is that I always suspected my parents wished they had kids like that. But they didn't, and probably my love for the urban is a direct reaction to this let's-go-back-to-the-19th-Century when we could have slaves legally and men were mountain men and women sewed American flags in between quilting bees (note that the flag in the picture has only 13 stars - nostalgia for the states rights which were so brutally raped by the "northern war of agression"?).
But staying out of the ghetto is usually a good thing, if for no other reason than your own sanity.

My reason, in addition to my objection to the unhealthy gender stereotypes, for disliking the Vision Forum types is probably not very sanctified--because they make me look bad. When people hear that you were homeschooled, the image of a homeschooler that pops in to their minds is not of someone cool like Jason Taylor of the Miami Dolphins or ESPN.com's new favorite Russian tennis player Maria Sharapova, it's the Vision Forum type that they think of, and they assume that you must be that way too.

"Sometimes I fell I'm in the 1800s, in a covered wagon, dodging your arrows coming across the prarie, in a covered wagon"- Ryan Dixon

I was h/sed in San Antonio before Vision Forum existed. My folks were never VF types. Honestly, they were a lot more open and a lot more supportive of me and my siblings being true to ourselves. But we were involved with a lot of VF types (like, we went to church and were friends with "Little Bear" Wheeler and lots of homeschoolers like VFers.)

So, even though my parents never placed those types of expectations on me or raised me to fit into certain molds, I did adopt a *lot* of them. (Probably didn't help that a woman I respected gave me Mary Pride's books when I was 15. . .)

And, the long and short of this comment is, at age 30 I'm finally able to deal with some of the crap related to those expectations--ones I placed on myself, ones like VF promotes, ones that aren't necessarily in line with really being and becoming who God created me to be.

And that's me desire now, for my children. I used to focus on raising "obedient" children. Not anymore. Now my focus is on nurturing them as they grow into the person God created them to be.

Much healthier, IMO.

(Btw, this is my first time commenting here. I found your blog through kathryn's blogroll.)

"And that's me desire now, for my children. I used to focus on raising "obedient" children. Not anymore. Now my focus is on nurturing them as they grow into the person God created them to be."

When my wife and I homeschool our kids, TulipGirl, we would like to avoid falling into traps like Vision Forum. How does one go about doing that?

When my wife and I homeschool our kids, TulipGirl, we would like to avoid falling into traps like Vision Forum. How does one go about doing that?

*L* Don't I wish I knew!

Honestly, though, I think a lot of it has to do with not forcing our children (or ourselves) to be what we are not. . . One of the themes in Bible study the past several months (Galatians and Romans) has been sanctification coming from the "Be what you Are" line of thought.

I know for me, I set up tons of wonderful "ideals" that really were other people's ideas, couched in lovely and romantic images--but were not in line with reality. Reality of life, or reality of who God has designed us, as individuals to be.