Dealer's Choice: Facebook Stalking Mamas

Dealer’s Choice: Facebook Stalking Mamas

When I first thought about blogging every day with a different topic for each day of the week, I easily came up with my seven topics. But when I sat down to write about my plan, I had a Rick Perry moment; I could think of six topics, but for the life of me could not think of the seventh. As a result, I decided Saturday would be Dealer’s Choice, a miscellaneous place holder for anything I felt like writing. Then, yesterday, I remembered: Saturday was supposed to be Things I Saw on Facebook. I am going to keep the Dealer’s Choice topic for Saturdays, but it often will be about things on Facebook, usually things that make me crazy. I will start with a post that shows up almost weekly, posted by some of my favorite people. They are sincere, lovely, loving mamas. And yet, this post is so noxious, so wrong, so…..

First the post:

Ok, lovely friends who are wonderful mothers, this does not say what you think it says.

What you think you are saying to your kids

·       I am your mother and that is special and exclusive

·         When you love someone you watch out for them

·         My love will guide you into responsibility

What you are really saying to your kids

·       I am controlling and unpleasant

·         Love is controlling and unpleasant

·         Responsibility is unpleasant

·         You are incompetent

·         The world is not safe for you on your own

·         Our relationship will always be controlling and unpleasant

·         People who are pleasant and agreeable (your friends) don’t care about you

 Come on ladies. This isn’t really how you want to be seen. And it isn’t necessary. You can love your kids, trust your kids, and enjoy your kids, without turning them into hedonistic slackers. Here is what I worry about: how you treat your children teaches them about intimate relationships. Do you want them to associate love with unpleasantness, lack of trust, and controlling behavior? If your 17 year old daughter got this text from her boyfriend, would you be a bit creeped out?

My promise to my girlfriend: I am not your friend. I am your boyfriend. I will stalk you, flip out on you, lecture you, drive you insane, be your worst nightmare & hunt you down like a bloodhound when needed because I LOVE YOU! When you understand that, I will know you are a responsible partner. You will never find someone who loves, prays, cares and worries about you more than I do!

But he is not her mother! Of course not, but you have told her that the highest form of love involves these behaviors. In BOLD print, you state that stalking, controlling, unpleasantness is LOVE.

How about this one from your husband on Valentine’s Day?

My promise to my wife: I am not your friend. I am your husband. I will stalk you, flip out on you, lecture you, drive you insane, be your worst nightmare & hunt you down like a bloodhound when needed because I LOVE YOU! When you understand that, I will know you are a responsible wife. You will never find someone who loves, prays, cares and worries about you more than I do!

I know, you are grown, he wouldn't dare talk to you that way. But you are saying to your kids that this is not just love, but extraordinary, unparalleled love.

One last thought, because all you lovely ladies are good Christian wives and mothers:

I Corinthians

13 If I speak in the tongues^[a] of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. ² If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. ³ If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast,^[b] but do not have love, I gain nothing.

⁴ Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. ⁵ It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. ⁶ Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. ⁷ It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

⁸ Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. ⁹ For we know in part and we prophesy in part, ¹⁰ but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. ¹¹ When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. ¹² For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

¹³ And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

Trust God, trust your kids, and trust yourself. Your are all in the Palm of His Hand. Rest in Him.