I'm Coming Out of the Closet

Churchgal's post has me thinking about a lot of ideas that have been ping ponging in my head for awhile. Recently I've been really upset by some of the arguments against abortion. Namely, I abhor the idea that a life is less of a life if he or she is conceived as a result of rape or incest. I think that allowing abortion ONLY in these cases is more nonsensical than outlawing abortion all together from a Christian perspective. Valuing one life more than another is clearly wrong. Being a therapist, I see these heart wrenching circumstances, and have yet to find any two cases that warranted the exact same response to unique, but similar situations of brokeness.

I do think abortion is murder, I do think abortion is wrong. However, it is an evil no less evil than exploiting entire peoples in sweat shops. Or allowing the genocide of an ethnic group. Or building our own wealth while globally millions starve. It is no less or more evil than an unjust war, or a million and one types of other corporate sin in which I engage or am a part of EVERY SINGLE MOMENT OF MY LIFE.

So, for these reasons, I feel convicted that I am prochoice. I am pro that it be your choice. Abortion is a Pandora's box that we opened long ago. Some mistakes can never be undone. The decision to abort or not is such an idiosyncratic one that I do not feel comfortable to let the government decide which situations warrant "permission" to abort a baby, as if the government has the authority to legislate such absolution or condemnation.

So it is your choice and my choice to be a Christian or to not, to eat organic food or not, to abort your pregnancy or not, to love others or not, to wear red shoes or not, and the list goes on. I pray everyone would experience the freedom that I have in Christ. I pray that we do such a good job of educating and loving our women and teaching our men to love women so that abortion would seem a ludicrous proposition. It's not likely to happen this side of creation, but I pray it will happen.

Until then, show me how to love you. I'll show you how to love me. This is going to be hard, and messy, and probably cost way more than I'll ever get back. You want to? It's your choice.

Spiritual Development of Children

My fantabulous friend/colleague and I have been doing research together. No, not running little mice through torture mazes, but thinking about complicated and large ideas together and then writing down all of our thoughts. Then editing that crappy writing, and then making it all make some sort of comprehensive sense and even finding other people to show that we aren't the only ones who have thought it, but that we are the first ones to think about it quite in this way.

I could make this entire post about how great my colleague is, but I won't. I will say that I love working with an artist (her undergrad is in sculpture) turned psychologist. She also wants to specialize in working with adolescent females, just like me. If I weren't married, and I were a lesbian, I'd marry this woman. Her new boyfriend is a lucky man, and he better remember that.

Anyway, our research is focusing on developing a model for the spiritual development of adolescents that we can both endorse. There's quite a bit of published work out there, but much of it is perfunctory or just plain wrong. Other parts of the research lean too far toward universalism, implying that truth claims cannot be a part of a mature spiritual etic.

It's frustrating, because since I am on my way to be a bonafide published author, I can't share as much as I'd like of our work. Copy right issues and such. But I would love to get input from everyone on your ideas of what is essential to hold as ideal for teens as they develop into mature spiritual beings. One thing I feel comfortable saying is that our ideas of spiritual maturity leave room both for holding truth claims and for going on a journey of discovery that takes adolescents a few steps away from truth claims in order to examine their faith identity and to form an autonomous spiritual identity away from their parents.

So, what do all ya'll think? What is key in the spiritual development of adolescents? I'd love to have voices from all traditions and no tradition at all, but I think it will help us for clarity's sake to state our biases. I take a distinctly Christian viewpoint, but think that spiritual maturity can occur to a limited extent outside of that belief system.

Name that Kitty...

We're having a bit of a conundrum at the GoingApe/WaspJerky household. We have this new family member who we adopted today, and we can't think of a name. Let me say that all prosaic suggestions such as "Fluffy," "Kitty," and "Princess" will result in banishment.

Here's our newest kitty daughter.





We reserve the right to refuse your suggestions and to make fun of them.

God, I'm glad I don't have a penis...

I've been on a blogging hiatus of sorts. Christmas break was refreshing, but ended on a sour note. Not only did Oogie, my furry companion, die a mysterious premature death, but we also learned that a friend of ours from Tennessee passed away two days after that. Add that this has been one of the hardest stretches of time for me academically and professionally, and you can see how I've just not felt like posting for all the world to see. But, I am coming back with a vengeance!

I have all sorts of interesting courses on the integration of psychology and theology percolating in my brain. I'm going to try to be a bit more sophisticated in the future weeks and months than I have been in the recent past here on my blog. ( i.e. See the "Stunt Ass" quiz results below.)

But, I do think I'd like to share a turn of events that pissed me off to no end. My friend and colleague A and I are researching together. It's completely theoretical, but our article was accepted for presentation at a conference and we'll soon be submitting it for publication. We invited some of our classmates who are new to graduate school to join us, so that these two young men could learn the ropes of research and being a part of a team, so on and so forth.

Unfortunately, I didn't realize how many issues we'd have around the fact that some (many? most?) men my age (25) just can't quite handle women who are intelligent and more knowledgeable than they are in a certain area. So these two colleagues have been difficult to work with at times.

For weeks, we've been trying to schedule a meeting time. So today, we finally, although begrudingly, agreed to meet during our one hour break between 8 hours of class on Thursdays. None of us likes it, but such is the life of a grad student. The following conversation ensued between one of the male colleagues, J, and I today in the presence of our other male colleague and J's good friend, C:

J: So, if we're meeting during our break, I guess we should pack a lunch then?

Me: Yeah, I guess so. I don't think we'll use the whole break every week, but we should this next week. There's just not enough time to grab some lunch and get back here to get anything done.

J: Well, Nicole could you email me and remind me to bring a lunch?

Me: Huh? What? Don't you have a planner?

J: Well, yeah, but I don't look at it.

Me: No, J, I won't do that. I am too busy to be emailing you reminding you to bring a lunch. (Thinking to myself, "You narcissisitic asshole, what am I, your mother?")

J: Well, then if I forget, I guess I'll just have to miss the first part of the meeting.

Me: I guess so.


So, I have revisited this conversation with many colleagues. It's offensive on many levels. The most offensive to me is that I'm pretty certain J only asked me to remind him rather than our other colleague C because I am a female. This may be hard to tell here, but it fits with other interactions with J.

But regardless of my sex, this is offensive because it implies that J isn't to be responsible for something as reasonable as PACKING HIS OWN FUCKING LUNCH. Come now, we're all adults, at least according to our ages.

I know, I have to go revisit this conversation with J, and it won't be well received. But, via therapy and my training, I'm learning the measure of whether a conversation is a good one to have is not dependent upon receiving the response that I would like. Nope, speaking truth is the goal, a receptive response is just icing on the cake.

Sigh. Have any of you, my dear male academicians, had a colleague ask you send him/her lunch reminders? I didn't think so.

Goodbye, Dear Friend

After 5 days of inexplicable illness culminating in seizures, our dearest cat (yes, we like her best!) had to be put down this morning. Oogie was a loyal cat. We got her only two months after we got married. She helped keep me sane when I was so depressed that I couldn't see straight. She made the move from Tennessee to Illinois with us. She kept me company when Kevin had to be away the first week after our move. I had hoped she would be the cat that kept me from eating my children if I got depressed after giving birth. Alas, that will never be.

But Oogie LOVED red scrunchies. She preferred dry cheap food over the fancy schmancy kind. She like to lay in the bathtub. She would play fetch with a red scrunchie in the bathtub. She would attack you when you least expected it. While our other cat is friendly, Oogie's itense loyalty was reserved especially for me, and sometimes for my husband. She always liked to lay on my belly in bed. I'll miss her tonight when I go to read, and she won't be there to force her way between my face and the book.

Goodbye, Oogie. I'll miss you. I'm so sorry you had to suffer.