Week 41: Pippi Longstocking

This week's book:
Pippi Longstocking
By Astrid Lindgren

When our little guy started kindergarten I wanted to make sure that I had some just one on one time with our little girl. She had just turned two when her big brother started school. This was going to be time with just us girls. Our daughter has always been so calm and easy going. Even when her big brother is too rough or messes with her she is normally pretty calm. She loves to snuggle and dance and she makes everyone around feel happy. I am so lucky to be her mom.

I have been a stay at home mom for most of my children's childhoods. I tried to go to nursing school and in the middle of the program they changed the requirements. I was getting into a dark place of depression and not being the mom or wife or person I wanted to be. In one of the darkest moments in my life I took a pregnancy test and it came back positive. My husband and I hadn't been trying, and yet I was going to be a mom again. I honestly believe our little girl saved my life. I want to say I would never have hurt myself or anything like that, but I can't say I didn't think more than once that my husband made a mistake by marrying me. Wow, that got dark real fast.

Back to this week's book. When I started trying to potty train my daughter during the day, I thought we would read all the potty books. She would play a game on my phone about learning how to use the potty. On those long waits for something to happen I wanted to read her something that centered around a strong little girl. I chose Pippi Longstocking. I had never read it and had a copy so I thought, what the heck, let's try it. While I do believe Pippi Longstocking is an independent girl that never needs anyone for help or strength, the book doesn't hold up. There are subject matters that are just not okay to talk about anymore in children's books. On a personal level I kind of wanted to smack Pippi constantly. She lies the whole book to the other two little children she convinces to follow her into her little “adventures”. When I was little, Curious George would stress me out, he did all these naughty things and there were never consequences. Pippi Longstocking gave me that same feeling. It didn't take long for both my daughter and I to realize that we didn't like the book. She would say “no pippi! No pippi!” It should be noted that our little girl loves to be read to, so for her to say no to being read to is really something. While I do believe that there was a time that this book was groundbreaking and awesome, its time has past and I wouldn't recommend it.

Week 40: Unafraid and Unashamed

This week's book:
Unafraid and Unashamed: Facing the Future of United Methodism
By Wil Cantrell

This week's book was from a small book discussion my husband and I were involved with for the last few weeks at our church. The books I usually read for book group from my church don't really include religion for the most part, the group are people that all go to the same church. This week's book wasn't for that group and isn't like the other books. Not only is this book about religion, it’s about a major rift that is going on right now in the United Methodist Church.

I was raised in the United Methodist Church from birth. My parents were both raised Methodist and so was I. I never questioned which religion best fit me, but as it turned out this is the best choice for me. Even before my husband and I got married we talked at great lengths about what kind of things we believed it and if we had children if we would raise them with some sort of religion or beliefs. My husband wasn't raised religious, so when my husband and I got married I asked him if he wouldn't mind going to a Methodist church, and he said he was totally fine with where ever I wanted us to due to his lack of one church over another. Years later on a car trip he dropped a bomb on me. He explained why he was glad we were Methodist because our main focus was on helping people along with following in the teaching of God. He had thought more about our sect of Christianity then I ever had. When we were shopping around churches, like you do when you move, my husband and I Googled Methodist churches around us and the church we go to new was the second church on the list. From the first time we visited the church my husband and I agreed it was the church for us. The minister talked about playing Pokemon with his twin sons and also spoke about the seven love languages, which sparked both of our interests.

It wasn't until sometime last year that I truly understood how much we had chosen the right fit for us churchwise. My book group was discussing God and the Gay Christian. It was written by a man who was a researcher and coming to terms with coming out of the closet as a deeply conservative Christian man. The author wrote it as a purely to dissect the Bible and pinpoint the references that would explain why Christianity has a problem with the LGBTQ community. He explains how historically most if not all of the references that are referenced as opposed to the homosexual community are not speaking about what we think of as homosexual is today. It was an amazing book and the discussion with the group was even more amazing. Our pastor and his wife were there. An openly gay lesbian couple that are part of our congregation were leading the group that night and they brought one of their friends. The woman was about my age and she was terrified to be in a church with all these people that are older (I'm one of the youngest people in the group) and she was scared of what the people in group would say during the disscusion. The meeting ended with our pastor hugging the women while crying and apologising that she would ever feel unwelcome in any church. I went home that night and cried with my husband telling him we were at the right church.

This week's book is about how there might be a split in the United Methodist Church due to the fact that a few years ago at conference the point was brought up about LGBTQ becoming inculded into our faith. Every few years there is a international conference that has delegates that discuss different topics that arise in the United Methodist Church. The conference a few years back was in an uproar and things got very heated and they had to set up a separate special conference just for this one topic (which is going to be in 2019). There will be a regular conference in 2020 that will discuss other topics but the 2019 is only about this one topic. I think it should be noted that the rule discouraging the practice of homosexuality and gay marriage wasn't added to the United Methodist Church's Social Principles until the 1970’s.

The people that went to the group that was discussing the book at our church were in all agreement that this is the time to change the language and accept everyone. How can we express God's love for everyone and not accept everyone? The church changed when it came to slavery and women taking important roles in the church, we shouldn't have exclusion in the faith. I for one am tired and rather mad that there is this whole subject that I have to explain to my children and myself that I don't agree with in my religion. I don't want to leave the United Methodist Church and hopefully I will not have to.

I don't know if I would recommend this week's book. It was kinda wishy washy but I think it was because the author wasn't trying to sway the reader one way or another. It was definitely informative but I think I would have to recommend reading God and the Gay Christian, with this book as a good pairing.

Week 39: Holes

This week's book:
Holes
By Louis Sachar


This week's book is Holes. I had never read this middle school classic so the hubby and I decided to read it to the kids. It seemed like it took forever to finish the book but I don't really know if it did or not. It may have been that more than half the book is just about the characters just digging holes in the desert. Like literally like it's just them digging.

If you don't know the plot of the story here is a quick synopsis. A young man who seems to have just horrible luck gets sent to a labor camp for a crime he didn't commit. He gets picked on by the other guys and the people that work at the camp. Every day they have to dig a hole that is five feet deep and five feet around. No one (except for the warden) knows why they are digging. He ends up befriending another boy and teaches him to read. There is also a backstory about the town where the work camp is. Obviously there is more to the plot but I don't want to give up the whole story.

When we finished the book we showed the kid the film adaptation. Turns out I had actually seen part of it at my in-laws at some point. I had also forgotten all the stars that are in the film. Sadly like the first time I tried to watch it, this time I fell asleep and missed the last section of the film. What I did see was cute for a kids movie.

As a whole I think it was a good book. But unlike other chapter books that we have read to the kids, I think this one was a little over their heads. There is a subplot with racist people trying to break up a biracial couple. Also I'm pretty sure one of the camper’s mom is either a drug addict or selling her body. I think I would have waited if I would have known that the kids didn't really care about the plot, but I would recommend it definitely for upper Elementary or middle school.

Week 38: Breaking Free

This week's book:
Breaking Free
By Rachel Jeffs

This week's book is a bit late because I was reading it until today. I had been reading a couple of other books and I wasn't getting into them. You know that feeling when you can't put a book down. I know I am not that into a book when I am constantly looking at Facebook or Pinterest or whatever. I also find myself thinking about how far behind I am on quilting or something like that.

Anyway, this past weekend I was helping my sister box up some of her books. My brother in law and sister are avid readers. She gave me back a whole stack of books I had brought her and a few of the books stuck out to me. One of them was the sister wives book a read a few months back and another one was the 19th Wife. Both of these books are about plural marriage but are much different stories. Sister Wives is about modern people who have entered plural marriage by choice by their own free will and  can leave at anytime. The 19th wife is about the history of the Mormon church and the compounds that are still around today where there are child brides and men that have dozens of wives which can't leave their situation. Both of these books convinced me that I should read a book I bought a few months ago called Breaking Free.

This book is an autobiography of Warren Jeffs’ eldest daughter, Rachel Jeffs. If you don't happen to know who Warren Jeffs is well he was (and for as much as I can figure out still is) the “prophet” of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. He is currently serving two life sentences for sexual assault on two of his child brides, but really he did much more than that. According to his daughter and the author of this week's book, he sexually abused her for years. I never thought of the fundamentalist sect of the Latter Day Saints as a cult. I thoughts of “those” people as like the Amish, living a life different than the norm, but not hurting anyone. I mean I have known Mormons and watched Big Love on HBO, heck I just explained I have read other books about this certain topic. But I will be honest, this group of people sound like brainwashed idiots. After the FBI really began cracking down on polygamy, their leader started telling them to move around the country. Everyone had to follow all their bat-crap crazy rules that he himself didn't follow. He would tell different disciples that God was punishing them for things they didn't even do. The author was married at the age of eighteen to a man she didn't really know and became his third wife. He was nice enough to her, but her sister wives were horrible to her. She ended up having five children with her husband and they were constantly getting severely hurt in a lot of accidents. She seemed happy enough in her situation being away from her sexually abusive father and falling in love with her husband, but then the FBI started to investigate her father and the child brides. I actually remember watching one of the raids at work while I was in college. At the time I thought I didn't understand what the big deal was. It seemed all these women who looked like extras on little house on the prairie were having their children taken from them and everyone was crying. After FBI cracked down, our author kept getting separated from her family and friends constantly due to her father punishing her for crimes she didn't commit.

We know she got out of that life, considering she wrote this book and the fact the book is titled “Breaking Free: How I Escaped Polygamy, the FLDS Cult, and My Father, Warren Jeffs” I'm not giving away how the book ends. I thought it was a good read and educated me about how it could be in that way of life. It showed me how people sometimes can be so ingrained in a way of life they can't see their way out. I am not saying that some people weren't happy in their situation, but I find it very hard to see how I personally could do with no free will. As a mother, I couldn't be sending my little girl off to be with a man she doesn't know at an age as early as twelve. Equally I couldn't share my husband with God knows how many wives. I would recommend the book if you are interested in this topic, it was very educational.