Alexis
I feel like I have been so busy and so many changes and so much...life...but I never update my blog anymore. Maybe I need another blog challenge?

This past weekend I went to the Cleansing Stream retreat. Which really, shouldn't be called retreat. It should be called a seminar or an institute or something that reflects the magnitude of what is done or what is accomplished in those two days.

The extremely over simplified, gist of the weekend, is letting go and breaking free of the things that hold you down or hold you back from getting and giving the most out of your Christian life. Good stuff.

In what seems to be our pattern, much of what was covered were areas where God has been dealing with me already. Dealing with my own fear of rejection or my own, very real, rejections. deleting all messages I internalized growing up. Fun stuff...

It goes pretty well in hand with some of what I related with my not-really-a-mid-life-crisis . I look in the mirror and I do not see the person I saw a year ago. I just don't.

I grew up wondering when I would be like all the grown-up women in the church. Wondering when the switch flips? When do I have a grown-up type relationship with God? I think I looked forward to it *and* feared it all at the same time.

As a pentecostal-charismatic Christian there really is no defining moment where we take that mantle on our own. No Bat-Mitzvahs, no Quinces... nothing. And I think I need to help my kids find "that thing".

I looked, as a child, at my children's pastor to lead me and we carried my faith together. Later in youth it was much the same. I was blessed, however, to have a pastor who was very good at making sure you carried the bulk of your life's decisions and so I definitely began to understand how much of my faith journey was my own. And without Christian parents that load was a little more. Later as I married and drifted into adult world, I suppose my marriage made me realize it was up to me. Yet still, it's pretty hard to understand what that is supposed to look like.

So here I am, nearly 15 years after I got married, finally feeling like I *get* it...and that is incredibly freeing. It's not at all oppressive or frightening.
Alexis
I've been kicking around several ideas. A lot to post about. But I have been, well, exhausted.

I am equally exhausted today. I have been in a phase of some very difficult parenting. I've come to the conclusion that I have imparted a very important lesson to my children that has come to bite me in the fanny.

I know compliant kids. I know kids that know that when the parents get "that tone" they better obey or change their names. My kids...well...they aren't those kids.

My kids are painfully aware that their opinions on life and justice matter to me. Painfully. I am rarely left to wonder what they think of a particular chore or request. Seldom is their plan unknown to me. Or their reasoning.

In an effort to mold them into confident and assertive future grown-ups, I have molded confident and assertive kids.