Risky business

I am in Mexico right now.

This is a personal decision my family made. We asked no one their opinion on the matter, and we hardly told anyone. We needed no one’s permission, we asked for no one’s good blessing.

We have made many responsible decisions, a few accidental irresponsible ones, and no one knows about them. We have taken many photos, and no one has seen them, because it’s our business and no one else’s. 

We’ve bantered with real people, in real life, in really broken Spanish. Sometimes I have put on sunscreen, and sometimes I’ve abandoned the idea because it is partly cloudy and I am paler than the moon. I just want to see what the tiniest hint of pink could do for my languishing January complexion, so I risk it.

More risky business: my kids have gone swimming, and they cannot swim very well.

I’ve picked up starfish and put them in the hands of a four year old.
I’ve snorkeled right past two bulging eyes that turned out to be a massive stingray. Then I scooted right past another and got the heck out of the ocean because I know all about Steve Irwin and I’m a midwesterner to the core.

Last night we ate food on a deck overlooking a crocodile, one that could’ve killed my children if they’d been foolish enough to stick their legs out into the water.

I say all this because as an American, I’m well aware of the seemingly and potentially harmful, politically tense situation we are facing. I detect concern we are losing our freedoms; that one by one, our liberties will be stripped from us–beginning with our statues, guns, history, and closely followed by freedom of speech, freedom to worship, freedom to pursuit of happiness.

It feels, for all we can see on television and social media, that we are barrelling right into an abyss. Raging mobs certainly don’t make it better, and we’ve had those for several months now.

Closer to home, I stress daily over teaching my oldest kid Gauss’ method, still knowing we have a good six years of math ahead of us, and Gauss already is well beyond my own sweet spot. When it comes to homeschool, I am very weak. (Muy fraca was the excuse I gave our waiter for not ordering a margarita–very weak. So weak, in fact, that I didn’t realize I was speaking half Spanish, half Portuguese, and the words I actually uttered were “very skinny”. We both left confused, till I Google-translated it later.)

I want, like most parents, a regimen. A reliable education. Less emphasis on the social and mental wellbeing (leave it to the parents), and more on the foundations: Reading. Writing. ‘Rithmatic.

I want my boys to be able to play team basketball without submitting them to the cruel and unusual punishment that is wearing a mask for four quarters. (Seems like not that long ago waterboarding was severe, inhumane punishment, and now we just expect our kids to drown in their own juices.)

See, I cannot send my kids to school, and we cannot do what once was normal. It’s easy to assume, therefore, that not getting to live how I want is not fair.

It’s. Not. Fair.

I worry our familiar routines will be replaced with vague and bizarre rules that hold no hope for my kids, who I am hoping will be lovely, wise and wonderful grownups some day.

On the way down to Mexico, I sat next to a man with a beard and a low voice (and other clear indicators that he was a man) who wore a high ponytail, nails, bedazzled jeans, women’s shoes and a purse (plus a mask, of course). He assured me he loved children, and had no problems sitting next to my nine year old, because he was in the child care business.

Listen: I worry, because my kids are puzzled by this behavior. It strikes them as unnatural. It sends red flags flying.

I want to impart clarity, not confusion–but the world is so, so confused.

I could whine that it is not fair to have to explain the weirdness of this generation, but God very clearly told Job “where were you when the world began?”

“It’s not fair” doesn’t ring well in the ears of the Almighty.

When my oldest asked me later why a man would behave this way, I told him it was probably because he felt lonely or unaccepted, and there is nothing more acceptable to the world these days than to live contrary to the way God asks us to live. He acts this way because he desires love and this is his best shot in the dark at finding it.

This week I had the thought that I don’t want to write things on the internet anymore. I love the challenge of quitting social media. I love the thrill of having conversations in person, of not judging a friend because I haven’t seen every photo they’ve ever taken or heard all they’ve got to say about some politician.

I want me–and you–to loosen the tether of things that enslave us without us really knowing it, because we are not really as in a pinch as the world would like us to think.

The truth is, there is still plenty to choose, plenty of risky business.

Social media is not freedom of speech–it is slavery of the soul.
News outlets do not increase knowledge–they make prisoners of popular propaganda.

The crocodile–he is still swimming, always lurking under the deck, and our children walk the boards above it. This is the risk we take in living. They need not dangle their legs over him.

My personal decisions–and yours, they still belong to us.

This includes every responsibility you have that you ought not take lightly: marriage, raising kids, working a steady job to provide for yourself, living honestly and uprightly, and a thousand more. They demand your focus and energy, and this is enough.

This is enough, even if by all appearances, it doesn’t seem fair.

You couldn’t be freer in Christ. You cannot be safer than living the freedom the Jesus-following life offers. You can not live more boldly, love more extravagantly, nor abide more safely in the dangerous waters of our culture.

That isn’t fair either, but I’m more than willing to submit myself to the One who calls all the shots in the end.

We tried to get on a city bus in the dark last night. We had a ten dollar bill, and the driver would not take it. Pesos only. (This was one of our own risky irresponsible decisions.) Four kids, and one had lost a flip flop and was flipping out. We walked away from the bus, disappointed.
But then the bus honked. A kind gal poked her head out the window and said she had pesos she could exchange for us.
The bus driver waited. We got on the bus and got home. Mercy from strangers–what a blessing.

I reminded my kids before bedtime that as believers we are to “let no debt remain outstanding, except for the debt to love one another, for whoever loves others fulfills the Law.”
(Romans 13:8)

This a risky business.
Lean into it.