I’m still working on installment three of my Red Pill Heresies series, but I just couldn’t get it finished in time for today. It is on the way, I promise!
As I said a few weeks ago, I’ve been on Twitter a lot lately because a lot of red pill guys hang out there. But in addition to red pill hot takes, I’ve seen a lot of excuse-making for bad behavior coming from all quarters.
A video clip surfaced this week of a young mother screaming maniacally at her baby, and scores of people excused that away with assumptions of post partum depression/psychosis. There is no evidence of this diagnosis, of course. It’s an assumption based on a video clip of an unhinged rage.
Another story broke this week about a woman who left her 16-month-old at home completely alone in a playpen for ten days while she went off on vacation. The child was dead when she returned, still in the playpen, covered in her own filth. The suffering that poor baby endured is almost too much to comprehend. I kid you not, in the comments one woman suggested that the mother must have been suffering from post partum depression. If she’d just had more support, she wouldn’t have murdered her child. As if all women are potentially at the mercy of their hormones and can’t control themselves… What a slap in the face to all the mothers I’ve known who did control themselves even through PPD and remained devoted mothers in spite of their pain.
In another instance, a mom discovered that her thirteen-year-old had been talking to a strange boy online and the conversation had been sexually explicit. Everyone piled onto the mom for taking away the girls access to her smart phone, the Xbox (through which she was also contacting this boy) and the internet in general. Outlandish remarks were made. Remarks like, “It’s very normal for kids this age to have sexual conversations and you’re just going to push her away.”
What!?! The world has lost its collective mind. It seems there is no longer any expectation that people should control themselves even when circumstances or hormones are difficult.
I was not raised that way. I was expected to control myself from a very young age.
The zeitgeist of all this got distilled down into one tweet I read:
Presumably they think it’s abuse because the child might cry and we can’t have that. I’ve noticed this and have been bewildered by it for some time. But not anymore. It’s all kind of related.
Once upon a time, I too, wanted to sleep in my parents’ bed because I was terrified almost every night. But they wouldn’t let me sleep with them, and I’m glad they didn’t. They created an anti-fragile kid.
I love that term, anti-fragile. I heard it first when Jonathon was listening to an audio book, Anti-fragile, by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. There’s a bit of confusion around terms like anti-fragile and resiliency. So Taleb breaks it down for us as follows:
Fragile gets weaker from adversity.
Resilient stands up to adversity but grows neither stronger nor weaker.
Anti-fragile grows stronger from adversity.
My husband often tells me that I have a degree of self-mastery he’s never seen before. I finally asked him what he sees me do that’s so unusual. Because, to me, I’m just normal. So, he wrote it all out which is helpful. Here’s what he had to say.
Ways I see self-mastery in Amanda’s life:
Going months without favorites, like chocolate and coffee. Even when necessary for health reasons, you’d be surprised how many people just can’t or won’t even try.
Not getting the pretty nail polish because “we don’t need to spend the money right now.”
Keeping an intermittent fasting schedule with pretty much no cheating, ever. Super hard for many people, like me.
Getting through relationship anxiety to marry me, even though the fear was so bad sometimes that it made her sick to her stomach.
Living a pretty functional life, even though through much of it she’s felt rotten and would rather be in bed.
Not lashing out when annoyed or provoked, to the point that I have to ask what’s bothering her and then wait for her to figure out how to communicate what’s bothering her without hurting me.
She’s genuinely nice to be around, even when she is sick.
Self-mastery is the ability to simply say “no” to yourself. It’s the ability to say, “No, I will not give way to that fear. No, I will not give way to that desire.” It does so with the gain of something better in view: a husband, a relationship, good health, getting out of debt.
The intensity of self-mastery is expressed in I Corinthians 9:27. “I strictly discipline (literally, pummel) my body and make it my slave.” It can be done in futility, or it can be done with hope. The Christian can do it with the enabling power of the Holy Spirit, the faithful love of Christ when we do mess up, and the expectation of a future reward much weightier than anything we might gain here and now.
He has to live with me day in and day out, so this is a pretty honest inventory. It makes me happy to know this is what he sees, because all my remaining faults are the things I mostly see!
At any rate, I am not this way by accident. I am this way because of the work of the Holy Spirit in my life and because of the parenting I received. Thanks Mom. God, please tell Dad I said thanks again.
So, let me tell you about that time I was terrified almost every night.
I was about seven years old, I think. I got a strep infection. I have very little memory of the onset of the infection itself. I may have had a mild sore throat which came and went. What happened next, I’ll never forget. I went from a kid who slept like a rock at night to a kid who woke up with night terrors. I went from a kid with a little mild anxiety, to a kid tormented with extreme terror almost all the time, but especially as the daylight faded and night closed in. I remember that like it was yesterday.
My mother said, it was like a switch flipped and I was a totally different child. They took me to the doctor over and over again. The doctor said there was nothing wrong with me. I began having heart arrhythmia and involuntary muscle movements. So, our family doctor referred us to a cardiologist. After blood draws, getting hooked up to a heart monitor, ultrasounds and I don’t remember what else, the cardiologist told my parents that I was fine and that they needed to take me to a shrink. It was then that my parents demanded a throat culture. Why? I don’t know. I have know idea what made them think to ask for it. I don’t think my mom knows why to this day. (My dad passed away a couple years ago, so I can’t ask him.) Personally, I think God directly intervened on my behalf with that seemingly bizarre request. The cardiologist humored them and did the throat culture. A few days later, he called my parents in an absolute panic with news that I had a dreadful strep infection and that I need antibiotics NOW!
What happened to me is now known as PANDAS: Pediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Disorders Associated with Streptococcal Infections. Essentially, the infection masquerades as various bodily cells like brain and heart cells to evade the immune system. Once the immune system catches on, it attacks the infection AND the brain and heart cells indiscriminately, effecting the central nervous system which often presents as extreme and sudden personality changes, OCD-like anxiety, attacks of rage etc…
It was a hard time for my entire family. My mom was so stressed out by this bizarre illness, she began grinding her teeth in her sleep and ended up with TMJ, a condition that still effects her and gives her jaw pain now.
On occasion during that ordeal, and specifically, leading up to my diagnosis, my parents let me sleep with them. But there came a time, when they had to rip off the bandaid about where I slept and a few other things, as well. I had stopped doing my school work (homeschooling) because I felt distracted and yucky. I constantly and obsessively sought out reassurances from members of my family when I was afraid which only relieved my anxiety for moments at a time before it came roaring back. Things were getting out of hand.
I recall one day, my dad got home from a long day of work to news that I had not done any school work. He got me off the couch, sat me down at the table, and told me that I had to stop letting the way I felt be an excuse to let my studies slide. I took that to heart, and together, we got through all of my learning for that day in a couple of hours.
I even got spankings during that time for acting out inappropriately. I know, I know. Everyone thinks spanking is abuse these days. It’s not. But think what you like, I guess.
My parents also put their foot down about me sleeping in my own bed. It was time for me to face my fears instead of running from them.
I know to a lot of people this sounds terribly harsh. All I can tell you is that, even then in the middle of my terror, I knew that my parents loved me. They proved it every single day. My parents were not stingy with affection, praise or encouragement. So, this insistence on sleeping in my own bed did not occur in an environment of harsh words, lack of love or anything of the sort.
They knew I was scared, so they gave me tools to deal with the fear. They wrote out Bible verses on three by five cards for me to read and think about when I was afraid. That was the year I learned the verse, “What time I am afraid, I will trust in Thee.” It is very dear to me, even today.
The terror would hit like the old hymn says, “As daylight fades into deep night shades.” My parents would encourage me at that time to remember the Bible verses I had learned and to talk to Jesus. So I did. I was still scared, but I did.
Of course, they always tucked me in at night and prayed with me before bed, asking God to help me fall asleep and help me not be afraid. Lots of hugs and kisses before the light went out.
The best tool they gave me, though, was “the thankful thing.” I’ve written about it numerous times before. But for those who haven’t read those pieces, essentially, my parents told me that when I was in bed and afraid, I should start thanking God for all the things He gave me that day.
I did this religiously. So much so, that one night I woke up and had to use the bathroom. I walked all the way from my bedroom past the nearest bathroom to my mom and dad’s bathroom. Probably because it felt less scary since it was right by mom and dad’s room. Anyway, my mom awakened to a light shining out from under the bathroom door, the water faucet running as I washed my hands, and a little Amanda voice chanting:
“I thank you for my bed. I thank you for Elsa (our dog). I thank you for food. I thank you for mom and dad….”
My mom groggily got up and opened the door.
“Amanda, what are you doing?”
“I’m doing the thankful thing, Mom.”
It’s one of my mom’s favorite stories.
I have done the thankful thing ever since. That terror I experienced only began when I was seven. It followed me all through the rest of my life and into adulthood. And I fought it with “the thankful thing,” other tools of mental self-discipline I learned over the years, lots of prayer, lots of Scripture reading and lots of finding the humor in the situation.
I will likely fight anxiety in some form or fashion in the future. But I don’t believe I would have developed the strength to be a fighter if my parents hadn’t kicked me (lovingly, of course) out of their bed to face my Goliath on my own with the Lord of Hosts at my side.
They repeated this in different manifestations all throughout my childhood and adolescence. And as a result, they raised a human who could take responsibility for herself. They raised a girl who could take to heart the message that “PMS is no excuse to bite people’s heads off every twenty-eight days.” They raised a human who could and did ‘fess up when she messed up…at home, at work when I got my first job, and in relationship with other humans.
They taught me not to make excuses for myself. After all, I had every excuse in the book, didn’t I? I felt bad. I can hear the excuse makers now:
“Your immune system was literally attacking your brain!”
Sure enough. But had I stopped there, I would have stopped growing. I learned it was crippling to view myself as a victim…of anything including my immune system. I learned, after slaying Goliath over and over and over again, that it was much better to be an overcomer. I learned that the way of joy is the hard-fought way.
The excuses begin so early now. “It’s developmentally appropriate for toddlers to throw tantrums. They need you to hold space for their big feelings.” (Whatever that’s supposed to mean. “It’s developmentally appropriate for this or that age group to defy authority figures.” “It’s totally normal for teenagers to seek out sexually explicit conversation with strangers on the internet.” “Post Partum Depression can make you lose control.”
I don’t buy it. The foundations of good character are laid in childhood. Call your children forth to greatness. Always. Never excuse. They can rise to it. They will be happier if they do.
If you don’t, who will? The police?
I hope you think about this with sobriety and care.
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That’s all for now. Until next time, folks…