Our 4-year-old granddaughter is one who should never be considered a candidate for movie theater attendance. Each movie is given a running commentary from our little munchkin along with a verbal tornado of questions. One of the first things she needs to know is ‘who is the bad guy?’ It’s important to her to be able to identify which side each cast member is on. So yesterday when she and her grandfather were watching a movie, I wasn’t surprised to hear her ask this question. But I did find it surprising when she wouldn’t take his word for it. He had to justify his decision. “But, Grandpa, why is he the bad guy?” I had to smile listening to Grandpa explain that you could tell he was a bad guy because he was taking the little dog. That wasn’t good enough for her. “But, Grandpa, does he say bad words? Does he do bad things?” Grandpa fumbled on that one while I laughed. But even as I laughed I thought ‘You go, Little One. Don’t ever take someone’s word for it when they tell you ‘that’s the bad guy‘. You hang on to that concept!’

And I sincerely hope she does. As she gets old enough to go out in the neighborhood, I hope she thinks twice before excluding that neighbor girl the others won’t play with because she doesn’t have the right toys. And I hope that if she joins the ‘in’ crowd in school that she doesn’t exclude the one who has no money or who doesn’t wear the right clothes. And I hope, as she reaches adulthood, that she discriminates rightly. That she can recognize that a certain religion, a certain race, a certain way of thinking doesn’t necessarily make them the bad guy. It just make them different. I hope she shows the love and acceptance that is so needed in our world today. I DON’T want her to be politically correct or to be so unsure of herself that she can’t stand up for what she believes is right. I just want her to know and to recognize that God made us all a little different. If we were all the same, the world would be a boring place. It is the differences that make this world a truly beautiful place. And if we love and accept others and their differences, we will have made the world we live in a little more beautiful just by being in it.

Of course, having her in our world now has already made it a little more beautiful for us.

Perfection is, unfortunately, not a state I have managed to attain yet. I just keep learning new things and realizing when I was wrong in others. Mostly I just keep realizing that I am going to have to learn to compromise more. For example, years ago, I chose to walk away from attending church services. I had not chosen to walk away from my belief in Christ. But I felt that churches, pastors, and people who congregated together in the church building made fantastic claims that they based on the Bible but couldn’t be verified in real life. I felt that churches often made sweeping judgments against those whose lifestyles didn’t conform 100% with their requirements. There were rules that had to be followed to be a ‘true’ christian. Deviating from those rules made you less than worthy. So I walked. I continued to want to know what the truth was so I kept studying various teachings including those in the Bible to see if I could separate the truth from the claims of the churches and the regulations laid down by them. In my studies, I recently came across this passage in the Bible that told of Jesus on the Sabbath in the synagogue. A sick woman was there and He healed her. This, of course, annoyed the leaders. Jesus was breaking a rule and working on the Sabbath. The leader didn’t complain to Jesus about this. I don’t know if he was in awe of Jesus or if he had just given up trying to get Jesus to conform to the rules. This leader went to the woman and scolded her for being healed on the Sabbath. So Jesus turned around and scolded him. Called him a hypocrite. Said he would have fed his donkey on the Sabbath, wasn’t this woman more important?

There were several little things that occurred to me when I read this. First, Jesus wasn’t always all that fond of the teaching of the elders. Second, rules weren’t His primary consideration - people were. And thirdly, he was in the synagogue. In spite of the fact that He didn’t always follow the rules, and He didn’t always like the elders, and He didn’t always believe they were teaching the actual truths God wanted the people to hear, where would you see Him on the Sabbath? He would be in the synagogue. He didn’t have to agree with them. He just kept doing what He thought was right. If He saw them hurting others, He spoke up. Obviously He didn’t make Himself real popular with the elders.

Anyway, it came to me there were some things I needed to learn from this. One, I should just keep on doing what I think is right. Two, if I see someone being hurt by the rules imposed by the church, I should speak up. And, three, I need to rethink my stand on church attendance.

So - I keep learning. I hope you do too.

Love

Mom

I have been trying to acces this website for a while. I was using Chrome then when I tried Firefox, it worked just great? Just wanted to bring this to your attention. This is really a greatwebsite. I have a few myself. I really admire your layout. I know this is off topic but,did you make this theme yourself,or purchase from somewhere?

 A:  This is a theme I made up myself.  As the mother of 6 and grandmother of 12, I have all kinds of people asking questions and decided maybe I could help online as well.  Sometimes I get questions through the comments and sometimes through the ‘ask mom’ icon.  I’ve been enjoying this and hope I have been helpful.

with ?we leave it to you to decide?.

A: Yes. You send me a question and I give you my opinion. You can take it or leave it. It’s up to you.

One of the joys of having adult sons who are smarter than you is that you can ask them questions and get really good answers.  If I ever make it on the  ’Who Wants to be a Millionaire’ show, they will definately be on my ‘phone a friend’ list.  One of my sons informs me that my information on the RSS feed is all wrong.  Not only did I not know what it was but I actually have an RSS feed.  Apparently some of my readers know what this is and know how to use it.  For the reader who had asked me for my RSS feed, I now have it.  It is http://advicefrommom.net/?feed=rss2.  I hope this is helpful to you.  I am sorry I had my information wrong earlier.

My brother-in-law and his wife just moved back home. Now he wants my husband and I to double date with him with his old high school girlfriend. I like his wife and don’t want to do this but my husband says we have to because he is family. What do you think?

A: I think you should trust your instincts and stay home. Your brother-in-law’s morals are less than sterling. You don’t have to sink to his level. Cheating on your wife is not an acceptable behavior. Your husband is letting the ‘family argument’ cloud his judgment. I think you should remind him of something his mother has told him at least 100 times. “If your brother jumped off a cliff, would you do it too?” It’s a little bit tough sometimes to take a stand but if I were you, I’d just say ‘no’!

Although I have just approved a comment from a reader asking for help for Haiti, I ask that all readers be sure to check out all agencies before contributing.

Apparently there is an email issue with the ‘contact Mom’ icon.  If you can’t get through that way, my email address is mom@advicefrommom.net.

Recently, I acquired a little Yorkie. He’s a cute little 4 pound bundle. But he’s a little weird. He spends his day running around my dining room table. I could use him to teach my four-year-old granddaughter to count except he doesn’t stop at 20, or 50 or even 100. Like the little energizer bunny, he just keeps on running. If I put an obstacle in his way he just detours around it and continues on his merry way. Every now and then he stops for a drink or a bite of food and then continues his laps around the table. Personally I thought he was either an idiot or he had mental health problems so I asked the breeder we got him from. She told me that, in the wild, this is the way a male dog protected his pack. That explanation just didn’t work for me. After all, he didn’t have a pack under my dining room table - and since I couldn’t imagine a Yorkie in the wild - I decided to look it up. Turns out I’m right. The darn fool dog might actually have mental health problems. Guess I’ll have to take him to a vet to find out for sure.  Regardless of what the vet has to say, I think I’ll keep him.  Even if he does have issues, in this house, a dog like that will fit right in. If you want to check some of the sites I read, here they are:

http://www.helium.com/items/992179-why-dogs-run-in-circles

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080213220924AAtkCp7

http://springthing.3.forumer.com/a/puppy-running-in-circles_post7964.html

http://www.ehow.com/facts_5731210_causes-dogs-running-circles_.html

I’m trying to get your RSS feed but I’m getting an error. Please let me know when it’s ready, I love the site. Thank you!

A: I understand that an RSS feed is only necessary when you are transferring money or identifying information over the internet. Since no money or identifying information is every used on this site, an RSS feed is unnecessary. To send a question to me, just press the ‘contact Mom’ icon and it will automatically email me. To send a comment, just do as you did and press any comment button. That, too, comes directly to my moderation folder where I can check for inappropriate comments. Once I am sure that your comment is family friendly (you don’t have to agree with me. You just can’t be vulgar about your disagreement.) I will press the approve button and your comment will post.