Deconstructing my -Isms

 I was raised a straight, white, Christian girl with very little knowledge of anybody outside of my homeschool group. Saying I was ignorant doesn't even cut it. I knew basic, whitewashed American history and that was it. 

When I grew up, I learned more about the world outside of my little bubble. I learned how to care for my hair from people with kinky afros and twists. I learned how to make my food from people who's language I didn't speak and how to love nature from the people who cultivated it for hundreds of years. I learned how to love others from people whose love was forbidden and love myself from people whose bodies were perfectly imperfect. 

When I dipped my toes into culture I was scared of what I might find and instead, I found community and love and people who care about other people and I LOVED it. 

But had you said to that straight, white, Christian girl that her ignorance made her pathetic and showed her hate instead of love then she would've never dipped her toes into that beautiful mixing pot of cultures and she would have remained ignorant. Your hate toward ignorance will drive away all those who strive for knowledge.

Lets Talk About: The Middle Class

Let's talk about the middle class. 

Let's talk about how 'middle' it really is. 

Let's talk about the intense budgeting that's required to keep that 'middle class' label. 

Let's talk about tough choices. 

Tough choices like whether you can afford to eat out? 

Tough choices like whether you can afford the expensive toilet paper? 

Tough choices like if you should go to the expensive hair salon or the cheap one?

Those tough choices? 

No. 

Those aren't that hard to make.

Tough choices are deciding which bills should be paid first because you can't pay them all. 

Tough choices are whether to pay to fix your car or leave the dangerous malfunction alone and still have electricity. 

Tough choices are when you chose between buying Christmas presents or paying rent.

But there are other tough choices.

Let's talk about depression. 

Let's talk about disposable income and how a lack of it is shown to have an impact on your overall happiness and stress levels. 

Let's talk about people who don't have income at all. 

Let's talk about their reliance on other people to survive. 

Let's talk about culture putting that burden on the middle class instead of billionaires. 

Let's talk about our resentment about it.

Why do we resent it? 

Because we fight every day to keep ourselves out of the lower class. 

Because we're one lost job, one car accident away from joining them. 

Because the little guy is expected to help the littlest guy while the biggest guys stand on the top pretending like they didn't get there by stepping on the backs of their peers. 

Let's talk about how easy it is to drop down a peg. 

Let's talk about a system that can fire you, without notice and after working you to the bone, and leave you unemployed. 

Let's talk about the month after you lose that job, when you've used all your savings and you can't afford to pay the bills. 

Let's talk about the real possibility that a well-to-do family could become homeless in less than a year. 

Let's talk about how hard you worked at a job that didn't care if you never got a lunch break. 

Let's talk about how hard you worked to fix up your resume and how many convoluted job applications you filled out. 

Let's talk about the stigma surrounding unemployment and the belief that after all that work, you just didn't work hard enough. 

Let's talk about disability. 

Let's talk about my dad. 

Let's talk about a high-ranking computer programmer losing his vision. 

Let's talk about a massive pay cut. 

Let's talk about the humiliation of going back to school for something that doesn't involve sight, in a field you don't have 30+ years experience in and starting back at square one. 

Let's talk about how stupidly easy it is to fall off the ladder. 

Let's talk about a man who lost his career and his sight in the span of a decade. 

Let's talk about life.

Employers were Allowed to Pay Employees 1.60$ an Hour

In 1938 The minimum wage was implemented in the USA at a whopping $0.25. '

That's so low!' I hear you saying, 'I'm so glad the minimum wage was raised!'

Hold up. That's not the whole story. Adjusted for inflation, that amount is equal to $5.09 in 2020. 

'But that's still lower than our current minimum wage.' hold your horses I'm getting there.  

In 1968 the minimum wage was $1.60, equal to $12.18 in today's economy. Essentially, workers in the 60s were being paid $4.93 more than workers in 2021. See the problem?

It seems like an obvious thing to fix, why are we still fighting about it? People against raising the minimum wage have a good reason for opposing it. Raising the minimum wage so drastically would put a lot of strain on businesses who suddenly have to figure out where that extra pay is coming from. Do they lay off workers? Do they raise prices? Will they go bankrupt!? These are, understandably, very hard decisions for business owners to make. 

But, does it really have to be a drastic change? What if we raised the minimum wage gradually over time? Did you know that lots of other countries are doing that exact thing?

In France, Australia, the United Kingdom, the Czech Republic, and Costa Rica, the minimum wage is reviewed and changed annually and their minimum wage rises gradually over time, putting very little strain on businesses.

Okay, so why aren't we doing that? The answer is simple, the US doesn't have any laws in place that mandate how and when we change our minimum wage. For the wage to be raised, it has to be approved by congress which happens every decade or so. By the time they do actually agree to raise it the gap is so significant that it causes mass panic. Individual states can raise the minimum wage higher if they want, Washington State decided to do just that, raising their minimum wage each year based on inflation.

In 2021 we're getting close to another big raise in the minimum wage. Politicians are debating about it and arguing about it and yelling at each other about it. I don't know about you, but I'm tired of the debating. Why are we, the people earning minimum wage, the parents whose children are living off minimum wage, letting politicians debate about whether we deserve to be paid a living salary? In America, we seem to think that we can't do much about it. Big Brother is leaning over us holding us down and keeping us quiet. That's not true. There's what? A few hundred of them? There are millions of us. "73.3 million workers age 16 and older in the United States were paid at hourly rates, representing 55.5 percent of all wage and salary workers"(BLS) They can't fight all of us. Start making some noise.

Sources:

Vox: What the US gets wrong about minimum wage

BLS Reports: Characteristics of minimum wage workers

Wikipedia (Suck it, Professors)

Rat Race

Two steps forward

One step back

Barely moving

I may Crack

Running

Tripping

Crawling

Crap

Rolling over on my back

Trip and fall

Lay in a ball

Get back up now!

F it all

Lazy brat

Stop laying down

Kick me again

That will help how?

Walking steady

Three whole steps!

Feet still heavy

Need to rest

Chest still throbbing

Mind still numb

Hit my knees

Now what's to come?

Someone help me

Too damn hard

You want me to go how far?

Here it's easy

Watch me fly

You can do it

Get up and try

Body's aching

Heavy chest

Can't you see

Doing my best

Finish line so far away

No way I'm getting there today

One more step then I collapse

Why must I go nowhere fast

Angry

Tired

Bittersweet

Stop your pushing

Let me sleep

Watch the sun set overhead

Knowing I'll sleep like the dead

Tomorrow go just two more feet

Just as tired

Just as beat

Did I even sleep at all?

Will I walk or will I crawl?

Life's a race I cannot win

And giving up is a sin

Punish me when I am down

Push me facedown in the ground

Force myself to stand once more

Living simply is a chore

Run this rat race day by day

Help me up or get out of my way

The Big Question

Let me ask you a question; how well do you know God?
I'm not asking how well do you know the Bible. I'm not asking if you go to church. I'm asking how well do you know the God of the universe.
Is He your best friend? Your father? Your brother? Or is He more like your boss that you talk to once a day and maybe ask for help when things get really bad? Do you know Him personally, like you would a best friend you call up every day or is He that one friend you call up every once in a while for a coffee?
God isn't looking to be facebook buddies. He wants to be your number one, your wingman, your best man at your wedding. That's the kind of relationship He calls us to.
He wants to know you.
Do you know what that means in the original Hebrew? He's not just saying 'oh I know him!'. To know someone in the Biblical sense is to know them intimately, the way a man 'knows' his wife. To know every part of you and love each and every bit of it. That is what it means to know God. You see, being a Christian isn't anything more or less than a personal and intimate relationship with God.
Do you think God would send the Son to die for some random person?
He loves us.
Do you get what I'm saying here? God wants to be so intimately involved with us that we want to spend the rest of our lives, the rest of eternity, loving Him.
He's not some impersonal cosmic force, He's a person with thoughts and feelings. He's a king who fell in love with a slave and let His only son die to pay for her freedom. He is a father who loved his daughter so much that He gives her everything she could ever imagine, but she doesn't want anything to do with Him.
So again I ask you, how well do you know God?

Love of Wrath

Hello lovelies! I have officially been a resident of Liberty University for a month! How exciting is that! 

At Campus Community tonight we were talking about God as both a loving and Wrathful God and I felt like somebody ought to tell ya what that means and since I have this here blog that might as well be me!

When I say that my God is a wrathful God most people think He is waiting in the wings for us to screw up so He can smite us with His holy wrath! You couldn't be more wrong.

God is first and foremost a God of mercy. Do you have any idea how many times I've screwed up? If God was an impatient God I wouldn't be sitting in front of a laptop typing a poorly written blog! No God is a merciful God. But there's a problem; if God is a merciful God then how can he judge me? Because He is also an absolutely good God, and if God is absolutely good and He is the Judge of all creation then how can he allow evil to go unpunished? He simply cannot.

So you see here that God is faced with a dilemma; He cannot allow evil to go unpunished, and His children insist on doing evil things. *sigh* What's a God to do? This is where Jesus comes in. Somebody has to be punished for all this evil and He doesn't want it to be us, He is a loving God after all. So in comes Jesus, the perfect sacrifice, ready and willing to take our place. God pours out all His judgment and wrath on a perfect and blameless man. It's bloody, it's shameful, it's a public display of God's judgment. And it gives Him great satisfaction to see justice done because He is a just God.

And that's that. God gets justice for sin and He can spend the rest of eternity loving, and being loved by, His creation. accept that we, as the dumb, rather senseless sheep that we are, insist on abusing the gift we've been given, which is basically like slapping God in the face. Frequently. Now if God were not a God of mercy He would do what your parents likely would do if you slapped them in the face, bend you over their knee and teach you some manners. But that's not God. God is infinitely patient, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love. You can see this in His letter to the Chruch of Thyatira in Revelation 2:

20 Nevertheless, I have this against you: You tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophet.... 21 I have given her time to repent of her immorality, but she is unwilling. 22 So I will cast her on a bed of suffering, and I will make those who commit adultery with her suffer intensely, unless they repent of her ways. 23 I will strike her children dead. Then all the churches will know that I am he who searches hearts and minds,and I will repay each of you according to your deeds.

God gave Jezebel time to repent, it was her fault that she chose not to take it. So while you are continuously slapping Him in the face, He is calmly telling you to stop. You and I both know what our Father is capable of, yet He is giving you the chance to stop. Does that mean that you are free from His wrath? No. He is simply giving you the option to ask for forgiveness. 'But Bri,' I hear you say, 'I've been doing this for years and nothing horrible has happened.' To that I ask you this, has God simply left you be? You see, His wrath doesn't have to be fire and brimstone. God knows what's at the end of this road and He may have decided to let the result be punishment enough. I came the realization that God hadn't punished my repeated sin, not because He is a forgiving God, but because He said 'if she insists on playing with fire the burn itself will be punishment enough'. Does that sound malicious? I don't think so. God gave me every opportunity to repent, I chose not to take it. I was slapping Him in the face after all. He gave me mercy and I chose not to accept it and a good Father reprimands His children.

The Love of Wrath

The wrath of God
A naked man
Held aloft
By sinners hands
The love of God
His sacrifice
To cleanse our hearts
Of sin’s firm vice
His wrath poured out
Sweet justice served
Our bail paid off
With five broken words
The three in one
Torn one and two
Your Father’s face
Was turned from you
A roaring lion
Turned to a lamb
The wrath of God
Was turned from man
And in its place
A fathers love
Given free reign
Rains from above
What heights of love
What depths of peace
My fears are stilled
My strivings cease
The sting of death
The wrath of God
Was spent on Christ
To clense our flaws
The flood was passed
The winter gone
And all He asks
Is for a song

TTFN! That's ta ta for now!

The Wall

When I found that I was broken

I could not bear the pain
I was tired of the ache
And tired of the shame
So many things were thrown at me
So much hurt and so much blame
That when I built for me a shelter
Safety was my only aim

My mother hears me tremble

And calls over my walls

Her voice earnestly pleads me

Down long and empty halls

But my fortress is now massive

Each stone a bitter recall

Of the pain that seems to last
And never fade at all

Many came to visit

When my wall had just begun

They tried to help me break it

But I did not want that done

So for every brick they tore out

Each and every stone

Another would replace it

And soon I was alone

When the walls had reached the sky

And the sun could not see inside

I found for me a corner

And in it I cried

I found a book of stories

And there inside I hid

I forged from it a friend for me

And it joined in all I did

And when again my mother

Called me from the day

I was content not to listen

And begged her go away

I made for me a family 

And built for me a place

'Til soon the walls that smothered me 

Felt like a sweet embrace

My mother grew tired

Of calling out to me

Her voice was growing fainter

And then she left me be

But deep within the shadows
Where I knew no one should be
I hear a lonely wimper
A heartless bitter plea

Someone else was trapped here
Somebody just like me
How could I ignore them,
I simply couldn't flee

I had to find them safety
I had to bring the light
But how can I protect them
In this never-ending night

These walls we built ourselves
protect us from our plight
And often times the outside
Is much more difficult to fight

She too had a book of stories
Quite similar to mine
And the friends that we had built ourselves
Got along just fine

They wished us to be happy
At the cost of their own lives
So they pushed and pulled us
To move closer to the light

And yet we resisted
Do we really want to leave?
We were hiding from something
Far more painful to receive

After quite a bit of prodding
And pushing us along
We started on our journey
And though it was quite long
We reached the wall together
For together we are strong

We're tearing down the wall
piece by painful piece
But we've built it far too high
To remove in just a week

Our friends look on and cheer us
From both inside and out
For there are others outside the wall
That continue to shout

And if one must leave us
To demolish their own wall
Another one will take their place
And continue with their call

They will not stop their screaming
They will not cease their cry
Until they see our faces
And we look them in the eye

And the stories still are there
They will always comfort me
But no longer can I hide inside
They want me to be free