Hate to Burst Your Bubble...

I think I would like “19 Kids and Counting” a lot better if I knew Michelle Duggar was once a prostitute...

Okay...okay...that might be a bit much...get up off the ground.

How about I would settle for...maybe...Michelle just having been really promiscuous in college?

Don't you raise your eyebrow at me, Belle.  You date manbeasts.

That should be enough:  “She was a shameless hussy, and now she is nearly perfect with her really sweet voice that she never ever raises and her perfectly modest dress and 19 kids (all with the same man).”

That’s a story I could watch.

Peeved has started watching this 19 Kids show, and she watches it episode after episode after episode. 

So, I sorta fell into watching an episode one day while passing through Peeved’s room to survey her laundry situation.  I sat down on her bed with her, and Peeved and I watched a full episode of 19 Kids and Counting.  By the end of the episode, I felt like a total loser.

The next day, I snuck in for another episode.  By the end of that episode, I was going to give away my children.

On day three, I was annoyed and keeping my kids.  I mean, I was like really irritated in a very unholy way.  I told Peeved to stop watching “that stupid show,” and she looked at me and gave me a taken-aback “MOTHer!”

I grabbed my laundry basket, and I was like, “It’s stupid.”

I maturely walked out.

With flailing limbs, she followed me, and she defended the show and the 21...22...25? people on it.  She followed me room to room, defending, and I was upset I tell you:  to every sentence she whined, I grunted back (while putting away clothes), “It’s stupid.”

She did not relent.  She couldn't believe I would be against such a wholesome show. 

“Would you rather I watch ‘Criminal Minds?’”

I shoved some underwear in a drawer, and I made a thinking face toward the ceiling, and I answered her, “Yes.  If it touches on redemption.”

Now.  Before you go all nuts on me because I would have my daughter watching sex crime victims before I would have her watching a teenager who is not allowed to hold hands with her fiancé, let me explain it to you the way I explained it to her:

all my very best friends – the people to whom I am forever tied – were not raised in a wholesome bubble. 

Or, in a few cases, they had wholesome bubbles provided them, but they recklessly popped out of it and went on a rampage for a bit. 

Excuse me, that is not a rampage - that is what I wore to church last Sunday.

You might really like the bubble people. 

But, I do not prefer the bubble people.

I like the redeemed sinner.  And, I don’t mean the bubble kid who broke out one day for fifteen minutes and stole gum from the 7-Eleven.  No.  Not him.  He ran right back to the bubble, and he took the gum back to the store and apologized to the manager with his parents sternly standing behind him with that smug “concerned” look on their face...nodding.

No. 

I am talking about the friends who hit the real bottom,

then bravely and physically clawed and fought their way back to

the Church.

I love the ones for whom there was no one ringing the dinner bell.

But they called out into the world for His help...at first meekly, but eventually hysterically.  They cried and yelled and begged to be found.

And then, down the road a bit, they bravely told me – their friend - all about it, and I told them all about me, and we sat there like two exhausted travelers, sipping our water, happy as heck to be resting there together...too shell-shocked in countless ways to dare look around to judge others worse off. 

In short, my people would never make a show about a bubble.

This is not to say you shouldn't be protecting your children, sheltering their young minds, shielding them from the world's nastiness.

But, you shouldn't show off your bubble.  

Those are the key words here:  show off.

When I see people smugly in the bubble, judgmentally raising their children in the bubble, judging those drowning outside the bubble...

I feel really defeated.

"Alert:  Superwoman down"

I didn’t have a bubble as a child.  I didn’t have a bubble as a teen...a young adult....  I cannot manage to maintain a bubble NOW.

Hearing about the Duggar bubble...your bubble...seeing your perfections...your Pinterest page (oh, sorry - that is not what we are talking about)...

that is not motivating me to be better.

That makes me shrug and give away my kids.

That doesn’t mean YOU should shrug when you watch the Duggars.  Hey!  For all I know, you might have a great bubble going over there at YOUR place, and you are comparing bubbles. 

Michelle Duggar has more flowers than you.

It is okay – it is okay to want her bubble or to have your own bubble (I guess)...

as long as it doesn’t affect how you look at people NOT in your bubble or a bubble of like magnificence.

Don't you look at me like that - back to your bubble - back...back.

AND, as long as you aren't living inside your bubble all proud and stuff.

My favorite friends are cleaning up their act, and they are remembering, always, how close they are to the massive mess they once had and the ugly mess they could have once again,

and they need me, and I need them.

And that is not happening inside of any bubble.  That is too unstable to be inside bubble walls.

My favorite pals have a bubble for a day, and then it bursts, and they are all sad, looking at their broken bubble pieces thinking, “It was such a good day with that.”

An unstable broken place is the world; it is a perilous place, and I let my kids know all about it.  In the face of peril, my kids are not awkward or nervous or perfect- my kids just KNOW that - with Christ - the world has hope, and THEY, my kids, are a part of that hope.  

We don’t need things to be perfect for us to be effective.  

We don't have a bubble to shove in your face.

We don't even want you to see our attempts at creating a bubble.

What we want is this:  we want to tell you how our bubble keeps bursting and how we keep going...and you can go with us, if you'd like.

And so, I told Peeved that watching a show about a bubble just does her no good whatsoever.  I would – yes - much rather her watch a cop drama about someone overcoming, about someone preserving, about someone recovering, about someone losing, about someone struggling, alone and unloved.

And I would want her to imagine how to help that person, and then I would want her to get down and dirty and bubbleless

and go find that person.

The Duggars don’t need us.  We are not going to stare at people who do not need us.

Peeved should watch Hoarders.  Now those people need us.

See.  We could do THIS for them!