Saturday, August 25, 2007

And if I Don't Want to Leave Yet?

Church today. We had a nice discussion on finances and how God wants us to handle money, etc. Afterwards, we had food, like always. We have decided that is is very important to eat together, so we always do. Somewhere along the line Beth started making noises about leaving. We were finishing up eating, and Jeffrey said something about leaving. Earlier, he had mentioned something about stopping by Best Buy on the way home to look at a tv. He's been sorely tempted to buy a nice big tv this week because he could get it for 3 years with 0% financing. So, tonight I thought he wanted to stop by Best Buy and I said, "You can't buy anything until after sunset anyway." It was still fairly early. That's when he said he didn't want to stop at Best Buy. He didn't need a new tv. That discussion on finances, maybe? So, I wasn't worried about leaving.

Peggy and I started playing with texty.com and experimenting with how we can use it on the web pages - specifically on feastgoer. We'd like to give people a little more control over their pages, without giving them access to the server. It's a little late for this year, but maybe next year. For now, we tried it on the Baraboo page so that Peggy can post announcements or whatever, and added a comment box for people to suggest study topics. We were excited about the possibilities and what we can do with texty.

After a while, Beth was getting all upset because I wasn't getting ready to leave. She never specifically told me that she wanted to leave or why. She just started getting mad at me for not somehow knowing. Regardless - even if I did know - why should I drop everything? She seems to be going out somewhere and 'hanging out' with her friends every single day of the week. Once a week, I go somewhere, and I want to spend some time with my friends and do something I want to do. Why should I have to leave before I'm ready just so she can go and do something that she does every other day of the week? Because, after all, she just wanted to make all of us come home so that she could leave immediately and go hang out with Tim. It's not my fault that she didn't see him yesterday - she's the one who spent the night with Kayla. It's also not my fault that I didn't know she thought we were going to leave early so she could do that. She never said anything. Part of that could have been because she stayed at Kayla's last night and didn't come home until after 11 this morning. It's not like we saw her or talked to her or that she let us know what she thought she was planning to do.

Yeah, no matter how often we go over it - for some reason she has this idea in her head that she gets to do whatever she wants to do, she doesn't need permission, and she wishes she didn't even have to tell us. Unfortunately, for some of her friends, that's the way it works. Their parents let them run wild and do whatever they want to do. She sees that and thinks that's how it's supposed to work. I just say, "It's too bad their parents don't care about them more."

4 comments:

  1. I imagine when my daughter turns 16 she will be exactly the same. Luckily she is still only 13 and the only life she gets to have right now is the one I gave her. LOL

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  2. There is a lesson in that for us all, old and young alike ...

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  3. I don't understand why teenagers and their parents usually think so differently, only that they do. Hang in there.

    Do you not allow shopping until sunset as an observance of the Sabbath? What about restaurants? We are still thinking through this stuff at my own house... not following a the most strict observances, but continually evaluating our Sunday activities.

    Re: your profile. You don't sing at all? Tsk, tsk, tsk.

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  4. @craver vii: We don't do normal shopping on the Sabbath, though sometimes we do stop and grab something, and sometimes we do go to restaurants. So, we're not totally strict, but we don't do our normal activities.

    Nope, no singing. Except sometimes with the radio - and then only when there's no one else around.

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