Like a lot of other people, I have been very busy this season, and even though I’ve taken time off from my usual homeschooling schedule, I’ve managed to find plenty to keep me just as occupied as usual. I have to watch my use of time, as I sometimes treat it as something that needs to be filled up with activity. There is always a shower to clean, a dish to be washed, a call to make, an email to be answered, or a dust bunny to be aggressively pursued with a ferocious broom. Nothing is ever really done! With my large family, my home is filled with daily chores to do, not to mention maintenance. Keeping it clean and picked up is important, but sometimes “house beautiful” has to make room for “home good enough.” Sometimes it can be more productive to shut the door on sky-high “Mt. Washclothes,” while saying to myself, “Don’t look.” Then, I can use my freedom to do something unexpected, like straying over to the kitchen to bake a fragrant tray of home made chocolate chip cookies instead.
Even so, when I was recently offered free tickets to a theme park, my first thought was pleasantly demented. “Oh, no, I’ll lose one of my free days to get things done.” My “to do” list had me by the throat. What else is new? Mercifully, the sane part of my mind forcefully rose up to topple the god of the schedule. “You will go to the theme park with your daughters. You will enjoy it.” Passing up a huge opportunity to hunt dust bunnies, I accepted those tickets.
On our way to the theme park, sandwiched in between cars in stop and go traffic, my two youngest daughters and I found lots to talk about. Somehow we got on the topic of all the trouble Tiger Woods is in, and how people don’t use sex in the right way. “Yeah, mom,” said my young teen, “Sex is a power. It’s like other types of power. You can misuse it, like, say, politicians misusing political power.”
“Yeah,” chimed in my other daughter, “Sex is good. People just don’t use it right.” I was pleased to hear such common sense out of the mouths of my thoughtful girls. There would be much more peace in the world if sexuality wasn’t treated as a commonplace thing, with no more meaning than a casual handshake. It’s a wondrous mystery, only worthy of real, committed love. It is good, because God invented it.
My teen wasn’t done yet. Her mental wheels were going beyond what we began with, and flew up to heaven and the angels. She looked thoughtful, serious, and then smiled. “Mom, this power of sex is really something. We make people with it. Not even angels can do that!”
[Originally published Dec 21, 2009]
(© 2009 Kathleen Woodman)
