I Am Not Roaring

Morning comes. Jay goes off to work, and I brace myself for the day. I shower and dress and then open their door and get them up.
"Mummy!" they say, and beam at me. I swoop in and kiss them and we all troop downstairs.
That's on a good day.

On a bad day, the yelling starts early, long before Jay has left the house. I am not a morning person and I cannot take yelling before breakfast. I stomp in before I've showered and say "WHAT IS GOING ON HERE?" in my scary angry voice, freaking them out with my scary pre-shower smooshed-up pillow face.

The answer to what is going on here is always the same: a plaintive little voice (Pink) saying "Blue roaring at me". And then I say DOES THAT MAKE IT OKAY FOR YOU TO YELL AT HIM? and she says no and looks sad and then I say BLUE DID YOU ROAR AT PINK? and he hangs his head and says yes and I say YOU BOTH NEED TO SAY SORRY and then they do and I say I DO NOT WANT TO HEAR ANY MORE YELLING OR ROARING FROM THIS ROOM  and then I march into the bathroom and turn the shower on and try not to hear the yelling and roaring, the roaring and yelling that's coming at me through the wall.

It drives me crazy, the way that he needles her and then she takes the bait. They are both half of the problem, but he always, always starts it. I wonder if he's ever going to grow out of it, this need to annoy her with dinosaur impressions in the morning.

An actual picture of Blue in the morning. Not actual size. 

And then a few days ago, I walked into their quiet room after my shower and he grinned at me and said "Mummy, I not roaring!" and you know what? He wasn't, although the temptation was obviously killing him. I gave him a big high-five.

Now he says it all the time, out of the blue. I not roaring! And I say Well done, little guy! and it makes me realise just how much of his effort is taken up with not doing things. Not bouncing on the sofa. Not hitting people. Not touching my phone. No wonder he's always so tired.

And the same goes for me, I guess.

So often, I am feeling bad because of all the good stuff I'm not doing. Like, I'm not answering my emails (really, I'm not) and I'm not cleaning the kitchen (really, I'm really not) but hey! Where's the credit for all the bad stuff I'm not doing either?

For example. At the moment, things feel really difficult and stressful and I am not doing anything useful, at all, ever, but I am NOT eating any more m&ms.
I have NOT killed anybody in my extended family.
I have NOT killed anybody else, either.
I am NOT buying any more bags on ebay this week.
I am NOT getting up from the computer right now to make a batch of caramel popcorn.
I am NOT calling in sick and staying home from work
 and I am NOT using this computer to book a vacation (alone) to the Caribbean or Italy or, well, anywhere.
(How about you? What are you NOT doing?)

All this stuff is as hard for me as Not Roaring is for my little guy. I guess it never ends, does it? So much of being a grown-up, or just of growing up, seems to be about developing self control, about NOT doing all the stuff that my id wants.  I was listening to a radio play recently (because that's how rock'n'roll my life is) and one line that really stuck in my head was beware of the things we do to get by. Beware, I guess, of feeling the emptiness and sadness from the things that go wrong in our lives and becoming the kind of person who loses all self-control and just lets themselves roar, metaphorically speaking. (Or, you know, sometimes literally too).

I probably give myself too many passes on this one. Sometimes I think I just need to grow up.

I go in and wake them up after their nap. (They still nap in the afternoon. So sue me). He looks at me and says again I not roaring, Mummy! and I say I know, I'm so proud of you and I really am. Every minute of every day that he is not roaring, I am proud of him.

And now I find myself thinking it myself, all the time. When they provoke me - when I'm annoyed - when things go wrong - when the cat vomits unexpectedly - when these things happen and when I (rarely) manage to keep my cool, I say it to myself. Hey look, Mummy! You not roaring! and then I high five myself in my mind and then I clean up whatever mess is in front of me.

Things are hard in our house right now, and who knows, they might be about to get harder. But I want to be able to say this more: I Am Not Roaring.

Yes, it's true. I'm aiming for the self control of a three year old.

(High five, Mummy, high five).

...and that's why I have a headache.

Thanks for those bath flutes, Nanna. No, really.

And: yes, we have a problem with damp in our bathroom, and no, I didn't choose those tiles.

Also, no, I don't really know the words to that song and I have no idea why they demand it so often. I think it's about how girls would be happier if they would wear things that boys like and put on more makeup. I'm so glad my children are learning those important lessons in early childhood. 

And also also: parenthood sure is a weird thing. This is not the first time I've realised it, but it's the first time it's been so literal - in the video that is their life, I really am just the backing singer. I'd probably better get used to it. 

***************

No news from the geneticist. It turns out that they are waiting for a lab to send them a sample of my mother's DNA in order to do a comparison. They have her genetic results from the test she had fifteen years ago, which should be enough, but apparently the whole way they name genes has changed since then and they can't do a conversion because 'we aren't sure where one of the zeros should go'. Awesome. 

I will admit that when I found that out - after phoning the lab - I went straight upstairs to my bright pink bag and grabbed the M&Ms out of there and pretty much inhaled the whole lot. 

Oh, I should probably mention that my mother lives in Australia, and that's where the sample is. 

****************

Actually, I have just - as I was typing this - realised that there is probably a sample of my mother's DNA on the envelope that she used to send us the bath flutes. Maybe I should visit the lab and see if they can sequence her saliva from where she licked the seal. 

No, I don't think so either. 

***************

I really  need to start thinking about something else. Lately, what's been on my mind (probably somewhat inappropriately, to be honest) is the whole are we going to acquire any more children? thing. There is too much swirling around in my head about all that, and I really don't know where to start. I think I might try to sort the issues into compartments and attack them one at a time. Here are my current contenders: 

Capacity (or how being a below-average mother should mean that I get to parent an easy kid)

Destiny (or how I'm trying to figure out the part of the Venn diagram where theology, loss, public opinion and adoption rules intersect)

Fertility (or how I was barely thinking about my actual reproductive system until I saw a nature documentary and realised I was jealous of a seal)

Velocity (or how the feeling of moving forward can trick us into thinking that we are making good decisions)

Responsibility (or how I struggle with reconciling the conflict between our current children's needs and a bigger family. Or maybe it's not a conflict. Is it?)

Doing & Being (or how being the person you want to be - or think you should be - sometimes involves doing a whole lot of stuff you don't really want to do)

Siblings (or how 'To Three or Not To Three' should maybe be 'To Four or Not To Four')

Yeah, okay, now that's in black and white it's really no wonder I haven't done any of that yet. Any suggestions for where to start? 

***************

One more also. I should have said this earlier - I'm so grateful for all the support you have given me over the last few weeks. I'm sorry that I haven't shown  it more, but it really means the world. 

Waiting For A Train

Still no mail. One way or the other: ring my doorbell, postman, ring my doorbell.

In the meantime. Here's the thing about living in an urban area:

Everything is right there. Our playgroup is so close we can walk.
However, on the way, we walk right past a strip club.

Also: our favourite park is right next to my favourite café.
However, it is also right next to a prison.

And also: we can go and eat our sandwiches at the train station anytime we like, since it is only about 150 metres from our house.
However, on the way, we cross about six super-dangerous ultra-busy roads. (Okay, two).

That's what we did yesterday, and and I feel like this picture sums up my life right now. Sitting, and watching, and waiting for something to happen.

Ring my doorbell, postman, ring my doorbell.

HOME!!!

We leafleted the neighbourhood, not really expecting anything. But in the middle of dinner we got a knock on the door and:

My boy is home!!! He's sleeping on my feet right now.  There may not be any fluffy bunnies around here, but I think I forgot that a fluffy kitten is even better.

Many, many hearts for all your sympathy earlier.

Compassion Fatigue

Honestly, I have compassion fatigue just looking at myself in the mirror these days. I'm so bored of being so whiny. I promised myself that I wouldn't post any more doom or gloom here.

But my cat has gone missing.

My beloved, furry, purry, sweet, handsome, hilarious cat that Jay got for me on the same day we applied to adopt. He is my first baby.

I have no idea where he is.

He never, ever, ever ever wanders. He's a homebody, an inside cat, a hungry hungry boy who has never ever missed a meal in the four years we have had him. Now he's missed three. He's been gone more than a day.

If you are a pray-er, please pray for his safe return. If you're a pet owner, you'll understand why.

The Four Week Wait

So, right now I'm in the middle (I think) of the four week wait for my test results from the geneticist. (I talked in detail about these tests here a year ago - here's the link - if you want to know what's going on).

This waiting period has been much harder than I expected. I mean, I knew it wouldn't be fun, but I didn't expect that I would want to bury myself under a pile of sand quite as much as I do. (Out of interest, does anybody else experience this? When I am anxious or sad, I have a really strong physical urge to get underneath something. A table or a duvet or a piano or something. I'm not kidding, and it kind of freaks me out. Generally I just aim for the duvet but this time I kind of want something heavier). (Please don't hate me for admitting that). I guess what I'm saying is that life does not feel very much like a fluffy bunny at the moment. In fact, I would say it is something of a bunny free zone.

Here's where it all went wrong. (Well, it all went wrong the week before, but here's where it went wrong on the day I actually went to have my blood taken). The tests were in Oxford, in a hospital we haven't been to since we got my first set of genetic tests five years ago, and last time we went in a back entrance and really only saw one room. This time, we used a different carpark and went in the main entrance and once we had taken one step inside that hospital it was clear that it is the kind of place where nothing good ever happens.

Giveaway number one. You know how hospitals like to make a bit of extra money these days by selling retail space? I've been inside a fair number of hospitals, and it seems the shopping area usually has a cafe (mediocre) another cafe (truly awful) a gift shop (magazines that nobody wants to read, and sad dusty teddy bears with dead little eyes) and oh, another cafe, even worse than the first two. That's not what this hospital had. Oh no. Next to the obligatory cafe, directly opposite the entrance, was a shop that only sold one thing: wigs. Uh huh. The shop that expects the most customers from the people who frequent this hospital is the I can't help noticing your cancer treatment took away your hair shop.  

 Also. You know how hospitals have those big direction boards with how to get to all the different departments? Well, all the departments in this hospital were the 'oh no, you have to go there' departments. Nobody was getting their hip replaced. Nobody was having a knee operation. Absolutely nobody was having a baby. It was all sad, scared people, walking around in pairs holding tightly to each other's hands. It was really starkly obvious that this was the kind of place where all the patients need to bring their spouses to their appointments for support.  There was a strange, strained atmosphere so yeah, I guess we fit right in.

Eventually we trekked across the silent corridors of misery, got to see the geneticist, and she was super-nice. Really, really super-nice. She said she hardly sees any second-generation testees*, and she'd already been in touch with my mother's geneticist (in Australia - I was suitably impressed) so she knew exactly what gene deletion she was looking for. I think that because I've already had some conversations about the biology behind all this with my mother and cousins, I knew more than most of her patients do when they come for a first test, so she kind of skated quickly over all the basic information and got into the nitty gritty of some of the treatment options. I was glad to find her really knowledgeable, but I'm not really sure that I was ready to go into all the depth that we did - it has been a really big thing for me, deciding that I do want to know about what's going on in my body, whether it's going to try to kill me at some point in the future, and I wasn't really ready to think about 'hmmm, Total Abdominal Hysterectomy with Bilateral Salpingo-Oophorectomy or just oophorectomy? Mastectomy with no breast reconstruction or mastectomy with reconstruction using stomach fat [that's when she offered me the bonus tummy tuck] or reconstruction using back fat or reconstruction using synthetics?' I have no idea. I don't know. I don't know I don't know I don't know. I don't know. I don't even know if I have the gene yet, so I'm not ready to think about this stuff, but of course now I'm thinking about it all the time.

Then - because of her fascination with my ovaries - she was asking 'so, are you planning to have any children?' and I just laughed, in that wow, this isn't funny at all, why am I laughing**? kind of way and said 'ummmmm, well, we've already sat in this room once before' and she said 'yes, I can see that from your notes' and then I laughed hysterically again and told her we had two adopted children because of our initial trip to the geneticist, five years ago, but that we really had no idea what we might do next (if anything) in terms of more children and she says 'well, if you were to get your ovaries removed...' and frankly, who cares what someone says at the end of a sentence that starts like that? Have I mentioned lately that I'm thirty-three? I'm thirty-three. I do not feel ready to think about getting my ovaries removed. Or my breasts.

And by the way, sometimes I would be tempted to type br3asts instead of breasts, because I want to keep people who are searching for naughty stuff away from my blog. But this time, I'm leaving it there because the horrible men who are trawling the internet looking for naked pictures? Well, I hope they find this post instead of what they were really looking for. Cruising the interwebz for a cheap thrill, boys? Well, I HOPE YOU ARE HAVING FUN READING ABOUT OOPHORECTOMIES.

Also. I know that some people reading this have actually had cancer, and all of us know people who have died because of it. I am very aware that what I'm facing is not actually a diagnosis of anything except for risk. I'm not trying to be a drama queen about all of this. I know that I must sound to some of you like the person who has only been trying to get pregnant for six months and now thinks that they totally get infertility. I realise that I do sound a bit uber-dramatic about this wait, this anxiety, and I guess that's why I took an unintentional break for the last few weeks, waiting for all of this to feel a bit less raw and panicked before I vomited it out here. And actually, I didn't intend to even vomit this much, seeing as how this is supposed to be an adoption blog, but my fingers just seem to keep typing of their own accord. Bad fingers. Bad, bad fingers.

And yeah, I may feel pretty stupid if I get the letter on Monday and it says Negative for the gene mutation, no heightened cancer risk. But I'm pretty sure I can deal with feeling stupid. I can think of worse things than having to type 'guess what, it turns out I'm A-OK' Sometimes I picture myself getting the letter with the results (the one that is supposed to come within four weeks of the appointment) and opening it up and it says NEGATIVE! and then I jump for joy and drink some champagne and then I start to think seriously about saving for retirement, because hey, I might need to do that after all.  But twenty seconds later I wish I hadn't had those thoughts. After all,if I do get good news, I'm sure I'll figure out what to do without having planned the minutiae, and I don't want to have to put those fantasies away. I don't need them. After all, I'm okay with happy surprises.

Bad news, on the other hand - I do have a plan for that. Over the last week or so, I've been collecting a 'bag of treats' that I'm only allowed to open once I've got my letter. I know it's shallow, and trivial, but I wanted to have something shallow and trivial to look forward to during a week that might be really hard (and a month that has already been really hard).  The bag itself is bright pink***, and so far inside it I have:

and to be honest, I feel a little better just thinking about it. I'm also waiting on a mindless girly DVD I ordered from Amazon, and I am ABSOLUTELY taking suggestions for other things that should go inside. What would you put in a bag of treats? (Don't say a puppy, even though that is an awesome idea). The criteria are: entertaining, mindless, fun, not too expensive, able to be enjoyed immediately. And not a puppy.

So anyway, that's me right now. Believe me, I know how boring this is. I will start writing about adoption again soon, I promise, but right now this is eating all of my mind-grapes. I'm so sorry that I owe so many people emails, and that I haven't commented on anything at all lately. I think what I'm really trying to say is:

Normal service will resume shortly. 

*hee hee. That sounds like testes. I was going to find another word, but then I thought this post might as well have some male body parts along with all the female ones. 

**I've been doing a ton of this lately.I was filling in my sister in law on everything that has happened over the last few weeks and I was telling her "and then we had to take Blue to hospital and that was weeks ago and we are all still sick and now I'm waiting to find out whether I'm going get gene linked cancer HA HA HA HA HA!" and a part of me was looking on and thinking 'wow, it's really time to stop laughing Claudia' but it was that or head for the sandpit so, well, what can you do? 

***annoyingly, as far as I can tell, this organisation only exists in the US which kinda stinks for me. 

Clues About My Mental Health

One day I'll do a proper update post about my mental health. This is not it. 

Right now, things are somewhere between 'Not OK' and 'Yikes'. (Silver lining: I ended up buying a really nice handbag from ebay). Things continue to be really tough, for about ten different reasons, none of which I have had a chance to process properly. (Okay, okay, this vagueness is mostly me avoiding a summary of my trip to the geneticist on Tuesday, because I'm not ready to write about it yet. Spoiler alert: she offered me a free tummy tuck, which wasn't weird at all. Okay it was). Also: dental work is more fun when they use enough anaesthetic. YES IT IS. I'm talking to YOU, root canal dentist lady from Wednesday. But there are two different family health things going on (nobody who lives in this house) and I feel more confused and anxious than I'd like to admit about it all.

Anyway. I'm sorry I haven't been around much. This is the way things are here at the moment. I really appreciated the funnystuff you all posted last time- they cracked me up, which is no mean feat right now. Thank you. And now I'm off to watch some more Friends sort my children out.

So Much For Recovery Week

Last week, we had three different sets of visitors from abroad. It was SO good to see all of these people. I got to spend an amazing weekend with a dear friend, meet two lovely new friends, and talk late into the night with one of my fantastic cousins and her super-nice boyfriend. It was great. It was also pretty full-on - I didn't get nearly enough sleep and had this week down as 'recovery week'. I'm due for some annual leave, so it was all lining up - days off work, no big commitments, some easy food in the slow cooker, lots of rice milk, some time to work on my book. AHHHHHH.

Yeah, right.

So on Monday night, things start to go south when I have to take Blue to the out-of-hours GP. He'd been unwell all day - coughing and so on - but at bedtime he started breathing rapidly and his pulse went right up. I took him up to the GP at the hospital where they listened to his chest and said 'oh, this doesn't sound good' and nebulised him. Then, they referred him to paediatric A&E. At paediatric A&E they sent him straight up to the children's ward, where the nurse measured his vital signs and gave him oxygen.  At this point, about 80% of my brain was really worried for my darling boy, but the other 20% was feeling smug about how right I was to get him checked out. And Jay didn't think we needed to bother!  I thought, while he sat there, uncharacteristically subdued, looking like a sad and tiny spaceman in his little-boy-sized oxygen mask.

 This is getting boring so I'll summarise. An hour later, we got to see a doctor. Two hours after that - 3.30 am - they found a bed for Blue and he was admitted to the ward. (They had the space for a bed earlier than that, they just couldn't find an actual bed, which seemed kind of like a fundamental thing to have lost. Note to self - do not get surgery at this hospital). An hour after that, they woke him up for more medication, and an hour after that and an hour after that and an hour after that until Tuesday morning.

 The whole experience was weird - I had no idea we were going to be staying at the hospital when I left the house with just my purse and my keys. Nobody really told us what to do, either - most of the parents there seemed to be old hands, but nobody was talking and I didn't know the drill. They didn't even explain that we were going to be staying until hours had passed - I know it is all routine for the staff, but it was pretty scary and disorienting for me. I know their job is to look after the children, but I think that taking better care of parents in this situation would probably help the kids in the long run. I know that nobody who makes those kind of decisions is reading this blog - I'm just sayin'. Would it really be so hard to print out a leaflet, people?  Anyway. I was also wishing that I had brought a toothbrush and some pyjamas, or at least was wearing some more comfortable underwear. I was telling myself be grateful for free healthcare, Claudia, be grateful for free healthcare. Millions of mothers around the world would love to be able to complain that their free, high-quality hospital service didn't quite communicate effectively with them. Millions of mothers around the world would love to find themselves unexpectedly spending a night in hospital because their child was getting good medical treatment. And all that is true, of course, but I couldn't help also thinking but those millions of mothers are not having their flesh crushed by this stupid bra. 

So Tuesday morning came and I had had about two and a half hours of sleep. So had Blue, but the asthma medication they were giving him (frequent, high) doses of has the same sort of effect on the human body as coffee. So at that point I have a tiny, sleep deprived three year old who is off his face on the equivalent of about seventy espressos. Also, I'm discovering that this virus must have about a 24 hour incubation period because my own throat and head and chest are starting to say hey, forget that small kid you're looking after, what about US? 

It was a pretty awesome day. It was made yet-awesome-er by the discovery that some nurses are mean. When administering drugs to a tired, hungry, jittery preschooler, it doesn't seem kind (to me) to shout "I do not have time for this silliness! I have lots of other things to do!"  That was fun.  Also fun - when Jay turned up with a bag of stuff for me, including new underwear that was even more unsuitable than what I was already wearing (because let's face it, men don't pick underwear based on comfort, do they?) and when the doctor said that we couldn't go home and he had to stay another night. 

Cue weeping. I was feeling so sick by this point, and so disappointed that we couldn't go home that I pretty much burst into tears in front of a nurse (who didn't care, obviously, because her job is to look after the children).  Again, I tried to talk myself into feeling grateful for this first-world-problem of too much medical care, but in the end I told myself to shut up and just let myself feel sick and miserable. Jay came up to swap with me, warning me that Pink was getting sicker and sicker at home.

At this point, it's Tuesday night. I'm so tired that I skip the shower when I get home, even though I'm disgusting. I crawl into bed and sigh with relief. The cat jumps up - he usually sleeps on my pillow - and I tell him how glad I am to see him. Then, for the first time ever, he decides to walk across my face with his claws out, just to say welcome home, I guess. Face bleeding, I fall asleep in about a minute and a half.

Wednesday morning, Pink wakes me up early, crying. I haul her into our bed and give her some baby paracetamol. She throws it straight up. I give her some milk and she throws that up too. My limbs have turned to lead. I put a towel over the vomit patch - mostly- and eventually we both fall back asleep.

Later that day, Blue is discharged from hospital. He comes home, still high as a kite, and immediately starts fighting with his sister. I look after them and try to stop them killing each other while Jay goes back to the hospital to get the prescription for more medicine for Blue. Except... he can't, because... someone has driven past our parked car in a truck and totalled it.

Yes really. On this day, of all days, someone has totalled our car. While it was parked. Fortunately our car was only worth about five hundred pounds, but still. 

There's no moral to this story, none at all. It's just a horror show. (So why can't I stop thinking Hmmmm. I wonder if we could handle a week like this if we had three?) We are still up to our ears in it all, and Jay has just tonight started saying 'hey, my throat is really sore'. Quelle nightmare. Please tell me something to cheer me up - just found out there's a way to melt 7lb of belly fat a week with one weird old diet tip? Found something hilarious? Got a cute video of a cat on youtube you're dying to share? Now's the time.

Seriously. Please.

Because next week, next week: On Tuesday, I'm finally going to see the geneticist. And then on Wednesday,  in a random medical scheduling collision of horror, I have a root canal. I think it might be a while before things look up around here.

Give me strength.

(Or at least - failing that - give me videos of kittens).

Oh, and another thing

I'm going dairy-free for a month, in an effort to see whether it will cure my chronic wheezing. I hate the very idea of doing this- I eat everything. When people ask about dietary requirements, I always say it, smugly:  "No, I eat everything" as if my lack of food allergies makes me somehow morally superior (pretty sure it does).

And now I'm giving up dairy. (Well, milk-butter-cheese. I'm not giving up traces of lactose because I'm too lazy I don't think that will make a difference since I'm not properly allergic).

I started yesterday, and was suddenly more tired than I can ever remember being. I had an awful revelation that actually, milk is what has been giving me energy! I'ts been keeping me alive! I was never going to survive without miiiiiiiiilk! And then I realised that I hadn't had any coffee, because I usually have milk in that. Most likely that was the real problem.

Problem #2, along with yesterday's sudden onset of narcolepsy: I've just found out that soy milk is disgusting. Do I have to try every brand until I find one I don't hate?  Does anybody know how to make almond milk at home? (I've got a blendtec). Am I doomed to drink my coffee black from here on in, or no coffee at all? Will I ever be able to have a takeaway latte again? Will I? WILL I????

In short, I have no idea how to do this. I know that I should probably just google this stuff, but frankly I'd rather catch up on reading all your blogs. Any tips would be greatly appreciated.

The Penniless Princess: A Review, Plus Some Other Stuff

Okay, before I begin:

Personally, I think that creating Christian resources (books, DVDs) for kids has got to be one of the hardest jobs on earth. Creating Christian fiction is tough. I mean, it's really really tough. It's tough writing for adults, and a thousand times harder writing for kids because hey, are you preaching the gospel to these kids or are you teaching them how to live as believers? So your target audience is, say, eight years old, and their parents go to church. Really, that tells you nothing about who this child is, where they might be spiritually. And maybe that's why most kids Christian resources seem to fall into six categories.

The first is a kind of junior prosperity gospel. The message here is: trust in Jesus and your life will be okay. Things might be hard at the beginning, but if you trust in Jesus you''ll be picked for the team / pass your test / get a boyfriend, depending on the age the book is aiming at.  As if the point of coming to Jesus is to make our lives better, rather than to save a people for himself.

The second is straight-up moralism. A lot of sunday-school type fiction goes into this category. Jesus loved his friends, therefore you should love your friends. The End, as if Jesus' primary purpose was to show us how to live rather than to sacrifice himself for us exactly because actually, we never will be able to live like him.   As if the point of Christianity is learning to live by a set of rules for their own sake, rather than living in a restored relationship to our creator and redeemer.

The third is probably my least favourite of all. This stuff doesn't really have a message at all - it's just milky and sappy and fluffy and its only virtue is that its not offensive. It's like aspartame for the soul.  The characters might go to church, they might mention Jesus a few times, they might pray a bit, but if you took all of that away the story would be exactly the same. There are no meaty themes, it's just the Disn*y Channel with Christian sauce.  There's nothing to wrestle with.

And hey, I have nothing against the Disn*y Channel, or against mindless entertainment. (Maybe I should, but I don't). But ugh, what a waste if we're trying to engage our kids with the meaning of life, and what do we, as Christians, think that Christianity is if not the meaning of life? Why are we buying them Christian books and DVDs if we aren't trying to teach them about God, to shape the way they think? (Personally, I think that we can be a bit too apologetic about that. I believe I've found the truth in Christ - of course  I want to teach my children that same truth. Their spiritual life is their own, of course, but I would be bemused by anybody who had any kind of deeply held faith and didn't want to share it with their children). Christianity that is merely cultural is nothing but a waste of time.  My point is this: Christianity is the meatiest subject in the whole universe. Hello, justice, atonement, sacrifice, redemption, everlasting love, restoration and justice.  Do themes come any bigger than that? Christianity is the meatiest subject in the whole universe. There is no excuse for Christian fiction to be sappy or fluffy. Not for kids, not for anyone (and most of what I've said on this third point covers a huge, huge chunk of women's Christian fiction too, unfortunately).

The fourth and fifth tend to be much better, I think. The fourth is re-told bible stories. I'm a fan. Done right, these have all the meaty themes missing from Type Threes, lots of opportunity for discussion and also some truly fun ancient Hebrew names.  The fifth is allegory - a genre that can go horribly wrong but also very, very right. I really think The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe did as much for me spiritually as any other book I read as a child (and yes I know CS Lewis said that it wasn't strictly allegory but does this look like a literary analysis blog?)  The interesting thing about Type Fives is that they don't ever actually talk about Jesus - instead, they have a story that runs sort of parallel to the gospel story. There's usually a character who is pretty much perfect, who engages in some kind of act of sacrifice, who redeems one (or more) of the other characters, who often follows the riches - humiliation - restoration arc. That can get verrrry messy, but again, to see it done right: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. 

The sixth, elusive, category is set in the real world and deals with real characters grappling with the real-life implications of what it means  - or what it would mean - to follow Jesus. I hardly read any of these when I was a kid, because of the aforementioned elusiveness. If you know of some good ones, please let me know.

All that to say: good Christian resources for kids are really hard to find. So when, a few weeks ago, I was approached by the people at Veggie Tales to review their new DVD, and I was really happy. I really like the idea behind Veggie Tales - Christian stories for kids. Told by vegetables. Okay, when I write it out it just sounds silly. But I like that they are funny (hello! Vegetables with foreign accents! I love it!) I like the idea of all the re-told bible stories, I like that they are genuinely amusing and kids really seem to enjoy watching them. I haven't bought any for my kids yet (thinking they are probably a bit young) but nieces / nephews / little friends have been watching them for years. I've been eyeing up Silly Songs and trying to work out when my kids will be old enough to start really enjoying them. (Now, probably. I'll get on that).

And all that to say - I really wanted to enjoy The Penniless Princess, but I didn't. It's a re-telling of The Little Princess, by Frances Hodgson Burnett (which I read many years ago, but can't remember in too much detail). In the book, a little girl (whose mother is dead) is placed in a boarding school by her very rich father. After her father dies, the headmistress goes back on her promise to treat the little girl well and turns her into a servant. She remains steadfast and befriends some difficult characters.  Eventually it turns out that her father's best friend has been looking for her all along and she is restored to her rightful place as the rich kid.

And the 'Christian' DVD is.... pretty much exactly the same. This is one of my two major issues with the film. The protagonist (a stick of rhubarb, of course, named Sara) talks about Jesus, talks about praying, but it all feels very pasted on top of the 'real' story (which, I guess, it is). It feels sort of like a cross between a Type Two (moralism - in this case, even when people are nasty to you you should be nice to them) and a Type Three (a story with Jesus bits that isn't really about Jesus at all) and a Type One (if you trust in Jesus, in the end you'll be rich again).  To make it even more confusing, there are elements of Type Five in there too.  In a way, I think the Christian themes would be more successful if the whole thing was treated as allegory, and since the source novel was written in 1905 (thank you, Wikipedia) I wouldn't be surprised if it was read that way, at least partly, when it was first published.  The whole riches - humiliation - restoration formula is sort of Jesus-ish, and the protagonist is entirely perfect the whole way through- again, she seems more like a Jesus allegory than anything else.  Is Sara the saviour or the saved? In short, it feels a bit like a genre-bending mashup and I think it's actually all a bit confusing, or at least not particularly helpful. I know I can be prone to overthinking things (cough *understatement* cough) but this really does feel fundamentally flawed at the story / message level. All the words sound Christian-ish but I really wouldn't recommend it as being particularly helpful in understanding the gospel.

My other big issue with this is that the strapline is 'A Lesson in True Worth'.  All through the middle section, when Sara is banished to the attic to work, she says to her friend: "Even if you look like a servant on the outside, you can still be a princess on the inside". On one level, okay, yes, that is absolutely true. Man looks on the outside appearance, but God looks on the heart. No matter what our position in life is, if we are Christian women and girls, we are daughters of the King. If that makes us princesses, I guess we are princesses.

However:"Even if you look like a servant on the outside, you can still be a princess on the inside". Personally, I feel like this is entirely missing the point. What does it really mean to be a daughter of the King? Does it mean sitting around all day in tulle? No. (Unfortunately). Servanthood isn't the opposite of being God's girl - it's the reality. The absolute reality. Here's what Jesus has to say about that:
Matthew 23:11 The greatest among you will be your servant.
Mark 10:43 Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant,
Mark 10:44 and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all.
Luke 22:26 But you are not to be like that. Instead, the greatest among you should be like the youngest, and the one who rules like the one who serves.

Follower of Christ = servant. Being a daughter of the King, a princess, means being a servant. This is not a trivial point.  Particularly because - have you met little girls? I have yet to meet even one who doesn't truly believe that she is a pretty special person. Barring abuse or neglect, I think that most little girls have no trouble at all believing that they are worth it, they are special, they are definitely a princess on the inside no matter what anybody else says. Maybe this isnt' the case all over the world, but this DVD is... well, it's a DVD. Any girl who is going to watch this is probably in the top 10% of the world, economically speaking. I do not think that most little western girls are struggling for Christianity to tell them that they are worth their oxygen.

Quite the reverse. I think the real shock of real Christianity for little girls (and big girls, and boys and men too) in our uber-privileged society is that that it is not all about us. It is not about how great we are. Instead , it tells us that we can't save ourselves, tells us to put our trust in a man who died and rose 2000 years ago then calls us to a life of service. Not really very much like a fairytale. Jesus' little sisters are not going to have an easy life. That's the real deal. If we are telling our kids that Jesus is coming to save us from a life of servanthood, well, I'm afraid we're lying to our kids.

And it's this second issue that means I won't be playing this DVD for my kids again. They enjoyed it the first time, and Pink particularly liked the peas (I did, too).  But I don't want her ever hearing "Even if you look like a servant on the outside, you can still be a princess on the inside" again. She can wear all the frilly dresses she wants (and oh, she is adorable in a frilly dress) but I don't want her thinking that means she gets a pass on service.  I don't want her thinking that servanthood is something to be avoided, something for Other People.

Instead, I'm going to wait for something where the frequent quote is: "Even if you look like a princess on the outside, you can still be a servant on the inside".  Now that's a message worth teaching. That would be a film I would like my daughter to see.

That would be a lesson in true worth.