The great debate

THis week in sunday school , we discussed leviticus 23, teh story of Balaam and the talking Ass. This Balaam was a non-0Israelite prophet, and probably was not such a bad guy. The fact that he couldn't wee the angel that his Ass saw, was probably due to the Lord removing his prophetic sight from him, that he was only able to communicate with god intermittently. I feel that I am only able to communicate intermittently, but this is not due to God removing the means of our communication but rather my own intermittent worthiness. That being said, Balak, who is tryign to get Balaam to curse Israel thinks of God as soemone who can be bought or manipulated into doing the will of man. Balak may not be such an awful person in general, be just has a very wrong idea of how God works.
ANyhow, Balak builds 7 altars, sacrifices a bunch of animals, the Balaam goes to curse Israel, then ofcourse God tells him to Bless Israel, and he does that instead. Then Balak, not being one to give up, builds 7 more altars, and offers up a bunch more animals. Balaam is again constrained to bless Israel.

The big question that our wonderful teacher brought up at the end of this lesson is this;
How much of our church service is done like Balak, building 7 altars and offering animals so that God will do our will?

This brought up some introspection. What exactly is God's will concerning my life? I want my life's master plan to include a 3:30 marathon, possibly a few 100milers and being a seminary teacher. I also want to serve my fellow man by teaching high school math, after raising my 4 wonderful children. I also want to spend every saturday evening watching Dr. Who with my Husband who will continue being my faithful spouse well into eternity. I want to be a democrat who works towards real change in this country's foreign policy.

I am afraid that my life might contain some difficulties. If my marriage were to prove undesirable, I would be uncomfortable. Perhaps my political ideas will develop into something more than heartfelt wishes and half formed ideas and I will actually have to take drastic action to live a life in accordance with what I believe to be right. Financial devastation could occur in the form of job loss, or a family member could die, or I might have to talk to my parents about serious matters and watch them face their own craziness.

I wish they would separate. Marriage is not about being chained to the albatross forever. This is the bad side of temple marriage. When there is abuse -especially emotional, which is harder to see and often perpetrated by the woman- the abused spouse feels extra obligation to stay in the bad relationship and the abuser can use that to guilt them into staying.

So far my strategy has been to ignore their craziness and move far away. I also have a lot of kids, so if they are on the phone I can just pretend that someone needs me and hang up. This will not work when they kids are older, but because my Mom is so self destructive she will probably be dead by then.

I am so not visiting them this summer.