lies

I'm saddened. When the girls were smaller and before school their lives revolved around only what Adam and I wanted them to be exposed to. We controlled the environment. That is not so any more.

Tamara has a friend at school who we will call J. Well J. and Tamara are really good friends and it seems from what she tells me that they talk and play together quite often. This in itself is not a bad thing. It starts to become complicated when you know that J. is not a christian. Or should I say his parents are not Christians.

He has told Tamara before that all churches except for his are mean. I asked her if her church was mean and of course she said no and I asked her if she told him that. She said that she did. But he told her again that all other churches were mean. She said,"Well mine ain't." (I can totally see Tamara saying that matter-of-factly to this little boy with a grin on her face.)

Well now it is going beyond other churches are mean. Last night I was tucking Tamara in bed. We said our prayers, I sang to her and then she started reflecting on the day. (I don't know if the reflecting is her way of processing the day or a way of stalling bedtime or perhaps both.)

So she says," J. said to not pledge the flag and all the animals will be nice to you, even the sharks won't bite you."

What?!? (I'm thinking this in my head) I asked her to repeat what she said again because I hadn't quite processed. Once I figured it out I asked her if J. said the pledge of allegiance. He doesn't. I asked her if he didn't "pledge the flag" so all the animals would be nice to him. She said that she guessed so. I told her that we believed in doing the pledge of allegience and that pledging would not make the animals like her less.

She started talking about something else but in my mind I could not let this go. This little boy was telling lies to my child. Of course he was probably just passing on the lies he had been told but still, I don't want Tamara to think these things are true and since he is not being raised as a Christian his lies will inevitably become more damaging.

So Tamara is still reflecting and I change the subject back to J. and what he had said. But now after reflecting a little on my own I had come up with some reasoning to help Tamara gain some perspective. I told her first that it was a lie that the animals would like her if she didn't pledge the flag. J. had told her that even the sharks would not bite her. I told her that was a lie. (I did bring up that J. probably didn't know that it was a lie, and that someone had probably told him that lie too.)

I think Tamara though it would be cool if the sharks didn't bite her because she really likes sharks and knows that they can be very dangerous. She told me that she said only one of the pledges at school but not both of them. (She was believing J.!)

So I say to her, lets pretend that you are swimming with the sharks. How do they know if you pledge the flag or not? Are the sharks going to ask you if you pledge the flag before they decide to bite you? To which the answer was of course not, sharks don't talk! How would the sharks or any animal for that matter know whether or not you pledge to the flag.

With these two questions I get this quirky little grin that she does when she is pondering on something that she thinks is silly. (So I knew I had made sense to her.) I know that I may be overreacting. But I don't want the girls to believe these crazy lies.

Lord I pray that the truth always reveals itself to my children. Please place a hedge of protection around my girls not only physically but I pray for your protection of their minds and spirit. Amen.