Circles

Work tonight got me thinking. 

A manager and another employee got into a discussion about politics and what party they stood behind and such. The manager, a republican, was questioning the employee, a democrat, about the issue of abortion. (I started this by asking the manager how he voted, and managed to escape direct conversation while still enabling myself to listen in.) The manager, being rather conservative, believes that abortion is wrong period, end of discussion. The employee believes it to be wrong only when people go out and are stupid/unprotected and have abortions left and right out of their idiocy. However, the employee believes it to be alright when the mother will die if the baby is born, or the baby is going to die anyway, or other circumstances alter an otherwise normal pregnancy/birth. 

The matters of life and death have been on my mind recently because of the death of my friends mother. Here is how I see it, and perhaps I see it this way because a friend challenged my perspective over the summer, but nonetheless: 

A person lives to fulfill God's divine will. We, being human, do not usually know what God's will for our life is; we probably will not know when we accomplish it, and therefore we do not know when our time on earth is done. Now, if a woman (or girl, I suppose) becomes pregnant, her child has a purpose and a so-called destiny. The mother does not know what the destiny is, nor the child, but there is something that God has designed especially for this baby to do in its lifetime; God has created this being to have an impact on the world that He has ordained to no one else. What right has the mother to take that away? 

Now, you say, what if the mother died because the baby was born? Well, I will go back to my original statement. A person lives to fulfill God's divine will, which we do not understand. Perhaps that mother was born to give birth to her child, so that the child may accomplish wonderful things and impact many lives, more than the mother could do if she had lived and had an abortion. Or perhaps things would have been worse down the road if she had stayed. Either way, if she passes while the baby lives, she has fulfilled whatever God had planned for her. 

Some would argue the case of rape or incest. To that I ask a question: Why would you punish the innocent baby for a crime that it did not commit? For rape: it is the rapist who should be punished for what he or she did, not the unborn child. Same thing for incest. Give it up for adoption if the mother doesn't want it; there are plenty of couples out there longing for children. A grave longs for no one. 

That is my take on abortion. 

This Christmas

My brother woke me up at 5:30 this morning. I was very tired and cranky; I had not slept well and dreamed odd dreams. I had dreamed that I had a little baby boy, and I loved him very much. I remember rocking him and kissing his face and seeing him smile. It was an odd dream. 

I went downstairs as my brother rushed to jump on his new motorized thing that looks like the product of a scooter and a bike. I stumbled past my "Santa present" to crash on the couch. My parents came out all smiling and sleepy, taking pictures and opening presents of their own. We had opened most of our gifts the night before, on Christmas Eve, after I got home from work. My grandpa Jim was still fast asleep in our guest room upstairs. After everything was opened and the new Wii was discovered on our coffee table, I stumbled back to my bed and drifted back to slumber until 8:30. 

When I woke up, I got dressed and such and went back downstairs to eat breakfast. I opened my telescope and began to assemble it. While doing so, Lauren called. Isaac's mother had died that morning at 4 A.M. from cancer, leaving behind four children and a husband. I send up a prayer for them on this Christmas. 

Mistakes

I am so sick of making mistakes. 

Mistakes, mistakes, mistakes! That's all I do all the time is constantly mess up. At school, at home, and most definitely at work. It is so frustrating. Tonight, for example. Ten minutes before I left I spilt a whole box of Buffalo Sauce all over the floor. I take orders wrong, and am forever getting in people's way because I'm not sure what to do, so when I actually get around to doing something it's someone else's job or I'm obscuring some other job from getting done. I want to scream. Why can't I do something right for once? Why can't my body and brain coordinate smoothly? Why am I such an idiot? 

Of course, messing up leads to another thing: I am constantly saying "oh, sorry," which irritates me to death because I know it irritates others as well. I'm sick of saying sorry. I feel like such a doormat. If I mess up I wish I had the confidence to just keep going without a second thought after I've corrected myself. No saying sorry. No feeling stupid. Forget sorry. It's a fake word anyways when it becomes trite and overused. 

I want to be right for once. I want perfection. I want to be Christ-like. What is wrong with me?