This Isn’t Love.

“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.” (1 Corinthians 13:4–5, NIV)

Weddings nationwide use that quote from the Bible. It was even read at mine. Often though, I think we forget what it means. This is the only way I can rationalize how Christians across the United States support a president whose actions display the opposite of what those words mean.

I was raised knowing the Golden Rule: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Here’s the thing: it doesn’t specify your “Christian neighbor.”

How does turning away refugees who need help follow this rule?

How does denying legal US residents the ability to return to their homes from vacation show love?

It is easy for me, in my warm home with bountiful amenities to think that I am normal, but in the larger picture of our world, I am not. I am very very lucky. So many people don’t have close to what I have.

• Worldwide, 780 million people do not have access to clean water and an estimated 2.5 billion people don’t have good sanitation. (Source: https://www.cdc.gov/healthywater/global/wash_statistics.html)
• Over 59 million children of primary school-age aren’t receiving an education. (Source: https://www.unicef.org/education/bege_61657.html)
• 400 million people do not have access to essential healthcare services. (Source: http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2015/uhc-report/en/)
• And lastly, the UN estimated in April last year that 400,000 people have been killed throughout the civil war in Syria. (Source: http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/04/staffan-de-mistura-400000-killed-syria-civil-war-160423055735629.html)

Denying legal residents the ability to return to their homes isn’t displaying love. Denying refugees a safe haven isn’t displaying love. Love doesn’t only have to apply when it’s easy and convenient.

Love “always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.” (1 Corinthians 13:7, NIV)

Always. That’s what love is.

**This Post Original Appeared on Medium**

This Winter

There is beauty in the ice

Unique patterns and form

It is easy to forget

That it started with a storm

To watch is just a pastime

To play is life or death

When everything still matters

It hurts to catch your breath

It is easy to get lost

In search for truth misplayed

Reflections in a mirror

That’s twisted up and frayed

The hours in the day are short

The fear is sinking deep

Bitter chills cascading down

And frozen tears we weep

As the ice shatters in pieces

We are broken inside

Spring seems so far away now

But hope moves like the tide

© 2017 by Julia Faye Slade

More than words

A lot has happened since I last posted here, and as much as I'd love to talk about me and tell funny stories about my son, I'm not going to do that with this post. Today I'm going to post about something a lot more serious, and possibly very uncomfortable.

A couple weeks ago and along with everyone else in the country, I watched a video of a man running for president bragging about sexual assault. I then watched some people defend him by saying it was just words. They then discounted the women coming forward as taking advantage of the political climate.

I think we like to view sexual assault as something we saw on a television show, but it doesn't really happen. The thing is: it does happen, and it happens a lot.

I've been lucky to live a very good life. I can also tell you that I've experienced unwanted sexual advances that have been far from appropriate. And these instances were minor in comparison to what I know has happened to other women. I know women who have been raped, and more than one. To repeat: I know multiple women who have been raped. Just think about that for a second.

These are not joking words that Trump said. This is not locker room talk. That's an insult to women and men everywhere. I know plenty of men, including my wonderful husband, who would never say things like this. Do you know what we call the men who do say things like this? Assholes.

Please don't vote this man into office. I don't want my son to grow up in a world that tolerates this kind of behavior. 

Please. Don't. 

Happy Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day, everyone!

So, I'm back in school and am taking a "technology in education" class. One of the requirements is that I have to start a blog and make a certain number of posts on it. They gave us a whole lesson on how to write a blog.

I probably should have taken notes...

(If anyone is curious, I opted to start a different blog for this class since the topics are predetermined and not consistent with my sarcastic nature.) (Yeah, you read that right: I hold the bar for this blog to be too high for those posts.)

I haven't blogged in a while and since I am not going to use my class's predetermined topics, what can I blog about?

Trump?
Superhero movies?
Star Wars?
Game of Thrones?
Baseball?
Basketball?

Just kidding. I would never blog about basketball.

I started to write a blog about Trump, but my heart just wasn't in it. I'm also seriously behind on watching superhero movies. Going to a movie requires a level of planning that I haven't managed since Star Wars, and that is so 6 months ago. (But hey 6 months from now... Rogue One! Woohoo!)

I haven't watched tonight's Game of Thrones so I can't talk about that...

And I haven't been to a single baseball game this year.

So it's Mother's Day. Is this what it is to be a mother?

Maybe I should have used my class's topics...

My political wish-list

I've always tried to steer clear of politics on this blog. Politics are such a divisive and passion-filled issue, and my experience is that entering into it on social media is usually a fruitless effort. Many things recently, however, have made me think that there is value to speaking up and voicing an opinion. No, I'm not going to tell you which candidate to vote for. That's your own decision. I can, however, give a wish-list. So here it is:

1) I wish people would remember to treat each other with love and respect. This goes for everyone, not just the people who agree with them. It's easy to be respectful of people who agree with you. It's a lot harder to be respectful of someone with a dramatically different worldview than you.

2) I wish people would try to work with the people that don't agree with them. Wouldn't it be nice if there was more compromise in our government so that people could actually get stuff done? The "my way or the highway" approach of politics these days reminds me of a childhood playground, and I don't mean that as a compliment.

3) I wish people would find out if their candidates were telling the truth, and actually care if the candidates lie. If we don't require them to be honest, who will?

4) And finally, I wish people would fact-check the stuff they share on social media. I know I've said this before. I just don't know if I can say it enough.

So that's my list. Seems simple, right?

Sigh...

(I'll be funny on my next blog... Promise)

Fountain of youth... or whatever...

"I need to see your ID, young lady."

Someone almost got slapped today.

I know... I know... I should take it as a compliment, right? I don't. It's ridiculous. I'm going to be 32 in a few weeks. I'm not 20, and more importantly, I don't look like I'm 20. My hair is a quarter gray, and I haven't dyed it since before I was pregnant with my now 10-month old son. I'm wearing absolutely no makeup, my hair is pulled back in an out-of-fashion but very useful bun. My glasses are 8 years old and incredibly out of style because my only slightly newer pair met an untimely death due to said son.

My 20-year-old self would be appalled at my lack of fashion.

So here I am, in 3-year-old Target clothes, at the check-out counter, with my son in tow, buying a bottle of wine, and you're going to call me "young lady" and card me. Okay, then. Good for you. You thought you were paying me a compliment.

You weren't.

I'm almost 32 and I don't want to be 20. I've earned those 12 years and have gone through the bumps and bruises that make up venturing into adulthood and figuring out life. How is it a compliment to set me backwards 12 years? Why would I want that? Why does our society want that? No, thank you. Life is much better in my thirties.

So if you needed to card me because you have to card everyone under 40, whatever. I'll play along with your charade, even though you never card my husband who was born on the exact same day as me.

But don't call me "young lady".

Happy New Year!

Happy 2016!

Wow.

Things I thought I would have done in 2016 if you asked me in 1996:

• Become a pop star.
• Won at least 2 Oscars.
• Become a bestselling author.

So I'm pretty much on track.

It's strange that getting married and having a kid didn't make the list. Those have turned out to be the things that I'm most proud of. I say this as my son tries to pull one of the slats out of our blinds. His face is also covered with dirt and spit up. Maybe I should clean that up...

Okay, I'm back. What was I saying? Oh, right: my life goals in 1996. I am so thankful things didn't turn out as I had hoped at the wise age of 11 years old. Life is unexpected, and while that sometimes can be a difficult thing, it can also be a very good thing.

(I would have made a terrible pop star. Sure I've got killer dance moves and auto-tune can work wonders, but my skin is way too pasty white and tanning beds are bad. Skin cancer is real, folks.)

Things don't always go as planned. For example, I planned to finish this blog post with some witty and important insight, but my son is trying to eat a power cord so I should probably take care of that.

Happy New Year!

Thanksgiving for Paris

I've been struggling with this blog. It's Thanksgiving this week, which is my favorite holiday. (Stuffing my face full of gravy-soaked foods? Yes, please!) Most years, I would say that writing a blog about all I am thankful for would be cheesy. This year, I'm making an exception.

I'm thankful I woke up this morning, in my warm bed next to my husband, with my son in his room practicing standing in his crib.

I'm thankful I got to pour myself a cup of coffee and write this post because I know so many others in the world have not had such easy mornings.

As many of you are aware, I have a degree in French. As many of you are also aware, I can't speak French, so don't ask me to. Anyway, in college I had a contemporary French history class where a huge portion of the grade was to do a research paper. We had the entire quarter to work on this paper, so naturally I wrote mine the night before it was due. I chose to write it on the status of the Muslim community in France. I chose that topic because it had the most articles that were readily available. I surprisingly got a good grade on it, but I sadly don't remember much about what I wrote. I wish I did. I wish I had spent more time on it. I spent so much of college thinking that this stuff would never be useful later on in life, but that one was. And I failed. Not in the grade sense, but in the learning sense.

I failed because I had an opportunity to really study the dynamics that the people in France are actually experiencing. We so barely scratch the surface with our headline-grabbing instant-gratification media consumption. We get our "news" from internet memes and propaganda machines, and it can be so easy to forget that these are people, people who wake up every day and mostly just want to be surrounded by their loved ones and eat a good breakfast. It's people like that who were killed in the Paris and the Beirut attacks. And it's people like that who are fleeing Syria. And it's people like that who are turning away the refugees out of fear for their loved ones.

I failed because I looked at that paper as an assignment to get done, and not as an opportunity to really understand a situation in our world that was once so easy for me to ignore. Many people shared articles on Facebook calling out the fact that everyone focused so much on Paris and not on Beirut. That's fair. We should have focused on both. I think the reason everyone focused on Paris so much is because of how close to home it hit us. I was a French major and spent a summer there. This was a place I had a personal connection to. And it was a place, in my mind, that was supposed to be safe.

There's this small corner of my mind where I store the knowledge and awareness of the atrocities that are happening regularly in our world, outside of the comforts of the "safe" western countries. I think about it and I think "that's so sad", but I don't really let myself feel it. If I feel it, I have to accept how awful it is, and I'm not sure if I can handle that. It's so much easier to stay safe over here and not really comprehend that what's happening over there is happening to people. Real people.

People who want to wake up every morning surrounded by their loved ones.

I don't have a solution for this. I wish I did. I wish someone did.

So this Thanksgiving, I am also thankful for love and for compassion. I am remembering two golden rules: love your neighbor, and treat others how you would like to be treated.

Because in this global community, everyone is our neighbor. I need to remember that.

My novel journey...

Once upon a time, the biggest challenge in the world was writing a novel. I had no idea if I could because the time and dedication required was daunting. 

And then I did it. It took me several years albeit, but way back in 2006, I finished my first novel, The Vision of Caldaria. 

Finished is such an arbitrary word, it seems.

Three years later, in 2009, I self-published it. It wasn't ready, and I knew it wasn't, but I wanted to move on to writing the sequels and the other stories I had in mind. I did just that. I wrote two sequels that I'm quite proud of, but there was always this nagging feeling about the first book. It wasn't ready. It didn't tell the story I wanted it to. 

So about a year ago, I picked up the novel I had "finished" 8 years prior. Today I released a new updated version, with a whole lot different but the core story still the same. Now it's a book I am proud of, not just because I did it, but because I think it's finally ready. And now I have the very daunting task of marketing it and convincing people to read it.

I used to think the biggest challenge in the world was writing a novel. 

It was. Now I just hope people read it.

I swear I'm not turning this into a mommy blog...

So I am a member of this mommy board on Facebook. It's provided me with much amusement and sometimes horror, but I'm discovering that's a consequence of being a parent. You'll never agree with everyone, and as a result, sometimes the internet is not your best friend. (It's full of crazies.) (Like me.)

Anyway, one thing I've noticed on this board is that people tend to complain about their spouses, and more often than not, other moms will chime in saying that "he's got issues" or even "leave him". Don't get me wrong: many of these guys might have issues and some even should be left, but shouldn't that be a last resort? A lot of these are responses to things like comments on clothing the mom is wearing or how the baby is being fed. (Not whether or not the baby is being fed, but disagreement over the method.) I appreciate that my husband is wise enough to keep his opinions about my attire to himself, but if he did one day decide to chime in with his two cents, I wouldn't consider that a divorce-worthy offense.

Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but when I see so many moms have an abundance of opinions about the best way to raise their child and in the same breath be so willing to suggest pulling the plug on the child's other parent, I get confused at the end goal. Plenty of children can grow up happy and healthy with divorced parents (including yours truly), but it usually isn't easy on anyone. I also think that compromise is a magnificent tool and that treating your spouse with love and respect can often result in that being done to you in return and set a great example for your kids. (Not always. Some people are d-bags and always will be.) (All genders included.)

Marriage should still be a priority once the kids are in the picture, maybe even more so. It's so easy to say "you were my #1 but now my kid is my #1", but that's not how I like to view it. My family is my #1. As a whole. And that includes my husband. Otherwise those marriage vows we made, amidst Mario Kart references and Star Wars music, just don't quite mean as much.

(Our wedding was awesome.)