Balance? What balance??

I recieved this email today:

Hi Joni,
I am one of the authors from EmpoweringLDSWomen.blogspot.com, and we're collecting guest posts from various inspiring mothers discussing how they are able to find balance in motherhood. We're posting these stories in a blog series the week before Mother's Day. Would you be willing to participate and write about how as a mother you are able to balance the many constraints on your time and still find time to do things that are rejuvenating for you? If so, we’d like your post to include the following things:

1. An introduction with some personal information about you and your family (it doesn’t have to be very detailed).
2. At least one picture if possible.
3. A discussion about things that demand your time in a typical daily/weekly schedule, as well as any long-term time constraints you have dealt with (e.g. how you balanced pursuing an education with starting a family, etc).
4. Most importantly, as you deal with all the different demands of Motherhood, how are you able to follow Elder Ballard’s advice to “find some time for yourself to cultivate your gifts and interests,” while not getting caught up in “time-wasting, mind-numbing things like television soap operas or surfing the Internet”?

Thanks also for the inspiring insights you always share on your blog. I'm still fairly new at this, and I look forward to hopefully getting to know you better.

Although I had to politely decline the invitation, due to the fact that I'm not LDS and I haven't the faintest idea who Elder Ballard is, I thought I would like to write the article anyway.

Christianity wrap up part I - Story of a Survivor

I had the privilege of interviewing a handful of women who opened up and shared their stories with me on how Christianity has changed their lives. Before I move on to mormonism, I would like to share some of those stories with you. These ladies have given me permission to use their information and have allowed me to give them a voice to speak to the world about their relationship with God, for which I am very grateful. These stories are in their own words.

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Photo by Mark Cornwell

This is April's story.
When I was younger, I grew up in a Methodist church. I was baptized as a baby, so I wasn’t aware of what was going on or anything like that, my parents raised me in the Methodist church. I had a lot of fun writing notes back and forth to my friends during the service. I wasn’t really engaging at all. I tried to listen to the sermons, but it was just not my thing at all, even when I got older. 

As soon as my folks allowed me to not go to church, I stopped going to church. It wasn’t because I stopped believing in God – there hasn’t been a moment in my life where I didn’t believe in God. I know that that sounds weird to some people, but my parents introduced me to him at such a young age, that out of the gates, I believed in God. Most of that had to do with my mother and how she raised me, how she treated me, and how she had that hopefulness all the time, happiness seemingly all the time.

ugly words [or] god is not a rapist

RAPE.

It’s an ugly word. It hurts coming out of my mouth. It elicits a visceral response, a bitter taste on the back of my tongue.

But it is how I would describe my first experiences with the church.

I was raped as a child. Someone took my innocence and my trust and they replaced it with cowering fear.

I was raped  spiritually and emotionally and mentally.

My own power was taken from me and in its place, the power of Someone Else took over, and that “someone else” was the Church.

But the worst rape I experienced was the rape of my perception of God.