My kid the Christian

Ok...stop laughing. I know I'm not supposed to be here, but my vacuum belt broke and I can't clean four rooms without it. I don't care how clean you keep your house, stuff is always behind and under things. And I have a house rife with breeding dust bunnies. : ) Happy, breeding dust bunnies which seem to be making homes in and under everything I own including a pair of Lyle's old shoes behind the bedroom door....call me nuts, but that isn't the place I would want to make my burrow if I were a dust bunny. Then again, who am I to impugn the tastes of the local flora and fauna?

So, before I wipe out whole colonies of dust bunnies, etc, I have to get a new vacuum cleaner belt, which gives me a reprieve. Heh. But I'm coming, dust bunnies....

The weirdest thing happened today, and when I say weird...when I say weird, it's got to be weird indeed. My oldest had a massive attack of IT, and it migrated with her from our house to the school my youngest goes to. While I had myself wrapped around my screaming, spewing daughter, a friend from the cafeteria came outside to see if she could help. This isn't the weird part. That was a good part. I am so grateful they know me as well as they do because it is scary to have your child do that in public. It always goes through my mind that I am this close to having some well meaning yet uniformed samaritan call the cops. So that part was nice.


My daughter asked why God was doing this to her. The friend is a Jehovah's Witness, the very people I have spent most of my adult life refusing to open the door to. But this woman has always been very not in your face with it, and she is very sweet...she began talking to my daughter about God, and could she give her a book which might help her understand God better, yada yada yada.

Well, fuck a duck.

My daughter is a Christian, mostly by indoctrination and my brief yet memorable stint as a Southern Baptist. I am not a Christian. I do not believe in *GOD*...but I respect that she does, and she respects that I do not. She is curious about Wicca, and whether I am Wiccan (something I am still unsure of myself), and we have really neat talks about the differences in philosophy. Still...for all that respect for her differing viewpoint, I do NOT want my daughter growing up "Christian". I detest organized Christianity, believing it has little or nothing to do with Christ and everything to do with power and control. And money, of course. So when this woman began spouting Christian dogma, I had to stop and think a minute...

My daughter was calming down, coming out of her little fugue, and she was listening. I realized that as distasteful as I find Christianity, it could help her because she believes in it. So now I am faced with a weird dilemma...is my need to pass on my own beliefs and faiths greater, my right and job to do that as a parent, greater than her right to believe what she wants? Is anything ok if it helps her feel better about herself? What if she decided to become a Scientologist? Branch Davidian? One of those nuts who were waiting for the flying saucers?

What if it helps?