How Life Is Different

One of several questions posed to answer in a special project sent by daughter Victoria:  
How is life different today compared to when you were a child?

I understand that this question is probably about life in general, society in general.  What major changes have I seen, etc?   The arrival of color television, computers, cell phones, of course.  So many conveniences today that I could not have imagined as a child.  A dishwasher, for one!  A dryer  (we hung the clothes outside on the line!!).

But I think I will answer it more in terms of how my life specifically is different.   There is a huge world of difference between being raised in Mississippi and living in New York!

Growing up in Mississippi,  I lived almost exclusively in small towns.  Since my father was the minister of the church,  our lives revolved almost exclusively around church activities and events.  In that culture, most everyone went to one church or another.  The church and the culture of my childhood are so deeply enmeshed that I cannot pull them apart.  For instance,  the "training" of the girl child was to be sweet, never assertive or aggressive,  and totally submissive.  This expectation was tied to the biblical story of Adam and Eve, and other biblical texts which supposedly demanded that submissiveness.   The way that was lived out is that the women were expected to wait hand and foot on the men.  The men would sit.  The women would serve them.

The revolution of the 1960's and the 1970's changed all of that for me.   Those were the decades of the sexual revolution, and women's liberation.  Women's liberation in particular was at the forefront of television talk shows, and books, and conversations among friends.  No longer would women "know their place",  but suddenly women are expecting to be equal, and are not willing to be submissive.

Probably the biggest change for me is that I am now married to a wonderful husband who has not one iota of expectation that I "serve him" or wait on him.  He values an independent partner who pursues her own path in life.  He encourages, rather than seeks to control.

Life is different today compared to when I was a child primarily because I have been liberated!   I have been liberated from living a "role".  I have been liberated from narrow views of God and theology;  I have been liberated from both overt and subtle expressions of racism.  I have shed any notion that a woman cannot be a clergy, or a president!

I am so so liberated, compared to the child I once was, both in thought and action!

I do believe that I have retained some of  the more positive aspects of my "training" as a southern lady.  I am very unlikely to be unkind, or aggressive.  I do not swear.  I would never take the Lord's name in vain.

Even though the fundamentals of it have changed,  I have kept my faith.   By that I mean that the essence of the Christian faith has to be rooted in love, rather than judgment.