Little Shop of Horrors

I've never seen it, actually.  It is the only musical my mother in law likes, but what I have seen of it in show choir competitions a thousand years ago was enough to convince me that I don't really want to watch it. 

But this morning I used it to prepare a mini musical for my husband's branch of the family tree to perform in the talent show at this weekend's family reunion. 

The family reunion is always a challenge because some of the people there have been related for their whole lives, and then some have only started hanging around more recently.  So there is this wierd melting pot thing that is supposed to happen.  But it is challenging when you share neither blood, nor history, nor common world view to really melt with people in a more or less positive way.  Challenging.

I was singing in my devo yesterday this little chorus I made up:
Wherever I go, whatever I do, let me be found hiding in You
Wherever I go, whatever I do, let me be found leaning on my Beloved

What I meant was,
At the family reunion this weekend, as I'm feeling socially awkward and counter cultural and freakish, and am trying not to eat piles and buckets of food that will do me no good whatsoever, please help me stay connected to the only One that can get me through my little crisis. 

I have a phrase I am pretty sure I invented:  fishbowl parenting.  When a goldfish lives in one of those glass fishbowls (think: Cat in the Hat), he has no privacy, except darting in that little castle thing.  He is on display.  I always call parenting in a situation where you are in continual close encounters of the unavoidable kind, "fishbowl parenting".  In a fishbowl parenting environment, if your kids misbehave, everyone knows.  If you discipline them, everyone hears and knows.  If you 'train' them, instruct them, indoctrinate them, brainwash them, everyone knows.  And if you train them in a wierd, countercultural way, well, everyone knows that too. 

And if your wierd, countercultural way is hypothetically different from the way the listeners are raising or did raise their children (including, hypothetically, the way they raised your husband, hypothetically) there exists the potential to offend or alienate or tick off in some way.

And it is also possible that this whole thing is mostly in my hypothetically paranoid and insecure brain and that no one gives pig snot how I raise my children.  Maybe.

But all of this insecure wierdness feeds my desire to eat crap, because everyone knows that highly processed carbohydrates and mostly hydrogenated lard and high fructose corn syrup makes insecurity and fear go away, right?  Well, in the moment, it seems like it would.

On the contrary, eating carrot sticks and hard boiled eggs and bunless hotdogs while washing s'mores off of lots of little sticky fingers always makes one feel so secure and confident and, just, happy.

What an opportunity to live out my fasted lifestyle and choose eternal pleasures rather than earthly and temporary anesthesics.  What a great time to build character.  What a beautiful moment to lean on my Beloved.

AAARRGGHH!

But that's my only option.  I can't go over it, can't go around it, can't go under it.  Gotta go through it.  If I make it to the other side without gaining 5 lbs, that will be evidence that God exists.  Not that I'm wondering.  And if I can get through the next several days leaning, clinging, abiding with some measure of joy because I (quoting Ann Kiemel) have a giant of a God in me and together, He and I, we're out to change our world, if I can do that, then I think maybe I can call myself a grown up, a bridal soul, a real Christian.

I'll let you know.