hannah and caroline and me
(part thirty-nine)
((a mommy scorned...))

editor's note: so, are you tired of coming back and checking to see if any comments have been added to "a penny..." that might add fuel to your fire??? welp, here's the supply to the ever-increasing demand, only...it's not from me this time. it's from...someone else.

that's right.

after years of negotiations, the wife has finally come down on her appearance fee. please keep in mind that she totally hates me, too, so the venom that she is shooting in my direction should be taken for what it's worth. two, count it, TWO grains of salt. 

without further ado, i present for the first time on HACAM, mommy o'kelley.

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Now read this!!!


Kevin has asked me to blog on at least a dozen occasions. Really, I’ve been holding out to do so about topics that I can’t get out of my head, like how I don’t feel for a moment that gay marriage is a threat to my marriage or how I really hate that there are people in jail or prison at all or many other topics that move my soul and mind.

But, it’s come to this. I have to be honest. Our church family has so much potential and does so many things for its members and community. But, in the 10 years I have been coming to this church, this church family has hurt me the most of any group or individual I have ever encountered in my life. I have experienced a taste of what it must be like to be married to a politician or a coach or a minister. Apparently being vocal and being a leader invites others to say horrible things about you. Apparently it is an open invitation to vilify every action and misperceive every comment. It justifies others in making requests that you change your behavior or stop speaking your mind or just go away.

The “concerns” and opinions that make their way back to me (and I am no idiot- what I hear is only the a sample of what is actually said) and my family and my friends are usually comical in some way. My initial response is, “seriously? THAT was offensive? I thought that was the mildest of what could be bothersome.” And usually I’m amused. However, as drama and comments mount, it becomes poisonous. Some things hurt Kevin. Some things hurt me. Some things hurt our friends. But overall it is the most sickening feeling I’ve ever had.

I think I can imagine some of the asides in these “have you heard about Kevin’s blog?” conversations:

“and what about his sweet wife?”

“I feel sorry for her”

“that language! Does he use that at home?”

“I heard he beats her up. I’m sure he does.”

“I heard he hates girls. His poor daughters.”

Or maybe it’s more like:

“she’s as bad as he is.”

“she tries to make points in meetings, too”

“I heard her say a bad word once, and one time she didn’t show patience when her 3-year-old was screaming and throwing herself in the floor in the gym.”

“she lets her child sit on the stage during dinner.”

GASP!

Honestly, given my experience with the reactions to Kevin’s blog, there is no way to predict or know what other people might be saying. It’s obtuse. And frankly, I’m too tired to even think about it anymore. I get that Kevin’s blog can be offensive. I’m pretty sure he has said that before. Having had my share of arguments with my husband, he can be pretty difficult to argue with and can be infuriating. He always knows he’s right. I usually know he’s wrong. We usually reach some sort of consensus. Whatareyagonnado?

Let’s just be clear about something. If any one of the people talking behind his and our backs or any of your backs (now or at any time in the last few years) were to publish their comments and thoughts in an online forum, would you be so quick to judge those comments? I would hope so but I am fairly certain that it wouldn’t. After all, the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. And the past behavior in these situations really sucks.

I know that many of the people talking about Kevin’s blog have never actually read Kevin’s blog, and thus, this edition from me is somewhat wasted on the innocent. However, I can only hope that word can travel as fast that I feel like I am in an abusive relationship with members of my church as it did that Kevin looks at the internet on his cell phone during church. For the love…

During the sermon or announcements or hymns or anthem or any part of worship, how many of you can deny that you daydream? Write notes to one another on the bulletin? Make your Sunday to-do list? Look around and think about the choir’s hairdos? Wonder if we’ll get out of church in time to make it to Lee Garden before the crowd? Fall asleep? Would admission of these very human behaviors catch as much flack if you posted it on your blog or facebook? If you noted this in person or online, would word travel so fast? You all know where he sits, right? He’s not hiding it from anyone.

What really is at issue here? Is it the action/words or is it just that you are tired of Kevin O’Kelley?

It’s starting to feel a lot like the latter. We’ve seen this all before. The last time a group of church members turned on one of its own we lost a family and the “young” people who were associated with it. Actually, there are those of us whom that has happened to who haven’t left, too. Let it be known that Kevin O’Kelley does not stand alone. He has a wife and two young children. There might even be more spawn of Kevin one day (God help us all!). He has a Sunday school class (who he is on hiatus from) who loves him and looks forward to seeing him on Wednesdays and Sundays and sometimes other days of the week. He has created a Limbo atmosphere that is the biggest “attraction” we’ve had in years. But you probably wouldn’t like what any of those folks have to say either. I can almost guarantee it, because it’s out of your control. Maybe you want all of us to leave. That really would solve a lot of problems. At least until you (collective) turned on someone else…

Another aspect of this situation (and those in the past) that I feel the need to comment on is the sheer time and energy that is spent on Kevin’s blog and the loathing of said blog. Sure, my husband spends a LOT of time on the blog writing about LOTS of things he is passionate about. I can’t imagine there are those of you out there who spend near the energy discussing his man-love of (insert current sports star here) or his conversations with Kathy or his music reviews (although if you listened to some of the music he likes, you might think even less of him, if that’s possible- there are bad words in it).

What you don’t think about is that Kevin spends even more time thinking about the things that he writes about before they ever hit the page. And the marked difference in how Kevin spends this time and how many others who “can’t believe” Kevin’s blog choose to spend their time and energy is that I personally witness that Kevin spends equal time (maybe more) thinking about and participating in very important aspects of the daily life of the church. This week alone he has attended 2 meetings (both after leading soccer practice- Oh! The young minds he may taint there!) and has at least 2 meetings at the church in the coming week. He helped lead a Bible study. He coordinated a team that played over 2 hours of church softball on Monday. He will leave home without his family at 6:45 Sunday morning to prepare for Limbo. So, in coordination with all the time and energy that has been put into the blog, he’s matching that tit for tat in his daily actions at, for, and within the church and community. It’s like he never left the church staff. He’s just as busy as he was when he was the youth director there.

I’m in a similar boat in wanting to be involved in our church and community, except I don’t have the energy to fight you people anymore. I would prefer to put my thought and energy into my work and my activities in the church. I love my husband. He is not always right, but he is not always wrong. He rarely argues without good meaning and intentions behind it. If you took some time to see him as a human being, you might realize that too.

I swear my next post will be about something different.

Now, discuss amongst yourselves. Please print this installment along with the others you plan to print and distribute to your Sunday school class in your campaign to raise a rally against one of your own. I’ll put it in the Disciples’ Council meeting notes if you’d like. Just let me know.

what's a con-tri-bu-tor?
(conversations with kathy)
((a preview))


have you looked on the right side of this page in the last few days? have you noticed anything different? do you now?

remember early last year when i tried not-so-hard to get "hannah and caroline and us" off the ground. i'll give you some insight into the process. in january of 2009, i sent an email out to several individuals, friends and family, that i thought were close enough to me, the girls and this blog to be worthy and interesting new additions to these parts. i didn't necessarily want HACAM to become too diverse too often. i am much too selfish for that. but i was interested in finding folks that cared about the girls that had shown some sporadic interest in writing themselves to help freshen up the place, if you will. well, some responded to the emails. some didn't. some excused themselves from the idea. some didn't want to go first. i didn't do a great job of following up and "hannah and caroline and us" ended up as a two part series. you can see the two parts here and here. thanks to kiker and rebecca for being willing to come outside and play. if either of you ever feel an itch that needs to be scratched, you are always welcome on this blog.

many things on the blog fell by the wayside last year for many reasons, but i've never stopped wishing for more than my opinions to be the only ones shared on HACAM as this world continued to evolve. thankfully, i've found my next willing participant, kathy h.

who is kathy h., you might ask? you might not really care. but the girls will. the girls do. and that's all that matters.

physically, kathy h. is the personification of bearvsshark's final album (r.i.p, best band ever), terrorhawk. mentally, she's a lot like that feeling i had when i yelled "it's a future-back!!!" at the television screen towards the end of the third season finale of LOST. figuratively, she's the first car you drove when you were sixteen. ultimately, she'll define herself for you (here) over the course of however long "conversations with kathy" maintains both of our interest.

so, what will you guys be talking about?

i am glad you asked. we are going to have our own little book club mixed with the 'formidable opponent' segments from the colbert report.  it'll probably end up as part debate, part celebrating how smart and/or enlightened we both think we are, part me thinking she has no idea what she's talking about and vice versa.

our subject? our initial inspiration? conversations with god, book 1 by neale donald walsch.

what's that about?

well, the conceit is this: (from wikipedia)

"...at a low period in his life, Walsch wrote an angry letter to God asking questions about why his life wasn't working. After writing down all of his questions, he heard a voice over his right shoulder say: "Do you really want an answer to all these questions or are you just venting?" Though when he turned around he saw no one there, Walsch felt answers to his questions filling his mind and decided to write them down. The ensuing dialogue became the Conversations with God books."

sound interesting? well, yeah. the book is interesting. and if you can suspend your disbelief that this kind of dialogue could happen between one of us and the G-O-D, then it's really interesting.  

we won't be commenting directly (sometimes maybe not at all) on the book itself as much as we'll talk about ideas that the book spawned in our respective heads. i asked kathy to pick the first idea.

and?

she chose free will. is it really free will if we have to behave a certain way to find a certain reward?

this is going to be fun. hopefully, for all of us.

kathy...the floor is yours!