Fiery Darts

I have a Google thing that patrols the internet looking for the name of my blog or the link to my blog. I get a comprehensive email every evening giving me links. (Do you know how many times Halle Barry is associated with the word “homemaker”? A whole lot more often than you’d think.)

As the months have gone by and my blog has grown, I have become more and more the focus of very odd blogs and message boards. It would appear that some people find entertainment or amusement in, I guess the best term is trashing, homemaking blogs – specifically Christian homemakers. It is fascinating the things I read. I’m apparently a closed-minded bigot who can’t think for herself so her husband thinks for her — but yet who has the brain capacity to also be brain washing her children into being closed minded bigots via seclusion and child abuse. People wish they could take my daughter away so that they could teach her something other than abstinence and modesty, and take my boys away so that they can teach them how to be open-minded feminists.

I have two knee-jerk reactions to things like that. The first one is flight. I have a phobia to hostility and immediately I think about closing the blog down, quit being openly Christian, quit discussing God, or stick to just recipes and proper ways to mop the floor. Once I recognize and I work through the phobia, the next reaction is fight – respond, reply, comment just like when I used to be active in politics. I did the latter once and never will again. Despite a lack of hostility on my part, a level-headed, kind reply was met with such venom that I simply have never been back there again to ever read about me, even a continued discussion or response to my one reply. There’s no sense in it, no good to come out of it.

One particular site was incredibly interesting. There’s a message board that mocks Christian fundamentalists and I guess I’m new on their radar. They did everything from mock my appearance to what they perceive my sex life is like and everything in between. The cattiness reminds me very much of partisan politics. The kind of politics that had Time Magazine publishing 1980’s big-hair prom pictures of Katherine Harris (Florida’s Attorney General during the 2000 election) or Ann Coulter’s commentary on the ugliness of the women at the Democratic National Convention in 2004.

The thing about me is that I’m not really so much in your face – not the way I could be. And I’m not really classical fundamentalist. My daughter wears blue jeans, can text faster than most people can type, and carries designer purses. She’s upstairs nursing the cheek that got hit by a softball during tryouts at her public middle school. But, you know, we don’t eat pork so we’re obviously abusing our children.

A preacher I love to listen to while I run (my iPod is full of sermons instead of music – how dastardly of me) named Alistair Begg once said, “If you’re not being attacked by the enemy on a regular basis, then you’re obviously not doing any good and you need to step up your game.”

With a weakness against hostility, you can bet that is an area for attacking me. Between emails that get received, comments that don’t get published, and the results of these internet searches, there is certainly A LOT of hostility for Hallee the Homemaker. The kind of hostility that makes me hesitate before hitting the “publish” button for posts like “Brokenness“. Yet, that post alone garnered such a response, publicly and privately, that I knew I’d published it for a specific someone – or several specific someones.

So, I’m going to keep being me, Hallee the Homemaker, and I’m going to keep being me for those thousands of people who read me every week. Within the mix of all of those recipes and articles about the best way to mop your floor, I’m going to keep talking about God and the Bible and how amazing a personal relationship with Jesus Christ has been for my life, because that is who I am. I practice what I “preach” and I live as the person whom I portray. I love my neighbors, I give constantly of my time, talents, and resources, and I do, without hesitation and without prejudice. I am desperate to do more, to give more, to be more – but I’m handicapped right now holding down the fort while my husband serves our country. One day, however, our focus on ministry will be full time and we can finally roll up our sleeves and dig our heels in and DO.

So Hallee the Homemaker will just battle back the fiery darts of the wicked one (Ephesians 6:16) because this is where God has me right now, and this is what He has me doing. I’ll win over my stupid phobias and challenge anyone to come battle me here on my turf. I’ll even love my enemies and those who hate me (Luke 6:27) because, really, that’s how I fly.