I couldn’t turn the channel fast enough.
All five of us piled on the queen bed watching a cooking show when the commercial break brought an invitation to watch 50 Shades of Grey. My teen daughter gave me a look that told me her peers were talking about this film, too, as I fumbled for the remote. My 7th-grade son asked what it was about, “Because it looks just like a love story,” he said.
That’s what they want you to think. It’s a movie about violence and sex. The world wants us to think it’s about romance and love, but it’s not. I’m shaking.
I flipped to the next channel and the latest news of terror in the middle east filled the room.
My 8 year old looked at me with her deep brown eyes and said, “The world is scary.”
I turned the TV off and wondered how to teach my kids about real love-the kind that makes us pray for our neighbors in the war on terror while shutting out the lure of our anything-goes culture.
I want to pin recipes on Pinterest and google how to make a sliding barn door. I want to protect them from the world. Some days I want to live in my bubble and not think about how the rest of the world lives.
Two days later 21 people were beheaded in Egypt. More death. More terror.
More Christians.
It hit close to home. And it made me long for another home. Because I can’t protect my kids from the world we live in.
It made me think about living widely obedient and what that really means.
It made me wonder at my upcoming trips with my daughter to a predominately muslim world. (Updated to add: We work with women, some who are Muslim. I certainly don’t think every Muslim is “bad” any more than I think every Christian is “good.” I’m simply being honest–these events make me pause and wonder, “Is this safe?” But I still go.)
