Month: April 2021

Brain Washed or Blood Washed?

Brain Washed or Blood Washed?

January 2021.While assisting a teenage girl with a scrapbook-like project I overheard her mother who was talking on the phone, addressing someone in her conversation ‘the log’ which usually is called any married man with priorities in right order, who does not conform to cultural AKA man-made ‘rules’. Men who have reached 1Corinthians 13: 11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I set aside childish ways.

Hearing the word ‘the log’ I raised my head and looked at her daughter; she replied to my look “My uncle doesn’t mention or shows to his daughter the gifts my mom sends her.”

From July-January deceiving and dividing had worked. ‘The log’ is her only sibling.

I felt like a watchman to notify people whose mouth piece they are being. Unbeknown to us some times we invite deception with our tendencies of self-centeredness. Deception, like virus or cancer that needs human body to live, demands spread through human mind; it seers conscience and hardens the heart. I wanted to question God by adapting Moses words from Deuteronomy 29:4 ‘Why haven’t You given this sister a heart to perceive, eyes to see and ears to hear, to this very day?’

I had two entries in my journal after Messenger conversations they contained clues.

The most recent was dated July 2020 and was titled ‘Who is in the details?’

He had attended a funeral and called to tell me how impressed he was that in the midst of COVID-19, the fare well of the man who had passed on, a truck driver, looked more like one of an influential person or politician. He compared it with his sister’s funeral where they couldn’t see the end of the cars’ tail, but that funeral took place 2012, there were no pandemic restrictions then. He was mostly touched by how the 20years of age son, of the man being buried, spoke about his father.

After the funeral he went straight to his in-laws who live in the same city, lashing out at them how bad of a parent their son is, ‘the log’.

He passionately told me; “I went to my in-laws and made Mike (his father in-law) not even a river can wash him.”

It gave me the impression he had premeditated about it after hearing the speech of the young man. His conscience must’ve convicted him as a father and probably as a son too.

“I told Mike, call your son, now!

He called.

I asked his 3years old girl Did you like what your aunty sent you?

Surprised she said ““What did my aunty send me?”

I brought it to you yesterday in the gift bag. You remember?

My brother in-law, asked his wife to bring it. The little one’s face lit and asked her mother to help her wear it running to the mirror.”

(One wishes the advance of technology didn’t need to reach up to the video talking) J

After the short and ‘to the point’ video call his father in-law heard. “In her age your daughter’s children knew the names and talked on Skype with my friends and second cousins back home. I made sure they knew them. Your grand-daughter does not know even her one aunty she has. The gift was a way for them to bring to her attention that she has an aunty that loves her but that’s the type of parent your son is!”

His father in-law told him “No one compares to you, no one can do what you do, and we all know that.” It was just what he wanted to hear. Temporarily might have made him feel better as a parent putting down or diminish other parents’ priorities.

I interrupted him saying that his brother in-law is focusing on more immediate needs of his children, or he doesn’t want his children to associate relatives with the gift giving. I do not agree trashing someone’s parenting for prioritizing different than you did. Plus they both are working from home and have to manage an infant and a three year old. Introducing the extended family and relatives should not be the most important thing to a parent.

He cut me off by saying “You are brain washed!”

I stood my ground that even if it wasn’t pandemic there are more pressing things, preparing their food, reading to them, interacting with them, even more now that cannot take them out to the play ground.

He hung up on me.

Five months later, hearing his wife call her brother ‘the log’, and his daughter “explaining” to me why her mother did so, it was clear who were brainwashed and it became alarming to me. No one had used their brain to say ‘why in the world was so important to him to ‘trace’ what happened with the gift; what even triggered the ‘curiosity’ about it?

Am I asking for too much from people? Should a sister just automatically throw her brother under the bus for not making her gift priority? Is that supposed to be a family deal breaker?

How can a sister so easily be blinded about her only brother for such a trivial thing?

An Instagram post I had recently stumbled on from Samuel Say @slowtowrite made sense why the grudge lasted five months “If you are easily offended, you are easily controlled.” I would add easily deceived too.  

I looked for the other entry, spring 2018 ‘Be the Surfer Not the Wave Tossed and Driven with the Wind.’ dots started to connect.

What had appeared as sarcasm two years ago had progressed to condemning.

I’ve had an issue with the intention behind sarcasm all my life; is humorous, playful or belittling.

My discernment had concluded that the darkness must be interested in infecting the younger generation.

The conversation had been about few pieces of bedroom furniture to be moved from his house to his brother’s house. Being meticulous himself he loaded them safe to the vehicle, but, because his relationship with his parents is sour he didn’t want to be the one taking the task to the end.

To ‘save’ him the awkwardness of facing his parents, his sister’s husband agreed to take over. During the transporting one of the nightstands fell from the trolley and came apart, had to be thrown right then and there. Knowing that bedroom set had sentimental value, his sister’s husband was disappointed at himself and heartbroken for his in-laws.

After everyone, well most of them, had already comforted him saying, they were glad that he was not injured, he received a text from his niece by marriage “Woe to you” or can be taken also equivalent to “Shame on you!”

After learning that one of the nightstands did not make it to the next destination the accuser’s volume between her father’ s ears must’ve gotten louder than the inner ‘dialogue’ prevented him from going to his brother’s house in order to avoid being face-face with his parents. And it seems to me to quiet that voice he meditates in ways of spilling the misery.

I do not know why he calls to proudly tell me-‘the brain washed one’-what measurements he takes when his conscience convicts him.

He thought was humorous and ‘wittily’ to tell his son first, to send the text “Moses, Woe to you!” His son firmly said ‘No’.

The fact that his son said ‘No’ ought to have served as red traffic light for the father to STOP.

Then he asked his daughter to send it.

“Spell it!” she excitedly ‘ordered’ her father, since the saying was to be written on his language. Maybe she wanted to restore her relationship with her father. Few months ago she had said ‘NO’ in an occasion that wouldn’t have hurt her to say ‘Yes’. Full of pride he had asked his daughter to play the piano for his aunty with whom he was talking on Skype.

I looked for an entry in my journal which had come after the conversation with his daughter titled ‘Where Did the Spatters, Go?’ You know what I mean the ones who spat on Christ?

After his daughter deflated his pride he quickly ended the Skype conversation with his aunty and spat on his daughter, then in rage he grabbed her from her hair, dragged and twisted around, her body making circles. Her father spitting her in the face shocked his daughter more than the painful pulling from the hair and twirling around.

Writing the text “Woe to you Moses!” for which she eagerly said ‘yes’ to, was akin to stepping on someone’s fresh wound. She probably was more concern to make up for the inappropriate and unnecessary ‘NO!’ she had said few months ago.

Would her dad take responsibility for it if his daughter ended up making it a habit building a pattern of saying ‘yes’ to mind games, I bet every father wish their girls build their courage to say ‘no’?

Domino effects can start with sending a sarcastic text for which her brother said ‘NO’ to.

A dilemma to do or not to do the right thing is overpowered by self-righteousness or ego convinces him not to.

He then gets tossed around ending up premeditating misery needs company.

Not wanting to humble himself and face his parents he ended up feeling guilty for the broken piece of furniture. I saw a pattern

In the case of the nightstand’ s ‘funeral’ he premeditated how to put down the person who came to his ‘rescue’ his sister’s husband, throwing to him the shame.

In retrospect he must’ve realized even hiding behind the moving furniture would have silenced the mocking voice of the accuser.

We have evolved packaging mockery as “sense of humor” in order to smoothly share some of it in form of sarcasm.

How would he otherwise recognize a ‘brainwashed’ person?

Hmm maybe because he buys sets of mascara to his daughter each time he physically abuses her? When his daughter was asked “Why do you accept the mascara? Why don’t you tell him how you feel?”

She replied “Yea that’s how he makes up; he takes me on driving practice or buys me things. Oh well it does mess my head up when he treats me poorly but then I have mascara!”

When Hailey’s hands got frozen, fingers bent in strange positions, during a nervous breakdown few days after her father had hit her for the 3rd time. Panicked she yelled asking her mother to come urgently and see what was happening to her. Haley’s mother inexperienced asked for help her husband’s relatives having been through same sort issues few years ago.

To their warning, “Be careful how you treat her, prior to ending up irreversible!”

He replied “Nothing is wrong with her she just wants attention.”

Mental conditions turned physical were what Jesus healed. They are called miracles because that’s what it takes to reverse damages that come as result of not listening to our conscience when we are convicted by it for doing unto others what we wouldn’t want it be done unto us.

In that funeral home, on July 10th, 2020 he might’ve honestly asked ‘Would my children’s speech be as heartfelt and genuine as this young man’s about the loss of his father?’

“In the place where the tree falls, there it shall lie” reads the last part of Ecclesiastes 11:3

May I suggest that if someone comes and makes logs out of cutting the fallen tree, ‘the logs’ will be much more useful.

We who know we are blood washed might be seen as brainwashed by the ones who hopelessly assume that few more works, or amount of mascaras, and the conscience will be cleansed, and the accuser will be silenced. The works kind of thinking is attempt to mocking God’s gift, also keeps us wondering “why bad things happen to ‘good’ people?”

We can either be blood washed by the One Whom was mocked and spat for humbling Himself before His Father declaring “It is Finished!” or we’ll be brainwashed, ‘Woe unto us!’ for assuming that our self-centered works and gift giving will please God.