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Greta

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Everything posted by Greta

  1. Scarlett, it was out of respect for you, specifically and personally, that I didn't mention what religion this person had been in. So your response is grating. You and I both know perfectly well that your religion gives very serious, life-altering, sometimes devastating consequences for leaving, so don't pretend it's that simple. Edited for a word that was too harsh.
  2. He has done / is doing that, and the therapist thinks he is ready. (It has actually been a number of years at this point.)
  3. Oh, I hadn't thought of that. Thanks!
  4. The thought of a UU church did occur to me! Unfortunately, there is not one anywhere near him. I am so happy that you found healing there. :grouphug:
  5. Thank you so much for taking the time to help educate me! :001_smile:
  6. That's a very interesting point. Thank you!
  7. I was surprised because the Roman Catholics that I know are so very gentle and kind, exactly the kind of spirit that I'm hoping he'll find. But I also realize that the church can vary a great deal from parish to parish.
  8. Thank you, Katie! I wasn't thinking of it when I originally posted, but I do think that being able to partake of communion would be an important experience for him, because he's never done it before (in his former church, only certain people are allowed to partake, and he wasn't one of them). So I would like for that option to be open for him. I can't seem to tell from the Presbyterian church's website if they are PC-USA or not, but I will try again, and I'll definitely put Episcopal and United Methodist on the list. Thanks!
  9. I'm so sorry. :grouphug: Yes, I wish I knew more people there to ask, but most of the people I know who live there either attend the church he's trying to escape or don't attend church at all. He knows plenty of people he could ask, but he's uncomfortable talking about it, and I don't think he'll open up. In fact, I'm not even sure he'll go through with it and actually attend a church. But I wanted to try to give him a gentle little nudge in the right direction. :)
  10. Thank you so much, Bluegoat! According to the website of the one Lutheran church in his town, they are Missouri Synod. Does that tell you anything? (Tells me nothing, I'm sorry I'm so ignorant about these things!)
  11. This is not for me, but for a loved one who is trying to heal from a spiritually abusive church. He needs a church which is warm and gentle and kind. No fire and brimstone. An emphasis on reconciliation rather than judgment. Particular points of doctrine or theology are not as important and the overall spirit of the church. And I realize that's the kind of thing that varies from church to church even within the same denomination. But which denominations would be a good place to start? Or which ones would probably be best avoided? He lives in a small town in a very conservative Christian area. The churches available to him are: Roman Catholic Episcopal Lutheran Methodist United Methodist Seventh Day Adventist Assemblies of God Church of Christ Church of God in Christ Church of the Nazarene Disciples of Christ Pentecostal Presbyterian Non-denominational And Baptist, lots and lots of Baptist churches! I just want to help him narrow his options down a bit. Any thoughts?
  12. I've had the "regular" flu twice and swine flu once. Two of those cases were before doctors routinely had a test to perform, and they were just diagnosed based on symptoms. I'm confident in the diagnosis, though, because the flu is a whole different world from other illnesses I've had. I've heard other people say, "I had the flu once, it was like a bad cold." Um, no, you had a bad cold. Because the flu is NOTHING like a cold. That's like saying "I got stabbed once, it was like a bad paper cut." :lol: I've also had bronchitis, pneumonia, strep throat, many stomach viruses, and gazillions of colds. Nothing. Like. The. Flu. I get vaccinated every year now, because if there's even a small chance of not having to go through that again, I'll take it. ETA: My daughter got the swine flu at the same time I did, and she's had a cough ever since, and that was ten years ago, at least. Her cough has never gone completely away. My husband had a-fib and when he got the flu, it became permanently worse. He barely noticed it before, but it's been a real problem for him ever since. He also has a friend, a young and previously healthy marathon-running friend, who died from the flu. It's nothing to mess around with.
  13. Ah, okay. I thought the question at hand was more specifically about how we can find abusers among the homeschooling community, and whether homeschooling regulations should be changed to try to address that problem. The question of how to prevent/find abuse involving preschool children is a separate one, at least to my mind. But apparently it was not a separate question in this discussion and I just misunderstood. Sorry about that, and please carry on!
  14. Wait, why would you “have to� Current homeschooling regulations don’t apply to preschool aged children, so why would additional homeschool regulations have to apply to them?
  15. :lol: I don’t remember the Seinfeld gym episode. I’ll definitely have to look that up - it would be nice to get a laugh out of this!
  16. The gym staff never leaves the front desk, and seems, as far as I can tell, completely oblivious to what goes on in the gym beyond checking people in when they arrive. So that’s something management could choose to change if they wanted to.
  17. Ah, so there IS a way that management can ensure good etiquette! Thank you!
  18. I never think of anything clever in the moment! I'm editing here to explain better: The first time it happened, I was surprised and confused, so I just caved in and let the guy have the machine. That was not the best way to handle it, and I recognize that. The second time, I was "saved" by a gentleman on the next machine over who said "I'm done, you're welcome to this one." Then I realized this was going to keep happening, so that's when I started politely asked if I could work in with him (which seems odd since it really should be him asking if he can work in with me, since I was on the machine first!). And while no one has outright refused that request (yet?) they have acted very irritated by it, and glared at me the whole time. It's uncomfortable.
  19. We have a no-contract, month-to-month arrangement, so I can easily walk away any time. What's kept me there is that my husband's employer has an arrangement with this particular gym for a discount. But I'm feeling more and more that the discount is not worth the hassles.
  20. I don't suppose you would happen to know how the management goes about enforcing that prohibition? I'd like to be able to tell the gym manager, "here's what you can do about this."
  21. Okay, so there ARE better gyms out there, I just have to find one! Oh, yeah, that's another thing! :lol: Now that I'm complaining, I might as well just let it all out. No one re-racks their weights. No one. Normally, though it irritates, me, I just consider moving the extra weights off of a machine before I use it to be part of my workout. But when some jerk has left SIX 100-pound plates on the leg press, I am stuck! I cannot lift and re-rack 100-pound plates, and I cannot leg press 600 pounds!!! So the machine is just useless. And there are only two good leg press machines (plus one crappy one).
  22. Holy crap! I thought my gym was awful, but at least I've never seen a fight break out over it. Wow, that's discouraging. I hate that too. My gym has TWICE AS MANY bench press stations as squat racks, so when I see someone has dragged a bench over to the squat rack to do bench presses there it makes me want to scream.
  23. At my gym, it is common for people to put their gym bag or water bottle and keys or other personal item(s) on a machine to "reserve" it for themselves, while they're using another machine. It bugs the crap out of me, because the place is always crowded to begin with, and then you have people trying to keep you off of machines that they're not even using!!! Sometimes they don't even bother putting something on the machine at all, they just come up to you once you've started using an obviously empty machine and complain that they were using it (it was empty) or that they were "saving" it (with the invisible forces of their minds, apparently). Once, I even saw this tall, beefy, 30-something muscle-head male run up to a timid, frail, little 70-something year old woman, YELLING at her that he was still using the empty machine that she'd just gotten on. While that was a one-time thing (at least in my experience), I am routinely approached (always by a man) and told that the empty machine I've just gotten on was "his". It is really obnoxious. Women do the thing where they try to save a machine with their personal items, which is bad enough, but they don't have the audacity to chase you off of an empty machine. So, basically, I just want to know, is this something that I have to learn to live with? Is this normal? Is this just standard gym etiquette and it only seems terrible to me because I'm old and cranky? I could bring it up with management, but I honestly don't know what they would/could do about it. Should I start looking for another gym? Because between that and the fact that they keep it a stifling 74 degrees in there, I'm feeling pretty much done. The two nearest gyms to me are a Planet Fitness and an Anytime Fitness. Any experiences with those?
  24. I don’t know, to me this sounds a bit like you’re saying that since we can’t save *every* abused child, we shouldn’t bother trying to save more of them than we are right now. I don’t expect government regulations, on this or anything else, to be 100% effective. But that doesn’t mean they don’t help. Personally, yes, I am indeed eager to give up my right to homeschool without ANY oversight if it would save even one single child from abuse. The phrase “freedom isn’t free†applies here. Some freedoms come at too high a cost. The benefit of that freedom to me isn’t worth the cost of a child’s security and safety.
  25. Yes, of course. But I think I must be missing your point. Or maybe I need to clarify my question. Since the law basically required next-to-nothing of homeschoolers in their state, the family in this story complied with the law. But if they had lived in a state which required, say, an annual home visit or something along those lines, it's quite possible (and I would say probable) that they wouldn't have. So, when a neighbor (hypothetically) calls the authorities saying the kids are digging through the neighborhood trash cans, a much BIGGER red flag goes up if that person in a position of authority also sees that they are not complying with the laws than if they look, on paper at least, like law-abiding citizens. It gives them an even stronger legal basis for investigating further, for intervening to make sure the kids are being cared for. Doesn't it? I mean, I guess what I'm asking is, wouldn't stricter homeschooling laws make it easier for those in authority to distinguish between law-abiding citizens who are taking reasonable care of their children, and those who have gone rogue and are putting their kids in danger? In my state, the laws are so lax and so completely un-enforced that I know many homeschoolers who don't even bother complying with them, because they see no need, because there are ZERO consequences one way or the other. And yet at the same time, abusers would have no reason NOT to comply with the law, because there are ZERO consequences one way or the other, so it's an easy way to make themselves look good on paper. That seems to me to be a problem. And I'm not convinced that we should just throw up our hands and say "oh well, nothing we can do about it." I suspect we could do something, if we put our minds to it. Though I admit it will probably take sharper minds than mine. :001_smile:
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