I See Through the Amen

I Think I’m the Christian Bullshit Whistleblower …and they know I know.

The older I get, the less patience I have for people who wear Christianity like a Halloween costume. They post Bible verses, inspirational memes, and “God is good” statuses, then turn around and treat people with all the grace of a parking ticket.

And before anyone gets offended, I’m not talking about imperfect people. We’re all imperfect. Lord knows I am. I’m talking about people who treat Christianity like the latest fashion trend.

Some people collect Stanley cups they’ll never use. Some people collect Bible verses they’ll never live by.

I don’t know why I notice it so much, but I do. I see the selective morality. I see the “love thy neighbor” crowd becoming remarkably flexible on who qualifies as a neighbor. I see kindness that only applies to certain people.

And I swear they know I know. They seem a little leery around me. You know how some people can walk into a room and sense tension? I walk into a room and my hypocrisy detector starts beeping like a smoke alarm.

Faith shouldn’t be measured by how many Bible verses you post online or how loudly you proclaim you’re blessed. It’s measured by how you treat people when nobody is watching. Kindness, humility, honesty, forgiveness, and compassion will preach a louder sermon than Facebook ever will.

You don’t have to be perfect to be a Christian. But if your actions consistently contradict your words, people notice.

Some of us just have really good bullshit detectors.

I Don’t Want to Text My Lamp

Maybe I’m becoming an old grouch, but I swear everything has gotten way more complicated than it needs to be.

The other day I needed a light bulb. Just a light bulb. Not a life-changing purchase. Not a major financial decision. I wasn’t shopping for a car or a house. I needed something that screws into a lamp and lights up when I flip a switch. Apparently that’s no longer a simple task.

I stood in front of the light bulb aisle staring at enough options to make me question my intelligence. Warm light. Cool light. Daylight. Soft white. Bright white. LED. Dimmable. Energy-saving. Smart bulbs.

I don’t want a smart bulb. I want a bulb that’s smart enough to turn on when I flip the switch and turn off when I don’t need it anymore. That’s the entire job description. But now light bulbs need Wi-Fi. They need apps. They need passwords. Why does a lamp need to communicate with my phone? I don’t want to text my lamp. I don’t need notifications from my bedside table.

And once I started noticing it, I realized it’s not just light bulbs. Everything needs an app now. The thermostat needs an app. The garage door needs an app. The doorbell needs an app. The television needs an app. At this point, I’m shocked my toaster hasn’t asked me to create an account and accept updated terms and conditions.

The funny thing is that half these smart devices don’t seem all that smart. The old thermostat sat quietly on the wall for twenty years and never once lost its connection. The new thermostat occasionally acts like it’s forgotten where it lives.

Maybe it’s my age. Or maybe we’ve reached the point where companies are inventing solutions to problems nobody actually had.

I don’t need my refrigerator to tell me what’s inside it. I opened the door. I know what’s in there. What I need is for it to stop making noises that sound like a repair bill.

Sometimes I think technology has passed me by. Then I remember I’m not the one who decided a light bulb needed internet access. So maybe I’m not the problem after all.

Turns Out I Live on the Chisholm Trail

The other day I was looking at a map and discovered something I probably should have known years ago. Apparently, I live right where the Chisholm Trail used to run.

Not near it. Not sort of close. Practically on it.

All these years I’ve been worried about property taxes, Amazon deliveries, and whether the grass needs mowing, and it turns out that 150 years ago cowboys were driving thousands of longhorn cattle through this same area.

Can you imagine?

Today, if a neighbor’s dog gets loose, the neighborhood Facebook page goes into full emergency mode. Back then, people were moving entire herds of cattle across Oklahoma and hoping they all made it to Kansas.

The Chisholm Trail wasn’t some little dirt path either. Between 1867 and the 1880s, an estimated five million cattle and a million wild mustangs traveled north through Oklahoma. That’s a lot of hooves. Suddenly the traffic on Garth Brooks Boulevard doesn’t seem quite so impressive.

And here’s the crazy part. A cattle drive could stretch for miles. Cowboys spent months on the trail dealing with storms, river crossings, stampedes, heat, dust, snakes, and whatever else Mother Nature decided to throw at them. Meanwhile, I get irritated when my air conditioner takes longer than five minutes to cool the house down.

The area around my home address is considered part of the historic trail corridor. That means where my house sits today, there were once campfires, chuck wagons, cowboys sleeping under the stars, and enough cattle to make modern HOA committees spontaneously combust.

History is funny that way. We think of it as something that happened somewhere else. Then one day you realize you’re standing right in the middle of it.

Now every time I drive down my street , I’m going to imagine some cowboy looking around and saying, “One day this place will have traffic lights, coffee shops, and people paying half a million dollars to live where my cows are standing.”

And honestly?

He’d probably laugh himself right off his horse.

Clearly I'm A Big Deal

I saw this the other day.... and well... I laughed way harder than I probably should have. But then I started thinking about it. Seven days. The entire world. Mountains. Oceans. Trees. Animals. Sunsets. The Grand Canyon. All of it?  Seven days? 

Meanwhile, it took nine months to put together this masterpiece known as me? Honestly, that tracks. Have you met me?

Apparently creating a planet is one thing. Creating someone who loses her glasses while wearing them, walks into a room and forgets why she’s there, and spends twenty minutes looking for her phone while talking on it… that takes time. A lot of time. Quality craftsmanship cannot be rushed. Maybe the extra two months were spent adding sarcasm. Lord knows I have that in abundance ...  Or stubbornness. Or the ability to remember something embarrassing I said in 1987 but not what I had for lunch yesterday. It could have been the sense of humor that took a little more time. Lord knows that received extra testing. 

The more I thought about it, the more it made perfect sense. I’m not saying I’m more complicated than the entire universe… But the math is right there. 😏

So yes. The world may have only taken seven days. But I took nine months. Clearly, I’m kind of a big deal.

They Walked Away… We Kept Living

I’m gonna just say it… I was a single mom for seven years. And to be honest, I loved it.

Was it hard? Of course. Was it my own fault? Yep. I picked the biggest losers I could find to marry and have kids with. I own that. But once I accepted that reality, I quit wasting my time wishing people would be different than who they had already shown me they were.

One thing is for sure—my kids didn’t do without. They had a roof over their heads, food on the table, birthday parties, school activities, and a mama who showed up every single day. In a lot of ways, they actually did better without the chaos, disappointment, and broken promises.

This year, I’m calling out the dads who left. The ones who walked away from responsibility, child support, birthdays, school plays, sick kids, and every hard part of parenting. The ones who disappeared and left women to do it all… not even caring if it worked out or not. Not even knowing if their children had what they needed. Not even checking to see if they were okay.

And here’s the reality: a lot of us women didn’t just survive without them—we thrived without them. We raised good kids, built stable homes, and created happy lives. We worked, paid bills, sat up with sick kids, attended parent-teacher conferences, worried about money, and carried the entire load ourselves.

They missed every milestone, every memory, and every chance to know their own children.

Children grow up. They start connecting the dots. They remember who was there and who wasn’t. They remember who came to the games, who helped with homework, who stayed up when they were sick, and who simply disappeared.

I don’t care if people think this is harsh. It’s the truth. People make decisions, and then they live with them. Choosing not to be in a child’s life is a decision. Walking away is a decision. Missing birthdays, holidays, graduations, weddings, and grandchildren someday… those are all consequences of that decision.

And their families know it too. They saw it then, and many of them still see it now. Many of them chose not to build relationships with those children either. They had birthdays they could have attended, phone calls they could have made, and memories they could have been part of. They chose not to. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, and a leopard doesn’t change its spots.

Many of these men are still exactly who they were back then—still blaming everyone else, still avoiding responsibility, and still running from accountability. And if their lives are a mess, that’s not on the women who stayed and did the work. We earned our peace. We earned our families. We earned the respect of our children.

And if today some of those men are hearing “Happy Father’s Day” from a sibling, a parent, or another family member while their own children don’t call, don’t text, and don’t acknowledge them at all… I hope it stings. I hope they realize that being a father and being called “Dad” are two different things. Titles are earned, not biologically assigned. And I hope they understand what a fraud it is to celebrate being a father when they chose not to father their own children.

Because we didn’t take that title away from them.

They gave it away all by themselves.

They missed out on amazing kids and the adults they became. We didn’t miss out on anything. We got the privilege of raising them, loving them, and watching them grow into incredible people. The loss wasn’t ours. It was theirs.