I don’t have a list.

I mean I could say skydiving because I’m afraid of heights, but I might do it…maybe…for a million dollars.

(No probably not. I don’t need a million dollars that badly.)

If I was serious, I might say move in with my dad again.

That idea used to give me nightmares. Sometimes it still does.

Once you’re out of a bad situation, you don’t want to go back. It’s one thing to put up with something when you’ve never had a choice, or won’t have one in the future, but it’s another to willingly suffer again.

I know some people consider it their Christian duty to stay in a bad situation to love someone else.

I’m not quite sure that’s what Jesus meant when he told us to turn the other cheek. Granted, there are certainly times to stick it out with someone.

People splot up over really dumb stuff now. I’ve seen people say they’ll divorce over someone not doing chores.

Which, you know, is annoying, but it’s not worth splitting up over. You can find a way to manage that, it’s silly to just throw in the towel.

There are real threats though.

The Bible does make some provisions for people not staying in a situiaotn if it’s not good for them. Such as if Christian wife or husband is married to someone who is not a Christian, they can leave them if that person is not okay with their new faith. Because spiriutally, they are not bound to them. But that’s only if the non-believer wants them to leave. if they are okay with it te y are ups to say.

And since at the time you could get killed for being a Christian, it was only sensible to let people who didn’t believe it off the hook in marriage.

The Bible instruct husbands to love their wives well, and not to deal with them treacherously. And wives to honor their husbands. As well as for fathers to not provoke their children, and children to obey their parents.

It doesn’t specifically use the word ‘abuse’, because that word wasn’t used in the Bible period. But it uses words like “oppress” very often.

And says that we should protect the innocent.

All this to say, I do not think the Bible favors abuse. We are told to reconcile with people as much as it depends on us.

So when we made the choice to separate from our father, we kept all this in mind.

We didn’t deal with him harshly, however, or take revenge. We simply set up boundaries and cut off communication.

I later reopened it once I felt I had enough space from it, my sisters and Mom are still working on whether or not they’re okay with that.

I always intended to reopen it at some point, though I waited a few years.

But that does not mean I want to live wit him. I still haven’t been in the same room with him, barring my Grandmothers’ memorial service, since he left.

Though one funny thing that happens after he moved out was that he would drive by our house in his yellow truck a lot, just creepily looking at it. It would freak us all out, which no doubt was his goal, knowing him.

I would flinch every time I saw a yellow truck for years after that.

Then it got burned up in one of the wildfires (not the recent ones, but for year ago) and we din’t have to worry about ti anymore. (Don’t worry, he had another truck at the time. He wasn’t using it.)

While I can’t say for sure it was a God thing, I did feel it was somehow poetic justice. not that I wanted my dad to lose stuff in a fire, but the truck itself was not such a big deal.

So yeah, I wouldn’t ever want to move back in with him.

But if I ever did, it would be because it was the right thing to do. And, wen he was too slow to catch me anymore if he got pissed off.

I’m more worried about my dad using physical violence than verbal abuse if I ever end up having to take care of him, so I’d hope it would be when he was too frail to land a hit.

Which sounds awful, but honestly, if it wasn’t to that point why would he need us to take care of him anyway, so t seems like that’s the only reason it would ever happen.

I’m sure he might hope we ended up having to move out of our Grandma’s house and not his extra one, but that would take a lot of convincing.

Still, if God told me to help him, I would do it.

That strikes man people as crazy, but I think ‘ts more crazy to live in a society where no one as any sense of family responsibility anymore.

Our country has tried to destroy the most basic bonds we have. Given people the idea they aren’t responsible for their children, and their parents, or their other family.

As if someone having a bad family absolves you of any obligation to them, as if having bad people in society means you don’t still need to contribute to it.

It’s not exactly rocket science to figure out at if all the good people stop participating in family, or society, the bad people will have the upper hand and just keep making it worse.

Which is what is happening. The people who aren’t psychos are saying “Nope” so the psychos keep getting their way.

It’s a self fulfilling prophecy on the part of the people who say the world is a bad place.

It’ll stay bad if you do nothing to make it better, duh. And you encourage others to do that same. Evil people will still do evil, they aren’t going to quit because you said they suck.

So that’s why I make it a point do the right thing, even when I don’t like it. Which includes still being a part of my family. I could do better at it, honestly, but it’s a work in progress.

You can be a kind person and still have boundaries, I’m not sure why people Thikn otherwise now.

So yeah, that’s my biggest fear (at least that’s tangible). It doesn’t scare me as much now, though.

–Natasha.