Following up on "When opinionated old men attack":

Hello from the bottom of a mound of flour, sugar, and ground ginger! I am elbow-deep in Christmas cookies and wrapping paper, thrown off track by a croupy three-year-old and a six-year-old with a case of the crazies (I am assuming -- hoping, even -- that his new, screamy, defiant disposition is a result of a lack of adequate exercise due to stitches recovery. Stay tuned.).

I wanted to thank everyone for the comments on my last post. I was a little hesitant to post it because of the religious stuff, for lack of a better word.

I agree with several of you that this incident was not so much about religion as about a pushy, well-intentioned, buttinski type of man. In many ways, he was no different than the woman at the grocery store check-out handing out Mommy Drive-Bys (rude, unsolicited commentary on your parenting from someone who knows you not at all) to the frazzled mommies trying to grab the missing dinner ingredient with strung-out, witching-hour-crazed children in tow. Like most other unsolicited advice, this man's was unwelcome and irrelevant.

But I do believe that what transpired at the violin lesson wasn't completely NOT about religion, either. It just wasn't about any of our religions or our definitions of our religions. It had to do with how this man interprets the Bible and God and how he applies it to life and child-rearing. But I certainly don't equate it with other Christians or even other Baptists. Religions and religious people, as we all well know by now, come in every single shade and texture. His grated on me and you, it seems.

In the end, I wanted to let you know how I handled C.'s anxiety about the issue. I called for help. I have a friend who happens to be a child therapist. I talked to her, and I found her take interesting. She advised me to stop splitting hairs with C. on what words and intent the man actually had, because C. made it clear to me how HE heard it and how it landed on him. She suggested that, instead, I tell C., "That man was wrong to say what he did to you. He tried to threaten and scare you into behaving well, and that was not a good choice." She said to emphasize that like children, adults can make bad decisions too, and that his was a bad decision.

I didn't look at it that way, because I know that the man had good intentions. But my friend is right: he was basically using a threat to scare C. into submission, no matter what his intent. I don't want C. to equate God with threats. As a  few of you pointed out, that's not the way we generally want children to relate to God or religion. So I focused on letting C. know that the man was the one in the wrong here, that he had gotten this wrong. He had not meant to scare him, but he did, and he chose poor words.

C. seemed to take this in and accept it. We haven't had more anxiety about death. And though my children have discussed death and seen animals die, I think that we all struggle with the concept and the actual thought of ourselves dying -- I even struggle with it at my age -- and I also believe C. had taken the man's words to imply an immediacy to death that scared him. He seems to have recovered.

In any case, there were good reminders and lessons here. I love Christmas and all the festivities leading up to it, but I also find this a delicate time of year. Christmas can be the popular girl that marginalizes the less festooned winter holidays of other religions. This gave me pause to remember how it feels to be bossed around or to have someone else's opinion shoved in my face or to have my children assaulted by someone else's "stuff." Hey, 'tis the season.

Check back in, because coming next week will be a new family member here in Crazytown: a puppy. You don't want to miss that. And if you go that way, you can start praying for me now.