UGH!
🙎Meme: Don't start reading this one until youíve got more than a minute to just íscaní over it. It deserves some time for reflection.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: And a lot of time to kill.
🙎Meme: GOD LIVES UNDER THE BED
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Aaaaagh! Don't drag God into this meme!
And no, God lives where God lives. Don't restrict him to under the bed.
🙎Meme: I envy Kevin. My brother, Kevin, thinks God lives under his bed. At least thatís what I heard him say one night.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: You envy your kid brother who's still so small, or else developmentally challenged that he thinks stuff like that? Please, don't tell me this is going to be another whinge about how idillic you think it is to be a small child and how life sucks beyond the age of about 8, or that worse, you wish to be mentally slow so you could think nothing but simple carefree happy joys about everything…. Ugh! That would be warped. Hopefully this is the 8 year old kid...
🙎Meme: He was praying out loud in his dark bedroom, and I stopped to listen, ëAre you there, God?í he said. ëWhere are you? Oh, I see. Under the bedÖí
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Well, that's little kids for you.
🙎Meme: I giggled softly and tiptoed off to my own room. Kevinís unique perspectives are often a source of amusement. But that night something else lingered long after the humor. I realized for the first time the very different world Kevin lives in.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Right, this is because he's either a child or an adult with mental disabilities that make him like a child.., and considering your reference to his "different world" I'm starting to get a definite sinking feeling about where this is going.
🙎Meme: He was born 30 years ago, mentally disabled as a result of difficulties during labor.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: *Sigh* Yet another meme glurge story about someone for whom the big emphasis is on something that entirely drives the plot - he's "disabled" after all, without that element, there wouldn't even be a story at all…
Well that explains Kevin, but it sure as heck explains something a lot uglier about you. You envy him because of his simplistic ideas due to his disability and - oh crap, you should be thankful for what you have, even if adult understanding comes with it...
🙎Meme: Apart from his size (heís 6-foot-2), there are few ways in which he is an adult.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: And you envy him. Ugh. You're screwed up...
🙎Meme: He reasons and communicates with the capabilities of a 7-year-old, and he always will. He will probably always believe that God lives under his bed, that Santa Claus is the one who fills the space under our tree every Christmas and that airplanes stay up in the sky because angels carry them.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: And you envy him.
🙎Meme: I remember wondering if Kevin realizes he is different. Is he ever dissatisfied with his monotonous life?
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Well maybe it isn't monotony to him. Maybe it's safety and security. Maybe he'd be stressed out if he didn't have his "monotonous life" as you call it. You said yourself he is different. If he stopped developing mentally at about 7 or 8, it's highly unlikely any of that matters to him.
🙎Meme: Up before dawn each day, off to work at a workshop for the disabled,
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: *snip* Yeah yeah, I get it, routine, happy, routine, happy happy...
🙎Meme: The only variation in the entire scheme is laundry, when he hovers excitedly over the washing machine like a mother with her newborn child. He does not seem dissatisfied.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Well if you want to call that a "variation" so he gets excited about the laundry. And this is supposed to be important because? Oh, he's content and you wish you were, right...
*Snip out more endless details about how this 6 foot something 7 year old gets all excited over things we all find mundane like watching water boil etc. Yeah, yeah, some of us get the drift already, he's happy, you're not.
🙎Meme: And Saturdays ñ oh, the bliss of Saturdays! Thatís the day my Dad takes Kevin to the airport to have a soft drink, watch the planes land, and speculate loudly on the destination of each passenger inside.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Yadda yadda, he's mentally disabled, he's simply bubbling over happy happy, you're not, I know...
🙎Meme: And so goes his world of daily rituals and weekend field trips. He doesnít know what it means to be discontent.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Of course he doesn't. But that doesn't mean you can moan on about it and expect any sympathy from me.
*Huge section about how Kevin is good with his hands, how happy he is to do things with his hands, how he expects nothing from people and doesn't worry about anything at all and how he believes in everybody blah blah blah snipped* Okay, I get it, I get it, I GET IT ALREADY!
🙎Meme: In my moments of doubt and frustrations with my Christianity, I envy the security Kevin has in his simple faith.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: You don't have to be Kevin to have a simple faith! You are making me nauseous!
🙎Meme: It is then that I am most willing to admit that he has some divine knowledge that rises above my mortal questions.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Kevin is Kevin and you are you. Instead of pining for a Kevin-like faith, develop your own.
🙎Meme: It is then I realize that perhaps he is not the one with the handicap. I am.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: OH BROTHER! Somebody please pass me a bucket! Look, everybody's handicapped in some way. No profundity there!
And I'm going to get this out of the way right now.
I am so tired of memes where people obviously can't get over someone being "disabeled" so re-shares go around all the time where we are told to either pity or admire somebody who does this or that, or has an amazing attitude - and all this taddoo over them is because they are disabled, or else they had cancer, or have died of it. Because if it weren't for that one apparently heart-warming or heart-wrenching element, that person's story wouldn't be shared. That just seems to focus on the disability rather than the person behind the accomplishment/attitude/life experience, and it rubs me the wrong way.
Why Many People With Disabilities Do Not Want To Be Considered Inspirational by Carola finch is an excellent read!
🙎Meme: My obligations, my fear, my pride, my circumstances ñ they all become disabilities when I do not trust them to Godís care.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Every Christian with an adult intellect realizes that about themself, and that still doesn't mean you should be envying Kevin for being simple! You should be thankful for the mental faculties you have and that they enable you to look after Kevin in the first place!
🙎Meme: Who knows if Kevin comprehends things I can never learn? After all, he has spent his whole life in that kind of innocence, praying after dark and soaking up the goodness and love of God.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: You can do that as well, along with all your other obligations and crap! Nobody's stopping you from praying in the dark and soaking up God's love but you! And, God made you you, and Kevin Kevin...
🙎Meme: And one day, when the mysteries of heaven are opened, and we are all amazed at how close God really is to our hearts, Iíll realize that God heard the simple prayers of a boy who believed that God lived under his bed.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Well that doesn't discount anyone else's belief in God, no matter how simple or complex.
🙎Meme: Kevin wonít be surprised at all!
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: You don't know that. He might turn out to be the most surprised among everybody there. But you and he aren't in Heaven yet, so nuff said.
🙎Meme: When you receive this, say a prayer. Thatís all you have to do. There is nothing attached.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Balderdash! Look, I'll pray when the spirit moves me to pray, and not at the mercy of some meme demand, which is a string attached, by the way...
🙎Meme: This is powerful.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Only if you're prone to getting played by this incredibly odious sap.
🙎Meme: Prayer is one of the best free gifts we receive. There is no cost, but a lot of rewards.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Right, like in the I Picked You and the Phoney ST. Theresa Prayer Chain Hoax.
I repeat, prayer is powerful, but it has to be sincere, and not subjected to the whims of a meme that uses the word "prayers" to get people forwarding it madly. Prayer is not the gift, but the request for gifts! And there is a cost for sending this junk - it's known as the loss of friendship. I'm still awaiting my reward in the form of real notes and no more forwards seen being spread around by Christians.
🙎Meme: FRIENDS ARE ANGELS WHO LIFT US TO OUR FEET WHEN OUR WINGS HAVE TROUBLE REMEMBERING HOW TO FLY Ö
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Oh, so they're not wingless angels after all? You mean to say that my friends aren't angels, but that I am an angel who has forgotten how to fly? Wow…Um - if you knew me - …? Please, stop with the cheesy friends/angels kruft.
These whining "Childhood is such innocent bliss and adulthood is such drudgery!" memes are bad enough, but this one is absolutely sickening! I'm getting something to settle my stomach.
OVER - AND - OUT!!
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