My dear (sister), let your mind be eased! For do not believe for a moment that your feelings might be considered trivial to me. There is nothing trivial about what you've been going through. There is nothing trivial about your emotional state.

First of all, I don't think you realize how often I find myself trying to evaluate myself by my surroundings. Instead, the fact that I'm so aware of the comparison game constantly being thrown at me is what leaves me knowing for a truth that it is all so bogus. "Inept" is the very stuff that brings me to know HIS strength and HIS power and HIS wisdom. My writing with life comes forth not because I am so strong, but that I am so weak ... not because I'm so wise, but foolish!

I understand that disappointment you have in yourself and in your past religious history. But know this, what has been failure is now turned into victory. Just because you experienced so much bondage while raising your kids doesn't mean you were or are a bad mother. Despite the fact that you have learned so much of freedom after all those years, you thought you were doing the right thing for your kids. You have so much honest truth to speak to your kids. You don't have to make anything up because you have been there and you know what it is to be sucked up in a religious quagmire. Don't be afraid to let your kids know what you've gone through and what you are now going through. Don't be afraid to let them know how much of a failure you have believed yourself to be, but also don't be afraid to tell them of the freedom you have discovered apart from the bondage of the religious system. There is no one else in their entire lives who could minister to them as you can ... just by being real with them.

Love, Jim