Newton’s Third Law of Motion says …
“When one body exerts a force on the other body, the first body experiences a force which is equal in magnitude in the opposite direction of the force which is exerted”.
Simply put, every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Hence, forces come in pairs. Here’s a classic example:
This concept explains how we react to certain things in a seemingly unexpected way. If others aren’t aware of the first action, they’re not likely to understand the second action, the equal and opposite reaction.
By late 1994, I was Exhibit A for Newton’s Third Law of Motion.
I was fresh off of my friend Julia Rebman’s death and freaky funeral …
I was convinced demons were within a hair’s breadth of possessing me …
I’d traded my better judgment for the promise of a “freer life” by imbibing radical feminist theory …
I met my birth mother for the first time … and
I took notice of a handsome man in my new church.
I was recently reminded by my birth mother that we spoke for exactly 24 hours to the minute, that’s 1.440 minutes, the first month we met. Phone bills were expensive back then. We would meet in person over the holidays in 1994.
Suffice it to say, I was a hot mess.
I was tired, confused, and frustrated. I was angry at the world and mad at everyone, but I didn’t really know why. Nothing really satisfied me - having fun was a dopamine hit, but those didn’t last very long after a while.
I needed more.
Here comes the bride …
So, like any rational 21 year old would do, I decided to get married!
I would reset my life and start my own family, on my own terms. I’m quite persuasive, so I convinced that handsome man, Brian, to marry me within 4 or 5 months of dating. We married in August 1995.
They tell me I have a strong personality … (wink wink) and can be persuasive (wink wink) … poor guy didn’t have a chance. I reeled him in and before you knew it, we were in that little black church saying “I do.” I’ll tell the wedding story next time - it’s too good to bury into a paragraph - but suffice it to say, you just can’t make some things up!
My mother bawled her eyes out during the entire ceremony. She didn’t want to come to the wedding, but dad made it clear that failing to show would destroy our relationship (which was already on the skids) forever. He told her I would choose my new husband over her. He was right … he was always right. I miss him so …
Mom and I laugh about it now …
Spoiler Alert: She bawled her eyes out during my second wedding too, by they were happy tears!
Some background …
By the fall of 1994, I was attending services in a new church in downtown Erie, Pennsylvania. It was a black church, so I stood out along with the other white families who made up about 25% of the congregation. The older women were delightfully kind, warm, and loving. Knowing I was nursing a broken ankle and trying to get through school, they made sure I always had plenty to eat and a shoulder to cry on. I needed some maternal attention (mom was in Florida and I was in Pennsylvania) and the church ladies filled the bill. I appreciate them.
Just 90 days earlier, I was knee deep in Antonio Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks and Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish in Critical Theory class. Never mind that Foucault, along with his famous colleagues Jean-Paul Sartre and Jacques Derrida, signed a petition to the French parliament to abrogate the age of consent law in order to decriminalize consensual sexual relationship between adults and minors under the age of 15. Fifteen is the age of consent in France. While they weren’t successful, renewed efforts to significantly lower, or otherwise eliminate, the age of consent for heterosexual and homosexual sex are in full swing. History might not repeat itself, but it certainly rhymes.
Upbringing …
I was raised in a relatively conservative Christian home in Orlando, Florida. If my siblings and I knew anything, it was to save ourselves for marriage and to keep the booze at bay.
Once I got to college, I became uncorked, quickly. Like a good wine, I was more expressive with the initial exposure to freedom, but after a while, I, too, would fade. And, I was fading, fast.
By 1994, I was on a death spiral.
With a lot of help, I reached down deep into my heart and history, pulled out what I knew to be true, and hit the “reset” button. I would quit feminism, quit radical living, and be a stay-at-home wife and mom. I would re-engage with my faith and pretend the last few years never happened. I would also drop out of college and stop immersing myself in all of the postmodernism that was destroying me.
You see, it turns out that I wasn’t enough. The theorists said I was, but I wasn’t. I couldn’t worship myself, save myself, and be the master of my soul. Wait, I don’t have a soul, so ditch that.
I needed help, a shoulder to lean on, a helper to share the burden of my life. I needed a wise elder to guide me to safer shores.
It would take a few hits and misses, and way too many years, before I finally figured things out, but never again did I feel the pressure of having to be enough. Humans weren’t designed to be isolated creatures, we were designed to live a shared life (evolution and creation share this finding). What a relief.
Turns out that I wasn’t an accident of an impersonal universe destined to live in isolation and autonomy after all. I was made in the image of the One who created the Universe. I don’t think I fully understood the scope of this at the time, but I held onto it with all of my strength. I couldn’t allow myself to care if others believed in the doctrine of Imago Dei or not. It was keeping me alive.
I recorked, I started over. I wiped the slate clean. At least that’s what I told myself.
Reality, schmality …
But … we all know that neither life nor love nor history are that simple.
A few months into my relationship with handsome church guy Brian, I realized I didn’t really KNOW the Bible or KNOW how to pray. He did, but I didn’t. I knew many verses and understood that God created me and loved me, but I didn’t know very much about the whole of the canonized scriptures. And, I certainly had NO idea how to be a wife, mother, or even a God-fearing woman.
My situation reminded me of family politics when you’re a kid. Once you’re eligible to vote, you vote like your parents. Once you find your own wide open spaces, you vote however you want. Sometimes you circle back to the norms of your childhood, sometimes you don’t. I was circling for sure, but I was in a no man’s land in this whole getting married and being an adult Christian thing.
You see, I had to deny God’s existence in order to absorb critical theory, which is simply an extension of Marxism’s economic theory into social and cultural theory. I had to become an Atheist.
Marxism comes from a materialistic worldview which says that matter is the fundamental substance of all things. Nothing precedes matter and only through matter bumping into self over and over again does anything evolve, including human consciousness. There is no meta-physical realm, there is no spiritual realm. There is matter. And physics. And chemistry. And biology. All of which is .. matter.
I tried REALLY REALLY hard to ditch my belief in God because, to be honest, there were no rules in the material world. Madonna wasn’t lying! It was “good times,” my friends.
German philosopher, and one of the most influential members of the Frankfurt School, Herbert Marcuse, famously said that eros (desire) should not subjugated to, but be equal to, logos (reason), as it through the release of erotic energy, not through logical thinking, that we find true happiness. Translation > go sow some wild oats … and then sow some more.
I’m 19, uncorked from my prudish parents, reading Marcuse and the Second Wave feminists who took his theory and added some rebellious flourishes … and ran with it … I was all in!
Did I mention I was getting plenty of dopamine hits, but no real fulfillment or satisfaction?
NEWSFLASH!
Party girls aren’t happy girls!
Sorry, Herbert, but you suck. All you crazy feminist writers too .. you suck too. No wonder so many of you committed suicide. If I didn’t break the circle jerk and make some changes, I, too, would have a concrete overcoat.
Releasing libidinal energy to fuel the revolution is for the birds. Wait .. nah …. It’s no good for them either. In fact, all of the postmodern leftist ideologies are nothing shy of exhausting, depressing, and oppressive in real life. They’re seductive and engaging on paper, and actually make a lot of theoretical sense. But, put them into a world full of humans and you’ll quickly find out that “their truth” ain’t “your truth.” But you have no one to blame but yourself, because, after all, there is no God to save you. There is just you. You, yourself, and you.
How’s that working for you? It wasn’t working for me.
Fast forward 30 years …
You teach this garbage to two generations of American men and women and then wonder why you have chronic sexual harrasment allegations in the workplace, and then #MeToo?
Poor dudes, the regular ones, not the predatory ones … they don’t know have the slightest clue what to think. I can imagine their minds swirling …
Was she flirting with me, or was she just being nice?
Was she coming on to me, or simply playing a mind game?
When did all the rules change?
Honey, she doesn’t know either. Except, she does.
If you’re hot and she likes you, she is flirting. If you’re not, she’s just being nice. Unless, of course, you really piss her off.
Bottom line, there are no rules. She makes them up as she goes.
I’m a chick, I know how to play this game.
We all do.
–
Perhaps Garth Brooks says it best in his hit tune … She’s Every Woman.
She's sun and rain, she's fire and ice
A little crazy but it's nice
And when she gets mad, you best leave her alone
'Cause she'll rage just like a river
Then she'll beg you to forgive her
Ohhhhh! She's every woman that I've ever known
-
She's so New York and then L.A.
And every town along the way
She's every place that I've never been
She's makin love on rainy nights
She's a stroll through Christmas lights
And she's everything I want to do again
-
And It needs no explanation
'Cause it all makes perfect sense
For when it comes down to temptation
She's on both sides of the fence
-
She's anything but typical
She's so unpredictable
Oh but even at her worst it ain't that bad
She's as real as real can be
And she's every fantasy
Lord she's every lover that I've ever had
And she's every lover that I've never had
–
Back to 1994 …
I wasn’t every woman, but I was a lot of them. I was as real(ly) confused as confused can be ... but I certainly wasn’t any fantasy.
But I was Exhibit A for Sir Isaac Newton’s Third Law of Motion.
Exhibit A:
Action 1: Raised with a Christian Worldview
Reaction 1: Rebellion and Embracing of an Atheistic Worldview
I was Exhibit B too!
Exhibit B:
Action 2: Ditch Atheism, back to Christianity
Reaction 2: Suffice it to say, you just can’t make this stuff up … but you can always spice it up!
Operation Reaction 2 is underway … that’s our next story, so don’t go too far.
Thank you for staying with me as I keep unpacking and revealing my ongoing journey to finding, understanding, and confronting the TRUTH.
With heartfelt thanks,
Kelley
December 14, 2022