Lynse Leanne

We were watching the news last night and this story came on. I was dumbfounded. I couldn’t believe this happened.

Here is the whole article but you can read it here too.

SEATTLE — The mother of a Ballard High School student is fuming after the health center on campus helped facilitate her daughter’s abortion during school hours.

The mother, whom KOMO News has chosen to identify only as “Jill,” says the clinic kept the information “confidential.”

When she signed a consent form, Jill figured it meant her 15 year old could go to the Ballard Teen Health Center located inside the high school for an earache, a sports physical, even birth control, but not for help terminating a pregnancy.

“She took a pregnancy test at school at the teen health center,” she said. “Nowhere in this paperwork does it mention abortion or facilitating abortion.”

Jill says her daughter, a pro-life advocate, was given a pass, put in a taxi and sent off to have an abortion during school hours all without her family knowing.

“We had no idea this was being facilitated on campus,” said Jill. “They just told her that if she concealed it from her family, that it would be free of charge and no financial responsibility.”

The Seattle School District says it doesn’t run the health clinics at high schools. Swedish Medical Center runs the clinic at Ballard High and protects the students’ privacy.

T.J. Cosgrove of the King County Health Department, which administers the school-based programs for the health department, says it’s always best if parents are involved in their children’s health care, but don’t always have a say.

“At any age in the state of Washington, an individual can consent to a termination of pregnancy,” he said.

But Jill says she not only didn’t have a say in her daughter’s abortion, but also didn’t know about it.

“Makes me feel like my rights were completely stripped away.”

what are your thoughts?

Chad has started his new job at Whipple Creek. He is busy and loving it. I am loving it for him. He is doing what he loves…he is talking church and ministry. He is in a pastor role. he is considered a “pastor” but working on the licensing thing….you know, the legal mambo jambo. ;)

wait…did you just read that? my husband is a pastor! I am married to a pastor…and that makes me….

you guessed it…

A PASTORS WIFE.

I knew this was coming. I liked the idea of it. but then BAM…it hit me.

i have this picture and concept in my head of what a pastor’s wife should be like…and i am unsure i fit it. I know that if i am genuine and me it will all be good…but honestly it is the dang title that scares me.

I dont care too much for boxes and trying to fit in them and actually i heard this quote somewhere,

people who dont like boxes are those that dont fit in them…

and it is so true. I dont feel like i fit into the “pastor’s wife” box…or really want to. well, the stereotypical pastor’s wife box. There are freaking sweet pastor’s wives that are around… case in point Tam Hodge, Lori Wilhite, Brandi Wilson….and i can be like those pastor’s wives….just not the duggars like…not that she is a pastor’s wife. anyways, i digress.

all of that to say that the title and not the responsibility that freaks me out.  and i know it is just a title or a label or a box…but still it scares me.  ha!

Have you ever had a title, label or box that scared you?  do share.

As we are getting ready to move and packing we are also going through everything I own. EVERYTHING. The other night I found some old papers that I had written in High School that I held onto and i found this one. It is called “The Way She Feels.”. It is a story I had to write. The feelings are all mine…but I didn’t live in San Franscisco. That part was made up so teachers didn’t know it was about me. ;)

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Dark night, dark blood carrying with it a river of rage that had brought her to this point. And the horror of it suddenly shone with the clarity of her face in the mirror as she reached down for the razor blade. She always kept a constant supply of loose blades for when the rage took over. The cutting helps relieve the tension, she says to herself in a reassuring voice. I’m not addicted, I don’t have to do it, I just do.

She lives on the street in San Franscisco, it gets cold at night. She doesn’t know where her home is, she doesn’t have a home. Every passing day she is more mad at herself for where he life is, or isn’t in her case. She holds so much rage and pain in her sixteen year old being. People say singing or writing is their therapy but it is really their “release” from a “free” world where everything is dictated. She sees drugs, alcohol and citing as her way out of a life she dreams of leaving everyday.

The blade is bone chilling as she drags it across her stomach as she does each time. She stops and sits in silence for a minute or so, and waits. She is waiting for the pride inside of her to die and the courage to rage so she can have the guts to push hard enough to break the skin. You would think after two years of cutting it would e no problem, not for her, it’s more like a ritual. In this ritual she is waiting for the pride to die so she can humble herself before her “god” an refuge of cutting. She places cutting before anything, before life, love and herself. The pain that is carried with cutting, pain on the outside is no match for the pain that she feels inside, the void of something she has never felt for herself.

She never cuts deep enough to do more than hurt the skin, she is too afraid. She doesn’t know that cutting the outside is killing her on the inside. So many people care that she doesn’t know about. Since she left home when she was thirteen she has thought parents have no care in the world. They only think about themselves.

As she presses the blade a surge of pain jets through her body giving her a “supernatural” feeling, if she even believes in anything spiritual. It feels so good. How could other people not get how good it feels? The blood trickles down her stomach and pools into her bellybutton. It’s like she has left her body. Like she is sitting on the stairs, watching herself. She knows that it hurts but not knowing what else to do. Cutting is her way out of a boring life into a life less ordinary. A life not too many sixteen year olds lead. Cutting to the world is wrong, it’s morbid and people that do it deserve to be locked up and need only counseling.

But to her cutting is all she has to survive the nothingness her life is.

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As I read this I was taken back to when I was 16. And when all of those feelings and emotions were true to me. I was a little girl trying so hard to get caught. To be found out so I wouldn’t have to live in silence.

It makes me wonder how many other people are out there just wanting their addictions to be found out so the silence can be broken.

Today, as i sit at Starbucks. Just off of a 5 hour shift i feel so content.

I dont know that i have felt this full on the inside in a very long time. it is like a beautiful collision of the music in my ears, the smells and people around me but i am totally satisfied in life at this point in time.

I have a best friend that i get to live with and spend the rest of my life with. i have an incredible manager and fellow partners alongside me at Starbucks. I have a dog that loves me no matter if i had a good or bad day…he is happy to see me. my best friend and i are about to embark on the biggest journey of our lives together…and we are together.

It took a huge step to resign from my other job….one that was hard…but one that i dont think i will ever regret.

You may think i am “just serving coffee” or “working in food service” but for me it makes me happy. my legs on the other hand arent as “happy.”

i am satisfied and content. right now.

Are you? if not what would it take?

I have been reading Sex, Drugs and CoCoa Puffs and in one of the chapters Chuck Klosterman, the author, is talking about The Real World. How after the first season it began not being “real” because each person who applied after that was trying to fit the mold…trying to be “that guy or girl”…you know, “the religious one” or “the gay one” or “the race focused person”…those origional first 6 characters now became the definition of what a real person who was 19-29 is….and we all had to fit the mold.

This got the wheels in my mind turning.

Started thinking about High School and the “popularity” contests that are going on daily…and how when you graduate you think those end. But maybe they become a little more subtle.

I started thinking about my life. How I dress. How I act. How I talk. The people I want to hang out with. My choice of phones and computers. The shoes I choose to wear. How I wear my hear. Why I don’t wear make up. The books I choose to read. The journal I choose to write in.

Being honest about a dark place inside of me, I do a lot of those things listed above to get the attention of other people. The people I want to be friends with…or even more than that the people I want to be classified with.

I care what people think about me…probably a little way too much.

I often wonder if I were to strip off everything that drives me to “fit in” or fit the stereotype that I would like to fit in if I would be a different person. Would still make the same decisions without the motivation of fitting in?

I dont think the desire to be liked or to fit in is a bad thing…for me i think it becomes bad when i am morphing myself into someone i have created…i daily have to battle putting on this idea of Lynse that i like….and just being me.

I have a sneaking suspicion i am not alone.  Today People of the Second Chance started this experiment…what if we showed who the real us was…what we looked like without photoshop, before we styled our hair and put on makeup. what if for a week we were real?

from where my head has been recently i was drawn to this. so i am participating…trying to press myself a bit where i struggle the most….

So here is a picture of me without straightening my hair and just throwing on my sweatshirt.  me…

what about you? do you struggle with this too?