Well, I Guess I Know Where I Stand, Now, Anyway

I got sent to collections. Again. For $10. A scant three weeks after I was sent to collections the last time. Like, somewhere in there I was supposed to make a third payment to them (during a one-month period)? Like, apparently they didn't like my nasty letter, and just sent me to collections without calling or notifying me in any way so we could discuss things further? Like, even though I technically fulfilled all the requirements that I was supposed to fulfill for their little pay-your-bill-in-smaller-increments thingy (they demanded all kinds of info from me, and told me to send a letter of explanation for any information I did not provide. Which, I most certainly did), and even though they technically are not supposed to send me to collections when I'm working out a payment plan with them (or so I'm told by the billing CSRs), apparently, we're both playing passive aggressive, and I'm the one getting screwed over by it.

It really is frustrating, actually. I mean, I feel totally powerless, because I'm sure that technically they have every legal right in this situation, and I have none (and, if I do have any legal rights here, it's not like I can afford a lawyer to find out that I do), so they're bullying me into doing something that I really can't do. Note to Sanford Health System: just because you have a legal leg to stand on, doesn't mean you ought to go around standing on it. Stop being a bloated, bureaucratic, feelingless automaton, and recognize that, you know, you're dealing with individuals here, with individual situations. We are not patient numbers.

So, anyway, I'm going to fight this the best way I can (and they darn well better take that $10 bill back from collections!), and I am going to take my business elsewhere, because I refuse to pay for crap service, and I absolutely, positively refuse to be bullied.

And now, I am angry.

Thanks for Nothing, Folks!

The third trimester exhaustion has hit me. Hard. My husband keeps subtly suggesting that maybe a little exercise would boost my energy levels a bit. I disagree. Plus, it's hard to muster up the energy to exercise, when I can barely muster up the energy to go pee. Again. Which is—serious—to say the least. Other than the exhaustion, though, I've not really had any third trimester symptoms; no swelling, no difficulty breathing (well, except for when I'm trying to chase the toddler up the stairs), no real discomfort. Well, maybe insomnia, but, since I'm exhausted, anyway, who really cares. Right?

Other than that, I'm embroiled in a battle with the billing department of the hospital from which I receive all my medical care for my pre-existing condition. As in, I have, like a $500 bill running with them right now, and they sent me to collections over $45. Which I was totally incensed about, because I'd been making monthly payments to them, like, every single month this year, and a couple of months I actually made two payments to them. So I called them to square all of that up, and I was told that the remainder of my bill would be sent to collections if I didn't set up a payment plan. But when I tried to set that up, they wanted waaaaaay more money per month than I can afford. I mean, we keep it cheap at our house. As in, we don't do cable or Netflix, my husband's cell is paid for by his employer, and I have a cheap no-contract phone so that I have a way of keeping in touch with civilization in case I'm stranded out in the middle of nowhere with three kids while making the 30-60 mile drive that I have to make whenever I need things like groceries, gas, and medication. As in, if I wanted to make these obnoxious monthly payments, I'd have to take them out of my grocery budget. Which, I ain't doing.

Now, let me explain: I've been receiving services from this hospital for the past seven years. In seven years, I've never, ever, ever not paid my bill. Ever. But, apparently, they've totally redone their billing system, and the new one has no long-term memory. Or something. So the CSR said that if I wanted to negotiate lower payments, I would have to fill out an application. Fill out an application, folks. Like, regardless of whether I fill out an application, I can't pay more than what I've offered to pay. But I said, fine, so she mailed it out to me.

Yeah. I got the "application" in the mail a few days later, and, let me tell you: my mortgage application didn't even require as much information as this "application" required. Plus, they wanted the last two pay stubs of every adult member of the household, and permission to check our credit. Um—let me think—NO. So I was totally insulted, because the little letter that they sent with the application was totally demanding and demeaning ("We don't trust you or believe you, so prove that you're too poor to pay the monthly amount of money that we think you should pay."), and the application was ridiculous. As I said, I've been making payments on my bills for the past seven years, and I've always paid them off. Dude, I'm not "applying" for financial aid or bill reduction. I'm simply telling them that I can't pay the monthly amount that they're demanding; here's what I will pay.

So, instead of enabling this pettiness, I sent them their empty application back, along with a nasty letter (they said that if I didn't send the requisite information, it had better be accompanied by a letter of explanation—well, they asked for it!) explaining just what I thought of their system and their demands and their overall suckiness. Or something. This is what I said:

To whom it may concern:

Last week, I received a very unexpected letter from [collection agency name], informing me that [hospital name] had turned my account over to them for collections because of a $45.77 outstanding balance. I immediately called [hospital name]'s billing department regarding the letter because not only had I been making monthly payments on my [hospital name] bills for the entire year (I have enclosed bank records that indicate this), but I had received no phone calls or any indication that [hospital name] was somehow not satisfied with my payments. When I spoke to the CSR in billing, I was informed that [hospital name] has been implementing a new billing/patient records system, and that my account had not had any payments made on it for several months and was past due. The CSR also informed me that the new system automatically sends all past-due accounts to collections. Apparently, because I had been paying off a bill (that I had received prior to the bill sent to collections) from the old system, the monthly payments that I had been making were completely irrelevant. I paid the balance that had been sent to collections over the phone, but I was absolutely insulted that my bill was sent to collections at all, despite my best efforts to make payments, and I was beyond frustrated that your system, apparently, has no actual person reviewing whether an account really needs to be sent to collections.

I called your billing department again, later that day, and spoke to a different CSR about setting up a payment plan so that the remainder of my bill would not be sent to collections, but the CSR informed me that I would have to make the first payment immediately, and, furthermore, the minimum payment that your system would have allowed me to make was much, much more than I can afford. I told the CSR that I could pay a lower amount, and she said that I would have to fill out a form, provide copies of my last two pay stubs, and would probably want to provide information regarding my monthly expenses. I agreed to do this, so she mailed the form to me.

I received the form in the mail on Friday, 12/21, and as I looked over it, I was again completely insulted. The letter accompanying the form was extremely demeaning and petty, and the information that your form is demanding I supply is completely irrelevant to the situation. My mortgage company didn't even require all of the information that your form requires, when my husband and I were applying for a home loan. I can possibly understand asking for every minute detail of my financial situation if I were applying for financial aid or a bill reduction, but that's not the case. I am simply trying to pay my bill—in its entirety—in increments that are affordable to my family's budget. You do not need to know who the lien-holders are on my mortgage and car loans; you don't need to make inquiries into my credit. None of this information will get my bill paid any faster than I am able to pay it, and it is a gross invasion of my privacy.

If you review my payment records, you will see that in the seven years that I have been receiving healthcare services from [hospital name], I have never once failed to pay my bills. And let me be very clear: I will be paying this bill—all of it. I will pay it as quickly as I can, in increments that are amenable to my family's budget. You can take my word for that, you can let my seven-year bill-payment record speak for itself, or you can take this letter as a written contract. But I will not be providing the very personal financial details that your insulting form is demanding. I have enclosed my family's monthly budget for 2012, and while I object strongly to providing this information to you, I have also enclosed copies of my husband's last two pay stubs. If your billing system can't work with this, then perhaps it's time to reintroduce a little human reason, understanding, and compassion to your new system.

If you would like to discuss my account further, you are welcome to contact me.

I may have just totally ruined my really, really good credit. But, dude, it felt so good to mail that letter.

Updates on That Which I Promised Not To Mention Any More

So we had that big, mid-term ultrasound yesterday, where they check baby all out, and you can see all of the bones and internal organs, and all of that fun stuff. Have you ever tried keeping three kids entertained while you peek at indiscernabletothem pictures of the baby in Mommy's tummy? Yeah, me neither. Candy works, though. I mean, I'm not all about giving my kids candy, but I've been known to do desperate things sometimes. So we settled them all in with candy, and checked out the baby's spine, brain stem, kidneys, fingers & toes, leg and arm bones, eye (sockets), umbilical cord, and, for daddy, gender.

So baby looks really good, which means I got to sit down with the doctor afterward and tell him, "thanks so much for the help; we'll take it from here." Which, he actually handled well. He told me that he was obligated by hospital policy to inform me that my decision to birth baby at home does not meet current standards of care ("But," he said, "You can obviously do whatevertheheck you want!"), which he documented, and then wished me luck in all of my future endeavors. And told me to get in touch if I needed anything else. So, overall, I have been fairly impressed with my interactions with this doctor. No hard-sell to birth at the hospital, or anything like that. I don't know if he just saw me as a hopeless cause (a woman walks into the office with three kids, two of whom have been born at home, you're not liable to get anywhere trying to convince her to go back to the horrors of hospital birth), or if he's just really a nice, easy-going doctor, but...I was actually mildly impressed. Which, you know, says a lot.

So baby is measuring a few days behind, but still well within normal range, which means that I may actually be pushing out a newborn instead of a full-sized toddler. Comforting news for my nether regions. My placenta is in a good position--toward the back, not near my previous c/s scar, not near the cervix, so that was very good news, too.

They tried to get one of those creepy 3-D ultrasounds of baby's face (am I the only one who totally gets weirded out by those?), but baby wouldn't move her hands away from face at all. Camera shy, apparently. Daddy got a peek at (her?) gender, but he's keeping it a secret because I don't want to know. Obviously, my use of the feminine pronoun will clue you in to my personal gender suspicion. But I could be totally wrong.

Our little addition: nicknamed Macadamia

Nursing in Public, Sunday-Style

My sister and I visited a church this weekend; it wasn't a church that either of us would ever, ever attend. Ever. But we both went to the school associated with this church, years and decades and lifetimes ago, and we still know and love a lot of people there.

So we sat up in the balcony with our two and three kids respectively, while the pastor stood up at the pulpit and made it very clear that noisy/crying/distracting children should be immediately removed from the service, as we would not want to hamper the work of the Holy Spirit. Who is, apparently, a lot less powerful than I always gave Him credit for. So five minutes into the song service, my eighteen-month-old started talking. Loudly. So I took him to the designated "cry room," which had been pointed out to me the moment I stated that my kids would be sitting in the service with me. Yes, even the baby.

The cry room was--weird. There were no less than thirteen people in there, several of them men. The chairs were arranged in rows, facing the front of the room, but no one was at the front of the room. The sermon was being piped in, and everyone was sitting in the rows of chairs, facing the empty front of the room, listening to the sermon. I was one of two people with a child. I sat in the back, next to a lady that I had known when I went to the school, and started to discreetly nurse my baby.

"Do you have a blanket or something to cover up with? That doesn't bother me, but there are men here."

"No, and my baby won't nurse under a blanket."

"Here, I'll get you a blanket from the nursery." She laid her coat over my baby's head and stepped out.

My baby immediately threw her coat on the floor.

We stopped nursing, and tried our luck walking around in the lobby. We ran into her as we were leaving--I told her my baby was done, and she handed me the blanket anyway. "The nursery has little curtained rooms in it if you need to nurse again."

Honestly, I was annoyed. Probably incensed. I was nursing my baby in the only place I knew to nurse him (and really? I'm supposed to shut myself up in a little curtained room every time my baby wants to nurse?). I was covered, but apparently, because that covering was a tank top, my shirt, and my baby, instead of a giant flannel blanket, I was being dirty. Immodest. Disgusting. Probably causing men to have lustful thoughts.

In the five-and-a-half years that I have been nursing, I have never encountered negativity while nursing in public until now. And of course, it had to be in a church, because obviously, God hates breasts. Especially those used for nourishing a baby.

A mom nursing her infant as discreetly as I was nursing.

A Little Too Much Help

So I got a phone call from the doctor's office on Thursday, telling me that they wanted me to start on antibiotics because of the results of my urinalysis (I had an appointment on Monday and had to pee in a cup for them while I was there). I assumed I had a UTI, so I called them back on Friday to find out more about it. Turns out that it's not a UTI. I tested positive for Group B Strep, so they wanted me to start on antibiotics to treat that. So I asked them why they were going to treat that now, when I'm only ten and a half weeks pregnant ("Isn't that something that you usually give abx during labor for?"). They said they wanted to treat it now, and then, of course, they would have me on abx during labor if my 36-week swab came back positive also.

So, first of all, I'm not going to be getting that 36-week swab because I stop seeing the doctor around 24 weeks, after I have the "big" ultrasound. And, if for some horrible reason, I did have to go have my baby at the hospital, I would not consent to abx during labor for gbs. The chances of my baby getting sick from it are small, and there is conflicting evidence as to whether abx actually help the baby, and, in the event that the baby does get sick, receiving abx during labor can make the gbs resistant to abx, thus increasing the risk that the baby will die. So there's that.

Also, gbs tends to colonize transiently. As in, I may test positive today, and negative tomorrow. So why would I subject myself and my nursing toddler to unnecessary antibiotics in my 11th week of pregnancy, with no apparent benefit?

When I thought it was a UTI, I asked the nurse which antibiotic they had prescribed. My husband is allergic to amoxicillin, and on the off chance that the baby has inherited his allergy, I don't feel comfortable taking that antibiotic while nursing. So then, I get a call back from them a little while later, and they told me that they decided to wait until next month (my next visit with the doctor), to treat the gbs. So it's obviously not all-fire important to treat it now, so why were they rushing me to the pharmacy to treat this right now!! if it's not that big of a deal?

Then, while I was on the phone with the nurse, she also pointed out that I'd had glucose in my urine, and asked if I'd been watching my blood sugars, and she said it in a very implicating way. And you know what is annoying about this? It's that when I really needed their help, they were all like, "Screw you, lady!" and now that I just want to go about my pregnancy, they're determined to get all up in my business. Well, I'm telling you now: butt out.

What You *Really* Need for Breastfeeding

So I had another "first" prenatal with another doctor the other day, and they sent me home with another prenatal pack with info for new moms. I was actually semi-impressed with this pack--there was only one publication that contained formula advertising in it, and I couldn't find anything that was actually published by formula companies. It appeared that the hospital self-published much of their materials, and contained some fairly good information. Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure none of their doctors have actually read said materials, because when I birthed there five-and-a-half years ago, they pretty much didn't do any of the good stuff. Which is why I now homebirth. Different topic, though. Anyway.

So they included a copy of the Babytalk pregnancy planner, which I ignored at first because a)most mainstream pregnancy publications suck, and b) this is not my first time around the block. But, yesterday, in a fit of procrastination, I picked it up. And it was every bit as appalling as I'd expected.

First thing a saw when I opened it was a full color double page spread ad for Similac. Now, I know they have to have advertising, and I know that lots of moms formula feed, and I know that since breastfeeding is free, no one can really make any money advertising breastfeeding, but, still. I'll give them a pass on that, though, for the above reason, and because it's a mainstream publication, and all mainstream publications advertise formula, and all kinds of crap that no one actually needs or use for their babies, but it makes you all warm and fuzzy feeling when you flip through it as a hormonal pregnant woman, so whatever.

What caught my eye, and, consequently, my temper, though, was the breastfeeding supply list. It just screamed "I was written by someone at the formula company!" Here is what the spring/summer 2012 edition of the Babytalk pregnancy planner says you need in order to start breastfeeding (this list can be found on page 39):

• breast pump This purchase can make or break your nursing experience. If you're going back to work full time, you'll need to buy or rent a super-efficient (but pricey) double electric pump. But if you're staying home, a much less expensive manual pump may be fine.
• freezer storage containers or bag 
• 4 to 6 bottles
• nursing pads 
• nursing pillow
• nipple cream
• 2 nursing bras for now (your size may change when your milk comes in)
• can of formula in case of emergency
 (it's always good to have one on hand!)

Okay, so here's the deal. Really, the only thing you need to get started breastfeeding, is a baby and a boob. That's it. It's not complicated. It's not expensive.

You don't need a breast pump. Not at first. If you're planning on going back to work at some point, then yes, you'll need a breast pump. But you don't have to go out and drop $250 on a Medela before you've left the hospital in order to succeed at breastfeeding. If you are having supply issues, your hospital can rent you a hospital grade pump to help your milk come in (and often, your insurance will pay for it). You can also hand express (the first time I tried hand expression, I was actually shocked at how effective it was. So effective that I had clean milk off the opposite wall when I was done). You can use a "much less expensive manual pump" if necessary. Really, though, if you're having supply issues, your best bet is not to go out and buy a breast pump, but to contact your local LLL representative and get help. Immediately.

Obviously, if you don't pump, you don't need freezer containers or bottles, since those would be absolutely useless to your breastfeeding baby. So I'm really not sure why these are on a list of things you need to breastfeed. Maybe they mislabeled the list for "Things You Need for Pumping."

Before my oldest was born, I bought a huge box of nursing pads, because all the lists told me that my breasts would turn into geysers after my baby was born, and I would soak through my clothes, and embarrass myself. I never used them. Not one. Granted, I know some women who do leak, so I'm not saying you absolutely, positively will. not. need. them. I'm just saying, wait. Find out what your body does with milk before you buy stuff that you won't ever use. Like I said before, the only things you need to start nursing is a baby and a boob.

Nursing pillows are--well, I hated mine. Hated it. It didn't sit right, and the baby would slip down between me and the pillow, and it never quite propped him up high enough, and it was so bulky that I could never take it anywhere, and at home I had free access to all kinds of pillows (which I could arrange to work much better than my nursing pillow did), so it was totally a waste of however much money the lady who gave it to me spent on it. Again, I know some women who love their nursing pillows. Wouldn't go anywhere without them. Can't imagine breastfeeding without it. That's fine. But wait. To get started breastfeeding, all you need is (let's hear it, ladies) a baby and a boob.

Nipple cream, of course, falls into the same category as nursing pillows and nipple pads. When I was first starting out breastfeeding, my nipples did crack and bleed and hurt like holy heck. I honestly didn't find that nipple cream helped me (it was a latch issue, and often is. Breastfeeding should. not. hurt.). Half the time I forgot I even had it, so, whatever. Some women probably find it really helpful, so I'm not saying it's not something that you may need. I'm just saying that, well, first of all, if your nipples are cracked and bleeding, or constantly sore, contact your local LLL representative and get help. And second, all you really need to breastfeed is--yeah. You get it. Right?

Nursing bras I can actually understand. I mean, I don't wear them anymore because I can't find one that's comfortable that I don't have to mortgage my house to pay for, and I've found it's quite easy to slip my boob over the top of my regular bra, and pop it back in when I'm done. I'm an experienced breastfeeder, though, and I'm not positive I could have done that with my first couple of kids. Also, I may have ill-fitting bras. But, a nursing bra is not something that you need in order to start breastfeeding. I mean, I don't know about anyone else, but the first two, three, four years weeks after my babies are born, I don't even wear a bra. At all. So I certainly don't require the services of a fancy, expensive bra in order to feed my baby with my boob.

A can of formula is something that a beginner breastfeeder (or any breastfeeder) should never, ever, EVER have on hand. Those first couple weeks of breastfeeding your first baby are, well, hard. I won't sugar-coat that. Depending on how much support you have, you may have people telling you that baby is starving every time he screams, and that you need to top him off with formula to make sure he's getting enough. You'll obsess over diapers ("Is this poop the right color? Is he pooping enough?"). You'll cry because you just fed this kid six minutes ago, and he wants to nurse again. It's a mountain, and if you're going to breastfeed, you'll have to scale it, at least once. Probably. And let me tell you, a can of formula will hold you back. It will sit on your shelf and taunt you. It will remind you of how inept you are at feeding your baby with your boob. It will ask you if you know for sure that your baby is eating enough, and laugh when you stammer back that you th-th-think so. It will glow in the dark when you get up for those great many middle of the night feeds, and remind you that statistically, formula-fed babies sleep for longer stretches of time (it will not elaborate on whether this is actually safe, however). It will sabotage you. 

Incidentally, I find it (kind of) funny that the list of breastfeeding necessities is eight items long. Eight things that you're supposed to need in order to start breastfeeding. You know how long the formula-feeding list is? Six items. Six. Because last I checked, you need a lot more than a baby and a boob to formula feed.

Breastfeeding is--amazing. I've been doing it non-stop for five-and-a-half years, and I'm currently tandem nursing (while pregnant. Do I earn points for that?). I know whereof I speak, ladies. It may take some effort to get started, it may take some fortitude, some determination, some bull-headedness, some focus. But really, it just takes a baby and a boob. That's it. Now go for it!

Sackloth and Ashes

In the circles in which I grew up, the name Jack Hyles was big. Really big. Really, really big. If we had been catholic, he would have been the Pope. If we had been Mormons, he would have been Brigham Young. We were not, of course, associated with any of those sinful cults, so he was simply called "The Founder of Fundamentalism." Or something. His church, First Baptist Church of Hammond, was the bastion of fundamentalism. Books and sermon tapes poured out of our Mecca at an alarming rate, telling us how to live, how to raise our children, how to dress, how to be good, upstanding Christian men, and meek, submissive Christian women. I remember a great many hard-bound books on my mom's bookshelves bearing the names of Jack Hyles and his family members as authors. When I was in middle school, my school (it was a Christian school, of course) took a part-day field trip to a local church to hear The Man himself speak. He was well past his prime by then, and I don't really remember much about him or his sermon, other than the fact that for some reason, I thought he looked a lot like my grandma on my mom's side. On the bus ride there and back, I heard stories of stage antics in which he threw microphones, jumped off pews and pulpits, yelled, screeched, hollered, slammed books down, and did all manner of strange and wondrous things. He didn't do any of that this day, and I must admit, I was mildly disappointed, but he was an old man by then, so I understood. Anyway, he was a really, really, really big deal.

I remember, as a teenager, hearing whispers here and there about The Man, and some supposed sexual forays. My mom viciously discounted these rumors and forbad me to speak of them, saying they were stories made up by jealous men who were trying to destroy the Cause of Christ®, and the great name of Jack Hyles. I accepted this, mostly because I was young and dumb, and honestly, I didn't know enough about sex to really understand the significance of this accusation, other than that it was a Bad Thing. Later on, in college, when I was old enough to think for myself, and understand the import of such stories, I read Robert Sumner's expose of Jack Hyles, "The Saddest Story I've Ever Told," in The Biblical Evangelist. I delved further into Jack Hyles' teachings, writings, life, and family, and his church, First Baptist Church of Hammond (FBCH). I admit it was mostly morbid curiosity, since by this time, Jack Hyles had been dead for some years, but it was also somewhat of a Truth-Finding mission, since I was going through a crisis of faith, of sorts, and wanted to know if all that I had been taught as a child was based on actual Bible, or on some sexual deviant that got his kicks out of making up crazy rules that people had to follow in order to be "godly."

The truth, as I discerned it eventually, fell somewhere in between these choices, although closer to the crazy side than to the biblical side. I've had to reconsider a lot of what I believed about God and His demands, but honestly, I'm totally okay with that. God makes a lot more sense, now that I know Him better. Mom never has come around to the Truth about The Man, or about God (as I see it), so we just don't talk about that stuff. Maybe someday.

Anyway, I say all of that to say that I've happily been out of that world for quite some time now, and all of a sudden it all came crashing back into my reality this past week, when The Man's predecessor and son-in-law, the newest Archbishop of Fundamentalism, Jack Schaap, was ousted from FBCH for some kind of sexual mishap with a teenage girl. And this is what I want to talk about. Because obviously, the Schaap-haters are out en masse vilifying him, posting YouTube links to every crazy sermon and sound-bite he ever made, saying, "Dude! You're surprised about this?" (a la "The Polished Shaft"). And I have to admit, as a Schaap-hater myself, I sort of agree with them. I mean, there is definitely something wrong with the guy. Has been for a while. But of course, when the Schaap-haters come out, the Schaap-lovers come out, and defend him. Tirelessly. Sometimes crazily. They flood message boards and Facebook pages and blog posts with messages of support and love and grammatical malfeasance. And you kind of feel badly for them, because you know they're yelling so loudly because their world is crumbling around them and they're trying desperately to grab at something firm and truthful. At least, that's what I hope is their reasoning. Otherwise, they pretty much just need to be committed and medicated. 

I head him speak a time or two, as a teenager. He was a big deal, like his father-in-law. The only sermon of his that I really remember was something about sackcloth and ashes, and I think he came out on stage wearing sackcloth and ashes to illustrate whatever point he was making. I don't really remember what the point was, but I know he played clips of an Amy Grant music video that showed her dancing around and taking a scarf off her shoulders, and he told us that's why we shouldn't listen to the world's music, because it's all about sex. As a fourteen-year-old teenage girl, I didn't really get it, and I kinda liked the song, but it certainly wasn't a new message (my parents told me the same thing all the time), so I figured he was right, and whatever. Sackcloth and ashes, right? 

Later, I started hearing all the crazy, crazy stuff he wrote and preached about, but by then, I was waaaay out of the movement, so I just kind of chuckled at him and took a moment to be grateful that I was in a much happier, saner place now, and--end thinking about it. So when crap hit the fan at the end of July, and rumors started seeping out of Mecca about the Archbishop stepping down indefinitely for "medical reasons," and the Word About Town was that he was indeed sick, but not of the physical variety, I can't say that I was either surprised or sad. Yes, to my shame, I was just a little bit glad that maybe crazy was finally going to have it's microphone shut off. Hate me if you must, Schaap-lovers. 

So as the story came out (for yea, verily, it always shall), his ailment was one of a much darker variety than stress or Crohn's disease or irritable bowel syndrome. Mostly, it was sex. With teenage girls, apparently, among (I suspect) other things. So this is what I'm getting to with all this. There has been some discussion amongst, well, just about everyone, as to whether or not Schaap's fall should be labelled "Adultery" or "Abuse." Cue angry opinions on both sides, and toss around words and phrases like consensual, molestation, legally of age, old enough to choose abortion so she's old enough to choose sex. Really, I'm not interested in any of these words and phrases, because they have absolutely no bearing on Schaap and his actions. 

Here's the truth, folks: Schaap is a 54-year-old man (I'm using the term man loosely, of course) who was supposed to be counseling a 16/17 year-old girl for sexual abuse (a "bus girl," from what I understand, although the details are hazy on this point). Stop right there and think about that for a minute. A teenage girl has been sexually abused by someone, probably someone close to her, since statistically, that's who it is, and she goes to her pastor for counseling, because obviously, she's troubled about it. She's vulnerable and emotionally fragile and she probably doesn't have a really great support structure at home, if I may be allowed to use stereotypes for a moment, because most bus kids don't. (No, really--what good parent in his right mind would send his kids off on a rickety church bus, staffed by teenagers and over-exuberant college kids, and one old guy (the driver), to spend all day at some church somewhere that he has never seen and knows nothing about?) Her pastor, a man she has been taught to look up to, admire, and trust, a man old enough to be her grandfather, starts to shower her with "attention" and "love." He tells her she is special, and means a lot to him, and she's been dying all her life to hear this. I mean from someone--credible. He hugs her. Maybe kisses her. Suddenly, he's having his secretary transport her across state lines so he can "counsel" her when he's out of town. Did she tell him "No!"? Did she gladly lay down in the bed with him? Does it really matter? Really? No. No, it doesn't. Regardless of what she did, or what she said, every shred of responsibility falls smack at Jack Schaap's feet. He is at fault. He took advantage of her, yea, preyed upon her. He failed to have another woman counsel her (or, at the very least, attend the counseling sessions with her). He is the adult. Regardless of the "age of consent" in Indiana, she could not consent, truly, because she was not in a position to do so. Regardless of whether she is old enough to operate a motor vehicle, or have an abortion, or buy alcohol (oh. wait.), she was not in a proper frame of mind and understanding and emotional stability to truly consent to his advances. She was not some brazen hussy who wooed him with her wily, teenage-girl charms. She was not a temptress or a slut. She was a broken, bruised, and wounded young girl who came to him for help, and found--the furthest possible thing from that. He sexually abused her. Which, whether it is recognized as such by the legal system in Indiana, is, of course, called rape. Ugly word, huh? It takes an ugly man to rape a teenage girl. And Jack Schaap is an ugly, ugly man.

So why do I care? Why am I even talking about this? Because it bothers me. It bothers me that anyone can possibly be placing any kind of culpability on this teen girl, thereby lessening--softening--the ugliness of Schaap's evil deeds. She is a victim, twice over (or many, many times over, possibly). She is a victim. He is evil. He has destroyed her. He has destroyed his family. He has grossly misused the trust that was placed upon him as a pastor, an adult man, and a counselor. He has, I have no doubt, injured his marriage beyond reclamation. Whether his wife stands by him or not, he has damaged that relationship irreparably. He has dirtied his name--the name that his children must now ignominiously bear forever. He has shamed and broken his wife. He has raped this young girl, sexually abused her, taken advantage of her trust. He is evil. He is wicked. He bears all the responsibility. Don't you dare say otherwise, because you know you're wrong.

Sackcloth and ashes, dude. Sackcloth and ashes.