{"id":233,"date":"2007-10-15T12:34:38","date_gmt":"2007-10-15T12:34:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2007\/10\/i-do-not-do-what-i-want.html"},"modified":"2007-10-15T12:34:38","modified_gmt":"2007-10-15T12:34:38","slug":"i-do-not-do-what-i-want","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/10\/i-do-not-do-what-i-want.html","title":{"rendered":"I do not do what I want"},"content":{"rendered":"

Day by day, he’s living out Romans 7.
\nHe’s two years old.
\nOur little son Michael is energetic and willful and focused on things of his own choosing – in other words, as I said, he’s two.
\nSometimes his will conflicts with ours in small ways, sometimes more seriously.
\nOf late, he has started offering a most heartfelt response to correction. He insists, “I don’t want to be be bad!”
\nOver and over, he’ll say it, either whining or bellowing, depending on the urgency of the moment, either “I don’t want to be bad!” or “I want to be good!”
\nOur reflexive response is almost always, “Then be <\/em>good.” or “Then stop throwing that.” or “Then be quiet!”
\nTo which he invariably responds with more insistence, “I don’t want to be bad!” <\/em>with no indication that he has any intention of changing his behavior.
\n\u00a0What does this mean? Two possibilities come to mind – he either wants the keep his cover, to keep doing whatever he wants and call it “good” or “not bad” – or he really is engaged in the struggle, already, and is fighting mightily against it,\u00a0announcing the pain of spiritual dissonance to the world.
\nMany of us, I suspect, can sympathize.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Day by day, he’s living out Romans 7. He’s two years old. Our little son Michael is energetic and willful and focused on things of his own choosing – in other words, as I said, he’s two. Sometimes his will conflicts with ours in small ways, sometimes more seriously. Of late, he has started offering…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life"],"yoast_head":"\nI do not do what I want - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/10\/i-do-not-do-what-i-want.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"I do not do what I want - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Day by day, he’s living out Romans 7. He’s two years old. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. 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