by Rhonda Coyle

Created on: January 06, 2011

OMG! Have I got the perfect story to tell here. First I will qualify myself by giving a bit of background information. I was not brought up in a religious home. My mother was brought up Irish Catholic, my dad was Greek Orthodox. When they married my mother was ex-communicated from the church for marrying out of faith. That left a bit of resentment in my mother. Although we went to a few Greek services when we were children, they spoke in Greek and we (2 brothers, a sister, and of course my mother) did not… only my dad spoke it. So there was no possible influence of religious dogma, unless somehow the “spirit” in me understood what they were saying, and being as young as I was…well that speaks for itself.

So I mentioned my mother did not speak Greek. But that isn’t wholly true… she knew how to swear in Greek and she did quite often. Her reasoning was we (kids) didn’t know Greek so we had no idea she was saying “bad” words. Of course kids are very clever and have a way of finding out those things we aren’t suppose to know. For awhile it was fun, swearing in Greek in places we shouldn’t (like in school) because we knew they don’t speak Greek. Until some clever teacher did what clever kids do and discovered what we kids were really saying. So I am sure by now you get what I am saying. The cats out-of-the-bag… and of course mom couldn’t punish us for doing what she did for the same reason she did it, that would be hypocrisy, yes? So a lecture on those words you shouldn’t say in public and a kiss goodnight.

There was of course one reason my mother did it that was not why we did it. We did it for fun. She did it because she was angry. So let’s fast forward several years to now I am the mommy and swearing is just a normal part of my vocabulary, being that I was introduced to it at such a young age. You didn’t really believe that a little lecture would stop the unstoppable flow of: “knowing what is the right thing to do but finding myself doing the very thing I didn’t want to do” (Rom 7)… did you? And swearing was one of my “good” vices at this point. My “bad” vice was becoming an alcoholic. After getting sober I found me a husband and we got married and bought a house and had the 2.5 kids… blah blah blah.

Anyways, I didn’t want to swear in front of my kids but couldn’t find a way to just stop.

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