peculiar

My sister came home from her Mutual activity tonight with the Young Women, and she was crying. My sister does not come home from activities and just cry about anything. Once again, her female peers in the ward ignored her, and not just ignored her, but treated her like some foreign object. When I watched her walk in the door, tears streaming down her cheeks, my heart went out to her, and my mind went back to my life between the age of 12-17. 
I had been homeschooled my whole life. My parents knew that teaching their children at home was what the Lord wanted them to do, so they did their best to accommodate to our needs. Four children, at home, my parents as our teachers. I can't even begin to imagine the sacrifices my mother and father made, and continue to make, for us, especially during the most trying time of our lives. We moved, back to our home state, and I began to wake up to what happens in the real world. During the summer, lots of the girls in my beehives class were my friends. We'd hang out every few days, go on walks around our neighborhood, talk about our favorite books, plan our birthday parties months in advance. Then school would start back up and I became invisible. I didn't see them at the middle school every week, so at Mutual on Wednesdays, they couldn't talk to me. I didn't dress like them, so they avoided me. I didn't read Harry Potter, watch the Disney Channel and Cartoon Network, and play nintendo. And, of course, I had too many siblings. A few select leaders were my friends, but secretly, I think they just felt bad for me, and thought they had better talk to me, otherwise they might lose me to inactivity.
Junior High started, and for the first time in my life, I was going to a charter school. All of a sudden, they could talk to me again. They told me all of the things I would need to know - what binders to get, what kind of backpack was hip, how I should do my hair, how I should wear my makeup. I went to that school, and loved it for the first few months. I made wonderful friends, who I am still in good contact with today. I loved my teachers (most of them), and I learned incredible things. But then, things changed. That school became what I think of as a public school with a strict dress code. I left after one school year there and went to a "private school", which was, essentially, a handful of Jr. High and Highschool-aged kids getting together in the basement of a building on mainstreet to discuss books, articles, and scriptures with a young father of two - shhh, don't tell the Department of Indoctrination! (er, Education). I learned a lot at that school. We had a cool name - we named our school after Frederick Douglass - printed our own monthly newsletter, had awesome field trips, and we all became fast, close friends. But after one school year there, even that was too much for me. I returned home and began to study midwifery with a local college from the time I was 14-17. I then became known as "the midwifery nerd" (it was incorrectly pronounced mid-wife-er-ee). I was looked down upon, wasn't talked to, and, on the rare occasions that one of my young womens "friends" started a conversation with me, I was shot down the moment I started talking about myself and my education. I was thought and spoke of as weird because I desired to study life - see my post, Birth: It's Natural. I didn't dare talk about how I had been at the births of four of my siblings.
I moved again, and the Laurels in the ward were nicer to me, and more accepting. Still, I didn't fit in. I didn't have a boyfriend, hadn't kissed any boys - hadn't even held hands with any guy - didn't dress like they did, and didn't go to prom, or homecoming, or morp. I wasn't in school plays, didn't play a sport, and had no clue who the popular celebrities were. I wasn't ridiculed, but I certainly didn't feel welcomed.
I started going to Relief Society when I was about six months from being eighteen. When I say this, I don't want to come across as conceited or proud. . . . When I was barely seventeen, I felt like I was more advanced, in some ways, than the other girls in Laurels. (Okay, that sounds rude. Um, I thought that I understood things differently than they did. I had different desires. I didn't want to just be a flighty, flirty, care-free teenage girl. I wanted to be a woman, to really prepare to be a wife and mother. So, I began going to Relief Society with my Mother) Soon after turning eighteen, I went to the Single's Ward. I made friends fairly easily there, and still do, yet I don't feel like I have a best friend. I was on my "skirts only" kick last summer, but when I started to attend YSA regularly, I felt like I couldn't wear skirts all the time, that I as thought of as strange because I didn't wear pants. No one really said anything, though I did get a curious comment more than once. Maybe I was just paranoid. In any case, my best friends continued to be the ones who understood me, who had known me for years, who were/are strange, like me. Now, after having been in the YSA ward for nearly a year, I feel more accepted. I'm a young single adult, just like everyone else. I'm not the only one not going to college right now, not the only one who isn't in a relationship. People talk to me, like, really talk. Guys and girls. But I'm going on nineteen years old, and this is the first time in my life that I've felt accepted, not ridiculed or looked down upon, by "public schoolers".
I don't mean to put down those who don't homeschool. Everyone makes choices, and everyone is different. I'm glad I wasn't accepted by other girls when I was younger. I'm glad I wasn't like them. They were good girls, but I wanted to be different. I wanted to stand out, not blend in. I just can't stand how stereotypical people are. I was homeschooled, therefore, I must be completely unsocial, mis-educated, lazy, weird, sheltered, right?! No. I'm not. My sister is not. My brothers are not. We are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who choose to educate/be educated at home. We're still human! We're still male and female! We make mistakes like everyone else. We're learning like everyone else. We just make different choices than some people.
So, please, don't look at me weird when I talk about my siblings learning at home. Don't tease and torment my sister because she chose to bring "healthy" brownies to a Mutual activity. Don't glare at her because of her lack of a boyfriend - she's FOURTEEN. Don't put her down because she doesn't wear makeup. Don't ostracize her because she doesn't know who the latest porn stars are - I'm sorry, but that's what I see them as, the Disney Channel celebrities, and popular TV Show actors and actresses. Don't act grossed out because she likes birth. She still has FEELINGS. Keep your opinions to yourself. My dear sister doesn't call your weird because you wear makeup. And as for having "too many siblings", allow me to direct you to some of the recent words of our modern day Church leaders - the words of the Lord to us:
Teaching the Doctrine of the Family Children
and watch this video
I'm not really speaking to anyone in particular. I just need to vent without expressing outward anger. Please, no one misunderstand my words. My heart was just breaking for my sister when she came home tonight with the news that no one said a decent thing to her, yet again, and that all she got was flack for being in such a large family, for not going to Highschool, and for not knowing who a certain male celebrity is. She's kind to those girls even when they are so rude to her. They just don't understand her, at all. But would it hurt for them to try to understand her?  She can be one of the sweetest friends! If we are going to claim to be Saints of God, we must act like Saints! All of us. Homeschooled or public schooled; married or single, male or female. We must love the other children of God. We do not have to accept a person for their personal beliefs, but we must not shun them either. If personal safety is an issue, pray for the person you don't feel safe being around. Recognize that for a good reason, we are not all alike. We each have different tastes and desires, and we may not all like the same books, or clothes, or music; but we all have one absolute thing in common: we are all sons and daughters of God. 
To end, I want to state something that I'm just beginning to realize. Despite, and even because of, the fact that I quit going to Mutual activities, and had zero real friends in my ward for years and years . . . I have gained a stronger testimony of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Instead of leaving the Church because I felt offended, I became closer to my Lord. I chose to turn a weakness into a strength. And I don't regret that one bit.
1 Nephi 18:1-4 [A]nd we did work timbers of curious workmanship. And the Lord did show me (Nephi) from time to time after what manner I should work the timbers of the ship. Now I, Nephi, did not work the timbers after the manner which was learned by men, neither did I build the ship after the manner of men; but I did build it after the manner which the Lord had shown unto me; wherefore, it was not after the manner of men. And I, Nephi, did go into the mount oft, and I did pray oft unto the Lord; wherefore the Lord showed unto me great things. And it came to pass that after I had finished the ship, according to the word of the Lord, my brethren beheld that it was good, and that the workmanship thereof was exceedingly fine. . . .
[End note: I'm not exactly sure what my intent was in writing this post. Just take it as a grain of salt, or don't take it at all.]