Controlled.

[Mary+Immaculate<3]

You sound like every other white-bread sheltered teenage girl in America. Time to throw some Linkin Park on and grit your teeth until college.

Honestly though I recommend working on breaking out of your comfort zone (e.g. not just hanging out with kids from your youth group). You'll be much more experienced and successful if you start now then when you get thrown into the college fishbowl and are forced to adjust to complete culture shock.

Yep, pretty much.
Well, I don't really hang out with only "church kids." I work at a public coffeehouse, do activities outside my house almost every day, and am not blind to the scum that happens in the real world. My youth group friends aren't all perfect or fake either, they have gone through major struggles.

[Gabriela]

As a closing remark I believe you should truly ground yourself in the spirituality of the Passion and Death of Our Lord and especially develop a strong devotion to Our Sorrowful Mother.

 

Wow, Historian: This is precisely what I was going to recommend!

 

@OP: I do think that praying the Stations on a daily basis—or at least, every time you get really frustrated—would be helpful. Focus on His Passion and Our Sorrowful Mother. Most importantly: LOVE your parents. Judging by the things you report them having said to you and your siblings, there is a lack of love in your home. They may have done everything right with the sacraments, but "the greatest of these is love". It will be hard when you are feeling oppressed and judged and humiliated and powerless to love those who you feel are doing that to you. But remember that the problem in your home is a lack of love, and don't contribute to that problem. YOU have the power to bring love into the places where it is lacking. Resist the temptation to blame others for not bringing it to your home, and bring it YOURSELF. That, I think, is the best way you can lead them by example.

 

Prayers for you...

[Mary+Immaculate<3]

Wow, Historian: This is precisely what I was going to recommend!

@OP: I do think that praying the Stations on a daily basis—or at least, every time you get really frustrated—would be helpful. Focus on His Passion and Our Sorrowful Mother. Most importantly: LOVE your parents. Judging by the things you report them having said to you and your siblings, there is a lack of love in your home. They may have done everything right with the sacraments, but "the greatest of these is love". It will be hard when you are feeling oppressed and judged and humiliated and powerless to love those who you feel are doing that to you. But remember that the problem in your home is a lack of love, and don't contribute to that problem. YOU have the power to bring love into the places where it is lacking. Resist the temptation to blame others for not bringing it to your home, and bring it YOURSELF. That, I think, is the best way you can lead them by example.

Prayers for you...

It's interesting that you bring that up because in writing class we have been studying St. Paul's writing style in regards to that particular passage. That is a great recommendation, thank you. Yes, that seems to be the hardest part, the loving despite the circumstances. Thank your for your prayers, advice, and encouragement. God bless all of you.

[Catherine Therese]

I think this type of behaviour in matriarchs often masks a deep anxiety. Is your Mum a bit of an anxious person?

So often when we are anxious about things, we seek to control situations and get all our ducks lined up in a row, because if everything is "just right" then the things we fear in our anxiety will never come to pass. We over-plan, we turn into perfectionists... and its all because we desperately need to feel some sort of inner peace of mind.

If I've understood you correctly, you need to realise that reasoning with your mother won't change her behaviour - this difficulty is one of the things your mother has to learn and grow through for her OWN salvation... it might be the result of some sort of wound/s in her own past, perhaps even an ongoing encounter with her own mother in a similar way to what you're now experiencing? Even if you can put your finger on it and name it, talking about it with her won't change her - this is between her and the Lord.

Three things might help:

1. For your own peace, you need to come up with something that will help YOU cope without developing similar behaviours of your own in response. You need to find a place where you can go for brief periods of time to get away from things when its troubling you. Perhaps staying at a friend's house overnight, or even if you can't get away that long, even if you retreat to a Church somewhere for a holy hour, maybe? Or a nice piece of countryside where you can take your iPod and just lie in the grass and watch the sunset and listen to some sort of music and just be at peace alone with God for a little while?

2. Historian's above suggestion about developing a strong grounding in the Passion of Our Lord, and developing a deepening relationship with the Sorrowful Mother, is PERFECT.

3. For your mum: reasoning with her won't help, but praying for her with absolute dedication WILL. And you won't see changes in the short term. This kind of intercessory prayer is a labor of patient love.

Life really is a school of love, isn't it? This situation seems ideally designed to teach a person patience, love, humility, courage and hope... could it be that through this, the Lord is making you a saint? We rarely get the glorious path to sanctity that we've envisaged for ourselves - more often its something seemingly mundane and undignified, something just like you've described above.

Take courage!
Be faithful!

Rest in His love for you.

And just quietly: I need to follow this advice, too. Even though I'm quite a bit older than you, I have a similar dynamic in my relationship with my own mother. I know intellectually that the above is what I need to do. It is PERSEVERING in this and allowing it to form me that I so often fail. But it is precisely in being faithful to what He is asking me in THESE SIMPLE CIRCUMSTANCES in which He has placed me that I will be able to love Him best.

[Mary+Immaculate<3]

I think this type of behaviour in matriarchs often masks a deep anxiety. Is your Mum a bit of an anxious person?

So often when we are anxious about things, we seek to control situations and get all our ducks lined up in a row, because if everything is "just right" then the things we fear in our anxiety will never come to pass. We over-plan, we turn into perfectionists... and its all because we desperately need to feel some sort of inner peace of mind.

If I've understood you correctly, you need to realise that reasoning with your mother won't change her behaviour - this difficulty is one of the things your mother has to learn and grow through for her OWN salvation... it might be the result of some sort of wound/s in her own past, perhaps even an ongoing encounter with her own mother in a similar way to what you're now experiencing? Even if you can put your finger on it and name it, talking about it with her won't change her - this is between her and the Lord.

Three things might help:

1. For your own peace, you need to come up with something that will help YOU cope without developing similar behaviours of your own in response. You need to find a place where you can go for brief periods of time to get away from things when its troubling you. Perhaps staying at a friend's house overnight, or even if you can't get away that long, even if you retreat to a Church somewhere for a holy hour, maybe? Or a nice piece of countryside where you can take your iPod and just lie in the grass and watch the sunset and listen to some sort of music and just be at peace alone with God for a little while?

2. Historian's above suggestion about developing a strong grounding in the Passion of Our Lord, and developing a deepening relationship with the Sorrowful Mother, is PERFECT.

3. For your mum: reasoning with her won't help, but praying for her with absolute dedication WILL. And you won't see changes in the short term. This kind of intercessory prayer is a labor of patient love.

Life really is a school of love, isn't it? This situation seems ideally designed to teach a person patience, love, humility, courage and hope... could it be that through this, the Lord is making you a saint? We rarely get the glorious path to sanctity that we've envisaged for ourselves - more often its something seemingly mundane and undignified, something just like you've described above.

Take courage!
Be faithful!

Rest in His love for you.

And just quietly: I need to follow this advice, too. Even though I'm quite a bit older than you, I have a similar dynamic in my relationship with my own mother. I know intellectually that the above is what I need to do. It is PERSEVERING in this and allowing it to form me that I so often fail. But it is precisely in being faithful to what He is asking me in THESE SIMPLE CIRCUMSTANCES in which He has placed me that I will be able to love Him best.

Thank you for your support. This is so true, that I need to carry my cross and let Christ's Passion be a redemption in this. My Sorrowful Mother has brought me through a lot, I lean on her.