baby training

My mother-in-law Karen says that God does little things with our pregnant bodies to prepare it for motherhood. I don’t think she has any medical or spiritual proof of this, but I believe it. The getting up at night because your bladder is about to burst is good practice for getting up all the time with your wailing newborn. (C’mon, I know you see the similarities.) And I think maybe, too, my arms are being strengthened by pushing myself up into a sitting position, because my abs sure don’t work anymore.

I think God does other things to sort of make the landing on the motherhood pad a little softer than it could be. For instance, I was baking pumpkin bread today. I scooped the pureed pumpkin out of its can, getting it over all over myself in the process. It looked like baby food to me, squishy and orangey-brown. I had pumpkin bread dough splattered all over my shirt and arms by the time I was done mixing the batter. I thought, “This is great. I’m going to have to get used to looking and feeling like a sticky, poopy slob for days at a time.” (I’m not saying I want to look like one.)

I wonder if God’s training my feet, too. I don’t know for sure, though. Seems like if they had a break they wouldn’t be the worse for it. Two nights ago, they were all red and swollen from standing up practically all day. I had been baking monster cookies barefoot, and my heels were all callused and dirty from the kitchen floor. I gave my ankles sympathetic glances every once in a while because I had never seen them so swollen (although, I’ll admit, they were normal enough to make me question whether they really even were swollen at all). But I was still able to coerce Kyle into a foot and leg and lower back massage, and he was an absolute darling about it.

I’m getting up earlier these days, and completely voluntarily. I don’t have to get up very early, now that I only leave the house for doctor’s appointments and getting groceries, so I usually get up at eight. This morning, though, I woke up at 7.15, and I thought to myself, “You know, I really don’t need any more sleep.” So, I got up. It was a big victory, so don’t scoff at it. I think God puts the desire for earlier rising in me, and I thank Him for it. There’s something peaceful and miraculous about mornings, and there’s no other way to feel that except to get up for them.

Nesting is another way of God preparing me for motherhood, I think. It’s hardly instinctual; it’s more what I expect myself to do, so it’s very planned. I’m wiping down doors, touching up the walls with paint, baking for all I’m worth. I told Kyle I thought we might need to get a deep freeze by the time I’m done making all the food I want to make for when the baby comes. Aside from the red, swollen feet, it’s really rewarding to have made so much food lately. I’ve got pumpkin splatters on my shirt, but I’ve also got two lovely loaves of pumpkin bread cooling on the counter.

Something’s happening in my heart, too. This morning, when I was swimming in the pool, fretting about the sign that had warned, “Adults should not swim alone,” I was thinking how I was ready to plead to my murderer for my life “for the baby’s sake.” And I meant it, too. It wasn’t some cold-hearted, selfish scheme to get him to change his mind about killing me. In fact, I thought about arguing next that he could kill me as long as he called 911 first, so they could at least rescue my premature baby.

I’m trying to figure out where I got this love for this little being I’ve never seen or heard. When he kicks, Kyle says he practicing soccer, but I know the truth: he’s sending little love messages and playing games because he knows we’re out here, wondering quietly, waiting for his next move.

falling up

The great paradox is that getting to the point of living radically and wholly for Jesus means we must fall rather than go or get anywhere, do anything, or be something more than nothing.

those days

There are those days--
when words and works
just don't come--
energy, enthusiasm--
buried beneath
layers of "just don't feel like it."
And the things
you know you're
s'posed to do
lie stagnant, still. So--
you wait for grace
to drip down
in its gentle shower.
But still
you know--
grace is already
driving down--
in torrents.

practice run

I've been learning some things about writing. I've been learning that if I want to be a writer, I need to write like crazy, and get all (read some) of the bad writing out of me before I even start to pretend it's good and before I think I need to share my profoundness with other people. (Disclaimer: This blog is the exception -- I promise. I've just been blessed with some nice, non-critical readers, who let me make believe that I'm a real writer when I'm really only just practicing.)

I've been reminded about the practice-makes-closer-to-perfect thing a few times in the last couple days, but Anne Lamott said it best in her newish book, Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith: "I know that with writing, you start where you are, and you flail around for a while, and if you keep doing it, every day you get closer to something good."

You'd think I'd have known by now that it takes years and reams of paper to get good at writing. And I know I've read it in books about writing before because it sure sounds awfully familiar. But I've only believed it for about one day.

How do I know I believe it? Because I'm writing. I'm writing junk -- whatever comes to mind -- and I'm not expecting it to be profound or publishable. I'm just writing.

(I hope the belief sticks; that'd really be something.)

"yes, ma'am"

I think I must be getting old. Maybe it's being pregnant, or reading books in public -- alone, or maybe it's the fact that I now wear a wedding band. These things confirm to strangers that I have moved to a new stage in life. To be honest, I don't think I look a day older than I did when I graduated from high school. Well, maybe a day, but that's it.

I certainly didn't look a day older than those two girls I saw in Taco Cabana (which, by the way, is the most wonderful of all fast food taco joints. There, you can get two tacos, access to a full salsa bar, plenty of chips and queso, and a drink for only four dollars. But I digress...). The girls were really polite. I was standing in front of the door, rummaging in my purse for the keys to my sexy, totaled Honda (maybe that was it -- the digging for my keys), and when I realized I was blocking the exit, I moved aside, apologizing. They apologized, too, like they were getting in my way, which I thought was really nice. In the meantime, I found my keys, just as they were walking out the door. They both checked me over, and the girl with tattoos across her back held the door for me.

"Thank you," I said, wondering if it was the pregnant belly that prompted such kindness.
"Yes, ma'am," she said.

Yes, ma'am? I've been called ma'am by grocery store clerks and by people who are trying to get my attention and don't know my name, but never in that tone, not with so much respect. It was a warm Southern salute, and I basked in its afterglow.

I have a middle-aged friend who used to say it made her feel like an old lady to be called ma'am -- like it was a bad thing. I always thought that was dumb, since she really was noticably older than the people who addressed her. But me? I thought it was wonderful, even though as I've said, I was hardly those girls' elder.

I hope I never grow tired of being "yes, ma'am"ed. I think Solomon says somewhere that to be older is to be wiser, and it's a beautiful thing -- that there's honor in it. And I choose to believe that. There's nothing sad about wrinkled eyes and veiny legs, the sagging breasts of mothers who've nursed their children, or calloused, peeling feet (please don't ask me in ten years if I still believe this). They are as beautiful as... being called ma'am.

she adores you (to number 53)

She adores you, you know. When it was Tuesday night and she fell to pieces before you -- oh, she was a mess, 54 was. She didn't know which side was up. She didn't know how to be comforted or what to do once she was. She could only melt into your arms and pray you knew she loved you.

How do you make her smile again? How do you bring hope to that helpless wreck and make her believe she's worth something beyond Send/Receive and an empty title on the wall of her study?

You love her -- that's how. You love her in spite of her disrespect. You're brave enough to let her cry, to break the cycle, to give grace... one more time. That girl -- she adores you.

the living church

Before we fell to what we are, I believe there was a living church. I believe there were men and women in community who had faith -- not merely that God exists, but they had faith in Him; they trusted Him radically.

The living church lives through relationship -- and not relationship forced because "we both are faithful attendees of Church B," nor relationship that merely exists "deeply" until attendee A or B sins too grievously for that deepness to continue. The living church lives through relationship with the God-Man Jesus. His amazing grace flowing down over lost and broken souls catalyzes human relationship -- automatically and miraculously. It's not forced. In our innate humanness, it may be hard, but it's never out of obligation, and it's never based on anything less than the awe of the gracious blood of Jesus.

I believe the passion of the living church is getting God the maximum glory, and I believe this exists only by making missions the primary thrust of the church. Worship, fellowship, Biblical study -- they all combine to push forward the mission mandate of Matthew 28.19-20* and the promise of Matthew 24.14**. Wanting the world to be, as Keith Green would say, bananas for Jesus -- that is the goal of the living church. Missions ignites when the town drunk is embraced, when the hurting one finds love and hope through people who admit they know what hurting means too. And missions exists when the living church uses its resources to get the gospel to those who won't hear it any other way. Missions is at the very heart of a church.

I believe the authentic church still exists today, but I don't believe it's in the forms of "proven methods" of worship. Worship, after all, is anything but methodical. It's often spontaneous; it's always risky; it's heart-felt and heart-inspired. I don't believe the living church is made up of anyone convinced of their own righteousness. I believe the church is made up of the hopeless, the broken, the fallen, the abused -- the scalawags and sinners who know that by doing they can't prove anything to God about how they deserve to get into His heaven. At all levels, the living church does not forget how to say "I was wrong," "I'm sorry," "I forgive you," and "I love you." And the living church does not forget to mean it.

And then, people of the living church, in their radical faith -- though they may doubt, cry, pray, and drag their feet -- are not afraid to say, "Yes, Lord, I'll go to Lebanon," "Yes, I will give away all I own," "Yes, I will invite this dirty, bedraggled stranger into my home..." simply because their Lord asks them to. The living church has no power to do this of themselves; yet they claim the sanctifying power of the Holy Spirit, and through it, create a presence in the world so rare, so precious, so alive that it cannot be mistaken for anything but the living church.


* "Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you..."
** "And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come" (italics mine).

the shield

I hide behind my shield. Behind it, I laugh, I cry, I dance, I scream. With abandon I live -- behind the shield. I know you are real -- all of you readers.
And you can be
because you can't see me.
You only hear the dance, the laugh, the cry, the scream, the echoes of which are long subsided before you see me again.
And so I'm protected.
And you're protected.

solitude

Thank God for family. Because then when the chasm between new and old friends is so wide, you still have somebody to keep you sane, somebody to just love you for being you.

I wonder what would happen if I took off the Band-aids and showed my big, ugly scars, if the sopping emotions bared themselves as part of the me-package. I fear people would run. "Those things are supposed to be kept under wraps. Don't you know everyone suffers? But we don't have to talk about it."

Is this growing old? Is this moving away? Is this life? Was I just super-blessed before? Is this leaving "the fellowship"?

You get to loving your solitude, or at least you tell yourself you do. Perhaps God has built a bridge -- a narrow one -- out to our island, and we wait for someone to wander across the gap. But the bridge is narrow and hard to find. Folks can see the island, and they judge: interesting enough? smart enough? normal, average enough? real enough? enough?

And so we wait, still wondering: is this growing old? Is this moving away? Is this life?

homecoming

We didn't know which words to say, so we just picked some and hoped they were okay. We hoped they didn't make the wound deeper; we hoped they bridged the chasm. Days pass -- and we feel the distance tightening in. That's a good thing, we decide.

I choose to believe we're all gonna come home someday, and maybe it'll be because of you. Maybe you'll teach us how to say the right words, and to love, and to forgive -- not out of duty, but because you know like none of us knows: there's no other way.