Once upon a time (ten years ago today). There was this girl. She was young, and silly, and a little unprepared for the world in general.  But she had survived her freshman year of college without completely giving up her faith or having a nervous breakdown, and that probably meant something. This particular silly young girl spent the entire day telling everyone that even though she was going to dinner (at Outback) and a movie (Fantasia 2000) with a friend, a guy from school – it was, most certainly, not a date.

Tonight, the same silly girl – 10 years older, and only a tiny bit wiser – will go out to dinner with the same guy – now her husband, her lover, the father of her children, and most importantly… her best friend.

So I haven’t posted.  In like, forever.  I am totally behind, I know.

But here’s the thing.  I’m in kind of a weird head-space right now.  For so many different reasons.

Brianna is growing in learning at an amazing rate.  This is awesome, but presents me and Chad with a new set of challenges.  When do we start potty training?  How old is too old for a pacifier at night? When do we move to a toddler bed? How do we discipline her? I feel like we’re flying by the seat of our pants, figuring out things as we go, and I’m not always sure I’m doing the best job of it.

For instance, this week.  This week, I really feel like I haven’t been the best Mommy ever – by a long shot.  Brianna was sick over the weekend, and I managed to survive, and was (for the most part) patient and Chad was there to help, so we made it through.  Monday?  She was still sick, so that left me trying to work form home, and dealing with a sick and grumpy toddler.  I was having trouble working, because Brianna wanted to be on my computer constantly, pushing buttons and touching the screen.  I didn’t have time to eat much or regularly, because Brianna spent the whole day telling me she was hungry and then refusing any of the food we have in the house (except the occasional bite of applesauce).  There were many meltdowns (both of us).  Chad came home, and that helped some.  But then Brianna was up all night – resulting in Chad waking up at 5:45am to me crying in the bed, and Brianna crying through the baby monitor – I was so tired, and there just wasn’t anything I could seem to do to get her to stay asleep for more than 10 minutes.

Tuesday was also my OB appointment, where she told me that even though was only eating 150-200 carbs a day, I was still gaining too much weight.  And to avoid “sugar, bread, pasta, potatoes, and rice” – all the stuff I was pretty much avoiding anyway.  I told her that, and she said I’d just have to do better. So now I’m looking at about 100 carbs a day, which is killing me.  It’s also the borderline of what is “safe” for pregnant women.  I’m going to have to call her soon and make sure this is really what she wants me to be eating – to make the carb cut, I had to give up what little fruit I was eating, milk, and almost all my whole grains, which are all things she told me in the beginning that I should be eating.  Maybe she hasn’t taken into account the fact that I just make big babies. Or something.

And there’s another one on the way.  So I’m dealing with people who feel like it’s their responsibility to question my birth choices, putting me for some reason on the defensive.  And there’s the planning and all that, which we just haven’t done yet. And how do we figure out how to be parents to two kids when we’re just getting the hang of parenting one, a little bit, sometimes?

We went home a couple of weeks ago to visit each set of parents for like, 30-something hours.  And the Huntsville portion of the adventure… was exhausting.  And somewhat of a disaster, emotionally.  We weren’t allowed in my parents house – because my mom knew I wouldn’t let Brianna in there if it was in the state that it was the last time I was in there (May of last year).  I imagine it’s actually worse.  She lost a chicken in the house for several days, about a month ago.  A. Live. Chicken. Lost. In the house.  How does that even happen?  My sister moved into my brother’s former trailer, and he was in the process of moving out, so there was no room for us to sit and visit there, and our hotel was tiny – once we put up the crib we could barely walk in the room – so we spent the visit moving from place to place to place, McDonald’s to the park to a restaurant.  It was exhausting.  And I doubt it’s going to get any better anytime soon.  Which will make October (my sister’s wedding, and the first trip we make with two children – yikes!) interesting.  And Christmas, but I’m trying not to think that far ahead, because my brain can’t hold it.  The Southaven portion of the trip was nice. And now Chad and I are sad that we don’t live closer to home.

So we’ve been discussing the long-term plan.  What happens after Houston?  We’ve never intended to make this our forever-home.  When do we leave?  Where do we go?  In Huntsville, Chad could still work for NASA.  I still have a few work contacts there.  In Memphis… not sure what either of us would do.  In Starkville, we could research/go to school/teach, but do we really want to live there? Or to go back to academics?  In Denver, Chad could… do something, but I could keep my current job.  But Denver isn’t any closer to family…  Could we rearrange our budget and travel home more?  can we convince family to move here? (um, no). And if we do visit home more, how do we make it fair to visit with my family, when it costs so much more money because we need a hotel, and we see so much less of them because of the lack of a home-base for visiting?

So yeah.  A lot of questions, all around.  Not a lot of answers.  But that’s life, eh?

This is part of a series of post where I try to take a fresh look at a variety of topics. You can see more about the idea for the series, and links to the other topics here. This week’s topic is “The rite of communion”.

So I am currently a member of a Church of Christ church, where we take communion every Sunday.  Which is nice, because it happens often, and I really like traditions and rituals and liturgy and things with meaning behind them.  In a past life, perhaps, I would have been Catholic.

Our communion is an open one – at a church where “joining” the church is as simple as signing the member side of the attendance card instead of the guest side, it would be hard to have it otherwise.  And I like that, too.  I’ve never been a fan of the idea that you had the have signed on to a specific congregation to take communion with them – I just can’t find scriptural basis for it, really, since denominations are to some extent a modern thing.

I always feel a little odd, though, when I’m at a new church for communion.  I have to spend a few minutes figuring out how they do it, to make sure I’m not going to somehow mess it up.  At our church, the bread is a giant cracker (matzos, really), and everyone breaks off a tiny, tiny piece.  And takes it immediately.   The cup is grape juice in little communion cups, which for some reason at our church we take immediately and put the empty cup back in the little whole it came from.  Which freaked me out a little the first time.  Back home, everyone waiting until everyone was served, and then we all ate the bread together, then served the wine and took it – all together. At the Wesley, when we took communion, it was by intinction – we dipped pieces of actual bread into a cup of grape juice.  At Aldersgate, my church in Starkville, everyone knelt at the front of the church for communion.  One church I went to growing up used real wine (um, yeah.  That was a surprise). There are so many variations on the theme, it just takes me minute sometimes to get my bearings.

There was a disagreement at my current church a while back about how communion should be taken – should there be two separate prayers, one for the bread and one for the cup? Or would one prayer work? Should the congregation sing during communion? Or sit in (relative) silence? And people got kind of upset – I mean, communion is one of those things you just don’t mess with.  But here’s the thing.  It never says in the bible exactly how it should be done – or how often.  “As often as you do this”… So, every time we break bread together in a group?  Every time we eat?

In the early church, communion was more like a meal that everyone ate together – no little plastic communion cups, no stale crackers, a meal.  Maybe we would all be better off remembering that – and remembering Christ each time we eat, together or no – than arguing over the finer details of a ritual that, while it still has great meaning, is more traditional than biblical.

This is part of a series of post where I try to take a fresh look at a variety of topics. You can see more about the idea for the series, and links to the other topics here. This week’s topic is “Foreign missionaries”.

So this one was interesting to write, as I initially thought that I had no opinion on the subject.  I mean, yeah, sure, “go ye into all the word”, right?  Foreign missionaries certainly fall into that.  So sure, they are good, End of thought process, end of story.  But as I thought about it more, I realized I do actually have feelings on the issue.

To start, I think that one of my mom’s biggest disappointments in life is that I didn’t grow up to be a missionary in Papua New Guinea.  When I was a kid, I saw a video at church about these missionaries there, and I remember thinking that that must be the highest calling in the word.  I mean, these people ate worms – just so they would be able to tell other people about God.  And so I decided that when I grew up, that’s what I would do (not the worms part, though).  And I stuck with that idea for years.

And then.  Then my dad became a “local” missionary.  He worked full-time for a ministry in town, and had to raise support and all that.  And I absolutely believe he was called to do it.  But the money never really showed up. And there was a lot of nasty politics involved – church politics to the n-th degree, as it were.  And he left the ministry, and went back to full-time work doing what he had been doing part-time to support us the whole time he was working full-time in the ministry. And that was that.

But I got to see a lot of the ugly side of ministry. The politics, the gossip, the “you kids had better act right at this church, because your dad is asking them for support” lectures, the pressure to be perfect… and when it ended, the people who shook their heads and said either “oh, he must not have really been where God wanted him” or “He just must not have had enough faith” or whatever.  And trust me, it was ugly.  And it’s something I still harbor some grudges over, more than 10 year later.

So, going into college, I was a little jaded towards ministry as a career.  I took plenty of missions trips – “service” trips, really – to different parts of Mississippi, where I ministered by building Habitat houses and serving soup to homeless people and whatever the project of the moment was.  I ministered to the people around me (with varying degrees of success) by providing a listening ear, a shoulder when needed, and food.  And I chose my (original) major, thinking that it might suit me if I decided to look into full-time missions.

But the more I thought about it, the more I felt that full-time missions wasn’t really my calling.  Not in the US, and not outside of it – my calling, I feel, is to work in my church, to minister to my friends, and to be a wife and mommy.  And there are just a lot of things about foreign missions that I don’t agree with.

Most foreign missionaries send their kids to boarding school.  Which seems so backwards to me – shouldn’t you teach your kids, your family, before you invest time in others?  But instead, these kids get shipped off to school where someone else can teach them, and their parents con concentrate on the much more important task of missionarying.

Also, it seems like a lot of missionaries want to convert people not just to Christianity, but to Americanism.  Or Europeanism.  And these rich cultures get lost in Nike shoes and western clothes and eventually western values. People say “Look how much better they have it! Look how much the missionaries have done for them!” And while I agree that better medical care and hygiene is generally a good thing – there comes a point where the missionaries aren’t making things better, they are just making them different.   You can be absolutely just as good a christian in a hut, eating worms, barefoot, and wearing a loincloth as you can in a house with real walls, eating McDonalds and wearing sneakers and jeans.

What happened to the Hudson Taylor approach to missions?  Where we go an live as one of the people, adopting their culture (insomuch as it doesn’t impact our religion), and make friends with them?  Then try and talk to them about God – without equating salvation to prosperity or other modern western values.  I know this is still done some places, but it seems the exception when I think it should be the rule.

So, to summarize: while I in theory support missions.  And I pray for the missionaries I know, overseas and here in the US.  I don’t think it is always done the right way. And it’s not something I feel called to myself – there are plenty of things for me to do here, without traveling around the world, and eating worms.

I am so behind – in everything, it seems.  This is the story of my life, no?

1. You should have not one, but two Reconstruction posts coming here shortly.  So then I won’t be very behind… just a normal amount of behind.
2. Brianna might have finally cut her third tooth.  I say “might” because it’s still undetermined – she won’t let me really feel to see if it has cut through without biting my finger with her two (really sharp) bottom teeth.  So it’s still a maybe, until enough of it come out that I can see it.
3. Brianna has learned to “sing” the Itsy-Bitsy Spider and the Winnie-the-Pooh song.  Now, if you aren’t me or Chad, these songs might just sound like random syllables, and might almost be indistinguishable from each other.  But we know what she’s doing.   And the fact the Itsy-Bisty Spider has hand motions help, lol.
4. We’re gearing up for two more big trips before I stop traveling – one to Seattle, and one back home for a quick visit (and to go to my brother’s graduation).  After the middle of May, we’re pretty much going to be in Houston until… October.  Except we might take a trip to Dallas for Scarborough Faire over Memorial Day weekend – if I decide I want to brave the heat while being huge and pregnant.  If you’re interested in going, let us know!
5. Speaking of being pregnant – I’m 22 weeks or so now, and measuring two weeks ahead.  Which is interesting, as Brianna never measured ahead until the end, and was still 9 pounds.  So now I’m freaking out that I might have a huge baby, and the doctor is of course totally calm and not worried at all (but she tell me to watch my carbs a bit).  So yeah.  Other than being tired of being pregnant (already), and worrying about the big baby thing… I’m fine, and baby is fine, and all is good.  Less than 18 more weeks to go.  Hopefully, we’ll be picking a date here pretty soon, and I can start counting down the days.
6. Chad and I are planting a garden for the first time, um, ever, this weekend.  You might start praying for the plants – I am horrible at keeping things alive, lol. But yeah, it looks like we’ll be growing watermelon, tomatoes, and strawberries (how’s that for random?).
7. I’m taking my second-to-last cooking class tonight – from the set Chad bought me for Christmas.  I’m really enjoying them so far, and learning a lot.  The only problem?  I want to take more! And that will cost more money. *sigh*

Head over to Conversion Diary to read more Quick Takes and share your own!

This is part of a series of post where I try to take a fresh look at a variety of topics. You can see more about the idea for the series, and links to the other topics here. This week’s topic is “Your parents”.

My parents. Where do I even start? My relationship with my parents is odd. I mean, they took good care of me growing up.  And I have no complaints about how they raised me – I know they sacrificed a lot sometimes to give me what I needed or wanted.  But as an adult, it’s odd to try and relate to them as parents but also as fellow adults.  Sometimes I expect them to act certain ways, or to have certain beliefs – and they just don’t.  And I wonder where along the way we became so different…

My parents worry about me.  They worry that I’m too far away, that I’m trying to work and raise a family, and that I don’t get enough sleep (I don’t).  They worry about my health, and Chad’s health, and whether we’ll lose our jobs in a crazy economy.  And those are just hte things they tell me about…

I worry about my parents a lot.  I worry about their health, which is never good – but sometimes worse than others.  I worry about their finances, if they’ll have enough money to pay the current set of medical bills, or enough money to retire, if they would tell me if they had money problems, and what happens when they do run out of money. I worry about their relationships with my siblings – good, bad, and otherwise, their relationship with Brianna (it’s hard, we’re so far away), and so many other things… And I worry that someday, Mom and I will have a huge fight and stop speaking to each other, because that’s what women in my family do.

Despite all that worry – we don’t talk very often.  Mom and I probably average 1 or 2 phone calls a month, on a good month.  Generally, I talk to Dad whenever I talk to Mom.  I’m a little sad we don’t talk more often – it’s a combination of my schedule and Mom’s – but it’s working for us, with relatively little drama. So it is what it is, I suppose.

Being a parent has made me appreciate my parents a lot more.  I’ve learned a lot from them – both what to do, and – in some cases – what I’d like to try and avoid, lol.  And even given all our differences, I certainly wouldn’t trade them for anyone else’s parents.

This is part of a series of post where I try to take a fresh look at a variety of topics. You can see more about the idea for the series, and links to the other topics here. This week’s topic is “The golden rule” (and yes, I’m a couple of days late…)

So. I have mixed feelings about this one.  I mean, the golden rule is kind of a universal truth across most religions.  And it’s in the Bible, a couple of places, so sure, I absolutely believe it should be followed. As a guideline. Generally, treat people the way you would like to be treated, and if everyone does it, the world will be a happier place.

But here’s the thing – it’s not exactly a law of nature or anything. So you have to go about your life keeping that in mind. Just because you don’t lie to people, doesn’t mean that they won’t lie to you.  People are, well, human.  Does that mean you should lie? Absolutely not. But be realistic in your expectations of others, and don’t go around being nice to people just because you think it will reap you some kind of karmic reward.

Inversely, though, the rule does seem to hold more true – if you treat people badly, generally you’ll be treated badly by others, too.  Not always true, but more so (at least in my mind).  Good things are not always returned in kind, bad things are much more likely so. It sucks, but that’s fundamental human nature, I suppose.

I guess the biggest problem I have with the concept of the Golden Rule is that some people take it too far. When you spend so much time “doing unto others” that you really have no time to do anything for you… I see this more often than not in women (although I’m sure it happens to men, too), and I’m know I’ve been guilty of it at times (especially now, as a wife and mother). You can’t be expected to do everything, do it well, and not take any time for yourself – you wouldn’t expect that from your family or friends, so don’t expect it from yourself.

So, if I were in charge of re-writing the golden rule, this is how I would write it:

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you, realizing and accepting that they may not return the favor, or even notice at all (this is, in fact, not the point).  And do unto yourself as you would do unto others – because you are worth taking care of just as much as they are.

This is part of a series of post where I try to take a fresh look at a variety of topics. You can see more about the idea for the series, and links to the other topics here. This week’s topic is “Temptation”

Yikes. Maybe I’ll skip this topic… I mean really, who wants to lay bare their thoughts on temptation, potentially with personal examples, for all the world to see? I know, right?

But as tempted as I am to skip it (see what I did there?), in the interest of honesty and completeness, here goes nothing.

Um yeah, so temptation is something I face every day, in varying forms. And resist with varying degrees of success, depending on the topic/day/minute.  Sometimes, it’s something that I rationalize myself into.

For example, this year I’m really focusing on being more intentional in a lot of areas of my life – one of them being my spending.  I’m often tempted to stop and get Starbucks while I’m at Target or the grocery store – and I rationalize that I deserve it.  I mean, really, I’m taking care of a toddler, I’m pregnant, I totally need a treat, right? And it’s not that bad for me.  It has water in it, and pregnant women need water.  And milk! which has protein, and sugar calcium! And really, it’s only $5. Not much at all.  I am the queen of rationalizing.

And chances are, if I give in, it feels really great! Until I balance my checkbook/look at my spending, and I’ve spent way too much on little treats and such, and I have to pay the consequences (in this case, a tighter budget later and also looking at the scale at the doctor’s office).

Other times, it’s something I just do automatically.  I don’t usually consider myself to be “tempted” to say snarky passive-aggressive things about people who annoy me – it just kind of happens.  Which means I’ve done it so much that it’s a habit.  Which means I need to be more intentional about what I say (and think), until it isn’t a habit any more.  Until I reach that point where I am tempted to say something, and I can choose to not do it.

Obviously, I’m tempted in ways other than spending money on fluffy drinks or making snide comments. But those examples, I think, illustrate my point well enough without leaving me too exposed to the world

1. I think Brianna may be cutting a new tooth.  Or two.  Or more. She’s bee tired and grumpy for the last couple days, and I think I can see little bumps where teeth might be – but I could be wrong. I have been before, about her teeth. Bless her heart, though, she needs something – she’s only got two.
2. The insurance people are coming to look at my car on Monday, so hopefully we’ll get all that resolved fairly quickly. I’m still okay, as far as I know, just tired and sore (but that could just be from, you know, life).
3. I’m hoping the weather is nice this weekend, because I would like to spend some time outside. In the front yard, most likely, as the back yard is full of contractor stuff while they finish replacing the windows on the back of the house (almost done! yay!). And also, the backyard is the dog’s territory, and so there’s more danger of stepping in something not fun.
4. I will not be spending all my time outside, though, as my housekeeping as of late has been somewhat lacking nonexistent. So I’ll be cleaning house. Which is all kinds of fun, let me tell ya.
5. I fee like this a lot these days… Brianna burned her hands on the oven a while back, and Chad and I both felt bad – no way to make it better, really, it’s just a lesson learned I guess.  Other links that I liked this week – this (about loud children and sweet moments), and this (about hugs).
6. I miss being at church… my efforts to improve attendance this year have been mixed, really, but do to a ton of things (you know, sleep schedules, car accidents, vacations, etc),I feel like I’ve missed more than I’ve gone.  Hopefully, this will start to pick up soon, as my travel schedule winds down.
7. To round out my seven: One of the random vacation memories that didn’t make it into my summary post: if you are pregnant, and have not ridden a bicycle in a very long time – you might reconsider trying this particular activity until after your center of gravity returns to something resembling normal. (I did not actually fall, but let’s just say my balance was a little off. Chad thought it was funny.)

For more quick takes, check out Jen @ Conversion Diary.

This is part of a series of post where I try to take a fresh look at a variety of topics. You can see more about the idea for the series, and links to the other topics here. This is a catch-up post for a previous week’s topic – “Single Mothers”

I don’t think I every really put much thought into single mothers until maybe a year or two ago.  I mean, I knew a couple, sure.  There was a girl in my church who had a baby at, I don’t know, 15 or 16 or something.  But then again, she married the father, so I’m not sure she was really a “single mom”.  My mom went to nursing school with a couple of single moms.  And I guess they kind of had it rough, but it seemed like everyone there did, or really, why would they be going back to school? So honestly, I never really thought about it. Because it never touched my life.

But now – now that I am a mother myself, now it touches my life a bit more.  Also, my cousin married a single mother (making her not a single mother, I suppose), bringing it a little closer to home.  And my sister-in-law is now a single mother.  And I have friends who have been/are/will soon be single parents, for a variety of reasons.  So I’ve done a lot more thinking lately about single mothers, and the challenges and such that they must face all the time…

When I was pregnant with Brianna, especially towards the end when I was huge and pregnant and grumpy, I began to fret more about being so far away from family and their help and advice (or in some cases, their well-meaning but sadly unhelpful attempts to help and give advice). And I couldn’t imagine, even then, trying to go through any of it without Chad.

At the hospital, Chad was with me almost every moment – and I really could not have made it as far as I did through labor without him.  I know that most women in labor, even single moms, must have someone with them, be it the baby’s father, their mother, a friend – but I wonder sometimes now, about the women who go through that process with no one but the nurses.  And how sad and scary and horrible that must be for them.

And the first two weeks or so with a newborn? For single moms that don’t live with someone else? How do they make it through? I know I couldn’t have – I was doing good to make it with Chad’s help, and my mom, and his mom.

I do the “single parent” thing from time to time, when Chad has to work odd hours or whatever. And let me tell you – it sucks. The worst was when he did flight following for 20-A – basically, a week and a half of just me and Brianna, and by the end of it I was ready to die.  I was so exhausted from being on call every second, with no break, and no opportunity to do things I had totally taken for granted like go to the bathroom by myself.

So I have a new-found respect for single mothers. I am not entirely sure that I could pull off being a decent mother, much less a good one, without Chad to help me out. Some days, I’m not sure how well I do even with Chad to help me out.