Easy

Recently, we decided to update our kitchen on third floor. Where we live, each floor in our building has one kitchen shared by the families who live on the floor. Our meals are provided on the first floor, but if your kids won’t eat what’s being served downstairs, or you have a hankering for some molasses cookies, you can go make food in your floor’s kitchen. Some people say that the kitchen is the heart of the home. Well, the third floor kitchen was like the heart of a person about to die of a heart attack. Something needed to be done. We held a floor meeting to get everyone’s input and hopefully everyone’s help on the renovation. The meeting did not go well. Getting fourteen families to agree on things like counter space, refrigerator size, and wall color is quite an undertaking. Just getting everyone to agree on what “clean” means was impossible. There were some hurt feelings, and things got heated. By the end of the meeting, no one wanted any part in getting the kitchen redone. There was a collective throwing up of hands and a general spirit of giving up. But I cook in that kitchen often. And I realized, on looking around, that no one was going to take over and get it done. My options were to cook in a terrible kitchen for many more years, or take over and get it fixed up. This is how people like me wind up in charge of something - backed into a corner.

On looking at the situation, I could see what needed to be done, and I knew a basic order of business. First, rip everything out. Then, put in a new floor, etc. But everything was going to cost money, and we are very tight on money always. So, I talked to the person in charge of our finances to see if we could get money each week to get the kitchen done, and I talked to the people on our floor with carpentry and tile laying skills. Everything seemed to be possible. My deadline was Thanksgiving.

There were some bumps, and some hiccups, and some things that didn’t go as quickly as planned, but I held onto that Thanksgiving deadline. Weeks passed. Then came Thanksgiving, and we were not done. The people who had promised to shop for some of the major items we needed got too busy to pursue it, and finances promised on Monday and Tuesday evaporated on Wednesday. This did not make me happy. This in fact, made me really mad. I knew that the financial problems were not the fault of the person in charge of the money, but I was frustrated that things that I thought were being taken care of were coming back to me undone. So, I told my husband about my feelings. He gently pointed out that the kitchen is a luxury, not a necessity, since we can always eat downstairs, and that if I were not going to spend my life fuming, I would have to accept things as they are and move on. He was very gentle, and very cautious, but this is basically what he said. And this made me realize that I hold the basic assumption that if you are doing the right things for the right reasons, it will all be easy.

If someone had asked me if I believed that, I would have said no, but really, I just kept thinking to myself, “Shouldn’t this be easier?”

My husband works at a homeless shelter. They house over four hundred people a night. There are moms and kids, newborn babies, dads and single people. The shelter never has enough money. They are under constant threat of having the heat/water/lights cut off, and every penny is counted and stretched. My husband does the counting and stretching, as well as convincing the workers sent to cut off the heat/water/lights to give us a little more time to pay the bills. (The joke I tell about the shelter bookkeepers is this: “How many bookkeepers does it take to count to zero? Seven- one to count and the other six to tell people to stop freaking out about it.”) There are days Andrew comes home too exhausted from dealing with the finances over there to do much more than sit on the couch and stare at nothing. And often I think, “Shouldn’t it be easier than this? We are helping homeless people so they don’t freeze to death outside. Shouldn’t it be easier?”

This past Sunday, the guy in charge of the finances did the sermon (he’s one of the pastors). He preached on peace and spoke about Mary, Elizabeth, and Hannah. All of these women had what you might call miracle babies. And I kept thinking about Mary especially. Shouldn’t it have been a little easier for her? Most of the people she knew thought she was sleeping around even though she wasn’t, she had to travel on a donkey in her last trimester for days on end, and she delivered her baby in a barn. Shouldn’t it have been easier for the mother of God’s Son? But maybe, just maybe, there is more to being blessed than being comfortable.

There is a Veggie Tales my kids used to watch which was a spoof of the Lord of the Rings. In it, the Gollum character has a magic ring which guarantees a “Life of Ease.” The ring is a huge temptation for him and everyone in the show.

And it is a huge temptation for me too. It would have been easier to leave the kitchen alone. It would be easier for my husband not to run the finances at the shelter. Life may have been much easier for Mary not to say yes to the angel when he asked her about having God’s Son. But this is why the Bible calls us blessed, because it is possible to have peace and joy even though things are not easy.

So the short answer to “Shouldn’t this be easier?” is a big “Nope!”

Feed the Pregnant Lady!

I have never enjoyed food so much as when I was pregnant. I spent most of my time during my pregnancies planning what I would eat next. I think most pregnant women are like this. If you want to see a person really enjoying their food, give a pregnant woman what she wants to eat and step back.
Before you have kids, you notice your food. You know what you’re eating, take in its seasoning and texture, and can savor it. Once you have kids, and for a few years after, food is about survival. You have to clothe, feed, change, bathe, and care for this other tiny being, - even suction out their nose – and you have no time to eat except for what you can hold in one hand while the other hand is busy doing something else. You forget all the advice you’ve heard about eating balanced meals because you’re busy balancing your dinner on top of your stroller because if you have to spend one more minute inside, watching your baby drool, you will be brain dead. Or at least cry, and who has time?
My midwives got after me when I was pregnant for gaining too much weight. They were concerned about high blood pressure, diabetes, and a c-section. But I was too hungry. Food was all that interested me, and I would slow down, but I was not going to suffer. I was throwing up constantly, almost never sleeping, and I felt basically rotten. I was going to eat. I didn’t care how big I got. I would diet during happier times, not then.
Some people are completely tactless with pregnant women. A person I know, one of those skinny, athletic women, was especially so with me. I spent much time and effort avoiding her because of her habit of greeting me loudly and heartily in public places with “So, how much weight have you gained now?” There I was, waddling about my own business, and suddenly this question for all to hear. I tend to be a truthful person, but I found myself wanting to lie about it. Should I tell her I’d only gained five or ten pounds and my midwife was begging me to eat a pint of Ben and Jerry’s every night so I could gain more? (My poor midwife, who spent much time extolling the value of salad bars in the hope that I wouldn’t put on another eight pounds in two weeks.) Could I get her to believe this even though I was much bigger than I had been? Maybe on such a skinny person as she was, a few pounds could make you several sizes bigger, and turn you into the Pillsbury Dough Boy. If I didn’t tell her, how would such a thin person possibly know that I was working on my thirty-eighth pound of baby weight, and would happily put on sixty if I could just stop barfing long enough? Surely anyone dumb enough to shout such a question across a crowded room would be dumb enough to believe a small weight gain. However, I could not bring myself to lie to her. Lying would mean I was giving in to her, admitting that there was something wrong with packing on the pounds like a bear about to hibernate. So I would waddle over to my skinny questioner, mutter my weight gain, and waddle away as fast as possible. A normal person would have been gracious enough to say something to me like, “You don’t look like it! You look like you only gained two pounds! You look great!” But she never did. Instead, she would stare up and down my swollen bulk, as if to figure out where every pound went, as if I were a human jigsaw puzzle waiting for a final piece. Such experiences require lipstick for morale and a second helping of chocolate cake.
So this is a plea to the non-pregnant world – let the ladies in your midst who require extra sustenance due to the alien force which has taken over their body eat whatever they want. And don’t be tactless about it. There’s plenty of time later to worry about their weight. They will thank you profusely for feeding them, and they won’t be able to even taste let alone fully chew their food for the next few years, so let them enjoy it while they can. Before they have to start suctioning out noses.

Legacy

Mid-life crisis is the time of life when people start to think about their legacy. Men and women handle this differently.
Men wonder what they gave their life to, if it was worth it, then panic, buy themselves a small, (no room for the kiddies) convertible and a baseball cap, and hit the open road, looking for their legacy. Sadly, many of them decide divorce and biker bars are where they will find it.
Women seem to go the opposite direction when mid-life crisis hits. Men run from their families, while women run towards them. Women who would never have taken their own children to a park suddenly start cooking up schemes to take their grandkids to Disneyland. And they do. They get a minivan and a few cases of goldfish crackers and hit the open road, diaper bags in the back, looking for their legacy.
Most people have no idea what their legacy will be. The guy who invented Monopoly probably had higher aspirations than "Board Game Inventor" when he thought about his legacy. How about that innkeeper who turned away a poor couple the night the wife went into labor in a barn? Then there's Neville Chamberlain, giving in to a German bully while loudly proclaiming "Peace in our time," thereby releasing Hitler on the world.No one knows what their legacy will be, but everyone wants a huge, glorious, good one. No one wants to even think about leaving a so-so one. (Think of the epitaphs - "Here Lies a Mediocre Cook and An O.k. Mother," or "Essentially Harmless," or "Not As Good As Some, But Better Than Others.")
A man I know who has been a Christian for many years, happily married for decades to the same woman, keeps looking for new jobs. Each job he gets, he becomes excited and works hard at first, then he decides the job is not worthy of his time. Why should he, with all of his qualifications, take out his own garbage? It is beneath him. Soon after taking on a new job, after assuring everyone that he will "change the face of" whatever company he is working for, he stops trying. He decides that he would be better used somewhere else.Unfortunately, he becomes of little use where he is, and starts looking for new work.
The problem is, he is looking for a legacy. The funny thing about looking for a legacy is that if you go off looking for it, you will never find it. No one pulls a legacy out of thin air, and it is very possible to live a life spent on the trivial and leave no legacy at all. A good legacy requires generous spending of time and qualifications that could be spent elsewhere, but aren't. To reap generously you must sow generously. A book I've always meant to read is titled "A Long Obedience In the Same Direction," and that title sums up what brings a lasting legacy.
The Bible is full of assurances that whatever we do that God asks of us is never useless or pointless, even though we may not see the fruit of our actions. It all counts, we just can't see it. Big legacy people don't often see the results of their labors.
If you want to see a big legacy person in the Bible, look at Abraham, father of the Jewish nation. Generation after generation of his descendants conquered and ruled Canaan, as he was promised. God considered him a friend. Angels visited him. The Messiah Himself came through his lineage. Yet what did this extremely qualified and capable man spend his time doing? He wandered. He chased his sheep. He dug a well or two. He lived in a tent. For many, many years the only thing in his life to point to his big legacy was God's promise. But he had a long obedience in the same direction, and it counted. Abraham didn't see his millions of descendants. He only got to see Isaac. But he was able to trust God for his descendants "as numerous as the stars in the sky." And God saw this trust as a very big deal. Abraham, flaws and all, was declared righteous and a friend of God. This wandering shepherd left a huge legacy, because he trusted God to choose it and to back up His promises.
The man I know who keeps starting new jobs is missing a legacy because he is trying to choose for himself what only God can give. Millions of people have quietly obeyed and followed God and in so doing have changed the world- and they probably never knew it. But God, Who knows all things, planned and knew and held their legacies for them. At the end of time, their reward will be, "Well done, good and faithful servant."
No convertible, no trip to Disneyland, and certainly no goldfish crackers can even come close.

Parenting

Parenting

Parenting is an awe-inspiring, terrifying thing. Everyone wants to be a good parent, but we all mess up a lot, or worry that we do. Did I feed my kids enough milk today, or will they be permanently short because I didn’t? That yellow food coloring in the Mac’N Cheese does not look natural… am I accidentally giving my kids a carcinogen for dinner? And, did we talk about God enough today? The consequences of messing up are scary. Who wants their kid to grow up to be a serial killer?
Every Christmas, and at different times throughout the year, we hear about the most famous parents of all, Mary and Joseph. Sometimes I wonder what kinds of parents Jesus was born to. The more I’ve thought about it, the less impressed I’ve been by them in some ways. They seemed last-minute in their decision to go to Bethlehem for the census. Maybe Mary left Joseph in charge of the travel plans, and he kept putting it off; she kept nagging, and finally they left for Bethlehem hoping she wouldn’t go into labor on the side of the road somewhere. Traveling during pregnancy is tough, even in a car. Do you think Joseph may have made some unkind remarks when Mary made him stop the donkey for the fifteenth time in one day so she could go find a bush? Then they finally reached Bethlehem, and there was no where to stay. Do you think Mary said, “Don’t worry, honey, we’ll just have the Son of God here in this nice, clean stable. You move that pile of straw and droppings over so I can lay down and have the baby”? I don’t think so. Women in labor are not renowned for their tact. I imagine there were some harsh words and tears that night. I bet they weren’t wild about letting the mob of shepherds coming in, fresh from the fields. Years later, they had no idea where Jesus ran off to for three days when they were coming back from Jerusalem. Imagine their panic. “Joseph, we’ve lost the Son of God! How do we explain that to the Almighty? Sorry, God, we thought He was with us, but…” They searched and searched and eventually found Him in the temple, talking with a bunch of priests. Joseph and Mary were not amused. They went up to Him and did what all scared parents do, they yelled at their kid. And then the priests started telling them how wonderful and special their Son was. “He sure is,” they must have thought “Making us backtrack three days in a panic. Special is the right word for Him.” All in all, these seem like pretty unorganized people. Years later, even Jesus’ own siblings didn’t believe He was God’s Son until He rose from the dead. Shouldn’t Mary and Joseph have told the whole family? Didn’t the siblings have the right to know that the big brother they threw food at during dinner was the Son of God? Really, Mary and Joseph, for all of the lengthy Catholic ideas to the contrary, come off sounding depressingly normal. Imagine being Joseph and Mary and having some of your worst moment as parents talked about for two thousand years! What about all those good times, like when Mary told stories at bedtime? Or when Joseph taught Jesus how to saw in a straight line? They didn’t end up in the Bible.
God knew, when He handed them His Son, (the “Only begotten Son,” with Whom He was “Well pleased”) that they would lose track of Him in a large crowd for days at a stretch. He knew that they would be so disorganized and last-minute that He would be born in a barn. It was not a clean barn. There were probably flies buzzing around, and they would have to put Jesus in a manger to keep Him from getting stepped on. So why did He give them His Son?  Their great, shining quality was that they obeyed. God’s law said that they should bring the baby to the temple when He was eight days old, and they made the uncomfortable trip there, on the right day, because they were obedient. When the Bible says that Jesus never sinned, His parents’ commitment to obedience was part of this, because He fulfilled this law when they were in control, not Him. Later, when God told them to make a run for Egypt in the middle of the night, they got up and left immediately. They did the best they could, but they were real people with human characteristics that get forgotten sometimes. The most important question God asks about people is, “Will they obey?” Good planning skills, organization, even keeping track of God’s Son, were not as crucial to God as, “Will they obey?” In the end, God is always in control of the safety of His own. God doesn’t look for perfect people to raise children. He looks for obedient ones.

Heaven

I have a hard time explaining Heaven to my five- year-old. He thinks Heaven sounds scary. He asks me periodically if we can just stay here and not go to Heaven.I've tried to talk Heaven up and make it seem really great and exciting. The Bible describes it as a feast, a city with streets of gold, a mansion, a long sing-along with the angels before God's throne. None of this appeals to him much, unless I tell him he can eat as much chocolate as he wants at this feast without having to eat any "real" food first. Truth is, gold streets and singing with the angels for eternity don't appeal much to me either. Maybe the Apostle John was very musical and the idea of singing forever was awesome. To me, it seems like way too little to do for six months, let alone ETERNITY. So I've come up with my own vision of Heaven. I live in a ten-storey building with my entire Church, called JPUSA, of about four hundred people. I like to imagine Heaven like JPUSA at Christmas time, in those few peaceful days between Christmas and New Years. All of the gifts are open, everyone is home brewing pots of coffee and you can still greet people with "Merry Christmas." My husband and I like to drift around, hanging out with people and eating treats, basically doing nothing but enjoying our peculiar home and the people who share it with us. I hope Heaven is like this, having a holy responsibility to enjoy hanging out with God and all of the people there. I think one of the main problems with descriptions of Heaven is that we are told of so many things that won't be there. There will be no pain, suffering, dying, or tears. I am glad to hear that, but what will it be full of? What has helped me is my own experiences of moving. I went to Mexico for nearly a year. During that time, the list of what I missed was staggering. I left my family, friends, language, culture, health, food, and so many other things. Before I left, I used to wonder what I would do to fill my time without these things. Once there, I got new friends, learned Spanish, and developed a liking for mangos. My time was full, and most importantly, I learned that the same hands that had cared for me in Chicago, God's hands, were still caring for me there. He cared for me using people who I had never seen before and who never even knew how to pronounce my name. But the caring was the same because God never stopped, just my circumstances. So this is what Heaven is all about: the same Person Who has cared for me all of my life will be there caring for me still, but this time it will be His face I see, His hands I feel, His voice I hear, directly. The Bible calls God, "Him Who fills everything in every way," so Heaven won't be empty. I just don't comprehend what it will be full of. But as long as it is the same hands caring for me there, it will be wonderful. I'm hoping for a few pots of coffee and some comfy couches,too. Now, how do I explain this to a five-year-old?

Nature and the Children

Nature and the Children
There comes a time in every child's life when he learns about nature. Not the nice, sunshine-on-springtime-flowers nature that even a city dweller like me knows about, but the nature that sometimes shows up in a National Geographic special right before you change the channel to keep your kids from having nightmares.
My boys, ages two and five, learned about this darker side of nature one summer day a few months ago. We were staying in our trailer on a lake in central Illinois, when a strange purring sound beckoned me outside. I hunted for the source of the noise, and finally found a small baby raccoon climbing on an old window we had stored behind our trailer. (Yes, we have a trailer and junk around it and so have official trailer-trash status. We draw the line at fake animals in the yard, though, so we are classy trailer trash!) It was the cutest little ball of fur I had ever seen, so I called the boys to come see it. “Look, boys, it’s a baby raccoon! Come see it!” They reluctantly tore themselves away from Blues Clues and came behind the trailer. As soon as their feet began clumping on the deck to come around back, however, a curious thing happened. The raccoon was transformed from a cute little baby into a menacing, snarling, hissing thing with bared teeth and an uncanny resemblance to Mike Ditka in a snit. When the boys got to where I was standing and stopped making noise, the raccoon went back to its adorable act, and the boys stood, open mouthed and speechless, for some time, staring at this little baby doing a balancing act on our old window. We stayed like that, conferring in whispers, watching for a few minutes until the boys got bored and decided to do what boys do when confronted by the inexplicable. They picked up some rocks and threw them at the raccoon. Once again, I had a miniature Mike Ditka hissing behind my trailer, and I realized that where baby is, mamma is usually not far behind, and mammas don’t like their babies being stoned. I scolded the boys for trying to hurt a defenseless animal, and herded them back to the trailer for another round of Blues Clues while I decided what to do about the raccoon. I could hear my older son tell his brother, “Let’s be baby raccoons. I’ll make the purring sounds, and you try to pet me” from the open window while I stood watching the raccoon, trying to figure out how to chase it away. Raccoons are terribly destructive, smart, smelly, and disease ridden. Not an animal to keep around your kids. I, too, picked up some rocks and half-heartedly lobbed them near the raccoon, which, I could hear from the trailer window, was now named Herbie and a welcome member of our family. Herbie was not amused. He bared his teeth whenever one of my rocks came close to him and looked like he was about to spring at me, a small grey rocket of death and germy destruction. So I decided to do what any city girl would do when confronted by a country problem. I hid, er..., retreated to our trailer to wait for the man of the house, who was raised in the country, to come home.
My husband grew up on a farm where the realities of life were not hidden from him. His parents routinely had to drown excess kittens and do other fun-filled farm activities that didn’t make it into the pages of any Laura Ingalls Wilder books. So I knew he would meet this problem head-on in a calm, dignified manner. A few minutes later I watched him come down the hill and past our car, where Herbie was now looking for his mother. As Andrew went past the tire behind which the raccoon was hiding, Herbie gave a loud hiss and sprang out at my husbands ankle. Andrew screamed like a woman and jumped about three feet in the air, then sprinted to the deck, screaming, “There’s a raccoon out here!”  “No kidding,” was my reply. When he got to the deck, he paused and said in a much deeper voice, “Hunny, git my gun!” Andrew is Canadian, and you could tell he’d been itching to use this line, complete with Southern accent, for a long time. I tried to talk him out of it. I mean, a gun? Around children? For a poor animal?  But he patiently explained as he loaded up the rifle that this was the only way. Raccoons are not one of those peaceful coexistence type animals. They are all-out war animals. “But what about the boys, shouldn’t we go somewhere?”    (I’ve read enough Family Circle magazines to know that this is where some family member gets shot accidentally. You’re going along; minding your own business and sudden disaster is visited upon you by an unsuspecting relative. “If I’d only checked to see if she was home from the supermarket, I’d still have my wife here to cook me dinner every night.” Never read these magazines before bed. You won’t be able to sleep because you’ll be wondering if your popcorn maker was recalled because of spontaneous combustion. And, are your pilot lights really on or just leaking gas into your home? You can’t be too careful. ) “Just go in the trailer, you’ll be fine in there,” he said. I tried to keep the truth about what was going to happen to Herbie from my sons, but they had seen the excitement in my husbands’ eyes as he loaded the gun and ran outside. So my two sons and I gathered at the window to see Daddy “Take out” Herbie. Behind the window glass and sheet metal walls of our trailer we were surely safe from stray bullets, right?  We couldn’t actually see what happened next because it happened on the other side of the car, but the gun kept going off and we heard Andrew let out some more of his high-pitched screams as he battled the raccoon. I kept giving him helpful little hints like, “Careful, we’re over here!” and “Don’t forget to point down, not up.” He told me later that the gun kept “Self-firing” as he put it, which basically means “It went off when I wasn’t anywhere near the trigger but I don’t want to scare you.” How bad is it that there is an official term for that? After a few shots, all was quiet. Herbie was dead. We silently watched Andrew get a large garbage bag, load up Herbie, and drive him to the dumpster. Then it was back to Blues Clues.
Surprisingly, we have never heard any questions about Herbie and his noisy fate from our boys. They took it in stride, much as my husband probably accepted the death of his farm’s kittens each spring. The boys learned all about the dark side of nature in one afternoon. One minute you’re staring at this adorable animal and the next, when you’ve realized its survival may be harmful to you, you’re watching it get shot and scooped into a black trash bag.
But the boys have never, ever pretended to be baby raccoons again. Yes, they understand about nature.

On Being Spoiled

On Being Spoiled

I am basically a spoiled person. I have a husband who faithfully tells people I am nineteen years old with such great conviction that when I mention that we have two boys, five and two years old, you can see the math wheels turning and suddenly! Bam! they look at him in astonishment and ask, "But what state did you get married in?"
I have the aforementioned boys, both of whom are exceptionally healthy and wonderful. I could bore you with zillions of anectotes about their intelligence, cuteness, and general fabulosity (made that word up just now, and it works well for what I'm trying to say). When I tell my friends that my eldest son pitched a huge, loud, screaming and kicking fit in the Children's Museum at Navy Pier, and had to be carried, cajoled, and dragged to a bus stop several blocks away as the entire population of downtown Chicago looked on in horror, my friends laugh, shrug their shoulders, and clearly don't believe me. "Not Chase!" they say.
My parents are still together, and still like each other's company after all these years. Respect their Do Not Disturb sign! They also like me, my husband and my kids, and even though we live in the same building, they aren't suffocatingly close.
My sister and I get along, and our husbands get along well. The nice thing is that our husbands have each other to discuss computer stuff with. I am lucky to be able to read e-mail without crashing the computer. When our husbands turn to their secret language of dot-this and that, or those long strings of acronyms, we talk sewing.
I periodically watch the BBC late at night to keep up on more than mommy info, mommy info being the next day's weather, dinner, and child safety tips. It seems like every time I watch it, I come away depressed. Sometimes I just hear the word, "Africa" and I have to turn the T.V. off. I am ashamed to admit that, but it's true. I feel so helpless and so embarrassed to be in America when people have such huge needs. I do try to pray for the situations I hear about, but it feels like too little. My husband works full-time at a homeless shelter, so it's not that we don't try to help people. But essentially, his is a nine-to-five job, we have a seemingly secure life, and I am basically a spoiled person, especially in the face of starvation, AIDS, orphans, genocide, torture, poor or nonexistant medical care, high child mortality rates, etc., etc. I heard recently that America has four percent of the world's population. How did I get to be in that four percent? How did I get to have such a wonderful life? I have friends whose children have various genetic differences which mean they may never have a real conversation, ever. Last year, I watched my next-door neighbor die slowly and painfully of cancer, leaving a young daughter. It's not that there is no pain or trouble in America, or my own building, it's just that all trouble seems so huge and hopeless. Africa has the added difficulty of being far away.
I have a friend with three sons. Two sons have bleeding disorders, and one has autism. Once you say it like that, it sounds hopeless. I have a theory about moms who go through things like that. It's kind of like those wagon trains in the Old West. When there was trouble or an attack, they would pull all of the wagons into a circle, put the women and children in the middle, and try to fight off the attackers. I think a mom, when given news like the news my friend got, circles her wagons, pulls in her kids, and sits down to grieve. How could you not grieve? But what makes or breaks the situation is if the mom decides to sit in the circle forever. Some moms seem to get in the protective circle, and decide that this or that wagon have to go. That wagon is making the circle too big, so out go friends. Another wagon has to go now, and out go outside interests. You get the picture. The circle gets smaller and smaller until the mom is completely alone with her grief, with no one to help her and no desire to do anything else but grieve. Bitterness sets in and things get worse. But the women like my friend, with enough courage sit down for a while, and eventually, through God's grace, they slowly and painfully get their wagons back in a line and set off again. They may move in a slightly different direction, may make more frequent stops, but they have the courage and determination to continue. And you know what? Somehow the problems are not the center of their lives anymore. Yep, they are still there, they still hurt like crazy sometimes, but they really do receive enough grace to continue. That is what I have come to learn. If you're not in the thick of the situation, next to the person having the hard time, you miss the miracles that happen. If you're not close, you miss the grace. I tend to run away from people with big problems. I feel helpless and like I have nothing to say, no hope to hold out. But, thankfully, hope is not my job. My job is to listen and to wait. As I listen and wait, I will secretly be praying with great reverence, "So God, how are you going to work this one out?" Because if I am dragged into the middle of real life from my spoiled life, I am sure to see some miracles. Maybe God put me in my spoiled life in this specific four percent for some reason of His own that I will never understand. People in hard situations don't seem to have any better idea than I do about why things happen to the people they do. We are sort of plunked down and expected to keep our eyes open to the good, not just the bad. Do what is put before us to do, and keep our eyes straining for the miracles.
That's the problem with the BBC. They miss the miracles.    

Men and Action Movies

Men and Action Movies
My husband loves action movies.Five nights out of seven will find him on our couch watching Mel, Bruce, or even, in a pinch, Steven Segall, blowing things up. The other two nights of the week he is gone. I am a reader. Seven nights out of seven will find me reading anything I can get my hands on, short of Christian romance novels. I firmly believe there is a library full of Christian romance novels in Hell. I have even spent many happy hours reading through military surplus catalogues because it was all I could find. On careful consideration (at least two minutes of thought) I think I am a reader because I love to learn. I read some fiction, but I love history.
I have spent much time watching action movies with my husband.At first, I used to try to find some little piece of trivia in the movie to think about to keep from going crazy. I was like the Macgyver of action movies, with my paper-clip sized bit of historical trivia dredged from the bottom of an action film's script to keep me from going mad with boredom.
Now I have another system. Early on, I predict the outcome of the movie and stick around to check my accuracy. I know, sometimes before opening credits are over, who is toast, who is really alive even though we've been told they are dead, and who is likely to be in a love scene. It's a gift.
I have come to realize that, unlike history, it's the process, not the end product, that my husband enjoys about action movies. With books on history, you don't care too much about the process unless there is a big end result. For instance, you don't read too many riveting books on the daily life of peasants. They are born, eat, sleep, get married, have children, and die, with maybe some extra eating and sleeping thrown in. I have slogged through one or two books of the daily-life-of-a-peasant genre, and I have come away with only one interesting fact. There are a lot of gutless editors out there who won't tell the truth about these books- "This stinks. I fell asleep." But tell me about winning a war, transforming a nation, or ruling a kingdom and I will willingly get through heaps of detail. Maybe I like history because I get to see something modern more clearly because I understand better where it came from. At least that's what I tell myself.
But action movies! You get your basic explosions,your rebel-turned-savior hero, your last-minute twists, your high- tech gadgets, your sidekick destined for painful death, your car chase, your other car chase, your car chase ending in an explosion, your loud music, your tough-talking but essentially helpless girl, and you suddenly have a billion-dollar movie and maybe even a record deal.
So it must be the process. How will they show us the hero is a rebel? How will the sidekick meet death? Is the girl going to scream or hit ineffectually during the final scene?
One thing I've noticed is that the big "They" have started to give us women who can fight like men. I don't know if this is good or bad. I have never met one of those Hollywood beautiful women and secretly I doubt they exist. Now not only are we women supposed to be tall, thin, and drop-dead gorgeous, but now we have to fight like Bruce Lee and still have all of our teeth intact. This is just too much. One or the other, guys, teeth or fighting ability. Personally, since I'm stuck on tall (I'm short) there is no hope for me personally. I would be toast in the first ten minutes.
Since action movies are so predictable, why do people, especially men, love them so? Here it comes, one of my Big Theories. Men like action movies for the same rerason some people like Haikus. With a Haiku, you know you're going to get seventeen syllables, and at the end of those seventeen syllables, the poem will be over. No lollygagging around when you're writing a Haiku. If you choose to ride the wild rollercoaster of Haiku, you know exactly what you'll get. In an action movie, as with a Haiku, the author/director is trying to get his point across in a very restrictive medium. The sidekick will die. Everyone knows this. But will he betray our hero? Will he meet death in a dignified manner? Will he reveal his pent-up feelings for the hero's girl before he expires? This is where the art of an action movie comes in. The details. Are they on the subway for the final scene? Are there pigeons fluttering around? I think the point every director is trying to get across in an action movie (besides making pots of money) is his version of the perfect man. Some versions of the perfect man are surely better than others. Really. Vin Diesel in Triple X dressed and sounded way cooler than Mel Gibson in the Lethal Weapon movies. But the screen writer and director were so good on the Lethal Weapon series that Mel (even in a mullet!) has become an icon of cool in action movies. And, since most action movie directors are men, it's no secret that kindness to animals is not high on the list of action hero qualities. An animal is something you ride or eat. Sometimes both.
I enjoy what my husband refers to as "Chick Flicks," and I refer to as, "Movies taken from books by that astonishing genius, Jane Austen." I believe there is more truth to be found in a Jane Austen movie than in an action movie. Women talking and chatting and men falling in love with the women talking- that is a Jane Austen movie. There are of course feelings thrown in for good measure, but the basic gist is that people talk, get married, and the credits roll. Happens every day with alarming frquency. I have never personally witnessed things like may be found in even a calm action movie. Explosions, car chases, gorgeous women, and perfect teeth everywhere - this is the stuff of legends. This is using a restrictive medium to make a point. This is - dare I say it? - art.
My husband, when he lounges on the couch with his pint of Chocolate Fudge Brownie ice cream, is enjoying art.
Behold, my huband, the artist.    

Potty Training Dashiell

Potty Training Dashiell

This is not an essay for people who have the luxury of getting "grossed out" by frank discussions about bodily secretions. If you have never had kids or have never been a teenaged boy, this may not be something for you to read. That said, let's begin.
Parenting is that period of life when you spend huge amounts of thought, energy, and time being obsessed with bodily functions. Teenage boys pass through a certain amount of training for parenthood when they become intrigued by burps, poop, and other noises, etc., that disgust and dismay the girls they know. Watch out, ladies, there will be a real need for this knowledge when you have kids of your own! Ask any new parent, and they will tell you that for the beginning two years of a child's life, the first question out of a doctor's mouth when you take your kid in for a checkup or for sickness will be, "How many times a day has he had a dirty diaper?", closely followed by, "How many times has he pooped today?" Men always know the answer. One of the great God-given instincts that men have is knowing about their infant's poop. They have been waiting for years for their early fascination with such matters to pay off. When they have kids, they get to show off their special knowledge in this crucial area. They used to have to hide somewhere to talk about poop and gas; now DOCTORS are consulting them about it.
Well, Dashiell was 18 months old and would pat the lid of our toilet and lift his shirt. I assumed he wanted to potty train. One day, I plopped him on the toilet, holding him carefully so his skinny bottom wouldn't fall in, and lo and behold, he did what every mother hopes for from the day they are born - he went potty in the toilet! Mothers wait longingly for two milestones, sleeping through the night and the completion of potty training. They feel that whole worlds could be conquered by them if these two things could be accomplished. So we began our saga. For the next two days, he would sit on the toilet, eke out a few drops, gasp in wonderment, and say, "Done." Then I would wipe him, get him off the toilet, wrestle him back into his diaper, pants, and socks, and the flushing ceremony would begin. He would slam the lid, yank on the handle, reopen the lid, and put his face as close as possible to the swirling water, all the while making loud gasping sounds and saying "Wow! Ooooh!"
Now, I have read from a very reliable source, (Dave Barry) that toilets spray out water as they flush at least up to, like, forty feet. So imagine the germs to be obtained by kissing Dashiell's pudgy cheeks!
This was the first year he was old enough to notice our Christmas tree. My husband and I went out after the boys were in bed, bought a tree, carefully covered it in a not-so-subtle amount of lights, and packed every branch with shiny, sparkly ornaments. The next morning I closed the curtains, turned off all the lights except the ones on the tree, told the boys to expect a surprise, and brought them in to see it. Chase, our four-year-old, gave us the right reaction. He shouted, "Nice tree, mommy and daddy! You guys did a good job!" (Positive reinforcement is big in our family.) Dash, however, ran right past the tree in his rush to get to the T.V. and turn it on. Barely even glanced at the tree. Probably just glad it didn't block the screen. But this child who thinks nothing of a giant Christmas tree suddenly appearing in the night like a glittering, beneficial fungus, positively adores putting his face in our toilet and watching his own you-know-what swirl around and disappear.
After four days, I was ready to give up on the whole potty-training extravaganza. There is only so much time you can spend in a five by seven bathroom with a squealing, squirming toddler before your vocabulary is reduced and the Mommy Mantra takes over. The Mommy Mantra goes something like," No! Don't touch that! Icky! I said Yucky! Stop! No more!Yuck!" It doesn't actually calm anyone down like a mantra should, it just makes the mom think she has some control over what's going on. She doesn't. Sometimes you add a long, drawn out wail, "Oooooooh, Dash! Why did you do that?" I discovered this part of the Mommy Mantra when I went to get some underwear for Dash, leaving him unclothed for about five minutes. I had decided that he was doing so well with his training that he could wear underwear as a reward. So I went to his room, rooted around in his older brother's drawer for something small enough, and came back. During my absence, I pondered how amazing it was that such a young little boy, and so cute, would potty train at such a young age. Not only cute, but quite advanced, and surely destined for greatness. (Yes, I know early potty training is no sure mark of greatness, but we mothers grasp at straws sometimes to keep going.) When I returned to this miracle child, he had pooped up a nice pile on our floor and was carefully smearing the pages of my photo album with it. Right over pictures of his brother and I before Dash was born. Coincidence? Since this genius child didn't really talk yet, we will never know.
I decided to press on, though, and the next day he sat on the toilet for all of his business. I did not have to change one wet or smelly diaper all day, and when I realised this at bed-time I was almost teary-eyed with joy. Everything smelt fresh and clean, the skin wasn't flaking off my hands from excessive handwashing, and my child was once again destined for greatness. The whole smearing of photo albums was a small bump in the road to absolute perfection. My thoughts like this continued into the next day until I realised that Dash wanted to sit on the toilet to pass gas and nothing else. He was exceptionally gassy and so I spent a huge amount of time saying the Mommy Mantra to him in our tiny bathroom, with no real results except lots of wet, smelly diapers and a crick in my back from sitting on the edge of the tub.
I wanted to quit. I feared that my brain would become atrophied from lack of use because of sitting in our bathroom for years on end with a gassy little boy. So we called it quits until four months later, when he suddenly became toilet trained in two days and, except for an accident about once a month, we haven't had a problem since. He has added to the flushing ceremony and now blows kisses at the swirling contents of our toilet, while calling "Bye, Bye!", which is more than his Grandparents get sometimes.
What did I learn from this? That the possibility, just the hazy possibility, of never changing another dirty diaper again until you have Grandkids is enough to keep a reasonably normal, intelligent woman trapped in a tiny bathroom for hours on end and still think it's worth it. I am a woman, after all. My instinct is to run away from poop and poop stories. That's why women do the potty training, though men talk about it. We are trying to escape poop. Instinct. And anyway, you can always send the Grandkids home for changing.