Unto Us

This is Simon, and I have been delinquent in introducing him to the world. He was born on November 29th at 10:53pm, after 2 hours of labor and 11 minutes at the hospital (if you want to be a hospital celebrity, deliver a baby that fast! I think everyone I saw for the 36 or so hours we were there knew how fast he came!). He was 7 lbs., 1 oz., and 20 inches long (identical in size to his sister at birth, except for being 1/4 inch longer).

I will post more about him soon. For now, it's sufficient to let him nap on my chest and to enjoy his babyhood.

Sometimes the Answer is Another Question

I put my order in for this week and, like those times when you ask for an Egg McMuffin and end up with a Cheeseburger, somehow it got garbled in the process. My requests were simple, I thought: 1 baby (born, healthy); 1 mama (healthy, no longer pregnant); 1 toddler (healthy, happy, loving baby brother); 1 daddy (healthy, proud).

Instead the tally seems to be 1 baby (still inside, presumed healthy); 1 mama (sick, still pregnant); 1 toddler (sick, grumpy), 1 daddy (healthy).

I keep wondering if it would do any good to go back to the drive-thru and try yelling this time.

They're little things, the ones I didn't get this week, and yet I keep finding myself upset that I didn't get them. I want this baby out like you could not possibly believe (except you can, if you've been there), I want to be able to breathe through my nose, and I want my girl to regain the ability to deal that seems to flee when she's ill.

This week, these little things mirror larger things that I prayed for over months and years when I felt like God was ignoring me. Now that things seem to be on the upswing for us, I can look back on those times with a little more clarity. A little more, but not too much.

I thought there'd be a moment of truth, a time when I'd realize why we walked through difficulty and uncertainty, when I'd see a purpose behind it all and suddenly understand. But just like I don't understand how this week turned out so opposite what I'd hoped, I don't understand why our lives had to go all topsy-turvy for 2 years.

Maybe I never will know. Maybe I'll never be able to explain to my girl why her first impressions of the world are probably so mixed and confusing. Maybe there will never be words.

I can say that, but can I live it? Questions rise up, more and more of them every time I try to make peace with that. Not just "Why?" but more detailed questions. Did I miss something? How do I know when life is just like that and when there's some sort of method to be found? I wonder why my girl's coming into the world seemed to usher in a time of pain and confusion, and my son's looks to come alongside peace and routine and rest. And on, and on.

So right now I'm sitting with questions. They're fragile, or maybe I am, because if I think on them too hard, they'll break (or maybe I will). So they sit in my hands. I poke them a little, then I walk away and come back later, only to poke again.

Will answers come from the prodding? Peace? I don't know, but I know that, just as I can't look at them too hard, I can't leave them behind, either. They're pieces of the future, I think, even though I can't see how they all fit just now. So I'll hold, look, poke, leave until something rises from their ashes.

Come, Lord Jesus.

Loving the Sharp Places

It's easy, when the beautiful is her smile and the sun reflecting off her blonde hair as she runs ahead of me. And it's easy when she dances on the living room floor, just-learned jumps still wobbly but nothing half-hearted about them.

But it's different when the beautiful is tears at dinner because her olive fell apart and demands to get out of the car while it's still moving. It's different when naps don't happen and they dare change the clocks and she doesn't want to wear diapers but refuses to use the potty.

We think of beauty as the round and the smooth, with graceful edges balanced by straight lines. But beauty can be pointy, too, and sharp, and hard as a rock. Some say that isn't beauty, but when it's a little heart trying to figure out what it means to be human, what else can it be?

And so I try to love her like she's beautiful, even the hard parts. I wrap my arms around all of her, even the points and the prickles, and I hold her close to me even when she's sharp. How else will she learn of love, that it has more to do with the lover than the condition of the beloved? Because to be human is to be loved, and that's what I'd have her know more than anything else.

When Love is Enough

At the end of a day when she didn't sleep and I needed her to, tomorrow looks like a long haul. I keep reminding myself that we're all still in transition, but what to do when I need 10 minutes away from being mama and she needs her mama now, and now, and now. The pressure is on, to get us settled before her baby brother arrives and to still meet her needs and make her smile.

Little eyes, little nose, red from crying and I can't give her what she wants because neither of us know what that is. Not up, not down, not bunny or bear, not the book, nor the baby, nor the markers and paper.

It's the intangibles that get us all, even when we're small, and sometimes being offered love just isn't enough. Sometimes we all want to run away, want to bang our heads against the wall or hold our hands in front of our faces so the world can't get in anymore. Sometimes stress settles around all of our shoulders, even the smallest ones, and we can't rest for the pressure we can't see.

I didn't want her to be like me, didn't want her to absorb emotional energy like her skin is an emotion-permeable membrane, not always able to distinguish what's mine and hers and yours and someone else's. But I think she is, dear little sensitive soul, and I feel the need to be okay so she will be okay.

There's also truth, though, and when the truth is something other than okay, I want to learn to hold that for her, as I hold her and let her fall apart in my arms.

Tiny love. Not so tiny anymore, not even the tiniest in our family, but always my little love. May you find your sleep, and may we both remember that love is enough, even when it feels like it ought to be otherwise.

Not All Who Wander Are Lost (or So They Say)

More than a month (nearly two!) since I've occupied this place in any meaningful way, and so much between then and now that truly catching you up is more than I could do, because I'm not caught up yet myself. But here's the summary:

• a week in Nevada, at WorldCon (why, yes, we are nerds!), where we learned that toddlers and conferences are not entirely incompatible, but are also not the best-synced things on the planet
• a week in Virginia, teaching
• a week in Philadelphia, visiting friends
• a car, a train, a taxi ride, my first solo hotel-stay, another taxi ride, a bus, two airplanes, and another car ride to get home
• a phone call, in the middle of the train ride, telling me they'd offered the job we'd given up on and we had two days to decide which life we wanted
• the decision to accept the job and turn the world temporarily helter-skelter
• a whirlwind trip 50 miles away to find a place to live
• a nearly perfect house
• a phone call from the doctor (just as we were putting the deposit on the house) and a somewhat complicated situation where they thought I had gestational diabetes but I didn't
• a week of pricking my finger 4 times a day to PROVE I didn't have GD
• a fortnight with the husband only home on the weekends because he stared working before the house was available
• packing packing packing
• another pregnancy-complication scare, this time because my blood pressure skyrocketed (Lest anyone panic, it has since gone down. They took it the day before we moved . . . actually, I should just have the doctors read this list before they decide to get worried again!)
• moving moving moving
• unpacking like crazy, in case the babe decides to come early
• a toddler who doesn't do well with transitions (I'm starting to think she's a highly sensitive person, like her mama)

And today it's his birthday and we'll celebrate next weekend because we're still too tired and disjointed to figure out what to do on a Monday night. We face a wall that has to be painted (a baby boy just cannot move into a room with a pink wall), a basement we have to figure out how to heat, helping our bella girl figure out that her world really hasn't ended after all, and figuring out how to connect with people in this new place.

But all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well. Thank God for Julian!

Musings on Liturgy: Where Do I Go?

To whom shall we go? 

You have the words of eternal life,

and we have believed, and have come to know

that You are the Holy One of God.

Praise to Thee, Lord Jesus Christ,

King of endless glory.

My head hurts today. The raging hormones of pregnancy can cause that, they say, and I suspect that pondering the future too much can, too. Not being able to take my traditional rounds of medication makes me grumpy, and when I'm grumpy too long, I go to a bad place.

Most of you reading this probably know that place, if not in your own experience, at least in your experience of other people. It's a place where life sucks and where I don't want any demands placed on me because I'm uncomfortable, darnit!, and the people around me are supposed to take care of me, not the other way around. 

It's not a good place. It's not a place that makes me a better wife, mother, symbiotic host, or friend. And it's not a place from which I really want to talk to God. After all, he calls me to be more than my headache, to come out of the place where I want everyone to feel sorry for the poor pregnant woman who cannot take medicine to feel better and see where others are at, too. 

And yet, where else is there to go?

The words above, part of my morning liturgy, seem like one of the most appropriate greetings for God that I've ever heard. That's the way I see them, like the words I say when I'm finally through the door, after I've stated my intention to want Him and only Him and asked that my heart be changed so that intention can be truth. Then I get to see Him, and these are the words I'm given to say. 

Truly, there's nowhere else to go. Or nowhere else that it makes sense to go, anyway. In reality, we all try to go a lot of different places other than to God. People talk about these places all the time. They're the things we try to fill ourselves with, the things that actually make us more empty, and yet we return over and over again.

There's only one place we can go, but to do that we have to admit that He is God. We have to say that He is the Lord, the Son of the King and King himself, and that his perspective, the eternal one, is the one that counts to us more than anything else does. It's hard to do this, especially hard when we want our circumstances to matter more than they do, when we're demanding acknowledgement of our pain or our struggles or our unmet desires before we submit to anything.

That's not to say that these things aren't important. We need to feel our pain, and we need others to see it and speak into it. Our circumstances do matter, because that's where we're loved. And if we aren't held and loved in the places where our deep desires aren't met, we'll have holes inside that effect the rest of our lives. 

These things matter, but they aren't everything. Even when we're hurting, there's more going on than our pain. There are His words of eternal life, and the knowledge that He knows us and sees us, and that our pain hurts Him, too. It's not always comforting to remember these things (in fact, it can be maddening), but keeping them in mind can change our perspective. When we see Him through our pain, we see the pain itself differently.

And so today I work to acknowledge Him. I work to love the people around me, even with their demands, because He loves them and because He loves me. And in the larger picture of our current struggles and state of unknowing about what the next few months, I try to find the joys in every day, because those are things He has given, rather than dwelling on the unknown, or the things He hasn't given.

Canyon Places

We've been waiting and waiting, these last months, for the phone to ring. He's applied so many times, so many places, so many different jobs. People tell us over and over again that the market sucks, like we don't know that or it's supposed to be comforting. It's not us, nothing personal, and we don't take it that way. But you can only go so long staring at a silent phone when all you want it to do is ring before you start to wonder if you got the rules wrong, somehow, or if you're playing a different game than the rest.

And then it rings, and again and again. Three interviews in two weeks, and we were out of town for one of those. A job we really want, a job we kind-of want, and one that we'll take with joy if the others fall through. Three different industries, three different types of experience. But it's all backwards, with notifications coming in the order opposite of what would be helpful and us wondering if we're going to have to close the door on something sure because we hope for what we don't yet know. We're not sure if we can do it, if it comes to that. Not even sure we should, with two littles in the mix now and the need for at least a semblance of stability.

Sometimes I feel like I'm a player in a game that I don't understand, like if I could have the view of the chess player rather than the pawn, then it would all make sense. From where I stand, it feels backwards and inside out (or, in the words of my daughter's book, "Inside, Outside, Upside Down"). We've waited so long for any opportunity, and now we have three. Rejoice! On the other hand, we may end up choosing one that's not what we really want because we can't wait any longer to hear back from the one that's most ideal. Bah! 

It's a twisty thing, this path of life, and somewhat easier, I think, if we accept that most of what we'll do is wander. There aren't many vistas, here, not many places where the clouds part and the rocks move and we get to see where we've been and how it leads to where we're going. Most of the time, I think we're in a relatively narrow canyon with high walls. It's beautiful, there, with a stream running through and trees and flowers and all the layers and layers of rock stacked to remind us that others have been by, millions and millions of times. It's beautiful, but we can't see.

This doesn't bother some people nearly as much as it bothers me. I've always wanted to see, always strived to understand more, to gain a bigger perspective. I think it's the the way my mind works, the way I was made, if you will. I don't like having pieces without a whole, don't like sifting them through my fingers without some sort of overarching reason or premise behind it all. 

I want us to make the right choice, to not choose out of fear but out of wisdom. I want the pieces to fall into place, so that I know. But without the bigger perspective, I don't know if that's possible. And I wonder why he doesn't tell us more, doesn't give us what we need to know to make the right choice. 

"Trust," comes to mind, and I work on that. Yet he's trusted me with so much, and it kills me to think I might not be able to make the right choice here. He'll still be there if we don't; I know that. But I don't know how much more of this wandering I can endure. Funny, that. I've always been a wandering heart. But now I want roots, a place to settle, a place and a routine that feels like home.