Radical!

Ah, remember the 80s, when the cool kids said that?  Tubular.

Well it now appears that I'm a radical, in the old 60's sense of wearing beads and not shaving armpits.  Or something.  I fit the profile of "a radical homemaker".  Although I think they might be a bit surprised to know I vote Republican and think this is funny.

I keep waiting for my library to get the book, because I'm hesitant to spend money on it.  Because, you know, I'm cheap radical like that.

Cheers,

Breanna

P.S. Can anyone else tell if that's a dude or a chick on the cover of that book?  I honestly can't... which might be the point... but if so, wow.

BRT

Apparently This is Not An Anomaly

I don't have a picture because it would have been unsanitary to handle the camera as I was scrubbing the bathroom.

Let me tell you, you don't know what it's like to scrub a bathroom until you do it with a wiggly one-year-old strapped to your back and a curious toddler standing directly behind you the whole time.  It gets done but... well, let's just say that it's gonna be a few years (like, when I can trust the small people in my house not to drink cleanser) before I attain to the Flylady's "swish the bathroom every morning after your morning shower" routine.

(Nope, I don't always get a morning shower, either.)

So last week, I was scrubbing the bathroom in the company of the afore-mentioned small people and also a curious, 73-pound black lab (because, hey, maybe I was going to make food magically appear in the bathtub or somesthing) when Miss Boo begins having The Mother of All Fits.

Now, she doesn't Fit often.  And usually there are extenuating circumstances--vaccinations, no nap, being dragged up and down the aisles of a store, something.  Not that we excuse Fits, I am just always surprised when they show up, because they're rare.  It took a minute to figure out what had caused the Fit.

Miss Boo: I want to wash the toilet!
Me: (thinking, you can't be serious) How about the tub?  Take your rag and wash the tub.
Miss Boo: NO! I want to wash the toilet!
Me: The toilet is yucky.  Mommy has to wash the toilet, because it's too yucky for kids.  How about the door?  Want to wash the door?  I'll squirt cleaner on it.
Miss Boo: NO! I want to wash the toilet! Let ME wash the toilet!
Me: (sternly, realizing that this is getting out of hand) That's naughty talk.  You need to calm down.
Miss Boo: I DON'T WANT TO CALM DOWN!  I'M MAD!

So we did the discipline thing, and it took ten minutes, during which time at least the toilet was clean.  I thought this was an isolated incident--how many toddlers can there be in the world who desperately long to scrub the toilet? for longer than six minutes?-- when we had another fit today, as I was scrubbing the toilet again.  This time she had the sense not to flail and yell to the point of needing a time out, but she did go stomping into her room, where I heard her muttering to the night light:

Miss Boo: I'm mad.  I don't want to use my words.  I want to wash.  I want to wash the toilet.  I don't
want to use my words!

Couldn't quite figure out how to break it to her that she was, in fact, using her words.  So we rocked in the rocking chair until she conked out instead, and now she is sleeping, and at least I have a clean toilet.

And a toddler who uses words to explain she doesn't want to use words.  Sigh.

Cheers,

Breanna

Pictures for the Patient

Now that I've decided spending all day with the cracks of my attention occupied with our impending business meeting is dumb, I've got to make myself think about healthier things.  For instance, how the ginger beer turned out:

Like mild gingery lemonade, if you are wondering.  I think I let most of the carbonation escape.  (That's Brother's birthday cake next to it.  We eat cake slow here.)

He liked the cake, but not as well as the goldfish crackers.

She liked the ginger beer.  But she liked her new swimsuit more.  It was a real challenge to get her to put clothes on in order to go to night church that night.  (Yep, it was the disastrous night, but we aren't thinking about it right now.)

Here are some of my plant babies, although they look better than this in real life (darn flash).  Rosemary (that's for rememberance!) and Genovese basil, and then you can't see the cucumbers, bok choi, onions, tomatoes, peppers, and other onions.  (3 kinds of onions, in fact.)  Going to the nursery in the spring and buying seeds and plants is like going to the grocery store hungry--everything looks good.

We have a busy few days ahead of us--tonight the Husband and I have to go out to dinner with one of his corporate bosses, while Grandma sits with the kids; then tomorrow I actually have a Mommy-pal date.  (You don't realize how important or rare this is, that I can actually get excited about library storytime.  It's difficult when you've got littles and your friends don't... they try to understand, but they will keep doing things like calling to invite you to a Mary Kay party that happens at 8:30pm.  And they won't understand when you laugh as though they suggested robbing a bank and moving to Panama.)  The Husband will likely be working late every day and working through lunch.  So.  Exciting times, but at least not a lot of lesiure for morbid thoughts.

On the other hand, check out this prayer from a nun named (what else?) Mary Margaret:

"I fear everything from my weakness, but I expect everything from Your strength, O Lord."

Bingo.

Cheers,

Breanna

The Contemplative Prayer Practice

Okay.

So first of all, a disclaimer: not Catholic.  Not considering being Catholic.  I don't pray to Mary, I don't venerate saints, none of that.  No statues or candles or anything in my house, right?  No holy water.  No icons.

Alright.  Glad we've got that clear.  But.  I have been praying a rosary lately, albeit with tweaks to make it more Protastant-ish.

I haven't been using an Anglican rosary, although that would be totally Protestant, because it doesn't include meditation on the Life of Christ.  (Although it could.  It would be easy to set up.)  To understand the tweaks I made to the standard Roman Catholic Rosary, you should understand how it's usually prayed.

I've been counting on my fingers.  Pretty much what I do is, replace the Hail Mary prayers on the decades with the Jesus Prayer, which is a famous Eastern Orthodox prayer that says: "Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner."  The value I've found in the repetitive prayer is in engaging my fingers (like doodling while you listen to a lecture, which has always helped me concentrate) and my lips, and making it so I can pray while I change diapers without losing my place.  (No, I'm not using it as vain repetition.  I promise.  I don't think the fact that I say things over and over again makes God hear me better--He's not hard of hearing.)  See, overall the rosary is a meditation on the Life of Christ, starting with the annuciation of His birth to Mary and ending with Him going up to Heaven.  Each event in the Life of Christ is called a "mystery".  I cut out the mysteries in the Catholic Culture article like "the Assumption of Mary" that have no Biblical basis, and put in something else instead to meditate on, like maybe a verse or another miracle Christ did, like feeding the five thousand.

This has, as a side note, clarified for me what a nurse's assistant said to me once when she cornered me at my first job: "Did you know the Pope added five new mysteries to the rosary?  So you should make sure to get a new one!"  To which I nodded and smiled.  It was easier than explaning I didn't have a rosary or keep track of Papal statements in the first place.

Again, just for clarity, praying the rosary doesn't mean that I'm converting to Catholicism.  But I've been finding the rosary very sweet and helpful as a way to keep Christ continually in my mind during the day, and since I'm praying it to honor the Lord and not His mother*, I think I'm ok.

Check it out.  You might like it.  Or you might find it really, really weird.  To each his own.

Cheers,

Breanna

*Mary was a very good woman, and worthy of all kinds of respect, but she isn't my mediatrix with Christ.  I don't need a mediatrix with Christ.  He is my Mediator.  I understand and respect the Catholic position, but there you are--this is what I find evidence for in Scripture.  Someday when we are all in Heaven together we can find the dear lady and ask her to clarify her position; until then I'll respect her without venerating her, and Catholics who have other convictions can live out what they believe they have to do.

A More Encouraging Post

...remember, I already told you to start learning and doing now while you have the money.  That might include buying yourself a prayer book, if you think you might find it as helpful as I've been doing.  There's some wisdom, after all, in following patterns laid down by smart people who've been dead for hundreds of years.  Or in simply yelling whatever you think you need to say to God at the sky.  Both ways are valid, but I find the book helps me concentrate, since my prayers are generally interrupted by tiny voices saying things like "Buddy has noodles!" or "Mama, I'm poopy."

The Lord has been so gracious to me in my devotional time as we enter these couple weeks of ickyiness.  I've been praying (among other things) the Anglican Great Litany, which you may find here, and which is a great thing to pray when you have no idea how to go about phrasing things to the Lord.  (Or when you find yourself just saying "help! help! help!" and you wish to be more specific.)  The Litany takes you down through absolutely everything you could ever think of to pray for, and although it's meant to be read with responses, you can do it by yourself quite satisfactorily.

I found a One Year Bible at the secondhand store a few months back and have been using it quite happily this year (go New Living Version! you rock) and was charmed to find that the Lord had set up the story of Gideon to fall on April 26, which was yesterday, and today.  There's nothing like reading about a cowering, sulking, sign-demanding judge to make you realize that the Lord can save whom He pleases with whom He pleases.

The reading in my Psalm for the day yesterday was the last half or so of Psalm 119, the part where God is doing some housecleaning of those who don't love His law.  Yeah baby.

I've also been doing another contemplative prayer practice lately--even before this whole thing broke--that deserves its own post, in case you might want to try it.  I'll write that post next.

Want a good poem about Christ as Warrior?  Try "The Goodly Fere" by Ezra Pound.  "Fere" means "brother" in case you don't speak old Scotch. :)  Presumably it's Simon Peter talking in the poem, though I suppose it could have been one of the sons of thunder too.

Christ is King, and you seriously don't want to get Him riled by endangering babies.

Under the Omnipotence,

Breanna

Pray for Us

I have some cute baby pictures I'll put up soon, but right now I'm still a little sick at heart and I want to ask you to talk to the Lord for me.

The Husband and I have been attending the same church since we moved here.  It's not a perfect church--nowhere is--but the folks are friendly and they generally preach the truth.  Last month a situation came up regarding a person who appeared one day asking for membership in the congregation.  Without saying anything that might open me to legal liability, let's just say that this person is not safe to be in a congregation that includes, among others, women and young children.

So last night the Husband and I attended the business meeting that was called to determine this person's admission into membership.  The Husband tends to get a little abrasive when he's arguing (he did well in Speech and Debate), so when it got to the part of the meeting where this membership question was addressed, he came and got the kids from me in the nursery and sent me in to represent the family in the meeting.  (We'd already discussed this and agreed to do it that way, although now he feels he should have figured out a way to be with me .)

I was shocked that the Husband and I were the only ones in that meeting who felt we shouldn't offer immediate membership--in good standing!--to this person.  I stood up and said my piece, and of course because I was nervous and upset my voice trembled and I got teary.  (It's incredibly aggravating to get teary when you're angry, teary when you're nervous, teary when your sad, teary when you're happy.... sigh.)  I stated my objections as clearly as I could--and they were really pretty obvious objections, things like "have we spoken to this person's parole officer?"  (Answer: "uh, no, we meant to do that...") and "has anyone noticed that the details given about this person's conviction and sentence don't match the details on the offender registry on the computer"?  (Answer: "uh, maybe the state made a mistake?")

In the end I had to come right out and say that the Husband and I can't continue to attend if this person is in membership--we have no right to endanger our children that way.  I was so surprised when the response to this was a lecture, mostly on the part of older men with grown children, about how I was being unloving, unbiblical, and dare I say, unchristian.

I've never felt like a feminist before in my life.  I've never felt oppressed--not at school, not at work, and not in the church, but last night I am almost certain I was dismissed because I'm a young female.

At least my words seemed to shock the congregation enough that the issue hasn't been decided (although a test vote was taken--the Husband and I were the only two "no" votes).  We've been asked as a church to spend two weeks in fasting and prayer about this.  Because we want to do our duty, the Husband and I are going to stick out these two weeks, but they are going to suck.  So pray for us, and pray for the church.  Pretty much unless God does a miracle and either removes this person or changes the minds of the congregation, the Husband and I and our babies will be seeking a new church home.  We are sick at heart about this.  We like our congregation and it's been our church home for two years.  It's weighing heavily on both of us.

So pray for us, would you?

Hard?

Breanna

We Got Tim Tebow!

...and in other news, is anyone surprised?

Cheers,

Breanna

Independence

Happy Mother's Father's Valentine's Earth Day!  What could possibly be more valid than buying a bunch of Earth Day stuff, turning off your lights for a symbolic hour, and driving to a green rally?

Well, becoming independent of what's been called "the formal economy", maybe.  See, I don't care a whit about "saving the Earth", mostly because I think she isn't in danger, but I do care about making sure that everyone in my household is insulated from the Random Acts of Extreme Stupidity being committed daily in the formal economy by certain people we won't mention.  (*cough* PBO!)  Let's just say that as the person in the household who balances the checkbook, I recognize the signs.  It's terribly fun getting into debt, most of the time, but I do believe as a nation we've reached the point that households reach when they go out and buy plasma TVs so they can distract themselves from the forclosure notices piling up on the credenza.

The Earth (she's not my mother) is doing just fine.  But isn't it ironic that when you do the right thing anyway, like not wasting things and gardening the part of the Earth you've been given (Genesis does instruct humans to 1) populate and 2) garden/subdue the Earth), that you end up doing what has been called "dark green" stuff?  So although I laugh in the face of those buying carbon indulgences, I end up doing stuff that they approve of but think is extreme, like hand-cultivating my garden and using cloth diapers.  Why?  Because July approaches, and I want independence.

Or actually I suppose we should say we are striving for "interdependence", because I'm all for getting together with neighbors, but let's face it, when I'm talking about growing food and mending things, I'm really talking about doing what you have to so you don't have to take things from people that probably have no buisness bribing you giving you stuff.

It's foolish to pretend that bad times won't happen to us.  I'm coming to the point lately where I am starting to believe it's foolish to pretend that bad times aren't already upon us; I've started replacing the "rec" in "recession" with "depr" when speaking about it in conversation.

Which means we all should sit up and take notice of the lessons from prior generations.  There have always been economic hard times.  (Know when Earth Day started?  In the midst of another recession.)  At the moment it doesn't look like the current depression, at least in my neighborhood, means people eating grass because they're starving to death.  But because I'm a mom, I intend to see that nobody within the reach of my salad tongs goes hungry.  (Will people who don't share DNA with me have to work for their mouthful?  Of course, but hey, it's a big garden and I'll take the help weeding.)

Since you all are metaphorically in the reach of my salad tongs, I thought I'd give you a little list to think about as we approach the garden-planting-type season.  Also you may be getting income-tax refunds this year, and if I were a wagering woman I'd say you shouldn't count on it next year; spend your extra change on stuff that will keep working for you--not a plasma TV. 

Here are things you can be learning to do, if you still have any spare time and income to do them.  They may well mean the difference between comfortable, frugal living (albeit without extras) down the line and grinding, miserable poverty.  Here they are, in no particular order:

1. Examine your land and decide what you can produce.

I'm not talking about raising beef in Manhattan (although that would be neat) or chickens if all you have is an apartment with no balcony.  But make your own cookies for your lunchbox, at least.  If you can grow something, grow it.  On our place this translates into my loose rule of thumb: I don't put in any new plants that don't produce something useful for food or medicine.  (Even the roses make rose hips.)  We're still learning, but even with a severe lack of weeding and bad planning, our garden produced pounds and pounds of food last year.

2. Fix things.

Socks.  Buttons that pop off.  Table legs.  You get the idea.  Try to fix it, mend it, tighten it, or paint it before you buy a new one.  There's tons of free information about how to fix almost everything out there on the internet.

3. Think outside the (Big) Box.

If you can get children's books at the secondhand store for 75 cents, for instance, why buy them for $8 at Target?  Look around.  And give yourself time to discover your options--creative shopping takes longer than just going straight to the mall.  Having extra cash may be no help if things in the economy go really sour--I'm talking, South America sour--but you can bet having more disposbale income to dispose of on things like a good pair of shoes will make you more comfortable.

If you've done your due diligence, however, don't feel bad at the mall.

4. Learn new stuff.

...while you can still afford the interweb. :)

5. Cultivate the correct mindset.

Have you all decided I'm a doomer yet?  I'm actually not.  I would be thrilled to see the country suddenly wake up, realize we're throwing money hilariously into a blender, and decide to sober up and quit it.  I don't have a bunker.  I haven't given you any instructions about buying ammo.  What I'm calling "correct mindset" isn't the idea that the world is about to end any minute, so we'd better get the Spam while we can.

It's a simple acknowledgement that, for the 10,000 years of recorded human history, the hard times have been more abundant than the good times.  Heck, even for the 200 years of American history the hard times have been more abundant.  And for most of American history, people have both expected hard times and have been more resilient to them.  We cannot all return to being subsistence farmers.  But most people can store a bit of food under beds, in closets, or around the place.  And most people can grow something, be it only a jar of sprouts on the counter. 

If the difference between making it comfortably through a hurricane, job loss, or medical emergency is a bag of rice that will cost you $15 now, why not go ahead and buy it?  You like rice anyway, don't you?

This doesn't even get into the fun parts of independence, like making your own hooch.  Seriously, after a while it gets to be a sort of mental game--can we make that instead of buying it?  Can I improvise that from something?  Can I patch those pants one more time?  Can I figure out how to do that, instead of hiring it done?


It's an education.  I am surely not perfect, and I sometimes get a fit (usually after watching TV, I admit...) of longing for strappy sandals, fake fingernails, and a new dress.  Usually it takes only a moment of thinking about how those fingernails would tear off if I tried to knead bread or change a diaper to settle me back down to contentment.

Trust the Lord, do the work your hands find to do, be happy that you've got the chance to work, be content with food and covering... and be independent.

Cheers,

Breanna

P.S.  The ginger beer is carbonating itself and is almost ready to bottle.  I'm going to have to buy balloons to cap the bottles, I think.  Spooky.

Birthday Pics

Well, this isn't from the birthday.  This is from a few days earlier, when we got some blocks at the secondhand store.  We're working on the whole "you have to pick up the blocks you get out" thing.

"Mama, I'm buildin' a tower."

Who else would you ask to assess your child-sized garden tool, if not a farmer in bib overalls?

"Sigh.  Birthdays make me feel so old... well, so I've only had one... but it seems like just yesterday I was nine months old... at this rate I'll be two before I know it..."

A giant coloring book.  Grammy and Baba know a thing or two about big sisters and their needs for presents on siblings' birthdays.

(It was a really warm day.  That's why the bare tootsies.)

A HAMMER!  (And see how he stole his sister's princess cup?  Didn't even have to try very hard, either.)

It's been bizzarely warm here.  I don't believe in human-caused global warming, but if this is global warming I'm all for it.  Today I believe we'll get out and see if we can't get the last little measly bit of the garden turned over, and the crop cover out.  At this rate we'll be planting in late April instead of early May... but I still don't quite believe it.  I've lived here too long.  I keep expecting to wake up to find it snowed in the night.

Cheers,

Breanna

And Now We Are One

I will probably say this every year, but man, it goes so fast.  For the record, Brother really likes chocolate cupcakes.

Happy Birthday, son!

Cheers,

Breanna

Sold Another

My short story, "Patron Saint", will be appearing in the print anthology, "While the Morning Stars Sing".  I'm excited, although it only pays $5 and a copy.  It publishes in June.

It'll be available on Amazon--I'll post a link when that happens.

Cheers,

Breanna

Some Pictures, But The Camera Died

Not permanently.  I just couldn't get away with not charging the battery any more.  Here is how we spent a snowy (in April!) day:

As promised!  A picture of my ginger beer culture!  Exciting, no?  I fed it two teaspoons of ground ginger and two teaspoons of sugar today.  Felt very silly.

We decided lacing cards would be fun, but it is snowing very hard today in that snippy way that only Montana in April can snow.  So I wasn't going to go to JoAnn's and buy any, and frankly after checking prices online was appalled.  So--if you happen to want to make lacing cards, and you have a lot of old coffee-can lids laying around, and you have a hole punch...

You just make your own cheap lacing cards!

She's pretty good at it already.

(...but she's not sleepy...)

I made rice pudding for desert tonight, with peaches.  That's cinammon that floated to the top, not burned custard.  And I took a bite to...ahem, test the seasonings.

He pretty much just wants to eat the yarn, but he makes his cute face at me and I just end up getting out more yarn when he's soaked the yarn that's there.

(Random picture from a couple weeks ago: don't you think he looks like Graps in this picture?)

(Second random picture from a couple weeks ago.  A heartbreaker, isn't she?  Daddy is already oiling the shotgun.)

Ahh.  There.  Picture craving satisfied? :D

Cheers,

Breanna

In Football News

In case you were wondering what I think about Ben Roethlisberger's latest fiasco, I'm pretty much with Terry Bradshaw.

And I'm for suspending Big Stupidjerk, and maybe cutting him altogether.  We've got Dennis Dixon, we don't need Ben.

Sigh.  The rotten thing about having teams-by-marriage is that now I have to care about TWO sets of coaching decisions...

Cheers,

Breanna

A Confession, and a Proposal

No, there is no picture.  (Well, because the picture you would get for this post is my ginger beer fermenting on my counter.  At the moment it just looks like a jar of suspicious, murky tan liquid.  But the recipie promises I will have ginger beer in a mere two weeks.)

I have this feeling I am a bad preschool mom.  Here is my confession: I hate cut and paste crafts.  You know the ones I mean?  The ones that involve cutting things to bits to glue them to other things?  A cotton balls?  And glitter?  The craft pages, for instance, that Miss Boo does in Sunday School, rapidly loses interest in, and then the pages shed glittery cotton all over my house for the next week until I can master my guilt over throwing the thing away.

So here's the thing.  I am probably being uptight and Prussian about this, but it seems to me that if you are going to let the kids fiddle with something, and if you're going to have to supervise them anyway (scissors and glue, anyone?), why not teach them something USEFUL?

Like a craft that won't be a dust catcher/maker.  I mean like a ball they can play with or paganish noisemakers or something.

No, I haven't taught Miss Boo to sew yet, but I am starting to consider it, thinking about the fact that little girls of three were sewing and knitting in colonial times.  And also because whenever I get out my  mending, she pesters the living daylights out of me to hold the thread.

Which brings me to my Proposal.  See, I don't like Ladies' Craft Night any better than the glittery Sunday School papers.  To me a dried flower arrangement has all the same problems, only eucalyptus-scented; scrapbooking to me is just expensive glittery Sunday School papers.  So here is my Proposal, which I am putting on my blog only to keep myself from getting crazy enough to actually propose this to my ladies' Bible study group (which would promptly put me at the head of any such effort):

1. Why not get together and learn to do useful things?

It would work like this: I know how to mend a variety of things, including socks, how to knit, crochet, weave, spin, make bread, make pickles, and pin on a cloth diaper.  But I could use some help learning how to work my pressure canner, figuring out my sewing machine, and getting my pie crust to stay in one piece from board to pie plate.  So why not swap?

It could go on and on.  Maybe there is an older lady in the church who braids rugs--or makes knives, heck, we aren't sexist--or knows how to kill pigweed, or keeps ducks... maybe there is a younger lady who knows all about herbs for pregnancy, or how to make whole grain pancakes that aren't the consistency of hockey pucks.

Do you see how this works?

2. Then just keep it going--at canning time, get all the ladies together in the church kitchen and have a little inservice on canning.  (Sign waivers if you have to.)  And cleaning, for that matter.  Do you know how many people my age don't know how to scrub a floor?  I'm not kidding.


This all came about because, in case Warren Buffet is reading this blog and hasn't heard, hard times are here and rapidly getting harder.  It seems supremely silly to me to be wasting time, effort, and money on something as transient as scrapbooking.  (Please don't hate me if you love scrapbooking--to each her own--but how can you really love something so fiddly?)  It's a matter of priorities.  Perhaps back before we had our first stock market crash of the decade, we could justify scrapbooking to ourselves.  But now we have to examine what we do, everything we do, and see if it's useful or...well, stupid.

Say you want to buy a book (a pastime I am all for).  Should you buy a novel you will read once, a novel you will read many times, or a practical manual that will tell you how to garden/mend/cook?  It might be either the second or third, but it won't be the first.  And probably before you buy any books, you should try to check them out of the library and see if they are worth owning.

You want to keep your hands busy with a craft?  Well, would you rather spend twelve hours putting together a photo album that no one but you and your grandma will appreciate (especially considering you can do so much with photo arranging on the computer), or twelve hours knitting a pair of socks you can wear for the next five years?  For that matter, if you committed twelve hours (not all at once, an hour an evening, say), you could memorize a lot of Scripture, or learn to make really good bread, or take the time to use shoe-goo and leather conditioner and fix up your shoes instead of spending $40 on a new pair.

Priorities, baby.  I'm getting Miss Boo her own little sewing basket fitted out tomorrow, I think.  Now if I can just find a blunt needle and some loose-woven fabric.

Maybe I'll talk to them Bible study ladies after all...

Breanna

I Should Probably Mention...

I sold a story a little while back to a neat e-magazine calle The Enchanted Conversation.  It's now up, and available for commenting on.  I linked to it on my other blog, but remembered there are people who only listen to me because I have cute kids. :)

So here's the link.

Cheers,

Breanna

P.S.

Yes, I'll post more pictures soon.  I'm charging the camera.

Praying for patience

It's been an interesting few days.

Holy, of course.  It is Easter Week.  But have you noticed the wry sense of humor with which the Lord decides to mix things like Easter Week and babies waking up at 5:30 AM for three days in a row?

People who haven't expereinced the hellish sleep deprivation of early parenthood don't know what I'm talking about.  They chuckle merrily and picture something out of an "I Love Lucy" episode, maybe.  But I'm not exaggerating when I say I haven't had an entire night's sleep since my daughter was born in late 2007.  Yep, that's almost three years.  You can get your trucker's certification faster than that.  You can even become an LPN faster than that, for Pete's sake.  So sleep, all sleep, becomes this gorgeous, precious thing that you are continually trying to obtain.  To the point that I have, several times, looked at my husband at 8:10PM and said "Well, I'm going to sleep."

And he says, "Yeah, that sounds like a great idea."  Sigh.  We used to be normal adults, who knew that there were shows on TV other than The Wonder Pets and who had your normal social hangups about mentioning poo in conversation.  (No, we don't have those hangups anymore.  And I don't watch Dancing With the Stars.)

The practical consequence of this sleep deprivation is that on bad days I have less patience than, say, Mike Tyson.  This is bad; patience is a fruit of the Spirit, so not having it in my life is a significant lack.  Also, I have children whom I am trying to teach impulse control.  When you find yourself snapping "JUST WAIT FOR A SECOND!  A SECOND!  A MEASLY SECOND!  BE PATIENT!" at your two-year-old, you become aware of the dictionary definition of "hypocrisy".

So the other night I prayed, "Lord, give me more patience", and then I cringed.  Because you know what they say about praying for patience.

Which is surely a backward way of looking at things.  God is the definition of love; He doesn't look for reasons to trick us while answering our prayers a la Hera or Zeus.  If I need more patience, I am instructed in the book of James to ask for it.  If I need to get a handle on the tone of my voice when I discipline my youngsters, I should ask for it.

So why don't I?  To my shame I just don't think of it.  This, I think, exposes a fundamental lack in my basic way of thinking: I'll work on it myself and call on God if I have any problems.  Which is a little like deciding I'll buckle my seatbelt real quick if I seem to be getting into a car accident, right?

Which brings me here, on Friday of Holy Week, praying for patience.  We've decided getting the girl up at 6AM is probably the best plan, since it minimizes our "I'm-not-tired-and-you-can't-make-me-sleep" issues at night.  In theory. 

I am dying thinking about it in a way that only another nursing mother can really understand.  So can I ask all of you to pray for my patience as well?

Thanks.

Breanna

Easter Week, and the Great Fifty Days

(Isn't this a great picture of the Lord and the children?  I can't find an artist attribution anywhere.  If this is your picture, I apologize!  Please either send me your name so I can credit you or ask me to take it down, and I will.)

I like the picture that I've headed the post with because 1) He looks Jewish and 2) He looks 30, instead of 50, like in some older European depictions and 3) the kids look like they're laughing, instead of constipatedly holy and 4) He's laughing.  (C.S. Lewis quotes an author I can't remember who says that we're never told, in the Gospels, that He laughed.  But as Lewis points out, it's difficult to read the Gospels and not conclude, and tremble in the conclusion, that He smiled.)

In the church year, we've entered into what's called The Great Fifty Days, the time between Easter and Pentecost.  This is the time when the risen Christ was with His disciples, appearing to them periodically, before His ascension (we have a Sunday to commemorate that), and then from the time He ascended until He sent the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.  Liturgically speaking, the whole thing is one big Feast.

This probably has less meaning for most Protestants, who don't usually fast seriously during Lent.  Perhaps one of these years I won't be nursing or pregnant during Lent and I can undertake a mealtime fast; this year I should, probably, have fasted from something else--like the computer, maybe, or coffee.  But I didn't; every year a baby step.

Especially is Easter Week a feast--that's why Easter baskets exist, actually, they're filled with candy and other things that you are typically supposed to avoid during Lent.  (In the olden days they'd have component ingredients in them, things like eggs, butter, and sugar.)

We tend to forget about Easter after Easter Sunday, but I encourage you to spend the whole week thinking about Christ's Resurrection, and celebrating it.  And if that means eating the ears of a few chocolate bunnies, well...

See, the Lord likes feasts.  He instituted several under the Old Covanent, in perfect rhythm with fasts.  Fasting serves to point out where we are too attached to something that isn't God--whether that be soda, television, or food itself--and to force us to seek the Lord instead of our distractions.  Feasting is the expression of our astonishment at the abundance of every kind found in God.  To feast every day blunts its point, and to fast every day blunts its point, but when we alternate feasting and fasting on God's rhythm, we learn something important about him and about ourselves.

We're rhythmic creatures--we get tired, go to sleep, and wake up refreshed, only to do it again.  We eat, get hungry, and eat again.  And we live in a rhythmic world--we have spring, summer, fall, and winter, every year.  The sun comes up, then it goes down.   We tend to be surprised by the rhythm in our emotions and abilities (I have a good writing friend who periodically writes to me, worried, because he is hitting a dry spell in his writing inspiration), but we shouldn't be.  After all, our souls and spirits are tied to bodies, and our bodies definitely have peaks and valleys.

This is one reason, out of practicality, to attend to your body the way you'd tend your car.  It's more difficult to be cheerful and loving when you're hungry, underslept, and vitamin-depleted.  On the other hand, it's entirely possible to be well-fed, overslept, and still vicious, selfish, and lazy.  In the U.S. we are probably not in danger of too much acesticism; much more likely we to need to discipline ourselves to go to bed (and get up) at a decent time and to eat our vegetables.  This is also, incidentally, an excellent reason to, if you find it helpful, use prayers you can read out loud (or at least pray out loud), so you can engage your ears and mouth in prayer.  Our souls are tied to bodies.  God made us that way.  So as much as we can engage our bodies in our devotion, we will find it helpful.

(By the way, in case anyone wonders, bodies are good.  God invented them.  We're not gnostics here.)

But disciplining our spirits to pray when we don't feel like it, and to worship God even when He doesn't give us a sweet emotional experience, has a surprising payoff.  Sometimes He gives us an experience of overpowering sweetness.  The equivalent, if you like, of a feast after a fast.

So this week, let your body do what your spirit sometimes does-- enjoy the Feast of the Lord.

Cheers,

Breanna

Happy Easter (Monday)!

Did you know Easter lasts for six weeks in the church calendar?

(The flowers from our Seder and Easter table--white and gold are the colors of the season.)

Our Seder table was very pretty.  Somehow, between frying latkes and bouncing babies, I didn't remember to take any pictures during the dinner.  But rest assured, it was great.

Unsure about having to sit in his high chair, Brother is equally unsure about being photographed while in confinement.

Not so this mysterious person, who kept showing up whenever Miss Boo disappeared.  Who are you,masked stranger?  Who?

Plastic eggs rock...

...but not as hard as using them to walk around with...

...or stealing them from your sister, with a clever "I don't even have to look at my theivery" motion.

Miss Boo takes matching up the eggs seriously.

Brother, not so much.  They are fun to smack and chew on.

Easter Sunday, and Brother apparently thinks that the church service would benefit from a DJ.  He's practicing while riding on Daddy's shoulders in this shot.

What? I should put down my sippy for my closeup?

You got it, babe!

Easter service was great.  The ham I cooked wound up being too big (why was I sure that only six of us would be able to eat that thing?) but now at least I have leftovers to do stuff with.

And yes, I am aware of the contradiction inherent in having a Seder supper one day and a ham dinner the next.  We're Messianic and not kosher anyway, ok?

I'll write something later about Easter Week (this week), but for now just enjoy the cute babies.

Cheers,

Breanna

Good Friday

...or "God's Friday" as some people think it used to be called (aren't they all His?), in the same way that Goodbye used to be "God be with ye".

This is the day that we remember the crucifixion and passion of the Lord.  (I have a confession: I've never seen The Passion of the Christ.  I just can't psyche myself up to it.  I get weepy just thinking about the previews.)  This is the day that we can identify, if we choose to use it as a devotional aid, with various people in the story.  Who fits you?

Perhaps it's John Mark, the young man who is so frightened when the soldiers come to arrest Jesus that he runs away, losing his garment in the process, and flees naked.  This is one of those times, I think, when God uses an event that really happened and also gives it symbolic significance--He's good at that.  Because surely, what makes us more naked than fear?  And what better way to lose the covering grace of the Lord than to abandon Him, rather than running to Him, in our fear?

Or perhaps you identify more with stubborn Peter, ruled by his emotions.  When Peter isn't allowed to fight violently for his Lord, he doesn't know what to do, and loses his courage.  Maybe you've denied the Lord like Peter did, for petty reasons, in front of people that didn't matter.  (Surely, the servant girl in the courtyard was not the person who could threaten a full grown, burly fisherman.)  Maybe you've repented.

Perhaps you identify with the women, unable to see what was going on, knowing He was arrested, knowing something bad was happening, seeing all your fears confirmed when He emerges, bloody, forced to pick up the instrument of His death.  Perhaps you've been watching someone you love carry death--death in a hospital, death at home, death coming in the next days or months or years.  I pray not.

Perhaps you are like Simon of Cyrene, caught up in this drama against your will.  You were just going about your business this Easter and suddenly you are brought face-to-face with Christ, and you have to look into His eyes.

Perhaps you identify with the centurion, who was just doing his job, on a busy, exhausting holiday weekend, in a country he probably didn't much like.  Perhaps you've been forced to see God in the mundane, and perhaps you've realized that the job you were wanting to get over with has been the most important moment of your life.

Perhaps you identify with Pilate, and you just want the whole, embarassing mess over with.

Perhaps you identify with the theif on the cross, knowing Christ is what you need, and knowing just as surely that you can never presume to reach out to Him.  Remember, His arms are stretched out to you.

But unfortunately, I think most people on Good Friday identify with everyone else in Jerusalem--they are just going about their business, and while they may know something is happening outside the city where they execute the scum, they have their own worries to attend to.  Business is business, after all, and by the time the veil of the temple rips, the earth cracks, and the sky blackens, it's too late.  He's gone, and it was only a strange earthquake.

But remember, as we spend tonight and tomorrow in vigil, mourning the death of the Lord: it's only Friday.

Sunday is coming.

Breanna

Well, So I Skipped Spy Wednesday

Mostly because I had to take a couple of bags of handmedowns to the secondhand store, and that led to me looking at their furniture department, which led to me finding the perfect new bedside table for The Husband, who has been longsuffering-ly using a red cube thing we got when we were first married that is much too short for his side of the bed, and that tended to get rearranged every day by the kiddos, who found it the perfect height for mayhem.

Anyway, this is Maundy Thursday.  We're supposed to think about Christ washing the feet of His disciples, and hopefully later tonight we'll have our own little session with warm washcloths and lotion, but I found myself translating the service idea already today as I wiped certain chubby, wiggly little people up during morning diaper changes.  This motherhood gig--really can be means of sanctification.  Sigh.

Which is not, of course, to say that automatically sanctification has to be unpleasant, or that everything unpleasant is necessarily a means of sanctification.  But it at least lends an aura of greater meaning to the drudgery tasks--the picking up of dirty socks that you already picked up, that someone threw on the floor because they wanted the laundry basket for a boat, or washing the dishes, again, or vacuuming the floor, again, or changing the sheets you just put on the bed yesterday, only the baby puked on them...

Ah, yes, everyone has drudgery.  Doctors, pastors, mothers, factory workers, even, I imagine, fashion models (it can't be entertaining to have to stand in place for three hours, being told "now widen your eyes.  Alright, now look to the right.  No, my right.")  The drudgery is the place where we can choose. 

We know that we're supposed to be joyful in suffering--I think a lot of Christians would make a fine showing if Red Dawn happened and suddenly the commies were lining people up in the street and demanding they renounce the Lord or get shot.  (Seems like a lot of trouble to go to, by the way, when you've already got a high school football team militia running around the hills, yelling "Wolverines!")  No problem.  I'm only a bullet away from eternity, and I know what I'm supposed to do in this situation.  Likewise, it's not hard to do the right thing when we're having mountaintop experiences--when we're at a moving service, when your child looks at you and whispers "I love you, Mama, you're a good Mama", or when you get to be in on a person's conversion.

But it's very, very hard to do the right thing, and think the right thing, when you're scraping spattered bits of tomato sauce off the inside of the microwave.  Again.  And you're not being so demanding--all you want to do is get a FEW MINUTES away from the tomato sauce (or the annoying, talkative neighbor, or the pile of incoming papers to grade) to do something completely inoffensive that you like.  Knitting, maybe, or writing, or brushing your hair all at once.  It's very easy, in the midst of drudgery, to think resentfully, and (what's worse) to think that it doesn't matter what you think at that moment.  After all, it's just an ordinary, average, less-than-ideal moment.

The truth is that ordinary moments make up most of our lives.  Relatively few of us will, probably, be called to stand in the streets and choose the Lord at the cost of a bullet.  A relatively small portion of our spiritual lives will be taken up with experiences of emotional sweetness and supernal enabling.  Most of it will just be work, and a percentage of the work will be, I hate to say, drudgery.  So unless we can get in the habit of seeing our drudgery as service to the Lord, well, we'll spend most of our life thinking wrongly.

Which is something to remember when your son has the Epic Poopout of all poop-outs.  (It was even between his toes.  Wow.)

Service, baby.  Christ didn't have to do it, but He did it, and in the humblest guise imaginable.  Now if I can just remember this for the rest of the year.

Cheers,

Breanna