Thoughts, Musings, & Ramblings of a Catholic Housewife
Feast of the Holy Family (A Love Story)
I started working on a post about The Holy Family on their Feast Day (12/30/12). I worked on it some and then saved it as a draft and kind of forgot about it. As I started looking through my drafts today it caught my eye. How appropriate that I re-read and revise this post today, 1/9/13, as this is also our first CCD class of the new year and we will be talking about The Holy Family, among other topics today. Not only will be talking about The Holy Family, but we’ll be doing a little dissecting as well. We’ll discuss St. Joseph, Mary, and Jesus and their individual roles within the Holy Family as well as what it means to be a family and what The Holy Family is like, as a unit. I’m excited to be back in class with my second graders and pray that God will give me the words and open their minds and hearts as we study and work on their preparation to receive Jesus, later this spring, in our Most Blessed Sacrament, The Eucharist. When I started writing this blog post 2 weeks ago, I had a love story on my mind. Well, more than one as The Holy Family is a picture of such amazing and pure love itself, but specifically I had the love story that God has written for my family on my mind and heart. He is so amazing & the gifts He wants to give us are divine. Simply, amazingly divine. So, below, you’ll find the post that I began working on last year. 🙂 To be totally honest, it’s really more about my family than The Holy Family but The Holy Family did provide inspiration!
Today is the Feast of the Holy Family. I am sitting here, next to my husband, thinking about what all this means. I can’t help but hope that our baby will be born today. (Update…as of 1/9/13, I am still very pregnant. 😉 I must remind myself that everything is in God’s time & His time is perfect.) I realize there is a very slim chance that that will happen, seeing as it’s already past 3 in the afternoon and I haven’t had any kind of regular labor pains, contractions, etc & no water breakage, either. Why do I think today, of all days would be so cool for Baby Nixon to join us? Because it just fits us and our story so well. (This is actually all of the original blog post from 12/30/12 that made the final cut. LOL. Oh, who doesn’t love some editing and revision.)
Everyone has a love story. Really, we all have a few of them. The love story of us and our families. The love story of us and God. The love story of us and our spouse (no matter if our spouse is God, The Church, or a person). Every love story is supremely unique and so very special but, of course, everyone thinks that their personal love story is just a little extra unique & special. I tend to fall into that camp and happen to be of the (biased) opinion that the love story I share with Harold and our family is something a little extra special.
I could go all fairy tale on you (to be honest, I do LOVE a good fairy tale) but I won’t. 🙂 Everything about our relationship was a (to quote a Julia Roberts’ movie) “wrong fit right from the start”. Harold did not like me, at all. He didn’t find me to be attractive and thought I was a little too…well, too much, I guess is as good a way to describe it as anything. He liked girls with dark hair and dark eyes. He’s always found girls with an ethnic background, specifically Latina girls, to be particularly beautiful. What am I? Light hair, light eyes, and fair skinned. Northern European (whole lotta German & English in my background) through and through. Thankfully, he’s always been a bit of a chubby chaser, so one plus for me. So, almost no physical attraction on his side. What about me? Well, I didn’t find Harold to be all that attractive, either. He had a very young face and NO chin at all. Nothing, nada…he went from face to neck (not totally true…he just had a very “soft” chin). I also thought he was a little strange, a little quiet, a little too sensitive, and a little too meek. Also, he liked to talk philosophy. PHILOSOPHY?!? Ugh. Our personalities didn’t mesh (he told me I was simply too brash & I thought he was a mama’s boy), we weren’t physically attracted to each other, and every time we talked or hung out he always swore to himself that that would be the absolute last time. He really wanted nothing to do with me. And what now? We’re married. We’re madly in love (mad is a sometimes a big part of that) and we have one child in heaven and one in oven, due any day now. I can say there is no way we would’ve moved beyond personalities not meshing and the total lack of any physical attraction if it weren’t for God. He had to be at play in our love story. There had to be some divine intervention. (Just FYI…I find my husband to be ridiculously attractive and sexy now. He tells me how beautiful I am and that he can’t believe he didn’t see it the first time he saw me.)
I struggle with my prayer life. I always have. It ebbs and flows, like I’m sure many of yours does. I’ve always known how important it is to pray for your spouse, even when you are single and have no clue who your spouse may be. To know something and to do it are two different things entirely. I did not pray for my future husband. I’m sorry for that. Harold did. When I say Harold did, I mean that Harold prayed for MY future husband! He also prayed for me. He would kneel at the back of our church, under a picture of The Holy Family, light candles, and pray for me and my future husband. He was positive that I was a good girl, who needed a good man, and that man was NOT him. He figured that man would need the prayers. He figured I did, too. He was right about almost all of that. 😉 We’d been dating for nearly 6 months when Harold confessed this prayer habit to me. He still wasn’t sure about anything. I fell hard the instant he told me he’d been praying for me all that time. That’s our love story, well at least the beginning of it. My husband faithfully prayed for me (and him, he just didn’t know he was praying for himself), even when he didn’t like me. That is love. I am thankful. There are plenty of cute stories I could share with you. Plenty of ups and downs, plenty of inside jokes. Harold loves to make me laugh & he’s pretty funny. Those are stories for another post (maybe).
Harold and I had been dating for about 2 and 1/2 years when he decided to propose. He always said he would never ask twice BUT he actually did. 🙂 Most of the time I share the story about the first proposal but this time, I’m sharing the second. Harold took me to our church, to the back corner and we sat down. There were some older ladies in the church praying the Rosary and Harold didn’t want to draw attention or make a scene, so he told me I wasn’t allowed to cry. He asked me if I knew where we were and why were were there. I did not (I mean, I knew we were in church but you know what I mean). He pointed to the back wall, where the picture of The Holy Family was hanging and told me that we were sitting in the very spot where he used to kneel to pray for me. He knelt under The Holy Family and prayed for their intercession for me and my future family. Since it seemed to be God’s will that Harold was part of that future family, he thought it appropriate that this was the place he proposed. He dropped to one knee and pulled out my engagement ring. A pearl, surrounded by three interlocking circles of diamonds. The ring is full of a lot of symbolism, too. I did cry (very quietly…nobody noticed) and I said yes.
Sometime in the next three weeks or so, our baby will be baptized in the same corner of our church, under the same picture that Harold used to kneel under to pray for us and then that he knelt under to propose. I can not think of a more perfect place for our baby to welcomed into our Church family than that spot, under The Holy Family, where Harold and I agreed to start down the road to building our family. Icing on the cake…our baby’s baptismal garment is being made out of material from my wedding gown. Our baby will be baptized in a gown made from the gown I was wearing when our family was created before God, our extended family, and friends.
Update…
2/3/13
Our baby was baptized on February 3, 2013. This is a picture of our family standing in front of that picture of The Holy Family.
Humility, Humiliation, & The Simpsons
Okay, so this has nothing to do with The Simpsons, other than I’m watching a rerun as I write this post. I got you to read the first line or so, though, didn’t I? 😉 I’ve been thinking about humility a lot lately. I mean A LOT. The Litany of Humility is one of my favorite prayers. It is also one of the most difficult to pray with total sincerity. To pray for God to release you from the desire of being loved, from the fear of being forgotten, from the desire of being praised, from the fear of being falsely accused or calumniation (calumniate – To make maliciously or knowingly false statements about. – www.thefreedictionary.com). When you really stop to think about what you are asking for…what you are praying for – it’s scary. Most people have heard that you should be careful when you pray for patience because God will give you ways to practice patience Well, when you pray for humility – God will give you ways to practice it.
I was speaking with some friends earlier today about St. Ignatius of Antioch, among other things (including The Simpsons). He (St. Ignatius) was on his way to Rome, before Rome was Christian, and was fairly certain he would be martyred while there. He wrote letters to his friends and fellow Christians begging them to stand back and let him be martyred. Today, the Church would frown upon us seeking out martyrdom, like St. Ignatius did. As we were talking about this, one of my friends joked. “You mean I shouldn’t ask God to make me a martyr? How about to let it be quick and painless?” Praying for a painless, free, and quick trip to Heaven. If only it was so easy. In some ways it is. Remember, Jesus tells the rich man that all he needs to do is give away everything he owns and follow Him (Jesus). That’s not so hard, right? Right. Or not.
Just like we know the road to Heaven is not an easy one, practicing humility is a lot more difficult than you or I might think. Often, practicing humility requires humiliation. It requires a death of our pride. Our sweet, sweet pride. Sometimes I think nothing hurts more than dying pride. I pray to be free from the fear of being forgotten, so I am forgotten by those who (I think) I would never forget – and it hurts. I feel angry and confused. “Why am I so easy to forget, why am I not wanted, why don’t they like me?” These questions plague my heart and mind. “Oh, why God?” Then I remember, oh yeah, I prayed for this. Ugh. Thanks for that answered prayer, Lord. (I’m not nearly as sincere in my thanks as I should be.) I can’t develop humility on my own, by myself, because then I’m making it all about me and what I can do. That’s not very humble, is it? If I become too aware of my own humility then I run the risk of becoming proud about just how humble I am – not so humble. It’s a vicious cycle that Satan loves to use against us. All of this has been on my mind because I was recently given the gift of practicing humility. My first reaction was absolute anger. I was livid. Then, I stopped and thought about what I was feeling. I imagined carrying out many different scenarios that would assuage my wounded pride and put the other person in their place. How would that feel? Would I have satisfaction, peace, joy, or relief? No. I might feel a little superior but most likely it would only leave me one step closer to an ulcer and my heart would still be sad. I had to stop and calm my behind down. I had to stop and think about how many other people this would effect. I had to lay my pride down and walk away. It wasn’t easy – it still isn’t. I’ve been struggling with this since it happened. Part of me really wants to run back and defend myself. Part of me really wants to let my fury rain down upon them. Part of me wants to pick up my wounded pride and give it some life support. I am broken, fallen, and disordered. I want to take care of this in a broken, fallen, and disordered way. Who does that help? Satan. It helps him. He is the only one to benefit from me falling to my pride and disordered desires. It brings at least one soul (mine…possibly more) that much closer to him and that much further from God. I don’t like Satan and I have no plans of intentionally helping him out. I’m sure I already unintentionally help him out plenty.
I am prideful, fallen, and disordered. I am a sinner. A big, goober, stinky sinner. I have plenty of logs to take care of before I point out any of my brothers’ (or sisters’) splinters. Heavy logs. I desperately long to be free of them. The thought occurs to me that to be poor in something lends itself to being free. When I have no money, it’s so much easier for me to give everything I do have to someone else. When I have nothing, it is easy to share. The more I have – the more we put away in our savings account or the more material possessions we amass, the more I fear loosing it. The more difficult it is to share. I have to constantly remind myself that anything I have has been given to me by God and it is not mine to horde. I should share it and I shouldn’t be afraid. God will always take care of us, somehow. If I could be poor in pride – how free would I be?!? I would be free from feeling inadequate, defensive, vengeful, and angry. I would be free to be thankful for every little thing I was given. I would be free to love. I would be free to follow Christ and accept whatever crosses He gave me. So, I am going to pray for humility. I am going to pray for it as sincerely as I possibly can and pray that God will help remove any resentment and resistance from my heart. I am going to lay my pride and everything else down at the foot of the cross and try not to run back for any of it. It is only with God’s help that I will be able to let go of it all and truly leave it. I long for true freedom and truth in Christ and I can’t do any of this without Him.
Sparrows
“Why should I feel discouraged? Why should the shadows come?…When Jesus is my portion, a constant friend is He. His eye is on the sparrow and I know He watches me!” (Lyrics from Gospel Hymn His Eye is on the Sparrow)
I am a silly, cotton-brained, ninny muggins! (To be completely plain about it.) In the last 10 weeks, I have found myself stressing out over various things involved with this pregnancy. I’m not stressed about labor & delivery or what it will be like bringing baby home. I’m not stressed over being “prepared” in the least. All of my stress has involved dealing with doctors, pharmacies, and (especially) my insurance agency. All of this stress has come to naught. Absolute naught, as everything has been taken care of and worked out. So, why do I keep falling for it?!? Once again, tonight, I’ve just been reminded that God takes care of His children. He has made a way. I’m not going to go into all the messy details because it’s really not that important. What I do want to do is encourage all of you (and myself) to remember that WE are God’s adopted children and his most loved creation. He will always take care of us…ALWAYS. We have no need to fear or stress over things of this world. God will provide, in some way, in His time. He will take care of us and we will always be okay!! Hold onto that. Be encouraged. Know how greatly you are loved. We are all loved. Our God provides for the smallest bird of the air, He will provide for us, too.
No matter what situation you find yourself in, no matter what trials are foisted upon you, what struggles are laid at your feet, what temptations you must battle, or whatever kind of spiritual warfare you find yourself in – hold fast to the knowledge that God loves you best of all His creations and He will take care of you. For a little added comfort…remember that this world is fleeting and this is all temporary. There is a much bigger picture to keep in mind, one that we can’t really see in totality. We are living towards an eternity.
To Nest or Not to Nest…
This is how I am feeling after nesting all day today! I am ready for a nap!! lol
It seems you hear that this is one “symptom” of pregnancy that hits every mamma – no matter what number pregnancy she is on & it has hit me HARD. I have spent the entire day organizing baby stuff, cleaning, and doing laundry. I feel like I’ve made NO progress & I am highly frustrated about that. I’m also very frustrated that I feel like my husband hasn’t bothered to help me. Poor guy can’t get a break, though, because if he did try to help me it is very likely that I would struggle to not yell at him and demand he get out of my way. Sometimes he kicks me out of the house when he is trying to get a lot of work done & I would be more of a hindrance than a help. I’m thinking that I might be kicking him out tomorrow, so I can get more done. 🙂
One thing accomplished tonight – cloth diapers are washed and ready for baby!!
Oh, Lord, please give me the grace and humility to appreciate and savor every bit of this amazing blessing. Please help me to stay calm, keep my patience, and love my family. Amen.
The Hard Way
Harold and I were talking earlier this evening – well, technically yesterday evening, since it is now after midnight and therefore a new day. 🙂 He’s been out of state all week, with the Boxcars, working on their third album. This has been a bit of difficult week for both of us. For him, because he’s been away and didn’t want to be. He didn’t want to go to the boonies of eastern TN, he didn’t want to play, sing, or record. He’s been a little stressed out and hasn’t slept well at all while he’s been down there. What did he want? He wanted to stay home and keep working on getting the house ready for Baby Nixon’s arrival. He’d finally really focused on what needed to be done to prepare for Zesty and started getting some stuff done. He didn’t want his mojo and motivation interrupted. However, he did want his share of the royalties for this album and knew that he needed to go down and work on this investment with the rest of the band, even though he didn’t want to. So, his best friend and band mate, Ron, picked him up Tuesday afternoon and they headed southeast. This week has been difficult for me because I missed Harold – pure and simple. I don’t sleep well without him. I really needed him on Wednesday (see my Night of Trash post) for everything and I’m missing him tonight, as I sit in my mother’s living room instead of the home that I share with him, in case I go into labor. I’d much rather have him on labor watch tonight (nothing against my mother because she does rock). So, my sleep deprived & stressed out husband and I were talking tonight. We were talking about if I should stay with my mother tonight & how likely it really was that I’d go into labor tonight (highly UNLIKELY). We were talking about how things were going with the recording (really well) and what time I should expect to pick him up tomorrow. We were talking about what all I needed to remember to get done before heading out to pick him up tomorrow and then we started talking about Christmas. Oh how I wish that was a conversation we didn’t have to have…it’s not finished, yet, either. I’m thankful that we aren’t fighting – we’ve gotten pretty good at being able to communicate and can usually recognize when a misunderstanding/miscommunication is escalating and a conversation is becoming a fight. So, we truly weren’t fighting but that doesn’t make the conversation any easier. The general gist of our conversation is that, in the midst of being in the home stretch to get ready for Baby Nixon’s arrival (stressful enough), we have to figure out what in the world we want to do for Christmas & while we want the same thing, we also want two vastly different things. We are talking about changing up our routine and developing our own Christmas traditions (very GOOD thing) – which means changing up what we’ve been doing as a couple for nearly 6 years and what I’ve been doing my entire life (at least that I remember). Change is hard and I don’t always handle it well. Harold pointed out that we are likely to be embarking on a very difficult and rocky time in our marriage. He is already crazy stressed out, he doesn’t like having to pretend & put on show for the sake of someone’s feelings (he’d much rather be totally honest and genuine about who he is & if you like him or don’t like him, at least your opinion is based on truth and not speculation/assumptions/misconceptions). He wants to feel free to be himself (can’t blame him there) without having to constantly be on the defensive…it’s tiring when you have to be “on” all the time for someone. So, here we go, we are getting ready to jump onto the Hard Way of marriage.
I was thinking about this and Harold’s warning after our conversation, wondering what I could do to help lessen the challenge. How could I ease the load that Harold would be carrying? Why did it seemed destined to be so hard? I realized a few things. It would be hard because it seems part of our fallen nature to seek out the hard way. We seem to be addicted to making things more difficult than they need to be. Case in point? I will disagree with my husband and fight with him, just so I can say that I was right. Really? How screwed up is that? I just want to be right, so I’ll disagree with him and go out of my way to try to prove him wrong, just so I can what…feel superior? Yup. Some wife I am. 🙁 I fall to pride and falling to pride leads me to fall to all kinds of other sinfulness. I KNOW that Harold will never do anything to put me or our family in any kind of physical or spiritual jeopardy. He will die before purposefully causing us harm in any way. So, if I know that my husband, who I believe is the head of our home – the priest of our domestic church, has nothing but our absolute best interest at heart (i.e. he wants us all to get to Heaven), then why would I ever feel the need to fight him? Why do I feel the need to try to one up him or be “better”? I know that I don’t handle change well and that, sometimes, I’m fighting out of some basic need to feel like I have some control over change. If I make plans, it can be a real challenge for me to let them go without a fight. If I’m really honest, it’s not the change I find so scary – it’s the loss of control. If I continue to be brutally honest, the I’ll admit that the only reason I’m afraid of losing control is because I don’t totally trust anybody else. Isn’t that sad? If I’m going to trust anyone, wouldn’t I trust my husband?!? I mean, I am married to an extremely honest & faithful man. A man who wants nothing more than to help his family get to Heaven and to get there himself. A man who loves me beyond words. I would argue that our capacity for true love is limited by our understanding of and belief in God. If we don’t believe in Him, if we don’t know Him; then we don’t know love – true love. We only know what we think is love – a very limited & shallow love-like emotion. Emotion because without knowing God, then we can’t really understand that true love has nothing to do with emotion at all. It is always, and simply, a choice. I am married to a man with an understanding of true love. He will never leave or abandon me. He will always choose Heaven for me and our family over any and everything else. Is he perfect? No. None of us are. But he is good, and he wants to be holy, and he tries so hard, and he loves greatly. He challenges me to trust God, first and always. I am married to an amazing and passionate man, who has loved me totally, and who God has used to draw me closer to Him. I am a blessed woman. If this is the man that God has blessed me with, then why don’t I totally trust him? I know that being married means death. Death to myself & what I want & my selfish desires. It is only in dying to ourselves that we are free to live for others. As Harold’s wife, my vocation includes living for him. I am not supposed to worry about myself – no need to watch my own back, if you will. Why? Because I’m supposed to have Harold’s back & by me totally having his back – he is freed to have mine completely (and vise versa). What a simple and beautiful circle that is. Ah…my head hurts. It seems like it should be simple. It seems like it should be easy. It should be but it isn’t. Why is it so hard?? I blame Adam & Eve. (Thanks mom & dad!)
Poor Adam & Eve, always taking the wrap for our broken & fallen nature. Now, I’m blaming them for making the easy things hard! Well, they did. Before the fall, life was good and it was easy. It was absolutely natural to us to KNOW God, to love Him, and to love each other. Gardening, dominion over the land & animals, co-ed relationships…ALL EASY. No sin – no pride, no lust, no sloth or gluttony or wrath. Ah, Eden. ♥ Adam and Eve fell by grasping at things that were not for them. They grasped at equality with God by eating of the one tree they weren’t supposed to eat of. So, they essentially gave up their (and our) stewardship of the Earth to Lucifer. What was supposed to come easily now comes with hardship and suffering. Essentially, sin is forgetfulness. Adam and Eve forgot their place. Not only did they both grasp at equality with God, but Eve grasped at the dominion that Adam was given as the first man & Adam allowed her to take what wasn’t his to give. Eve was told that she would suffer pains in childbirth. Childbirth was supposed to be EASY! (A little mind boggling to me at the current season of my life – especially as I am beginning to feel more regular pressure & pain, day by day.) Our bodies are created for this holy and unique purpose, but, we are disordered. We are fallen. So, it is no longer easy. What occurred to me is this…it is not just the birth process itself that is labor. That is not the only easy thing that is now painful. The entire process from conception to a successful birth is HARD. Think of how many people you know who have so much trouble even conceiving new life in their wombs. Then think of how common miscarriages are…so common that most doctors won’t bother looking for medical causes of miscarriage (hormone imbalances, other diseases, etc) until a woman has experienced at least 2, if not 3, losses. So, relationships should be easy – we should be able to love each other without the stain of lust, envy, anger, etc. We should be able to totally and completely trust each other, without fears of lying & cheating. We should be able to survive – to have plenty to eat and drink, without devastating & destroying our planet. We shouldn’t have war, famine, disease, & death raging all over the world…but we do. Why? Because our first parents forgot what they were made for, they forgot who they were and they gave up their (and our) birthright to Satan. When life was easy, in Eden, Adam and Eve were in total communion with God. They were united with Him. Satan doesn’t like that. Why? Perhaps because he is an a fallen angel. Not just any angel, either. He was one of, if not the best of all angels.
Angels are created spiritual beings with no physical bodies. They live with God in Heaven and the purpose of their creation is to worship God, giving Him glory, and doing His will. They love God beyond anything we could ever imagine. Angels are superior to us in so many ways. They KNOW God, easily. We don’t. They are far more intelligent than we are & they understand things that we could never wrap our minds around. So, we are the infierior creations to Angels. Inferior but still the most favored and loved of all of God’s creations. We are His only creations that He chooses to adopt as His children. Lucifer loves God so fiercely that he can not fathom why God would create something so lowly and limited as a human, give us a gift like free will, and love us so much that He is willing to forgive all, if we just ask. Satan got angry & jealous & rebelled. We know how that ends. He and all the angels who sided with him, along with all the lukewarm ones who tried to play neutral, were cast out of Heaven – FOREVER. He loves God so fiercely but will never be able to be with Him again. Satan is eternally removed from God. Misery loves company & how better than to hurt the one you love the most than by denying them of who they love the most. Satan can’t have God, so he is going to do everything he can to prevent us from having God, too. So, when Adam & Eve forgot who they were, when they fell for deception & grasped at equality with God – they gave up their claim, their stewardship, to Satan & he will do everything he can to make our journey to God & Heaven as difficult as possible. We sin, we suffer, we are forgetful, and we lack the capacity to understand so much.
So, marriage, family, and relationships are REALLY hard and they can really hurt. Harold and I are about to enter into a more difficult season of our marriage. Why? Because we are broken, fallen, and forgetful. So, how can I try to love my husband and make lighten his load during this difficult season? I can do this by remembering. I must remember how much he loves me & our family. I must remember that he always has my back & will never choose anything that will harm me in anyway. I must remember that I agreed and chose Harold as my husband. He is the head of our home & I am the heart. I must remember my place as the heart & fight to not grasp at the dominion of the head. I must remember that without me, doing my part as the heart & pumping blood (i.e. life) through the veins of our family, then the head will not be able to function at all. The head and brain can not function without the heart pumping blood. Our society recognizes this in a kind of backwards way. We’ve all heard “Happy wife, happy life.” Harold tells me all the time that his life depends on me & all he wants is for me to have eternal happiness. Harold desperately needs me to remember who I am and to fight against my broken and fallen nature of grasping at things that aren’t mine to take. He needs me to love him and trust him and submit to him. That doesn’t mean that I am losing anything. I am not losing control and I have nothing to fear. In fact, by remembering who I am, by embracing my place as the heart of our home, I gain freedom. Freedom from fear. Freedom from forgetfulness. Freedom to love absolutely and unconditionally.
I am asking for your prayers for my family and all families. We will all have seasons in our lives that are more difficult that others. Seasons that make it easier to forget who we are, seasons that tempt us to sin. May we not only know who we are but may we also be inspired to remember who we are, especially when we are in the middle of the hard way.
{Thanks for stopping by and reading! Please, if you feel so called, leave a comment or two. As this is my blog, I reserve the right to refuse to publish any comments that are rude, vulgar, or distasteful (regardless of if I agree with you or not). Trolling & nasty don’t look good on anyone.}
Baby Nixon aka Zesty
Baby Nixon
I went to the doctor today for an ultrasound and got a fantastic picture of Baby Nixon (Zesty). I thought I’d share it along with a couple pictures of me from my early days on the outside. 🙂 Any resemblance? As baby’s gender won’t be known until his or her big day, guesses abound as to if Zesty is a girl or boy. Most people are guessing boy – in fact, when my stepfather saw this picture he declared “I told you Zesty was a boy!”.
A Night of Trash…
So today has been a day. You know when something happens that just kind of throws a wrench into your whole day? Well, this wasn’t just a wrench – it was a full on sledge hammer. Everything seems to have been worked out (for now) but throwing a sledge hammer at a pregnant woman, who has less than 5 weeks to d-day, while basically shrugging your shoulders and saying “sorry” is just a real jerk thing to do. Oh, how I love insurance poo. I had big plans for today. I had a to-do list of things that needed to be done to further prepare for the big D-day and a few things I wanted to do, because I could. 🙂 I was planning on baking chocolate chip cookies to both eat and also share with a friend who just gave birth to a GORGEOUS baby boy. I was planning on cleaning up and further organizing our room. I was planning on being a domestic diva, getting lots of laundry done & put away along with starting the LONG process of washing, cleaning, and organizing baby stuff. I also had a few insurance phone calls to make – both about claims we need to file and double checking on coverage for baby and I. I got through one and half items on my list and then came the hammer. While I may have dodged it, that stupid sledge hammer basically shattered the rest of my list…well, everything except that baking cookies part. I’ve really been craving chocolate chip cookies & they are in the oven now. I spent a good deal of time crying, shaking, trying to catch my breath & STOP hyperventilating, praying, trying to remember to be thankful for that stupid hammer (after all you can’t have a headache without a head), playing mindless games on Facebook, enjoying my baby’s hiccups, and hoping I didn’t stress myself into labor. Did I mention that my husband is out of town ALL WEEK? He is. He and the band are working on their 3rd album so I can’t even (easily) get a hold of him to vent to about sledge hammers and such. (I was also told that I look like I’ve lost weight, which I took as I look skinnier at 8 months pregnant than I did pre-pregnancy, but that’s another blog post.)
So, what did all of this lead to…a night of total trash. Trash food, trash tv, and trash talking (or thinking). I have totally given my night over to the trashier things in life. I had fried chicken, mac n’cheese, and chocolate chip cookies for dinner and when looking for some mindless trash on tv to watch, I settled on the Miss Universe Pageant (after first checking to see what was on Bravo). Oh my. I could blame part of tonight’s trash on my husband being gone because, if he was here, while we may have enjoyed a trashy dinner, there is no way in the world Miss Universe would have lasted more than 10 seconds on our tv. I must admit that he would’ve been right, too. As I watched these young women, some of whom are already crazy accomplished and wicked smart, parade around in skimpy clothes that leave little or nothing to the imagination (who knew a sequined swimsuit & chiffon sarong passed for evening wear?!?) I just felt bloated and sad. I felt so bloated and sad that I enjoyed a couple more chocolate chip cookies and a glass of milk. What I found was that the more I exposed myself to trash, the more I started to feel like trash. Trashy food, while very tasty, has left me feeling bloated, sluggish, and like a really bad mother. Here baby, have a butt load of bad fats, sugar, & carbs!! That’s a great start and will surly help your development!! Trashy tv, while mindless, has left me feeling sarcastic, sad, & more than a little flabbergasted. To be totally honest, it also left me feeling kind of witty at some of the cracks I was coming up with (:cough: see above about evening wear) but then again, I also felt kind of bad. They were talking about how the ladies brought their National Costumes with them and paraded around on stage in them. My first thought was “What in the world is the national costume of the USA…a stripper nurse?”. Then, as they were showing images of some of the costumes, it seemed that “stripper…” was the national costume of many countries. They described one of the girl’s evening gowns as “Blue is the color of royalty and she really looks regal..” and I thought “she looks like a regal hooker!” I also thought the descriptor “This is quite an exotic dress” was a nice way of saying she looked like an anorexic Christmas tree. Funny stuff, huh? (I got a chuckle anyway.) Maybe funny but also sad. I’m better than this. I’m a better person and worth more than simply spewing snarky & trashy (my initial thoughts were trashier but censored for blogging) comments. More than that, these girls…these LADIES are worth more than to be viewed as “regal hookers” or “anorexic Christmas trees”. They are somebody’s daughter, sister, and friend. They might be somebody’s wife or mother one day. They deserve to be viewed with dignity and respect. They deserve more than to be thought of simple beauty queens. They are more than a pretty face, tan body, and perky breasts. So, why then, is it so easy for so many of us to view something like the Miss Universe Pageant and a) immediately consider it trash in and of itself and b) speak about these ladies in a manner that is less than dignified? I can’t really defend the Miss Universe Pageant…I really can’t. I’ve tried to think of what else it is besides glorifying physical beauty and sex, but I can’t. I’m writing it off. It’s trash. However, just because I think that it is trash, that doesn’t mean that the ladies participating in it are trash or deserve to be talked about as if they are less than any of us.
We all fall into trash from time to time. Sometimes by our own choosing with full knowledge (ahem…my choices tonight would be exhibit A for that one) and sometimes we don’t realize what is happening until we are already ankle, knee, waist, or shoulder deep in the trash heap. Sometimes we are thrown into trashy situations by no choice or fault of our own. Circumstances and choices do not dictate the value, dignity, or worth of a person. We all make bad choices. We all wind up in less than ideal circumstances. It is just part of living in this fallen world. The more I think about this, the more I wonder why we are so attracted to the darker & trashier side of life. Why do we watch, or want to/choose to participate in, things like the Miss Universe Pageant, the Victoria’s Secret fashion show, and reality tv (in general)? Why are shows like Criminal Minds (I’m a big CM fan, btw), NCIS, and Law & Order so popular? You could argue that the tv shows display the struggle of good vs. evil and good usually wins. But why, when our world is already so dark and fallen, do we choose escape in something so realistic? It’s like saying I looked out the front window, instead of sitting on the front porch, to get a break from reality. If we want to see the struggle of good vs. evil why aren’t we at least allowing our imaginations to wonder into the world of the fantastic? Why aren’t we indulging in fairy tales and fantasy? If we are going to escape something about the reality of our broken world, then lets escape the REAL BROKENNESS of it! G.K. Chesterton, in Orthodoxy, says “Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragon can be killed.” Think about it – where else would do you see that, no matter what struggles and sufferings the hero & heroine must face, no matter their trials – in the end they triumph. They win. There is always hope, faith even, and it is rewarded. They see their “Happily Ever After”.
Fairy tales, to me, illustrate the struggle of Christians in our broken world. We will stumble, we will suffer, we will fall. This is a given. Evil exists and it wants to destroy and devour us. Sometimes it is as insidious as the spindle of a spinning wheel and sometimes as obvious as a fire breathing dragon. We must be brave and stand up to whatever evil we are faced with. We must remember that dragons can be killed and that EVERY story ends with the faithful finding their happily ever after. So, why aren’t we not only indulging in the fantastic fairy tales of our childhood, but why aren’t we also immersing ourselves in the fairy tale & love story that God has given us? Why is it so easy for us to turn away from the light? Why do we feel compelled to wallow in trash and hide in the shadows? Is it because we don’t want others to notice just how trashy and dirty we’ve allowed ourselves to become? Is it because we are trying to hide our brokenness from others, from ourselves? Who are we trying to fool? Or is it that living in the light, choosing God’s will for our lives, and choosing to rise & trying to live a holy & saintly life is just too hard? We are lazy, in this world of instant gratification. We don’t like to work for things. We don’t enjoy mighty quests with the long journeys and perilous tasks. It is much easier to wallow in the muck – there is usually far more company in the muck, too.
Today I fell. I fell hard. I allowed circumstances that were beyond my control to manipulate my emotions and instead of running to my heavenly Father, instead of immersing myself in light; I chose to dive into the trash. Now, I am going to get a bath and clean myself up. I am going to fall on my knees, thankful to have survived today, thankful for all of the crazy blessings in my life, and pray to see tomorrow. I am going to love my husband and my baby. I am going to (try) to be far gentler and kinder to my mother in law than I was earlier today. I am sorry for indulging in so much junk food at one meal. I am sorry for having such harsh and judgmental thoughts about my sisters in Christ. I am sorry for choosing the trash. I’ve been playing in the dumpster all day, instead of enjoying the warmth, peace, and joy of my Father’s house. I posted on my Facebook page earlier tonight that sometimes you need a little trash in your life. I was wrong. You never need trash – it’s unhealthy for every part of our being. (A little “junk”, you know the stuff that isn’t NEEDED to survive but it’s nice to have from time to time (like dessert or fresh baked cookies!!), is fine – trash is not. “Junk” is the stuff that I consider, in moderation, adds a little extra something to life – sweetness, spice, spirit.) So, next time I must dodge a sledge hammer and it happens to smash my plans for the day into trash at my feet, I will clean up the mess, thank God it wasn’t worse, and go play in the light. I invite you to do the same. ♥ (I just may also enjoy a little junk, like some freshly baked chocolate chip cookies or some 80’s/90’s pop/rock, while playing in the light. 😉 )
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