Raging, Ranting, Raving, and Rhapsodizing

I don't like to talk politics for two reasons.  First, it's just not something I'm super passionate about.  There are many other things I'd prefer to discuss.  Secondly, most of my friends are conservative republicans, and while I describe myself as unaffiliated, I tend to lean to the left.  Sharing my political views has often made me the recipient of scorn, anger, and rejection.  And there are many other things I'd prefer to do than get yelled at because I buy into the whole global warming scam, or whatever.

I love being a mom.  I really do, but I didn't at first.  I really struggled for the first 6 months to find an inner peace, a steady place every day, and I often felt overwhelmed and unhappy.  I watched other moms cope with the challenges of a new baby, watched them adapt beautifully (or at least appear to) and wondered, "why is this so hard for me?"  I've always felt somehow lacking as a woman and for months, motherhood was another confirmation of my feminine inferiority.  I felt guilty every time someone said to me, "Isn't it fun?" or "Don't you love it?" and answered a meek "oh, yeah" but inside felt a resounding "NO!"  I finally decided to drop my pride, ask for help, and be authentic with the people who love me.  I received in return many listening ears, much understanding, and plenty of support.

The last few months have been vastly more enjoyable, ever better and better.  I'm finally feeling that I'm a competent mother, able to handle the many and varied challenges, able to adapt.

I practice what I've been calling "intentional parenting."  It's the same way I treat Stephen.  We've always believed in being intentional with one another, never doing or saying anything casually or thoughtlessly or out of routine, quick to repent when we do, talking about everything, and I'm happy to say it's given us a rock solid marriage.  I suppose I could call it "intentional relating" just as easily; it simply means I approach every day and every interaction with purpose.


I wake up every morning with the higher calling of not only meeting Isabella's basic needs- feeding her, clothing her, keeping her safe- but sowing into her heart and spirit the messages and values that Stephen and I have determined are most important.

That she is abundantly loved, of exceptional worth, and highly honored.

That we deeply value her heart, needs, desires, thoughts, and emotions.

That she is strong, beautiful, tender, intelligent, powerful, bold, and capable of doing absolutely anything she sets her mind to.

That Stephen and I are a safe place for her to run to when she's unsure.

That we deeply value our relationship with her.

I try to give my daughter more than the minimum.  I try to pour everything I have into her, and I truly love doing it.  The things I set aside for her benefit are not even worth mentioning, because she's worth my time and energy.

I work for this every day, and I'm covered by grace when I fail.  But at nighttime, everything that I value so much during the daylight hours seems to go out the window.  Lack of sleep is like a mental illness for me.  I'm not kidding.  I feel like I turn into a totally different person.

I don't know (nor do I particularly want to know) if this is normal, but Isabella often wakes up to nurse 3 or 4 times a night.  Even at 9 months old it's rare for her to make it longer than 5 hours at a time.  I'll usually get up and nurse her and she'll fall right back to sleep, no big deal.  But sometimes she just can't get settled back down, and no matter how many times I bounce her to sleep and set her gently in her crib and pat her back for what feels like an eternity, she just wakes back up and I lose my temper so hard I think I'll never find it again.  I would never, ever hurt my daughter but I definitely know what it feels like to kind of want to a little tiny bit, in some deep dark corner of my heart.  Instead, I slam doors and stomp around and curse like mad and get so worked up that even when Stephen finally gets her back to sleep I'm too full of adrenaline to get back to sleep.

Then as I lay awake in bed with my heart pounding feeling like a werewolf slowly returning to human form, God speaks to me in a firm but gentle voice.  He reminds me who I am, what He made me for, that I'm better than this.  He reminds me of the commitments I've made as a parent, and that I'll look back at this challenging season as a moment in time, a mere heartbeat in the journey of my child's life.  And then I remember that every nighttime waking where I respond to Isabella and don't leave her alone to cry in a dark room, I've taken another brick and cemented it into the foundation of her heart, building the knowledge that her needs are important and that Mommy and Daddy are people to be trusted.

And in the morning I apologize to Isabella and ask her forgiveness for losing my temper, for not being gentle and loving and patient with her.  I thank her for being patient with me and giving me grace.  I tell her I'm going to work on this issue in my heart and I tell her how much she means to me.  I know, she's only 9 months old... that's why it's so important I start humbling myself now, while it's still relatively easy.  We want to cultivate a culture of honor in our home, and it happens day in and day out, over time.  With humility.  With intention.

I'm slowly realizing that the moments it's hardest to honor and love are the moments it's most important to do so.  This is how character is built.

I actually wrote this post on Saturday but didn't publish it till today (Monday) and of course, the sermon on Sunday was about dreaming, using Abraham as the example.  When God gave Abraham His promise, everything that Abraham did from that point on was intentional toward this dream.  God has given me a dream during the last few months so I'm going to take a cue from Abe and turn my sights in a new direction.


Dreaming can be scary.  It can be a risk.  What if my dreams don't come true?  What if I fail?  What if I get my hopes up and end up getting disappointed?  But I'm in a season of risk taking and big dreams, where God has invited me to dream with Him- not just to dream His dreams for me, but to dream my own dreams for myself.

I vividly remember my last birthday party.  I was in 4th or 5th grade.

I had excitedly prepared for the day... invited all my friends, received RSVPs, planned games, picked out favors and decorations and snacks.  I even hand-made little place tags for each friend we were expecting.  And then, no one came.  Well, I think 1 or 2 people came, out of 10 or more that said they would be there.  I have this very clear memory of sitting at the table on our back porch surrounded by empty place settings and streamers, looking at the names I had written and decorated on each of those stupid place tags.  I vowed to never have another birthday party.  It was 15 years ago, but every time I think about it, it still burns the way it did that day.  It was a defining moment in my life.

Since then I've had many more situations that seemed to confirm what I felt the day of the failed birthday party: people don't actually like me.  In junior high I had another defining moment.  My best friend told me she needed to take a week-long break from our friendship.  Our group of friends were informed of the break and everyone decided to hang with her, so for a week I sat alone on the bus, alone at lunch, alone in class.  If you knew me in junior high you know I was already a weird kid, but my friends were weird too, so it was ok.  Now I was weird and alone.

In high school I embraced my new identity and purposefully isolated myself... but that's a subject worthy of several independent posts.  The point is, since the birthday party, I've had this crippling lack of self-esteem.  I've always seen myself as this awkward, unlikable person.  Even now, as an adult, I have an idea in the back of my mind that while I may exchange pleasantries and small talk with my peers, people mostly tolerate me.  They talk to me when I'm around but no one really cares.  It makes me terrified to reach out to people.  It's exactly why I've always been so guarded, so eager to show everyone that I don't need them, and, consequently, how I learned to be such a good listener (by turning conversations away from myself).

Last week, Thursday, was my 26th birthday.  Early in the week I was on facebook looking at pictures from a friend's recent surprise birthday party.  I thought to myself, "No one has ever thrown me a surprise party.  Of course, no one ever will."

Stephen told me to get dressed up for a fancy birthday dinner Friday night.  We were to swing by a friend's house because they were giving us a gift certificate to a nice restaurant.  The door opened, and standing in the living room were a large group of people... whose faces I recognized... even my sister was there.  For a second I honestly wondered whose party we had accidentally crashed.  Even after they all yelled "Surprise!" it took me 15 or 20 seconds to process the situation.  This is for me?  What?  Why?

It was a wine and cheese party, so everyone was dressed up.  I found out later that Stephen didn't remember to put the party together until the last minute, so these people had less than a week's notice and STILL came.  Because, as it turns out, I am NOT a giant inconvenience.  In a moment years and years of rejection and abandonment, both real and perceived, just broke off of me.  Literally.  Gone.

My little girl's heart was broken on a birthday, a day that is supposed to be a celebration of who I am.  And that little girl's heart was healed on a birthday.  God took this traumatic event and fully redeemed it.

I was telling Stephen all this after I'd had time to process everything, and tearfully asked him, "Did you have any idea this party would be so powerful and significant for me?"  He nodded back, started to tear up himself.  I just can't get over how amazing my husband is for doing this for me; because of him I will look back on my 26th birthday party as one of the defining moments of my life.

I was so blessed by the response to my last blog post.  It felt like a big risk hitting the "publish" button, but it was liberating and I haven't regretted it.

The great Mitch Hedberg (may he rest in peace) had a joke about mountain climbing.  "I want to climb a mountain- not so I can get to the top- cause I want to hang out at base camp.  That seems fun as shit.    You sleep in a colorful tent, you grow a beard, you drink hot chocolate, you walk around.  People ask you, 'Hey, you goin to the top?'  'Soon.'"  (I couldn't find audio of this joke... oh well, enjoy this compilation instead and consider this your warning that while the material is clean Mitch seasons his comedy with plenty of f-bombs.)

I feel like this is how I live my life.  Waiting for something to happen.  Wasting my time.  Making excuses.  Missing out.  Truthfully, I rarely live in the present moment.  I often find myself thinking, "Tomorrow I'll make that change, achieve that goal, deepen that friendship, pursue that dream."

I'm not sure why I'm sitting out on the fringes watching other people live.  I think it's because I'm scared.  The mountain of life can be a dangerous place.  There are real risks involved, like relationships and rejection and failure.  Being open, authentic, present, and vulnerable with people... it's just not safe.  What if they don't like me?  What if I don't fit in?  What if people see my weaknesses?  What will they think of me?  What if I share my heart and they don't care?

In order to preserve myself, I've alienated myself.  I don't reach out to people.  I don't cultivate relationships very well.  I don't share myself unless I'm asked, and even then I give little.  I don't ask for help when I need it.  As long as I live in this little bubble, I can't get hurt.  I watch people who are truly living, who are willing to share their heart and passion, people who are taking risks.  I hate watching the real mountaineers setting off up the trail because I'm intimidated by their courage and jealous of their adventure.

Since Isabella was born, I've felt especially isolated and desperately in need of a real support network... of friends who know me deeply and love me, who will celebrate the joys of life with me and help me through the tough times.  Friends that I can support and encourage in return.

Normally I would journal all of this and not tell anyone about my life changing resolutions to stop hiding, and then lose my motivation and be disappointed because I failed again.  So I guess I'm sharing all of this as a way to say, I'm picking up my pack and taking those first steps up the trail, and I could use a little companionship along the way.  Hope to see you on the mountain...

I haven't posted anything on here for quite a while.  That's because I'm very busy these days taking care of 6 month old Isabella.  And when I'm not taking care of her, I'm trying to maintain the business I've worked so hard to build.  And if there isn't writing to be done, there are the endless piles of laundry which seem to be reproducing.  And while I'm parenting, working, and cleaning, I'm finding a little bit of time here and there to take care of myself.

Much to our joy, Stephen recently got a job after 15 months of searching and waiting.  And while he still works from home and it's more flexible than most jobs, he works hard and is usually in his office all day, so I'm sort of on my own on weekdays.  It also means that a lot of the work for my business that he had been taking care of is now falling to me, and I'm feeling the added pressure.  It's been a sore spot for us lately... I feel like I work more than he does.  I'm certainly balancing more things at once than he is.  But then I realize that Stephen gets far less time with our daughter than I do, and even less time to take care of himself.

Recently Time magazine published a story about how working dads and stay at home moms work pretty equal amounts, albeit in often different ways.  But just yesterday, I read an excerpt from Think: Straight Talk For Women To Stay Smart In A Dumbed-Down World by Lisa Bloom suggesting that women should be hiring someone else to do our housework, and women who do it themselves are stuck in the 50s, and that we have "no excuse" for this ignorance.  (You can read it here.)

The suggestion that I'm an unenlightened and powerless domestic slave, or worse, oppressed by my overbearing misogynistic husband because I'm not spending our hard earned money paying someone else to do a job I could easily do myself, is simply infuriating.

Do you know why I do housework?  Because saying "I love you" in Stephen's love language means acts of service.  Popularized by author Gary Chapman, there are 5 love languages: physical touch, quality time, gifts, words of affirmation, and acts of service.  Most people find that they naturally communicate and receive love using mainly one or two of these languages.  When Stephen sees dishes in the sink and just cleans them, or brings me a cup of coffee without me asking, or voluntarily cleans up a mess that someone else made, he's showing love.  Just like when I give a giant hug or launch into a long winded soliloquy praising all your minutest qualities, I'm showing love.  Because my thing is touch and words (lots of words).

Even though our languages are a little different, we try to speak each other's language regularly.  So, although cleaning doesn't come naturally to me, and in fact goes totally against my nature, I do it because I love when Stephen emerges from his office and sees that I've vacuumed up the astonishing amount of ever accumulating dog fur, and his appreciation is obvious on his face.

I enjoy making my husband happy because I love him, and that doesn't mean that I think we should go back to the good ol' days when women couldn't vote.

After reading a wretched blog post about motherhood, I felt totally discouraged and bummed out.  The author insists that she loves her life, though she just wants it to be "more about her."  She says she's made a living from pointing out our culture's double standards (which I agree do exist), but my guess is that writing these diatribes are mostly her way of dealing with the craziness of her life.  And I'm sure she congratulates herself on being "brutally but refreshingly honest" or some BS like that.  But who am I to talk?  My blog basically exists for the purpose of complaining as a coping mechanism.

Then I read this truly lovely post shared via a friend on facebook, and it was a breath of fresh air.  And it made me examine my own heart.

I don't love every second of motherhood.  Admittedly, there have been a lot of seconds so far that I haven't loved.  If I'm honest, I had a handful of moments (mostly during the first 6 weeks when everything blended into a hazy, sleepless fog) that I wondered, "Is there an undo button?!?"  I've had a series of identity crises as the fabric of my daily experience is transformed into something utterly unfamiliar.

But my incredible daughter is almost 5 months old now, and we've had millions of brilliant, glorious, wonderful seconds, and those far outweigh the bad ones.  I have a tendency to focus on the negative, so I have to be intentional about cherishing and remembering every beautiful moment with Isabella.

Every smile, every grin.  Every tiny sigh, every big old yawn.  Every time her eyes light up when I walk in.  Every morning that she wakes up and scoots across the bed towards me.  Every time she makes that sad little pouty face that would be funny if she wasn't being so completely serious about it.  Every time her little pudgy hands reach up to touch my face or grab my hair.  Every sweet sound she makes.  These are the things that make motherhood worth all the sacrifice- so worth it that complaining about what I'm giving up almost seems trivial.

What an honor, what a privilege it is to be a parent.  What a massive responsibility it is to care for, guide, and lead another human being into healthy adulthood.  I sometimes feel that I'm spending an inordinate amount of time managing Izzy's mood, changing diapers, and being fussed at, rather than simply enjoying her.  But she's not here simply for my enjoyment.  What I'm doing is not solving a temporary problem or trying to satiate her so I can go back to bed.

It's far more meaningful and enduring than that.  She's learning that when she has a need, it's met; her parents are trustworthy, and she is deeply valued and unconditionally loved.  Through Stephen and I, Isabella should experience the Father's abiding love, indefatigable patience, and prevailing grace.  I get to love her every day, and in return, she's teaching me how to do it better.  How dare I complain about that?

I've been pregnant for 39 weeks now.  Over the last few days I've had a handful of people pay me truly lovely compliments, and continued comments from my friends, family, and fabulous husband have helped me maintain emotional balance throughout the process.