Have you tried...?

In honor of Rebekah being so close to D-day, I think we should compile a list of the foolproof ways to jump-start labor that people so helpfully suggest to women in the last days of a pregnancy. In my experience, these brilliant suggestions are particularly, ah, charming, when they are offered after one's actual due date, by representatives of the male of the species.

I'll get us started:

1. Just relax and have a beer.

2. Eat spicy foods.

3. Take a car ride down a bumpy road.

4. Jump on the bed.

5. Drink castor/cod liver oil. One of my friends actually tried this, and it did produce something--but not a baby. Er. Ugh.

So, feel free to chime in with your favorites, and also mention whether you've had any luck with them! Because scoff though we may, there's a certain desperation that sets in, especially after the official date has come...and gone...

Working as for the Lord

In my recent past I was a working mother. I was never anything terribly impressive but I pinned up my hair and clicked off to work nearly every morning, leaving the babies in the care of women with good hearts and unbrushed teeth. For yea those many long years I was sick in my heart about leaving my children for who could love them better than I? Who could better shelter them from the evils of Spongebob and processed cheese? Who could better clean them, tuck them in, brainwash them, etc., etc., etc.?

And for yea those many long years I pined for the time when it would all end; when I could trade in my heels for slippers and gather my children around me in a happy, wholesome, loving little bubble of family.

Now I’m here, surrounded by my children with no job to which I might escape. I’ve been here for about six months or so and I have a question for you: What was I thinking?

I daresay I fell victim to the classic blunder: Romanticism. I was gone so much and so completely that I didn’t know my children very well, neither did I know myself, and I imagined them to be something quite different than what they are. In the working world, surrounded by people who wanted little more from me than fingers on a keyboard and platitudes in the boardroom, life was easy. Stressful? OK. Trying? Yes. But really, fundamentally, thoroughly easy. Because those people didn’t own my heart, drain my body, try my senses, test my limits, or pull my hair.

These people, these children, these evil, sinful, wretched little creatures of my own creation do.

Those office people? They would often verbalize appreciation for something I had done. And they were grownups with whom I might have conversations about something, ANYTHING. And my work was tangible, my paycheck satisfying, my comings home pleasant—the babies were glad to see me and I was happy to play at their games for the 1.5 hours prior to bedtime.

Now? The dishes are never done. The laundry is never done. The diapers are never done. They nursing is never done. There is never enough time. My cooking is never complimented. My questions are never answered. I cannot complete a single thought. I do not have time to read. The house itself leers at me like my demon spawn wanting more and more and never getting enough. I never look pretty. I am cr@pped upon, spit at, slapped, screamed at, and pushed. All this before my husband gets home to find me wild eyed and engaged in mortal combat with the fruit of his loom. And his children. Let the reader understand.

Thanks be to God, the having of the children is easy enough for us. Taking care of them, teaching them, raising them up in the way that they should go . . . that part bites.* Some mornings I dare look in the mirror and when I catch my own eye that other face smirks and says, “You wanted all this and you got it. You’re freakishly disappointed in who your children are and in your constant, dangerous, consequential failure to be a good mother. You’re lonely, cold, and dreadfully unhappy. And you’re not going to use birth control to stop all this? If you keep having more, you need to go back to work. If not, do you really think you can handle it?”

The only answer I have for myself thus far is this: “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving” (Col. 3: 23-23). And, “Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ . . . doing the will of God from your heart . . . because you know that the Lord will reward everyone for whatever good he does . . . and masters, treat your slaves in the same way. Do not threaten them, since you know that he who is both their Master and yours is in heaven, and there is no favoritism with him (Eph. 6: 5-9). And, “I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of the wicked” (Psalm 84:10).

I think I may actually be a toilet scrubber or shoe licker (DV), but that’s beside the point. My enemy myself scoffs at this my life every chance she gets, and the weak Romantic myself hangs her head in defeat, and the chorus of selfish myselfs sing out their desires and plans and all that stands between them and this my life, these my children is the conviction that these sinful wretches are baptized unto life everlasting and that indeed it is better to be spit upon by an eternal creature of the living God than to type 10,000 clever things that pass away with the season.

Come quickly Lord Jesus, and reveal your kingdom to us all.

*And it bites whether you work outside the home or in, eh? But when you’re outside you get coffee breaks, right? That’s all I’m saying.

Haunting words

I had occasion in a recent past life to have some conversations with an LCMS mother of five--not a big family homeschooler type, not a conscience-bound CSPP type, not a rich lots-of-babies-trend type--just someone who had vague independent misgivings about birth control and ended up with five kids as a result. Anyway. We were talking about L&D and her take on it was that one's piety during the event decreases with each child, which I found amusing (especially as she described her quiet prayers and singing during her first labor, compared with the angry shouting directed at her husband by the time 3 and 4 rolled around). But then she said that her last birth had been by far the best. I asked her why. "Easy," she said. "I finally took the epidural."

Practical piety for Epiphany

It was with particular fervor that I sang the last verse of "O Morning Star, How Fair and Bright" this morning:

What joy to know, when life is past,
The Lord we love is first and last,
The end and the beginning!
He will one day, oh, glorious grace,
Transport us to that happy place
Beyond all tears and sinning!
Amen! Amen!
Come, Lord Jesus!
Crown of gladness!
We are yearning
For the day of Your returning!

I have always loved this hymn. And going to church with my children endows this last verse with new, practical meaning. It's one thing to pray in a general sense for our Lord's return. It's quite another to spend the Words of Institution gritting my teeth and hauling my dear sons out from under the pew--the first occupied pew, I might add, as a series of minor pre-church crises prevented us from arriving in time to claim our usually more discreet location. "Come, Lord Jesus," quickly come! No, I really mean it this time! Transport us to that happy place! Now! Practical piety, indeed.

It sometimes seems rough when the "tears and sinning" so immediately precede reception of the Sacrament--but then again, as has been observed on this blog before, what better time to receive this most precious gift with deep humility and earnest gratefulness?

And the boys really were pretty good for the rest of the service today. Um, except for the prayers. We are yearning for the day of Your returning!

The 3 yr. old did redeem himself at home by recounting parts of the service, volunteering to tell us about Sunday School, and actually getting most of the stuff right, down to details of "gold, frankensense, and murr," and of course the camels. And then he told us he would put on a "drum show" for us (kitchen utensils; you don't think we'd actually get him drums, do you?) if we would sing verses 1, 2, and 5 of "Joy to the World." So I guess the Word of God extends even as far as under the pews. (I know, "Joy to the World" has only 4 verses. But we'll take what we can get.)

A Joyous Epiphany to all!

P.S. We do hope the King cake celebration came off well for R. and co?

Blogorrhea

Actually, there are a lot of big family Lutheran blogs out there. But none of those girls seem to have the same hangups I do. They just live life with their six kids (oh, and homeschool them and make everybody's clothes and distill their own organic, cruelty-free gin) and blog blithely away, occasionally fretting cutely about the pile of shoes in the hallway. What gives? Are they:

--people who always wanted a big family?
--not originally from Sulvan households so it doesn't seem weird to them?
--just more virtuous than I am such that this considerable departure from the world doesn't bother them?
--some combination of all of these things?

Converting to CSPP was a major upheaval for me. I think I'm safely out of the initial anger zone that lasted for a few years. But when we first called off the Sulvan business, we thought we were the only people in the world who had. I felt alternatively scared to tell people that we were doing something so gauche as permanently pitching our pills, or compelled to tell them that we were doing it on a confessional basis so they wouldn't think I was one of those girls who had always dreamed about getting married and wearing stretch pants and canvas shoes while I crocheted another pair of booties with a little smile on my face. The big family people I knew didn't give the impression that they lived that way as a matter of piety rather than out of personal preference. For the most part, I still don't get that impression from them.

So I still feel lost about all this sometimes, as we don't really fit the profile of people who send the crowded Christmas pics every year. I sort of identify with them, at least in the sense that there's always a huge pile of shoes in my hallway, but there's also a part of me that wonders what our old crowd is doing, and if they just write me off as another big family crazy (although I didn't look or sound the part 6 years ago) when they hear tidings of us through the LCMS grapevine. I also wonder about the people who are probably now going through what we did when we got our paradigm shifted, because I would have appreciated having someone to talk to about it back then. Awkward times, explaining to department heads that I was switching from the thesis to the exam option because I was, *ahem*, pregnant again--but I can finally say without gritting my teeth that I don't regret it.

Gauntlets make good

I'm not saying CSPP isn't the awesomest blog ever, but check out this high distinction over at the Lutheran Blog of the Year 2007.

C.S. Lewis on the Iowa Caucus

[Of course we don’t want to get all political on this blog; we’ve got enough issues without going there. But since my phone is ringing umpteen times a day with campaign calls, I’m going to make you suffer a bit too.]

Cut to scene fragment from That Hideous Strength, where Mark Studdock tries noncommittally to express his disagreement with another character’s view:

“I suppose there are two views about everything,” said Mark.
[The other replies]: “Eh? Two views? There are a dozen views about everything until you know the answer. Then there’s never more than one. But it’s no affair of mine. Good night.”

It’s not like I’m always totally thrilled with the candidate I end up voting for. But it seems I’m not alone in thinking that the problem is worse than usual this year. There are surely more than a dozen views about which candidate is the best one, a situation exacerbated by the fact that some of the candidates themselves seem to have “a dozen views about everything,” whether simultaneously or over the course of their career. Makes it rather more difficult to know what “the answer” is. I miss being able to have a smug superior attitude about how "my" candidate is obviously far superior and you're just stupid if you don't agree with me (ok, so maybe that's never really worked so well in the past anyway...)

Even if one is willing to sacrifice calculations of electability and go strictly on conscience/issues, what’s a (semi) crunchy con to do? There are some obvious no-nos, but a lot of unanswered questions too. Oh, to be able to say, “But it’s no affair of mine. Good night.”

Well, I think I’ll send my husband off a-caucusing tonight to cast the family vote, and we’ll muddle through the best we can. And be grateful that the worthless phone traffic should slow down dramatically after tonight.

Meanwhile, I just shake my head at the mastery of Lewis’ biting insight in this tiny snippet alone. There’s nothing throwaway in Lewis’ writing, even the fiction—yet neither is it annoyingly moralistic. He’s a master of the craft. We need a Lewis for this generation! (Anyone have any nominations? Gotta be a more hopeful situation than the presidential nominations, at least.)

Advance warning: buy purple sugar

We're a little hung up on Epiphany around here. The good news is that I've recruited some other people to help me make King cakes this year (tutorial over at the school in an hour if you're interested) so I won't have to do them all myself. I've posted my preferred recipe at CSPP cooks, but I wanted to tell you now that purple decorating sugar is powerful hard to find, so don't leave it until Saturday afternoon! One time I found some in a Valentine's day variety shaker, so you could try looking for something like that. And of course, don't forget to put the baby inside AFTER baking (I use the ones you can buy in bags of 6 for baby showers in the craft section at Walmart).

Why

does the volume of liquid always seem so much greater on the floor than it did in the cup?

I know, I know, surface area and all that. But still.

A resolution I can keep!

Our helpful local paper offered suggestions on "52 ways to be a better you in 2008." Number 13 was "Make the trip to the grocery store an adventure." (This feature was obviously written by someone who does not shop, or live, with small children.) Guess I can pretty much check that one off. Wow, it makes me feel so warm and fuzzy to be a better me already, only a half day into this new year.

At least I found this special feature to be less offensive than their recent features kindly offering to help me choose "the right candidate for '08."