Usage you can use: Fiancé(e)

Fiancé is masculine. A man who is engaged.

Fiancée is feminine. A woman who is engaged.

E. It matters.

Meditations upon Boxing Day

--I didn't win a Nook from Lulu. Hard to believe, I know. Other things I have recently not won include a gift card from a grocery chain for all the surveys I fill out for them, and a Father of the Year award for my husband from a local electric coop. Jerks. Anyway, Lulu told me I could still have a Nook if I sold more of something than anybody today. Seriously, I'm supposed to compete with Wil Wheaton? Bump it.

--You know you've arrived when you have to do laundry on Christmas on a non-emergency basis.

--Did anybody else see that bulletin cover? Ha ha ha ha ha.

--Best Christmas movie ever is A Muppet Christmas Carol.

--What is the deal with "I Saw Three Ships"? Is this another one of those weird British nationalist things?

--What is everybody else doing about the loot/space discrepancy with greed and sloth skewing the data?

Who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto knowledge of the truth

It's been years since I last posted this little discursus by Luci Shaw, so here it is again. Merry Christmas, dear readers. God bless you and yours unto life everlasting.

It’s as if the infancy were the whole of the incarnation.

One time of the year

the new-born child
is everywhere,
planted in madonnas’ arms
hay mows, stables,
in palaces or farms,
or quaintly, under snowed gables,
gothic angular or baroque plump,
naked or elaborately swathed,
encircled by Della Robbia wreaths,
garnished with whimsical
partridges and pears,
drummers and drums,
lit by oversize stars,
partnered with lambs,
peace doves, sugar plums,
bells, plastic camels in sets of three
as if these were what we need for eternity.

But Jesus the Man is not to be seen.
We are to be wary, these days,
of beards and sandaled feet.

Yet if we celebrate, let it be
that He
has invaded our lives with purpose,
striding over our picturesque traditions,
our shallow sentiment,
overturning our cash registers,
wielding His peace like a sword,
rescuing us into reality,
demanding much more
than the milk and softness
and the mother warmth
of the baby in the storefront creche,
(Only the Man would ask
all, of each of us)
reaching out
always, urgently, with strong
effective love
(only the Man would give
His life and live
again for love of us).

Oh come, let us adore Him--
Christ--the Lord.

Yet another thing I can see no reason not to post

It's been way too long since we've had a Vanity post. Besides all of them, I mean.

Postpartum again! I'm trying not to be so vain this time. Maybe I'm just getting too old to care so much; that would be good. Anyway, in a manic moment I found a great deal of humor in the fact that I'm carrying around on my person a plurality (at least) of the food my baby is going to eat this year. What a goofy system. What do I expect to look like? It's got to go somewhere.

I could tell the moment was manic because I then began imagining what it would look like if I weren't nursing but still had to carry a year's worth of baby food on me. I have no idea how much formula a baby goes through in a week. A can? Three cans? Let's call it  one can. We won't count little Gerber jars, just formula. I am now picturing myself with 52 cans of formula affixed to my body. Sheesh, I'm huge! This formula takes up a ton of space! I'm also really loud with all these cans clanking around me every time I move. I look, like, SO silly. I can't get comfortable enough to sleep, either. I'm exhausted.

I think we've all learned an important lesson here.

Above and beyond

I needed a baby so I could realize how much I needed a husband. A husband is not a BFF. A husband is the man who takes care of you when you can't take care of yourself.

I'm not saying a spouse isn't or can't be a friend, just that the "husband as BFF" motif so prevalent in contemporary conjugal piety (especially at weddings in which the couple writes the "vows") is really dumb. This has everything to do with a motif that's been dropped from contemporary conjugal piety: "husband as lord." This necessarily leads to people marrying their BFFs whether or not the BFF is of the other sex.

But anyway, although my husband is my friend, he is also more and less than that. He is my lord, and as such a great part of him is above me and therefore unknowable to me. And I will venture to assert that as his lady, I am and always will be a mystery to him. There is a great part of me that is beyond him and therefore unknowable to him. One of the greatest services husbands and wives do each other is NOT trying or pretending to share absolutely everything. Not every cross borne by a husband can be shared by a wife, as surely as a great multitude of a wife's burdens cannot be lightened by a husband. To act or expect otherwise is delusional and unfair.

Knowing this and valuing it frees us from needing to be jerks about it. I find that when I get to spend time with my female friends (which means one of us herding crawlers out of the kitchen while the other cooks), sharing with each other the burdens beyond our husbands, we end up thanking God together that he put us under the care of dudes so much better than we are.

Springerle

I have my grandma's springerle rolling pin and I feel like a jerk for not using it. I remember eating springerle when I was very little and loving it. So I really want to make it but I haven't had luck with the recipe I've got (not my grandma's--alas, that one is lost). Does anybody have a good recipe? I'm paralyzed by all the internet options and would love it if one of you internet people had a recipe with commentary.

These. I want them.

Alliums, or why any number of intervention-free deliveries do not a NCB advocate make

The following comes of my sick, terrible habit of hanging around birth-junkie websites in the weeks before my due date. GOT to stop that.

The main reason I wanted a med-free birth with our first baby was curiosity. I wanted to know what it was like. Not everybody gets to find out.

Now I know, and I haven't wanted one since, but I keep getting them. Lucky me. As I've said here, there are some valuable lessons in the experience, but the most valuable one for me has been learning that it wasn't really my choice. It was my preference the first time around, and it worked out. I didn't have any complications, so I got my curiosity satisfied. (In a hospital. Yes.)

Then all my friends and relations started having babies, and I started seeing that childbirth isn't any different from breakfast on a busy morning. You can't always get what you want. Some wanted to go "natural" for whatever reason, and they couldn't, honest. 2000 miles or 150 years from here, something bad would have happened to mother and/or child, no matter how ideal their birth ideals (and why the ideal would be anything other than an experience which does not induce terror upon its remembrance--which for a few of us weak-minded people would involve pain relief of some sort--is beyond me). Some decided along the way that hours of voluntary agony weren't worth the Natural Childbirth Award, which doesn't exist. Some regretted not having an anaesthetic in place when it came to the measures which had to be taken upon them after the baby's birth. Some wanted pain relief and it didn't work, or even made things worse. Some got what they planned, whether it was Interventionpalooza or a moonlit glade attended only by maiden wolves. Everyone had preferences and made choices, but not everyone got the birth story they wanted.

The only thing I feel like telling someone any more about how to have a baby is You can do it! Unless you can't. You won't know until it happens. If you get the delivery you think you want, thank God in heaven because that is the third cherry on the real whipped cream on the hottest of fudge on the Haagen-Dazs of a healthy baby. If you don't, don't feel bad AT ALL, because who cares? It is ultimately not something you can control. And however it goes, turn off the comments when you post your birth story because there is always going to be some fool out there who thinks she knows better than you what should have happened.

But I still want to lodge my major complaint about the NCB universe, and that is its ridiculous self-satisfaction. I cannot take pride in my deliveries, much as I would LOVE to after this many times, any more than I could be proud of surviving a lightening strike or bout of ebola. They prove nothing except that God dealt with me mercifully (which is pretty blasted hard to admit, considering). That first time when I got myself all educated and prepped, I was told I'd stride away with this incredible sense of strength and accomplishment. Instead I hobbled off feeling completely ruined and, moreunder (or is it lessover?), lied to. There's no buzzkill for that post-baby rush like the thought of earning it again, or maybe ten more times. I came with onions and left with garlic.

Unlike the farmer and the monk, I also left with six perfect babies. So that helps.

Update: the comments upon this post, while non-explicit, are frank. If that would trouble you, dear reader, do not attend.

On the doing of homework

So there's this, which is like, you people still? And this, which is pretty funny. And a bunch of people saying stuff. But please, everybody, do yourselves the huge, huge favor of reading this book, the best book ever written on the topic outside of Heilege Schrift, The Eternal Woman by Gertrud von le Fort.

Read it before you write your next post about not ordaining women!

Read it before you write your magnum opus on women in the church!

Read it even if you don't like me or this blog!

Read it even if you're a dude!

It's so important that you read this!

Yes, YOU!!!!

New ropes, old ropes, and the gallows, too

Rebekah's last post reminded me of something I've been saving for a rainy day. It's raining in my amygdala today. Ta da.

When and why did moaning under one’s cross becoming synonymous with “whining?” Life on this side of the veil is hard, most grievously hard. Christ knows this very well. He does not sneer at His little ones who cry piteously over what in eternity amounts to a stubbed toe or missed dessert. Rather, in His mercy, He hears the groans of His Elect, those who bear His Name in Baptism, and has compassion.

Indeed, God, for the sake of Christ, lifts His countenance upon us as we muck about and stays His righteous wrath. Instead of floods, hellfire, and stonings, He provides for us the softest, gentlest of graces: a Holy Mother Church, who patiently and lovingly hears our sobbing and soothes our consciences with Words placed into her most beautiful mouth by Christ Himself.

And thus are we taught to hear the suffering of others. Dear sisters in Christ, it is not necessary to coat your face in colorful Plasticine and intone tired American lies about how lucky you are to have the Eschaton somehow immanentized in your heart. Rather, let us receive what God has given, and then do as our Mother does. It is good, normal, sensible, and poetic to see your sin and the sin of your children, and to speak it out of darkness that it may wither and die in the light. It is good, normal, sensible, and poetic to hear patiently a sister speak of her struggles, and to direct her toward her good Mother, who is a fertile land abounding with milk and honey and who will feed her the very salvation of her soul.

It is not good and far from poetic to harbor your misery or to treat with complacence the cries of your fellow Christian. Life is difficult and filled with storms we cannot understand. Even the smallest of thunderclaps finds its impetus in sin, and it was for even the smallest of peccadilloes that our Christ died.  Every cramp of flesh and soul is of importance to our Savior, who does not hesitate when we call for help but immediately puts out His hand and draws us out of the waves. He might chide, “Why did you doubt?” But such words are His and His alone to give, and His Bride is more than capable of conveying their meaning to Her babies.

You and I commune at the same altar; that is good enough for me. Let us join together in raising our voices to Christ. When you rejoice, I will rejoice with you. And when you cry out, “Oh, Lord, how long?” I’m the alto you hear over yonder.

Could be better. Will be better.

I remember getting a book from the library when I was a kid called, I think, Could Be Worse. Yup. It was about a couple of kids whose grandpa always told them when they complained to him about something, "Could be worse!" Once when they brought him a complaint, he told them a long, crazy story about all these awful things that had happened to him when he was young--something like his house exploding in a hurricane while weasels ripped his flesh and his mom poached monkey gizzards in puke sauce for supper and on like that for pages and pages. The kids hear him out and then happily tell him . . . you got it.

And of course grandpa is right and the kids are right and that frowny, responsible, "you live in the first world you unpitiable whiner" voice in the back of my head is right. But there's a part of me that could do without Could Be Worse. It's not weeping with them that do weep to always be telling them "could be worse," and it could be way stinking better, and it's OK and even important to want that, and we're supposed to be sort of ready for it, and frankly there are times when it feels like that's really all there is to look forward to.