Law as mirror

The real reason to dress modestly is not to smother another's lust, which is impossible, but to cover one's own pride. That's why the notion makes ladies angry.  

"Thin and separate. There should be two."

One piece of advice I got from a seasoned mom when I was just starting out was that it wasn't worth the energy and grief to worry about how irreparably scraggly I looked all the time. Instead, she counseled, I should pick one small thing about my appearance that was always well controlled. Hers was her nails. Even when she had a toddler and infant twins, she worked hard to make that sure her nails were done to her liking all the time.

I am very low maintenance in terms of personal grooming, which you know if you've seen me, but this still struck me as good advice. Nails aren't a huge concern to me, but eyebrows are. Or, more accurately, eyebrow is. Maintaining my eyebrow (hereinafter  "eyebrows") is not just a matter of personal dignity, but public courtesy. I have pallid skin and dark hair which is committed to concentrating its growth efforts just behind my glasses. If there were an eyebrow subsidiary to Locks of Love, I'd be their star donor. To give my eyebrows free rein is simply antisocial. So whenever I've got a crew in the bath, I clean the bathroom and then get those caterpillars under control. Voila! I've taken time for my appearance like an actual woman and made the world a better place.

Find a thing, girls. If it can help even a trainwreck of feminine aspect like me, it will surely be of value to you.

It just doesn't work for all of us.

Academiology 101

Don't have a degree? Don't worry about it.

Doubtless you, like I, know a whole lot of people who have spent or are spending a whole lot of time in school. And maybe you, like I, find this depressing, bewildering, and/or intimidating depending on the school or the person. But I am doing my best to get over it, and I urge you to do the same.

Schools of all kinds are businesses, and it's much better business practice to broaden rather than limit your clientele. With the exception of a few very prestigious places, most schools need lots of paying students. The best way to get paying students is to make it easier to go to school: have classes at odd hours, eliminate requirements of locality, help students get money from places other than the school, appeal to popular interests, generate perceived needs for new areas of "study," and make sure academic requirements aren't too hard.

So here is what it necessarily means that a person has some degree: she had the time and money to get it. It does not mean that she is smarter or harder working than someone who doesn't have that degree or its equivalent.

All disciplines uncharacterized by empirical, quantitative skills and requirements have become so inundated with mumbo-jumbo that it is very common for inarticulate persons with little analytical ability and a basic lack of knowledge to fulfill the requirements for a degree. Inarticulate and unknowledgeable people even advance to the highest levels of these disciplines.  A guy who can fix a car gave his brain more of a workout acquiring that expertise than someone who majored in communications. The diploma is not always to the smart, nor yet favour to men of skill. The diploma is at the bottom of a box in my attic (I think). If you don't have one, I admire you for seeing through the vanity that is the academy. I was too stupid. A fool and her time and money are soon parted.

Knowledge puffeth up, but charity edifieth. The academy can look very appealing, but its main reward is the esteem of men. And what's that worth?

And about that classmate of your husband who's back at the seminary (or wherever) for graduate work: time and money. Time and money. That's all it [necessarily] means. Every non-academiologist husband deserves a big old thanks today and every day for not asking his family to sacrifice any more, even though he could, even though he IS smart enough. If the clergy shortage is a tall tale, an academiologist shortage is downright phantasmagorical. Most parishes can't afford to give a raise for an advanced degree anyway.

(I am indebted to my reverend brother for the apt term "academiology".)

"Is it not strange that desire should so many years outlive performance?"

It was befuddling to see Madonna working the crowd with her trademark methods during this year's big halftime show, and not because she has clearly purchased a sort of youth. It is befuddling to think why anyone Madonna's age would still WANT to shake her skirt like that.

I turn 35 this year. It is evident that in my body I have passed my solstice and will soon begin slouching through my dog days. My pride doesn't like it, but my more reasonable side finds some comfort in the idea that there is coming a day when my flesh will have proved itself, and the heat of summer will come to an end.

When the North Wind blows through my life and carries all my birds to the warmth of their own summers, there will still be sunshine enough, God willing, for all the days of autumn. To think of fighting that wind, of gathering up my falling leaves in taut, synthetic bags, and working to confuse eyes with my brittling branches . . . No. No running, or painting, or afflicting myself for growing old. What must be, will be.

Besides, autumn is an enchanting season: she has gained so much from the sun that she more fully reflects its colors; she blesses her people with unexpected bursts of warmth; she shelters the time of harvest and prepares the soil for generations of life to come. Sing to the Lord, for autumn is at hand! There is still much, very much, to do! And not a second to waste groping after a spent spring. An honest Spring is coming, and soon, and it will appear in the sky without our doing a thing. In the meantime, dignity as we await the snow.

I think I'll go for a walk!

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.

Ego boost

The upside to having a kitchen full of fruit flies: The tiny creatures put on a show of being intimidated when I irritatedly storm into their midst. My children do me no such favors; they think I'm hilarious when I'm angry.

Ha, ha! Mom's gonna blow her top again!

It's that time again

Does anyone else deal with this? My hair starts falling out in fistfuls right about the time the baby gets serious about growing to Kraken-ish proportions. It's terrible. There's not enough Drano in all the world.

We're not going to lose the Enterprise! Not to the Borg! 

Not while I'm in command!

Ugly duck

I wish I weren't the only female who shows up at church (any church) with a procession of adequately fed and clothed kids instead of a carefully executed wardrobe, hair, nails, and makeup job.

Just look at the kids, OK?

for life's not a paragraph And death i think is no parenthesis

Came across the following quotation in today's Memorial Moment (a daily devotional written by Rev. Dr. Scott Murray of Memorial Lutheran Church, Houston, Tex.), and thought it worth sharing here:

"But we should not be amazed, for the greater part of mankind is ignorant of the true love of wisdom ... It is as if a person did not know how to recognize the beauty of human bodies but attributed beauty to the clothes and the ornaments worn. Thus when he saw a handsome woman possessed of natural beauty, he would quickly pass by her, but when he beheld one who was ugly, ill shaped, and deformed, but clothed in beautiful garments, he would take her for his wife. So also in a similar way, the multitude is affected about virtue and vice. They are attracted to the one that is deformed by nature because of her external decorations, but turn away from the one that is fair and lovely, because her beauty is unadorned, for which reason they ought to choose especially her." --John Chrysostom, Homilies on 1 Corinthians, 29.8.

I don't know about y'all, but my vanity takes a major hit every time I get pregnant again. I think that when I was younger I might have glowed a little bit; these days, I look like a swollen, gimpy lizard.

But, hey, it's OK. Unadorned beauty is that by which a woman ought especially to be chosen. And, unlike Maybelline (and, please, what can even Maybelline do for me?), it's free.

So, limp on, limp on in majesty! In lowly pomp, limp on to birth! And have a nice day.

That awkward phase

Not adolescence. The-baby-is-three-months-and-nothing-fits. And-maybe-I-won't-lose-it-all-this-time-anyway. That phase.

I'm not the only one who's struggling. Recently my husband and I had to attend an event and I did that thing where I stood in the closet trying on everything and determining that it all looked awful, spiralling into ever-darkening panic and gloom as the time for our departure approached. Dad really hates it when I do this. In what he claims was an attempt to be encouraging, he sized up one ensemble and, clerically clad, asked, "Are we going as a pair of cat burglars?"

Fast forward a week. I come into a dress from a kind soul. I am afraid to try it on, not sure if this kind soul has accounted for the fact that it takes me longer than three months to return to my standard dimensions. But she has and it fits. I present myself to Dad. Quoth he, "You look like a vampire."

Friends, what am I to make of this? I try to look decent though the cards are stacked against me. My husband, the only person whose judgment of my appearance matters to me for reasons beyond vanity, the person whose words have the power either to pulverize or illuminate my heart, and I may also add a perceptive and gifted communicator with the ability to choose apt words, when in my hour of deepish need is looked to for aid, characterizes me twice as a criminal.

Distinctive and interesting criminals, yes.

But???

NOW how do I look?

Weight up

We all know motherhood is everyone's excuse for not fitting into her wedding dress, which is often true and a fine rationale as far as I'm concerned. But there are some for whom parturition and its environs have the opposite effect. After a few months of nursing the chub down, I haven't had trouble getting into any dress I've worn in the past 10+ years. Lest your VBA alarm begin sounding, let me assure you that this does not mean I look at all good. If a blushing maiden is a slender birch and a fruitful matron is a shapely linden, I'm Charlie Brown's Christmas tree once the baby hits about 6 months. Which, at 30, is just the look I was going for.

I think this skirt really helps.

The strange workings of this cellular mass I've been issued (heretofore, anyway--every time I'm pregnant I think, well, this is the time I'll chunk up, so watch this space) have brought to my attention a fertility issue that doesn't get as much press, because most health care providers spend their time lecturing us about how terribly terrible it is to be overweight. As someone who puts on a lot of weight during pregnancy, I'm quite familiar with this too. But having very low body fat can be an impediment to conception. I'm an idiot and know nothing about medicine, chiro, magnetism, Brewer's yeast, or your health care belief system of choice, but I've read that having one's convenient health proxy known as BMI in the 19 or lower range can put a girl in problem territory in terms of fertility.

The preachy hobbyhorse I'm getting at for CSPP types is this: a woman of childbearing age should think very carefully before she decides to train for the Iron Man. 12% body fat may be what we see on the cover of Shape, but that is not a good shape for a mother in her fertile years.

Being physically fit is not, for us, about looking great on the beach or running a marathon or holding our own on the tennis court or fitting into our wedding dresses or getting back to a certain weight. It is about maintaining the healthy body necessary for the nurturing of a new life--which is probably rounder and definitely softer than what we've been hypnotized into considering attractive.

Most moms can benefit from taking a walk when they get a chance. For some people that walk wisely replaces a listless hour on the couch, and for others it wisely replaces a sweaty, panting hour in the gym. It's either ignorant or disingenuous for those who don't need to take off a few pounds to say, "If I get pregnant while I train for my marathon, I'll just quit." Training itself may well put the body out of commission for pregnancy.

I feel pretty!

Physical fitness is a vain god of our time, and as grotesque a caricature of the ideal it imitates as any vain god. Resisting the temptation to fitness excess (whether through exercise or starvation) has direct and quantifiable consequences for the ongoing work of mothers.

Pressing on

Reb. Mary is a runner. I am not. I am just someone who had enough fat-aphobia to try to act like a runner, every day if I possibly could. I couldn't hold my own in even a 5K where there were real runners, but I could still get myself red and sweaty and more in control of the horrific possibility of my dress size going up.

Exercise has never felt good to me. I don't get second winds, or that endorphin rush they talk about. And when I imagine what my life would look like on a rainy day digital treadmill readout, I get sad. I see this looooooooooooooooooong course marked out in the red dots, and I'm so much closer to the beginning than the end (DV), and I'm already dripping sweat and dying to quit.

I imagine 15 years (!!) from now when I will maybe, finally be crumpled in the grass, sticky forearms on my sticky knees, too tired for a drink, feeling how hot my face is blazing, wishing for a breeze, waiting for the strength to get to the shower and stand in the icy water and wash it all away. Only thinking, "It's over. It's over."

I know all lives are hard and every time of life is hard. But this feels like that heavy part where I haven't even reached the middle, and all I can think about is being done.

Pep talk

Words of encouragement from a Concordian Husband of Perpetual Parturition: “Everything’s going to sag and wrinkle anyway, so you might as well have something to show for it.”

(He hastened to add that he was speaking only in generalities, for neither time nor gravity could lessen the perennial loveliness of his own bride in his eyes.)

Of course he’s right. The smooth-skinned Cosmo look we’re coached to pursue at all costs is startlingly fleeting. (Not so startling for those of us who remember how quickly we wither.) We’ve all seen the difference between the dignity of aging gracefully and the pathos of clinging desperately to an illusive, elusive covergirl rating.

Hmmm…respected for my battle scars by people I love or ogled by people I don’t even know? When I’m 70, what will I (DV) be carrying in my wallet and insisting on showing you: pictures of my grandkids, or a faded photo of my vain, lonely self in the swimsuit that by then has long gone the way of all flesh anyway?

There you have it. Not terribly profound nor deeply theological—but what’s the alternative, girls?

Through the Looking Glass

In the history of this blog, there has been some talk about an issue dear to our hearts. There’s been a lot of talk about this very issue in my house lately. Conversations go a bit like this:

Me: Wow. I look very like a whale.

Him: You’re lovely.

Me: I’m HUGE! For crying out loud! I have, like, half a year left! And I’m already carrying a watermelon! (turning around) Two watermelons!

Him: You’re beautiful.

Me: I can’t believe this. What am I going to end up wearing?!?! I’ll stock up on tarps. Big tarps. I’ll cover the windows and doors of this room in tarps and stay under the covers all day.

Him: Darlin’, shut up.

Now, don’t misread me. I’m not looking for a forum to discuss my fabulous, gibbous beauty as, objectively, I was neither born with it nor is it Maybelline. What I do want to point out is my husband’s rather endearing habit of thinking of me as “lovely” in spite of my “never the same river twice” figure and in spite of the good view he gets of those swimsuit models in the diet ads that keep popping up on our homepage. He seems to like me, and God bless him, he is not about to let my constant self-hag sessions stop him from saying what he thinks. I am deeply grateful to have this man as my husband, and not only because he’s so nice.

More to the point: I’ve had some time (at 3 a.m.) to think about the impact of my words upon my marriage. And because I can, I’m going to share those thoughts with lucky, lucky you.

Most women I know naturally want to be admired and appreciated as beautiful. We do not wish to be leered at with those poor creatures on the Victoria’s Secret runway; we want to be genuinely appreciated—Venus rising from the sea foam, chaste, pure, lovely, and loved.

Such appreciation is not achievable in the minds of the general populace. The boys who looked upon us--who today look upon our daughters—as innocent girls fresh from the sea foam, thought: “Smoking hot, made to order with onion rings at Appleby’s.” Regardless of hair color, height, jean size, and modesty, there is no avoiding it. Shudder The general populace is such a vile thing.

The gods that feed the depreciation of feminine beauty are too numerous to be named. Their prophets are everywhere, from cosmetics counters to Super Bowl commercials, and their message is very, very loud: You do not measure up. You are old. You are just a baby. You are fat. You don’t fill out a swimming suit. You are in desperate need of this product, this outfit, this surgery, this diet, this pill, this technique, this shampoo. Buy it, do it, wear it, strut it, sister, or no one will ever, ever love you.

We then carry these prophecies into our homes and into our relationships with our husbands. We look in the mirror, stand on the scale, or accidentally fall into a triple-layer dark chocolate strawberry ice cream cake and we just can’t help but reiterate all we’ve heard: I’m old. I’m fat. I’m scarred. I’m ugly. I am not worthy of anyone’s appreciation. I cannot be loved.

On the other hand, the good, Christ fearing, long-suffering husband does not see what his wife has been taught to see. He sees the wife of his youth, the mother of his children, bone of his bone, flesh of his flesh. How frustrating, how infuriating it must be for him to hear his most precious possession wrongly called worthless, to hear the object of his love called not worthy of love. How devastating when those terrible words drop from the very mouth of his bride, her features twisted as she spits at her reflection.

I daresay Paul’s admonition to submit to one’s husband comes into play here. Note to self: shut up. When your husband dares speak his heart and tell you that you are beautiful swallow the bitter pill of your disagreement. What you think is not of any importance whatsoever, for it is the filthy residue of that first lie hissed into the ear of our mother, Eve. Your dear husband is your head, even as Christ is the head of the Church, and what he says is not only final, it is truth. You long to be loved, appreciated, seen as one who shares in the very image of God. Here is a man who sees your flaws, your scarred up flesh, and by the grace of God sees with eyes of faith that which you already are in Christ. What a great gift you have been given in this husband who, as a metaphor of the Bridegroom, declares that you are worthy, whom Christ in His mercy uses to communicate the fact that your not yet is now.

Marriage is great. Here’s to casting off the corset in favor of the crew neck. Come next brownie night, I’m really going to enjoy my half of the pan. ;)

Vanity, thy name is Reb.Mary

Three-odd months* after BabyThree, I’m back in the “healthy and normal” weight range for my height. But not in the “happy and sane” weight range for my mind.

Many days, I feel fine. I feel healthy. I can even believe that I look exactly as I should for a woman who is nursing her infant. I thank the Lord for health, and I pass the Evil Scale with nary a second thought. Then…what? What happens to that sensible version of myself, to cause a sudden plunge into near-despair over a matter of what’s really a (relatively) small number of pounds?

What’s the deal? Why do I obsess? Is obsessing over my weight, or my looks in general, really such a great way to use my time and my oh-so-finite mental powers? Is my temporary exercise in full-bodiedness worth all the mental anguish? But—but—but—whispers the wicked little voice--what if it’s not temporary this time?

Well, what if it’s not temporary? Would anyone love me more if my skinny jeans weren’t so… well, skinny…right now? Would I be a more productive member of church and society, a better wife and mother, without these extra “lactationally enabling” pounds? And how narcissistic is it to think that anyone else really cares, or even notices? Another great Andree Seu quote: “Don’t worry about what other people think of you. They don’t think of you.” Self, get over yourself already.

My husband, a man of his word, and the person that should be my only mirror, avers that to him I look just as I should. And I believe him—in the sense that I think he thinks it’s true, and that it’s true for him. Which is fine for him, but not for me, if you know what I mean. Which is frustrating to him because he thinks I’m somehow disbelieving his sincerity, which I’m not. [By now I’m guessing that any brave males who might have persevered in reading this post thus far are despairing utterly of finding any sense here.] Wherefore a moratorium on the topic is imposed for reasons of marital accord, and yet I fret.

Do I really believe, as I often catch myself thinking, that I would be happier if I just could lose the last few “baby pounds” overnight? And if that’s true, then how shallow am I? And if it’s not, then why am I thinking it?

Would I really trade those ridiculous-but-profound preschooler insights, those tight toddler hugs, and that sweet infant breath for a figure that wasn’t spectacular to begin with and realistically couldn’t have been maintained for much longer anyway? Would I rather have had a few more years of feeding my destructive pride, at the cost of fewer names in the Book of Life?

So many questions. I know the right answers. Really, I do. It's just a hard truth to accept, as Rebekah has noted, that sometimes the best way to mortify the flesh is to feed it.

*Note the vanity even here: We're closer now to the 4-month mark than to the 3, but it's better to have a 3-month old than a 4-month old when you're talking about still having extra weight.

I'm so vain

I probably think this post is about me.

It's easy for me to think that I'm not that vain when I'm at what I consider my "normal" weight. This usually lasts from when whatever baby I'm on is 6 months old until I'm 2ish months pregnant with the next one. My clothes fit and that's as good as I'm ever going to look, so I don't think about it that much. (So I tell myself.)

Being visibly pregnant I just have to roll with--obviously I'm not going to win any beauty contests, but at least I have a legitimate reason for weighing more than my husband.

But the long transitions in between are when it becomes clear to me how vain I am. I'm always too scared to tell people we're pregnant until I'm out of the first tri, but the main thing that makes me want to tell anyway is so people won't think I'm getting fat. I refuse to buy clothes in sizes I deem unacceptable and just rely on loans from other people because I'm too vain to have such high numbers in my closet, even though I spend a lot of time in them. I obsess about what size I'll be for various events over the course of my endless gravitational journey (Huge pregnant for sister's wedding--avoid pictures. Should be skinny for brother's wedding--yay!). Am I vain? Oh yeah.

Just another example of how perpetual parturition is a useful spiritual exercise. Sometimes feeding the flesh is what mortifies it.