Invoke a bit

A Christian lives his days with Christ and in contemplation of Him.

His days pass in remembering the sufferings of Jesus. When the clock strikes eleven, he knows that the bells are ringing in the noon hour of his Redeemer, when thick darkness overshadowed him. In the afternoon at three o'clock, he breathes a grateful prayer of joy, for the Lord has finished. Every stroke of the clock calls upon him to consider what Christ did and suffered in that hour.

Seed-Grains of Prayer, Wilhelm Loehe

No, it really doesn't get any less weird

If anything, it seems stranger every time around: there is a person existing in my abdomen.

 Fearful and wonderful and all that. But still kinda crazy to contemplate.

Perspective

With my first baby, I thought, Babies are like this.

A few more babies and I thought, My babies are like this.

Now I think, This baby is like this.

It's not a contest

Mere days before my first became my firstborn, the church organist sought to encourage me by telling me that, decades ago, she delivered her baby and showed up to play the Christmas Eve service the next night. This did encourage me. I stood up for my baby's baptism at church four days after her birth, and have never stopped wondering what could possibly have made me think I needed to do that.

Some of us bounce back faster than others, and that's great for them and their families. I bounce faster than I used to, but I've still never come close to winning the Bounce Back-Off. The reasons don't matter; what matters is knowing that after I've had a baby, I don't owe anybody but my baby anything. I really do have to get better. Nothing drives home the counterproductivity of pushing it and consequently costing the family more time and energy in momcare.

I do not have to entertain visitors, go to the store, go to church, clean behind the toilet, or carry around any sized person my health care provider has advised me against carrying around no matter how much that person (or anyone else) whines. I do not have to feel as good as my friend/sister/great aunt/gerbil/internet pseudo-acquaintance did three hours/weeks/months after her baby was born. It is lonely, sad, embarrassing, boring, and frustrating, and the house is a mess and everyone eats junk and the girls' hair looks like wrens' nests and these things make me feel even more terrible. But it's not a contest. Feed the baby and get better.

Infelix ego

Maybe you've heard I'm a legalist. I know I have. It's an easy term to use: simply throw it at anyone who does or defends something you can't see doing or defending. Lutherans say Baptists are because they won't drink. Baptists say Lutherans are because they say you have to confess your sins to a pastor and be absolved. Everybody's got a prooftext.

Well, my accusers are right. I am a legalist, as my college roommate could tell you (no, the other one). She'd start with my dish towel dogmas, and she'd probably end, like many other people, with my Pharisaical insistence that the church's catholic and historic teaching on [insert your horsey hob here] is right.

But they're also wrong, because what I am more than anything is a vile and perverse sinner. Seriously, I am BAD. I love evil things. My conscience is in charge of the nastiest, most stinking hunk of rotting flesh in creation. The poor dear is in way over her head. So the best she can do is hold up a three-inch leash and say, "You! You're on this! You can't run away!"

O darkest woe, my teeth are sharp. I take every opportunity to chew through that thing. The Gospel is a joke to me. I am not a tragic victim of illness and sadness and pain and death. I made those things happen. I looked at suffering and cruelty and the ruination of all that is good and holy and said, Yes, I wish to cause that, where do I sign? I'm a hardened criminal, I'm a psychopath, I'm Barabbas. And best of all, I don't think I'm that bad. I'd choose them again if you gave me a chance. I chose them all day yesterday and my history of recidivism is, you know, unreassuring.

I know why Psalm 119 is out there. Please let me delight myself in thy statutes. Make me upright and good, because I am SO NOT. Make me so I won't trample on your Gospel, spit and mock and tell you to prophesy who hit you.

Here's the takeaway lesson: first, that nothing on earth is below me; and second, that there is not a thing on earth to which I am entitled. Ten solid years (and counting) of waxing, waning, and diapering? Yeah, not that bad, considering. Taking time for me? Well, did Barabbas deserve time for Barabbas?

No, but he got it anyway. He got it as a gift, not as a right.

I don't expect anyone who isn't a psychopath to get this. Just thank God that you aren't me and spare yourself the trouble of commenting. You can't help me, only Jesus can. And that is why (DV) I will have ashes on my head by the end of this day and why I will abstain and such for the next six weeks and why my life looks the way it looks. Not because it makes me better. Not as a witnessing tool. Not because it makes me a member of some club. Not because my husband does. But because if you could know my heart, "you will see and hear things that will seem to you impossible among human beings with immortal souls," and, meine Gott, I need Jesus to save me. All those laughably paltry "legalisms" help me know and feel how much I need him to save me, because there is nothing I love more than thinking that I am the poor, pitiable  victim and not the abhorrent, damnable perp.

My body is lazy. It needs resistance. My soul is putrescent. It needs purgation. My life is forfeit. I need Jesus.

"I want to believe."

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".)

I will hope

As a certain husband of mine has had occasion to remind me, there is a difference between Hard and Hopeless.

Are God’s promises true? Of course that husband is right. Hope is always ours, objectively. And yet, and yet... As I have had occasion to remind a certain husband, things can sure get to feeling Hopeless.

Hard is when one knows the right path, and must press through the wearying chances and changes along the way. Hard is when Mom has to be cool and consistent in disciplining, in discipling, when the infraction is egregious and repeated and what she really really desperately needs is a nap, or just five minutes with no one clamoring about her knees. Hard is when everyone’s fighting and crying and the baby won’t nap and there’s nothing in the freezer for supper. Hard is when everyone’s sick but the laundry still has to be done and someone has to get to the pharmacy and the grocery store. That is Hard, and every person who’s found her way here can supply a zillion everyday examples. (Every day is a large part of why Hard is Hard.)

Hopeless is when everything has been tried, repeatedly, and nothing seems to be working—even accounting for the long-range perspective of results in this grand childrearing project not being immediate. Hopeless is when one can’t seem to get the household, the education, the discipline, into anything resembling functional order, and not for lack of trying. Hopeless is when it seems that solutions simply don’t exist, no matter how much effort is expended. From Hopeless, Hard looks easy (though it is not). Hard is Hard, but solutions can be found and applied, through gritted teeth and various degrees of travailing.

There are many roads to Hopeless, and I’ve been down a couple of them myself. I daresay that most of us have traveled at least partway there, however briefly, at some point. What do you do when you are gifted with a Challenging Child? What do you do when all the crises—health, family, church—crash in at once? When you try to squash the sadness and the lostness into a corner of your throat because you feel like there’s no point in talk-treading over and over the same ground, when there are no new solutions in sight? When it gets to the point that you dread going to bed because there’s no peace in sleep, only—at best—a temporary oblivion overlaid with the crushing burden of having to get up in the morning and face everything all over again?

More’s the victory for the enemy, if he can get us to dread the bright dawn, to believe that its fresh rays can never illumine dark Hopeless. Recognize this attack for what it is, and remember: What do I know, even when I do not feel it? The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. 

No, everything may not look brighter in the morning, but “The LORD is my portion,” says my soul, “therefore I will hope in Him." It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the LORD.

So eager am I to depart Hopeless that I forget: It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth.
So eager am I to deaden the pain, to protect myself from the anguish of Hopeless, that I forget: what is such self-protection, after all, but the hardening of my heart against the only One can rescue me, who even now is at work in my life? For the Lord will not cast off forever, but, though he cause grief—though He cause grief!—he will have compassion according to the abundance of his steadfast love. 

The enemy hisses that Hopeless is Reality. That dawn brings only drear. That hardening your heart against hope is your only protection, so shove your feelings back down your gut, because numb is the best you can hope for.

Hearken to a different voice: Today, as you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion. Oh! How many rebellions have there been, in this foolish little shriveled-raisin heart of mine! Thrice in short span, the writer to the Hebrews echoes this exhortation, “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.” Today, today, today—this very moment! Thrice-repudiated is the insidious accusation of never and too little and too late. Even amid the darkness, this is the moment of grace—of the shockingly free grace whose dreadfully priceless purchase makes all the difference, now and forevermore, between Hard and Hopeless.

Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

Though he slay me with blessings beyond what I can bear, I will hope in Him.

So sorry to bore you

To everyone who kinda likes this blog but gets tired of all the baby junk: you're not the only one, genius. Please understand that I do not feel bad for you at all.

One of the biggest problems

with having more than three or four kids is that there's nothing unfamiliar left to get the newest one-year-old when his birthday rolls around.

For you, son! Just don't spend it all in one place.

Inertia

No announcements here. Just something I worked up to amuse myself the last time I was hyperemetic. 

“Will you walk a little faster?” said the brain unto the feet,
“I can feel the stomach turning and the outcome won’t be neat.
Sense how nearabout our precious gastric system is divested
Of the paltry bit of breakfast we so wantonly ingested!
Will you, won’t you, will you, won’t you, will you join the dance?
Will you, won’t you, will you, won’t you, will you join the dance?

“You already have a notion how revolting it will be
If the mouth falls short of target and deposits all our scree
On the floor. Your lovely kingdom will be mucked all up with gluten!”
But the feet replied, “Too far!” and missed a beat in the cotillion—

Said they thanked the brain quite kindly, but they would not join the dance.
Would not, could not, would not, could not, would not join the dance.
Would not, could not, would not, could not, would not join the dance.

“You’ll be sorry,” warned the wiser part. “You know the score by now.
What does miss that rounded rim will be our problem anyhow.
The further from the bathroom, the nearer then to Couch—
You obdurate heel! Beat it! While you might yet stand a chance!
‘Cause there ain’t no way you’re gonna sit out this round of the dance.
Will you, won’t you, will you, won’t you, will you join the dance?
Will you, won’t you, will you, won’t you, will you join the dance?”