An exercise in patience.

     So last week, Emilee started eating much faster durring the day, but since it seemed like a sudden change, I was thinking she was just being squirmy and needed to eat more, so I tried to hold her on.  Of course she screamed at me. lol.  If ever you want an exercise in futility, try feeding a baby when they aren't hungry!  It was very VERY frustrating and was deffinately a chance to practice patience....a lesson I failed miserably at at times!  I guess it's a good thing God is giving me opportunities to learn it now, when she won't remember, rather than later.  I'm a whole lot less likely to damage her psyche now if I loose my cool than later, though I guess I'm destined to mess her up at least a little bit along the way. :-p  Haha, of course I jest, though the sad reality is, no one is immune from it...we all have character flaws and "issues" as a result of our upbringings. The goal is to try and make sure they aren't insurmountable.  Hating peas because your mother "made" you eat them is pretty insignificant compared to being a people pleaser and perfectionist because your family was always critical and nothing was good enough for them.  You catch my drift?  I think it's also a good thing God made babies so cute, lol.  It's really hard to be very angry, or angry for very long, when they are giggling at you. LOL.  No need to worry, loosing my cool mostly just entails speaking sternly and loudly, but I still feel awful about it when I do, because she's just an innocent little baby.  She doesn't know deception or will power yet...she just eats when she's hungry, cries when she's unhappy or uncomfortable, laughs and plays and "talks" when she's contented, and sleeps when she's tired.  A baby's life is pretty uncomplicated!  It's amazing how God uses the relationships in our lives to show us things about ourselves, life, and him, and to teach us things.  I am humbled by my lack of patience, it's not something I would have expected from myself!, and I'm trying to conciously NOT react that way.  life should be malleable; we should always be improving on ourselves. :)  Here is a picture of my little irrisitible munchkin with the monkey toy her father found for her at Goodwill.



    I would not have chosen it for her, but she lit up the moment he gave it to her and laughs and giggles every time we've given it to her since!  She loves the darn thing. :-p

    Anyway, in other news, I've been experimenting with my curly-ing hair.  That's right, it truly is getting more curly since I've been pregnant with Emilee!  My hair is so heavy it looses a lot of it's curl once it dries, so I put some gel in it on sunday.  It kind of worked, but I didn't get a picture of it.  This picture is from saturday when I let it air dry.  You can kind of see the curlyness at the bottom.



     I'm pretty excited about this change...I mean, I always liked my hair, but it's still kinda neat that I get to play with curly hair now.  I also found out on sunday that I'm not the only one this has happened to!  Not that I thought I was, but personally knowing someone else does make me feel a little less afraid it was caused by something serious like lukemia!  My imagination is pretty wild and in my personal experience, the only time I knew someone's hair to change was after they had chemo for lukemia!  But, one of the women at church told me her hair got curly after pregnancy too, so I feel much more comfortable about it. :)  Anway, we've got the pastor coming over this afternoon to talk with us about a baby dedication, so I should wrap this up.  Happy tuesday everyone!

Fevers, toes, and hair OH MY!

      So, I don't typically do new years resolutions, but occasionally I do try to impose a new habit on myself (like the year of pictures album).  This year, I am going to try to post at least one blog entry a week. :)  Since last week's blog entries focused on times past (Emilee's birth and our time in colorado), I'll write about last week's events. :)

      My life as a stay at home mom is made up, primarilly, of moments of intense focused attention and patience, and moments of boredom and innactivity... with a few moments of productivity thrown in too. lol.  It can be hard to get much of anything productive done when you only have 40-60 minutes at a time in which to nap, get dressed, eat meals, etc.   I know some super moms who are able to get all kinds of things done while baby sleeps but so far I've mostly been so exhausted I'm lucky if I get one or two productive things done in a day...not including taking care of baby.  I'd say it's a pretty productive day if it ends with her well fed, well napped, and contented.

      But anyway, last week, Emilee had her first fever.  She had been fighting something for a few days before, runny nose, watery eyes, more fussy than usual (and she is not typically a fussy baby), but wednesday night she was MUCH more fussy than usual and she felt hot.  I took her temp and it was 101.3!  High, but apparently not TOO high for babies and not too uncommon either.  It was around 8:30 at night and all the stores in my town close at 9.  By the time we decided to run to town and see if we could find some baby tylenol, it was about 8:45.  It takes 15 minutes to get to town...so, if you do the math, we would either get there right in time, or just barely too late.  It was the later. :-/  We checked the gas stations that were open, but they only had childrens ibuprofen, which our daughter was not old enough for (She was going to be 4 months old that friday).  So we came home, treated her with a cool wash cloth and put her to bed. The next morning her temp was 100 on the dot and hovered around there all day.  We called the Dr., but he said not to treat the fever unless it went above 102, so I just tried to keep her as comfortable and hydrated as possible. She pulled through just fine, by friday her temp was back to normal, but poor baby did not have a fun time.  That was the sadest thing I think, seeing my normally happy giggly baby just placidly lying on her play mat staring at me.  It truly makes you feel helpless to know your child is sick and relying on you, and you can do nothing but ATTEMPT to make them comfortable.  It just reminded me once again of God's control and soverighnty and made me that much more thankful for his care.  HE holds all things together, not me.  Thank goodness!



     It took a few days, but eventually Emilee was back to her usual giggly/talky self. :)  She is SUCH a cute baby and SO social! And she loves her toes!  As soon as I take her socks and pants off, PING, the toes come up and into her hands! Haha...it's kind of overwhelming how cute it is! I don't think I've ever seen anything so overwhelmingly cute...kittens have come close...but Emilee totally tops them!  Her eyes have still been a little watery and her nose a little runny, and today she seemed a little extra fussy, so perhaps she is now fighting off a cold (tis the season and there are 4 other people in the house, 2 of which spend all day at school!), but even in the midst of not feeling well, even when she had her fever, she is remarkably good humored!  You could tell, when she had her fever, that she was uncomfortable, but she still gave grammy and daddy grins and laughed at the dog and even when she was fussing, she wasn't crying.  She even still went down for her naps well and ate well.  I am just continually amazed and grateful for how agreeable she is.  God is deffinately good!



      Anyway, other than that, my husband and I had a date night on Saturday.  I had gotten a gift certificate to get my hair cut for christmas, so I used that saturday morning.  I figured it was a good time, since I'd have a place to go later with my new 'do'. :-p  Interestingly enough, the hair dresser asked me if my hair was naturally curly.  Now, this is interesting, because it's not.  At least, I was not born with naturally curly hair.  I have been noticing a bit more curl to my hair lately and I told my mom I thought it might be getting more curly, but she didn't believe me.  Then, when the hair dresser asked me that and told me I had some "serious curl" going on at the back of my head, it was like confirmation of what I was noticing!  I read an article online while I was pregnant about pieces of other people's DNA attaching to our own, most commonly durring pregnancy (at least that was the most common instance in their study).  It kind of makes sense...mom and baby share so much accross that placenta....and I'm pretty sure Emilee will have curly hair.  It's just very interesting to me and I'm eager/curious to see just how curly my hair will get.  Anyway, I gave the hair dresser a few minor directives and then told her to just "do what you think looks good."  She gladly took up the challenge and cut and styled it according to her own ideas. :)  I think it looks pretty good no?



      My husband and I went to eat at Margarita's restaurant, a mexican cuisine place.  I had been thinking about going there all week.  The food was as good as I remembered, but I think the prices went up! :-/  When we left there we went to the movies to see what was playing and when.  We were GOING to see either Les Miserables or The Hobbit, but both were starting late and both were almost 3 hours long.  Being parents of a 4 month old, we value our sleep! lol.  So, we went to the cheap seats and saw Rise of the Gaurdians, an animated film about Jack Frost!  Heh, guess it's already started! We'll be watching animated films from now on for the next 10+ years.   My husband and I both like animated films though and Rise of the Gaurdians was actually a very funny and interesting movie. :)  We don't regret the choice at all. :)  The evening was a lot of fun and a nice treat to spend those hours with just my husband. :)  God has certainly blessed us abundantly and I am so grateful. :)

Colorado in a nutshell

     Ok, here we go, the long overdue summary of the past two years! Yikes...this might read more like a bio than a story/journal/blog.

     So, 2 years and 6 months ago, we packed up my Dad's snowmobile trailer with out stuff and headed accross country to Colorado.  I turned in my "final" thesis document that morning, and my husband and I drove out of the driveway that afternoon!  We took our car packed with some imediate necessities and our kitty and took a more circuitous route, visiting family and friends on the way.  The plan was that my dad would follow with the trailer later, once we found an appartment.  Our first night on the road we stayed with my husband's family, and from there we stopped in Vermont and my grandparents.  Our kitty Jasmine quickly learned to be a great travel cat!  She never liked when we would first start out, but she would almost imediately settle down somewhere in the car and sleep untill we stopped.  She had no problem using the litter box when we stopped for the night and we had trained her to be a leash cat, so whenever we got out of the car, so did she.  She was a trouper. :)  She even seemed to enjoy the various places we stopped at!  After Vermont we went to Virginia, then Tennessee where we stayed a few days with mutual friends.  From there we drove to Texas, one of the longer days of our journey, and stayed with my brother -in-law and his wife for a couple days.  We went to the Dallas zoo and Jasmine got to meet (read intimidate) a little of lab puppies. lol. From there we headed out to Oklahoma City.  We were only going to stay the night there, but they had a huge rain storm come through that night that flooded our exit route, so we layed low for another day before continuing our journey.  Finally, we arrived in Colorado and spent the night at 8000ft with friends of friends who were kind enough to let us stay with them untill we found a place.  Jasmine got comfortable in the bathroom sink and we began looking for an appartment!
     It didn't take us all that long to find one and it was a great deal!  We got a discount on the first month plus it was prorated, so we needed almost nothing to move in! Here is a picture of our first place:



     While we were looking for appartments, our car broke down!  We were afraid it would cost nearly all our savings to fix, but the insurance company towed it for free, the people I stayed with when I went for an interview earlier that spring refered us to a great autobody shop, and the insurance provided us with a replacement car (also for "free"...or part of the policy anyway) while they worked on it.  In the end, it only cost us about $300 to fix.  Once we had the place, my dad took a more direct route accross country and arrived in a couple of days.  We unloaded everything, then took my dad for a trip into the Mountains.  He loves the outdoors and is an avid rock climber so we knew he'd love it. :) We took the Trail Ridge road through the Rocky Mountain National forest which took us up along the ridge and back down...a full day's trip to go up and back again!  On the way down we stopped at a great little restaurant in Granby, I believe it was called Mavericks...plenty of delicious origional options!  We vowed to go back but never got around to it...that's one thing I'd do if we went back! :)
     Anyway, after that we began looking for jobs! It took us a few weeks, but not nearly as long as we had both anticipated!  We spent our 1year anniversary walking around down town denver and getting familiar with the place. :)  It was a special moment. :) Here is a pic from our wanderings. :)



     I got a job working for the Denver Street School, a non-profit christian High School for at-risk kids.  It was just days before their semester was about to start, in august, so I had a lot of prepping to do!  It was a fun challenge though and I was excited to do it.  We got my husband situated at Colorado Christian University and he continued looking for supplemental income.  My job paid for insurance, praise God!, and allowed me to use one of their company vans when our car was wrecked in a fender-bender!  Ironically enough, even that was a blessing in disguise!  My husband was on his way back from a job interview (which he got by the way!), when someone in front of him slammed on their brakes and switched lanes, causing him to rear-end them.  They pulled over, checked their bumper and sped away, so it was considered a "no-fault" accident.  A good thing since my husband has his CDL license!  Anyway, while waiting for first paychecks to come through, we lived off the money the insurance company gave us for the car! lol.  Again, the host family I had stayed with earlier refered us to a guy who did his best to get as much for us out of the car as possible!  It was deffinately a blessing!  We spent a few weeks ridding around greater denver on our bicycles (which weren't really in any condition to be used to hard or frequently!) and then we finally bought an inexpensive used car to  get us around the city and went about our lives.  That fall, our "new" car broke down! LOL.  We couldn't figure out what it was and we spent about a month borrowing neighbors cars and using public transportation.  Finally, my husband tried roll-starting it and it started right up! (It was a standard, so we could do that!).  From then on we roll started the car every time we used it (which my students thought was great, lol, they called it my ghetto car!), untill my husband finally bypassed the starter and put a push button in.  That was even cooler to my students (especially while it was still just wires and we were essentially hot wireing it), lol! That was several months later though. 
     In the meantime we found a great church family that was super helpful to us in those "lean" months.  Working for a non-profit is NOT lucrative, lol, but they did have connections with outher non-profits and for awhile we were getting food from a food cupboard in the same building as my school, once a week.  We were deffinately living paycheck to paycheck with only the most necessary utilities!  We often weren't sure how we would make it through the month in the black, but we always seemed to.  God was soo good to us and provided for us with so much!  I am especially grateful for how he established us so quickly in our community and with a church family!  I know it was crucial to our success/survival that first year!  Need has a way of making a person dependant on others/their community, which has a way of establishing you pretty quickly! Anyway, my husband did great at his school, I settled in at my school and life continued on. I don't think there are any words to really do justice to the all the experiences we had and people we met.  If there are words it is way too many for a blog entry!  Honestly, our time in Colorado feels like a whole other life, that's how full and rich and eventful it was!  Anyway, that first fall we drove back to Maine with our friends (who had followed us west and moved to Nebraska) and one of my students for Thanksgiving.  My student was at a point in her life where she really needed someone to invest in her personally and fortunately, my job encouraged things like that!  It's crucial in the lives of teens, especially at-risk ones!  Anyway she LOVED Maine (hopefully she can come visit us here some day!), and we had a great visit with family.  On the way back, we increased our car load by two small kittens! lol. That's how we got our kitty Paxton.  So we had 5 people and 2 kittens driving non-stop accross country in a Honda Civic!  Cramped yes but still a memorable adventure!  We even saw Gumby in Pennsylvania! :-p
     Our first Christmas in Colorado was small, but we still had a tree!  One of our friends from church had decided to go up to the Rocky Mountain National Forest to get a christmas tree, and we tagged along with them!  The National Forest sells tags for $10 dollars and it's up to you to go get the tree; cut it and everything.  They don't allow "topping" trees and the trunk had to be at least 4in in diameter.  It was a way of helping to thin out the trees.  Despite our situational poverty, we could swing $10.  It was such a blessing to have the memories and adventure with out friends and to be a part of such a neat holiday tradition (the National Forest has done this for years). Here is a picture of our Christmas Tree that year! :)



     That spring, as the weather got consistently better and warmer, my husband and a friend from church tried to figure out what was wrong with the car.  Keep in mind, we were still starting it with the push button!  My husband had installed it in the cigarette lighter (which didn't work anyway).  It was pretty cool and futuristic but still, we wanted to fix our car if at all possible.  Our friend started going through fuses and switching out any that made sense and were blown...still nothing.  Untill, later, my husband decided to just switch out ALL the bad fuses.  He changed out the fuse for the door light, of all things, and the car started right up!  Now who ties the ignition to the door light!? Seriously!?  LOL...anyway that was really funny and we now had our car back!  It wasn't much of a catch by any means, the back windows wouldn't open much, the front passenger window mechanism was broken (so it didn't open at all) and the compression was down on all four cylinders, and really low in one in particular.  However, it got us from A to B and ran like a champ. :) 
     That spring I FINALLY, officially, finished my thesis!  It felt so good to have it DONE! And in May, the day I was supposed to go to North Carolina to visit a friend, my graduate diploma came in the mail!  It's still kind of surreal that I have my master's degree...seems like someone elses' life!  But it's not, it's my life, and it's pretty darn cool. :-p  The other nice thing about it was that I got a pay raise for having my masters in education. :)
     That following june, we had to move to a new place because the appartment complex had changed hands and the new landlords wanted to raise the rent...more than we could afford.  We were sad to leave that place, but God provided abundantly in our new place too.  Not that we had any doubt he would!  That summer we spent swimming in the pool, taking walks, playing mini-golf, etc.  My husband got to fulfill one of his goals of getting a motorcycle ( a friend at church was willing to "sell" it in installments...see what I mean about how great these people were!?) and we had a great time driving/riding around denver on the motorcycle that summer.  We got caught in a few rain storms and I remember one in particular we were on our way back from church and the water litterally hit us like a wall.  The breakdown lanes were flooded and we could scarecely see 10 feet in front of us!  We just kept taking the first left exits we came too and ended up only a mile from one of our other friends from church!  They let us stay the night (fortunately neither of us had work in the AM).  It was a lot of fun and one of my favorite memories.  My husband spent a lot of time listening to Dave Ramsey that summer and decided to compile all our finances and loans into one document.  Once he realized how much we owed in student loans he decided to stop going to school (spending more money) and start using his CDL to get work.  He quickly got a job working for Lemon Lines, a private contractor company driving for FedEx ground.  Our financial situation got a lot more comfortable after that and we were able to buy a new car on financing!
     Our situation was looking up and were were thrilled to be in a position to repay the favors and compassion that was bestowed on us the previous year.  We had thanksgiving with one of my co-workers and had a farm tree for christmas. :)  That year we drove back to Maine Christmas day to spend some time with family.  At this point I was pretty sure I was pregnant, but I had not taken any home tests.  We left our kitties in the care of our neighbor (a friend and my husband's classmate), and drove non-stop, even taking turn sleeping in the car, so as not to waste any of our time at home.  It was a great visit, but I came back feeling totally disgusted with the behavior of my students...somewhere along the way my tollerance and compassion for their shenanigans was lost.  It was a rough end of the year, especially being pregnant, though I was blessed with a very easy pregnancy.  Still it took a lot out of me and I was tired nearly all the time.  Perhaps my annoyance and lack of patience with my students was heightened by my knowledge that it was my last year there, but I made it through and tried really hard not to treat my students differently, despite my struggle with patience.  They were, after all, products of their upbringing (or lack of one!), and it was not entirely their fault that they acted out at times.  I kept reminding myself of this whenever I had a particularly bad day.  I WANTED to shower them with compassion, I just couldn't always muster the FEELING. 
     Anyway, right up untill 3 weeks before we moved, in June almost exactly 2 years after arriving in colorado, we were not entirely sure we WERE moving!  However, God put all the pieces into place and we once again packed up home and hearth and headed back accross country.  I was nearly 8 months pregnant at this point, and it was certainly uncomfortable at times, but the trip back was not as bad as I thought it might be.  We stayed with family and friends on the way home, which broke up the trip, and stopped every few hours for me to use the bathroom and walk around.  Other than our poor kitty Paxton having traveling anxieties, it was a pretty uneventful trip.  We arrived back in Maine and off loaded most of our things into the Barn at my husband's mother's house.  We did not have a place of our and we were planning to live with my mother for a few months at least while I finished my pregnancy, we got jobs, and found a place of our own.  My father was going to be gone at War College, so there would be plenty of room (figuratively and literally) for my husband and I to stay there.
    We had a few visitors while we were there, a friend of mine from Maine (she came twice! :)), our friends who moved to Nebraska, my father (when he brought our stuff), and my mother and sister! Overall, our time in Colorado was a huge blessing!  Our faith and our Marriage grew leaps and bounds!  I am so gratefull God led us there, and equally gratefull he brought us home and worked out the details to make it possible!  We have been living at my parents house for several months now and now that my husband's work is picking up, we're hoping to find our own place this spring!  It's all so exciting and we love our little life to pieces...our kitties, our daughter, our families, where we are, all of it.  It might not be big, but it's ours. :)

Winter back in Maine. :) First snow.

Emilee's Birth Story

      Ok, so, here we go.  I know I wrote a post earlier about how freaked out I was about the concept/possibility of being pregnant and having a baby, and as I suspected, that all changed.  When I first suspected I was pregnant I was already pretty sure of it, maybe because I had spent so much time a couple years before looking up symptoms and obsessing over it. haha.  But either way, I was quite certain because my period was late and my boobs were ballooning out of control!  I went up a whole cup size overnight! That was really my first indication.  I had been thinking it was time to start our family for a couple months, but we weren't really trying.
      Just to be certain, I waited until a full week after my missed period to take a home test.  It was January 3rd (I think), my first day back at work after the Christmas break.  I studied the instructions several times to make sure I was reading it right, and since the 2nd line was so faint, I asked Ray if it looked like 2 lines to him too. Not the most romantic way to tell your spouse your expecting, but that's the way it happened.  Even though I knew I was pregnant, I set up an appointment at the doctors office to make sure it wasn't a false positive.  To show how nieve I was, I didn't realize hospitals consider a positive home test to be sufficient proof.  Anyway, they confirmed it and thus began our journey into parenthood.
     I dove into all kinds of pregnancy sites and signed up for a pregnancy e-mail.  I perused a plethora of information on birthing options, labor methods, what to eat/do and not eat/do, the pros and cons of imunizations, how-to's on breastfeeding, etc. Lets just say, I did my research, and it was all a bit overwhelming! Once we found out we were pregnant we began talking about moving back to Maine to be around family, which we both really wanted.  Whether we moved back to Maine or not though, we knew we needed a bigger place, so we started looking into houses.  All in all, with all the changes on our horizon and not being sure where this baby was actually going to be born, I felt as though I couldn't really look for birthing classes and choose a hospital untill I knew where we would be.  My insurance through work only paid for Kaiser care (a western united states company) unless I was referred, and they didn't have midwives, so I chose a doctor & nurse-midwife combination.  I wanted to have as natural a birth as possible, but I also knew my mother had had 3 cesarean's because her body wouldn't dilate enough...the doctors told her her pelvis wasn't big enough for her babies...and I knew that was potentially genetic. Because of that, I wanted to give birth in a hospital in case of complications, but I also wanted to avoid a cesarean if at all possible!  I put together a birthing plan all the while allowing for the possibility that I might not be able to do it vaginally.
     I had a GREAT doctor, I have to say, because he did all he could to help me deliver vaginally.  He took my goal and made it his and I know not everyone has the good fortune to have such an understanding doctor.  However, even though I did have our daughter vaginally (thank God!) I was not able to do it completely naturally.
       I started having contractions Saturday, September 8th, 2012 (a day after my expected due date), but they were not consistent.  They would get up to 5 or 6 minutes apart, then slow back down to 10 or 15 minutes apart.  I had contractions like this all saturday and sunday!  On Monday I finally had contractions 3 minutes apart for an hour, so I went into the hospital around 3pm.  I was 3cm dilated and fully efaced!  They admited me imediately and the doctor came and broke my water.  He figured I would dilate very quickly after that because I was already fully efaced.  However, I did not.  My contractions continued to vary and I made very slow progress dilating.  after about 7 hours I was still only at 5cm!  They gave me something like a shot of novocaine in my back to take the edge off the pain and allow me to sleep, hoping to encourage my contractions that way, but no such luck!  Because I was fully efaced, but not dilating, our daughter was getting a bruise from pressing on the birthing canal, so they put me on a drip of pitocin to help keep my contractions steady.  That was about 12 o'clock I think.  I barely needed any to do the trick and I dilated relatively quickly once the contractions were consistent.  With the consistent contractions wearing me out (I was exhausted already because I had been in early stages of labor for 2 days already!) they gave me another shot of the pain medication (around 2ish?) to allow me to sleep and when I woke up, it was time to push!  I never fully made it to 10cm, but the doctor was able to deliver her anyway.  She was crowning for quite some time, because I just didn't have the energy to push very effectively.  Finally though Emilee Rose made her entrance at 5:43am on Tuesday, September 11th 2012!  She was 7lbs 3oz and 21.5in long! The placenta came shortly afterwards and they were all very interested in it because it had two sections to it instead of just one.
       I am super greatful for an uncomplicated pregnancy (I didn't have any very noticeable symptoms, not even any specific cravings!), and I am greatful to the doctors and staff of Penobscott Valley Hospital for taking my birth plan seriously and really being my team and helping me to delivery our daughter vaginally.  They were really great. :)  My mother and my husband got to witness the birth and both were a great help/comfort in the midst of labor. :)  Here are some pictures of our journey:

Our first ultrasound. 6w3d gestation

 

 

17w gestation

 

 

When we found out we were expecting a girl! 21wks.

 

 

38w gestion. I was carrying it all in the front!

 

 

 

 

in a 0-3m outfit from her grampy.

 

 

Daddy and Emilee napping.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Appologetically guilty

      Hi all, I just want to appologize, first of all, for taking so long to post again!  A lot has happened since the last post, including all of our life (for 2 years) in Colorado, getting pregnant, and moving back to Maine!  I have every intention of writting a comprehensive tribute post about that time for you all, but first, I want to tell our daughter's birth story before the memory becomes too vauge and because friends of mine who have recently had children have also written a blog about their childs birth and I feel left out. :-p  So, stay tuned, hopefully, for an update post.  I always have such good intentions of keeping up with this, and I'd say I've done better with this than other online accounts since I still remember the e-mail and password to log into it. haha. 

      Anyway, I will be back to write an update...I promise. :) Stay tuned for my daughter's birth story! :)

~Mae

Musings on Love

I’ve been thinking about love, and I think we have it all wrong…people say “I married my best friend”, “You should be friends first”, “He/she needs to like my favorite show”, “He/she MUST be a cat person, “He/she can’t dress like a hippie”, “She/he should have blue eyes”, etc. But all those things are just superficial…I mean think about it, how weird would it be to ACTUALLY marry your best friend? In my experience with couples who say they’ve married their best friend…either they were dating for years and BECAME best friends, or one of them did not consider the other a best friend when they got married. As unfortunate as it is, when people who are best friends hook up, it usually ends in destroying the friendship. Favorite shows change, clothing style changes, people can learn to like cats, and your significant other has no control over the color of eyes they were born with! There are just as many awful people with blue eyes as there are nice people. Can you see what I’m getting at? These things don’t guarantee lasting love, and they really aren’t good indicators of compatibility. Yes it can make it easier, in the beginning of a relationship, to WANT to get to know a person and love them if you have similar likes and dislikes, but when it comes down to love…love is unchanging.

1 Corinthians 13 says, “love is patient, love is kind, it does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices in the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.” It doesn’t say “love lasts as long as you agree on restaurants and movies and music.” It doesn’t say, “Love lasts as long as you agree on politics and religion” or “Love lasts as long as you have the same or similar dreams and goals in life.” No. It says love NEVER fails. It doesn’t end. It is constant. If you look at what this passage is saying, love doesn’t even have anything to do with feelings. Regardless of how you feel, or if you get along all the time, Love perseveres. It is a Noun, not a verb. Do you see what I mean? Love is a THING, it exists outside of you, or me, or anyone else, and it is more than an action. Love exists and operates and moves, without any action on our part.

I think what has happened to our society, is that people have forgotten what love is, and how to love. Of course it is easy to feel affection for someone who does nice things for you and likes the same things you like. It’s even easy to stuff anger and forgive a person if the majority of the time they are pleasant and you get along. But what love REALLY is, is affection without reason, sacrifice without reward, compassion regardless of situation or temperament, and preference regardless of similarity. Jesus was the ultimate example of love. He died on the cross to pay the price for sins he didn’t commit, for people who rejected him, and for criminals who didn’t deserve it, all because he CHOSE to. He had affection for the people of the world and wanted them to find forgiveness and healing. He gave them what they needed before they even realized they needed it, in the midst of them thinking they didn’t WANT it. THAT is love. God IS love. Can you see that? The reason love is a thing, is because it IS God. It emanates from him and cannot exist without him. It’s like the discussion between God and Scientists. When they say they can make man from nothing but dirt. God says, “ok, show me you can make man without me.” They go to pick up dirt and God says, “Oh no, you need to get your own dirt.” It’s the same idea. We have love in this world, because we have God. Infatuation and physical attraction are not love, they are infatuation and physical attraction! We have built in us a desire to be loved and appreciated, because we have a desire for Love, for GOD, built into us. But that same desire, with the selfishness that entered the world with sin, makes us want to grab at anything that will fill that void and make us FEEL loved and desired, no matter how temporary. Infatuation is mostly in our heads. We THINK the person we are infatuated with fits nicely into our dreams and imaginings, which are concocted entirely in our minds. Physical desire, I often think, is what King Solomon talks about when he says, “Do not arouse or awaken love until it so desires” (or until it is right). My own mother used to say, “it is easier to never start, than to start and try to stop”…meaning people who never explore the realm of physical desires, rarely feel them until they are awakened at the right time, and people who don’t feel those desires, don’t try to satisfy them prematurely. People who try to satisfy physical desires prematurely, end up giving away intimate, precious pieces of themselves to people who won’t treasure them. They throw their pearls before swine.

So if Love is God, and Jesus is God, and we are called to be like Jesus, then we are called to love EVERYONE. And let’s face it, there is no way everyone likes your favorite TV show, or likes cats, or has blue eyes. Do you see where I’m going with this? Love is a CHOICE, and it doesn’t matter who the person is, what they’ve done or haven’t done, what they look like or don’t look like, what they like or don’t like….love is available to everyone, is freely given, and goes beyond those things to show preference and affection and compassion and concern and desire, regardless of whether or not it is deserved. Now, I’m not saying this means women in abusive relationships should stay there. I have read that women in these situations, when asked why they are still putting up with the abuse, say “Because I love him.” That is utter foolishness. It’s not love. Love despises evil and rejoices in good, and God definitely sees abuse as evil. What appears to me is actually happening in those situations, is the desire to be loved is warped and replaced by a need for attention of any kind. The Man has turned the woman into his instant gratification, and the woman has mistaken this as affection and begins to confuse abuse with punishment for something wrong. If a woman (or man, there ARE some very overpowering abusive women out there) in that situation TRULY loved the man, she would remove the object of the man’s physical addiction, she would remove herself, from his life. And, whether she could do that or not, she would continue to pray for him and reveal his sin to him. Loving people don’t let others continue in destructive sin, they point it out to them, they encourage them to confess it and give it up; they ceaselessly try to help others find love and purpose in their lives. Please remember I am no psychologist, I merely speak as I find, and this seems to me the most likely reason (or any variation of it) for abusive behavior of that kind.

Do you see what is happening here people? Our society is persistently shoving God out of the picture, and love is going with him. Do you really want a world without love? Can you imagine how dark and depressing and woeful that would be? Just people using each other for instant gratification, absolutely no random acts of kindness, no stranger willing to give you bus fare or shovel out your car, no one with any respect for personal property….we are seeing glimpses of this now (as we have since sin entered the equation), but can you honestly imagine a world where it is utterly and completely devoid of love: compassion, affection, redemption, relief, safety….etc? It’s unfathomable! Love is one way we know, God has not forsaken us. God is still here.

So if you think about it, love isn’t about all those things we think we like and want in a significant other. Those things just make it easier for us to love them, and it may be, that the person God has for you, could be the most unlovable person in the world, and God wants to use you to redeem them, to reintroduce them to God, to love, and to life. It may even mean there IS no specific person, and God is just calling you to love everyone you encounter equally. All we are called to do, is be like Jesus and obey God’s will and plan for our lives. This is kind of a difficult pill to swallow for anyone who has even a trace of selfishness in them (I’m thinking everyone), because it means dedicating your energy, attention, thought, heart, and talents towards someone else’s well being. In the process, of course, God takes care of YOUR well being, but it is hard to trust that when you feel you are in a comfortable place. For some reason people think their own plan for their life is going to be better than Gods, but that’s a whole other topic. The point, is that love is a choice, and it’s something that should be given to everyone. Since love is God and Jesus is God, and we are called to be more and more like Jesus, our spouses and other relationships are where we do the learning and growing to BECOME more like Jesus. God is using you to teach them, AND he is using THEM to teach YOU. Love is a lifestyle, a goal, a destination. Stop trying to find it in temporary, fleeting things.

Here are some quotes about Love that I think all say something a little bit different about what real love is.

We find rest in those we love, and we provide a resting place in ourselves for those who love us.

~ Saint Bernard of Clairvaux

Love one another and you will be happy. It's as simple and as difficult as that.
~Michael Leunig

Love is an act of endless forgiveness, a tender look which becomes a habit.
~Peter Ustinov

We choose those we like; with those we love, we have no say in the matter.
~Mignon McLaughlin

The ultimate test of a relationship is to disagree but to hold hands.
~ Alexandra Penney

Love makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place.
~Zora Neale Hurston

A Crossroads in Life

Perhaps it is just a mood I’m in right now, but it seems like more and more, my circumstances are telling me not to finish my thesis. Now, I understand that seems like a rather big deal, and I am the sort of person who was raised to finish what I’ve started. I have every intention of completing it, and I believe if it was right when God led me to the program, then it is still right and it needs to be done to the best of my ability until it is completed. However, there are also times when God tests us by asking us to fail…or at any rate, give up something we’ve worked hard for, and I just feel like I’m prepared to do that if necessary. Yes, I want to finish my program, but I need to either finish it by the end of april, or the end of May, and if I don’t finish in April, then I can’t graduate in May, I’ll have to graduate in August. Now, if I graduate in August, I need to be enrolled in at least one credit for that summer term. My husband and I are planning on moving to Colorado in early to mid June, so I likely won’t be able to work for my Grad school department, and if I can’t work for them for the summer, they may not be able to pay for the one credit, which for a graduate level, is around 300 dollars. With us moving, I really can’t be throwing that kind of money around. PLUS, even if my department would let me work remotely for them, the university is experiencing economic hardship as well, and is even talking about eliminating some degree programs! So, the money might not be available anyway. I obviously still need to talk to my advisor about all this, but it just seems like everything is saying “It’s time to move on”…like there was a reason why I couldn’t do the student teaching and I need to just accept that. I am trusting God in this, and I know he will provide and bring together the necessary pieces, I just wish people didn’t get so riled up about it.

I hadn’t talked about this to anyone really, but yesterday I mentioned it to a friend of mine when I was talking to her on the phone. She actually got mad at me! I don’t get it. What does my finishing or not finishing my thesis have to do with her? Why do people get angry when something doesn’t work out? How does it affect her at all if I get my masters or not? I just don’t understand. I mean, I expect that people will react that way, it’s human nature I suppose…they probably feel like I’m accepting defeat or failure….but I don’t see it as failure. If it’s where God is leading me, if it’s what he’s asking me to do, then it’s not failure to accept it! God knows what is best for me, for my future, and for the future of my marriage and my family. There is just absolutely no need for it.

I have also been feeling lately that it is all vanity anyhow. The things that really matter in life are not diplomas, or papers pontificating on student understanding, or even having a job or making things….if God is not in it, then it is vanity. I have always been one to focus more on being a Godly example by living uprightly and being blameless before men and God, which I still hold to, and not so much on proactively witnessing. But recently I’ve just felt as though my current life, with my graduate responsibilities, my thesis, my wife responsibilities, and even my hobbies, leaves no room for even situational witnessing. I feel like I don’t have time for family and friends. I haven’t even found time to do thesis stuff, even after I finally found my motivation again! I will probably work on it some today, and hopefully get a lot done, but I don’t really feel like I have enough of a relationship with the people around me to be a witness by my living. I don’t think they see me enough! Plus, the things I find the most Joy in; my husband, friends, kitty, beading, reading, projects, etc…I keep getting further away from them. Work is good, it is from God and it should be appreciated as a gift from God. However, I don’t believe it should be depressing. I don’t believe work should suck your life away. It’s in those little things, and in those relationships that God is seen the best. I want people to be able to see him in my work, but I don’t know how to do that! I don’t feel smart enough or motivated enough to do the brilliant work that some people do. My mind has been all fuzzy lately. I don’t know if it’s just because I’m trying to hold too much in it, or if it’s something more serious, but I just don’t feel capable. I know I am capable of finishing it, but I don’t feel capable of doing anything supernatural with it. Obviously, that is God’s department, and I suppose this is the best place to be in order for God to work through me, because then there’ll be no doubt who’s responsible. Perhaps that is where God is leading me….I just pray that I will not let my co-workers and my superiors down, and that I will live an upright and blameless life before God and men. If he asks me to give up my Masters degree, I am willing and prepared to accept it. I just hope and pray that he reveals his will to me clearly and soon, in a way that I will understand without any doubts.