An Advent Baby

Bethany and Liz,
If you were here in person, I would just talk to you instead of writing a blog. But you're not here, so I'm processing my thoughts in writing (which is why I had to rope you into writing a blog in the first place!)

I'm trying to write a sermon for the fourth Sunday of Advent, but it's weird because I just had a baby. I can't seem to separate my own experience from how I read the biblical account.

For example, for the last month or so of my pregnancy, basically all I did was sit on the couch. Mary rode a DONKEY. To Bethlehem. And had the baby in a STABLE. On HAY.

When I got pregnant with Amos, I was married, finishing up grad school--basically as stable and normal as possible. Mary got pregnant before she was married, and she lived in a WAY less tolerant society. Even with my highly predictable life, I was terrified to have a baby. I can't imagine how scared Mary must have been. When she said, "I am the Lord's servant. May it be to me as you have said," I wonder how she said it. Was her voice small and quivering? Mine would have been!

If Herod went on a toddler-killing spree now, my sweet, beautiful Amos would be among the victims. I can't help but cry when I read the words in Matthew 2:

"A voice is heard in Ramah,
  weeping and great mourning,
Rachel weeping for her children
  and refusing to be comforted,
  because they are no more."

All those precious little baby boys. Dead. Gone. No more. All that was left behind were the tears of their mothers, never ending.

What was God thinking, coming as a baby into this world?

One of the first few night's of Eva's life, she decided to try to pull an all-nighter. I was sitting up in bed around midnight, holding her, amazed at how healthy and perfect she was. It was all "Silent Night" in there until I heard a round of gunshots coming from somewhere in the neighborhood to the south of us. While I was holding my brand new baby, some other mother might very well have just lost hers in that same moment. An hour or so later, I heard sirens suddenly ring out from all around us, and I started thinking about women praying for their husbands and sons and daughters to come home from overnight police shifts in dangerous neighborhoods. Suddenly, I felt so small, and my healthy baby girl seemed so vulnerable. How could I possibly expect to keep her safe in such a big dangerous world?

How could the Son of God be born as a tiny baby into this violent and heartless world? A world where lives are suddenly cut short all the time? Where people shoot each other in the middle of the night?

I suddenly can't read about Mary without worrying! What was her health like? Was she able to carry a baby full-term? Would he arrive in good health? And how would she make out after the birth? Would she heal properly or would she have some sort of complication that cut her life short? And then to raise the Son of God in a world of paranoid kings and oppressive foreign governments, not to mention everyday risks like pneumonia and food poisoning.

As I held my baby in my arms, listening to gunshots and sirens, I wondered what Mary heard in the stable in Bethlehem. Nativity scenes never show the world beyond the walls of the stable. Did she hear Roman soldiers patrolling at night? Did she hear drunken fights and domestic violence? Did every sound make her jump as she carefully held the Son of God in her arms wondering what she was supposed to do next?

There is some comfort in all of this.

While I was in labor, I was kneeling on the floor of the hospital bathroom, moaning in agony, when suddenly the verse from Romans popped into my head (yes, I am definitely meant to be a pastor):

"We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time."

In my somewhat hazy brain, I thought, How many people really understand that verse? I mean, like, really understand it. Obviously men don't. (Sorry, guys.) And really, we women have these nice hormones that help us forget a lot of what happens during labor.

But in that moment, I KNEW. All of creation is in majorly intense pain. Groaning. Crying out. Praying for relief. The pains of childbirth are no joke!

And that's right where Jesus showed up.

Right in the middle of all of that. At the end of nine months of increasing discomfort and fear that culminated in the agony of labor and delivery. Into a world where innocent toddlers were murdered by a cruel king. A world where mothers wept and could not be comforted because their children were no more. A risky world. A heartless and violent world.

He walked right into the middle of it. So much so that it killed him. The manger scenes don't show that either. In the manger scenes, Mary and Joseph look so peaceful and angelic. Their hair isn't gray from worry. Their faces aren't lined with the wrinkles of age and hard lives. They don't have bags under their eyes from sleepless nights and long days. They don't have that haunted look from watching their son head towards certain death.

And Jesus is still fresh and squishy. He's wrapped in his swaddling cloths. He's all curled up in the manger. He doesn't yet have the weight of the world's pain and heartbreak weighing him down. Later, he will weep for the death of his friend Lazarus. Later, he will go head to head with the teachers he one time looked up to and learned from. Later, he will be betrayed by a kiss from one of his closest friends. Later, he will pray so fervently that his sweat will be drops of blood. But none of that shows up in the manger scene.

But the story didn't end at the manger.

The other words that have never been far from my mind now through two pregnancies are Jesus' own:

"This is my body, broken for you. This is my blood, shed for you."

Especially during my first pregnancy, I was terrified. There is no easy way to have a baby, even with all of our modern medicine. It's painful, messy, scary, risky. Having a baby means pretty literally allowing your body to be broken for the sake of another person.

In the weeks leading up to the inevitable end of my first pregnancy, I clung to those words. "The body of Christ, broken for you. The blood of Christ, shed for you." I knew that no matter what happened to me, Jesus was there beside me. He had allowed his body to be broken for me and his blood to be shed for me, and even if no one else could feel my fear or my pain, Jesus understood.

The theme of the fourth Sunday of Advent is love.

I'm pretty sure there's something about love in all of this. Something about a God who stepped right into the messiness and riskiness of humanity. Who allowed himself to experience the very worst of human cruelty. Who knew pain and heartbreak, who suffered.

And somehow that love changes everything. It means that when I allow my body to be broken for the sake of someone else, I'm not doing something new; I'm just following the path to the cross. When I see heartache and loss around me, I can remember Rachel's lament and know that sometimes there is no comfort. But, like Jesus, I can choose to be present anyway. I can know that in the midst of pain, I am not alone, but also, creation is still groaning, in agony, praying for relief, for the moment when all pain suddenly ceases because Jesus has been there, and he knows this isn't good enough. That all this pain and violence needs to end once and for all.

So yeah. Those are my thoughts. I'm not quite sure how to preach this. How much can you really talk about labor and childbirth from the pulpit? And yet, it just doesn't seem right to skip over all of that and move right to the sweet, squishy baby part. Because as both of you have so eloquently pointed out, that's not really where most of us live, most of the time.

Did Jesus ever look like this?

Merry Christmas Meat Sacks!

Seriously you guys, I finished all my Christmas prep over a week before the 25^th! All is ready and wrapped and twinkling and now I get to lazily browse for delicious Christmas dinner recipes and pick out which Christmas Eve service(s) we want to go to. Boom Bam Baby, I just Christmased like a boss.

I will now share with you the secret of getting through your Christmas to-do list quickly and efficiently: don’t put much on it.

That’s it.

Some of the simplification of our Christmas came about organically – it didn’t take too long to decorate the house because we don’t actually have that many decorations. Gift shopping also didn’t last more than a few hours because we decided we could do other things with our meager funds than just buy each other a bunch of crap. A few select people got one thing each (or a group thing) and I am militantly unrepentant. It’s Jesus’ birthday, not yours.

So wrong, it's right.

Other simplifications happened more intentionally. I just refused to do stuff. We got invited to a lot of parties and while they sounded like fun, we turned them down and just enjoyed being together. And it was brilliant!

Christmas gets out of hand so easily and so quickly. It becomes this enormous burden of cookie baking, office parties, ugly sweater parties, white elephant exchanges, cookie exchanges, Christmas programs, Christmas program practices, and fa la la la la until you pass out on the floor.

Brace yourselves people, I’m about to lay some super cheesy Christmas wisdom on you: it’s not about presents, it’s about presence. (*gag*) But really, it is.

God Incarnate is here.

Incarnation is such a great word. It comes from the Latin for “flesh” but in the happy little dialect of Latin that I happen to know (Spanish), the word “carne” is far more often translated “meat.”

God be-meat-ified has come to us. The Lord of Hosts put on skin and bones and muscle like an ugly Christmas sweater and hung out with us – one with the talking meat sacks. Yeah, I know, that’s not a very romanticized way to speak of the Nativity story but really, how romantic is your real life? If it’s anything like mine, it’s a lot less holy serene people with softly glowing halos and more sweat and chaos and tired bags under your eyes. That’s kind of the point; Jesus is for your real life, not whatever perfect version you wish it could be.

So be of good courage my fellow meat sacks! When someone tries to rope you into volunteering for something or guilt you into buying more than you can afford or whatever extra holiday activity appears to stress you out, say no! Do the things you love that are meaningful for you and your family and let the rest go.

Just be. Be with your loved ones and your God, because God is with us.

Emmanuel.

Pleased as Man with Men to Dwell

We have this cheesy clock in our kitchen at Christmas time.  It has snowmen on the face, and on the hour, it serenades us with a carol.  We love it.  Even my over-efficient, get-rid-of-everything-cheesy-and-sentimental husband loves it.  And the littles get super excited. Every. Single. Time.  It's great.

Usually, as it's just a music box melody, I don't even register what song is playing.  But, often, I will find myself singing or humming the song as I go about my business.  That's what happened today.  11 o'clock sped by as it so often does.  Music played.  Two little voices said, "I hear music!" And then, I started vacuuming, and singing.  Yeah, those two don't go together, especially since there were two toddlers screaming, as they like to do whenever I vacuum.  (The decibels in our house might have been a little out of control.)

And then, I started crying.  Not because of the noise and confusion (read: chaos).  Not even, I propose, because I'm 7 months pregnant.  Because of these old words:

Mild He lays His glory by

Born that man no more may die

Born to raise the sons of earth

Born to give them second birth

Veiled in flesh, the Godhead see

Hail the incarnate Deity

Pleased as man with men to dwell

Jesus, our Immanuel

That's it, isn't it?  In poetry more beautiful than I could ever pen, the whole reason for the season.  Not family, or giving, certainly not trees or new toys or food.   Born to raise the sons of earth.  Born to give them second birth.  

Not bad for clock.

Words from Hosea

“And Jacob fled into the county of Syria, and Israel served for a wife, and for a wife he kept sheep. And by a prophet the LORD brought Israel out of Egypt, and by a prophet he was preserved.” Hosea 12:12-13

Last week’s Sunday school lesson was on Hosea 12. The teacher compared the verse where Israel the guy tries to take care of his own problem (wifelessness), which doesn't work out so well (Laben cheated him with the ol’ daughter switcheroo), with Israel the nation having their problem (freedomlessness) solved by God (and Charlton Heston). Pastor B went on to say that the whole America ideal of self-reliance and pull yourself up by the boot straps is really the antithesis of faith.

But, argued a good American in the class, does that mean we should just sit on our butts and wait around for God to solve all of our problems? Of course not, Pastor B explained. Do what is in your capacity to do but leave the impossible to God.

That has stuck with me this week as I watched both of our cars break down, warranting expensive repairs, and Eli's hours being severely cut back. A host of other small crises made life feel as heavy as the sullen grey sky that has persisted stubbornly for weeks. Sometimes this magical journey of life is more of a slog.

About a month ago, I was standing in a ballroom praying for rain. I traveled to Southern California for my company's annual fall conference and all 600 or so attendees gathered together on Sunday morning for worship. The president of the district delivered a powerful sermon and at the end mentioned the terrible drought in the area and together we all prayed that some much needed relief would fall from the heavens.

I didn't think another thing about it until I opened my news feed yesterday and read an article about power outages in California due to the torrential rains they are experiencing. It gave me the shivers. I remembered that God really does hear us when we cry out to him.

Not ten minutes later my boss called me into his office and thanked me for some extra work I had taken on recently and gave me a bonus. More than enough to cover all those mechanic’s bills.

Again I stopped, amazed. And remembered that God really does hear the quiet whimpery sound I make from underneath a crushing pile of life.

I don't know what you carry that is too heavy, or the problems you face that sucked the life from your bones till you feel dryer than the California desert. But I do know who has your back. And when it comes to total clusterfart crap storms (you know what I mean), He is kind of a specialist.  

Do what you can do and leave the impossible to God. 

Story Keeper

“But Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart.” Luke 2:19 KJV

Marissa's excellent post got me thinking about telling stories and making memories...

My first memory is from when I was three years old and attended a wedding of two of my parents’ friends. I say that it was a wedding because I was told it was many years later; at the time, I had no idea what was going on. I remember people dancing on a stage and wearing a fancy dress and being super bored, really just wanting to go outside and play on the excellent jungle gym.

Before that memory, I’ve got nothing. And really, there’s not too much after that until I tucked a few more years under my belt. It’s as if there is a giant five year hole in my memory. If that had happened at any other point, I would seek immediate medical attention, but for children that’s pretty standard.

Which is why I got totally weirded out when I realized that I am currently witnessing the Lost Years of Troy. Seriously, that’s crazy. I am living in years he won't remember. But I will. Or at least, I will mostly remember these years - pregnancy dealt a great blow to my memory after all.

I will remember him giggling when I ew his dirty socks. And the way he bounces whenever the Two and a Half Men theme song comes on. And him galloping across the living room as fast as his chubby legs can toddle, with a boisterous yell for added propulsion.

He won't remember giving kisses on command or bringing joy to the hearts of grandmas in the supermarket with his uninhibited smiles and waves. He’ll never be able to tell me of his thoughts as he sat very still on the sofa staring down the terror-beast (vacuum cleaner).

Thank God he will not remember his molars sawing mercilessly through his aching gums. Or that terrible diaper rash that chewed a hole in his tiny round tush. Or trying to play on the plastic slide while naked (it was less of a slide and more of a scoot).

It will be up to Mom and Dad to keep these snips and fragments of his life, to ponder them in our hearts like Mary did with her baby, and somehow weave them into his unique story. Even though he may not remember any part of this phase of his life, he will still have an identity to hold on to and ground him.

We do this for each other too.

Some of my deepest and most lasting relationship are with people who have the incredible ability to speak directly to my soul and remind me who I am. We take on so many roles in life that can change so drastically year by year, or even hour by hour. Student, chef, housekeeper, secretary, accountant, mother, daughter, wife, sister, bad-ass mo-fo – those are all parts I play, things I do; they aren’t at the core of my identify (except the BAMF part, that’s pretty core). When things get out of balance, when I forget, when life starts unraveling around me and the day is lost, I need someone to tell me a story: MY story.

Remember that time…

A Season of Waiting

Come Thou Long-Expected ... Baby

Today is December 1st. My baby was due November 29th. Another due date come and gone (my first child was two weeks late). I find myself yet again in the season of Advent with my own sense of waiting and expectation.

My friend Aimee preached a great sermon on Sunday. She preached from Mark 13, which has some interesting correlations to childbirth. On the one hand, verse 29 says, "when you see these things taking place, you know that he is near." There are some definite signs that a baby is near--contractions, changes in baby position, nesting, etc.

On the other hand, verse 32 says, "But about that day or hour, no one knows." Ultimately, apart from medical interventions, there is no way to predict the exact day and time when labor will begin or when it will end in birth. All the signs may indicate that a baby is imminent, but that could mean that I won't finish this post because my water breaks suddenly or that I'm waiting for another week.

What really got me, though, was what Aimee said about how to live in the space of waiting, hoping, and looking ahead. According to verse 34, when a man leaves home, he puts his slaves in charge, "each with his work, and commands the doorkeeper to be on the watch." Some of us are called to be doorkeepers, to put our time and energy into watching for the master's return. But the rest of us are called to fulfill our duties, to take care of the master's estate while he is gone.

Something clicked in that moment. Last week, I was sick and miserable, and all I could think was, "Please get this baby out of me! I have to have this baby NOW!" But in my obsession with keeping watch, I was neglecting my work, not fulfilling my duties as well as I could have. Yes, I was sick, but my obsession with trying to discern the day and hour was only adding to my misery.

I feel much better today physically, but Aimee's sermon changed my emotional outlook. I don't think I'm meant to be a doorkeeper. I don't think I have the right temperament for watching and waiting. I'm a lot better off when I'm doing my duties--laundry, cleaning, cooking, praying, reading, taking care of my husband and son.

The day will come when I have a baby, just as the day will come when Christ comes again. But for today, I will heed the words of Susanna Wesley: "The best preparation I know of for suffering is a regular and exact performance of present duty." Today I will hope for a baby soon, but in the meantime, I will do my best to perform my duties faithfully.

Give Thanks in all Circumstances

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!  I think this holiday is awesome.  Amazing food.  Time together with family.  A break from work.  And best of all, a moment of reflection when we look up to our Creator and say thank you to the Giver of all good gifts.

A while ago, I read a book about a lady who started listing 1000 blessings, basically a thanksgiving journal.  This process became a habit that transformed her attitude and life.  Awesome.  Can I just go on the record and say that I think giving thanks is great?  Because what comes next is going to rub some of you the wrong way.

I often hear people in Christiandom giving thanks for horrible things, or teaching that that's what true, deep, mature Christians do. "You need to get to the point where you can honestly thank God for your infertility."   I'm not convinced...it seems terrribly masochistic.  Also, I don't see people in the Bible doing it.  I mean, where does Job say, "Thanks, Lord, for allowing my family, wealth and health disintegrate"?  Did I miss the part where Ruth says, "I bless you, Lord, for the blessing of losing my husband, country, and financial security."?   Surely super-missionary Paul simply neglected to mention his songs of thanksgiving at being rejected, persecuted, imprisoned, and beaten.  (Ok, I know- he did sing in prison.  I don't think the song probably went, "Thank you for the hard hearts and broken bones.")

Yet we today are supposed to slap a smile on and post "blessed" updates, no matter what trials we're going through.  Even if you just lost your child.  When the doctors can't find the reason for your constant, debilitating pain.  If your marriage is crumbing around you.  When you are so lonely and depressed that you can't see a way out.  When you see one line on that pregnancy test instead of two, again.  I don't think God is expecting a thank you for those trials.  I think He is as broken-hearted as you are.  He is our Comforter and Healer.  He walks with us through the valley of the shadow of death.

In my darkest days, I took comfort from the fact that pretty much all God required of Job was that He not deny Him.  Honestly, that was about all I could do.  So, if this Thanksgiving you are having trouble thanking God for what He's allowing in your life right now, it's okay.  He meets us where we are.  Find something good that you can honestly thank Him for.  Having trouble?  God is still good.  And Heaven is forever.  And cling to Him through the gunk.

Giving Thanks

This has not been a good year for babies. I have so many friends and friends of friends who have miscarried, whose newborn passed or is sick with some frightening long worded illness. I see their pain spilled out in tiny fragments of words in a Facebook feed. I mourn with these beautiful, strong, faithful women. 

How does anyone ever manage to have and to hold a tiny, frail human? It seems so unlikely. 

And yet, here is my Troy, who came out whole and hearty and continues in embarrassingly good health despite his mother clearly having no idea what she's doing. How did that happen?

Perhaps 90% of motherhood is simply holding your breath and hoping your kid keeps on breathing. I can watch over my baby, put up safety gates and stop him from sucking down toilet bowl cleaner. But. I didn't put breath in his body; I can't stop it from leaving either. 

I feel small and powerless and a little bit ashamed of my spectacular good fortune. But mostly I'm grateful. Because God in his mercy and peculiar sense of humor has granted me life and four beautiful humans to love and live beside me. And I am thankful to have wonderful friends who are blessed and remembered by the Almighty, even as they mourn. I am so very grateful for Bethany and Marissa and the precious tiny humans growing inside them. As I stumble through the joy and fear and road rash of every day, it's nice to have company. 

And I'm thankful because tomorrow is thanksgiving, and it's kind of required. 

Remember When...?

My roommate in college liked to tell stories. In person, in writing, any way that she could find. Somewhere along the way, she introduced a strange phrase into her story telling: "Remember when?" This phrase, of course, makes sense when referring to a shared memory in the past, but she used it for the present. 

For example:

As we were standing in line in the cafeteria: "Remember when we had to stand in line for eight years to get our food?"

(Oh...she also liked to speak in hyperbole, especially making use of the number eight.)

As we were driving around Chicago: "Remember when we totally got lost in Chicago? Remember when we thought we were going to Chinatown, but we ended up here instead?"

You get the idea.

I'm not sure why she started doing that in the first place, but it had a long-term effect on me. It reminded me that every experience we have now can be a great story in the future. And the more ridiculous or difficult the experience, the better the story.

Well, that brings me to my story today.

Remember when my kid pooped his diaper so bad during music practice before church that the poop actually ran down his pants, past his shoes, and onto the floor? And then he walked the entire length of the church, leaving a trail of poop as he went? And then we didn't have any extra clothes with us because he had worn them the day before, so we had to borrow clothes from the one-year-old who lives next door to the church? And then I had to spend fifteen minutes bent over him, kneeling on the floor, cleaning off first his shoes, then his socks, then his pants, then his onesie, then his diaper, then his bottom? Remember when I was mortified by this whole situation--from not having extra clothes for him to the poop down the main aisle of the church to the people who had to wash their shoes off after they stepped in it?

(Seriously. Why do the worst poop stories always seem to happen in church?)

But then one of the men, after cleaning poop off of his shoes said something that made me feel a thousand times better.

He said, "Someday in twenty years when your kid is leading music, one of us is going to say afterwards, 'I remember when he was just a little guy. I remember the Sunday that he left a trail of poop down the middle of the sanctuary.' And he will be mortified."

Remember when the worst stories now are the best stories later? Remember when the support of a community can make all the difference in the world?

The whole situation was pretty overwhelming in my current eight-months-pregnant state, and I was still flustered when I got up to start the service. So much so that I almost started crying when I got to the third verse of the opening Psalm: "Have mercy on us, O Lord, have mercy upon us, for we have had more than enough of contempt." (Psalm 123:3) (In my head, I replaced the word "contempt" with the word "poop.")

But as I read, I looked out at the members of our congregation, and I thanked God for them. For people who are also praying for mercy, who have also had enough of whatever is overwhelming them. For people who are supporting one another through difficult circumstances. For people whose hard days now will make for great stories later. And for the day twenty years down the road when we will still be sharing those stories, saying, "Remember when...?"

Sex Talk

Recently, my 13 year old girl and I were invited to a mother-daughter retreat. And glossing over the fact that I am not, technically the mother, I said sure and dutifully attended the pre-retreat planning meeting. I and about 7 other moms met on a Sunday morning in one of the pre-school classrooms at church.

Maybe I’m just stunningly naïve, but I thought this was a bonding, cheesy crafts, chick-movies and popcorn kind of weekend. I figured we’d don our fuzzy bunny slippers and share with our girls how much God loves them and whatnot. Imagine my shock and horror when it turned out the movie we’d be watching was all about sex.

I sat there in a tiny chair, surrounded by bright primary colors and watched a generic looking white lady with a unisom voice gush about “special gifts” and blood flow. And oh sweet merciful lord, there were pictures – not just pictures, drawings.

When the freak show finally ended (did you catch that clever little pun I just made there? It was freakish AND about freakin’! No? No one else thinks that is hilarious? Sorry, back to my story) the other moms looked at each other and smiled.  What a purrrrfect video that was, so well done, what a great way to bridge the awkward gap with our daughters.

Was everyone else watching the same video? ‘Cause that was LAME with a capital LAME. This is the focal point of the retreat?

I pulled out of that faster than, uh, well never mind. Let’s just say I sent a very polite email saying that this retreat was not right for our family but thanks for the invite.

Maybe the problem is a generational one. I am significantly closer in age to the 5^th and 6^th grade girls than any other of the other adults. No matter how old I feel when I creak out of bed in the morning, my own teenage years really weren’t that long ago. And this kind of church sex education was just as popular then as it apparently is now.

What a shame.

I know this crap, I learned it myself. I don’t want my girl exposed to it. I do not want her to think her self-worth is housed entirely in her genitals. Sex is not, now or ever, the only valuable thing she has to offer a man. I also don’t want her to buy into the lie of the secular world that sex is just a recreational activity. I want her to have a healthy and realistic view of sex and its accompanying consequences and responsibilities.

The church teaches that sex outside of marriage is this shameful, dirty, horrible, unfulfilling cheap imitation and sex inside of marriage is this sparkly, beautiful fairy land. I might be stoned for saying this, but sex is just sex you guys. It’s great, but it’s also squelchy and potentially embarrassing, not to mention a whole new world of sounds and smells. Married sex is not mechanically any different from evil fornication.

So why wait?

Remember those consequences and responsibilities I mentioned earlier? Yeah, those are called Narsty Goopy Diseases and Babies (also goopy but not so narsty). The former you don’t want ever, and the latter is infinitely better served having two grown-up, married parents, preferably with at least one job between them.

But wait, there’s more! The Bible doesn’t contain the words “saving yourself for marriage” or “how far is too far?” but it does talk about love fairly extensively. Christians have a responsibility to love one another unselfishly – just like Christ loved us. Jumping into bed with someone because you’re too impatient to wait is pretty selfish. Love is actually one of the pieces of evidence (or “fruits” as some might say) that the Spirit lives in us. So, by the way, is patience. And hey, would you look at that, the list of evidences for the Spirit’s presence culminates in: self-control.

Self. Control. My goodness that’s useful. You can rise above hormonal urges and hot dudes. With the help of the Spirit, you can say no, both now, to your horny boyfriend AND later, to the attractive gentleman hitting on you at the gym who probably would never fart in bed like your husband. Temptation, just like sex, does not magically become different because of a wedding ceremony. It’s always there but all that great practice you had bench pressing self-control while you were single will give you the strength to resist temptation even after he put a ring on it.

This is what I want my girl to know: she is valuable and precious as a whole person. I want her to be unselfish and loving in all aspects of her life. I want her to learn to have control over herself and reject all things harmful, whether it be drugs, skeevy sex or just too many cookies and not enough carrots. I want her to be whole and healthy, daily seeking the presence of God’s Holy Spirit.

So we didn’t go on the retreat. But we did continue our conversation about love and sex and boys. And I didn’t even have to draw any creepy pictures!

And then there was me.

Alright, now you've met Liz and Marissa, two of the best, most interesting people on the planet, which leaves me:  Bethany.  I'm their much less articulate and fascinating friend, but they keep me around for tax reasons.  :)

We have a lot in common, the three of us.   Like Marissa, I have a 2 year old, and a baby on the way.  And like Liz, I met my husband in Latin America while I was a missionary in Colombia.  I am currently working part time from home taking care of two other littles.

If any comments or posts from my corner seem a bit disparate, it's because I was interrupted approximately fourteen thousand times during the writing process.  Right now, as I type, I'm reading a book aloud and have also uttered the phrase, "We don't kick!" and "No writing in books!"  Wait, I'll be right back, someone needs a time out.  Whew!  I'm back.  What were we talking about again?

To be fair, we also don't own a mini van.  We've got a Kia Ultima and a Ram truck.  Welcome to the conversation!

More Introductions

Hi! I'm Liz.

I used to be a missionary in Nicaragua. A few years ago I came back to the States with a husband and eventually we had a baby boy. Two weeks after that my husband's two youngest siblings came to live with us. So I daily juggle my life as a dual-culture wife, mom of toddler and mom/sister of two teenagers. And I work full-time. Yup. If you see me staggering exhausted in the street please, hand me a latte.

I love the idea of co-blogging with two fine women whom I admire greatly and whose opinions I truly value. It's no big deal if no one ever reads it, I am just excited about wrestling with life and faith, discovering new questions and talking honestly about the things that matter to me. 

And just for honesty's sake I should confess that I don't actuall own a minivan. I used to but it ran afoul of a jerk in a sports car. But at least one of my kids plays soccer so I feel that my little Volvo totally counts. 

Introduction

Hi! Welcome to our blog!

I'm Marissa, and I have an almost two-year-old and an almost newborn.

I'm also a pastor with an MDiv.

Between those two roles, I have a lot to think about! My friends Bethany and Liz are great people to think with, so we decided to give a joint blog a shot. I'll let them introduce themselves.

So, here goes nothing!