This is a cry for help. I need a book to read. A good book. Better yet, I need a list of good books to read. After devouring The Help, I read another good one — Year of Wonders: A Novel of the Plague. But since then I've been stuck. I take books out of the library, start them, and toss them aside. As a result, I am watching obscene amounts of TV. Well, not just because of that. I don't usually watch much TV (when would that happen?), but I have been feeling so sick and so exhausted that I've been going to bed crazy early most nights, and I've even gotten into bed many times during the day. Honestly, I don't recognize myself anymore. I'm just waiting to feel better so I can hopefully return to my normal self.
In the meantime, I need help... because I'm going to shoot myself if I watch another episode of anything on Bravo! — and I like Bravo! But not in the doses I've been getting of it.
So please, please...give me some book titles (fiction please) so I can lose myself in a good book.
***
Last night, I dreamed — again — that we are having a boy. I don't put much stock in it because my dreams have been completely crazy for the past month, nothing like my usual dreams. Nevertheless, I feel better about the idea of a boy this morning. Up to this point, I've only been able to think of this baby as a girl. We talk about the baby as if it's a girl, and my husband calls the baby Pebbles (from the flintstones). He actually has a cut-out of Pebbles (from a box of Fruity Pebbles of course!) taped to his computer — though he's been planning on giving that to a friend who has a baby who looks like Pebbles. Still, we're pretty committed to the girl idea. But I am relieved that my thinking is different this morning — that I can entertain the idea of a boy and feel okay about it. I think it helped to learn last night that my favorite three-year-old boy has been praying "for Nina to have a baby that is healfy and not sick." I love that kid.
Friday, September 18, 2009
Thursday, September 17, 2009
The Lecture
Unfortunately for my kids, my husband and I are both good at the lecture. I'm not certain that this is the best parenting technique... I'm pretty sure they may zone out after a while. But sometimes, you just need to set some people (your kids, or at least one of them) straight. That's what happened here this morning.
The conversation started innocently enough, as they so often do. I was explaining to the two younger boys that I was hoping we could build an office for their dad out in our garage, which is a huge detached garage and fitting for such a thing. Of course, there's the small (or not so small) matter of money... but a girl can dream and pray, right? I mean, otherwise, there is just nowhere for this kid to go. But Son2, who has been making a habit of complaining lately, was highly annoyed to realize that this meant his little brother or sister would immediately have their own room. Son2 has never had his own room, and he wants one, and he lets us know it from time to time. "It's unfair!" he proclaimed.
And so the lecture began. (In my defense, let me say that I probably wouldn't have launched into a lecture if there hadn't been a number of complaints already this week, displaying a profound lack of gratitude on his part.) It was a lecture about financial reality and about poverty, and the truth of how most of the world lives. Whole families share rooms. I explained that he rarely sees this reality, that what he sees is the people who have more than we do, who go to Disneyworld every year, or at least go once. I even explained that many fortunate people don't actually have to pay thousands and thousands of dollars each year for health insurance and doctor visits and medicine. But we do, and at least we can go to the doctor and get medicine, even if it doesn't always stop those migraines from coming. At least we can keep working on it. Some kids can't even go to the doctor, can't afford their medicine. I couldn't stop. Well...that's not true. I could, and I did, eventually. But before I did, I told him that maybe this fall, as part of homeschooling, we would do a study about poverty (that was my husband's idea). We'd learn about how many of the people in our country have to live, how people in this world suffer. And then we'll just see what's fair.
The conversation started innocently enough, as they so often do. I was explaining to the two younger boys that I was hoping we could build an office for their dad out in our garage, which is a huge detached garage and fitting for such a thing. Of course, there's the small (or not so small) matter of money... but a girl can dream and pray, right? I mean, otherwise, there is just nowhere for this kid to go. But Son2, who has been making a habit of complaining lately, was highly annoyed to realize that this meant his little brother or sister would immediately have their own room. Son2 has never had his own room, and he wants one, and he lets us know it from time to time. "It's unfair!" he proclaimed.
And so the lecture began. (In my defense, let me say that I probably wouldn't have launched into a lecture if there hadn't been a number of complaints already this week, displaying a profound lack of gratitude on his part.) It was a lecture about financial reality and about poverty, and the truth of how most of the world lives. Whole families share rooms. I explained that he rarely sees this reality, that what he sees is the people who have more than we do, who go to Disneyworld every year, or at least go once. I even explained that many fortunate people don't actually have to pay thousands and thousands of dollars each year for health insurance and doctor visits and medicine. But we do, and at least we can go to the doctor and get medicine, even if it doesn't always stop those migraines from coming. At least we can keep working on it. Some kids can't even go to the doctor, can't afford their medicine. I couldn't stop. Well...that's not true. I could, and I did, eventually. But before I did, I told him that maybe this fall, as part of homeschooling, we would do a study about poverty (that was my husband's idea). We'd learn about how many of the people in our country have to live, how people in this world suffer. And then we'll just see what's fair.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Making Room
Perhaps not surprisingly, one of the first scriptures that I felt like God told me after I found out I was pregnant is this one from Isaiah 54:
2 "Enlarge the place of your tent,
stretch your tent curtains wide,
do not hold back;
lengthen your cords,
strengthen your stakes.
3 For you will spread out to the right and to the left;
your descendants will dispossess nations
and settle in their desolate cities."
I knew God was telling me that I'd have to make room for this baby, make room for his plan. I heard him, but nothing in me was ready to grasp that yet. But I read Isaiah 54 again last week, and it got me thinking.
I think that "making room" is one of the biggest things we must learn and do if we're trying to follow Jesus. God has always made room in his heart for us, and now Jesus is in heaven, making room for us. God tells us to care for the widow, the orphan, and the alien...but that does not come naturally to many of us. We have to ask God to help us make room in our hearts for them, so we can be moved to action. Many years ago, we knew a teenage girl who needed a home. My husband said we had to make room for her, but I didn't want to. Such things come naturally to him, but not me. But we did make room, and she is like a daughter to us still, though she only lived with us for a year. Our sons consider her to be a sister, though two of them were not yet even born when she lived with us. By the grace of God, and despite my unwilling heart, amazing things can happen when you make room.
The Jewish people, in the time after Jesus' death, had to make room for the gentile converts. The gentiles would be grafted in to Israel, but not all of them wanted to make room. In fact, you could say that many Jews could not make room for the Messiah... Why? Because he was not who they were expecting.
We were not expecting this baby. In my mind, I can now grasp this idea of making room. I can see God being good to us and blessing us with a gift we were not looking for. My heart is still trying to catch up, though. It will. We will. We will make room and who knows who this person will turn out to be.
I was a surprise baby. My brothers are ten and twelve years older than me, and my mother knew the heartache that I will now know. Her mother knew my brothers, but she died years before I was born. I knew that always made her sad, but I didn't really understand that when I was a kid. My mom died eight years ago today, and I cannot imagine having a baby she will not know.
2 "Enlarge the place of your tent,
stretch your tent curtains wide,
do not hold back;
lengthen your cords,
strengthen your stakes.
3 For you will spread out to the right and to the left;
your descendants will dispossess nations
and settle in their desolate cities."
I knew God was telling me that I'd have to make room for this baby, make room for his plan. I heard him, but nothing in me was ready to grasp that yet. But I read Isaiah 54 again last week, and it got me thinking.
I think that "making room" is one of the biggest things we must learn and do if we're trying to follow Jesus. God has always made room in his heart for us, and now Jesus is in heaven, making room for us. God tells us to care for the widow, the orphan, and the alien...but that does not come naturally to many of us. We have to ask God to help us make room in our hearts for them, so we can be moved to action. Many years ago, we knew a teenage girl who needed a home. My husband said we had to make room for her, but I didn't want to. Such things come naturally to him, but not me. But we did make room, and she is like a daughter to us still, though she only lived with us for a year. Our sons consider her to be a sister, though two of them were not yet even born when she lived with us. By the grace of God, and despite my unwilling heart, amazing things can happen when you make room.
The Jewish people, in the time after Jesus' death, had to make room for the gentile converts. The gentiles would be grafted in to Israel, but not all of them wanted to make room. In fact, you could say that many Jews could not make room for the Messiah... Why? Because he was not who they were expecting.
We were not expecting this baby. In my mind, I can now grasp this idea of making room. I can see God being good to us and blessing us with a gift we were not looking for. My heart is still trying to catch up, though. It will. We will. We will make room and who knows who this person will turn out to be.
I was a surprise baby. My brothers are ten and twelve years older than me, and my mother knew the heartache that I will now know. Her mother knew my brothers, but she died years before I was born. I knew that always made her sad, but I didn't really understand that when I was a kid. My mom died eight years ago today, and I cannot imagine having a baby she will not know.
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