keep growing

Sometimes God moves and it's obvious. Sometimes He heals people in a moment and they're not the same. There is proof that He was at work. Yesterday at church, a friend with heart trouble suddenly felt faint--he couldn't stand up and he was white as paper and sweating buckets (aaaand Arisa couldn't find his pulse for a while--when she did it was very weak). His wife said it was what happened the last time he had a heart attack. They both looked (understandably) scared. A group of us prayed for him outside and sent him to the emergency room. Before he left, his color started returning and there was NOTHING that showed up on his labs. The MD said it must have just been from locking his knees when standing up.

It could have been from locking his knees.... But seriously. God touched him.

So these things do happen. God moves.

And then sometimes He moves in a different way. He helps us outgrow something. That takes time. Sometimes lots of time.

It's like planting an oak tree. Let's say a sidewalk was poured near the tree. It may take (a lot of) time, but eventually, that tree's roots will outgrow the sidewalk. Eventually those roots will grow so big and unbending that they will crumble and overturn and displace the concrete. A little oak tree can grow and overcome something as unyielding as an asphalt road or concrete that it meant to handle pound after pound after pound of pressure.

I know I wasn't using a fruit-bearing tree analogy--but this also means that we can bear fruit while we are waiting on our freedom. Just because it doesn't happen suddenly doesn't mean it won't happen or isn't happening.

Pneuma

During worship this morning we sang a song about how God is our healer. I was thinking about something my dad said in one of his sermons a while back--about how how we look to God to bring healing--and he is that--He is healer. But He's even more than that. He brings LIFE. In my mind's eye I saw how God brought clay together and breathed life into it. And it became human. Or how He breathed into the valley of dry bones and everything became alive. He breaths life.

Our sermon this morning was about the Holy Spirit. P Timmy said that the word used for the Holy Spirit in the New Testament was "pneuma" (I looked at Charlie and said, "Breath!") And that's essentially what the root of the word means. The breath of God. It brings life and power and refreshing. Even more than healing, God, the Spirit, brings life.

I am learning a lot about myself right now. Learning a lot and realizing how little I know. I like to be in control. Or... I like to try to control my life. TRY being the operative word. I know I've got to start letting that go. To start releasing it. I know the best way to do that is to release it to God. But then I get all, "I have to listen to God--I have to hear what He's saying and do everything right and don't mess it up and be sure I'm hearing Him all the time and doing what He says when He says it am I sure that was God? Am I sure that's what He said? Don't mess it up!" Which basically makes me in control again which was the whole thing that needs to change. What a vicious cycle.

I really do want to change. I really do want to follow the Spirit's leading and be less in control all of the time. But I honestly don't know how to do that without trying so hard that it makes me in control! blah! God, give me wisdom. Show me how this works.

more

I watched a YouTube video the other day about marriage. It was the same guy who wrote the 5 love languages. He was talking about how every marriage has 4 seasons. Winter, spring, summer, fall. And every relationship goes through changing seasons throughout the duration of the relationship. He said it's basically inevitable that a couple will have falls and winters, but that there are things you can do to leave fall or winter and spend more time in springs and summers.

We've been thinking about trying to find a book to spark some conversations about our relationship, but haven't known where to look. Maybe this will be a good place to start. We've been married 6.5 years. The further we go, the more I realize I don't know about marriage.

AJ is the best thing in the world. I want like 10 more of her. I'm trying to be/get/become as healthy as possible so we can have options when we feel like it's time to expand our family. Sometimes I feel like I don't have enough hours in the day to do all the things I want and need to do to take care of myself.

I've started doing some guided meditation. I've found some good Christian ones that lead you with prayers or scriptures or prompts for praying/praise. I've really been enjoying it. I've been listening to podcasts on parenting and marriage and nutrition. I've been trying to get outside.

I need to exercise more. I need to figure out how to keep up with housework better. It is... not my gifting in life. nor is grocery shopping or cooking or decorating or any of the other house things I feel like I am supposed to be good at. Just because I am a woman (especially as a Christian woman). Somehow, those things that I am not good at are Charlie's love language. Whyyyyyyyyy. Whyyyyyyyyyyyy? I can tell him all the live-long-day how proud I am of him. But it just floats right on by him. And I eat that stuff up.

It's not easy. But I guess that's not what we're promised in life from the things that are worth it.

365 days

Tomorrow is the birthday day! 1 whole year. The first 6 months kind of felt like 5 years, but the second 6 months went by in about 3.5 minutes.

She is so amazing. She's walking and talking (well. trying on both accounts).

She's supposed to be taking her afternoon nap right now. But she's sitting up in her crib rubbing her eyes. Susan said her boys went down to 1 nap per day at around a year, but she cries soooo much when I don't put her down. But she's doing 1 good nap for Mimi, so maybe I need to work toward that. I tried this morning, by holding off her morning nap until around 10:30 when Mimi puts her down. But instead, she just took a much shorter nap. HA. I'll figure it out.

Right now she's sitting in her crib rubbing her eyes. And then rubbing her head on her mattress and then sitting back up and rubbing her eyes. She's so tired.

I am a 365day-old mama. I know a LOT more about babies than my 0daymama-self knew. Aaaaaaand I have a lot to learn.

I know Parks and Rec is NOT a deep show, but on the last episode, Leslie tells April that kids are kind of like adding people to your team. Our team is SO much livelier and sillier and happier and cuter since AJ joined our team. But I know there are more of us. Our team isn't full, yet. It's fun to have your own team.

i set a goal to blog once a week...

You'd think I could manage that!

I am having so much fun planning AJ's birthday party. Charlie doesn't understand. (And I've never been very good at planning a party, so we'll see how everything comes together...) but I've enjoyed it. I worked on a chalkboard poster for AJ today. That was fun. I've made some flowers (with some special help from the Loup ladies) and spraypainted some things and... we'll see.

I've been so cold lately. Which is soooooo different than I've been the last couple of years. It feels weird to feel cold.

Last Friday night we had our first ladies' night at church for 2016. Amazing. As always. I meant to write about this sooner so I could actually remember details, but hopefully I can still give the impression that was left with me.

We talked about hope. During worship, we sang a song (that I didn't know) and it talked about how we're almost home. When we were singing that, I saw in my spirit the veil that separated the holy of holies from the rest of the temple. And I saw that veil torn in half from top to bottom as it did when Jesus was sacrificed. When the veil was torn, light came FLOODING out. And I had the sense that "home" was coming to us. The heavens were spilling onto earth.

And I could see how we don't have to wait for heaven for everything. The good things of God are spilling into our space and can touch what is earthly and broken.

And that vision filled me with hope.

Which just so happened to be the theme of the message that night. Megan spoke (and it was amazing) and she started off with the scripture that says "hope is the anchor for my soul". But did you know the second half of that verse? Somehow, I'd forgotten that it says, "That hope,e firm and secure like an anchor for our souls, reaches behind the curtain 20where Jesus, our forerunner, has gone on our behalf, having become a high priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek."

I love that. He split that curtain. And let the Kingdom flood earth.

love

I love this description of love by Lisa-Jo Baker:
"In real life people sneak out in the wee hours of Valentine’s Day to find a leftover card at the Dollar Store because they know it matters to us.

Sometimes real love is too busy unclogging the toilet, working the late shift, nursing the baby around the clock to find time to write down all the ways they love you – they’re too busy living it.

The thing about love in all its ordinary glory is that it was never designed to demand.

Love doesn’t stamp its foot because it didn’t get roses.

Love doesn’t sigh because it feels let down by the card or the day or the man.

Love doesn’t huff and puff and compare and point fingers.

Love doesn’t demand.

There is an age old definition of love that I thumb my way back to on the days I feel all that expectation bubbling up in me.

When I’m in danger of keeping score of what I did or didn’t get, of whether I was spoiled or celebrated sufficiently according to this weird and warped definition of love that has seeped into our culture.

On those days I flip back to the book that offers the most famously upside down definition of love:

Love never gives up.

Not when the baby has month after month of colic. Not when the teenagers won’t talk back. Not when the one you love is aching and breaking apart over that job, that terrible commute, all those night shifts, the dread of being laid off.

Love never gives up hoping, believing, cheering, listening, crying alongside, and planning together in the nooks and crannies of the leftover parts of the day – planning together for tomorrow.

Love cares more for others than for self.

Love packs lunches for decades for kids who can never understand how boring week after week of figuring out new ways to make sandwiches can be.

Love moves in with its parents-in-law to take care of them, take up their burden and take back all the years they cared for you.

Love remembers to get up early to change the laundry to the dryer. Love kisses boo-boos and helps bandage up broken hearts.

Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have.

Love doesn’t demand that card or necklace or Kay’s Kiss or Ring or Diamond when love has all these legs and arms tangled in a bed and a shared saggy mattress that wakes up to sticky kisses from toddler lips.

Love is satisfied with right now. Love isn’t always looking for something better than the man across the breakfast table who winks at you in your tired pajamas and still sees you through the memory of a twenty one year old’s eyes.

Love doesn’t strut, it doesn’t show off or show up others. It leans into the lonely and the forgotten and love sees them. Love sees the people around its table, living next door, swallowed up by fear – love leans into them and away from its own accomplishments.

Doesn’t have a swelled head, doesn’t keep lists of all that its achieved, all that it wants, all that you did or didn’t do for it. Because love is too busy admiring all that wonder in the DNA of someone else – that aunt who beats cancer every morning when she wakes up and decides to live out loud today, in that husband who keeps fighting for work that will provide for his family, in that first grader who sweats his way to figuring out how to properly make the “S” sound.

Love lives large through the victories of others.

Doesn’t force itself on others, love doesn’t stamp its foot or keep a list of everything it didn’t get or that didn’t go it’s way. Isn’t always “me first,” Love is about that tiny wisp of a baby, that temper-ridden toddler, that good man with his aching back. Love sees them through Jesus-colored lenses and believes the best.

Love isn’t easily disappointed or viscously competitive. Love doesn’t compare what it has to what it wanted. Love doesn’t point out all the ways the ones it loves were late or selfish or stupid. Love takes a deep breath. Love always gives second, third, hundredth chances.

Love is all about do-overs.

Doesn’t keep score of the sins of others,
Love doesn’t spiral into arguments that circle back to decades ago of disappointment. Love doesn’t say, “You forgot AGAIN.”
Doesn’t revel when others grovel,
When he’s hurting or she’s so sorry for forgetting. Love listens. Tenderly.
Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,

Love believes the best and receives the truth with both arms wide open ready for that hug, that gift of being nose-to-nose with the ones who make us whole.

Puts up with anything,
With burnt toast mornings and late shift nights. With imperfect cards, words, and offerings. With gifts that don’t live up to magazine standards of romantic and date nights that exist as stolen moments between the toddler’s bedtime and early morning wake up call.

Trusts God always,
That He will teach us how to love. And that He will surround us with love in every ordinary, nameless, faceless, Sunday that isn’t a special day on the calendar.

Always looks for the best,
In the man across the table and in the woman in front of us in the mirror. In the kids that frustrate us and in the day to day friendships that sometimes feel like they might break us. Love looks hard and long for the best.

Never looks back,
Not to the last fight, the last failure, the last forgotten holiday. Love only has eyes for today.

But keeps going to the end.

To the end of itself, the end of its expectations, love keeps walking its way home with the people who are the heart of its home.

I don’t know about you, but this is the definition of love I’m going to take into tomorrow – into Valentine’s Day and if I can remember, into all the other ordinary days that follow behind it.

I know I’ll get it wrong and there will be times I’m disappointed.
But I want to work hard at this love thing –
I want to do love – every day."

whew.

I still can't seem to kick the last little bit of perinatal anxiety that started during pregnancy. I'd compare it to... allergies or something. It does still bother me... but it's more of an annoyance that a big interference. BUT it does bother me enough to want it to go away. SO I'm trying something new. It's called EMDR.

It sounds kind of weird, and I don't quite understand it yet. But I'm hopeful. My basic understanding is that we'll try to re-frame some negative associations/fears. Which is really something I have been trying to do and prayed for, but this is a methodical and scientific method of doing so :)

What I'm praying for is that whatever comes up to be Holy-Spirit led. God created science and the mind and I believe that He can orchestrate exactly the things I do or do not need to re-frame.

When I spoke with the therapist, she kept asking me if I had any childhood trauma--and I don't! I explained what a wonderful childhood I had! Great parents, fun siblings, everything. I really can't imagine what it must be like for people who have had hard lives. What must that be like?! If you had absent / neglectful / abusive parents? I am so fortunate. God has blessed me over and over and over.

We sang this in worship today--it was so good. Faithful you have been, and faithful you will be. That's why I'm singing your praise will ever be on my lips...

slow down

AJ is napping right now. We have Fox for the day, so he's taking a break and playing Minecraft while she's napping. Earlier today, we went out and explored the yard! He set a goal for us to find 43 leaves--red, yellow, orange and green. We got a little sidetracked and picked up all sorts of stuff.

You know? I really enjoyed it. I don't know the last time I went outside in our yard and REALLY paid attention to the details. It was fun! I was amazing at what we found in the yard. Sometimes you just have to keep your eyes open.

Mardi Gras was fun. AJ was a little overwhelmed by ALL the people and noise, but she did well. She wasn't really fussy, she just stared the whole time, expressionless. Maybe next year she'll be able to warm up to it a little better. It's become a really fun highlight of the Loup family year--all of us go and spend the morning and afternoon together. I'm so thankful Kerry and Eloise let us crash their place for the day every year!

The weather has been beautiful again lately. I hope it's pleasant for AJ's birthday. I really need to start working on her party details. Charlie still wants to go with our original plan of immediate family only. And I always felt that way, too until my sweetestbabygirlinthewholeentireworld almost turned 1! Now I want a big party and celebrate the fact that we all made it a year... and that she's just so special and amazing. I know the 1st birthday party isn't for the baby--we really don't want any presents because we're feeling packed to the brim in our house. But I just want to celebrate the amazingness that is AJ.

So we shall see. I'm pretty sure Charlie will be super-annoyed if we invite more people. Maybe I can just trick Mimi into inviting the other people and then I can get out of the blame :)

Hello

Wow it's been a while.

I've been thinking it'd be good to start blogging again. I have alllll the emotions and it would probably be good to process them and get them out in a healthy outlet.

AJ is almost a year old! It has gone so quickly. Well, the days have (sometimes) been long, but the year has flown.

I'm working 2-3 days/week at work. Just starting to try to add 4-8 hours every other week. It will help me keep up with one of my units that I don't really get to spend much time on. My job keeps me so busy--so my 10 hour days FLY by. I've really enjoyed working. After so much wondering about what I'd want to do/need to do once AJ came, I feel so sure that God provided the exact situation I needed. Even the population I'm working with. God is really faithful.

AJ is the most delightful baby/person/little girl that ever lived. I literally just stare at her while she plays sometimes. She's so funny! The way she studies things and tries to figure it out. Watching her try to stack things on top of each other and being genuinely interested in why sometimes it balances and sometimes it doesn't! The way she's started to randomly lay down on the floor or lay her head down on her lovie while she's standing by the ottoman. haha Trying to shove pieces of fruit in her mouth using her whole hand. Or trying to pat her mouth to make "ah-ah-ah-ah" sounds but how she uses the back of her hand and just wiggles her fingers. I can't describe it right, but it's completely ridiculous. Or how she snuggles up with me at night and sometimes randomly on the couch.

There is NOTHING in all the world like having a daughter. It's incredible. I am SO PROUD of her over the littlest things. (^see paragraph above :))

In December, I really thought I had 100% recovered from all the perinatal issues. I haven't. Generally now, they're just a bother. Like allergies or something. It's annoying, but doesn't really interfere with ADLs or drastically impact my quality of life.

I really believe our bodies/minds/guts are so much more connected than we understand. I'm reading a couple of books about the nutrient/mind connection. They think that one day we will literally be able to treat mental illnesses with nutrients rather than medications. I think we're a looooong way off from that, but wouldn't that be something? I want to understand it more. I really believe the issues I have had are connected with nutrition/hormones/imbalances.

On the radio yesterday, they were talking about depression. Someone called in and said that every person on earth should feel dismayed at the state things are in. I disagree with that (I think if you can't see anything good, you probably are clinically depressed), but it is true that there are a lot of hard things marbled into the good. AJ is the best thing that's ever happened to me! But it is marbled with hard things.