Tangled in Tears

This is my best faking-sadness-right-now-face.  Highly attractive, right?

But really, I am so emotional today, and I don't know why. I cried twice (partly out of sadness and partly out of anger) over the Gosnell trial (if you don't know what it is, an abortionist is standing trial for 7 cases of first-degree murder because he butchered third-trimester infants after they were born [and most of the news media has been silent on the trial]...you can read more here. Be warned, though, it is extremely graphic).  I cried after practicing the piano for playing the prelude at my grandpa's memorial service tomorrow, because I wished he could hear it and I know he would enjoy it.

Ok, so those are reasonable grounds to cry.

But then I almost cried four times while watching Tangled. FOUR TIMES.

I've seen Tangled close to a million times and I cried the first and maybe the second time I saw it, during the lantern scene. And maybe during the Flynn-being-sacrificial scene.  But getting teary-eyed over it (and other scenes that never caused me to blink an eye) now?

I had to run to the bathroom and take a pregnancy test. It was negative.  But I had to make sure!  I'm rarely this emotional.  Do you guys ever take a pregnancy test just because you're feeling more emotional than normal?

Maybe it's the weather...it's been so cloudy and rainy and grey over the past week.

But whatever the case, I feel like having a really good, long cry.  I haven't seen Les Miserables yet, and I've really been wanting to, and we have the Blu-Ray just waiting to be stuck in the player. So maybe I'll watch that tonight.

What do you do when you feel like crying?

What I've Learned from Living with My Parents...While I'm Married

For the past 9 months, my husband and I have been living with my parents.  For the most part, it has been a good experience; my parents are super easy to live with and we all have good relationships.  I'm so blessed because I know that doesn't always happen.  But that being said, there are some things I've had to learn (and am still learning) about this season in life.  If any of you have ever lived with your parents, I'd love to read some tips in the comments as well! I know not everyone has the same experience (some parents are terrible to live with), so some tips from a different point of view are helpful, as well.

• Find privacy. Take your bedroom, clean it, keep it clean so you have your own little space to chill out in.
• Don't take it for granted.  Appreciate the fact that your parents love you enough to take you (and even your spouse) back in for a while.  Savor the good parent/daughter moments.
• Make your bedroom your own - hang your favorite pictures on the wall, put up your curtains; if you have a rug from your previous apartment, place it on the floor.  I should also pull out our bedspread and sheet set to make the bed look like our own.
• Don't make your mom do all the work cleaning and cooking.  I've not been as good at this as I should be.  I do okay with some cleaning, but I don't cook as often I should.
• Take the time to get to know your parents from more of a peer-to-peer angle, rather than just a parent-child angle.  The parent-child dynamic is still there to a certain extent, but now you're all adults, and that should drastically change the relationship (hopefully for the better - less arguments!).
• Don't go near their bedroom when they head there together...haha!  And on the same note, take advantage of the time with your spouse when your parents leave the house ;)  Or else make a game of it and see how quiet you can be...you know what I'm talking about!! Shhhhh...
• Your parents need some space, too.  Head to the other spouse's parents' house for a night or two, go out on a date and leave the kid with someone other than your parents, spend a Saturday together at a park or on the town.
• Surprise your parents with something.  A clean house, a cooked candlelight dinner for two, an organized bathroom.  If you're living with your parents, odds are that you can't afford to buy a thank-you gift every once in a while, so get creative. (Maybe, if you're crafty, find something in the basement or attic that needs to be re-done and get to re-doing it, using DIY ideas from Pinterest or other blogs)
• Talk with your spouse often.  If you're living with your own parents, he is probably going to have some issues that need to be worked out.  Be compassionate and put yourself in his shoes (what if you were living with your in-laws?).  Help him out in any way you can, and give him a lot of grace.  If you're the one living with in-laws, talk to your spouse about what you're feeling, what you're wanting, what is frustrating you. Don't hold it in and assume you just need to get over it.  That's what your spouse is there for, to support you and hold you in the difficult times.
• Don't forget about your in-laws.  They may want a piece of you, as well.  Go spend the night or the weekend at their house, and consider splitting the time living with your parents into two so the in-laws can have you, as well (or your spouse can get a break from your own parents).
• Look to see what God is teaching you from it. Humility? Trust? Learning to respect your parents?
• Keep an eye on the goal.  You're not going to be staying with your parents forever.  You will have your own place again, someday.  There will be hard days, but they will pass, and this season will come to an end eventually.  And there will be things that you will miss about it.

Grandpa Clark

My heart is so heavy today.

My grandpa died yesterday.




I don't know what to write, only that I have to, that I must express what I'm feeling.

I'm sad, I'm weighted, I'm a bit frustrated because Svanja is sick on top of it all and it is very hard to handle her feverish crying along with the grief. The day is cloudy and windy and only magnifies the pain.

I saw Grandpa on Thursday, the day before he died. He smiled at me in his wheelchair at lunch and held Svanja's hand, telling her how cute she was. Thin wisps of white hair surrounded the bald top of his head. Blue veins wound their way just underneath translucent skin blemished with age spots.  I grasped his hand, wrinkled and fragile, and told him I love him.  I did not know that in only one day he would be gone.

We knew he would pass soon, so it was not altogether unexpected.  But I had expected him to die in the hospital after a stroke, and that we would have time to say good-bye to him before he died.  Instead, he slipped peacefully away in his bed at the nursing home.  He kept telling the nurses and Grandma yesterday that he did not want to go the hospital.  It was like he knew that his time was up.

It was hard to see Grandpa decline in health over the past 6 months. When Jordan and I moved back to our hometown, he could still walk and was living at home and engaged us in conversation.  My mind moves back in time, to when he played big band songs beautifully on the piano and as a little girl I always wanted to play "as good as Grandpa."  I remember him cooking; he cooked once a week for Grandma and he made delicious food that was often British or Ecuadorian in nature.  He had lots of books and Bible commentaries, and I first discovered Tolkien's world of Middle Earth at Grandma and Grandpa's house with an old copy of The Hobbit.  Grandpa loved to write, which was one of the reasons I learned to enjoy writing as well.

He was the Wheaton Spanish professor who wrote memoirs, watched British drama, drank tea, wore glasses and vests and a British-like cap, read biographies, played piano, cooked well, and loved my husband from the moment he met him, taking him out to Culver's every week during my first semester at college.  He was the grandpa that took me out to eat on grandpa/granddaughter dates, and created toys for me and my siblings and cousins out of wood, and helped me with crafts, and bounced me on his knee as he sang long-forgotten nursery rhymes to me.

But it is not all sadness, for Grandpa was a Christian and highly valued his relationship with Jesus.  He is now in heaven, whole, rejoicing in God's presence.  He has fulfilled the last line of the poem I wrote for him and Grandma on their 50th wedding anniversary: he is now dancing with Jesus celeste...

God Gave Wings to My Dream

I am the girl that dreamed of the sky, and God gave me wings to get there.

There is something about the robin's egg blue of the daytime sky, with the clouds floating weightlessly and the sun brilliantly shining through the layers of atmosphere.  I watched birds soaring high above me, carried on streams of wind, and I was wistful.  I watched planes flying in the thin reaches of the atmosphere, white contrails following behind, and I longed to have wings of my own.

In the evening, with cool grass as my pillow, I lay back and watched the encroaching night change the sky from azure to deep navy behind the sunset.  And stars would prick the navy, and it would turn black.  Thousands of stars scattered across the sky, twinkling their praise to God.  I watched the steady gleam of satellites slowly creep from one horizon to the other, and I thought of the astronauts floating miles above in the International Space Station.  My heart did not belong on earth - it belonged in the sky, in space.

I was in junior high when I first discovered the sky and ate up everything I could on airplanes, astronauts, and atmosphere (which back then consisted of scouring our set of encyclopedias -- dial-up internet was too expensive to use for web surfing!).  I prayed often, believing that God answered prayers and would give me the desires of my heart, that I could someday get up in the sky and fly and go to space.

And you know what? He did answer my prayer.  When I was 14 or 15, we found out about a program near us that offers free flight lessons to high school students.  They specifically sought girls, minorities, and low-income students, although they accepted others as well.  And it wasn't just a flight lesson or two for free; it was ground school and all flight lessons for free, all the way through getting a pilot's certificate!  And that is what I did, and I passed my private pilot test the Friday before I left for my first year of college.

Mom and Dad gave me two telescopes in high school, and God gave me wings.  I could see into space farther than before, and I could fly part of the way there.  I often pointed the nose of the airplane straight up into the deepest blue part of the sky, and imagined there were no limits, that I was going to fly straight out of the sky into space.  And I treasured each moment in the airplane, using the time to pray and enjoy the feeling of flight.


I dreamed (and still dream) of the sky. What do you dream of?  Do you pray for it?  God doesn't answer all of our desires, but perhaps He will answer some of yours.

In which I start writing about my schedule and end up praying about God's will

I've started getting up early again. There is so much I want to do before Svanja wakes up! Do devotions (which currently consists of doing my Genesis BSF lesson and time in prayer), exercise, spend a half hour learning Arabic, work for 30-60 minutes on my freelance projects, enjoy a leisurely breakfast and a cup of tea, write a blog post (obviously doesn't happen every day, haha!), pick up the downstairs or do dishes, and take shower/get dressed/put makeup on/do hair.  

Total amount of time needed: 4 hrs, 10 mins, give or take a half hour.  Svanja wakes up around 8:30, so I would need to get up at 4:15-ish in order to get all that done every day (did I do my math right?).

Not happening. The earliest I can go is 5.  I did 5:30 this morning, and I got devos and breakfast and tea and shower/hair done, but that was it.  I got a little sidetracked with Facebook and Twitter...and reading other people's blogs.

What I will probably do is work on Arabic every other day, blog every other day, and if I don't have enough time to do the freelance projects, move that time to Svanja's naps (she naps a total of 3 hours each day, so I have plenty of time to work on them).

But I want to be very consistent with my devotions. God may be telling Jordan and I something very specific right now.  I want to KNOW that is Him talking to me and not just my own mind going off on its own, seeing arrows in coincidences and convicting me falsely.  The more I do devotions, the more I pray, the more I ask God to make me sensitive to His voice and His leading, the more I should be able to tell what His will is for us and what it isn't.  Pray without ceasing - it's hard to do, but I'm trying to do it.

Under Your will is where I want to be

Truly knowing that You are speaking to me

Accepting that our future is in Your hands

Holding nothing back in following Your plan

Knots In My Stomach

I lean toward "natural," alternative baby-rearing techniques in a lot of areas.  I cloth diaper (mostly),

make my own baby food (mostly), baby wear (mostly), and do cry-it-out - HOLD IT!!!  How does cry-it-out fit in there, and WHY would I do that since it is such a horrible, traumatic experience for a baby?

Well, first of all, I'm pretty sure that cry-it-out (CIO) is not really mainstream anymore. Most of my friends who have spoken about getting their babies to sleep, and most bloggers that I have read, do not do CIO.  It seems that the attachment parenting way to get babies to sleep has taken hold in the mainstream now, at least in my circle of friends.  So that's why I think it fits into my above list (though the same could be said for baby-wearing...).

As to why I do it, well, the attachment thing wasn't working. At all. And as soon as I tried CIO (which wasn't until Svanja was about 5 1/2 months - I wasn't doing this on a newborn!), it worked and she began sleeping for 12 hours. She sleeps for about 13 hours now, and she fusses at first when I lay her in her crib, but rarely (as in once every other month) does she cry longer than 5 minutes.  She's usually asleep within 2 minutes, and she wakes up blissfully happy.  (which makes for a blissfully happy mama!)

However, because I have chosen to do this particular technique, I often feel condemned.  Not by my friends - none of them have ever berated me about it - but by the parenting/blogging world in general.  I see articles and blog posts and status updates about how horrible CIO is for the baby, and how you're a selfish mom only thinking of yourself if you do it, and how your baby is going to grow up and be completely ruined because you did CIO.  I love reading blogs of moms who are into DIY and thrifting and cloth diapers and babywearing, but my stomach turns into knots as soon as they hit on the topic of sleep.  And even worse than the articles and posts are people's comments on them.  Oh, the hatred spewed by moms (from both sides of the aisle) toward each other! I also have a love-hate relationship with Dr. Sears.  I have tried to put into practice a lot of his attachment parenting techniques, but I don't buy into all of them (or all his claims).

I finally realized something, though, and while knots sometimes still form in my stomach while reading such posts, this has helped a lot:  One parenting choice you make for your baby is not going to ruin your child for the rest of his/her life.  You choose to bottle-feed instead of breastfeed? Great; I'm sure you have good reasons for it. I was bottle-fed because of breastfeeding complications and I turned out fine.  You choose to breastfeed for 3 years instead of weaning at a year?  That's your choice; it's certainly not going to hurt the child and I hope you both really enjoy that special time together. You choose CIO and a crib instead of co-sleeping or something else?  Your baby is not going to have major issues just from that or develop an unhealthy attitude about sleep.  And vice versa - choosing to co-sleep and rock to sleep and nurse to sleep is not going to cause your baby to have dependency issues for the rest of his life.  And in terms of a CIO baby growing up - my siblings and I were all CIO. And we're all really close to each other and to our parents, and none of us have fears of the night (in fact, as long as I can remember, even as a small child I loved going to sleep because I always had awesome dreams!).

Each family is different; each child is different. I may not do CIO with my other kids, but time will tell. I was that pregnant girl who thought I knew exactly what I was going to do - attachment parenting all the way. No way could I ever even think about doing CIO. And the tables turned on me!  I look at that attitude now as one of prideful, wrong thinking.  CIO is not a sin, nor is using disposable diapers, nor is using a swing.

So here's to the moms who have felt judged and condemned by other moms - you are trying to do what's best for your family, and you know what? No one else can tell you what that is because they have not been in your shoes! Your child will not be ruined by the parenting technique you chose!

P.S. The picture is of Svanja and I when she was a newborn...we kept her in our bed occasionally, and I happened to snap this picture (yes, I was faking sleep, haha) for Instagram.

Wait

I heard this poem the other day at my church's moms' group.  It spoke incredibly to me. I hope God uses it in your life, as well.

Wait 

by Russell Kelfer

Desperately, helplessly, longingly, I cried;
Quietly, patiently, lovingly, God replied.
I pled and I wept for a clue to my fate . . .
And the Master so gently said, "Wait."

"Wait? you say wait?" my indignant reply.
"Lord, I need answers, I need to know why!
Is your hand shortened? Or have you not heard?
By faith I have asked, and I'm claiming your Word.

"My future and all to which I relate
Hangs in the balance, and you tell me to wait?
I'm needing a 'yes', a go-ahead sign,
Or even a 'no' to which I can resign.

"You promised, dear Lord, that if we believe,
We need but to ask, and we shall receive.
And Lord I've been asking, and this is my cry:
 I'm weary of asking! I need a reply."

Then quietly, softly, I learned of my fate,
As my Master replied again, "Wait."
So I slumped in my chair, defeated and taut,
And grumbled to God, "So, I'm waiting for what?"

He seemed then to kneel, and His eyes met with mine . . .
and He tenderly said, "I could give you a sign.
I could shake the heavens and darken the sun.
I could raise the dead and cause mountains to run.

"I could give all you seek and pleased you would be.
You'd have what you want, but you wouldn't know Me.
You'd not know the depth of my love for each saint. 
You'd not know the power that I give to the faint.

"You'd not learn to see through clouds of despair;
You'd not learn to trust just by knowing I'm there.
You'd not know the joy of resting in Me
When darkness and silence are all you can see.

"You'd never experience the fullness of love
When the peace of My spirit descends like a dove.
You would know that I give, and I save, for a start,
But you'd not know the depth of the beat of My heart.

"The glow of my comfort late into the night,
The faith that I give when you walk without sight.
The depth that's beyond getting just what you ask
From an infinite God who makes what you have last.

"You'd never know, should your pain quickly flee,
What it means that My grace is sufficient for thee.
Yes, your dearest dreams overnight would come true,
But, oh, the loss, if you missed what I'm doing in you.

"So, be silent, my child, and in time you will see
That the greatest of gifts is to truly know me.
And though oft My answers seem terribly late,
My most precious answer of all is still . . . Wait."