Moving and Grooving!

• Evan started belly crawling successfully around Monday and it's SO fun to watch him! He promptly found himself in the mirrored closet at our pastor's house on Monday (we were there installing Skype for them) and began giving himself kisses. Video, you ask? Why, yes!

• I had another meltdown last week and realized that my biggest stress is feeling that I should literally be doing multiple (incompatible) things at one time. This was a revelation to me. I feel, for instance, that I should be doing the dishes and nursing at the same time. Or doing dishes, nursing and playing with Lilia. Second motherhood question -- Do you ever feel like that? Is that the cause of a lot of stress? How do you handle it? Jeff and I worked out a system of eating breakfast together and making a small to-do list, then tackling it together. So far it's been totally transformational for me NOT to feel like the whole world of our house is on my shoulders.
• I can't explain it in terms of milestones, but Lilia talks almost like a "big kid" now! It's so crazy! I really enjoy hearing more of what goes on in her head. I am actually loving the negotiations and being-her-own-person stuff. It's not as easy as when she just did everything I said, but it's a lot more interesting and it's making me look at my motives. These kids teach me so much.
• Dear, dear friends hired a housecleaner to scour our house on Monday. I had no idea how utterly life-changing it would be. Wow! Thank you, Mike and Liz!!! I should say, "my meltdown-free week was sponsored by..."

A Scary Post About Motherhood

(I'm telling myself that I will just click "save" rather than "publish" in order to make myself write this post at all.)

Rachel Held Evans has got me thinking again, this time with a post about her fears of motherhood.

The thing that scares me most is that, in a way, they're all true.

• Nothing has ever threatened my marriage like having children. Nothing has made me forget who I am like having children. Nothing has scared me more, pushed me more, hurt me more, or changed me more than motherhood.
• Of course the flip-side that everyone talks about is also true. Most critically, I don't think I knew the depths love could reach until I had children. I have come to a better understanding of grace and communication and priorities and values and pretty much everything else.

How can motherhood unravel me and refine me at the same time? I feel both of those things so keenly and I'm struggling with how to reconcile them.

I was talking about someone at our church nursery changing a poo diaper for me a few months ago and I started to tear up. Why, you ask, would someone cry about a diaper?

Because I am the Poo Person. I am embarrassed to tell you how much of my life revolves around poo, but it's a lot. So when someone else changed a poo diaper it moved me.

Things like this cause me to wonder, Is this what I've come to? I'm a Poo Specialist? What in the hell happened to my life?

Among many other things, I think motherhood can be profoundly disorienting. It's like the love you have for this new little person (or in my case, people) shifts the whole axis of the universe and you don't understand the orbits anymore.

I posted vaguely about some questions I have about motherhood. This first one is not even clear enough to be a question, but it has to do with wondering how being a Christian, an egalitarian and a mother work together in the same space.

Happy Mother's Day!

I just had to share. Happy Mother's Day for me:

• The church nursery gave me a lovely plate with Lilia's handprint and "Happy Mother's Day, 2011" on it.
  
• Jeff made me a gorgeous home made brunch again:
• And my dear Evan turned around in the middle of church, looked at me and said, "Mmmmmammmmma." Big smile.

Perfect day. :)

Questions About Motherhood

I have some questions in my head about motherhood. I'm going to start asking them here. :)

bin Laden, War and Hell

Last night Jeff looked at me and said, "I think I just saw something on MSN that said Osama bin Laden is dead." We were both shocked and waited up for the announcement, and watched in rapt attention as the President explained the events of the day.

It's times like these that I like not having a television, because I knew that TV's everywhere would be showing, "the reaction," and I knew I wanted time for my own reaction to develop without anyone showing me the right way to feel.

My reaction has been surprisingly slow to develop, and to be honest I'm still not sure how I feel.

I was struck by reading Rachel Held Evans' blog on the subject, wherein she made the statement, "Trying to keep in mind that how I respond to the death of my enemies says as much about me as it does about my enemies."

Here are some of my current thoughts:

• Relief is natural and acceptable. I liken this to women who are abused by a partner. They may leave, but there is always a nagging fear that he will find them or get to them somehow. They often feel guilty for the feeling of relief they have if he dies. I think it's perfectly fine, and different than rejoicing in someone's death.
• Our President and military have an extremely difficult job, making decisions about the use of force to protect our country and putting themselves in harms way to carry out those decisions. They have worked so hard at this for so long and I think it's right for them (and previous presidents who worked toward this goal) to feel proud that they have succeeded in their goal after a whole lot of sacrifice on their part.
• My questions about God and Hell have come into greater focus. It's one thing to ask, "Would God send this nice unbelieving person to Hell just for being wrong about Jesus?" and another thing entirely to ask the same question about bin Laden. I still don't know what I believe about Hell.
• I still have a very uneasy relationship with violence. It appears that this was a near-perfect operation with very little "collateral damage," (although I'm still haunted by the statement I read in one article that one woman was killed when she was used as a human shield.) but I still don't know my personal conviction about doing violence to another person. It's a very difficult question.
• I'm uncomfortable with the idea of celebrating someone's death.