Balance

Balance is a big thing for a lot of people. For parents of small children, I think it's one of the most important things in the world. And one of the hardest.

We're constantly balancing: nutrition, budget, personal care, fun, sleep, routines, the list goes on and on. Mostly I think what we're doing is trying to be sure that every member of our family is healthy and cared for -- spiritually, emotionally, physically, etc. Before you have children, a lot of building your family consists of learning to recognize and care for your own needs and your spouse's needs. But when children come, the balancing act begins! Everyone needs sleep, everyone needs fun, everyone needs independent time and interaction and good food and a prayer life and exercise. Everyone needs to feel loved and cared for. The kids are important, the parents are important, the marriage is important.

We've found that the vast majority of parenting advice/literature falls into two categories: ignoring the children's needs in favor of the parents or ignoring the parents' needs in favor of the children! It's hard out there for a family that wants to walk a middle ground and recognize that everyone is important.

This last month has been difficult in terms of balance, and we kind of hit bottom before we started to change our ways. We've been struggling to get ready for baby #2 while balancing the needs of baby #1, a pregnant mommy, and a daddy who is having to take up a lot of slack at home while holding down a job with 10-hour shifts. Here are a few things that are working for us right now:

• Putting first things (literally) first. I've been doing whatever it takes to start my day by eating a good breakfast, reading my Bible and putting Pandora worship on first thing in the morning. Changing my life.
• Talking. Jeff and I frequently ask each other, "How are you doing? What do you need right now?" and even, "What can I do that will make you feel loved?" It helps so much to stay on the same page and feel like real partners.
• Setting aside time to do nothing. Doing nothing was really missing in our lives. We were constantly going. It almost killed us. Now rather than waiting until everything is finished in order to relax, we're just setting aside time without everything being done. Because it will never all be done!
• Changing scenery. We've found a little money here and there to go grab dinner as a family at Costco, or just time to leave the house for a while. It's really nice.
• Investing in long-term time savings. This is a hard thing to fit in and I'm not sure we've got it right, but we've been thinking of ways to simplify things longer term. Getting an in-house water filtration system so we don't have to keep going to buy water at the store, cooking for the freezer in large quantities so we don't have to make dinner every night, organizing things so they're easier to get to, use, put away properly.
  

What's working for you? Let's share ideas! Here's to balancing and nurturing everyone in our families!

Valentine's Day

Well, it's Valentine's Day. I wish I could say that I hate Valentine's Day so I don't care that we don't get to be together, but I love Valentine's Day! I'm really sad that I can't be with my beloved hubbie today, but I'm so proud of him that he's doing such a great job in his "new" career.

I hate it when people say that they don't like Valentine's Day because you should celebrate your love every day. Of course you should celebrate your love every day, but you should also give thanks every day, appreciate your family every day, etc. and that doesn't stop us from having holidays that celebrate these things! We work very hard to keep our holidays and family events "especially special" and to make traditions in our family that are significant. We believe that traditions are an important part of family life because they provide rhythm and richness to our lives.

Anyway, off my soapbox. Now I just want to say that I can't believe how blessed I am to spend every day with the most amazing person I know, and the only person I could ever imagine myself partnering with to build a life. Sometimes it feels like we're little working ants just slogging away, trying to be faithful and build the life God has for us, but when I step back I really appreciate our situation. Jeff came home recently and said, "What we have is so rare." I couldn't agree more and I appreciate every single day of it.

Thank you, Babe, for the best adventure I could have imagined. I would rather hang out with you than anyone else in the world and I couldn't be happier to build this family with you.

Marriage Mysteries

A friend of mine recently sent me a very interesting review from the New Yorker about Elizabeth Gilbert's (Eat, Pray Love) new memoir, Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage. It was a lot to chew on and this blog has been rolling around in my head since I read it.

Marriage is a tough issue for someone like me, who often walks a narrow way between various party lines. I'm an egalitarian, a Christian, a thinker, a hopeless romantic, an independent woman, a stay-at-home mom. Things like marriage can be difficult to reconcile because, although I want desperately to believe in it, marriage has a lot of strikes against it. The article I referenced does a great job of outlining them: First there's its less-than-romantic history as a business deal along the lines of the slave trade. Then there's the "Marriage Benefit Imbalance." That's the worst part for me. Here's a quote from Gilbert's book included in the article:

Married men live longer than single men; . . . married men accumulate more wealth than single men; married men are far less likely to die a violent death than single men; married men report themselves to be much happier than single men; and married men suffer less from alcoholism, drug addiction, and depression than do single men.

And a summary of the female side of the equation:

Yet married women are more likely to suffer from depression than single women are. According to Gilbert, married women are not as successful in their careers as single women. Married women are arguably less healthy than single women. Married women, until recently, were more likely to die a violent death than single women—usually, at the hands of their own husbands.

Well, that's cheery for us married girls. Less happy, less successful, more likely to be depressed, less healthy, more likely to be murdered....

Is there any hope for the institution of marriage? I believe there is. I think the crux of the issue is when and how you think marriage began. Is it, in fact "a relic from a time when we needed an arrangement to manage property and reproduction and, crucially, to establish kinships for purposes of defense: safety in numbers."? I believe the history of marriage is older and richer than that. And I believe that it predates sexism. I believe marriage is as old as humanity, was intended to reflect God Himself, and has become as corrupt as all of humankind.

It is error both on the side of feminists and traditionalists to believe that marriage is intended to make women less and men more. I feel strongly that God intended marriage to be freeing, mysterious and even humbling to both parties involved. In my study of the subject I have come to discover that God meant marriage to overcome our desire to control one another, and instead to learn to inspire one another, support one another, lift each other up and even serve one another. I've often heard the argument that "every ship has to have a captain," but I believe marriage was intended to prove that idea wrong in itself -- to help us understand that we don't have to be the captain of the ship! That every game need not have a winner and a loser, but that we can raise each other up to great heights when we let go of our need to be in charge of each other, or to know who has the final say.

I was speaking with my sister, who is getting married this year, about losing your trump card. You give a person a lot of power in your life when you relinquish the power to leave them and choose another. And I agree wholeheartedly that that power is often abused to the detriment of women. But it can also be the beginning of something beautiful: of loving someone because you want to, and not out of fear that they will leave or choose someone else.

My own marriage has been one of the most profound learning experiences of my life. As Jeff and I have come to enter each other's private worlds as no one has before, we have discovered a depth of trust that we've never achieved with anyone else. No one has ever been on my side the way Jeff is. He loves me and challenges me and inspires me and serves me even when he has nothing to gain at all, not even under the threat of losing me. It's a profound love that walks through the mundane with a person day after day. And if we never learn to walk beside each other without "taking charge," we miss the entire point.