Life

belief

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I read a book called Lamb over the weekend.  The author, Christopher Moore, put together a hilarious take on Christ’s life as told by Christ’s best friend, Biff.  It was gritty and colorful (both in its telling and in its language – read: lots of swearing and sexual situations).

I loved that the story was gritty because I believe that life is gritty and raw.  I believe that more often than not, life is messy.  Life is change and evolution and growth and development and loss and loosely controlled chaos.

We are all on the verge of being tagged out of this great game of life – and yet we mostly live our lives with a somewhat misguided belief that we are immortal.  That’s why we’re shocked when something bad happens.

Sure, there are some of us who are better at faking the control.  There are some who might say, “aw, Em, cute – but I have this all wrapped up!”

But I believe for the rest of us, despite our best efforts, we often find ourselves putting out more fires during the day than checking things off of our “to do” lists – and that’s ok.  My dad liked to quote a Beetle (or someone) who said, “Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.”

So I loved the grittiness of Lamb.

And I loved that Jesus had a sense of humor in the story.  Yes, the book still portrayed him as innocent, but I loved that his best friend taught him sarcasm (which he used very moderately in the book).  The Bible is great at telling us a lot about Jesus – what he did, his virtues and character – but I kind of wonder about his sense of humor.  Was he playful?  Did he ever play pranks on the disciples?  I wonder if he ever short sheeted Peter’s bedroll or teepeed John’s tent.  Did Jesus spend time on the banks of the Jordan, hanging out with his friends and pondering some of the great mysteries, like: if Elijah and Moses were in a cage match – who would win?

Why does it matter if Jesus had a sense of humor?  I dunno.  I guess I just like the idea of knowing the person of Jesus – I like to imagine what it would be like if Jesus walked in the door and said hello.  Would he have a booming voice or a quiet disposition?  Would he shake my hand or give me a big hug?

I loved that Lamb painted a picture of Jesus that was so much richer than what I am able to glean from the Bible because so much of the Bible gets lost in cultural translation.  Perhaps there ARE elements of Jesus’ sense of humor embedded in the stories about Him – but humor in each culture is so subtle, it’s hard to pick up just by reading without studying the culture further.  And we all know that when you have to explain the joke, it really becomes less funny anway.  I am sure “That’s what she said” would be completely lost on ancient Jews.  And I can only imagine how future generations will interpret our jokes.

But I also felt convicted while reading Lamb.

Not because I was reading a story that was an irreverent and somewhat scandalous telling of Jesus’ life, but because as I read this story,  I was struck by Biff’s unbelief.  I don’t want to ruin the story in the case that you decide to read it, but generally speaking, I was surprised that this character Biff could literally WALK with Jesus for practically of his life and so miss the point on so many occasions.  It reminded me that I often miss the point.  It reminded me that I so frequently forget who Jesus is and get distracted by my own selfish desires.

I don’t know if the author intended for this result – I think the author wrote this book to provide a humorous explanation for what happened to Jesus between the ages of 6 and 32.  And perhaps the author knew enough Christians to know how many of us often spend all of this time learning about Jesus and God and MISSING THE POINT; there are so many of us who KNOW much, but BELIEVE little.

The disciples didn’t always understand what Jesus meant, but they believed in Him.  They were willing to stake it all on Him.  They believed He was who He said He was.

So yeah – I liked Lamb. It’s not for everyone, but it’s great satire.

three things: walking in the front door

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Please do not judge me for these three things.

Pretty, pretty please.

So these are the three things that happened when I finally got home tonight.

1.  What died in here??

Frank and I have had a few cases of smellasitis.  Basically, it’s when something wreaks to high heaven.  The source of this odoriferous offense?  About 99% of the time it is the garbage and of the times it’s the garbage, about 90% of the time, it’s because I tossed old flowers in there.  When will I learn? When??  I nearly passed out when I walked in the door and knew instantly it was the smell of rotting flowers.  Oh, and did I mention that TODAY was garbage day?  Guess I won’t be using the garage for the rest of the week… yikes!

2. Mail Call.

So, I hate getting the mail. I think there are two experiences that turned me off to the whole “getting the mail” adventure.  First, there was the time that my friend mailed me friendship bread batter.  In a zip lock bag, in a manila envelope.  I’m surprised, quite frankly, that the batter didn’t explode a long time prior to making it to my mailbox.  Or maybe it did explode, but our friendly postal carrier simply didn’t care.  Regardless, I reached in for the mail one day and pulled out… a hand full of soggy batter.  Of course, initially I didn’t know that the white clumpy goo covering my hand was soggy friendship bread batter.  My initial thought was that someone threw up in my mailbox.

Second, there have been reoccurring incidents of spiders.  I do not like bugs.  If you are a bug, I am sorry, but I do not like you.  It’s a blanket statement, but it is 100% true 100% of the time.  Even butterflies sort of creep me out.  I know bugs do lots of great things and I am grateful for their service, but I do not like them.  Anyway, spiders have taken up residence in our mailbox.  I live in fear that when I pull out the mail, I will be greeted by a big black hairy spider.  In my worst nightmares, this spider is spewing friendship bread batter.  I know.  It’s rough being me.

All of this means that I am hesitant to get the mail.  Which means that mail sometimes piles up in our mailbox.  Which probably therefore means that our mail carrier curses when she gets to our mailbox, not knowing if she can jam another piece of mail in there. By the way, she/he does an excellent job – sometimes I have to put my foot on the post of the mailbox and pull really hard to get all of the mail out of there.

So, I got the mail today.  It was only 1/2 full of mail.  Only one bill, one magazine, one catalog and no spiders.  Brilliant!

Speaking of mail: Nordstrom is having their anniversary sale until August 2nd. Are you there Nordstrom?  It’s me, Emily…

3. It’s electric.

Our front hall light switch has always been a little tough to flip.  It catches a little bit when you flip it on.  Then one day it really got stuck, so I just pushed it over anyway … and heard a loud snap.  Since then, that light switch just loosely flaps in the wind and sometimes I am able to turn the light on, but mostly not.  The new development tonight is that if you slam the garage door, the light turns on.  So, that’s fun.

I think it’s about time we have an electrician stop by…

framing

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I had some posters in college that I bought at hole-in-the-wall poster store on Belmont near the El stop.  We liked to go in this store to just poke around and find funny or interesting artwork or kitschy posters.  It was the kind of store where they let you sift through their posters for hours and never bothered you about it.  Just a few shops west of the poster store is the locally (perhaps nationally?) famous restaurant Ann Sathers (yuummmmy cinnamon rolls!) and across the street is Igor’s Dungeon (tawdry sex and drug paraphernalia).  While I was in school, I bought 4 posters from this poster store.  The posters were Romeo and Juliet, Jack Vettriano’s the Singing Butler, the VJ Day Kiss and another with a couple hugging at the train station.  These pictures hung frame-less on the walls of my apartments in college for several years before I moved home after graduation.

When I was moving home, Mom asked me if I had any artwork that I might want framed.  I hesitated when she asked and had to think about it before I remembered these four posters – I guess I hadn’t thought much about framing the posters.  I mean, they were the posters that I sticky-tacked up to the wall in my college apartment.  They were the posters that were part of a bigger wall-collage of sorority paddles and random pictures with friends and inspirational quotes.  I had never thought about these posters as art, but when my mom asked me if I had any artwork, I thought, “yeah, I guess I do!”

My mom does an excellent job decorating, but I was still surprised at what an awesome job she did picking out frames for the posters.  While I would have done something more ordinary (and well, lets’ be real – plain) – she picked out these gorgeous ornate frames.  The pictures that I looked at for years on my apartment wall looked COMPLETELY different in the frames she picked out.  They went from being college dorm-room blah to grown-up chic in less than five minutes.  I smile whenever I look at them because they reminded me of something very important:

How an image is framed changes how you see that image.  We talk about this concept in our culture a lot using phrases like “Perception is reality” and “Attitude is everything.”  The way the pictures were framed changed how I interacted with the pictures, where I place them in my current home and how others saw them.  Artists play with this concept by taking ordinary objects and “framing” those objects differently so that the ordinary objects are perceived as art.

I talked in my previous post about the different themes running through my life right now and that definition is one of those themes.  When I think about how I am defined, I realize that the context is just as important as the content.  I am well aware that the same word in different contexts can mean so many different things.  The question, “Why?” can be insulting, intriguing, lamenting, fatiguing and energizing, all dependent on how the question is asked.

I have a lot of different contexts that I exist in.  Sure, I am a wife and a family member and a friend and a coworker, but what kind of person do I want to be in each of these contexts?  I mean, yes, there are things that will be consistent in each area – I am a Christian in all of these areas.  But what kind of wife, family member, friend and worker do I want to be?  And how do I feel about how each of these categories is shaping up?

I like to say “yes” to everything.  It has been an epic battle for me to say “no” more often.  I think when I was younger, it was probably wise to say yes to a lot of things so that I could have a wider experience, but perhaps it is time to become more selective, picking the projects and paths that are of more interest to me.

I lamented the other day that there was nothing that I am passionate about.  I feel that have spent so much time trying lots of different things that I never really specialized in one area.  Today I was thinking on this topic a little bit more and a few patterns of behavior are emerging that give me a few clues about more dominant personality/skill areas that I could work on.

So yeah.  I know I started rambling, but I guess in a nutshell: I’ve got a lot to work on.  And I will probably write more on this because I feel like I didn’t say everything I wanted to.  But it is late and if I don’t go to sleep my context tomorrow will be viewed through sleep deprived eyes…

things that have really actually happened in the past week

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We ate sugar.  And lots of it. We hosted a cocktail & dessert party and even though we had quite a turn out, our friends are neither the lushes nor the sugar-holics we hoped they were.

Seriously people – if you don’t have to unbutton your pants so you can breathe after a party – did you really have a good time??

We also slept a lot.  A Lot.  Like, more than I thought was normal or possible.  And it was DE-LISH-US.

I have no regrets.

Except about how much sugar I ate.

And how I haven’t gone back to my sugarless lifestyle… I mean… SOMEONE has to eat all of the left overs.

Ahem.

I have also developed an addiction to online Boggle.  You know, the game where the letters get all mixed up and you try to find words in the jumble.  Yeah.  I love that game.  I play it to the exclusion of writing.  Which means there are a LOT of thoughts bumbling around in my head, longing to get out… but then I just ignore it and keep playing Boggle.

Like I said, it’s an addiction.

I also watched an entire TV series called Life.  Sure, it was only 2 seasons long, but it was AWESOME.  And I loved it. Although, ironically while watching Life, I was the one who was desperately in need of getting a real life. Who cares though –  it was something I could get away with while FK was gone.  You know, what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him…

But I think the HUGE pile of unfolded laundry in the basement may have been a tip off.

Although, I was able to drag my lap top around, playing the aforementioned TV show while cleaning the house.  So, you know, I was in the clear for a while.

It’s just that I never made it down to the basement.

Or the giant piles of laundry.

You know how you have those emergency pairs of underwear at the bottom of your drawer?  They are for emergencies because they are SO unattractive, that if seen by others, they actually cause an emergency.

It was a dark time in the K-House, but I will say, I spelled a record 60 words while simultaneously watching Life on Hulu. And cleaning the bathroom.

I’m pretty much amazing.

Yup.

Toot. Toot. (my own horn)

so much to say!

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Ok, in no particular order:

1.  I am running again.  Well, jogging.  Very, very, very slowly.  At this point, it’s as much for my physical health as it is for my emotional health.  I find that when I run, I am able to process things better and have more energy.  So I am committed to running/jogging/moving my booty every other day.

2.  For anyone wondering about my sugarless lifestyle, yes, we are still sugarless in the K House.  I have to say, there have been quite a few moments of weakness, but we are proud that we haven’t caved.  The only sweets we had were for FK’s 30th birthday.  Hey, that’s a pretty special occasion, right?  So we busted out some cinnamon bread pudding and homemade whipped cream.  Soooo good.  I was worried that it would become some kind of gateway drug – you know, leading to other sugary delights – but we stayed the course and did not venture any further into Candyland.

3. There have been lots of different themes floating around in my life.  I want to write extensively on every single theme, but right now is not the time.  Here are some highlights:

a. Definitions.  I’ve been wondering a lot about how to take control about how I’m defined, both by others and more importantly by myself.  This concern is on a personal and professional level.  Personally, I’m not afraid of being defined as someone who has had a very difficult time having children, but I AM afraid of being defined as ONLY that.  And maybe “afraid” is the wrong word.  I think if people only saw me for this trial, that would be a very limited way of looking at me and that I, and others, would miss out on the bigger picture of what God is doing in my life.  I also think about this a lot professionally, too – the woman who did my job previously really only focused on one particular area, whereas I’ve branched out and brought an entirely different skill set to the game.  I’m concerned that my success is being defined only based on area, without taking into consideration all of the other things I’m bringing to the table.  I have ideas on how to resolve my professional dilemma, but it’s a little bit more difficult to resolve the personal side of things.

b. Attitude. I’ve been battling attitude a lot lately.  For a great many reasons, it’s been particularly difficult for me to keep my attitude in check.  The running is helping with cleaning out any emotional overload, allowing me to refocus my energies when I feel myself slipping into a swirling vortex of sadness.  I think it’s a difficult one to balance, though, because I do believe that I need to be where I am, and not rush through it.  Said another way, I’ve spent a lot of my life checking things off of lists.  I like to do that.  But living a life of checking things off of lists sometimes means that I rush through things to just to get through the list.  A conversation I had tonight reminded me that life is really a series of processes and experiences, not a neat and tidy notebook of lists with check marks next to each item. Discontentment is being in one place, but believing that I should be somewhere else.  I kind of wonder if I would be more content if I just said, “Ok, this is where I am today, and that is ok” – with an understanding that I would not be in this same emotional place forever.  What does it look like to live a more contented life?  Hm.

c. Fluidity. In 2004/2005, I was working a lot of hours.  A lot of hours.  Even when I was not at work, I was mentally at work.  My brain was constantly thinking about things going on at the office; looking for solutions to problems I was having.  It doesn’t help that I worked in advertising and our world is inundated with ad messages.  Even if I didn’t want to take work home with me, it was everywhere.  But when I look back at that time and remember trips we took or things we did, I don’t remember the pervasiveness of work.  I just remember the fun things.  It’s amazing how my brain can edit out work and make my memories into a nice, clean 30 minute montage.  So why do I bring that up and what does it have to do with being more fluid?  Well, I realize that I have a selective way of remembering things.  I remember the joys of the simplicity of life being young when I feel overwhelmed.  But when I really remember what it was like to be me in second grade, I also have to remember that I was totally overwhelmed by simple things then (which were not so simple to me at the time).  I remember lying in bed one night, tossing and turning because I forgot to bring a worksheet home from school.  I knew I would get a “zero” for the assignment.  I finally went into my parents room really late at night (probably 10 p.m.) and told my mom what I was thinking about.  She laughed and told me about times when she felt the same way. The adrenaline from worrying about that worksheet left a bitter, metallic taste in my mouth.  The same taste I get even now when I realize I forgot something or am on a tight deadline.  We edit our memories.  Things do seem better in the past and more hopeful in the future.  Life is constant change.  People are born, people die, people move away, people move in… The sooner that I am comfortable with the idea that nothing is permanent in this life, the easier it is to roll with the punches.  I was not born as a person who is comfortable with being fluid, but over time I’ve come to be better with it.  I think being married to a pilot has expedited my personal growth in this area.  Let’s not go crazy though – I have hardly mastered being fluid and I still love a good check list, but in the realm of things I cannot control, learning to be fluid has been an excessively helpful trait.

So yeah.  Just a few thoughts.  No particular order.  More on some of them later.  Or maybe not.  Well, you can be 100% assured that I will likely talk about running and sugar again.  I’m predictable like that.

discipline

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I’m not a very disciplined person in a lot of respects.  I try very hard, but because it is not ingrained in my character, I often FORGET to be disciplined.

And last week was a week of discipline.

Something I’ve had drilled into me in my professional life is to nip things in the bud.  The minute something goes down a wrong path, and before it becomes a habit, you have to nip it in the bud.  Because I don’t like conflict, this was a hard one for me to learn both as a manager and as coworker.  But I have found that people respect you more for speaking up early rather than letting something carry on.  Not saying anything is often viewed as permission-granting.

I’m not perfect at this skill, but I work on it.  And because it runs counter to how I would prefer to live, it takes a certain amount of emotional energy.

The other thing I’ve had to get better at is disciplining my thoughts.  This has been on-going since I was little.  When I first started working on this, I was struggling with anxiety in school.  I would get the syllabus on the first day of school, and see that on the last day of the class there would be a… gasp… FINAL EXAM and I would start wondering how I was going to pass that test.  Seriously?  I hadn’t even been through the course yet.

As I’ve gotten older, and hormones have gotten crazier, I’ve had to work on disciplining where I let my thoughts go.  For example, my dear husband has a horrid schedule for the next 3 weeks.  I’m not going to get into the details for safety issues, but it is TERRIBLE.  Plus, he is supposed to get awarded a base closer to home, but the guy who posts the final awards WENT HOME EARLY on Friday, even though the company stated that it would post the results on Friday at 4 p.m. CST.

My natural bent is to go down the, “We will never have another holiday together.  We will never have another lazy Saturday together.  We will never …” And I definitely start down that road, but then I make myself remember that in a few years I will have mostly forgotten this time that we are going through and that it WILL get better.  Sometimes it takes a huge amount of emotional effort to turn this attitude around.

But it is always worth the effort.

three things: Wisconsin observations

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So I took a little drive up to the great state of Wisconsin, much like many Illinoisans do periodically.  We like to travel up there to make sure that they aren’t up to any funny business – like organizing an army to invade Illinois.

There’s a love-hate relationship between Wisconsin and Illinois.  For anyone not from the Midwest, it probably seems like two hungry super models calling each other fat.  The folks that live on either coast of the USA have no idea what business goes down in the Midwest, and it’s better that way.  The subtleties of Midwestern culture are for a more refined palate.

So, like I was saying, there is a love-hate relationship between Wisconsin and Illinois.  Illinoisans will concede that Wisconsin has a far superior landscape throughout much of the state.  While both states are flat when compared to, say, Colorado, Illinois is far flatter and a lot less pretty to look at.  Wisconsin has lakes and rivers and hills, making it an idyllic situation for weekend get-aways and crazy Uncle Oscars who just want to live alone in the woods gosh-durn-it! As a matter of fact, many Illinoisans have set up a secondary residence in Wisconsin in order to enjoy a more rugged and earthy life experience.  You know, the kind that involves personal watercraft and snowmobiles.

Anywho, Wisconsinites love Illinois for the shopping that can be done at our malls and on Michigan Avenue, and for the money that Illinoisans spend in Wisconsin (both on consumable goods and speeding tickets).   Which brings me to my first thing about Wisconsin.

thing 1: speeding tickets

To all of the Illinois drivers heading north: You know and I know that there is a really good chance that if you have an Illinois plate, you will get pulled over.

However, I want to be clear about why Illinois drivers get tickets.

See, in Wisconsin, the drivers drive exactly the speed limit. The only time they don’t drive the speed limit is when they are driving a combine, in which case they drive considerably slower than the speed limit.

In Illinois, the speed limit is a suggestion for how fast you can go on the shoulder while passing slower moving traffic.  By no means should you ever go anything less than 10 mph over the speed limit in Illinois or someone will shoot you with the gun they use for hunting cats up in Wisconsin.  (OK, no, they do not hunt cats in Wisconsin, but they did try to pass a law to make cat hunting legal.  It failed, narrowly.  ‘Nough said.)

It is the Wisconsinite penchant for driving the speed limit that makes all of the Illinois drivers hurrying off to their cabins for a little rest and relaxation such easy targets: Illinois drivers are going at least 20 miles per hour faster than their Wisconsin cousins.  The police don’t have time to figure out who is from Wisconsin and Illinois when your car is breaking the sound barrier on Interstate 94.

thing 2: abandoned cars

Driving through Wisconsin today, I saw no fewer than 5 abandoned cars on the side of the road in 40 minutes.  I’ve seen two abandoned cars in the past 6 months in Illinois.  What happens to cars in Wisconsin that they are just left on the side of the road??

thing 3: left hand turns

I hate left hand turns. I avoid them at all costs.  I will go around the block in order to avoid a left hand turn.

In Wisconsin, there is something really messed up about turning left.  First of all, the way the medians are set up for left hand turns in Wisconsin has always thrown me.  The medians are set up so that cars making left turns are off-set just enough so that neither car can see any oncoming traffic. After sitting through the light cycle three or four times, I find that I just hit the gas and pray when making a left in Wisconsin. This actually brought me closer to God.

Plus, the U-Turn reigns supreme in Wisconsin.  Instead of turning directly left into a shopping center, they would much prefer that you drive past your destination, do a U-Turn and make a right-hand turn into the parking lot.

Ah, I miss Wisconsin!

weather

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It’s raining and overcast and cool here in Chicagoland today.  It’s about 50 degrees, which is below average for this time of year, although, that is to be expected since we hit 80 last week, well above the average.

Isn’t that what an average is?  Some days are higher, some days are lower… but it all averages out.

Brilliant.

So what does the Chicagoland weather have to do with anything?

“The Weather as a Terrorist”

If you listen to any meteorologist or Chicago native discuss the weather, you’d think that the weather was a terrorist organization.  In the winter we have vicious cold snaps and brutal winter storms.  Truth be told, the winter of 2010 was pretty mild, but you wouldn’t know that listening to the news promos and conversation around the water cooler.  I’ve totally fallen prey to the “Weather as a Terrorist” mentality, often heaving reluctant sighs as I bundled up to go out into the cold.  And in the summer, we have blistering heat and suffocating humidity.  In the spring and fall, we have floods of epic proportions and hail the size of off-road dump trucks.  But an even worse offense than “violent” weather patterns is when the weather is just about 5-10 degrees too cool or too warm.  Oh, the hand wringing and sobbing that happens on the radio and in offices around the city – how could the weather be so cruel as to be BELOW average!

I actually had a conversation with an older woman that helped put me in a more accurate perspective.  I was lamenting about how rainy it has been and she said, “Well, we need it!” And then I remembered that the weather was not just about me and my immediate comfort, but about a whole world that needs seasons, rain, snow storms, and heat.  There are sweet little daisies that are ecstatic to get watered and happy little ducks paddling in the full ponds.

I look at God like the weather sometimes.  In the winter, I forget about the lovely warm sunny summer days and I wonder, angrily gripping my steering wheel, if it will EVER get warm again.  I think that’s how I sometimes go through the trials of this life: wondering if things will EVER get better.

And I can’t help but wonder at myself. Life is full of seasons and cycles and weather.  Sometimes I get into a particularly bad pattern of weather (like now), but unless I lived in Antarctica (and I clearly do not), it’s bound to hit 70 again in the next 365 days.  It is this attitude that I have (and many others have) that explains why God gave us the desire to write down stories.  And not just Pollyanna/sunshine stories, but the stories about times where life SUCKED.  Nearly every single life situation, featuring both suffering and joy, is documented in the Bible.  And guess what?  Sometimes the forecast calls for more “suckage” before it gets better.

The Small Rudder on the Big Ship

So even if you probably wouldn’t have thought much about the weather (unless it was particularly good or particularly bad), we TALK about the weather so much, it’s unavoidable.  “Crappy day outside, hey?” “Yah, bummer, hey?” “Yah.” (I miss Wisconsin!)

What I say about the weather impacts how I feel about the weather, in the same way that what I say about my situation often impacts how I feel about it.  I know, for those of you who THINK before you SPEAK, this probably doesn’t apply to you.  Since I often think out loud, this is totally appropriate.   Just a simple change of my attitude, changes my perspective.

the one where i use an aviation metaphor

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Physically, mentally and emotionally, it’s been rough.  It hasn’t been a crisis of faith, per se, but rather a crisis of HOW to have faith.

I believe in God, check.

I believe that His son Jesus is my Savior, check.

I have found, though, that I sometimes have a hard time figuring out how to look at our recent heartbreak and ongoing struggles to become parents and understand how to deal with it as a Christian.

When I am worked up about everything, I find myself tossed about by these storms and unable to find my bearings.

Which brings me to my aviation metaphor.  Ahem.

As a pilot, Frank has trained extensively.  When he first trained, he learned how to fly visually.  Flying visually is exactly what it sounds like – he would fly only in conditions (clear days, generally) that allowed him to identify landmarks and (most importantly) airports by sight. Flying on clear days is lovely, especially in small planes.

But as a committed pilot with aspirations to fly for airlines, Frank had to take his aviation training to the next level.  He had to learn to fly using only the instruments on the dashboard of the plane.  As part of his training, he actually wore a hood that didn’t allow him to see anything except the instruments in front of him.  He had to do this for two reasons: 1) because sometimes what you think you are seeing is not the whole picture and 2) because sometimes he has to fly in conditions where he won’t be able to visually see landmarks.

One night Frank took me flying.  It was a gorgeous night with a layer of low white clouds under a dome of shimmering stars.  Since there are controls on both sides of the plane, Frank let me take the “wheel” and instructed me to orient the plane so that it would be level with the horizon.  After a few minutes, Frank pointed at one of the instruments that showed how level the plane was relative to the earth.  Even though I thought I had the plane level with the horizon, I was very wrong.  The horizon I thought I was following was really a cloud, not the actual curve of the earth.

It is not enough, sometimes, to fly on sight alone.

Frank’s aviation training is a great metaphor for the grossly uncomfortable position that I am in right now.

Most of the time I can walk in my faith by “sight” alone; I either hear from God or I see landmarks from Him that point the way.  The answers are, for the most part, obvious.

Right now, though, we are stuck in the midst of storms and can’t see the ground or familiar landmarks.  Flying visually is not an option.  We have to rely on faith and the tools that God has given us.

I guess it’s a good idea to keep my seatbelt securely fastened, eh?

mother's day

/ emmykay / Leave a comment

Mother’s Day is coming up around the corner.  This is the second year that I alternately dread the day and love it.

I dread it because it so freshly reminds me of where we are at with our fertility situation.  It reminds me that for so many people, getting pregnant and having the baby is the easy part. It reminds me that our guest room is still just a guest room, not a home to a permanent resident.

I love Mother’s Day because I have a wonderful mom.  My mom is vivacious and bright and beautiful.  She is a fantastic cook, an enthusiastic story-teller and a one-woman party.  If you wonder where I get my “talk to anyone” attitude, it’s from my mom.  I remember being in Washington, DC, waiting to cross a street and Mom struck up a conversation with a complete stranger. Turns out Mom knew a guy who knew someone that this stranger knew.

No one is a stranger to my mom.

She is inclusive and fiercely loyal.  My friends love hanging out with my mom.  She remembers them, she remembers their stories and she always asks them questions about what is going on in their lives.

My husband loves my mom.  I suspect it is largely due to the fact that whenever Mom sees him, she is constantly trying to feed him (this is not something that happens for him in our house… woops!).  I think it’s good that he loves my mom because, as Mom would say, “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree!”

Speaking of that – my mom LOVES sayings.  She says things like:

“That’s why tigers eat their young!” (Do they?  Do they really?  I don’t think they do, but my mom has said that for SO long, I have started to question tigers…)  “There’s a lid for every pot” (not in our house – but I think she was referencing finding a mate, not actual cookware)  “No good deed goes unpunished” (Hm, sadly, I have found that to be true more often than I would like…) “Better to ask for forgiveness instead of permission” (Hmmmm…)

My mom, often in desperation, would tell us things that were not true that still mess with me to this day.  Like, for example, you HAVE to curl your hair to go to the city.  Or that the waiter was going to lock my brother up in the back room if he misbehaved (which explains why Andy would cry whenever he saw a waiter until he was about 18).  Babies crying in church were baby Jesus being born (this really messed me up because we had a giant crucifix at the front of our church + my dad read me time travel stories = I thought Jesus was a time traveling baby and I always wanted to tell warn him about the crucifixion “Don’t do it Jesus! They are going to crucify you!”).

Everything was fun and new and fresh with my mom.  Every day was a new adventure growing up.  My mom let us try a lot of things – this is how I knew I’d never be a horse jockey, a concert cellist, or a professional softball player.  It’s also how I knew what college I wanted to go to, what I wanted to major in and gave me a foundation of skills and knowledge to do all of those things.

When I was little, I loved driving places with my mom.  I remember listening to Elton John and Billy Joel on the radio, bopping along with her as we went to the grocery store or to visit Nani.

On one sunny afternoon, I remember my mom let me get Bubble Tape (6 feet of gum!), even though she hates gum (and bananas and raisins – also called the unholy trinity).  I remember holding the package in my hand, so happy to have this treat.  I looked at the packaging and I looked up at Mom and said, “Hey Mom, you know who makes this gum?” She replied, “No, who?” And I said, very seriously and proudly (I had just learned how to read) said, “Pat Pending!”

My mom laughed so hard that big tears were rolling down her cheeks.  She tried to explain to me what a patent was and what pending meant, but she could hardly get it out.

My mom loves to laugh.  She loves to delight in everyday kinds of things.

I love you Mom!  Happy Mother’s Day!