Elliana's First Month

Elliana Grace Waldron

April 3, 2011, 10:03 p.m.

8 pounds, 3 ounces - 20.75 inches long

Ellie has decided to celebrate her one month birthday by napping all day, so I am celebrating her one month birthday by attempting my first post since she was born. Yesterday, she went on a sleep strike all day long, so I thought I might never shower again, let alone manage a blog post. I am quickly learning that life with a newborn is very different from one day to the next!

It is hard to believe Elliana has already been here for one month. She still feels so tiny and new and fresh, and I still feel so far from from being an "expert" mom. At the same time, it is hard to imagine CJ and I without her - it just feels right that she is part of "us" now.

I love so much about her. I love the full head of hair I didn't expect her to have. I love the way she curls up against my chest and falls asleep, the rhythm of her small chest breathing in and out, the delicate coos and whimpers she makes in her sleep. I love the way her tiny lips curl up in smiles - involuntary or not. I love that I can (sometimes!) calm her down when she is crying, that she feels safe in my arms. I love watching her with her Daddy, love the tenderness in his eyes when he looks at her and the fact that he calls her both "Sweet Pea" and "Stinker Butt." I love the way she holds her hand by her face, pinky finger extended like she is ready for a proper tea. I love the way she makes strangers smile.

Don't get me wrong. The past month hasn't been a rosy walk in the park. Breastfeeding was awful at first, so much so that I thought it could never work for us. Getting up in the middle of the night is never fun. I've felt helpless and overwhelmed, frustrated that Ellie won't sleep, doesn't like the Moby Wrap, isn't eating enough. I've worried about her future, about all that I can't protect her from. CJ and I have fought about parenting decisions. In fact, yesterday at this time I was in tears, telling God that I couldn't do it anymore.

But in spite of the hard times, I am so grateful that God gave us Elliana. She is a beautiful answer to many prayers, and I am honored to be her Mommy.

Thirty Pieces of My Thirty Years #22: Homeschooling

Depending on your background, the word "homeschooling" might conjure up images of prairie dresses, nerdy spelling bee champions, and cultural disconnectedness -- or perhaps more positive pictures of cozy family educational moments around the dining room table, beaming children completely enthralled by their math problems and history projects. While reality includes a little bit of each of these pictures, it is also a lot more complex.

In my experience as a homeschooled child, homeschooling was both normal - in the church culture in which I grew up - and bizarre - to our neighbors and to the friends I met in my ballet class, not to mention the well-meaning strangers who were perplexed to see school-age children walking around the grocery store at noon on a weekday.

Even today, when I happen to mention that I was homeschooled for the majority of my elementary school career, I get varied responses: everything from "But you're so normal!" to "Me too!" to "I always wondered what that would be like." I've grown accustomed to the fact that my homeschooling background makes me somewhat of an oddity in most settings, and I actually rather enjoy the chance to describe my experience to those who are curious and even skeptical.

I tell them about the most commonly-described benefits of homeschooling, about how in contrast to a classroom of 20-30 students, homeschooled students receive the benefit of truly individualized instruction and are able to learn at their own pace. I tell them about how homeschooling allows students space to pursue their own interests and passions, how my "homework" was done by 1 or 2 p.m at the latest, allowing me plenty of time to read for pleasure, write in my journal, and run around outside in the fresh air. I also tell them that homeschooling is definitely not for everyone, how as an educator myself I would never recommend it for every family or every kid.

What I talk about less frequently though - and find more difficult to even notice - is how much my eight years of homeschooling shaped me as a person in so many little ways, mostly for the better, but sometimes making me, well, just a little different :)

Because I was homeschooled,

*I spent thousands more hours with my family than I ever would have otherwise.

*I sometimes felt/feel left out when people talk about elementary school experiences like recess, snow days, field trips, and school lunches. For example, I never got to bring cupcakes to class for my birthday, though I guess I wouldn't have anyway since my birthday is in July.

*I didn't write my name on my school papers until I started attending public school in middle school. I just expected to be known.

*I entered middle school not really knowing how I compared academically to other students. I got to enjoy 7 years of learning without seeing it as a competition or worrying about where I fit in the rankings. Though I would later find a great deal of identity in my scholastic achievements, my early years focused on learning for the sake of learning, a gift for which I am very grateful. I can only imagine how much more achievement-oriented I might be were it not for those years.

*I find it difficult to read novels unless I have the time and space to read them from cover to cover. When I was homeschooled, I read an entire book (usually Nancy Drew or Boxcar Children or the like) each afternoon, and I never really learned how to read a few chapters each day over the course of several weeks. As a result, I still tend to read fiction primarily when I am on vacation or when I can otherwise step away from my responsibilities for at least a few uninterrupted hours. I sometimes wish I had developed a habit of reading a few chapters before bedtime, as I would be able to read a lot more that way.

*Learning with and from my family feels normal to me. They are the first people I call when I have a question about something - be it domestic, theological, practical, scientific, or literary. When we are all together, we love to talk books and ideas.

*I'm comfortable working with and befriending people of lots of different ages. Since I didn't spend my early years surrounded by a large group of my peers, I value being around people both older and younger than me.

*My expectation of life tends to include freedom to pursue my various interests and to spend time with people. Since homeschooling took up such a relatively small portion of my day, I grew up accustomed to lots of "free" time; during busy seasons of life, I have often struggled that "work" takes up so much of my day. Homeschooling spoiled me a bit in that regard.

I am sure there are many more effects I could list; any other homeschooled folks care to add some?

On Being Full Term

As of last Thursday, I am full term in this pregnancy, which means that baby girl could make her arrival on any day, at any time.

Strangely enough though, I find it hard to believe that she actually will come. I mean I know this baby has to come out one way or another and that she will do so sometime in the next month, perhaps much sooner. But since I haven't noticed any contractions, Braxton-Hicks or otherwise, and still feel relatively mobile and energetic, it sometimes seems like I'll just be pregnant forever.

And, to be honest, while I am really excited to meet this baby and to be a mom, part of me is okay with the idea of being pregnant a little while longer. For one, I'm enjoying all the things that won't be possible soon - sleeping in, spontaneous date nights with CJ, baskets of toys that stay clean and put away, uninterrupted time to read, write, and just be. And of course, there are always more things we can do to get ready - meals to freeze, books to read, projects to complete.

But more than that, I'm enjoying a stage of life that I feel like I can understand and manage. I've been pregnant for almost nine months now, and while it was terrifying at first to watch my body changing in ways I couldn't control or predict, I now feel comfortable being pregnant. I've experienced the nausea, the fatigue, the weakened immune system, the round ligament pains, the back pain, the heartburn, and the aches of a stretching body, and I know generally what to expect on a day-to-day basis and how to deal with the various symptoms.

But the moment labor starts, a whole series of unknowns will be set in motion, things I've talked to friends about and read about but ultimately have no personal knowledge of and little control over: labor, delivery, breastfeeding, infant sleep patterns, the temperament of our daughter, my own post-pregnancy hormonal state, how CJ and I will respond to our whole lives being turned upside down.

When I try to imagine any of these upcoming realities, I quickly get stuck. There are just so many things I can't predict or know. Will my labor be long or short? Will I be able to have the natural birth we're planning for or will interventions be necessary? Will our daughter be fussy or calm? Will I be one of the lucky few for whom breastfeeding comes naturally or will it be painful, difficult, perhaps even impossible? How will I handle the lack of sleep? Physically? Spiritually? Emotionally? I could go on and on.

I have enough friends with children to know that there are many possible answers to each of these questions and that the way one area goes will affect many of the others, like a choose-your-own-adventure book, except that in many cases, I won't really have a choice.

CJ tells me that it will be an adventure, that we'll be in it together, that God will help us, that it will be good. I tell him that while I like the idea of adventures, I'm not really all that keen on them when it really comes down to it. I prefer predictability, routine, and the illusion of certainty. I don't like learning how to do things because in doing so, there is the strong possibility of failure. I'd rather be skilled and competent at everything I do. Prideful? Yes. Reality of my heart? Yes again.

So here I sit, these next few months feeling like one big, gaping unknown, part of me enjoying the comforts of my current lived-in, well-known reality, part of me recognizing that God is calling me to trust Him and that it is only in facing the risks of the unknown that the many great joys of motherhood and parenting and family will come.

My prayer is that in the remaining days of this pregnancy, God will help me to let go of my desire for control and safety and give me increased faith for this adventure of many unknowns, that I might experience rest, joy, and hope in the "knowns" of His goodness, faithfulness, and sovereignty.

Thirty Pieces of My Thirty Years #21: Bethany Beach

On the East Coast, or at least in the mid-Atlantic region where I grew up, going on a family beach vacation is a summer ritual right up there with baseball games, ice cream cones, and flip-flops. In Pennsylvania, where I spent my childhood, most families favor Ocean City, Maryland or the Jersey and Delaware shores. In Virginia, where I live now, the Outer Banks seems to be the favored destination.

For our family though, "the beach" has always meant one place - Bethany Beach, Delaware. For years, we rented a place there for a week each summer, and then when I was in high school, my grandparents bought a bayside cottage that I've visited at least once almost every year since, with family, and with friends from college, church small groups, and work.

While I've been to beaches in Maryland, New Jersey, Canada, California, Florida, Hawaii, and the Caribbean, it's hard for me to think of visits to those places, as amazingly beautiful as most of them are, as a true beach vacation. For in the same way that home, with its familiar, well-worn rhythms and rituals, is uniquely comforting, thirty years of trips to Bethany Beach has made it feel like vacation in a way that no other place does.

Part of that is its steadiness throughout the many changes in my own life. Sure, as my dad is quick to lament, dunes now prevent beachgoers from sitting under the boardwalk, and new, trendier restaurants like Five Guys and Baja Beach House have sprung up in recent years. But it is still a small beach, a family beach, and today, like twenty years ago, there are still the quaint, book-lined shelves of Bethany Beach Bookstore, the greasy comfort of Grotto's Pizza, and salt and vinegar laden DB Fries in their signature yellow paper tub.

But perhaps even more important to my conception of Bethany Beach as my vacation spot, it is a place that holds a lifetime of my memories, beginning with childhood visits to the rental house with the spiral staircase. Our family friends the Mellingers often joined us there, all six of us children crammed in the back seat of a station wagon at the end of each long beach day, sun-kissed and sandy, surrounded by piles of towels, beach pails, and boogie boards. When we weren't on the beach, there were bike rides on the boardwalk, endless games of pool and the card game War, and half-hearted attempts to fish and crab in the brown canal waters behind the house. And more often than not, my birthday happened that week, simple homemade chocolate sheetcake and candles, perhaps a present or two, surrounded by family and the closest of family friends. Pure happiness.

My teen memories of the beach are more introverted ones, long, lazy days of reading for pleasure, naps in the sunshine, shopping at the outlets on rainy days, people watching on the boardwalk. A welcome respite from honors classes, track practice, and college applications.

Then, for several years in college, my friends and I descended on my grandparents' beach house the week after exams for what at the time felt like the ultimate experience of community life: Techmo Bowl tournaments, National Geographic puzzle marathons that lasted until 2 a.m., puppy chow making sessions, football and frisbee on the still empty spring beach, laughter, and long conversations about life, love, the ever-looming future. Sweet moments of friendship, of life on the exciting cusp between adolescence and adulthood.

In recent years, the beach has become a place to both retreat from and explore the complexities of an ever-changing life. It is a place where CJ and my sister-in-laws have become, in a deeper sense, family. It is a place where I've gathered with friends to retreat, to pray, to fellowship, and in one case, to grieve. It is the place where I cuddled my baby niece while pondering the early days of the small life growing inside of me, the place where morning sickness first made me run to the toilet. Rich times, painful times, deepening times.

The future, as always, is uncertain. My grandparents are aging, and what might become of the beach house remains unclear. CJ and I are starting a family, and what sort of family vacation traditions we might institute with our own children are yet to be decided. I don't know if I'll spend as much time at Bethany Beach in the next 30 years as I have in the past 30. But I do know that I'm grateful for the gift of a home away from home, a place that has been the backdrop for so many scenes in so many seasons of my life, a place that will always be the storehouse for so many special memories.

Thirty Pieces of My Thirty Years #20: Dad

My mom will often say that she "lost out" when it comes to the temperments of my brothers and I. In contrast to her steady and generally upbeat personality, the three of us, while certainly different in many ways, tend to be more like our dad - emotional, contemplative, deep thinkers who are sometimes downright moody.

When I think of the influence my dad has had on my life, I keep coming back to how much I am like him, the ways in which our brains and hearts work similarly. Some of that may be explained by genetic contributions neither of us had much control over, but I believe that, perhaps because of our many similarities, my dad, more than anyone else, has taught me how to live as the person God made me to be - how to use my strengths, how to rely on God in my weaknesses.

He has shown me that it is okay to cry at the end of Hallmark commercials and in the middle of a small group meeting, that a soft and easily affected heart is a great gift to others - the suffering, the broken, even those for whom tears simply do not come easily.

He has modeled for me what it is like to think big thoughts about God's kingdom and dream big dreams about advancing the gospel, and he has also modeled how to walk in faith and obedience as a visionary who is sometimes misunderstood and often asked by God to wait on His timing and to trust Him when the gaps between vision and reality are overwhelming.

Even though he would never describe himself as "artsy," he has passed on to me his love of books and music and writing. It was his voice through which I first encountered the Adentures of Maxi and Mini, the Chronicles of Narnia, the Bible. It was he who encouraged me to write, who first made me feel like God had given me a gift in that area. And even though he can't carry a tune, he was the one who danced around the living room with me as a toddler, record player at full blast, and who, ignoring my teenage complaints about the country music he often played in the car, taught me to love the sound of a raw acoustic guitar and the rhythms of bluegrass.

Most important of all, he has both modeled and taught me to love Jesus above all else. Morning after morning, I came downstairs to find him already up and in his study, reading his Bible and spending time in prayer. I watched him at church, singing with passion and joy to a person He knew intimately. I listened as he talked to and around my brothers and I about how God influenced his thoughts, actions, and decisions. And time after time, when life has been hard, I have gone to him for counsel and received compassion, hope, and guidance from someone who knows what it means to wrestle with God in deep places and to be pulled up from the pit.

I am blessed to have a dad who knows God and knows me and who, in knowing me, helps me know God.

Thirty Pieces of My Thirty Years #19: Washington DC

When I first moved to the metro DC area the summer after graduating from Penn State, I lived in perpetual awe of the importance and fame of my new hometown. My roommate Rachel and I, both fresh to the city, would often drive down Constitution Avenue at night on our way to visit friends, staring transfixed at the glowing orb that is the Capitol Building dome. In small Hummelstown, Pennsylvania, where I grew up, I knew this view as the backdrop for World News Tonight with Peter Jennings, but now, I lived within miles of the very place where so much world news actually transpired.

In many ways, living in the shadow of power suited me. Unlike my husband, I have never been particularly politically oriented, but I am driven and goal-oriented, qualities I soon found describe the personality of the average Washingtonian. People in DC expect to succeed, and they're willing to sacrifice a lot to that end, something I quickly noticed at my new job teaching middle school English. In Pennsylvania, when I was student teaching, most of the teachers I worked with would line up at the door of the school, waiting for their contract hours to end at 3 p.m. so they could go home. At my new school in Fairfax, most teachers voluntarily stayed and worked in their classrooms until 5, 6, or 7 p.m., sometimes later. As a lifelong overachiever, all of this felt comforting in a way, like I'd found a place where I fit, where I was surrounded by people who were like me.

But in other ways, I struggled. DC is a hard place to find community, which thrives on time, relational energy, and proximity, all of which are lacking in a city characterized by sixty-plus hour work weeks, lengthy commutes, and over-committed people. I made friends, both at work and through religious organizations, but they were scattered and fragmented, often living so far away that even if I had energy to visit them on a weeknight, I would have spent half of my evening driving there and back. I missed my small college town, where no one lived more than ten minutes away, where grabbing a meal or watching a weekly TV show with friends was simple and easy. I often felt tired of trying so hard to connect with people and lonely because I wasn't. There were many times I wanted out - out where the lanes were fewer, the parking lots emptier, the groceries cheaper.

Eight and a half years later though, I am still here. I often wonder why. It's not that I haven't tried to leave. In fact, there have been several times when I've developed an exit strategy (grad school, new job, etc.) only to find doors closing and myself still here in DC. Sure, there have been changes. I've moved a few times within Fairfax County. I've lived with twelve different roommates, including a now-permanent one. I've even tried to make my world smaller by living, working, and going to church within one small Fairfax County community.

But the reality is that I am still here in a place I never really planned to stay. I met my husband here. I own a home here. I am about to have a baby here. I very well may spend most of my life here.

And I'm okay with that, even though I am still not sure I'd choose it out of a catalog of "dream places to live." But having invested almost nine years of my life here, DC is now, for better and for worse, part of me. Were I to leave for smaller, greener country, I'd miss being able to walk to Egyptian, Thai, and Chinese restaurants, not to mention Chipotle and my favorite little local bakery. I'd miss shopping at Trader Joe's and walking around Old Town Alexandria on a warm, spring evening.

But most of all I'd miss the many people, who as I realized at my local baby shower last week, have gradually become a community that, while still fragmented and scattered, has walked with me through the real joys and trials of my post-college years. They've come from scattered places - colleagues at both Frost Middle School and George Mason University, old roommates, friends from Navigators and from church, even friends I met while studying abroad in Cambridge. They don't all know each other, and some of them live further away than I'd like. But in God's kindness, they have made my experience of DC much less about being successful and much more about walking through life with people, even when it's hard.

Thirty Pieces of My Thirty Years #18: Discipleship

Discipleship can be defined simply as following Jesus, living life in obedience to His commands and out of a desire to serve Him. In some Christian circles, the word discipleship is also used to describe the one-on-one relationship between a more mature Christian and a younger Christian, where the more mature believer tries to help the younger Christian grow in his or her faith.

I owe much of my spiritual growth to several women who, over my thirty years, have walked alongside me in this kind of discipleship relationship. I think first, and primarily, of my mom, a joyful, steady homemaker who I know began teaching me to know Jesus before I can remember it. Our's was not a formal discipleship relationship with a regular weekly meeting time or topic, but it was discipleship all the same, eighteen years of living life together in our home and as we interacted with our shared community. The things she taught me were often more by example than by word, but they were rich, important lessons about what it means to be a woman of God. Time after time, I saw her patiently and joyfully lay down her life for her family and friends, wrestle honestly with God through hard things, and humbly admit her weaknesses. And as I watched, God showed me a picture of the kind of woman I want to be some day.

In the first weeks of my freshmen year of college, suddenly on my own and feeling very alone, I met a woman who would disciple me in my pivotal undergraduate years. Karly, a blonde Iowan, was a recent college graduate herself, but in my eyes, she was old and wise and oh-so-grown-up. She did, after all, have a car and a real apartment and a college degree. She also led the freshmen Bible study I ended up joining with the Navigators campus ministry, and she took an interest in getting to know me. We did fun things together - going out for ice cream, playing pranks on some of the guys in our ministry, working out at the campus gym - but we also talked. A lot. We talked about boys and about school and about sharing our faith on campus. Karly had an awesome laugh, one that came deep from her throat and made her nose crinkle, but she was also willing to cry with me about my struggles. During the three years I met with Karly, I learned the importance of talking about my spiritual journey with others on a regular basis, and I caught a vision for investing in other girls, like she had invested herself in me.

The summer before my junior year, I moved to Colorado Springs, Colorado for the summer to participate in what the Navigators called a Summer Training Program (STP). Imagine 50-60 college students living on the grounds of a Christian conference center, working on housekeeping, grounds, and kitchen crews, sharing cramped living quarters, and doing Bible studies and attending services together. Throw in some hikes up Colorado's many fourteeners, some midnight runs to Sonic, and lots of crushes and ultimate frisbee, and you've got the basic idea. That summer, I met with my team leader, an older, married woman named Carol, for regular discipleship times. I liked Carol immediately because she was taller than me, a rare and always delightful occurence in my world, and because she was a natural visionary and leader. I can't remember many of the specific things we talked about that summer, in various Colorado Springs coffee shops and on hikes up red-rocked ridges, but I do remember that Carol saw God-given potential in me, that she encouraged me to use my gifts for God's glory and to dream dreams as big as the Colorado sky.

My senior year of college, after Karly had moved on to pursue other ministry opportunities, I began meeting with the senior staff member of our campus ministry, Cathy. Cathy, who is perhaps the most sincere and caring person I know, wanted to help prepare me for life after college. In her living room and over Cokes at the Arby's in downtown State College, we talked our way through a five-part study on Biblical womanhood. But we also talked about life and about the Bible study I was leading for younger girls on campus, and I think in the end it was those conversations that most prepared me for life after college. Many of the girls in my study were dealing with deep issues like past abuses and depression, and Cathy wisely helped me learn how to help them and who to point them to when I couldn't help. In many ways, it was my first deep taste of the harsh realities of a fallen world, and Cathy's counsel prepared me to care for broken, hurting people - both in my Bible study and for the rest of my life.

After college, I moved from quiet, insulated, central Pennsylvania college town to the sprawling bustle of metropolitan DC. And God sent me Connally, a former English teacher turned Navigator staff member, whose ministry focused on twenty-somethings making the transition from college to career. That, thankfully, included me, and oh what a transition it was. Connally patiently listened to my desperate tales of a life that wasn't turning out the way it was "supposed to" and graciously drew me out about my unfulfilled desires for marriage and community and church. Time after time, God used her ability to understand me better than I understood myself to gently point me toward eternal truths that stood firm in the midst of the internal chaos I was feeling. And she also helped me to realize that I approached life as not only a thinker, but also an artist, a term I never would have applied to myself previously but now embrace as part of God's calling for my life.

I can't think of five more different women. In fact, the only thing they all have in common is that each of them loves Jesus and has committed her life to following Him. But God brought each one to me at the right time and used their particular strengths and gifts that I might grow to know Him more. Through each of them, I have been blessed.

Thirty Pieces of My Thirty Years #17: Teaching

One of my favorite 8th grade classes.

This week marks the start of spring classes at George Mason University. I read my colleagues' messages on Facebook, identifying with the first day jitters and excitement they are reporting, but for the first time in almost 9 years, I'm not headed back to teaching after winter break. Instead of managing a room full of squirrely eighth graders or trying to engage some lethargic second semester freshman in the wonders of Shakepeare, I'm here at home, sipping hot cocoa, blasting my space heater, and getting ready to have a baby.

I'm not sure the reality has really sunk in yet. So far, I just feel like I am on some sort of extended winter break. I'm relishing the time I have to organize our house, set up the nursery, read marriage and parenting books, and write. This time is a real gift to me.

But at some point, I expect, I will wake up one day and realize that I miss teaching. It might come in a few weeks, when the nursery is ready and waiting, when I am left with only the daunting uncertainties of motherhood stretching before me. Or it may come this spring, when my days are consumed with diapers and feedings and the absence of sleep, when even a pile of essays to grade or a classroom full of eighth graders after lunch in the springtime would be a welcome relief. Or perhaps it will take until the fall, when I always feel an almost magical excitement about a new school year, fresh, unmarred, waiting to be unfurled.

The reality is that I've been in school for 25 of my 30 years, either being taught or teaching. My only "real" jobs have been teaching jobs - five years of teaching English at a public middle school, three and a half years teaching composition and literature at George Mason.

And though it has often been very hard, I have loved much about teaching. I have loved putting good books into the hands of my students, loved seeing reluctant readers get hooked on a series and avid readers discovering a new favorite. I have loved the challenge of educating, the impossible task of connecting material with hundreds of different learners and personalities, of making a skill that seems abstract and impossible into one that students see as concrete and possible. I have loved the creative and energetic and sometimes downright goofy part of me that comes out when I am standing in front of a classroom, loved making my students laugh and have fun learning, sometimes in spite of themselves. I have loved the many colleagues who have become friends, loved collaborating with them and laughing and venting and sometimes even crying with them over the ups and downs of the teaching life.

And I have loved my students. Their faces flash before me now, so many of them - Jamie, Mike, Hilary, Cecilia, those whose names I can't remember but whose stories I will never forget. They have inspired me, challenged me, impressed me, and taught me. Because of them, I am more appreciative of God's creativity in making each person unique. Because of them, I am more aware of my impatience and self-righteousness and the ways I will be challenged as a parent. Because of them, I am more conscious of how very blessed I have been and of how very hard life can sometimes be. I could go on and on.

In truth, teaching has been so much a part of my life and my identity as an adult that in some ways, it is hard for me to imagine myself apart from it. When I meet people now and they ask me what I do, I still sometimes say that I am a teacher. It's the answer I've been giving the past eight and a half years, and since I don't really feel like a mother yet, it somehow seems like the most accurate thing to say.

I don't know when I might return to teaching in some sort of official capacity. I may teach a class or two on a part-time basis as soon as the fall; I may teach again when our children are in school themselves. And I may not ever again write the word teacher on my income tax return. The future holds many unknowns. But I do hope that whether I am being paid to stand in front of a classroom or not, I will carry with me the lessons from my teaching years and always be a teacher in the truest sense of the word, helping others to learn and grow and reach their full, God-given potential.

Thirty Pieces of My Thirty Years #16: Lists

These days, I feel distracted, my mind filled with to-do lists, to-research lists, to-buy lists, and to-read lists - all with a looming deadline: 10 more weeks. My brain is constantly spinning, usually bouncing back and forth between several baby-related issues and questions: birthing classes, stroller options, pregnancy exercises, house projects to finish before our little one arrives. I'm not teaching, so I have plenty of time to get things done. And yet, each days seems to slip by so quickly, leaving me frustrated at how many things still haven't been crossed off on all those lists.

I'd like to blame this phenomenon on my maternal nesting impulse, but if you ask my husband and my family, they'll tell you that I am a born list-maker and organizer and that I tend to have more projects on my lists than I will ever be able to complete. In fact, even as a young girl, I distinctly remember daydreaming about how great it would be to one day complete every single task on my list and to just be able to sit back and enjoy having everything done. Now, I realize that a ten year-old making lists and dreaming about completing them is slightly (or perhaps majorly) neurotic, but I'm not making it up. I really thought that way even then.

What's worse is that I haven't stopped. Never mind that I never once in my 30 years have been able to get everything done. Never mind that I feel frustrated by my lists as many days as I feel satisfied by completing things on them. I keep trying. And I keep falling short of my own goals and expectations.

Only in the past few years have I realized how much of my identity and security is wrapped up in lists. If I complete an appropriate number of items on my list, I feel like I've had a good day, like I am sharp and smart and on top of things. If I don't, I feel like a lazy, no-good failure. On a grander scale, I've also realized that I see lists as a sort of safety net. If I think of everything and do everything, I will be prepared for anything, and life will be okay.

The problem is that nowhere in this philosophy is there space for God, the One in whom I should find my identity, the One whose goodness and sovereignty I should trust in the face of reality that no amount of list-completing can ensure that life will be "okay."

His list is a short one: repentance and faith. This is what He asks of me each day. I'm definitely not there yet, but I hope that over the next thirty years, my list will grow to look more like His.

Thirty Pieces of My Thirty Years #15: Baking

Laiko Bahrs once said, "When baking, follow directions. When cooking, follow your own taste."

I prefer baking. Perhaps it is because, as Bahrs and many of my friends have suggested, baking appeals to my sense of order, my love of following directions, my need to do things right.

But I think there is more to it than that. Baking to me is about so much more than exactitude. It is about warmth, comfort, home, sweetness, love, and celebration. Is is about the heat of an open oven in your face and about the smells of yeast and cinnamon and chocolate. Unlike cooking, it is not something that needs to be done (most of us would survive without cookies, bread, pies); it is something we do special occasions: for birthdays, anniversarys, holidays and for when we want to make the everyday a little more special.

When I was a little girl, the women in my mother's family would gather every December for a day of Christmas cookie baking. In my grandmother's farmhouse kitchen, my mother, aunt, great-aunt, grandmother, and cousins would prepare batter for our family favorites: chocolate crinkles, Russian tea cakes, pecan sandies, Dissingers, sand tarts, and peanut blossoms. We'd bake all day, rotating worn cookie sheets in and out of the oven with practiced precision, filling the brown paper lined table with rows and piles of cookies. For my cousins and I, there were plenty of samples to enjoy, but what I loved most was the atmosphere of it all: family gathered in a cozy kitchen, news and stories exchanged while cookies were mixed, rolled, baked, and decorated.

The actual cookies were and continue to be a beloved family Christmas tradition, but I look for them every year not simply because I love their tastes, but because of what they represent to me. Even today, years since the last family baking day, a peanut blossom is more than the perfect blend of peanut butter cookie and chocolate kiss; it is also the taste of family, of my grandmother's kitchen, of love.

Thirty Pieces of My Thirty Years, Continued

Originally I intended to finish this series in July, the month I actually turned 30. Ha. Enter pregnancy, all-day nausea, a nasty month-long cold, end of the semester grading, Christmas, and a New Year's trip to CA. It seems that every time I start writing on this blog, something unexpected happens, and before I know it, months have gone by without a post.

I have about 2.5 months until my duedate, during which time I will not be teaching. One of my goals for this time of rest and preparation is to get in a good routine with writing before the little one arrives. I plan to finish my Thirty Pieces series and mix in some other posts as well...in addition to working on several non-blog projects. I hope some of you are still around and will keep reading!!

The Blessings of the Wait, Part 3

The changes in my soul did not happen, as I often wished they would, in one fell, dramatic swoop, like the sudden, relieving cool that follows a thunderstorm on a humid, summer day. Instead, they came in fits and starts, like the first signs of spring in Northern Virginia where I live, thawing one day followed by icy winds the next, any sense of progress toward warmth and new life passing, for a long time, largely unnoticed.

But somehow, gradually, as the months passed, I began to soften inside, to trust God a little more, to believe with a tiny part of my heart that He was still real and good, to see small glimpses of His presence in spite of the still unanswered prayers.

God showed up in the friends who walked with me during these months, the friends I called on the bad, desperate days when despair threatened to overwhelm me. In particular, He showed up in Randi and in Becca, two friends who were willing to drop what they were doing on multiple days and come sit with me in my sadness. They cried with me. They prayed with me. They watched while I balled up tissue after sodden tissue and listened while I processed emotion after endless emotion. They empathized where they could and were honest enough to admit when they couldn't. They gently spoke truth to my soul.

God showed up in His word, in the stories of the man born blind (John 9) and of Lazarus (John 11), stories that pointed not only to God's ability to heal what is broken, but also to His redemptive purposes in physical pain and sickness and of His tender heart toward His children in the midst of their suffering.

God showed up in the writing of Paula Rinehart (Better than My Dreams), whose words resonated with my writer's heart and reminded me that I am not the author of my own story, but a character in a greater story, a story that is messy and confusing and scary in the middle, but does have an ending where things will evenutally resolve for good.

God showed up in my times with Him, speaking to my heart with a directness that I only rarely experience. He reminded me that this time of waiting was for my good and spoke to me clearly that at least part of the reason He was asking me to wait was because He wanted me to write and knew that if I didn't prioritize that now, before kids, I certainly wouldn't after.

God showed up in my husband, who often did not understand the depth of my disappointment and who often bore the brunt of my frustration and despair, but who continued to patiently and faithfully love me.

I wish I could say that God showing up in all these ways gave me perfect joy and peace as I continued to wait on Him, but the reality is that it didn't. My trust in Him still often faltered and failed, and there were many days where I failed to trace His goodness in any of my circumstances. And yet, I really do believe that though I am far from arriving at a place of trusting God fully, the process of waiting on Him brought a deepening sense of trust in some previously hardened places in my soul, that in some small but significant ways, springtime finally did come.

The Blessings of the Wait, Part 2

The word barren describes an absence of life due to an inability to reproduce. It is not death exactly, but it is akin to death. Death describes a life that has ended; barrenness describes a life that, for whatever reason, cannot be.

Barren was one of the vocabulary words I taught my eighth graders when we read a short story called “Thank You Ma’am” by Langston Hughes. Hughes used the word to describe a city stoop, and in my head, I picture the word barrenness like I picture Hughes’ stoop – dark, shadowy, cracked, and dirty, absent of flowers, light, and beauty.

That’s how barrenness often felt to me too, in the year that CJ and I waited for a child. Each month, I would allow myself to hope, believing that maybe, just maybe, this time would be the time. And month and after month, when I saw the tell-tale signs of an empty womb, I found myself bowled over by a deep and profound sadness, aware that I was, in spite of my deep desire to give life, still barren.

At church, I watched the women with their small children, envying their full arms and busy, bustling pews. In my own row, it was just CJ and I. No diaper bags, no strollers, no children to fill our arms or our laps. Empty.

At small group, where I was the only woman who didn't have kids, I tried my best to participate in conversations even when they veered, as conversations of young moms often (and understandably) do, to topics like cloth diapers and bedtime routines. I'd done enough babysitting to hold my own most of the time, but inside, I felt excluded. Alone.

In my times with God, I sobbed, wondering out loud why He would not answer my prayers, certain that He was holding out on me, perhaps punishing me in some way. Sometimes, I was angry. Sometimes, I felt so sad that I didn't want to get out of bed. Sometimes, I just felt a crushing sense of despair.

One day, I bitterly told CJ how much I hated the word barren. He listened and then looked at me with a gentle and compassionate twinkle in his eye. “There is another word, Abby," he said. "It's a good word. It’s God.”

Paula Reinhart writes in her book Better Than My Dreams about the phrase, “But God…” She describes it as a phrase we must remember when our lives don’t turn out the way we always thought they should. In those moments, we see disappointment, failure, and the absence of God. But, she says, in every story, there is always a "But God...." God is always at work, even in what feels like His absence, bringing good to His children.

In my barrenness, I would come to discover, He was breathing new life into deep places in my soul.

To Be Continued...

The Blessings of the Wait, Part 1

"It is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord." - Lamentations 3:26

If you ask my mom, she will tell you that even when I was a little girl, I wanted to be a mom. If you ask my two younger brothers, they will tell you that even when I was a little girl, I acted like I was already a mom (they wouldn't mean that as a complement, by the way).

Motherhood is always how I have imagined spending the bulk of my adult life. Though I did quite well in high school and planned to attend college, I always assumed that I would grow up to be like my own mother, a stay-at-home mom to multiple children. In fact, even my dreams of marriage were primarily dreams of family. I did not imagine leisurely dinners with my husband after work or the freedom to stay out late and travel. I thought of babies, of little lives that we would work together to care for and nurture, of partnership in creating and maintaining a family. And I assumed all of this would begin as it did for my mother, with marriage shortly after graduation from college and kids in short order.

But, as the story so often goes for so many of us, God had other plans. I've already written about how God used seven years of post-college singleness in my life. But this is a story of another season of waiting for me, a season of trying for and waiting for a pregnancy for almost exactly a year, a season that was thankfully much shorter than my wait for marriage but one that was for me, much more painful.

I've already spilled the beans. You and I both know that this story of waiting will end in pregnancy. But for a whole year, I didn't know the end of the story. I'm not gonna lie. It was a hard year, a year in which my faith wavered so many times, but also a year in which God was faithful so many more times.

I know that it could have been much harder; I know that many, many people have waited much, much longer, are in fact, still waiting. I'm very aware that my good news might make someone else wonder why God hasn't yet answered their own prayers, whether they be for a child or some other unfulfilled desire. The last thing I want to do is make anyone struggle.

But I do want to take the next few posts to tell the story of my year of waiting, for it is ultimately the story of a tender and gracious Father who met me in my distress and who was kind in both unanswered and answered prayers. I tell the story not because I want you to know all about me and my life, but because I want you to know this God, for whom, I have found, it is good to wait.

Waldron Family Update

Well, as you may have noticed, if you still happen to check or subscribe to this blog, it's been over 3 months since I've posted anything! Yikes.

I promise that I do plan to finish my Thirty Pieces series and that I do intend to faithfully post on this blog. However thanks to some wonderful news....

the past few months have required my attention to be devoted to other places, namely my bed and my toilet :)

In all seriousness though, CJ and I are so, so excited about this blessing in our lives and can't wait to meet our baby sometime around March 31. I'll write more about that soon, but for now I just wanted to share our exciting news and let you know that I am very grateful to be feeling more like myself again and plan to work writing back into my schedule starting this week. Check back soon for more posts!

Thirty Pieces of My Thirty Years #14: CJ

A post for my husband - on our second anniversary.

Before we married, I grew to love you for many reasons. I loved you for not being afraid of difficult questions - both as a care group leader and as a person. I loved you for the generosity I saw you display toward me and toward friends and fellow church members. I loved you for relating to my roommates when you were hanging out at our house and for making them feel comfortable being around us. I loved you for the way you fit into my family - making my mom laugh, going hunting with my dad, talking politics, theology, and sports with my brothers. I loved you for making an effort to get to know the many people who are part of my life, how at ease they all seemed to be around you. I loved you for the way your whole face lights up with your smile and for the way you laugh deeply. I loved you for the story you wrote me on our first Valentine's Day, for the creativity and tenderness that showed up in it. I loved you for your steadiness and for all that offers to crazy, up-and-down, emotional me. I loved you for bearing with me through a particularly hard period in my life, for your patience and care for me in the midst of my fears and doubts and yes, lots of tears.

Now, two years later, I love you for all of these reasons and for so many more. I love you for the ways I see God shaping your heart - increasing your vision for ministry, helping you to grow in patience and leadership. I love you for the way you love children, for the way you pursue them until they like you, for the tears in your eyes when you met our baby niece. I love you for the risks I see you taking as you prepare to lead a care group, for your willingness to follow God even when the way forward is not always clear. I love you for your ability to take an idea and make it a reality, even if you've never done it before - for the planters you built in our backyard, for the electrical outlets you've replaced, for the drywall you've patched. I love you for talking to me late at night even when you wanted to go to sleep. I love you for challenging me in areas of my sin that I didn't see - or want to see. I love you for bringing me a glass of water before bed every night and for holding me before we go to sleep. I love you for doing life with me - from exploring the CA coast to making cranberry orange scones to sketching ideas for built-in bookshelves to dreaming about the future. I love you for blessing me with an amazing thirtieth birthday and a whole series of thirtieth birthday celebrations. I love you for knowing me better than anyone ever has, for seeing all of my strengths and weaknesses, and for loving me anyway. I love you for showing me what the love of God is like. I love you for being you.

I loved you then, and I love you more now. I am so grateful for all that God has given me in you, and I look forward to watching our love grow and deepen in the years to come. Happy anniversary, love!

Thirty Pieces of My Thirty Years #13: Small Groups

College Small Group

Career Corps Small Group

Church Singles Small Group

I was talking to a friend today (over Starbucks of course) about small groups and about how my ideas about them and expectations of them have changed over the years...and then a little bit later, I thought - what a perfect topic for my 30 pieces series! I mean, I've been a member of some sort of small group or another for almost 12 years now. If you figure an average of 2-3 small group meetings a month, that's something like 360 small group meetings in the past 12 years (yes, I did need to use my calculator for that one).

As you can see from some of the pictures above, I've been in all girls groups, co-ed singles groups, a faculty group, and young married couples groups (sorry, no pictures of those - maybe that's because everyone's too busy running around after their kids!). I've been in groups that intensively studied a particular book of the Bible, groups that discussed the sermon from church, groups with a particular focus like missions, and yes, a group or two, that wondered somewhat aimlessly from time to time (after all, what group doesn't wonder aimlessly from time to time?). I've been in small groups connected to churches, campus ministry groups, and other Christian organizations. All this to say, I've experienced many different kinds of small groups.

Until recently though, I kind of had this small group ideal I was always looking for and never finding - the group like my freshman Bible study where everyone is best friends and hangs out all the time and does everything together. I was convinced that this is what every worthwhile small group was supposed to be like, a happy little bubble of relational connectedness. The problem was that no small group I joined was ever like that; jobs and commutes and marriages and babies (not to mention sin and brokenness!) all seemed to get in the way.

But in the past few years, I've grown (thanks in part to my much more realistic husband) to finally stop expecting small groups to be these idyllic commune-like experiences (minus the actual commune of course, but with all the warm fuzzies and group love) and to appreciate small groups for what they are - crazy, always transitioning bunches of imperfect, generally messed-up people who sometimes hurt, offend, and disappoint one another but grow together and are used in one another's lives, especially as they work through the hurt, offenses, and disappointments. NOTE: If you are currently or ever have been in a small group with me, this is not a oh-so-subtle hint that I think you are personally messed up; it's just a growing realization that all of us are not so shiny when we get beneath the surface (and that starts with Captain Imperfection a.k.a. me!).

So at 30, I am grateful for the many small groups of people who have walked with me through the ups and downs of the past twelve years, who have encouraged me, prayed for me, challenged me, and provided many laughs and lots of wonderful memories. I look forward too to the many different small group experiences I hope I'll have in the next 30 years, knowing that they too will shape my life and help me grow. I think I'll enjoy them even more now that I've released them from being perfect - and simply expect them to be used by the Lord for good.

Thirty Pieces of My Thirty Years #12: Rachel

Rachel and I with friends in DC (Rudy, Bethany, and Dave)

Visiting Rachel in Arizona (with our good friend Brynne)

When I first met Miss Rachel Kraines, I wasn't so sure we'd be friends. It was the first month of freshmen year, perhaps even the first week. Through a welcome week table, I'd made contact with a Navigator staff woman named Karly, who told me about a freshmen women's Bible study she was leading. I agreed to meet her and some of the other girls who were interested for a trip to a local dairy for ice cream.

As it turned out, the other girls had all met before and were already telling inside jokes about freshmen adventures like making macaroni and cheese in a coffeepot and randomly deciding to try out for the rugby team. Everyone was loud and energetic and full of laughter, and I wasn't sure I fit.

Little did I know at the time that through this very freshmen Bible study, Rachel would quickly grow to become one of my best friends. We were never roommates in college, but we (and our friends Becky and Eva, also from that Bible study) were inseparable throughout our freshmen year, meeting daily in the cafeteria for meals, spending our weekends watching movies, ordering pizza at midnight, and just hanging out. Rachel and I remained close throughout college and ended up deciding to move to DC together after graduation. We were roommates there for a year and a half before Rachel's job moved her to her current hometown of Phoenix, AZ.

Remember how I said in a previous post that I have a lot of friends who are NOT like me? Well Rachel is one of those friends. We share a similar heart and passion for ministry and come from similar families, but our personalities are almost total opposites. Rachel is an off-the-charts extrovert; I love people, but need my space. Rachel loves to be spontaneous; I am a master planner. Rachel's not afraid to try new things or meet new people; it takes effort for me to step out of my comfort zone.

Because Rachel is so different than me, her friendship has challenged me in so many good ways. It's thanks to Rachel that I:

*Engaged in such crazy college activities as "duck hunting" - which involved her, Becky, and I running around a farm we were visiting for a campus ministry retreat to try to catch a duck to put in the guys' cabin. Honestly, I have no idea why that ever sounded like a good idea, but Rachel is the kind of person who can convince you that almost anything will be fun. If it weren't for her, my college career would have certainly been a lot more boring. Rachel taught me that every day could be an adventure and that taking risks could be fun - even if you never did catch a duck.

*Survived my first years in DC. The transition from college to working world wasn't easy for either Rachel or I, but I know that it was so much easier than it might have been thanks to her energy and partnership as we explored our new home and season of life. I'll never forget driving the wrong way down one-way streets in DC, grocery shopping together, putting together boxed furniture on the kitchen floor, and of course, lots and lots of conversations about church, ministry, boys, and work. I learned a lot from Rachel in those years - how to cook with garlic and olive oil, how to decide what meals to make based on what is on sale at the grocery store, how to paint a house, and how to train for a race.

*Ask good questions. When Rachel and I lived together, I watched her with the endless stream of friends and co-workers who showed up at our house. I listened to how she talked with them and how she drew them out about what they were thinking and feeling. And I learned to follow her example. I think this is the most enduring way that Rachel has shaped my life - knowing her taught me to be a good friend, to ask genuine, open-ended questions that invited other to respond.

Thank you Rachel for the many ways you have shaped my life for the better and for the joyful, others-focused way you live your life.

Thirty Pieces of My Thirty Years #11: "Classvictorian"

Me at my high school graduation

Part of me doesn't want to write this post. I'm afraid you'll all think I'm arrogant to include my title as valedictorian of my high school class as one of my thirty pieces. I'm afraid that maybe I am arrogant to call attention to it.

But I can't help but think that if this series is really about the 30 most defining experiences and people in my life, being the valedictorian has to be up there somewhere.

Of course, now that I am thirty and have been out of high school for twelve years (yikes!), no one really cares that I was a valedictorian. It's not on my resume anymore, and I rarely talk about it. If I do, it's to tell the story of the drunken classmate who ran into me on the boardwalk during senior week and gushed with enthusiasm, "It's Abby Martin...the freaking classvictorian."

All that to say I'm not writing this post to convince you that I'm super cool and important because I happened to have the highest GPA of the 200 or so students graduating in 1998 in my small Pennsylvania town. If I ever had delusions that being valedictorian was cool, they pretty much vanished with the "classvictorian" comment. And I'm certain that if I'd gone to school in my current home of Fairfax County, where the schools are bigger and academic programs are stronger, I'd have been lucky to graduate in the top ten or twenty percent of the class.

What I do want to say though is that being the valedictorian did shape me, for better and for worse. Allow me to explain by going back to the beginning of my educational career.

I was home schooled throughout elementary school and only began attending public school full time in the eighth grade, a transition that just happened to coincide with my family's leaving the church we'd been part of my whole life. Though I wouldn't fully realize or be able to name it until years later, these two major changes, along with the all the normal unhappy realities of adolescence, ended up making my teen years a particularly difficult period for me.

You wouldn't have known it from the outside though. I was a straight-A, honor roll student, newspaper editor, Fellowship of Christian Athletes president, and yes, eventually, valedictorian. And in many ways, I was happy in these roles, relished the recognition, the constant reinforcement of awards, praise from teachers, and high grades.

I think though that I used these roles and titles to fend off the emotions I didn't know what to do with - the loneliness of being a newcomer and missing my old friends, the constant confusion about how to fit in and be cool, even the spiritual doubts that I didn't yet know I had.

Being an overachiever game me an identity. I might not have been the prom queen or the basketball star, but I was someone. I mattered. People noticed me (even if it was only to ask if they could copy my homework or be in my group for a project).

In some ways, I see this as God's kindness to me. I didn't know when I started going to public school that I'd do as well academically as I did, but He allowed me to discover gifts that would make a way for me in an unfamiliar place. This was a real kindness to me.

In other ways though, as I suppose is often true of gifts we've been given, I think I clung too tightly to my academic gifts. I allowed them to define me in a way that only God should have. I didn't know who I was apart from busyness and success, a mentality God's been gracious enough to spend much of my twenties undoing (or at least beginning to undo).

From my vantage point now, I am very, very grateful for the many academic gifts God has bestowed on me, gifts I am deeply aware that I do not deserve. I want to use them well. But I am also less and less interested in being defined by them, by measuring success according to titles and accomplishments. I want to be known and to know myself first and foremost as a beloved daughter of the giver of all good gifts and to rest in His acceptance of me apart from what I do.

When I get to heaven, what I hope to hear is not Abby, Valedictorian, but rather Abby, Good and Faithful Servant.

Thirty Pieces of My Thirty Years #10: Ballet

With Joel, Nate, and my Grandpa and Grandma Martin
after one of my dance recitals.

If, at age eight, you'd asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would have told you that I wanted to be a ballerina. Never mind that I would grow up to be far too tall. Never mind that I would turn out to be the least flexible person in my high school gym class (boys included). Never I mind that I have weak ankles. I loved to dance.

I'm not sure if my parents signed me up for ballet classes before or after I started spinning around the house, but I remember that in those days, I often danced my way across the living room and through the kitchen, loving the fluidity and gracefulness of swirls, bends, and arches.

I looked forward to my weekly ballet classes at McCann School of Dance, found joy in learning and practicing my pirouette and frappe, in watching our choreographed recital piece come together week by week. But even then I was an achiever, aware of how I compared to others, wanting to perform well and to please. In the classroom setting, it was hard for me to let go and simply dance.

Church, however, was different. On Sunday mornings in the fire hall where our congregation met at the time, I usually slipped away from the front row where my family sat and headed to an empty space at the back of the “sanctuary,” behind the rows of folding chairs and near a Coke machine and the doors to the firehouse kitchen. This was my space to be with God, close enough to taste the energy of the crowd, yet out of their sight. Sometimes a few other girls joined me, but when they did, I danced beside them, not with them. It was just me and God, me dancing for God, Him smiling down, delighting in me.

During the fast songs, I skipped, and I twirled. With outstretched arms, I grand-jetéd across the floor, leaping into a spin that left me both breathless and light-headed at its conclusion. I don’t know if I had seen The Sound of Music at this age, but when I recall the moment now, I see myself as Maria, frolicking through the hills of Austria, tasting freedom in every step and turn of my body.

My favorites though were the slower songs. With the first strummed chords of a song called “Give Me One Pure and Holy Passion,” I felt as though I were a beautiful ballerina, delicate and tender, passionate yet controlled, the steps I had learned in my classes providing language to express the depths of my soul. I bowed before God in plea, moved toward Him through tendu, and then spun into His arms with a pirouette. Always, I reached for Him with my puny arms, grasped for Him with my gently curved fingertips. And while I danced, I sang:

Give me one pure and holy passion
Give me one magnificent obsession
Jesus, give me one glorious ambition for my life
To know and follow hard after You.

In those moments, though my faith was young and untested, I think I grasped something of the delight that can be found in knowing God, of the freedom that comes from His love. When I danced with God, I did not worry about making a mistake or trying to impress Him. I simply knew what it is often so hard for me to grasp now - that God delighted in me just as I was and that in His love, I could dance.

Note: Part of this essay was excerpted from my thesis project.