Fifteen Months

Your favorite word right now is "go-go." 

You say it first thing in the morning, your pajama-clad little self pointing eagerly at the front door, ready to get outside and go.  It doesn't matter where really.  You are equally content to walk in circles around our little court, babbling and swinging your arms back and forth with delight, or to go on a trek to one of our local playgrounds, holding my hand and toddling your way toward adventures in mulch piling and climbing and occasionally a few moments of sitting still in a swing. You are happy outside.  To me, you seem most at home there.

You say it at the pool, after we've spent an hour splashing and dumping cups of water, but mostly climbing in and out over and over again, walking countless laps around the baby pool, climbing on and off the chairs with the plastic slats that so fascinate you.  You point at the "big pool," watching the older kids jumping and swimming.  You are ready to join them.

You say it when Daddy comes home from work, when dinner's over, when bedtime is just an hour away.  You are still ready to go then, ready for whatever little taste of adventure we can offer you - a walk to the mailbox, an evening stroll, a few minutes of fresh air while Daddy waters the garden in the backyard.  You just want to go.

I love how you love life, baby girl, how you run hard into each day, confident that as you "go-go," there is fun to be found, joy to discover.  I love how you take me with you, how your adventures and your joy become mine too.

One Year Old

Last night, the night before your first birthday, I sat with you in the glider in your room, fed you your bottle, and then picked you up and placed your head on my shoulder, the fuzzy pink blanket you sleep with nestled between us. Usually, when I try to do this, you sit up and start looking around; you are used to falling asleep on your own in your crib.

But last night, you must have been extra tired because you kept your head on my shoulder and fell right asleep while I sang the verses of "Amazing Grace" to you softly, as I have done almost every night this past year. Your freshly washed hair rested on my cheek, and I could feel the steady rhythm of your breathing against me. By the time I finished singing, you were in a deep sleep, your body resting heavier and heavier upon me. I did not want to put you in your crib yet, wanted to enjoy one of the increasingly rare moments where I get to hold you in your sleep, so I sat with you and rocked you and thought about my almost one year old baby and the year we have shared.

One year ago on a Saturday night; your Daddy and I were busy working in the basement, trying to finish a few last-minute projects before you arrived. I, all nine plus pregnant months of me, was sitting on the floor with a hot glue gun, trying to repair a pull in the carpet, wondering if you would ever come. And then, early Sunday morning, I awoke to my water breaking, and I was nervous and shaking, though I had no contractions yet, because I knew that the next day would change everything.

And change everything it has, my Ellie girl. We've had quite a year with you, and it's been full of many challenges - a labor that wouldn't start, a C-section, breastfeeding problems, food intolerances, too-short naps, battles to teach you to put yourself to sleep instead of standing up in your crib and screaming. In many ways, it's been the hardest year of my life because I've had to learn to experiment, to fail, to not know what the right thing is to do. And for a Mommy who loves structure, order, and rules, it's been hard.

And yet, Ellie, when I look back on this past year, I don't see it as the hardest year of my life; I see it as one of the best. And that's because of you and the joy you have brought to your Daddy and I. There are so many sweet memories from this year: sleepy newborn snuggles, first smiles and laughs, watching you learn to hold toys and roll over and crawl and sit up and stand up and walk, observing your tenacity in all these things. We love how you love life, how you busily engage it, how you don't want to miss a thing. We love how you interact with us, sticking your chubby arms straight up in the air when we say, "How big is Ellie?" and shaking your head back and forth in hopes of getting us to do the same. We love your hugs and your big, wet, slobbery kisses. We love the snuggles we can steal from you every now and then, when you stop moving long enough to pause in our arms for a few seconds. We love you.

 There have been real trials this year. There have been deep joys. But looking back, I can't imagine it any other way, can't imagine any other baby being part of our family. The trials and joys are both part of the gift of you, and I am so very, very grateful.

Thirty Pieces of My Thirty Years #27: Liz

On my first day as a middle school teacher, new to Northern Virginia and to teaching, nervous and tentative about establishing my authority, making a positive impression on my students, my outfit, and pretty much everything, I joined a group of teachers I was beginning to know for lunch. 

One of them, an outgoing young woman I'd been introduced to as Liz, mentioned in passing that she had gone to Bucknell University.  Trying to make conversation, I told her that my brother was currently a student there.  She asked what his name was, and I told her, knowing that he had to be at least three years younger than her, knowing there was no way that she would know him.  Her response:  "I have a picture of him in my classroom!"

It was then that I learned my first lesson about Miss Liz Woo.  She knows everyone.  With Kevin Bacon, there are six degrees of seperation; with Liz Woo, there are maybe two. 

As it turns out, she did know my brother Joel as they had participated in the same campus ministry, and the picture in her classroom was not as creepy as it originally sounded.  It was a group shot of a bunch of friends together.

And so began my friendship with Liz, a friendship that will turn ten years old this fall, a friendship that is deep and tested and rich.  We have taught the same students with classrooms a few doors apart, worked on the same teaching team, participated in the same small group, and carpooled to work together.  We've walked with each other through years of unintentional singleness, through relational conflict, through the deaths of both of Liz's parents, through infertility, and through other trials and pains, big and small.  Liz has taught me how to cook Korean food and acquainted me with insider DCisms such as the dueling Christmas light displays in Annandale and bubble tea, to name just a few.  I introduced Liz to her husband, a friend of mine from college.  She and Colin got married a little over a year before CJ and I.  We had our first children, daughters, less than three months apart.

To me, knowing Liz and living in DC are one and the same.  I do not know one without the other.  That's why I can't make the thought of Liz, Colin, and their adorable daughter moving away this summer stick, no matter how many times she tells me that it really will be so.  I cannot imagine living here without Liz. 

Or perhaps it is not true that I cannot imagine it; it's rather that I don't want to.  I don't want to imagine the many dinner parties and gatherings with friends that won't happen because Liz will not be there to plan them.  I don't want to imagine months going by without the taste of Liz's amazing cooking.  I don't want to imagine not being able to meet at Connally's for lunch or for a walk in Old Town.  I don't want to imagine our daughters not growing up together.  I don't want to imagine our lives being lived in different places.

I will miss you friend.  You love faithfully and generously.  You make strangers friends.  You are still walking with God when it would have been so easy to let go.  Your friendship has been a sweet, sweet gift, and I count it one of the greatest treasures of my thirty years.

Thirty Pieces of My Thirty Years #26: Church

Ok, it's getting ridiculous, I know.  I've stopped and started this series too many times!  But my husband keeps asking me to finish it, and I'd really like to...even though I'm now well into my thirties!  So here we go one more time...hopefully this will be the final run.

My current church, Sovereign Grace Church of Fairfax.

Church, for me, has always been.  I wrote earlier about how I've been in school for twenty-five of my thirty years.  Well, I've been in church for thirty of my thirty years.

I am a pastor's daughter.  I remember dancing to worship music when I couldn't have been more than four years old.  I remember the children's classes I attended when I was too young to sit through the sermon, remember in particular that I once got my entire class to laugh by announcing how funny it would have been if my name were Gertrude.  I am pretty sure I learned many very important things in those classes, but that is what I remember.

I've written extensively about my relationship to church, an entire master's thesis, in fact, so the idea of crafting a blog post that describes how church has impacted the first thirty years of my life feels, well, daunting to say the least. 

If I had to sum it up in a sentences though, it would go something like this: 

Because of church, I've always known that life is meant to be lived in community, not only with your immediate family, but with a broader group of people who both know and love you. 

Because of church, I've known that as rich as this community can be, it is also tenuous and fragile.  I've known that, as with all things that offer great gain, there is also the potential for great loss.

Because of church, I've encountered the presence of a living God, known what it is like to feel holiness brush against my shoulder. 

Because of church, I've not been able to sustain any illusions about my own holiness or the holiness of Christians in general; real people rubbing real shoulders equals a real mess (and real, genuine good too).

Because of church, I met my husband.

Because of church, I don't expect to sleep in on Sundays.

Because of church, with all its warts and wrinkles, I know God more.

Eleven Months

There's no denying it now, Ellie Girl.  You are more of a toddler than you are a baby.  You can totter your way across the room without falling or needing support.  You are beginning to understand language, whispering a raspy "hiiyyyy" when you see yourself in a mirror, repeating a decisive "puh" after me when I ask you to say please instead of fussing to get what you want. 

Lately, you've taken an interest in reading books, handing them to me one after the other, sometimes the same one again and again, listening attentively while you stand next to me.  Sometimes, you even stop moving long enough to actually snuggle into my lap, your warm little body relaxing into me.

Mostly though, you move.  You walk.  You push chairs around on the hardwood floors.  You bang and shake things.  You love anything that makes noise.  You fall often, but you rarely cry.  When your little friends hit or push you, you don't even notice.  To be fair, you do your own share of hair grabbing and toy stealing.  You're a tough little girl, just like your Daddy's been saying since day one of your life when you wouldn't let the pediatric resident shine her light in your eyes.

And oh Ellie Girl, we love you so much.  Don't get me wrong.  We miss our uninterrupted sleep.  We miss our long, quiet, productive Saturdays.  We miss being able to sit through sermons on Sunday and making plans without having to get a babysitter.  But the gift of you is a greater and richer joy than any of these things.  You delight us.

Ten Months

When Ellie was first born, I held her tiny body against my chest, her little legs folded up under her, her head nestled against my shoulder. 

As a first-time parent, I had a hard time imagining that she would ever be anything but this little baby I was only just beginning to know.  It seemed impossible to me that she who could barely lift her head would ever be able to roll over, let alone walk, that the whimpers and coos she produced would ever turn into words I would understand.  I tried to imagine her with a backpack on her first day of kindergarten, talking to me about boys in high school, going off to college, but I could not.  All I could see was this baby who demanded to be fed every few hours, whose cries I could not yet understand.

And so, in my desperation to define my new role as a parent, to establish the expectations for daily life that make me feel safe, I thought, "So this is what being a parent is."  I knew that Ellie would not always take an hour to eat, would one day sleep straight through the night, would eventually stop spitting up, but it really, truly felt like my new job as a mother would always be defined by the challenges I faced at the time.

Only recently, as Ellie takes her first steps and experiments with her first words, have I been able to see her as more than a baby.  She is a baby still, but she is toddling and babbling her way toward maturity.  When I look at her, I see her as she is now, my eager little adventurer, but I can also see her as she will be, imagine her coloring and speaking in sentences and running on the playground. 

I know now that she is unfolding before my eyes daily, that my role as a parent is changing as fast as she is.  I know now that spit-up does cease and that nighttime sleep eventually improves.  I know too that she no longer fits into a little warm bundle on my chest, that to watch her grow is to both gain and lose.

Parenting Paradoxes

I have been editing photos the past few nights, sorting through hundreds of images of the last several months:  Ellie in her pink teddy bear suit at the Christmas tree farm, our little family in front of the National Christmas tree, my little squirmer sitting still in the arms of her fragile great-grandfather.

These are sweet images, special memories, moments captured but fleeting.  Already, my baby is not really a baby.  She has teeth.  She's taken her first step.  She can feed herself. 

It goes so quickly, everyone tells you; enjoy it.  And it's true.  I know that I'll blink, and Ellie will be one year old.  I know I'll miss her at this stage, when she still occasionally falls asleep in my arms, when her world is so thrillingly fresh, when she thinks I'm pretty much the greatest person ever.

It is going quickly, but it is also slow.  The days at home, just the two of us, when I often don't even take out my camera because it all feels so mundane - those days are often long.  The introvert in me screams for more quiet moments than my power napper permits me.  Too often, I count the hours, the minutes until naptime and then until Daddy's return from work.

Life with Ellie is full, and this is both sweet and exhausting.  I must die to myself daily, but I receive the gift of participation in the miraculous blossoming of new life.

Nine Months Today

She moves, this baby.  She doesn't like to be in any one place for too long.

She fights her sleep, doesn't want to miss a thing.

She's determined, my little girl.  When she sets her mind on something, she purses her lips together, fixes her gaze, and doesn't stop until she conquers - stairs, standing, walking behind her push toy, pushing purple sweet potato puffs into her mouth with her pudgy little fingers.

It makes sense, I suppose.  Her father and I are both determined in our own ways - me irrationally stubborn, him doggedly persistent.  My mom says that Ellie has me beat though, and I have to agree. I am quick to quit when I don't think I'll suceed at something, afraid to fail.

Not my Ellie girl.  If she falls down, she doesn't even flinch, just pushes herself back up and goes at it again.

I know I should fear this determination, know it will make parenting her difficult at points, but mostly I am proud of her. 

It fills me with awe to watch her, this baby that God made, the persistence that He built into her little soul.  He put it there for a reason, I know, and I pray for wisdom to shape it and a life long enough to see Him use it for good.

God in the Mess, Part Two

“Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy

and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven,

where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal.

For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." - Matthew 6:19-20

Ellie's spit-up hits the floor with a slap, a puddle of curdled milk on my recently cleaned hardwood floors.  I know that the process of wiping it up will not only soil yet another burp cloth from the stack that just came out of the wash, but that it will also leave an unsightly smear on the floor's shiny surface, the very one I worked so hard to achieve.

"Oh Ellie," I sigh, shifting her to my left hip, squatting down to clean up the mess with my right hand.  Part of me feels bad for her, for the discomfort the spit-up must be to her, but mostly, I am tired of dealing with it, tired of the ways it messes with my neat little world.

***

When I read Matthew 6, I usually think about money and worldly possessions, about wanting more stuff and pouring too much energy into getting it.  I tend to think it doesn't have much to say to me.  After all, I'm content with my '97 Saturn, power locks and sunroof long since broken, gold interior fabric drooping from the ceiling.  I don't buy (or want to buy) Coach purses.  I cut coupons. 
 
But Jesus doesn't define treasure so narrowly.  Based on the context of the passage, He defines treasure as anything that captures our hearts, anything that is of earthly value, anything that won't last until eternity.  That includes my shiny hardwood floors.  It includes my new $10 shirt from Target that Ellie stains with her spit-up.  It includes my image of a perfectly clean and tidy little house, an image that I work very hard to "lay up for myself."  These are things I treasure.  They are things Jesus says I should not treasure.
 
This is one way that God is present in the mess.  He is using Ellie's spit-up and her toys all over the floor and her baby food finger painting to remind me that my treasures of neatness and order can be destroyed and stolen, that my heart must be captivated by greater treasure.

God in the Mess, Part 1

Right now, I feel like I spend my entire life cleaning up messes.  My daughter spits up some forty to fifty times a day, spewing vomit on her clothes, my clothes, our furniture, the carpet, the hardwood floors, her toys, her car seat, pretty much anything that comes within a few feet of her mouth. 

After months of this, I've gotten used to the perpetual damp patches on my clothes, to the smell of halfway digested milk that lingers everywhere.  I don't even bother to change my clothes anymore unless I am completely soaked.

But now that Ellie's started solid foods, her spit-up messes are not only wet and stinky; they also stain.  I have to inspect each piece of our family's clothing before it goes into and after it comes out of the washer, pre-treating green, orange, and brown stains, making sure they have come out in the wash. 

Sometimes, when I watch her pea and carrot puree make its way back out of her mouth and onto the cute little off-white onesie I just finally got all the stains out of the day before, I want to cry.  Sometimes, I do.

Naptime and nighttime, when Ellie is sleeping soundly in her crib, are pretty much the only times of the day that I am safe from spit-up.  Even then though, there is cleaning to do - toys to be picked up and sanitized, laundry to fold, cloth diapers to wash, a dishwasher to unload, bathrooms to be scrubbed.

The hardest part for me is that it never ends.  Before kids, I could do laundry on the weekend and not have to touch it again until the next week.  I could clean the whole house one day and not have to worry about it for two weeks.  There wasn't much to tidy as CJ and I spent most of our time working and are pretty good at picking up after ourselves as we go.  No longer.  I hate living in a perpetual mess, feeling like I am always losing the battle against dirt and disorder. 

But this is where I live these days, with a burp cloth in hand and Oxy Clean my trusty laundry companion.  I want to believe that God is here too, that somehow there is meaning and purpose in the seemingly never-ending piles of laundry and dishes, in wiping up Ellie's 221st spit-up of the week.  It is hard though, hard to see where the eternal meets the mundane, where there is significance in these tasks that, to be honest, sometimes feel below my pay grade.

Psalm 118:24 says, "This is the day the Lord has made; I will rejoice and be glad in it."  I don't know how to rejoice in spit-up.  But I want to.  God's been giving me a few glimpses of what that looks like, but I have a long, long way to go.  So I'm going to do what I've always done when I'm in the process of learning something.  I'm going to write my way through.  And I'm going to write about it on the blog, in hopes that as I seek God in the very literal messes in my life, others might find Him in their messes too.

More to come soon...

Eternal Productivity

Sometimes it is easier to make pumpkin chocolate chip muffins than to spend time with God.

Sometimes it is easier to spend half an hour arranging gourds, leaves, and little bouquets of mums than it is to spend half an hour praying.

Sometimes it is easier to catch up on e-mails than it is to write in my journal.

* * *

I’ve always had a hard time prioritizing time with God. In comparison with all of the many other things I can spend time doing, it seems so unproductive. At the end of a baking, decorating, or e-mail session, I have muffins, a centerpiece, or an empty e-mail box to point to as proof of time well spent. At the end of time with God, there is no tangible record of my efforts. I know it is important to feed my soul, but to be honest, sometimes, I feel like it’s more important to get something done.

Being a mom has only made this already existing tendency worse. My time is more limited than ever before, and I have more things to do than ever before. When Ellie goes down for a nap, I’m desperate to make a dent in the list of things I’ve been wanting to tackle all morning – shower, lunch, laundry, dinner preparation, cleaning dried-on spit-up off the hardwood floors. Anything can seem more appealing, more important than choosing to sit and quiet my heart before the Lord.

* * *

It is easy to deceive myself, to think that I am being a good mother by all of this busyness - making Ellie homemade baby food and reading her developmentally appropriate stories and ensuring she has bibs and headbands that match her outfits. And I hope that these things will benefit her, at least the food and books; I am pretty sure she could care less about the matching bibs.

But what Ellie needs most of all is a mother who loves Jesus, a mother who prays for her, a mother who seeks the Lord with her whole heart and soul.

The truth is that being that kind of mother is the hardest work possible. It means dying to myself and my pride and my persistent illusions that I can accomplish anything of real value. It is not tangible, but unlike muffins, seasonal decorations, and e-mails, it is eternal.

Storykeeping

When you have a new baby, everyone suddenly wants to tell you stories about babies - their babies, themselves as babies, the story they once heard about a friend of a friend's granddaughter's baby. 

They tell you these stories, and you start to realize that there is this whole body of information about people you thought you knew well, stories that somehow they'd never thought to tell you before.  You learn that your husband didn't sleep well until he found his thumb and his Humpty-Dumpty doll.  You learn that your grandmother breastfed her babies even when it was discouraged.  You learn that your best friend's baby only took 30 minute naps.

* * *

When he heard that Ellie had acid reflux, my Dad recalled a story I'd never heard before, a story about himself as a baby - his own fussyness, spitting up, and the miracle solution my grandmother came up with to cure him. "I think it had something to do with giving me cow's milk at an early age," he said, "but I"m not sure."

My grandfather couldn't remember either. "I remember Eva being rather proud of herself for figuring it out," he said, "but I can't tell you what it was."

For the first time since my grandmother's death over ten years ago, I realized that there were many stories that had died with her, stories only she could tell.  My Dad and grandfather are both masterful storytellers who can recall in vivid detail adventure after adventure on the farm where my Dad and his four brothers grew up.  They have stories to tell about bums sleeping in the barn, stories about chasing rats in a chicken coop, stories about my uncle falling down into a well and almost drowning.  But neither of them can remember what it was that helped my Dad as a baby.  That story, a story that might have helped me care for my own baby, was my grandmother's, and it, like her, is gone, never to return.

* * *

To be a mother, I am learning, is to be, among many other things, a keeper of stories, the caretaker of a vast body of information that no one else in the world is likely to pay particular attention to or to remember.
 
Of course, fathers remember many things, and I am sure there are some fathers who remember more stories and more details than mothers.  But it does seem that mothers have a unique capacity to store up and hold on to the stories of their children's lives.
 
We see this in Luke Chapter 2 where twice Luke notes that "Mary treasured up all these things in her heart," referring to the many unusual particulars surrounding Jesus' birth and early years - visiting shepherds, angel choirs, prophetic utterances, and of course, Jesus as a preteen teaching His elders.  Surely Joseph noted these things too, would have thought them remarkable and significant, but what Luke tells us is that Mary treasured them.  She is the one who valued these stories, held onto them, took care of them.

I imagine Mary as the teenager she herself was when Jesus was born, watching incredulously as these events transpired, marveling at the little body that had somehow come from her and still lay in her arms, knowing too that He was somehow God, that His coming marked a pivot point in all of human history.

* * *

In some ways, Mary's treasuring seems so different from my own.  Ellie is very much human.  There was no angel choir at her birth, just four beaming grandparents to sing her praises.  No one has prophesied anything about her, except I suppose, the same grandparents who are convinced she's smart, active, and extroverted.  And her birth, while monumental in my life and the life of our family, is just one of millions in human history, a rather ordinary, everyday occurence.

In other ways though, Mary's treasuring feels very much connected to my own.  I too am watching my child with wonder, knowing that she has been created to be someone unique and special, waiting to see her story unfold.  I treasure the glimpses of her personality I am beginning to see - the smile that lights up a room, the little body that won't stop moving, the way she tries to catch her Daddy's eye.

I don't yet know who she will become, but I am grateful that God has appointed me to be her mother, to carry her story close to my heart, to pay close attention to each chapter, to walk with her through every page.

Growth

Photo Credit

"Though it is the smallest of all seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds come and perch in its branches.” - Matthew 13:32

The past few weeks, I've been watering the soil in our front yard, hoping that the grass seed CJ had planted there would eventually grow. Day after day, I looked at the brown earth, at the little white seeds, and thought, "This will never work. It looks the same as it did yesterday. Surely the grass will never come. It is too late in the season, too cold. I have not watered it as much as I should have."

But then, one morning last week, a few tentative shoots appeared, suddenly. One day there was nothing, no sign of life, and the next, life was emerging in tiny little bursts of green all over the yard. Now, the shoots have stretched and blossomed, dainty grean stalks covering more and more of the soil everyday. We do not have a lawn yet, but we are on our way. I no longer doubt that we will get there.

Growth is like that, I suppose. For the longest time, it seems like nothing is happening, that nothing will ever change, that all of your efforts will prove futile. And then one day, you wake up and realize that life is really different, that somehow all that waiting and watching and watering you've been doing really did matter, that something really did happen during all those endless days of plain old dirt.

I'm trying to remember that raising a baby is like this, that when all I see is the "dirt" of seemingly endless fussyness, sleeplessness, and neediness, growth is happening. One day, I will wake up and realize that Ellie has remembered how to sleep through the night again or that she is no longer spitting up all over the place. One day, she will walk and speak and dance and help me bake cookies and go off to school and grow up big and tall.

The Difference a Year Makes

Eaactly one year ago today, I ran to the toilet at my grandparents' beach house, losing the contents of my stomach for the first time in twenty some years. I did the same later that day at my in-laws' house, shortly after we told them that I was pregnant. And I repeated the feat a third time back at home when I took my prenatal vitamin before bed.

A year ago today, Ellie was the size of a lima bean, turning my life (and stomach) upside down, but so very unknown to me.

Today, she is sixteen pounds of laughing, grabbing, rolling, smiling, bouncing life. She's a striver, my Ellie, wanting to sit, stand, move further than her little body will carry her. She loves being around people, being talked to, being outside. Her smile fills her whole face, makes even her dark eyes sparkle.

It's hard to believe how far we've come this past year, that we've survived four months of nausea, the cough that wouldn't die, back pain, a third trimester shingles outbreak, labor and delivery, those early sleepless nights, breastfeeding difficulties, reflux, and dairy/soy intolerance.

My mother always told me that having kids was the hardest thing she ever did - and also the best thing. The past year has proven her so very right on both counts.

Thirty Pieces of My Thirty Years #25: In Laws

Ok, so I know I'm 31 now, but I'm determined to finish this series...

For most of my life (24 years in fact), family was a relatively static entity, existing in its narrowest form with my mom, dad, and two younger brothers.

There was comfort in this, in the known contours of the five of us, in our defined roles and rhythms, even in our repeated fights and annoyances.

Things were simple, just the five of us. When we went somewhere, we could all fit in one car. We all came home for every holiday.

And then, in the span of three years, I gained two sisters-in-law, a niece, a nephew, a daughter, and a second family, consisting of a mother-in-law, a father-in-law and a brother-in law.

Family is no longer simple. Planning for the holidays involves weeks of e-mails, schedule juggling, and phone calls. A simple dinner out requires car seats, booster seats, and several vehicles.

We are still trying to figure it out, these new family rhythms, trying to learn what we are as a whole and how we fit together, piece by piece. It takes more work than it used to, this figuring out. It takes time. In some ways, we are still getting to know each other. We are family, but we are becoming friends.

There are times when I miss the long, leisurely, intimate conversations, just the five of us. I miss the simplicity, the knownness.

But I have also gained much in these new additions to my family.

I have gained another example of deep faith and of love and lifelong commitment. I have gained two more people who delight in blessing me and serving me.

I have gained a partner in keeping my husband humble and a worthy Settlers of Catan opponent.

I have gained the two sisters I prayed for as a little girl, sisters to shop with and bake with and raise babies with.

I have gained sweet cuddles and baby laughs and the endless joys of new life.

In Family, Thirty Pieces of My Thirty Years

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Thirty Pieces of My Thirty Years #24: Lancaster

I was born in Lancaster, in a hospital just a few blocks from the city rowhouse where my parents live now.

I lived the first six years of my life in Lancaster, thinking that horse and buggies, women with head coverings, and two-dollar-a-dozen fresh corn at roadside stands were normal realities of everyday life.

I left Lancaster, trading the odor of cow manure on freshly plowed fields for the scent of Hershey's chocolate infusing summer breezes.

I visited Lancaster, on Easters and Thanksgivings and Christmas Eves, for birthday parties and to see grandparents and cousins and to visit the friends we'd left behind.

I met people from Lancaster even as I moved furthur away, finding my way back yet again to visit college friends over semester breaks, downing giant pancakes at Jenny's Diner with Josh and Anne.

I came to see Lancaster as home again, when my parents moved back there a few years ago and when four couples and one single girl, all good friends of mine from college, settled down in close proximity.

I started to like my husband in Lancaster, over fireworks and a long walk at Lititz Springs Park. I started dating my husband in Lancaster, at a non-descript Panera off of Route 30. And I got married in Lancaster, at a beautiful church on the same street as my parents' house, on the same street as the hospital where I was born.

While I have only actually lived in Lancaster for six years, it, in many ways, feels like my truest earthly home.

Thirty Pieces of My Thirty Years #23: Nate

Nathan means "gift from God." My parents named him that because he was a "surprise," a baby they hadn't been expecting. Over the years, I've often commented about how grateful I am that God surprised our family with Nate.

There are many reasons I am thankful for this youngest brother of mine. For one, our family would be incredibly boring without him. Let's face it - Joel and I are both pretty standard, play-by-the-rules, overachiever types. Sure, we both like to laugh and can be funny from time to time, but Nate has that special spark (what an old man in the K-Mart parking lot was probably referring to when he said, "That kid has a lot of juice!"). He's the one who brings out the silly in the rest of us and has often made us laugh until we cried - like with his "pillow dance" on our family road trip out West and his "Circle Up" interpretive dance on a rainy beach day. What a gift those memories and laughs and countless others like them have been to our family.

Nate is not only full of life and humor, but he ia also the one in the family with the strongest artistic genes. He's the kid who basically taught himself to play the piano and the guitar, who takes beautiful photographs, and who can decorate a space with the best of them. He's a pretty amazing writer too. Some of my fondest family memories involve Nate at the guitar and the rest of us joining him (with far less rhythm and pitch) in singing worship songs.

Another thing I love about Nate is that he has good taste, and he knows what is "in" before most people catch on. This means he is not only fun to shop with, but also that he is the one who has introduced me to some of my favorite music (everything from John Mayer to Joshua Radin to Glen Hansard).

When I think of Nate and his impact on my life and on our family, the word "richness" comes to mind. Before him, we were a family, and this was a good thing. But in His abundance, God wanted to give us more - more life, more color, more beauty, more music, and more energy. He wanted to give us Nate. And I am so, so glad that He did.

Thirty Pieces Series, The Finale

So, that Thirty Pieces series I started last July, the one I originally intended to finish that month, the one that got stretched into a year-long project by pregnancy and childbirth and caring for a newborn, well I've only got a few days to finish it. Because I turn 31 on Friday! Yikes! So buckle your seat belts because I'm going to try to crank out the last 9 posts in the next few days. Enjoy!

Lessons from Motherhood

When you have your own child, everyone tells you, you will know. You'll know their tired cry from their hungry cry. You'll know their routines and preferences. You'll even know their stool pattern.

It's a comforting thought, this idea of knowing. It sounds so clear, so certain, so confident. It sounds like the kind of parent I want to be.

But I have to say, that so far, three months into motherhood, I don't really feel like I know much of anything. Ellie's hungry cries sound pretty much the same to me as her tired cries. One night she sleeps nine hours straight; the next she is up every three hours. Somedays, she eats ravenously; somedays, she refuses to eat for hours on end. And stool patterns? Don't get me started.

The other day, I was telling my good friend Rachel, who used to be a roommate of mine, about how Ellie is so inconsistent and about how frustrating it is to me that I can't figure her out. She just laughed. "Sorry, Abby," she said, "I just think it's so funny that God would give you that kind of child."

This is, after all, the same Rachel who thrives on not having a schedule, the same Rachel who used to repeatedly move a flower arrangement in the bathroom we shared, just to see how long it would take me to put it back into place (not long, in case you're curious!).

Having a roommate like Rachel was good for me; she taught me to be a little more spontaneous, to worry less about having everything perfect and to spend more time enjoying life.

It's still too early to tell if Ellie's inconsistency is just part of her being a baby or if it's part of her life-long temperment, but either way, I am trying to trust that all the things I can't figure out about her, that which I don't know, is for my good, in the same way that having a roommate like Rachel was for my good.

Already, Ellie is teaching me too. She is teaching me to persevere, to keep trying when a particular approach or schedule doesn't work immediately. She is teaching me to find the middle ground somewhere between the two extremes where I tend to live - either adhering perfectly to my goals and plans or quitting altogether. And as a result, she is teaching me dependence on God, for this middle ground is not a place I can stay on my own strength.

As I work with Ellie, I am beginning to realize that my desire to know is really pride and self-reliance at their finest, my heart screaming to be able to manage, predict, and control - all by myself, thank you very much. Instead, God is asking me to cry out to Him for wisdom as I walk forward into this task of parenting, full of much which I may never know.

Perspective

Ellie with her great-grandmother, grandmother, and mother.

Among the many things I've learned through the process of pregnancy, childbirth, and caring for a newborn is that breastfeeding has not always been held in the same high regard as it is now. In fact, most people in my grandparents' generation used formula to feed their babies, believing it was healthier than breastmilk, a concept which seems laughable in the face of current research.

That's why when I was talking to my grandmother about Ellie a few weeks ago, I was surprised by her announcement that she breastfed four of her five babies. "The doctor always wanted me to use formula," she said, "but I decided to breastfeed."

Intrigued by the idea of my conservative, far-from-rebellious grandmother defying authority and breaking this social norm, I asked her why she had made that choice. Perhaps this was a whole new side of her I'd never seen, I thought to myself. Perhaps she was a rebel in her own right, a crusader for a cause before her time.

Her response, however, was a gentle laugh. "Oh Abby, I don't remember," she said. "It was so long ago."

I had to laugh too. Here I am, the over-researched, hyper-engaged first-time mom who wants to do everything right and has to have a reason for each parenting choice I make, be it breastfeeding or sleep schedules or colic remedies. Every little decision I make seems to have enormous consequences for Ellie's life, and I am terrified of making a wrong choice, of messing her up somehow. And then there is my grandmother, in her eighties with five grown children in their fifties and sixties, who can't even remember why she breastfed her children.

This comforts me in a way. Fifty years from now, all the decisions that seem so huge right now will most likely feel inconsequential. Should Ellie and I both be blessed to live that long, I probably won't even remember how I agonized over handling her fussy spells or when to let her cry herself to sleep. By then, research will have changed, and perhaps people will be feeding their babies some sort of formula again.

By no means is this an excuse for making poor decisions or skipping the research necessary to be a good parent. But it does remind me that in the end, this season of parenting a newborn shall pass, and what seems so important today will one day be a distant memory or perhaps even forgotten altogether.

In light of that reality, I realize that I want to invest most of my time and energy now in the things that will endure - praying for my daughter, laying down my life for her, living in such a way that will point her to Christ, thing my grandmother has done faithfully for her children and grandchildren for some sixty years.

Far harder than figuring out how to best feed Ellie? Yes, but far more important.