The Difference

I am blind
But in you sense glimpses of invisible realities
I am deaf
But your voice pierces structured silences
I am cold
But your warmth radiates dispassionate hearts
I am evil
But you are good and I am yours

10 Ways to Experience a No Weight Gain Pregnancy

#1 is vital, a must have, make sure not to miss it.

1.      Start overweight, by at least 30 lbs.

2.      Be diagnosed with preeclampsia your proceeding pregnancy, particularly the kind that requires post-partum meds.  That way your OB docs say what every newly pregnant mom wants to hear, “try not to gain any weight.”

3.      Have your children 18 months or less apart.  That helps your primary interaction with food be your one-year-old’s bottomless pit of a stomach.

4.      GI viruses are particularly helpful.  One a trimester should be fine.

5.      Move away from all your friends & eating in general as a social interaction.

6.      (#5 & #6 relate) Have a minor depressive episode in the second half of your pregnancy, such as one that might be caused from moving from a warm environment to a cold environment in the dead of winter, particularly if all your expenses can triple.

7.      For your new home choose somewhere that has 47 steps from your garage to your bedroom door.

8.      Tell your husband he can no longer come home for lunch.  That way he won’t be jealous of the Luna bar & prenatal vitamins you have for your meal.

9.      Seriously, never be without a bottle of water.

10.   (And this one’s not just for pregnancy!) Get rid of the 95% of your wardrobe that doesn’t fit anymore because it’s too tight.  Nothing fixes excessive weight issues faster than walking around in your skivvies in a house full of mirrors!

Baby Sahara & Women in Ministry

I never thought I’d have a girl.  I’ve always thought I’d raise boys & basically so did everyone else.  I wasn’t a girly girl & I’m not a particularly womany woman.  My ears aren’t pierced; I wear very little makeup & even less jewelry.  I almost never put on perfume & have less than a dozen pairs of shoes & only one functional purse (right now).  I can’t attest to how extensively or not I played mommy or house, but I do know I didn’t daydream about my wedding or dress or create a fairytale life binder I saw built by some others around me.  I didn’t seem to get wrapped up in whatever it was girls my age cared about.  It’s not that I didn’t want to kiss the boys, I just didn’t want to kiss any of the boys I knew. However on many fronts they were still preferred companions to the girls (no offense ladies)… less games, they kept it real.  I was told by those who knew me, “you’ll have half a dozen boys,” “you’ll run a boys orphanage.”  Yet here I am 30 weeks pregnant today with our second child & she’s a girl.  Her name is Sahara.

 

At first I was shocked & confused.  Having a girl didn’t make sense.  Our life was in transition & needed to be managed more with simplification than complication.  We have a boy already; we have boys’ clothes & linens & accessories.  My husband is a man & I’ve always related better to men.  Women, I’ve finally come to terms with, but girls… I wondered if I could ever come to terms with girls.

In these last 10 weeks though since I first received this news, as women in healthy situations usually do, I fell in love with this baby I’m carrying… this baby girl.

 

And being in love with this baby girl has made me start to consider things I’ve always sidestepped in the past, some important issues of practical theology.

I’m a believer in Jesus Christ & have been since I was old enough to understand sin & consequences & redemption.  My family members are believers & we were raised in conservative Christian Southern Baptist churches.  I felt uniquely called to the ministry when I was in high school & discovered others around me had ideas about what that meant, but I’d already observed 3 types of “callings,” if you will, for women who end up in ministry:

1.    They marry a man who is or ends up becoming a minister.  They’re “called” to the man, not the ministry per se. (my pastor’s wife growing up)

2.    They aim to marry a man who is or has professed he’s going into ministry.  They’re called to marry a minister, i.e. “I feel called to be a pastor’s wife.” (my sister)

3.    They uniquely are called to ministry whether or not they marry or whether or not if they marry their spouse is in the ministry & if they do marry & their spouse is in the ministry, they may end up serving in a different ministry.

That 3^rd one is me.  I’ve known it all along & my now husband knew, understood & agreed with it in my life before we even dated, which was particularly important to me since he was raised by a #2.

Herein lays the issue.  Southern Baptists are a bit notorious for not supporting women in ministry, at least not in the way I understand it.  It’s all well & good if you’re lucky enough to be a single missionary somewhere overseas, but the story changes if you’re married & even more so if you’re stateside, regardless of your marital status.  Children’s ministry or women to women ministry is usually acceptable, though perhaps still a step-child to the body of believers’ more important tasks & you will in no doubt be a “Director” because terminology helps people not get the wrong idea. (Not true of our last church who also very graciously licensed me to ministry related to my work in our local county jail.)

Up until recently this still had not been a big issue for me (apart from the “discussions” I have periodically with others).  Why?  I’m not one to be overly uncomfortable as a minority, a position that challenges my beliefs & helps me know if they hold credence in my life.  I don’t usually seek to be divisive.  I’m not a people pleaser.  My confidence & value, if I’m healthy, comes from a different source.  The real scapegoat though is because I’ve always felt led to & have served predominantly in parachurch ministries, where frequently my fellow church goers are not, or are certainly not in mass & the ones that are present are only too glad to have me around.

But that’s all changing… because now I’m pregnant again & this time I’m pregnant with a girl, a girl who will in all likelihood grow up in a Southern Baptist church.

I can no longer avoid this controversial issue related to gender, roles & women in ministry.  God willing, very soon we will have a young woman to raise in our home & I want her to have confidence before her God, herself & others.  I want to help minimize confusion that she may be confronted with regarding who she is or is not created to be.

It’s clearly (past) time to step out of my laziness, to pray, study, listen, wrestle & write as I seek to engage this sensitive subject.

I’m thankful to the Lord for his prompting through the precious life of our wee Sahara.

Sudden Death

Sudden death stands as a sudden enemy to the living left behind
Sudden grief makes time & concepts of reality unwind
Sudden loneliness suffocates in silent screams
Sudden fear paralyzes, a future unforeseen

Death has no victory, death has no sting
Words of the dead perhaps living again
Death has no victory yet death burns as fire
Words of the living enveloped by a smoldering pyre

Life's now shrouded in ashen fog
What is life but a ghost, a misty prologue
How is life worth living with the living gone
Why is pain unending, a mind terrorizing song

Will hope be enough
Will faith prevail
Will God be God
Will love not fail

I pray tomorrow was yesterday without today
My prayers are putty; my courage is gone
Stand by me now; I need the strong

Mi Amor

Only with choice comes love
Only with truth is it free
Only with sacrifice is it known
Only with God can it be

 

Intimate Mystery



To travel within and know is not for me

Though I did ask, how could I not
Dumbstruck by the mystery
To carry one so intimately
Yet so blindly
My body supports his very life
In fact he could take mine from me
And I wouldn’t even know him who’d slain me
His creator is yet again silent
The perpetuator of intimate mysteries
My job is intricately complex and yet innately simple
With vast knowledge of body care I can pretend to make it more
But it’s soul care I care most about
Oh God of wisdom, grant it
This child is yours before if ever mine
I acknowledge you as provider sufficient
I fear not what I know not as my knowledge is not uniquely needed
He’s in your stead and I am content with my allowance
 

Snapshot Jamaica: From this Girl's Lens

(Ocho Rios to Falmouth to Montego Bay & the roads in-between)

Black for the people.  Green for the land.  Gold for the sun.  Rasta Red for the blood of the people.  Both welcoming and potentially extortionate to the foreigner.  We went from a low-level all inclusive resort to a mosquito net and picked up a few notables along the way.
Respect mon.

 

·         Ya Mon is really used as much as you stereotypically might think… it’s out of control.

·         Summer is Jamaica’s off-season, so if you want to dodge tourists, go then.

·         Everyone has a nickname and everybody knows everything.  The island has a two point something million population, so with the exception of Kingston with almost one million, if you’re outside of the capital – there are almost no secrets.

·         Good luck understanding Patois, but everyone knows English.  Don't be surprised, you will be talked about.

·         The metric system is alive and well.  The speed limit signs are in kilometers, and you will fill up a car in liters.  Again thanks to the British, you'll drive on the left-hand side of the road which puts the steering wheel, you got it, on the right.  And counties are parishes.

·         This is the island of jerk chicken, so if you love spicy BBQ, you’re in luck.  Curries are here too, who knew?  And they know how to cook a mean banana or plantain (or other fruits) into many a fish dish.  My opinion: fish dishes with fruit are better than fish dishes without fruit in Jamaica.

·         Don’t be surprised, a ‘Made in Jamaica’ tag is hard to come by.  However, sugar to molasses to rum is island authentic.  Rum lovers should not be disappointed.  Welcome home.

·         Don’t expect to easily find diet drinks (unless of course you’re hanging out where only tourists go).  “Those are for women in other countries who don’t appreciate a good fat ass!”  Excuse me, I like their taste.  I was in the minority.

·         I hope secondhand pot inhalation is not too damaging to a newborn in the making… it was tricky navigating some of the air currents.  Will it be legalized here I asked.  The general answer, no, that would be too much drain for the American economy of course.  However, nobody in Jamaica seems to get busted for it.

·         I was not offered drugs (other than secondhand).  That however, was not true for my spouse, which seems to generally be the case wherever we travel.

·         I was called ‘my lady’ ‘princess’ or ‘boss’ for our ten days there.  BTW that last one was not a commentary on me personally, just white women in general, in case you were wondering.  Elijah got ‘mon’ or an occasional ‘captain’ (cruise ship culture).

·         The Jamaican dollar is about at a hundred to one USD – do not exchange at the airport – they will lie to you about their good deals.  Everyone accepts USD.  Bring over $100 or more in ones and fives for tips.  You will be expected to tip and you should.

·         Minimum wage is calculated more by week than by hour, though it was designed for a 40-hour work week.  It is fifty USD.  Abuse of the system without good checks and balances certainly occurs.  The educated workers generally have unions, but that’s not everybody.  Can they live on that minimum wage?... can US citizens live on ours?

·         Book taxi services like a tourist and get screwed.  Book like a local and Elijah and I paid $1 each for an approximately 8 mile trip.  Now be forewarned, the taxi holds 4 passengers (or more, suck in) and the taxi doesn’t go anywhere until it’s full.

·         This should go without saying, however we wish someone had said it to us.  When pulling cash from a local ATM whose currency is also in DOLLARS and who use the $ sign, make sure to enter the desired local currency amount.  If, for instance, you enter $200, you will just have been charged by your bank in the states $5 to pull out $2.  Though it may be difficult to type in $20000 for the withdrawal amount, do it the first time.

·         Don’t like to barter?  You better beat that bad boy before you land on Jamaican sand.  When I was told the necklace in my hand was 25 USD, Elijah can testify, I almost sprayed the gulp of water in my mouth on her display table before I laughed.  She took $5 and rightly so.  Again, cruise ship culture.

·         Even though statistically Jamaicans are predominantly Christian, there is no perceivable Jesus culture, and perhaps for better, the big guy is not overtly marketable.  We were told by a non-church goer, I presume, that only the women go to church, the men go to the bar.  In the tiny town we stayed in for the second leg of our Jamaica experience we were to be there over a Sunday, so I asked the owner if there were any churches in town.  He told me he had built his business in that location precisely because there were no churches in town.  No churches meant no sinners and he had an open bar!

·         However, Jamaica has 7 national heroes and 3 of them are Baptists.  Paul Bogle.  George William Gordon.  Samuel Sharpe.  And we saw the William Knibb Memorial Baptist Church where the shackles of slavery were famously buried in a coffin at a powerful funeral service.  Elijah wouldn’t dream of missing spots like this on a vacation.  Yes, we also saw the beach.  I insisted ;)

 

So if you've got a little cash to blow and want to do it in the Caribbean, they will tell you in a heartbeat, Jamaica No Problem.