This morning the heavens parted, the angels sang and Andrew slept until 8am.  (I’m sure the fact that he was up twice during the night and that Justin fed him at 5am only contributed minimally to this miracle)  The unexpected benefit of this blessed event was that I was fully rested and able to witness the following:

Andrew holding up a picture book, turning the pages until he reaches a picture of Daddy. Shreiking. Growling. Waveing bye-bye. All while crawling toward the gate, trying to drag his phone, picture book and a stuffed trout behind him and yelling “Da! Da! Da!” at the top of his lungs. 

I’m surprised he didn’t injure himself. 

One of these times that he does something funny I will catch it on video.  Until then, use your imagination.  

Last night we watched Millions from director Danny Boyle (of Trainspotting fame).  I am not a great reviewer of movies, but I can plug the ones I like.  So check it out, it was great fun!

Beth mentioned a funny thing about honesty tonight.  She said that it has this way of fencing you in; of forcing you to continue to be honest once you start.  It’s kind of like lying in that way; you just have to keep doing it for your stories to make sense. 

On Tuesday I found myself enclosed.  I was working on some stuff for this site and my mom looked over my shoulder and said, “What’s that?”  As my cursor made a beeline for the close button, I looked up and answered her, “It’s my blog.”  I told her that she could read it but I did not, under any circumstances, want to talk about it.  She agreed and, apparently, went home, read it   (Hi Mom), and still came over to talk to me the next day.  As I was contemplating the repercussions of this spurt of honesty (honesty spurt?)  I realized that I was not really all that concerned about her reading my stories of boyfriends long ago, or even about my struggles with food.  No, what I was worried about her reading was this, because I am afraid that she will step back from helping me with Andrew, or that she will help more with Andrew, or that she will think that I don’t need her, or that she will be concerned because I need her too much, or of what people will think of me when she does help, or that people will think that I am stupid for not taking her up on her offers to help, or that she will think that I am not capable of taking care of Andrew, or that she will feel obligated to help because I am obviously unstable and shouldn’t be left alone with a child, or that there is a right way to answer this question and that everyone knows the answer except me.  Put these thoughts on parallel tracks and run them repeatedly through your mind at high speed…that’s how I feel.

And then I stopped.  I literally stopped the car on the way home.  I pulled over and tried to separate the truth from the lies. Here are some of the pieces of truth that I came up with:

• This is madness.
• This situation is unique to my life and, therefore, has no textbook answer.
• One of God’s many gifts is the relationship that I have with my parents, and the relationship that Andrew is building with his grandparents.
• My real friends do not judge my parenting ability based on how much help I get, and God gave me the help that I have as part of His plan.
• Justin encourages me to get help because he knows that I get overwhelmed.
• My parents would tell me if they could not help for any reason.
• As  Heather said – truthfully, if cliché – “It does take a village to raise a child”

So when I got home tonight and found that my parents had taken Andrew overnight, my immediate reaction was, “Oh great, she thinks that since he hasn’t been sleeping well that I can’t take care of him tonight”.  And then I remembered the above truths and thought, “My mom knows that Andrew hasn’t slept well this week and she just did me a huge favor”. 

Thanks Mom!

Pride can often be used to beat down the simpler vices. Teachers often appeal to a boy’s Pride (or, as they call it, his self-respect) to make him behave more decently: many a man has overcome cowardice or lust or ill-temper by learning to think that they are beneath his dignity. The devil laughs. He is perfectly content to see you becoming chaste and brave and self-controlled provided he is setting up in you Dictatorship of pride…For Pride is spiritual cancer: it eats up the very possibility of love, or contentment, or even common sense.  C.S. Lewis “The Great Sin” Mere Christianity

This quote was referenced in the Bible study that our community group is doing and it touched a nerve with me.  All of my efforts of self-control and righteousness come from a place of pride.  I really do not think about pleasing God or enjoying His freedom, I think about doing something “the right way” or “being good”.  These terms are then used to bolster my self esteem and prove to me that I am not that bad and that progress is being made. But what would real progress look like?

Would it be “right” or “good” or would it be calm and peaceful, waiting for the next direction that God has for me?  Would it see all aspects of my life as worship, instead of chores?  Would it let me understand that, while I will never be perfect, my sins are covered and I do not need to live in them anymore and, in that understanding, would I find freedom?  Because I think that progress looks a lot like freedom, and I still do not understand what freedom looks like.

I used to think that progress could be measured by comparing myself to someone else.  I am not _______, so I must be doing well.  They do _______, so they must be doing better than I am.  And so forth, until I had everyone neatly classified and I could know what I needed to do to work my way up the ladder to my ideal.  But, as the people I have idealized step down (gracefully) off their pedestals, I am forced to recognize the destructive pattern that this line of thinking creates.

The fact is that I will never be someone else, nor should I be.  I am in this life, with these experiences and these circumstances for a reason.  This is one of the cornerstones of my faith.  That God is in control of everything, that nothing is out of His plan and that my life, then, has meaning and purpose.  I must learn that, if these things are all true, then progress can not be becoming like someone else, it can only be the diminishing of pride and small steps toward freedom. 

Yesterday Andrew and I played with Alicia at The Children’s Museum in Seattle. It was so great to actually have a chance to enjoy Andrew. Maybe it seems self-explanatory that one would enjoy their child, but I have to say that too often I find myself resenting, fearing or being irritated with mine.

Before I was a mother, I had these idyllic notions of what motherhood would be. I envisioned hours playing, cuddling and reading with no other cares in the world. I saw myself as a healthy, active mom who always had enough energy to play another game. I desperately wanted to be the one that could make everything better - to be the one that a child wanted more than anyone else. The reality of all those dreams is a lot different. I have responsibilities and tasks outside of Andrew that need to be accomplished on a daily basis. I am tired, overweight and lazy. The separation anxiety stage may actually be the end of me.

I was talking with my sister-in-law on Friday about motherhood and I think I got it right when I said it has been much better, and much worse, than I ever expected. I haven’t found the balance of work and play in this job that I have been given. I tend to give people the finger when they tell me to Carpe Diem. But on Monday we had a good day.

Last week at my recovery group I had an epiphany.  Like most epiphanies it didn’t come when I thought it would and it wasn’t about the issue that I thought it would be about.  I realized that I work, with every ounce of my being, to be “in the club”.  I always have.  All the times I have participated in events or joined organizations that I knew were not for me – in the club.  All the times that I tried to implement a system, rework a schedule, or revise a communication method in my home so that it matched what the cool kids were doing – in the club.  The Teaching Incident – in the club.  And last week, when I realized that the only reason I wanted to be involved in a potential, future leadership opportunity was to ensure that I was not left out – in the club.

I still divide people in to two distinct groups, the cool kids and me.  It doesn’t matter what the life circumstances are for those around me, I am always convinced that they have it together and I don’t.  I know that if I could just….I would turn the corner.  I would find the instruction manual for all the things I can’t seem to do.  I would be in the club.  I want this more than anything and it leads to jealousy, stress, arguments and unrealized unrealistic expectations of myself and those around me. And the funny thing is, as I open myself up to community and friendship, I realize that there is no club.  Everybody is, in one way or another, fucked.  As Jen says, you can try to deny it or plant flowers in it, but you are standing in a pile of shit.  And here I thought she was in the club!  I know that the club, if it exists at all, only exists in my head.  Only exists because I want it to be there.  Because it gives me a standard to judge myself, my performance, my marriage, my husband against and I know that against such ideals the things in my life will always be found wanting.  I want to believe this and to change my thought patterns to reflect the truth.  But the voices keep telling me that there is a club, that I am not in it and that when I try to pretend that I am in it, I am just putting on another façade. 

So when I was able to share these thoughts last week, it was a huge step because, in many ways, I am more embarrassed by this desperate need for acceptance than I am about my addiction to food.  Because people that are in the club are addicted to food, so that must be okay,  but I am the only one who still holds on to this junior high gym class, “pick me, pick me” mentality, right?  I know.  Not right.  Now I just need to convince the voices in my head of that.

Hello everyone,

Here is my own, new, shiny website!  For those of you who have enjoyed reading my blog on blogger, there will be more of the same here.  For the new folks - welcome! This is a complete work in progress

actually, I didn’t know that one could build a website before they registered a domain or actually got anything up…So when I was signing up for all this last night, Justin looked at me and said, “Did you finish building your site already?” and I said, “No.  I haven’t even started yet.” And he said, “Then why are you signing up for all of this already?” “I don’t know.  I thought I had to.” And then he explained the ways of the world wide web to me.  I realized that this was going to be a little messier than I thought.

So here it is.  A work in progress.  Please bear with me and know that I will stop fiddling with things eventually.

If only they had a jumper that would allow the child to throw itself upside down - Andrew’s happiness would be complete.

For the last three weeks, Andrew has neglected to remember that he is a good sleeper who stays asleep all night and sleeps for a good ten hours from the time you put him down. He has awakened at a variety of times from 9pm to 4am and has had trouble getting back to sleep once he wakes up. Needless to say, this has taken a predictable toll on the mental acuity of those living in our home; add in overtime at work for Justin and a night class at UW and we are close to complete insanity.

All this to try and explain why, as I stood in front of the mirror last night brushing my teeth I reached down and grabbed Andrew’s pacifier. Just as I was about to put it in my mouth, Justin asked what I was doing. I looked up, confused. Questions of that nature are far to complex for my diminished mental state, but as I thought about it I realized that I was wondering if I would sleep better with the binky in my mouth.

It was hard to fall asleep through Justin’s random guffaws - the binky didn’t help either.