out of Kadesh

I admit it: I have been known to awake with a jolt, crinkly page marks on my swollen face and a puddle of drool running out of my open mouth when I attempt to read those so-and-so begat so-and-sos in the Bible. Just to say that I have not read every single word of The Word, so I may have missed the part where Jesus tells us that our job as believers is to assign people the eternal destination of “Heaven” or “Hell.” Please, if I am wrong, feel free to leave a scathing, judgmental comment for me to read and get angry about.

When did we, as Christians, give ourselves the task of determining the everlasting whereabouts of other human beings? And more importantly, when did that become the point of Christianity? When I read Christ’s teachings, I find Him telling us to love one another, because then the world will know we belong to Him. I find Him telling us to share everything we have with those who don’t have enough. I find Him telling us to heal the sick. To care for widows and orphans. To above all else love the Lord our God with all our hearts, souls, and minds. Nowhere do I find Him telling us to decide if our friends, neighbors, coworkers, or various celebrities are making it into the pearly gates or burning in Hell for all of eternity.

I don’t mean to offend you, Reader, it’s just that I have given this a LOT of thought. I was raised in a fear-based denomination. My church taught us that we were “saved” and we needed to “save” other people. Being saved meant not spending a lifetime burning in Hell. It meant living life with the purpose of safely reaching death and the afterlife beyond. Our pastor preached that we would “drag people down there” if we weren’t constantly “witnessing.” (Witnessing, for you who don’t know, could mean anything from asking someone “If you died tomorrow, do you know for certain where you would go?” to passing out tracts chock full of information on what the fires of Hell would feel like as they melted your skin off your bones.)

I became the youngest-ever evangelist. Saved and baptized at seven years old, I became paralyzed with the fear that everyone I knew who hadn’t walked the Roman’s Road was going to burn forever and it would be my fault. I prayed the sinner’s prayer with my four-year-old brother in the back seat of our Astro van one night because by God, I was not going to let him burn! And if all I had to do was convince someone to say “Jesus please come into my heart and save me” to keep them from the land of the gnashing teeth, how could I not feel that insane guilt every time I was around someone?

And if you had lived through that, you would understand why I have come to the conclusion that our salvation is not about Heaven and Hell. These are concepts that even I, as a believer, can’t wrap my tiny head around. Are they places? Where are they? Are my dead loved ones there now, or will they go there later? Are they states of being? How can we expect anyone to understand, or care, about these overwhelming, mythological-sounding places?

How did it become the central focus of the gospel?

Here are some of today’s headlines (found on cnn.com, June 30, 4:30pm):
Students shot at bus stop in Detroit
Duke official offered adopted son for sex
Re-election of Ahmadinejad ruled valid
Girl, 6, lured into home, chained
Son lured home for family slaying
Woman assaulted by husband

Look at this! There is Hell going on right here, right now!

I think it’s time, Church, to bring the gospel back to what it’s supposed to be. The good news of Christ. His ability to bring us joy. His ability to heal us from our brokenness. His ability to love us when we are unlovable. He charges us to forgive each other, to help each other, to be at peace with one another, to love one another. Let’s stop operating in fear and judgment, and come back to Christ’s true commandment to us: that we spread His good news.

There is hope in Christ, Reader. There is hope that one day these grim headlines will be good tidings, when all people realize the true Gospel of Christ. Then we will experience Heaven.

Yesterday, as I usually do at the end of the day, I g-chatted Lance about dinner.

Me: we should grill out! we should grill that chicken
Lance: ok!
Me: and maybe I’ll go get some baked potatoes to go with it
Lance: sounds good
Me: are you leaving yet?
Lance: yep. See you at home.

And for some reason it made me think about how routine our lives have gotten: we go to work, we occasionally chat online, we go home, we have a snack while we talk about our day, we walk the dog for about an hour, we come home, I make dinner, Lance helps me, we watch a movie while we eat (sometimes we play cards instead), we go to bed. The thing is, I love this life. When I stop and think about it, sure it sounds a little mundane, but I love hanging out with Lance, taking walks at night together, cooking dinner together. I don’t even feel bad for veg-ing out in front of the TV over dinner, because we spend the rest of the evening talking to each other. And curling up on the couch with the hubbs is one of my favorite things to do in life. I’m kind of a homebody I guess. Stop judging me; I try to be more fun on the weekends, ok?

Anyway the thought crossed my mind “what if Lance is bored with this life?” It never occurred to me before, because I’m happy with it, albeit slightly lonely from time to time thinking if we had friends we’d hang out with them some nights probs, but what if Lance is bored? What if he hates the routine? He’s not one to expound on his feelings unless I pull them out of him like a rotten molar, so it’s not like he’d just spill his guts to me.

So I asked him last night, as we were walking Lucy together.

Me: “Are you ever bored with our life?”
Lance: “huh?”
Me: “Well earlier, I was asking you about potatoes, and I was just thinking, what if you really hate it? Every day, same thing, you come home, your wife makes dinner, you walk the dog, you go to bed, you get up and start all over.”
Lance: “No, I’m not bored. But I promise to tell you if I ever am.”
Me: “Or if you ever have an affair. Promise to tell me before you have an affair.”
Lance: “An affair? Where did that come from?”
Me: “Well I’m just saying, that’s where it starts.”
Lance: “It starts with potatoes?”

I appreciated him making light of it, because I can get really worked up really fast, and he knows this about me by now. But, Reader, what if it does? Maybe discontent in a marriage starts with boredom. I asked Lance “did you ever picture your life this way? Walking the dog every night, looking for a house, waiting for your pregnant wife to give birth, buying kid furniture, paying too many bills, not playing the wii very much cause I get tired of losing, working at a desk job 8 hours a day, doing laundry, discussing potatoes?” He said he never really thought ahead like that.

But I did. And I didn’t picture it this way at all. I never thought I’d want kids so soon, while I’m so young. I never thought I’d be living in Washington, DC, working in the marketing department for a regional theater. I had these huge dreams of glamour and glitz and being on Broadway, and I know Lance wanted to be in a band, and work in film. So what if, one day, he wakes up and realizes the screaming kid and the privacy fencing and the new HVAC system isn’t what he wanted at all?

What if I do?

Today is “Judy Garland Day” in the office. Every hour they’re playing a Judy song over the intercoms, and we have all this candy that looks like pills in her honor.

It was very funny when I first came in this morning, but then a friend told me to look up some of her quotes, and I found ones like these: “If I am a legend, then why am I so lonely?” and “It’s lonely and cold on the top… lonely and cold.” And I’m all, no wonder she was popping pills.

It just goes to show, you can feel lonely no matter how many people know your name. Loneliness is, to put it in obvious terms, lonely. It’s isolating. I feel alone in my loneliness. But I’m not, and it feels good to know there are other people out there feeling exactly the way I feel.

Someone reading this needs to read it. And when you do, I hope you feel warm and connected, even if it’s just to me, even if it’s for just a second.

My friend Caroline got me addicted to the show “Grey’s Anatomy,” and then unfortunately I found this great site that lets me watch all the episodes, so I’ve been infecting my mind with dramatic, smartly written mush for the past few weeks. I really like the show; I think it is compelling and brilliant. However, there is one thing I don’t understand, and that is how they talk. I guess every show has a talking thing… like I watched an episode of “Gilmore Girls” once and they talked so fast I got dizzy and threw up on the couch, and Lance said I wasn’t allowed to watch it anymore because he didn’t want to spin my head back around the right way after I pulled a Mary Poppins. Also I tend to get addicted to television really easily, and watch a lot of it all at once, so I tend to eat, sleep, and dream in terms of the current addiction’s characters. For instance, my favorite tv show was “Alias,” and I’d go on binges where I had to watch all the dvds back to back to back (because they’re all cliffhangers!) and I’d start seeing spy stuff everywhere. Like, did that guy just talk into his sleeve? And then I’d have to practice my kickboxing so I could knock out bad guys who were bound to get me as I was walking across the Target parking lot at 3:00 in the afternoon.

Anyways I was thinking today, wouldn’t it be weird if people really carried on conversations the way they do on “Grey’s Anatomy”? It would be like this:
Lance: “I slept with my boss today.”
Me: “I found out my great aunt died and left me 18 million dollars.”
Lance: “She was great in bed but I feel bad for cheating on you.”
Me: “What should I do about this money?”
Lance: “Do you think our marriage is over?”
Me: “I don’t have time to think about this money thing. There’s too much going on at work.”

But I’m saying “him” because “him/her” is getting old and “it” is just weird. And right now he just looks like an alien anyway. If it turns out this baby is a girl, I’ll pay for her therapy later.

Last weekend, I went to the Tony Awards. Yeah, I didn’t have anything else to do so… I figured why not. WHY NOT HAVE THE BEST NIGHT OF MY LIFE. In addition to being so close to Sir Elton John I could have reached out and touched him, it was exciting to me that Blueberry was getting his first trip to NYC, so we got some “Baby’s first” pics.

Here’s baby’s first time in Times Square.

Here’s baby’s first wait on the train… get used to this, baby.

Here’s baby at the Tony after-party. He is still hip enough to party with Mama and Daddy.

And here is baby… ON THE WAY TO HIS FIRST TONY AWARDS! (The other lovely ladies are my coworkers and friends, Emily and Jackie.)

Tonight, we took communion at church. Nothing has felt more real to me than this, not even hearing the baby’s heartbeat yesterday. As I ate the bread and drank the wine (ok I’m a protestant so it was actually tiny crackers and grape juice don’t get me started), I suddenly remembered this thing I had read warning mothers-to-be that everything they consume, the baby also consumes. Which means tonight, I fed my baby the body and blood of Christ.

How we’re going to raise this kid, we don’t know. What we’re going to say to him when he wants to know about all these issues that Lance and I consider “gray areas,” I have no idea. But what I do know is that no matter what, I want to raise this child to love the Lord, and love people. And if I can teach him to do that, I will have succeeded as a parent. And I felt it seal today, that commitment within me, when baby had his first communion.

No joke… this is the best article I’ve ever read. Hands. Down. The comments are even better.

2 people were shot at the Holocaust museum yesterday and there are people in the world who don’t have enough food to eat, but BRET MICHAELS DOESN’T FEEL THE TONYS RESPONDED APPROPRIATELY when he sauntered slowly upstage and got clobbered by a set piece being flown in. Sorry Bret, but if the rumors are true about you not showing up to rehearsal, you get what you deserve. And really, you’re asking why they didn’t stop the show when you were hit?! BECAUSE IT’S BROADWAY. They don’t stop the show for a little broken nose. You bite it, YOU TAKE IT MICHAELS.

And for those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about, please watch, and press replay as often as you like: 

- I miss coffee.

- I miss sushi.

- I miss wine.

- I have to pee.

- Why am I so constipated? Pushing leads to hemorrhoids… I hope I don’t get hemorrhoids.

- Oh, so that’s a hemorrhoid.

- I have to pee.

- Ugh I look so bloated…

- I have to pee.

- My boobs hurt.

- My boobs look great!

- I’m hungry.

- I’m tired.

- I really wish I could poop.

- I really wish I could stop farting.

- I really wish I could get off this toilet.

- I have to pee.

- Why am I not throwing up? Shouldn’t I be throwing up?

- Omg I’m going to throw up.

- I’m so CRANKY!

- I’m so sad!

- I’m so happy!

- I’m so tired!

- I have to pee.

- If I don’t get food in me RIGHT NOW someone is going to pay!

- Allergies? Where did you come from? I’ve never had allergies before…

- Ahh….CHOO! DAMMIT!

- I have to pee.

- My shirts all make me look fat.

- My pants are cutting into my circulation… maybe I’ll just unbutton them.

- Damn, I forgot to button my pants back before walking around work for half an hour.

- I think need new pants.

- Sorry for that fart, Lance, but that’s what I call SWEET PAYBACK!

- We gotta find a bigger place!

- 700,000 DOLLARS FOR ONE HOUSE!?!?!?!?!

- We’ll NEVER FIND A BIGGER PLACE!

- Omg what have I done… we don’t have money for this!

- I HAVE TO PEE.

- Look at this sweet tiny onesie… ok I think I can do this.

- Omg I can’t do this.

- Omg I’m going to throw up.

- I’ll never sleep again!

- I’ll never have another date with Lance!

- I’ll never hang out with my friends!

- I’ll have to get a minivan!

- Oh dear God and sweet mother Mary please don’t let me have to get a minivan.

- I’ll be a slave in my own house!

- I’ll never watch another movie!

- You can’t have sex for how long after giving birth!?!

- Babies need food every TWO AND A HALF HOURS!?

- My boobs… my poor, poor boobs.

- I should probably stop desperately holding onto my boobs in public.

- Guacamole.

- I have to pee.

- I’m STARVING!

- What if I don’t cook and we just order a pizza?

- What if I don’t cook and we just order Chinese?

- What if I don’t cook and we just go out?

- I think I’ll skip my work out this morning – I’m so tired!

- I should have worked out instead of sleeping in.

- Instead I guess I will eat some more.

- Wow I am getting really fat…

- I should walk my dog but I’m so tired!

- Lucy STOP PRANCING AROUND! I’M SORRY YOU DIDN’T GET A WALK OK!? GET USED TO DISAPPOINTMENT!

- Paddington STOP KNEADING ON MY BELLY! DON’T YOU KNOW THERE’S A FETUS IN THERE!?

- I’ve already gained 6 pounds!? My doctor’s going to kill me…

- I have 13 new pimples… no, 14.

- I have to pee.

- If I eat lunch meat, raw fish, fish more than twice a week, undercooked meat, undercooked eggs, unpasteurized cheese, drink wine, coffee, tea, soda, or anything out of a plastic bottle, don’t get enough protein, water, calcium, fruits and vegetables, or prenatal vitamins or work out just the right amount but not too much the baby will have 4 ears, one eye, and 9 toes on its face. That’s a lot of pressure.

- Omg there’s a baby in there and there it is on the sonogram screen. And it’s WAVING! The pregnancy test was right!

- It looks like an alien!

- If this kid has Lance’s eyes I’m a goner.

- I am SO EXCITED!

- I am SO TERRIFIED!

- Lance is going to be a daddy! I can’t wait to see Lance as a daddy! This is so worth it.

- Should I post a picture of the inside of my uterus for all the entire internet to see? Eh, why not.

New York is not nearly as fun without you.