out of Kadesh

Lance’s hair. It’s like its own character in a book. It changes with the seasons. I like it short; he likes it long.

He hasn’t cut it for almost a year.

He kept promising me he’d get it cut when it started getting hot outside, but I didn’t believe him. He hates getting his hair cut.

I think he just hates talking to people. You know how when you get your hair cut you have to go out in public. He’s not into that. Being social… it’s hard for some people.

He decided, “why pay someone to do this, when I can just do it myself for free?” He also decided, “if I do it myself, I won’t have to talk to some hair-cut person about what I do for a living, where I live, and when I moved here.”

His style of haircut involved grabbing fistfuls of hair and cutting, at random, with really dull scissors. After about 20 minutes, he had this total rockstar hair, which I thought he should keep since we’re in Nashville now and he’d totally fit in.

But then we thought, maybe it looks like he’s trying too hard. So he cut some more.

…And suddenly looked like this.

I was completely overtaken by a huge fit of giggles when I saw the finished product. Which was mean. Sorry.

HAIL CAESAR!

Ok, sorry, sorry.

So then we were like, now what?

So we got out the razor.

When in doubt, give yourself a buzz cut.

…Except, keep the top nice and full. Mohawk-style.

Final step: go to the barber the next morning.

Or not.

Self-haircuts are cool!

Sometimes I feel that I may be too emotionally unwell to be a mother.

Last night we fed Noah rice cereal for the first time. For those of you without kids, allow me to explain. Rice cereal is sort of like cream of wheat that you mix with breast milk. Now, most lactating women would probably just pump a bottle and use it to mix with the cereal, but that is a lot of trouble for the tablespoon of milk that I actually needed, and I’m pretty lazy. So if you could please picture some faceless woman and NOT, for the love of all that is right and holy, myself, bending over a bowl squeezing the shit out of her nipples with her shirt bunched up and her nursing bra around her belly. With that in mind, you can understand why when her husband walks in and finds her he TOTALLY wants to take her right then and there, up against the wall or on the floor. Yet somehow, he resists.

As I’m sure only parents would, Lance and I both agreed there never has been, nor ever will be anything quite as insanely cute as our son spitting out mouthfuls of gloopy cereal. Our son learning to eat, bro. It’s totally worth the cumulative hour of video footage we acquired. Afterwards, giggling, I peeled off Noah’s disgusting onesie and put him in his whale tub, and while I was washing pasty rice off his chest I started reflecting on what had just happened.

Note to self: from now on, never reflect after any of Noah’s developmental milestones.

Note to Lance: from now on, never leave me alone, thereby inviting reflection, after any of Noah’s developmental milestones.

Yes, Reader. It happened. The inevitable realization that my son is almost 5 months old, which is almost half a year old, which is almost one year old, which is almost five years old, which is almost a teenager, which is almost a grown man. And he just ate his first meal with a spoon, which is one step closer to him not needing me for his sole nourishment, which is one step closer to him not needing ME anymore. With these inevitable realizations came, and I am embarrassed to admit it, inevitable tears. Inevitable sobs. It’s not my fault. I couldn’t help it! While Noah splashed and smiled and tried to pick up his floating rubber ducky, I just sat there and cried, and felt old and alone.

And I thought, God, this is just happening way too fast. How do I slow this ride down?? It was YESTERDAY I brought him home from the hospital, and now he’s eating something other than boobs! When did that happen? Was I not paying attention? I can’t, like, breathe it all in, his baby-ness, fast enough. I want to stopper time and save it for later, for when he’s grown, but when I reach out to grab on to this, it’s already gone.

Ugh.

Excuse me while I go frantically hold on to my baby.

A couple of weeks ago, I posted about how I’d been sick, and a couple of days later, I posted that I’d been sick again. And then when I was sick three more times after that post, I didn’t post about being sick anymore because I figured you were sick about hearing about me… being… sick. Yeah. But the point is, I’ve been sick, and I mean, knock-me-out, throwing up, can’t stand up, can’t lift my son, have to stay in bed, have to get my mom and sister to come help with Noah and bring him to me and stick him on my boob when he’s hungry because I can’t do anything but roll over and drool kind of sick. And even though I am generally a very healthy girl who made many pregnant ladies super jealous when they found out I didn’t throw up once during my pregnancy, I’ve been sick many, many times this month. So last Friday, when I woke up with pain exploding in my head and the now-familiar but still nails-on-chalkboard horrible wave of nausea, I finally made an appointment and went to the doctor.

The doctor ordered a blood test, and the blood test showed abnormalities. And then the doctor couldn’t get in touch with me right away with the results, so she left a message, but before I even had a chance to listen to the message she scared the bejesus out of me by finding me on facebook and sending me a message that asked me to call about my blood work. REALLY. REALLY?

It turns out I am NOT dying and do NOT need to find my way to the nearest hospital in order for them to save my life which has precious minutes left if I don’t get help immediately, which is the only reason I can think to contact a patient by finding them on a SOCIAL NETWORKING SITE, FOR CRYING OUT LOUD. She told me the blood test showed that I had an over-active thyroid.

“An over-active whu-huh?”
“It controls your metabolism, and it’s working too hard, too fast, causing the dizziness, anxiety, and nausea.”
“O……..kay…….”
“It happens sometimes postpartum, because your thyroid gets messed up during pregnancy, so you need to see a specialist, because it could really cause problems if we don’t get it regulated.”
“O…….kay. Then do I still need to see the Ear, Nose, and Throat specialist about my inner-ear like you said on Friday? Or can I cancel that appointment now?”
“No, you still need to go to that too.”
“Perfect.”

The morning after this conversation, I got a call from the Thyroid Specialist’s office.
“We’d like to get you in as soon as possible. Women who have this condition because of pregnancy… well, we just need to see you pretty immediately. How does this Thursday work with your schedule?”
“Um, fine… I guess… I mean I never really have time to go to the doctor because I have a four-month-old… so…”
“Great! So we’ll squeeze you in at 11:45. Be here 30 minutes early to fill out a shit-load of paperwork that, were we competent, we could have gotten from the doctor who referred you to us. Okay?”
“Right. Thanks.”

Maybe I’m just not used to doctors calling me every couple of days and CONTACTING ME ON FACEBOOK to tell me something is wrong with me and rushing to get me appointments and everything, but I was beginning to be seriously concerned. I mean I’d heard of a thyroid before, but only just. So to me, it seemed like everyone was kind of…. panicked. On my behalf. Just keep this in mind, because it pertains to the story. Later. I think. After I got off the phone with them it occurred to me that I had no idea what this office visit was going to entail. They could be planning any number of torturous tests; they could be planning on poking me with a dozen needles! Or running CT scans! Or surgery! When I expressed my (TOTALLY FOUNDED) fears to Lance, he told me I watch too much Grey’s Anatomy, and I was all “Well EXCUSE ME for doing RESEARCH.”

The doctor’s office is about 30 minutes away, so I called my mom to meet us at a Starbucks nearby so we could leave Noah with her. I would have had her come over to our house while we trekked all the way out there, but Noah has recently decided he will not be taking a bottle ever again, thank you very much, so I have to bring him everywhere with me so my boobs are always readily accessible to him.

After we filled out 30 minutes worth of paper work, payed a 50 DOLLAR COPAY as we were seeing a Specialist oooo, and had my vitals taken (apparently I have a pulse), the doctor came in.

“So how are you feeling?”
“Pretty good.”
“Let’s take a look at your medical history. Hmm… that’s interesting, no history of thyroid disease?”
“Um, not that I know of.”
“Well, basically the antibodies in your blood are either attacking or sitting on TOP of your thyroid. But we can’t really know which it is unless we give you a radioactive substance to drink so we can take a picture of your insides.”
“Exsqueeze me?! Baking powder?! But I’m breastfeeding!”
“Right, well, you’d have to pump your breast milk and throw it away for about a week after the procedure. But a lot of people don’t want to do that.”
“Weird, I can’t imagine why.”
“Well, in all likelihood it’s just postpartum thyroiditis, which should clear up on its own in about 4-6 weeks.”

…………………………….

(Insert things I could have said)

“THEN WHAT THE HELL AM I DOING HERE?!!!”
“I want my $50 back.”
“Did my doctor owe you a favor or something?”
“Could a phone call not have taken care of this office visit?!”
“This is the dumbest thing I have ever done.”

Instead, I just blinked a couple dozen times, until she awkwardly asked, “So, do you have any questions?”

“You mean other than WHAT THE FUCK? No.”

“Ok! I’ll see you back here in 4-6 weeks then!”

LIKE HELL YOU WILL.

I learned several important lessons today. One was that even though I was kind of proud of losing so much weight after my pregnancy (I’m 3 pounds less than I was before I got pregnant), it turns out it’s not because of my daily walks through the golf course and lifting a 17 pound baby. It’s because I’m sick.

So I used to be all GO BREASTFEEDING! But now I’m all GO THYROID!

Noah’s in this phase where he doesn’t like to be put down, which makes doing things, like oh, I dunno, ANYTHING, quite difficult. So with Lance at work during the day and me unable to set Noah down for MORE THAN FOUR SECONDS, we’re having to do things at night, when oh, God but how I wish I were sleeping.

One of those things that normal people may find easier to do in daylight is planting a garden. Last night, after the boy went to bed, we took the baby monitor outside and lit some candles.

It was really fun until a june bug flew into my hair. Is it just me, or is there almost no worse sound in the universe than the buzz a june bug makes as it flies into your hair, dangerously close to your ear? I about lost my shit, y’all. I must have danced around the whole entire yard, shrieking like a little girl and swatting so violently at my ponytail that it came out in dirty, tangled knots. All while my helpful hubbs leaned on his shovel and raised an eyebrow at me. LIKE I WASN’T JUSTIFIED. Husbands can be so useless. Next time, kindly come to my aid by beating the living shit out of my head with your garden gloves. Thank you.

We planted zucchini, bell peppers, jalapeno peppers, cucumbers, and tomatoes.

We finally finished around 10:00, and now we have beautiful little plants peeking out of the ground. Aren’t they cute?

I can’t wait to harvest them! Best of all, it’ll be about the time the Bubbs starts eating non-mashed up baby food. Isn’t it awesome that his first veggies will be grown right in our back yard?

…that is the seriously baffling topic of discussion here in Kadesh today.

Before the Bubbs was born, I read some bad literature on the issue of sleep/scheduling… and I mean, VERY bad literature, that advocated letting babies cry-it-out even as newborns. I’ve since learned that this particular book has been renounced by the American Academy of Pediatrics. I won’t tell you what the popular, secular version is called, but the writers have a religious series as well that they call (and I am so not shitting you with this) “Raising Kids God’s Way.” Uh…pretentious much? I won’t go on and on about these writers that seriously messed with my head, and so many other mothers’ heads that I have since heard and read about, because that is not the point of this post. But I will say this one thing, and then I swear I’m done. Why is GOD’S WAY so damn cruel and why on EARTH would he want mothers to go against their instincts by letting their day-old babies scream long into the night? JUST WONDERING.

Anyway, honestly not because of any book or anything, but seriously because we did not know what to do as new parents and Noah was crying and we KNEW he only needed sleep… one night we let him cry. We listened to him cry himself hoarse for ten minutes, and only those of you with babies know how long ten minutes can feel. And when we couldn’t stand it for one more second, we burst into the room to hold and soothe him, and vowed never to do that to him again. NEVER AGAIN.

I hate that memory, Reader. It is one of the worst things I think I’ve ever done. Sometime after that day, I had a nightmare that I left Noah in the car because he was asleep, and halfway through the dream I remembered I needed to check on him but it had been like an hour, so I ran back out to the car and before I got to the door, I saw his face through the window. He was screaming soundlessly, and even in the dream my heart stopped at the sight, and I thought, My God, how long has he been screaming for me? After waking up in a cold sweat and crying myself back to sleep (in the fetal position) (after trying to ask Noah to forgive me) (for a dream) (that’s how real and terrible it was) (I think I’ll continue breaking all my thoughts into parenthetical phrases) (what do you think?), I redoubled my resolve to never, EVER, EVER let him cry by himself again.

Stop.

………….

Hammer time.

Oh man! Sometimes I make myself laugh while I’m blogging. ((heh)) I kill me. But seriously, folks. I’m pausing your regularly scheduled blog post for an update that I hope I can weave back into the point of this post, but if not, please cut me some slack. I don’t sleep.

Today was Noah’s four-month checkup. He gets a physical exam, we ask a shit-ton of questions, and then, oh help us, Jesus, SHOTS. Shots are where a mother, who spends all day and all night trying to protect her baby from harm and pain and doing everything in her power to keep him happy, is suddenly expected to sit back and like, WATCH while someone in scrubs crams needles in her baby’s legs. The desire to snatch Noah off the padded table in naught but his green diaper and run for the door is only JUST assuaged by my desire to protect him from those diseases I can’t pronounce and honestly don’t even know what they are. Noah was a champ though. He only cried a couple of seconds. But that’s not what I’m even talking about. (You’d never know, would you.) (Also, this has nothing to do with it either, but he only weighed 17 pounds! I could have sworn he’d be 40 or 50 by now. He’s back down to the 90th percentile for weight in his age group. His head size is still off the charts though, so all is as it should be.)

Anyway, the reason I am telling you this (besides so that you, too can be astounded by the size of my kid’s monster noggin) is because the doctor sits patiently in a chair during these checkups and lets me pull out my little red journal in which I have for two months prior recorded all manner of ridiculous questions to ask him, including, but not limited to, “why was he crying the other day when he um… suddenly started crying for no reason whatsoever?” (The answer, in case you were wondering, was, “There’s no telling. Next time you wake up and come to my office why don’t you remember to change out of your CRAZY PANTS FIRST.”) (Ok, I made that last part up, but I could see that’s what he was thinking. I COULD SEE IT IN HIS COLD, DEAD EYES.)

So he asks, “how’s he sleeping?” And I just start laughing, and ironically enough, so does Noah at the exact same moment.

And HE says: “You really just have to put him in his crib and let him cry. And when he wakes up, don’t go into him. Just let him cry. And I promise it will be ok, he won’t turn out to be a serial killer or anything. He’ll be fine, and he’ll learn to sleep, and within a week he’ll be sleeping through the night.”

FLASHBACK! Flashback to my nightmare where he was crying in the car, flashback to that time I listened on the baby monitor while he cried.

“Oh, well, I don’t know about that Doc… I mean I’ve read that breast milk digests in only two hours. Doesn’t he need to eat at night at least until I start feeding him solids?”

He gives a sidelong glance at my chubby son, taking in his chunky thighs and protruding belly, then double checks his chart (in which my four-month old’s 17 POUND WEIGHT is surely written). “Yeah. He’ll be fine.”

I think this doctor isn’t used to hippies like Lance and me. Their office was voted the #1 pediatrician’s office in Nashville. Rich, put-together people go there. So Lance and I stroll in there with our baby in a sling and neither of us have showered in 10 days and we’re like “Oh, we don’t want him to get four shots, like the schedule says. We only want him to have two. We’ll come back for the other two some other time. See, because, WE think four shots is too many, and last time we got FIVE shots and he cried all day, and we’re not into that.” The nurse comes in all contemptuously like, “Ok. So, only TWO shots today, huh. HUH.” And I’m like “Yes, thank you, and sorry he just started breastfeeding. But judging by the look on your face I should take him off because you clearly have better things to be doing so here you go. STICK NEEDLES IN HIS LEGS, PLEASE. I’LL JUST BE OVER HERE.”

The thing with the pediatrician is you don’t have to do what he says because he’ll never know. And even though I feel like a little kid in trouble while he’s towering over me as I’m sitting there in his primary colors office, I remember that I am Noah’s mother, and I will decide what is best for my son. And if I don’t tell the doctor at his six-month checkup that we didn’t follow his scary advice? Who’s the wiser, right? And if he asks me how he’s sleeping and I look right at him and LIE MY FACE OFF, who am I hurting? Right?

But then there’s this teensy part of me that whispers, “Noah will never learn to sleep. You’ll have to nurse him all night long like a little hamster until he’s 20 years old. He’ll be thin and sickly as a kid from never having uninterrupted sleep because you were too pussy to let him cry at night for one stupid week.”

Oh well. I’ve made my decision. I’m not going to let him cry, at least not right now. (See how I covered my ass because I’m about 200% sure those could have just been my famous last words.) I can’t tell you how much research I’ve done on letting babies cry it out, and it’s based on this plus the parenting epiphany I had about following my instincts (post coming soon), which tell me to rush in to his bedroom, pick him up, and coddle the hell out of my crying baby. I lied at the beginning of this post, there’s not really a discussion to let him cry. We’re not going to do it. Maybe if he’s still not sleeping when he’s 18, we’ll revisit the discussion about letting him cry himself to sleep.

Just don’t tell our pediatrician.

Noah hates his car seat. Have I mentioned? HATES IT. If we ever want to leave the house, we have to very carefully plan our strategy.

Step 1: Diversionary tactics. Lance straps him in it while I begin thrusting toy after toy in his face and shaking it.

Step 2: Confuse the enemy. Lance wrestles with his arms while I begin smiling ludicrously big, singing loudly and tunelessly, and breaking out in a little soft-shoe.

Step 3: Choose a weapon. Lance shoves the nearest pacifier into his mouth.

Step 4: Regroup. Lance and I throw back a couple shots of Vodka.

Step 5: Enter the battle field. We run out to the car, click the seat into the base, and then quickly roll down the windows so the force of his banshee screeching doesn’t blast them into a million pieces.

As you can imagine, whenever we DO go somewhere, it damn well better be worth it. THIS IS WAR WE’RE TALKING ABOUT.

And I forgot my camera.

But I had my phone! You go, Droid.

Hey, Bubba, let’s get a picture!

…let’s get another one where Mommy’s pores aren’t magnified!

Lance! Say cheese!

Lance: “DOOD! The park has wi-fi!”

Smile, Bubba!

Ok, you’re right, the sun was right in our eyes. Let’s get Daddy’s help.

Lance: “Aw, nuts, he looked down.”
Me: “Ok, I’ll bounce him, and when I say go, snap the picture.”

Lance: “It worked! I got him smiling!”
Me: “Great… let’s just make sure and crop Mommy’s Crazyface out.”

I think this trip was worth the car seat, don’t you, Bubba?

…Bubba?

(whispering) Oh, sorry.

It was a big day, y’all.

Dear Noah,

F-O-U-R months! You’re a big boy now. Only a couple more months before you’re ready to crawl, then (gasp) you’ll be walking, and then I guess you’ll be ready to move out and get your own place. I can’t believe how the time is zipping by, and I know I say that at the start of each of your letters, but it becomes more true every month.

This month has been very significant, mostly for me, because I decided to let you start sleeping in bed with your Daddy and me after your first night-time waking. You should know I was dead set against this before we had you, and even after we had you for a long time. I thought it would be very bad for all of us. But it’s just one of the many ways you’ve altered my thinking, Bubbs. The truth is, I love having you in bed with us. I love waking up to you sleeping in my arms, and I LOVE being able to feed you the second you start fussing, without even having to fully wake up. And I’ll tell you a secret: Daddy loves having you in bed with us as much as I do. The other night, as we fell asleep and you were still in your own bed, Daddy whispered, “I miss him.” And I did too.

You are like THIS close to figuring out your hands. It takes you a long time to actually grab something, but watching you concentrate all your energy on reaching out with those pudgy fingers and grasping a toy is one of the cutest things I’ve ever seen, with the exception of watching you try to put said toy in your mouth but missing and hitting your cheek, forehead, eye… but it’s ok. I know you’re going to get those hands under control ANY DAY NOW.

The biggest difference this month, though, is how BORED you are. Your dad and me are like, so lame. We have to entertain you pretty much all day long, or you get real pissy. And try as we might, you are just so bored that we are afraid you might just drive yourself insane. All day long I’m hauling out toys, picking you up, putting you down, talking to you, letting you stand on my lap, bouncing you, showing you books… it’s just a little bit exhausting. And it’s starting to spill over into our social lives. I admit I thought we had a little bit more time before we couldn’t take you out in public, but I’m not sure we do. The other day at Borders, I was trying to read a book and you’ve always been content to just sit in my lap and people-watch, but you were all like “I’M BORRRED!” and I was all “here’s your duck ok? Oh, please shh we’re in a bookstore Bubba, here chew on this.” Then three minutes later you’re all “I’M DONE WITH THIS ONE GIVE ME SOMETHING ELSE OH GOD I’M SO BORED!” and I was like “ok, let’s walk around, want to walk around? Sh, sh, sh…” …and on and on it went until we decided we’d better leave before we got kicked out.

And on top of it all, I think you’re getting teeth. Teeth! Already! I spend one half of my day being your own personal jester, and the other half stuffing things into your mouth, like my fingers, teething rings, washcloths, bibs, dollar bills, beer bottles… basically anything I can reach in a hurry to sooth the pain in your gums.

The other major change is that I love nursing you now. It was a rough start for us, Bubba, but I think we’ve finally got the hang of it. I still can’t nurse you in public very well, because you protest if I try and put anything over your head (understandable) but you like to pop off several times per feeding to smile up at me and talk to me. Don’t get me wrong, I love this, the way you have to stop eating because you have very important things to tell me, but if we were in public you would make me flash all the strangers around us, and I’m just not really into that. Plus, you’ve started this thing (part of getting used to using your hands, I guess) where you have to be punching my boob or pulling my shirt down while you nurse, so that’s not really socially appropriate either.

At four months old you’ve already got such a little personality. Your smile reaches all over your face and makes everyone around you feel joy. And when you cry, I mean really cry, your eyebrows turn red and big crocodile tears slide down your cheeks, and your Daddy and I feel like someone blotted out the sun. I hate it so much when you are sad, and I’d do anything in my power to make you smile again. I love you, Noah.

Love,

Mommy

Man, I’ve been busy today. Noah was like super fussy and wouldn’t let me put him in the new bouncy seat I spent way too much on yesterday, Lucy barfed on the rug, Noah barfed on the other rug, and I was trying to clean up because we invited our neighbors over for dinner on Thursday and I got to thinking they might not want to see that pink ring in the toilet while they’re here. Add seven or eight dirty diapers to that and basically what I am saying is I’ve pretty much been cleaning up puke and shit all day. It’ll wear you out. And then Lost was on, and then Parenthood was on, and I of course had to continue following the fake stories of the fake people in my life. (Give me a break, ok? When you spend your day scrubbing barf out of rugs and cleaning poop off your kid’s tush, you just want to sit on your ass at the end of it and stuff your face with pie while you watch Desmond kick the crap out of Charles Widmore with an IV pole.) With all that on my proverbial plate, I’m just now getting the chance to sit down to blog but really all I want to do is pass completely out until sometime next week.

Alas, my son still wakes me up for milk 400 times at night.

The reason this post is entitled “A paradigm shift” is because I am having one. Original, I know, but there it is. Actually, I’m having many, but I’ll stick to one for now in order not to scare you, Reader. It started with me picking up a book by Donald Miller last weekend called A Million Miles in a Thousand Years. I started reading it and it’s all about not wasting your life. No pressure. Then on the way to church on Easter I saw a bumper sticker on the car in front of us that said, I kid you not, “Don’t waste your life.”

Sometimes, God, I wish You would just stop with the subtleties. WHAT ARE YOU TRYING TO SAY ALREADY!?

If you’re like me, you’d see this and you’d be like “what does that mean though?” I get freaked out by stuff like that. It’s too broad, you know what I mean? Don’t waste your life. Ok… well, I’m fairly good at 5-Card Draw and I’ve read all the Harry Potter books a couple of times… oh! and I make a mean lasagna. So what do I do now? I need like, step-by-step instructions here.

Well, this pretty much never happens, but I think I’ve got the answer. On Easter, we’re at church like all good little Christians do on Easter, and the pastor is kicking ass with the message, and I’m taking notes like crazy, and all of the sudden he said something that I don’t even think he meant to say necessarily; anyway it didn’t have anything to do with his sermon, but it struck me in a funny way so I stopped taking notes and looked up at him with my mouth open for a long time, like everything was in slow motion. He said “Sometimes I get one of your faces in my mind and I can’t shake it all week, and then I’ll see you and I’ll ask, ‘How are you?’ and you’ll say ‘I’m ok,’ and then I’ll just look at you for a minute, and you’ll say ‘Well, actually I’m not ok.’” That’s when it hit me. I always think of closeness with Jesus as like, my being super blessed or having supernatural abilities like invisibility or something. Subconsciously, I guess I’ve thought having a close relationship with God is about ME. But I realized, in that moment, that it’s not about me at all. It’s about everyone else.

Jesus spent His entire ministry trying to get us to understand this one principle, but I’m pretty sure most Christians are like me, always thinking about MY feelings, MY sin, MY pain, MY brokenness. MY financial issues, MY marriage issues, the fact that MY baby won’t sleep at night. It’s opposite of what I should be focused on as a believer. My thoughts should not be on myself, but on my friends, family, the people of Haiti, the homeless, the hurting people all around me.

My thoughts… and my prayers.

My prayers are always for and about my own needs and selfish desires, so I’m starting this experiment where I stop praying for me. Instead I’m picking three to five people every day to focus on when I pray. It’s what Jesus would do, y’all. Did you know when He was in the garden at Gethsemane, mere hours away from what He knew would be His own torture and death, He prayed for us? That’s crazy love. I think this is going to be awesome, because it’s absolutely where God’s thoughts are: with His children. Eventually I hope I’ll have the kind of close relationship with God where He (or She) puts people’s faces on my mind, where He entrusts me to pray for and encourage and find ways to help those around me. I bet He loves me enough to put my face on someone else’s mind, too, and that’s pretty cool. It’s I think what Christianity is supposed to be about.

I think this is really it, y’all; this is really how not to waste your life. It seems almost like an oxymoron: in order not to waste your life, forget about YOUR life. You have to make your life about other people. But it makes sense if you think about all the great people in history; they all somehow impacted those around them. Jesus, Martin Luther King, Jr., Mother Teresa… others that I’d think about and write if my contacts weren’t so dry my eyes feel like glue.

Coincidentally, I was reading back over my prayer journal from last year, when I first found out I was pregnant. All my entries are so panicked sounding, so stressed out. The tone of the prayers is like I don’t think they’re really going to happen. It’s like PLEASE let us find a house! and I’m so nervous something’s going to be wrong with the baby, please protect the baby! and I don’t know how we’re going to live on only one income, please let us pay off our debt! Where are we going to get money!? I was reading it going, geez, what a putz. Calm down, already. And I was kind of laughing at myself as I realized that every one of my prayers was answered. We have a great house in a great neighborhood that we bought for a great price, most of our debt was paid off when we got our tax refund for being first-time home buyers, and we had a perfect, healthy baby boy.

But then I realized suddenly that I still do that. I still pray like that, like I don’t believe there’s any way at all what I’m asking will be answered. Even though He always always always comes through for me, I still haven’t learned to trust God for good things.

Huh.