What I'm Into-September 2013

Here's a fun thing. A new-to-me blogger, Leigh Kramer, hosts this link-up for people to share what they read, listened to, ate, and otherwise engaged in for the previous month. So if you're at all interested in what I did in September, stick around! Otherwise, you know, um, don't. Or something.

Happenings

• September was full of happy events. As I posted here, we finalized our daughter's adoption on September 3rd, a mere two weeks after moving across the country. 

• Ricky turned the big 3-0 and we celebrated with dinner, presents, and a salted caramel cheesecake. In the spirit of youth, I surprised him with tickets to go see Macklemore in November. Maybe we'll feel silly, but it should be fun. I'm on the lookout for a babysitter starting now. 

• Nicolas turned seven. It was a little sad to not have the usual friends and family around to celebrate with a big party like usual, but he took it in stride. We made the day special with lots of balloons, a special breakfast, funfetti cake (hurts my teeth to just think about it), a new bike with NO training wheels, opening packages he'd received in the mail from family, and a fun night at his school carnival (it also happened to be his school's 40th anniversary that day.) The next day was Saturday so we took a trip to the Lego store. It was actually not huge like we thought it would be, and therefore a bit anticlimactic for the adults, but he loved it.

• We joined a gym that offers two hours of childcare daily. We're mostly alternating days, but we did have a "work-out date" on Saturday. I was so beat afterward that I had to take a nap. Aaaand that's what I get for working out with Ricky. It was fun though.
• Silas, Aimee and I are staying home quite a bit. I'm not planning on looking for a nursing job until January, so this is a nice break. I'm still spending a lot of time unpacking and "cozifying" the house, and we frequent the neighborhood parks and head out to the gym a few mornings a week. Our schedules revolve around naps. It's simple and sweet, and I can actually appreciate it because it's temporary (funny how that works.)

• We've been to three churches here, two of which are promising. I'll share more about that in the coming days, as we figure things out. 

Reading

• I read Nadia Bolz-Weber's new book Pastrix: The Cranky, Beautiful Faith of a Sinner and Saint. It was refreshing to read something both gritty and vulnerable, and I came away from it encouraged in my faith. As Nadia writes, Christianity is really just a continuous process of death and resurrection, rather than a ladder we climb. It's freeing to think in those terms. I also really enjoyed listening to her interview with Krista Tippett, particularly the part where she discusses her tattoos and their meanings, and notes that tattoos often carry with them a profound story or hard-won truth. My one tattoo (the second one is brewing, I think) came from my years of grief following my father's passing and the desire to hold onto God's goodness. It's a hope really, more than an assurance. It sure is difficult to explain to curious passers-by in one or two lines! Anyway, I suppose I'm deeply curious about why people get the tattoos that they do, so this was fascinating to listen to.

• I'm still plugging away at America's Women: Four Hundred Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates, and Heroines by Gail Collins. It's truly interesting material, but I suppose my brain is easily pulled away by social media and such after a bit of reading in this book. It's a good one for my nightstand.

• I just started All is Grace: A Ragamuffin Memoir by Brennan Manning with John Blase (whose poetry I've really come to look forward to.) This one's been on the list for a while. 

Listening

• I've mostly been listening to Over the Rhine's new album Meet Me at the Edge of the World. It's my favorite work of theirs so far. Their music is gorgeous as usual, but there's a sense of peace and groundedness to this album that's really special, in contrast to the tensions they expressed in previous albums. We saw them in Albuquerque in 2010, and I remember they talked about how so many are interested in the stories of how people meet and fall in love, but they were more interested in the stories of what happens after people are married. It's infinitely more meaningful to hear happy stories when people have shared their sad and confusing times as well. All that to say, I sure like them.

• I'm a big fan of Jonathan Martin's sermon podcasts, and often listen to them while getting stuff done around the house. Thank God for my internet pastors :)

Eating

• I was curious about the cauliflower pizza crust I see everywhere, so we tried it out last Friday night. It's so, so good! I used this recipe.

• I'm enjoying fall-ish recipes. Chili in the crockpot, roasted acorn squash with taco meat and melted cheese, butternut squash lasagna....you get the idea. 

• Yesterday I discovered this little gem. It's every bit as good as it looks.

Watching

• Breaking Bad, along with most everyone else. A few years back I watched an episode and a half with Ricky and decided it wasn't for me because of the violence. At some point though, the story drew me in and I've been watching it religiously since. I did see the final season including the series finale before I finished all the in between episodes, so it's all a bit of a mishmash in my head. I think I like it as much as I do, despite the violence and difficult subject matter, because the characters are so layered and remind me of people I know in real life. To me, that's one of the marks of a well-written show.

• I also have big plans to start season 4 of Downton Abbey now that Walter White and I are parting ways. Ricky and I like to keep up with The Voice on Hulu and I'll be checking in with Parenthood at some point. Yay for new fall shows to watch.

So that's September in a nutshell. What did you enjoy (or not enjoy)? Linking up with Leigh here.

Happy October!

on rough edges

Three years ago, during our east coast summer, I read this book by Anne Lamott called Grace (Eventually) and kind of hated it. I had a really hard time relating to her, and can I say something honest and ugly and completely unflattering? I had a hard time thinking of her as a Christian. She didn't seem victorious at all over her issues, and that bothered me. (I know, that says a lot more about where I was at the time than it does about Anne Lamott. She's a brave soul.)

This weekend I read it again and pretty much loved it. I found the pockets of grace easily, amidst the political rambling and the lack of traditional Christian tidiness. I found good news there.

Here's the thing about her: she's rough around the edges, and she doesn't polish her image for her books. It was upsetting the first time around, this lack of polish. This time it was a relief.

What I get now, and I'm not sure why I didn't then, is that you can't possibly begin to talk about grace until you talk about the ugly stuff. Without one, the other doesn't exist. There's a startling beauty that begins to unfold when a person is vulnerable; truly vulnerable, not in the "I used to be this way but look, God helped me and I'm so much better now" way that we're all so fond of. She has a way of capturing the beauty of the human condition without airbrushing it, without leaving out the f word and the angry hot tears, and the confusion.

I'm definitely over myself more these days. I've prayed a lot of "why do I suck so much; please help me" prayers. I've apologized without any real idea of what I'm going to do to fix it. I've gone to bed bone tired just from being with myself all day. I'm in over my head and it turns out, much to my disappointment, that I'm not strong after all. I'm actually pretty ridiculous. I'm the proverbial old man grumbling "get off my lawn" and the optimistic kid saying "will you play with me?" at the same time. I read once that you grow up the day you look in the mirror and have a good, long laugh at yourself. Well.

But grace allows me to rest. Grace says, go to sleep and try again tomorrow, knowing full well that tomorrow might actually be worse. Grace teaches me continually to be kinder to myself even when I know that might be a mistake, because I might take advantage of it.

That's me, trying to make any progress at all with family, in work, relationships, self-image: scootch, scootch, stall; scootch, stall, catastrophic reversal; bog, bog, scootch. I wish grace and healing were more abracadabra kinds of things; also, that delicate silver bells would ring to announce grace's arrival. But no, it's clog and slog and scootch, on the floor, in silence, in the dark. 

I suppose that if you were snatched out of the mess, you'd miss the lesson; the lesson is the slog (p. 93) 

It speaks to me. I've become a student of the slog.

Silas came up to me just now, face covered in yogurt and said "Hey. Mommy. Owp." Too often I approach prayer like it's some kind of favor I'm doing. That's so not the case, ever. I just need help.

I'm making peace with the human condition (or you know, trying to). Opportunities abound for being taken up with our less pleasant qualities. It will always be tempting to say snarky things, to react, to judge. Especially in response to people who say careless, mean things....and oh, they are so much more up in our faces nowadays (or does it just seems that way to me?) I read today that the best way to be friends with people who you disagree with is to say "tell me why this is important to you", and then just listen. That pretty much sounds like the best and hardest thing ever. It is hard to have a conversation. It is hard to really listen and not just wait for your turn to talk some more.

All the ugly things that I bump up against and want to react to are inside of me too. I keep running into them. So I'm free to let others off the hook. Theoretically. Hopefully.

We are such fragile people, it's amazing we can experience love at all.

bread crumbs: on being still

{bread crumbs: hints, big or small, that seem to fall in front of me just when I need them.}

I've been reading Lauren Winner's new book Still: Notes On A Mid-Faith Crisis for the past few weeks. I first discovered her in college when my room-mate lent me her memoir Girl Meets God; I still read it every other year or so. Anyway, something stuck out to me a few nights ago. One of the things she writes about is her struggle with anxiety. She decides to give up anxiety for Lent (I love the bravery of such a statement):

The desert saints said that the beginning of renouncing a thought is simply noticing it. That is what I'm doing in my quarter hours--I am noticing, and naming, and then for a few minutes, quarantining  a distraction.

But the desert fathers say something more: after noticing a thought, replace it with prayer. So that is just what I try to do to my anxiety this Lent--not just ignore it for quarter hour increments, but sidle up alongside it and pray. (89-90) 

This idea of just spending some time with anxiety (or in my case the almost paralyzing discontent that creeps up sometimes) and noticing it, then praying through it really spoke to me. I tried it yesterday. I spent some time with my discontent, asked it what it's name was. Sometimes it's just advertising telling me I don't have things that I want (turns out most of the time I don't want them, not really), or Pinterest telling me I'm not creative enough with my throw pillows or my marriage, or any number of outside sources streaming false information into my mind. It's all the same lie of not enough. So I spent some time with that lie (disguised as my feelings) and eventually it showed its ugly face. And I prayed. I held up all my feelings, true and false, asked for help, and help came in the form of peace.

But say that feeling of discontent came from something real--something that really needed to be changed or fixed, then spending time with it would reveal that as well. Sometimes discontent is just the push I need to make something happen. Most of the time, I'm finding, that is not the case. It's just the not enough lie blinding me to the blessings that surround me.

I used to think I should be harder on myself. Now I mostly try to be kinder to myself, in the hopes that the outflow will be better. God lavishes grace on me daily, and I am desperately in need of grace to lavish (or even to dole out in teaspoons, that would work.) What goes in must come out, and there is no way to be there for other people if I'm not there for myself too.

I will not run away from stillness. It is uncomfortable but it is fruitful. I love this prayer she mentions:

O God of peace, who hast taught us that in returning and rest we shall be saved, in quietness and in confidence shall be our strength: By the might of thy Spirit lift us, we pray thee, to thy presence, where we may be still and know that thou art God.

-from the Book of Common Prayer, 832.