I don't have insomnia. I'm just not sleeping well. There's a glut of reasons why this might be. However, I find the psychology of not sleeping and the phases of human desperation very interesting.
The first night when you don't sleep, it's an annoyance. You flip and flop, and then you lay there in a state of grump. Everything annoys you: the temperature, the scratchy sheets, the clock ticking, the soft breathing of a man you've devoted your life, heart, and soul to. It's frustrating, but the next day comes and life goes on with the promise of slumber the next night.
When the next night comes, and you are again not sleeping, the ticking minutes start to nettle you with desperation. You flip and flop more incessantly, convinced that this is somehow your fault, and if you could just get this sleeping thing right (after 30 years of perfect practice) maybe you would be rewarded with unconsciousness. Things that were annoying last night begin to enrage. You want to rip the clock from the wall, find a hammer and make sure it's next tick is it's last. You want to strip every stitch of clothing off because for-goodness-sake-are-we-in-the-amazon?! Then you want to buy a gallon of fabric softener and wash your bedding in it a hundred times.
And you might just start considering how to murder your soul mate. Because God forbid the man breathe.
But day dawns. And though you may look a year or two older, the next night will be better.
On the third night of sleeplessness you turn into The Narrator.
You start composing the blog about sleeplessness in your head as you lay there sleepless (which I am now writing the next day after sleeplessness). It's all so cyclical that the meta threatens to make you philosophical at 2:00am (which is the worst time for philosophy).
You start quoting a movie you have never actually seen, but have heard quotes from and they make you happy. And that makes you so sad you sob loudly enough, to maybe encourage your snoring companion to roll-the-freak-over.
However, you are non-violent. You have never intentionally punched, slapped, or kicked (since being over the age of twelve) another human being. And Fight Club is just too normal for you. You'd go down into your cave in search of your power animal and instead of it being something normal like a lion or a penguin it would be the Pillsbury Dough Boy...
Woohoo.
And that's when it hits you: you are The Narrator of Bake Club.
Except instead of Brad Pitt as your Tyler Durden, your alternate personality is the Pioneer Woman.
"Welcome to Bake Club. The first rule of Bake Club is: you do not talk about Bake Club. The second rule of Bake Club is: you DO NOT talk about Bake Club! Third rule of Bake Club: someone yells "fire!", gets egg shell in the batter, spills the flour, the bake is over. Fourth rule: only two cooks in the kitchen. Fifth rule: one recipe at a time, ladies. Sixth rule: No aprons, no oven mitts. Seventh rule: cookies will bake as long as they have to. And eighth and final rule: if this is your first time at Bake Club, you have to bake."
It's a beautiful reversal really: "A girl who came to Bake Club, her derriere was carved out of wood. After a few weeks, she was a wad of cookie dough."
If you just picked up my blog...
"You've met me at a very strange time in my life."
Tuesday, October 27, 2015
Saturday, October 24, 2015
Life and Plastic Death
We walked toward the cashiers at Home Depot. The kids were having a rough go of things. Noah was whining, which is his new and oh-let-this-be-over-soon specialty. The "little man" wanted to be carried, but at three years old and D-lineman thick, he is no longer really carriable for me. Hannah, who I currently was carrying because she was picking up everything (everything meaning, metal brackets, screws, 2x4's and lollipops), was desperately squirming like a hooked fish trying to flop back into the waters of merchandise. I finally set her down (instead of catching her by her hair after an enormous barrel roll, which I'm told child services tends to frown on) with firm instructions to keep her little fingers to herself.
Then I looked up into the face of death.
A plasticy, cheaply fabricated, anatomically inaccurate death.
I hate Halloween. This is only in small part because I serve the God of light, who abides in life and grace, in whom there is no darkness. It is more because what culturally came to be a fun time for children has become a nauseatingly childish time for adults. There is no greater proof that we are mass cultural consumers unable to think independent or complex thoughts than our need to put giant inflatable spiders on our lawn.
Trick or treating is fine (for children). Dressing up is cool. A plethora of Reese's in every nook of the house just might have saved it.
But really? We need decor? We need life-sized Grim Reapers (... I feel there is irony lurking in that sentence) and orange lights, and paper mache headstones for our nicely manicured lawn?
However, my rants and opinions change very little. And thus, we came upon death... in the middle of Home Depot... next to the plastic flamingos.
I was concerned and suddenly hating Halloween for entirely other reasons: my sweet little Hannah was now trotting out ahead of us, and she was moments away from encountering this horrific figure. Does innocence count for nothing?
A truly concerned mother would have run up, spun her daughter away from the grim figure and rushed us all past. Sadly, I am more often curious than fully concerned.
At this point my baby girl was even with the plastic death, she started to turn, and I held my breath. Her eyes locked with the black hollows in the skullish face, a bony finger stretched toward her, pointing at her little heart, evil cackled "Abandon All Hope." I waited for the wailing, the crumbling, the clinging.
A look broke over my sweetie bear's face: her nose scrunched, her lips curled back to reveal her sharp baby teeth, she grinned and jutted her chin forward.
And then...
Her chubby little baby finger swung around and poked it's way right back into death's face. I should think if he were an actual specter, a horrible visage from the other realm, that he would have stepped back and looked around confused. As it was, I think the plastic was taken a bit aback. Hannah held her terrible pose for a second, long enough to telekinetically inform death that she was keeping an eye on him and he best just keep his little self in line, before skipping merrily toward an unsuspecting Cheetos display.
That's my girl: the minion so strong-willed, she stuck it to death.
Heaven help me.
Then I looked up into the face of death.
A plasticy, cheaply fabricated, anatomically inaccurate death.
I hate Halloween. This is only in small part because I serve the God of light, who abides in life and grace, in whom there is no darkness. It is more because what culturally came to be a fun time for children has become a nauseatingly childish time for adults. There is no greater proof that we are mass cultural consumers unable to think independent or complex thoughts than our need to put giant inflatable spiders on our lawn.
Trick or treating is fine (for children). Dressing up is cool. A plethora of Reese's in every nook of the house just might have saved it.
But really? We need decor? We need life-sized Grim Reapers (... I feel there is irony lurking in that sentence) and orange lights, and paper mache headstones for our nicely manicured lawn?
However, my rants and opinions change very little. And thus, we came upon death... in the middle of Home Depot... next to the plastic flamingos.
I was concerned and suddenly hating Halloween for entirely other reasons: my sweet little Hannah was now trotting out ahead of us, and she was moments away from encountering this horrific figure. Does innocence count for nothing?
A truly concerned mother would have run up, spun her daughter away from the grim figure and rushed us all past. Sadly, I am more often curious than fully concerned.
At this point my baby girl was even with the plastic death, she started to turn, and I held my breath. Her eyes locked with the black hollows in the skullish face, a bony finger stretched toward her, pointing at her little heart, evil cackled "Abandon All Hope." I waited for the wailing, the crumbling, the clinging.
A look broke over my sweetie bear's face: her nose scrunched, her lips curled back to reveal her sharp baby teeth, she grinned and jutted her chin forward.
And then...
Her chubby little baby finger swung around and poked it's way right back into death's face. I should think if he were an actual specter, a horrible visage from the other realm, that he would have stepped back and looked around confused. As it was, I think the plastic was taken a bit aback. Hannah held her terrible pose for a second, long enough to telekinetically inform death that she was keeping an eye on him and he best just keep his little self in line, before skipping merrily toward an unsuspecting Cheetos display.
That's my girl: the minion so strong-willed, she stuck it to death.
Heaven help me.
Wednesday, October 21, 2015
The new normal
Texas is nice just before it rains. The air is just a little stickier, but the temperature cools to jeans and t-shirt degrees Fahrenheit. There are little pinpricks of rain drops every few minutes, and the wind blows. It is a decent kind of wind. It is the kind of wind that reminds you, no matter how often you brush your hair, you're still just the little tomboy who can't keep kept. Texas and I could be friends if it could muster the decency to rain more.
Normal used to be waking up at 4:30am. It was dropping my kids off at 5:00; it was being to work by 6:00. Normal was fixing everyone's problems, filing, emailing, tracking, smiling and nodding politely. Normal used to be grabbing the kids, seeing them and the husband for a few hours, sleeping and repeating. It wasn't a bad normal.
But this is better.
Normal is now juice and milk and Doc McStuffins during breakfast. Normal is puppets, books, and blankies. This is the new routine:
Normal used to be waking up at 4:30am. It was dropping my kids off at 5:00; it was being to work by 6:00. Normal was fixing everyone's problems, filing, emailing, tracking, smiling and nodding politely. Normal used to be grabbing the kids, seeing them and the husband for a few hours, sleeping and repeating. It wasn't a bad normal.
But this is better.
Normal is now juice and milk and Doc McStuffins during breakfast. Normal is puppets, books, and blankies. This is the new routine:
And yes, that's Hannah throwing pebbles at her brother through her legs as she hangs upside down.
These are the faces I spend my days with:
And this is what we do all day:
And here is us practicing our future career as baby models:
Hannah is not so good at working the camera yet. She's too busy sliding, swinging, and causing trouble.
There are tantrums too. There's tears, wooden spoons, and time outs. Hopefully, those will lessen as we learn how to be stay at home mommies and somewhat civilized little human beings.
I was afraid to stay at home with them. I was afraid that we wouldn't have anything to do, that we would be bored, that I would be overwhelmed by the hard moments and lessons.
Noah and Hannah have been the least frustrating part of this whole frustrating move. The appliance guys, and the mortgage guys, and the crazy cat lady, and the utility guys, and the church folk could all take a few lessons from my little munchie munches: Be decent and give lots of snuggles, and the mommy on the edge is much more manageable. ...
Not saying I need snuggles from the appliance guys. That would be weird.
Tuesday, October 20, 2015
Please Avoid When Church Planting
We have been visiting a lot of churches lately, trying to find a new home. There are many to choose from here in Texas. I have been all over their websites; I have been up and down their halls. I have had my fingers in their doctrine, and my taste buds in their coffee (I suddenly sense in trying to form a poetic construction, I have simultaneously made it sound like I am the creeper walking into strange churches, sticking her tongue in their coffee pot and walking out.), and my heart in their worship. We aren't people to just walk into a place and have it feel right. We're too cynical for that. Too scientific. We need proof: proof that they trust the inerrant Word of God alone, proof that they worship the One true King of Kings, proof that they don't dilute the coffee in an effort to appeal to the masses.
My research has led me to compose a brief list of suggestions, should any of my now non-existant readership want to start their own church someday. Just a couple thoughts if you want smart visitors to darken your doors, and if you would like them to repeat darken on occasion.
1. Do not inform me on the home page of your website in reference to your church leadership that you have "assembled only the most anointed people for [y]our team". Because the poor sucker looking at your website probably already feels pretty badly about themselves at this stage in life, and there's nothing so condemning as being reminded of the lie that God finds everyone else more awesome than you.
2. Speaking of people being awesomer... don't tell me that the initial manifestation of the Holy Spirit in a believer's life is speaking in tongues. Because with Google Translate on the market today, there is really no reason for the tongues-speaking-ness, except a few ecstatic folk trying to bolster up their shaky awesomeness.
3. As a follow-up to the desperate need for affirmed awesomeness in the tongues department... don't tell me that miraculous physical healing is the divine right of every believer. If you do insist on asserting this, when I literally run my tired feets off to your front door and collapse in the throes of heat exhaustion, I expect every person in the building to see 20/20, never have a cold, and hover two feet off the ground. (Hey, how do we know gravity isn't just a disease?)
4. Don't tell me I have to participate in spiritual formation. Because I can kill you with my brain.
5. Do not reference the ordinances of your denomination in your doctrine of faith. In fact, if you get really ambitious, do not reference anything other than the living and abiding Word of God in your doctrine of faith. I don't care what the Baptists said. I don't care what the Pentecostals said. I care what my God said. In research this is second-hand citing, and it is a sign of laziness or shaky theoretical foundations. If you can't find enough evidence in the Scriptures to affirm a belief, it is not a belief worth stating in your doctrine of faith.
6. Spell check. No one wants to go to your class on "Being a Pacemaker".
7. Don't tell me you only use the 1611 King James version of the Bible. Can we just not start off on the foot where you think I'm a pagan, and I think you're a prude? Just stop.
8. And lastly... this one is very important, so please, if you do intend to start a church go grab a pen, I'll wait. Ready? Ok!
DO. NOT. BE. A. JERK.
WRITE. IT. DOWN.
Do not slap a barcode on the back of a visitor's child and point him down one enormous corridor, slap a biohazard sign on the other child (she has allergies, not the plague) and point her down another enormous corridor, and adamantly refuse to allow them to go down the same unknown corridor to unknown rooms, with unknown faces together. Do not look aghast when said visitor's husband picks up both of his children and declares, "They're going together." Do not call security (which is in the cop car outside directing traffic).
Do not look at the visitor as if she is some manner of witch for having the audacity to ask if there is a women's Bible study. And this is important: Do not point at the Ladies' Crazy Christmas Coffee as an acceptable substitution. I bite.
Do not glower when the visitor passes the communion tray incorrectly. She's trying her best.
Do not hurl your opinions from the pulpit about the sinfulness of those wicked youth under the age of fifty, when the only people in the "sanctuary" under the age of 50 are visitor and her husband. Do not remind them what sinners they are. They know. Once you reach 60 you are perfected and sin no more. I have thirty more years of heathenness in me.
Do not tell young women who are desperately alone that there is no space for them in the women's Bible study on Wednesday morning. Do not tell them they can't come.
As a teacher at the university I had two rules for all my classes: show up and don't be a jerk. I don't find it too unreasonable to expect the same of God's elect.
Just be nice.
My research has led me to compose a brief list of suggestions, should any of my now non-existant readership want to start their own church someday. Just a couple thoughts if you want smart visitors to darken your doors, and if you would like them to repeat darken on occasion.
1. Do not inform me on the home page of your website in reference to your church leadership that you have "assembled only the most anointed people for [y]our team". Because the poor sucker looking at your website probably already feels pretty badly about themselves at this stage in life, and there's nothing so condemning as being reminded of the lie that God finds everyone else more awesome than you.
2. Speaking of people being awesomer... don't tell me that the initial manifestation of the Holy Spirit in a believer's life is speaking in tongues. Because with Google Translate on the market today, there is really no reason for the tongues-speaking-ness, except a few ecstatic folk trying to bolster up their shaky awesomeness.
3. As a follow-up to the desperate need for affirmed awesomeness in the tongues department... don't tell me that miraculous physical healing is the divine right of every believer. If you do insist on asserting this, when I literally run my tired feets off to your front door and collapse in the throes of heat exhaustion, I expect every person in the building to see 20/20, never have a cold, and hover two feet off the ground. (Hey, how do we know gravity isn't just a disease?)
4. Don't tell me I have to participate in spiritual formation. Because I can kill you with my brain.
5. Do not reference the ordinances of your denomination in your doctrine of faith. In fact, if you get really ambitious, do not reference anything other than the living and abiding Word of God in your doctrine of faith. I don't care what the Baptists said. I don't care what the Pentecostals said. I care what my God said. In research this is second-hand citing, and it is a sign of laziness or shaky theoretical foundations. If you can't find enough evidence in the Scriptures to affirm a belief, it is not a belief worth stating in your doctrine of faith.
6. Spell check. No one wants to go to your class on "Being a Pacemaker".
7. Don't tell me you only use the 1611 King James version of the Bible. Can we just not start off on the foot where you think I'm a pagan, and I think you're a prude? Just stop.
8. And lastly... this one is very important, so please, if you do intend to start a church go grab a pen, I'll wait. Ready? Ok!
DO. NOT. BE. A. JERK.
WRITE. IT. DOWN.
Do not slap a barcode on the back of a visitor's child and point him down one enormous corridor, slap a biohazard sign on the other child (she has allergies, not the plague) and point her down another enormous corridor, and adamantly refuse to allow them to go down the same unknown corridor to unknown rooms, with unknown faces together. Do not look aghast when said visitor's husband picks up both of his children and declares, "They're going together." Do not call security (which is in the cop car outside directing traffic).
Do not look at the visitor as if she is some manner of witch for having the audacity to ask if there is a women's Bible study. And this is important: Do not point at the Ladies' Crazy Christmas Coffee as an acceptable substitution. I bite.
Do not glower when the visitor passes the communion tray incorrectly. She's trying her best.
Do not hurl your opinions from the pulpit about the sinfulness of those wicked youth under the age of fifty, when the only people in the "sanctuary" under the age of 50 are visitor and her husband. Do not remind them what sinners they are. They know. Once you reach 60 you are perfected and sin no more. I have thirty more years of heathenness in me.
Do not tell young women who are desperately alone that there is no space for them in the women's Bible study on Wednesday morning. Do not tell them they can't come.
As a teacher at the university I had two rules for all my classes: show up and don't be a jerk. I don't find it too unreasonable to expect the same of God's elect.
Just be nice.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)