living outside the Amazon jungle

The baby industry in the United States is, not surprisingly, a multi-million dollar industry, and I have made my small contribution to this in recent months as the process of nesting in my home has intensified. I went online to try and figure out the essentials for preparing a home for the arrival of this bundle of joy, and lo and behold, everything is presented to me as an essential. Positive reviews raved, “I couldn’t live without this!” “A must-have for every new mom!” “I wish I had this with my first child!” We are a country obsessed with our things and all the good we believe they will do for us. It’s hard not to get sucked in, to not believe all the hype about the newest developmental toy that will surely launch my child straight into Harvard.

I am grateful for every gift and gadget that our generous friends have given to us. I truly am. I am grateful to be able to afford extras of certain items so that I am not doing endless laundry just because I’ve refused to buy more than one of anything. I am grateful for the first-world luxuries and conveniences afforded to me and my baby, which will hopefully give me one more minute here and there of precious sleep. I understand that living – surviving – as a mother in the 21^st century here in Los Angeles, CA is vastly different than living as a mother in a small, quiet village in a developing country.

But I remain unconvinced that my baby actually needs everything the Los Angeles marketplace has to offer her. Amazon.com is endless but her needs are not. I personally certainly do not remember the way my nursery was decorated when I was a wee one, three, six months old. (Was it even decorated at all?) I remember the one little brown towel that I wanted more than any other item in my toy box. And I remember surviving and moving on with life when even that most precious security blanket got lost on a family vacation. I think I turned out ok.

I want my baby to grow up in a home marked by simplicity and contentment with the things we have. Freedom from the need to keep up with the Joneses. I want her to learn about the world such that she is able to distinguish between a first-world problem and a third-world problem at a young age, both externally and internally. She may be raised in Los Angeles, but I don’t want Los Angeles to raise her. I want her to understand that we live in a rather privileged pocket of a very broken world, to know that what God gives to us is meant not to be boasted in, but to be shared. The ads, the peer pressure, the internal insecurities, they will come at her from all angles. But how I pray for a life of joyful freedom for her and for our home. So free me first, God. Free me too.

dear friend,

You are in the darkest place your soul has ever known, and my heart hurts for you because I’ve been there too. It is beyond lonely. The voice of shame and accusation feels stronger than the voice of truth and love, because you feel more acutely aware than anyone around you, even your dearest loved ones, of how deep your sin and darkness have run, how far they have taken you from the person you thought you were, the person others thought you were. You wonder if your life was a lie, and it feels near impossible to even imagine yourself regaining any resemblance of that life again. You don’t know where to turn. You don’t feel you can fall any further and yet you feel you can never move forward again.

I want to say some magic words, pray some magic prayers, give a hug somehow strong enough to bring your heart back to freedom. I hurt because I cannot, but I hope because there is One who can. Oh my beloved Christ, He never gave up on me, though I ran, though I cursed, though I protested, though I shook my fist and said it was impossible for me to come back to life, I’d gone too far. I thought I understood grace until I didn’t understand grace. I had made such intentional choices against the One who gave up His life for me. Who forgives that? I deserved my emptiness. But He was stronger than the grave of my heart. He ran to me and wept over me and sang tenderly over my sick and broken spirit and loved me back to life. He will do the same for you. Maybe you have never fully understood the grace you preached, but maybe now, now you will, more than before, more than ever. Your life can still count for good, because of Him, because of the Gospel.

Friend, you may not believe me, but I still respect you as much as I ever did. Not because you are the hero you felt you had to be, but because you are my dear friend, because you are a child of God, that’s all, that’s enough. Please don’t walk away from the ones who love you. We won’t leave you, we won’t shame you in our words or our thoughts, we won’t. Please just let us love you.

Miracles of Spring

I seem to be in the business of heavy topics. Between my work as a nurse in a pediatric ICU and my marriage to a pastor, I get what can feel at times like too much of the inside scoop on the lesser known sufferings of many people, much of the time. This week in particular seemed to be the week of choice for a disproportionate amount of unpleasant news. A friend’s suicide. A bad code at work. Extra drama all around.

I also attended the annual Ethics of Caring Conference this week, geared primarily towards nurses, and while I deeply appreciate the courage that this group of people has to tackle the hard issues and reflect on them for a prolonged period of time, my internal response was conflicted. I needed to go there in a lot of ways, to remember that the ethical core of nursing has to do with caring deeply and persistently about situations and issues and people that many choose not to care about. It can be exhausting, but choosing the road of a hardened heart is certainly no better solution, at least not the one that I ultimately want for my life. Many speakers at the conference mentioned how the general public still doesn’t truly, fully grasp what a nurse does in the year 2013. We don’t just hold the patient’s hand, throw on an occasional blood pressure cuff, and deliver a small paper cup of pills, though that is part of our job description. We manage critical situations, enter into complicated conversations, and we clean up secretions, blood and sloughing bowels to try to preserve the dignity our patients. Maybe that’s why the public doesn’t really know what we do. Maybe they don’t always want to. Sometimes, we ourselves need to forget a little of it too.

I’m in the business of heavy topics, and quite honestly I seem to have a strange and morbid draw to them at times. But in weeks like this when I recognize the signs that a healthier sense of balance has been lost, I take a walk outside and remember that even still, this is the first lovely week of Spring, and the celebration of Easter, the resurrected Christ, is just around the corner. I went to water my somewhat neglected herbs only to see that my mint and lavender plants have grown and flourished despite me, and their resilience brings a comforting reassurance. My baby kicks me in my womb, and I marvel at the growth of this peanut who at nine weeks had only limb buds, but now has arms and legs and fingers with which she can jab and kick and punch. I feel the dryness of my soul, but then she kicks me again and I remember that where there once was no life in me, new life has begun and it grows over time, strong and sure. She reminds me that miracles still happen, and my mourning is turned into dancing again.

The Number of our Days

Baby Girl, we are in the middle of week 21 of your life in my womb, and already it seems you are growing way too fast. I’m not sure how we already passed the halfway point of this pregnancy, but it appears you will be here before we know it, while I’m still scratching my head wondering where Christmas went. I saw my favorite yogurt on sale at the market, with the sale’s end date marked as March 12. “Wow,” I thought, “I have a good month to come back to the market to get more of this before the sale ends!” On my way to my car, I realized it was March 12 already. How is it that the passage of time can deceive us so?

I’d like to think that I have a decently realistic perspective on how our lives will be upheaved when you arrive. These days, when I choose to sleep in, I am well aware that this is a limited luxury. When I sit down with a good book on my days off, I tell myself I better read fast because I won’t have much quiet reading time for years to come, unless you count the bedtime stories that will be on repeat as I (attempt to) lull you to sleep. When your daddy and I flew home from one final vacation, I foresaw myself in the shoes of the mom behind me as she tried oh so apologetically to keep her kid from kicking my seat on the plane, again. I did not take it for granted that for now, I still have full containment of all your extremities there in my womb.

This experience makes me realize anew how we make so many of our decisions depending on the assumptions in our minds of how much time or how many other options we have. All that home reorganization that I was procrastinating is now put on the fast track. I’m determined to get most of the nesting done while I have a decent amount of energy and can still actually bend over without a large watermelon in my way. I’m savoring all my quality time with friends before my conversations are interrupted with “Mommy, Mommy, Mommy!!” I’m so aware now of moments that feel like wasted time, lost time.

Working as a pediatric ICU nurse also puts a unique perspective on this pregnancy. For better or for worse, my experiences with my patients have forced me to walk this uncomfortable line between what is simply reality, and what is flat out morbid. I know the odds are in my favor, but I do not assume that I will absolutely, necessarily have a healthy child. If she is born healthy, I do not assume that she will live a healthy 85+ years and simply die peacefully in her sleep at some ripe old age. In some ways, this makes me overly paranoid, and of this I am very well aware. In other ways, this perspective makes me thankful for every healthy kick I feel, and every normal ultrasound picture that I see thus far. But I don’t presume upon anything. I appreciate the fragility of it all. I want so much to guard her with my life.

And so, in this season, I echo the prayer of the Psalmist:

Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.

Psalm 90:12

I am not my pregnancy

I confess, I am 100% guilty of doing it myself. When I see other pregnant friends, my mouth says hi, but my eyes automatically drop to their belly. The first, and at times only, thing I usually ask about is related in some way to their pregnancy. Being now on the receiving end of this, I want to say sometimes, “I am really excited about this and think about this a whole lot. But I am not my pregnancy. There are other things going on in my life, heart and mind that I’d love to talk about too.” When I see moms with their very young children, I’m guilty again as charged. I say hi to the mom but my attention automatically goes to the little person in mom’s arms, and that’s what we talk about. I forget that the mom was her own person before this little critter took over her world.

I do this to my patients and their parents without realizing it. I see the patient, and see the vital signs. I see the tubes and the medication lines attached, and I form a list of tasks in my mind to define who this patient will be to me today. A busy patient. An easy patient. A high maintenance family. A helpful family. They are who they are in this hospital room until I see the photos and hear the stories that show me a fuller picture of who this patient and this family was before illness struck. A love for bicycles, art, and silly hand-painting projects. An honors student who got in some trouble here and there but was trying to work things out. And then I remember, this child is ill, but this child is not his or her illness.

This morning, I woke up to a busy day ahead at church. I was tired on many levels. I had just worked two busy 12-hour nursing shifts the previous two days. I said to the husband, “Sometimes it’s hard to be both a nurse and a pastor’s wife.” And then my Father in Heaven reminded me, “Well, good, because that’s not who you are today. Don’t be a nurse. Don’t be the pastor’s wife. You are a child of God. You are a friend to those in your church community, and they are friends to you. So just be who you are today because that’s what you need the freedom to be.”

Today, I kept conversations about my pregnancy to a minimum. I tried hard not to look at my church community through the lens of a concerned pastor’s wife, but just as one who was simply part of the community, just being me, being there. I know the roles are necessary sometimes. But today, it wasn’t about the roles, and that made today a really good day.

letter to baby, at one trimester

I wasn’t sure for a long time if I wanted you. No, that’s not quite it. I just wasn’t sure if I could be the mommy you deserve to have. Life was so unrelentingly full with big things, unusually big things, some good things and some really sad things, and I was scared that I couldn’t give you the attention and priority and love you would need. Your daddy was so patient with all my crazy fears and our God was so gracious. And now here you are. We saw you, heard your little strong heartbeat, and there’s no turning back. Your head is huge and your legs and arms are still forming. I think you look ridiculous and adorable and amazing and just perfect. I can’t believe you are inside of me, connected to me, depending on me to take good care of you because right now, you are literally a part of me.

I can’t help but wonder if you have any conscious thoughts at this point. Do you mind that I still sleep on my stomach sometimes at this point, or is it annoying? Do you feel ravenously hungry when I feel ravenously hungry? Does it startle you when I sneeze? Did you hear the music I was making on the keyboard this morning? I hope you are comfortable and happy and safe in there. I think you have your daddy’s gas.

I’m eating a whole lot these days because of you. You sure do like all things potato, egg, and orange. Apparently you hate mushrooms and green beans, and the taste of coffee is a bit much for you (which makes me wonder if you’re really my child). You’re making my relationship with food really complicated.

I take care of a lot of sick kids at work, and it’s scary for me to know that you are not necessarily exempt from any of the things I have witnessed. You belong to God and your life is in His hands, and that is a good place to be. I hope to make good choices that will give you only the best quality of life at the end of the day. If you are healthy, which means you are running around and babbling and exploring and getting messy and sometimes screaming incessantly, I hope to not take that for granted too much when I’m exhausted and longing for peace and quiet.

I pray to grow and stay rooted in enough security in Christ and humility before Him that I don’t let my ego get wrapped up in your future behavior, your future success. I don’t want to raise the pastor’s kid. I just want to raise you. He is weaving your heart and mind and being together in my womb, and I hope to nuture you well so that you might know your Creator and live for Him, with all the gifting and passions He’s putting in you. Even if you and I have completely opposite personalities, interests, everything. I hope to value you well for all you are.

Well, enjoy it there in my belly for the next few months. The world is a big place and you’ll have a lot to take in. I don’t know if you sleep sometimes, but if you do, sweet dreams, little alien baby. Mommy loves you, and mommy’s praying for you.

your secret is safe with me

I am all at once a wonderful and a terrible secret-keeper. If others tell me of their own deeply private and personal matters, I can carry those things with me to the grave. But of my own private matters, there are really quite few, for better or for worse. I suppose the public offering of this blog’s contents would suggest as much. People tell me at times that they appreciate my raw honesty expressed here. For me, I can’t really think of expressing myself any other way. I would feel too fake, on a much too public scale. And perhaps I’m looking for a certain kind of safety or acceptance; if I put myself out there and my friends are still my friends, then maybe I’ve got a safer place in this world than I sometimes realize.

Christmas has passed, and I thought a lot about Mary, when she learned she was going to bear a son, Jesus, in her very virginal state. She had a secret, and it was big, and it was eventually going to become very, very public. Very scandalous. Very controversial. The implications were huge. Surely her heart ached for support, advice, sympathy. Surely she feared the judgment, the misunderstandings, the unwelcome and unjustified criticism. Where was her safe place, and with whom? Scripture doesn’t actually tell us a lot about what went on in her internal processing of her unexpected pregnancy. All we know is that she “pondered all of these things in her heart,” she sang a song of worship, and she went forward with commitment and indescribable sacrifice in her relationships to her fiancé and her unborn son. God was all at once the Author of scandal in her life, and her very safe place. She rested in the assurance that He knew her, all of her, and she was safe in Him when her secret spilled out and the people around her decided what they wanted to make of it all.

Some secrets are better kept low-key. The media does not need, and dare I say, does not deserve, to uncover and distribute it all. Some secrets are meant to be secret for only a certain amount of time, a right amount of time, and then they are to be shared and celebrated by all. What I’m pondering these days is why secrets can be so hard to keep, and why a safe place can sometimes be so hard to find.