One of the obvious blessings of a pregnancy is the end result– a baby. I’d do each one all over again. But there is another odd thing that happens during pregnancy that has nothing to do with children. Some women manage to avoid it and the others who are not so lucky …don’t. I always find myself in the latter group.

I refer, of course, to the weight gain. Even with hyperemesis, after I shed an astounding amount of weight in the beginning, I make up for it in the end. Eating calms the nausea, so I tell myself to do it. But now that the baby is chunking up in her second month, it is time for me to chunk down.

It is work. Everyday I get on my cross-trainer and spend a half hour of my life wishing I were somewhere else. I sweat. I plan boring, tasteless meals in my head (the kind without cheese) and resist the urge to clean off the kids’ plates when they are done. I don’t eat dessert. I don’t eat seconds. The plan is working, as I only have 10 pounds to go, but it is an effort.

One of the things about managing a houseful of small children is that it requires effort, planning, and work. This doesn’t mean that children are not a blessing. It just means that the path to blessing isn’t always easy. God calls us to do hard things. He hasn’t given us a life of ease but a path of suffering that leads to glory. If your path is easy and smooth, perhaps you are on the wrong path. Walking uphill is more work than walking downhill with the culture. Only one path leads heavenward. Do I love what He loves? Read the Sermon on the Mount. Read Jesus’ words about taking up your cross. Read about the narrow road and the wide road. Read about God’s refining work in redemptive history. It is all about Him. The moral of the story is not about us and our comfort level.

And yet—this is the beauty of it all– He gives us good things for our enjoyment, our pleasure along the way. It is ours to love God wholly and wholly enjoy all that it entails. There is the toddler who kisses you with a chocolate mouth. There are sunsets and flowers and breezes that are perfect. There are love stories. There are homeruns. There is even food with cheese on it for our delight along the way.

We gather with a group of families once a month to talk, eat, and worship—in that order. Last Friday, I began preparing vegetables in ginger sauce to bring for the dinner. The children were pattering about. Greg was on Google Earth showing our farm to one kiddo. I was bent over the stove.

I’ve never used a glass 9 x 13 pan on the cooktop before, but it seemed to make sense this time. The dish had withstood a lot of abuse over the past ten years. I use it all the time in the oven at 400+ degrees. Why not heat it in the dish that I would bring it in?

The vegetables were frozen, and to make up time, I turned the temperature up on the stovetop. A few minutes went by while I stirred to prevent sticking.

Then like a gunshot, the glass pan exploded into millions of pieces. (The temperature was not evenly distributed.) Tiny shards of glass covered my hands, hair, and clothes. I looked around to see if any children were hurt, but after that, I just stood there in shock. The burner kept cooking the vegetables and glass.

This isn’t the only time I’ve been saved from my stupidity. I’ve done a lot of dumb things. The problem is that I don’t learn my lessons very well. While I probably will never again cook with glass on the stove (don’t hold me to it, I’m dumb, remember), the lesson that I will miss, I’m afraid, is far more serious.

The lesson is this. God holds all things in His hand. The glass pan? It belongs to Him. That’s why my eyesight was saved, and there is not a cut on my body. God is sovereign. I owe him my thanks not because he saved me in this instance but because He is able to save. He is God. This is the mystery Job alluded to when he said, “Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him.” (Job 13:15) Not a hair or shard of glass falls to the ground unnoticed by God.

God’s choosing to save is a mystery. But our hope is well placed in Him.

Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego replied to the king, “O Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to defend ourselves before you in this matter. If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to save us from it, and he will rescue us from your hand, O king. But even if he does not, we want you to know, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up.”

Daniel 3:16-18

American Greetings, the mammoth card maker, observes that a child’s first experience with greeting cards is on Valentine’s Day. Come to think of it, they’re right. Back in the day, public schools sent home class lists and children dutifully filled out cartoon character Valentines and signed them each “your friend.” The girls all dotted the i in friend with a puffy heart for all the classmates they liked most.

I remember Valentine’s Day in fourth grade. I made out my Valentine list from memory the night before. There were 25 kids in the class, but I could only remember 24 of them. When I walked in the hall Valentine’s morning to join the line going into the classroom, I passed the quiet boy with glasses. His name was Michael Hopper.

I stopped and studied him, trying hard not to play connect-the-dots with his freckles. “You’re the one I forgot,” I shouted. He didn’t understand, so like an idiot, I elaborated. “When I made out my Valentines, you’re the one I forgot!” I wish there was a way to pay penance for my ruthlessness. He sat there for a minute, and quietly said that he had forgotten me too. It didn’t matter.

One of the problems with Valentine’s Day is that for a holiday so bent on love as its theme, it sure does hurt a lot. Expectations can be a killer. All year long, it is good to give love away, but on Valentine’s Day, reciprocity is the name of the game.

Nancy Gibbs contends in Time magazine that we should ignore the day altogether, “True romance comes unscheduled…[snip] Over time, as it ripens into devotion, still it improvises, a favor rendered, a sudden kiss, a private joke, flowers for no reason. Its expression is the very opposite of the fretful, ‘preorder now, or be left with drug-store chocolates’ connivances that the day promotes. For those who feel well loved, every day, of course is Valentine’s. For the rest, no card can console.”

I’m not sure that I agree entirely with Gibbs but I see what she’s saying. Still, I like Valentine’s Day just because, well, because. Either way, one of the love lessons we’d do well to learn is that God loves us even when we’ve forgotten Him. Still, there is pain when the ones we love don’t always remember to love us with chocolates. Perhaps if we wanted to show real love too, we’d give them a break. We’d see that it is better to love in the daily smallness than to love with fanfare on a Hallmark holiday. Maybe love is an action and not a card, though I agree, cards with pink hearts are nice. We all just want to be remembered, however that looks, because it hurts to be forgotten.

Maybe I like Valentine’s Day because my favorite color is red. Maybe I like it because it’s nice to have a day that is different from the rest. And maybe I need the reminder to tell the folks I love that I really love them because sometimes I forget to do it.

When I went home that Valentine’s afternoon long ago and tore open my (undeserved) overflowing Valentine box, my nine-year-old self pulled out a special one, the last one. It was signed, “Your friend, Michael Hopper.”

He didn’t forget after all.

Stuff kept breaking today.

There was the kitchen cabinet paneling that just… fell off. There was the cup that got stuck in garbage disposal. There was the dishwasher that broke, but that’s nothing new. Then there was the light bulb that popped and shattered when my son flipped on the light. The fourth grade English DVD’s for school kept skipping, for which my son was thrilled to miss, and the remote control for it? Yep, I ordered a new one of that, too.

So, when my husband told me his flight was delayed because the plane broke, it was just, you know, old news.

I haven’t posted a recent picture in ages. Just in case you need to recognize me in passing, my hair is darker. Because after 8 days of this cold virus (for all 8 of us) and last month’s flu, I’m not ever leaving the house again. You people carry diseases.

I love this thought, and I didn’t want to relegate it to the sidebar this time. John Piper writes in What Makes The Humble Happy?: “…humility is most fundamentally a trembling love for the majesty of God and secondarily a trembling sense of our sin and smallness and dependence.”

The first part is to taste and understand God’s majesty and holiness. In response, that will enable us to see ourselves in light of it: small, sinful, and dependent. (Isaiah 6) If there was one thing I wish I could say with my life, my words just given the opportunity, it would be just that. It is the gospel in a nutshell. I mean, we often think that it is a one time thing—to realize that God is holy and magnificent and we are dependent on Him. But really, we need to remember gospel everyday. It will enable us to live right, because the Christian life isn’t a one time decision at a Billy Graham rally but a daily dying to self and living for Christ. Seeing Him as holy is essential to that.

Our pop culture churches like to paint Jesus as imminent and less so transcendent. In other words, Jesus is your friend, yes, but really, he’s the King. Merging the two helps us see and worship Him as He is, and it also enables us to respond as we should. God’s people should be the most humble. If I really believe in the totally depravity of man—a fancy way of saying that we’re sinners—then where is the boasting except in Christ?

This is one reason why theology matters. Because what we believe about God drives what we believe about man. What we believe about man drives what we do about man. Ideas have consequences and all that.

I’m a little slow on updating our house progress. (Here’s where I’m supposed to give an excuse: I still have six children in single digits, some of them sick, none of them of babysitting age…) Greg was up there last week to check on things. He took pictures and video, but I figure most of it is exciting only to us.

The rough plumbing is done. The wiring is mostly done. The broken windows were replaced with fancy schmancy tilt windows. I didn’t know we were getting these, but apparently, you can tip them in to clean the exterior. (Great. I’ve been enjoying the fact that I couldn’t reach windows from the outside all this time.) The HVAC system is partly done. It might be finished now.

So it’s still a mess. The drywall installation begins next week, and then the parts that I care about begin: paint colors, trim, flooring, cabinets. Greg tells me those things are minor, but that’s the fun part in my opinion. This other stuff? Just details. You have to remember that I’m married to an engineer who took a hacksaw to our dining room wall just to check for termites. (There were none.) Just make the construction parts work—that’s my attitude. I’ve got a smoky blue/deep red/taupe theme with hardwood and white trim going on throughout the house. That’s the good stuff.

Our builder is a Mennonite who was Amish until five years ago. I will refrain from highly recommending him until the project is over, but we are more than pleased so far. He has taken care of water damage and crooked floors without readjusting the bid (though he’d be justified in doing so). Owning a few sub-par properties over the years, we’ve dealt with a lot of contractors. I can’t say there’s anyone I’d deal with again or recommend. In fact, our pool guy walked off the job last year with our money– leaving a cracked, unfinished deck. Our rental units are a whole ‘nuther story worth its own book. So, it’s interesting to me that people seek out the work of the Amish—you know, “Amish built” or whatever—but my experience has been to steer clear of anyone with a business ad and the little fish symbol. There are some great Christians, yes, but they are harder to find (presumably due to the large number of people who say that they are but aren’t). It seems you don’t have to wade through a few dozen Amish/Mennonites before you find one who won’t rob you blind.

Anyway, our contractor talked with Greg about his experience with converting from Amish to Mennonite. He says that when he was Amish that he and his wife traveled everywhere together in their buggy and life was much slower. Now, he and his wife have separate cars and go their separate ways. Much of the day is spent apart, you know, but that seems to be the cost of living with technology. There are trade-offs for sure, but time is definitely one of the casualties.

Just as an aside, last year a few readers hammered on me for romanticizing the Amish. For sure, there are theological concerns with some sects, works-based salvation being chief among them. I am a Presbyterian, after all. However, my point wasn’t a theological one, but a practical one.* Mainly, how much do we evaluate what we do, the choices we make, the technologies we adopt in light of how it affects the greater community? It is important to ask the questions, to think about their answers. The Amish are great at this; evangelicals less so. They at least consider these things, even if we don’t agree with all their conclusions. (Though, I’d argue after reading The Riddle of the Amish Culture that they are more right than we are in many cases.) I mean, we don’t even have communities, let alone have the problem of deciding how our decisions fit into the larger context of it.

I might be wrong here, but it’s my observation that organic community life occurs more often when people of similar lifestyles coexist geographically. This, in contrast, to the artificial communities we attempt to create based on theological sameness. There are many reasons and examples I can think of that would support this. It’s a thought I’d like to discuss sometime, but this post is already long enough.

*I often yammer on about how our theological beliefs have practical implications. If what I believe about God is “a”, then “b” necessarily follows. In other words, the sacred and the secular co-exist; ideas have consequences; faith has feet. But just go with me here on the point without dissecting that sentence…

Like many babies, our toddler has trouble pronouncing blends. Charles can’t make the “tr” sound. He will be two-years-old next month and loves his trucks. He plays with them all day long. He talks about them, too. The problem is…well, the problem is that he calls his “truck” something entirely different.

You know where this is going, right?

Greg is in charge of the kids this morning. If you have Jane Austin-like sensibilities, you might want to skip the email he sent me a few minutes ago. We have a contractor at the house getting a whiff of uber-Christian family life.

So the guy is here to work and Charles is running around through the house yelling “F***” at the top of his lungs. I keep saying “Charles, don’t say that” and then Anna chimes in, “F***! F***!”

I have no words. But perhaps I need to put “speech therapy” on the To-Do List?

Some things just work well together: peanut butter and jelly, Batman and Robin, and hot dogs at a baseball game. A good day can be like that. Sometimes you hit all the green lights down the main drag. Sometimes it is double coupon day and you didn’t even know it. Then there was the time they called my name at a crowded baby shower and I won a houseplant. Usually, I have to fight to the death to win those goofball games, but that time I didn’t. I just won for nothing. There are days that stuff just works out.

But for the rest of life—my life, in particular–there are paradoxes. One author, Joseph Heller wrote, “There was only one catch and that was [a] Catch-22.” The Bible is like that when it talks about the first being last, the greatest being a servant, and losing your life in order to save it. One of the things about learning a lot in life is that you find out that you really know nothing.

I’m naturally a little high-strung and impatient, which is just another way to say that I’m an unlikely candidate for the job as a…well, you already know my vocation. (I lock kids in the basement and teach them how to cuss, apparently.) Truth be told, though, who is really prepared for parenthood beforehand? And since giving up isn’t an option—there are the children, after all—the only option for the woman who loves her little ones is to succeed.

Motherhood is a great paradox in that in order to keep going day-after-day, you have to stop. In the loudness, there must be quiet. In the mayhem, there must be order. In the busyness, there must be stillness. Otherwise, the marathon of motherhood seems impossible.

It’s been a long time–four kids since I last had a moment away. But today, for this blessed day, I am alone and it feels good.

From our house, I made my way down the island where it turns into the skinny part on the map. Houses are expensive here because both frontyard and backyard are riverfront. Just a tiny road runs through. Some houses have swimming pools in their front yard, which is uncommon even in Florida. I drove slowly because it was a dark and stormy night, but also because the landscaping seemed worth checking out.

When the island’s causeway took me beachside, I made my way to Wal-Mart for snack food. Nothing can damper a day’s vacation and make a housewife feel like she’s back on duty like a trip to Wal-Mart. So I hurried. From there, I headed to the beach.

It is 75 degrees and breezy. The beaches are deserted and the weather is perfect, even if it is a little ominous. I have no idea why people vacation here in the summer when it is more tolerable now. There must be an internet special or something. It is in the 60’s in the evenings and in the mid-70’s during the day.

All is still except the rhythmic crashing of the ocean’s waves, two surfers in the far distance, and some seagulls overhead in search of a few morsels. It is good. Nobody needs me for the moment, and if I could be so optimistic, nobody is coughing, dripping, spilling, tattling, or crying. For all I know.

But now, it is time for me to head home. I can’t wait. My little ones have fat cheeks, and I am lost without them. My older ones have jokes and pranks and science experiments with too many parts. I hear the insect exhibit has expanded and that the two-year-old commissioned to find the specimens stopped eating them. I was made for this life. Some things go together—like me and them.