I hate the fact that time has turned things like keeping house, cooking for the family, and tending to the yard into things that are by their nature somehow demeaning to women.  I find a lot of pleasure in knowing that my family is well cared for.  I LIKE a clean house, a tidy and often used kitchen, the smell of a meal cooking on the stove.  I prefer spending my evenings in the garden than to sitting around watching television.

I sometimes think about having a career, but I don’t know that it would be more fulfilling than domesticity.  I don’t think that being a housewife is my highest or most important calling, I don’t think that it is the extent of all that I’m made for, but it is usefull.

And, hey, if there ever IS a zombie apocalypse, my family won’t have to worry about being well fed.  I also am fairly good at going without electricity.  Long power outages in snowstorms have sort of prepped me for the end of all things.

I just think that while women’s suffrage was a good and necessary thing, the backlash against being pigeonholed as women has cost us a lot as well.  Breastfeeding your child isn’t demeaning, it’s healthy and natural.  Caring for your family isn’t a torment, it’s a gift to both family and caregiver.  Domesticity has it’s joys and importance.  It may not be as “important” as being president, but…  How big of a price tag does a happy, well fed and well loved child carry?  I’d gladly trade my own dreams for the future for the dreams of my kids.

Not because I’m forced to.  Because I want to.

My grandmothers have a lot of sayings that aren’t heard very often any more, but most of them are really good.  “Never bake angry” is one of my personal favorites because it seems odd, but it is so very true.  They would say that the anger gets into the food, and I’m not sure if that’s really the truth.  Perhaps it’s just that when you’re angry you don’t have the gentle touch necessary to make a pie crust fluff or a meringue stay stiff- but whatever it is the lesson is still good.  Anger and baking don’t mix.  “Never argue when you’re angry” is another classic in the same vein- because when you’re angry an argument is a fight, but when you’re calm it’s just a discussion.  Another classic is “stretch it thin, wear it out or do without”- it’s like “waste not, want not”, but a little more detailed.  The lesson being that if you can’t make it last it’s not worth having.  One most people have heard is “happy wife, happy life”, that usually being interpreted as if you’re wife is unhappy she’ll make you miserable.  That’s not the way I learned it, though.  What I’ve always felt it to mean is if you keep your wife happy she will make your life better for you.  A happy wife is a worthy investment.

Some more classics are “A woman’s tools are her hands and her brains”, “feed your guests first”, “the world is a man’s domain but women rule the home”, “idle hands lead to destruction”, “kindness breeds in kind”, and “squirrels are evil.”  The last one isn’t really conventional wisdom, it’s more just grandma’s opinion.  Squirrels always ruin her garden and she hates them with a passion.  Especially the black ones.  They bring walnuts into her yard and just cause the biggest problems.

Sometimes I wonder if the lack of connections to family, history, and tradition truly are ruining society.  All I know is that I learned a lot more baking with my grandma’s than I ever did in school.  Well, more worth knowing.  Maybe not more in a quantative sense. Oh, and you can clean anything with vinegar and baking soda.  Bottled cleaners are for wimps. 

It’s interesting to listen to kids in the first blush of love talk about what they want from their relationships.  They say things like “wouldn’t it be great to be together all the time?” or “I just can’t wait to talk to him/her every time anything happens to me” or “I just feel like I’m dying when we’re not touching”.

Some things change over time, some things don’t.  I would hope that after ten years of marriage (currently on year six) that I still want to spend the majority of the time with my husband and I certainly can’t wait to talk to him any time something exciting happens.  As for the “dying when we’re not touching”, well, after several months of marriage and almost constant contact that particular thing died away.  Then, two years later and after baby one it certainly came back for a while.  But that’s a different topic, isn’t it?

The point is that marriage is and isn’t all we expect it to be.  At first it is (or was, in my case) everything a girl could hope for.  It was an orgy of togetherness (take that literally or figuratively), it was a communion of intellect and emotion and entertainment.  It was an endless dance of what he wants and she wants, it was massively intense.  And then the shine wore off, as it had to.  Two people can only maintain so much closeness before things start to get rubbed raw.  Humans do crave togetherness, but they also need aloneness.  Two can become one to a point that neither one remembers who they are when apart, and while that may seem magical it’s also hurtful.  We need to be united, yes, but we also need to be who God created us to be.  And the union can become twisted to the point where one person sacrifices their being and calling for the happiness of the other- which kills the union.

Yes, it’s a cliche, but the honeymoon always ends.  The sad truth is that the miracle of togetherness is often overshadowed by memories of the first knock-down drag-out fight.  Distractions of work or family mar the union and sometimes the union itself is forgotten or failed to be maintained.  And then a girl (or guy) is left to figure out what marriage really is.

Here’s the truth:  it’s not about you.  It can’t be, or it will end.  Marriage is not about me being adored, me being desired, me being fulfilled, my needs being met.  It would be nice if it was, but it’s not.  It’s about me loving someone else.  That means that I make sacrifices, I sometimes go ignored or neglected for long periods of time.  Not because it’s okay to do that to someone or to have it done to you, but because life happens and in the midst of life happening people get hurt.  But marriage isn’t about the hurt.  It’s about the hope, the faith, the commitment, the vows, the forsaking of all others for the sake of the union.  It’s about learning how to truly love someone unconditionally.  It’s about learning to put yourself second.

Oh, and then if you have kids…  wow.  It’s about learning to put yourself third or fourth (or fifth, or sixth, or seventh).  It’s about learning real, real patience.  It’s about learning to swallow anger and only let it out in appropriate circumstances.  It’s about learning to live without so that your kids don’t have to.  It’s about hours, days, months, years spent waiting for a chance to pursue a dream.  Often there are only enough hours in the day for one person to get needs met or pursue dreams above and beyond thier nine-to-five job.

In order for a marriage to work sometimes it seems like one person involved has to practically transcend humanity.  But, that being said, marriage is also about two people.  It doesn’t matter how holy and how perfect one person is, if the other person never commits it will end.  Rarely is one met halfway, but so long as both keep meeting things always seem to work themselves out.  In a perfect world you have two people so wholly devoted to each other’s fulfillment that neither go wanting, but this world isn’t perfect.  No, it’s far from perfect.  But it’s perfect enough.

That is what matters.

Not perfection, but having enough.  Having enough isn’t even about the amounts one has, it’s about learning to be grateful for what is there.  The moments of togetherness eclipsing the moments of solitude, the love expressed covering the wounds of anger, the tender platitudes taking the place of epic love poems that are wished for.  And in learning to love what is there, we learn about God.  We understand why God would send Christ for us, a broken people.  And we learn to be like him.  For me, that’s what marriage really is.

Romance is for fools.

(Okay, I take that back- romance is wonderful.  But it’s more wonderful six years in.  Trust me on that.)

Sometimes there are things that kids say or do that as a parent you never, ever want to forget.  I struggle with where to file these things.  In my journal?  (Which is mostly story outlines and drawings of jewelry)  Print them out and tuck them away in a photo album?

Ah, a blog post.

So here you all go-

1. When my daughter was really small I would pat her on her back to calm her down when she cried.  It became so reflexive I’d find myself doing it when she was already calm, too.  One day she did it back to me.  Now the back-pat has become mother-daughter lingo for “I love you.”  My son has started doing it, too.
2. Both of my kids find themselves praised so often that they think that if you like someone, you praise their efforts.  So whenever I’m fishing for a word and think of it, “good job!”  Whenever I manage to get food on the table in front of them without tripping over my feet, “good job!”  Whenever I read a book, “good job!”
3. My son has become a real trickster.  He was starting to yell “BOTTLE BOTTLE BOTTLE” and throw his bottle at me when he was thirsty.  When it became clear that I hated him doing that, he started doing the same thing more often.  So when I would grumpily say, “oh, you think I’m going to get you a bottle?” he’d fall over laughing and say “no!”
4. My daughter got so used to me correcting her pronouncing “t” as “d” and saying “with your teeth, T”, that she has started doing it to me as revenge even though I pronounce things correctly.
5. My son will eat anything I tell him I don’t want him to have, including red onions and raw garlic.  I’m considering saying “that’s really not to eat” when I put his plate on the table, just to see what he does.
6. My daughter got a flower girl’s dress at a garage sale two weeks ago, and has worn it every day since.  She says she feels like Princess Ariel on her wedding day.  My husband always corrects her by saying, “prettier than Ariel.”

It’s easy to get caught up in everything that you don’t have.

It’s wonderful to learn to remember everything you DO.

It’s been both a very long and unbelievably short (nearly) four years since you became the father of my oldest child, and I grew to know you in a different way.  I will die with the memories of seeing you hold our daughter as she cried, seeing the concern and fear and love in your eyes.  Your love and adoration of her is a precious gift to all of us, and I am so grateful that I am the one who was chosen to be her mother, that I am the one who has seen you at your best and worse for her.

And our son.  You chose his name, you have chosen to be such an example to him.  I will always be grateful for the way you play with him, for the way you are choosing to raise him to be such a strong and courageous man of God.

We have had our differences, as all couples do.  But all of that dies away when I see you as a father.  The relationship you have with my children is so precious.  To see you playing with them, comforting them, caring for them, teaching them.  You embody all that a good and loving father should be.

I love you.  You are the heart of my heart.

Happy father’s day!

So something we have all heard is that Gay people aren’t just asking for civil rights, they are asking for “special” rights.

In light of California’s recent ruling, I thought maybe we can all talk about that a little. First off, I would like to address what Marriage is in religious and civil terms. In religious terms, it is two people consecrating themselves before God and entering into a holy union, going on a journey through which they will be taught more about love and temperance than through any other relationship they have. In civil terms, a marriage is two people combining possessions and resources, and being afforded several civil rights. Marriage means being on each other’s insurance plans and being able to visit each other in the hospital and being able to make decisions about the way in which their children are raised and educated.

Now… Here is where things get sticky. One could give gay people “equal” rights through affording them every civil right that marriage encompasses, but calling it something other than marriage. When gay people say, “hey, hold on, why can’t we just get married” people get irritated. Sometimes the reply is, “what, are you trying to make society put a stamp of approval on your relationship? What, you’ve got to have special rights?”

That infers, then, that marriage is special somehow. Because homosexuals aren’t asking for rights above and beyond what heterosexuals have been afforded, they simply want the same thing we have. So is what we have really so special?

One can point to thousands of years of tradition in which marriage has been between a man and a woman. Okay, that makes sense. But let’s also look at what that marriage between a man and a woman was. A man needed children to inherit his wealth, or work the fields, or keep the family name alive. A man could not get that through another man. So marriage was both “holy” and a civil arrangement that met certain needs. And throughout the ages men left their wives to carry on relationships with other men.

Our society has grown beyond marriage being defined by the production of children. We marry for love now, something which throughout history was not a primary concern when it came to heterosexual union. Were marriage solely about procreation, obviously homosexuals could not enter into it.

But if it is about love and unity, they can.

I’m not going to give a ruling on what I personally think. I just want everyone to ask themselves a few basic questions:

1. Is the marriage certificate awarded by the State a stamp of approval on heterosexual coupling?
2. Is civil marriage truly equal to religious marriage?
3. If homosexuals were to be awarded every right afforded to heterosexuals but we simply called it something else, would what we have still be a special kind of “marriage?”
4. Or shall we not give homosexuals all the same rights?

Just think about it.

I am stranded somewhere between being pro-choice and pro-life. This is a tenuous position to be in, but there I am.

I had two unplanned pregnancies that ended in the light of my life and the breath in my prayers being born. The first pregnancy showed my husband being laid off from his job a little bit in, us having to scramble to find somewhere to live and some way to support ourselves. I won’t go into extreme detail as this is not a personal blog, but suffice it to say that we were strapped for cash, living hand to mouth, and bad off. Very bad off. The second pregnancy we were still in a transitory position when it came to housing. The husband was again without consistent work. Things were still hand to mouth (and still are). So when I see a statistic that says that over 90% of women who had abortions ascribed failure to provide for a child/pay for a pregnancy as their primary reason to abort, I sympathize.

It is terrifying to bring a child into this world, even more so when one asks “where is my next meal coming from” and “how much are diapers again?” Now add into that the physical and emotional rigors of childbearing, instability in intimate relationships- and what do you have? A cocktail for disaster. Any time I am asked I will be frank about the physical symptoms of pregnancy, the strain it puts on the father of the child as well as the mother, the fact that labor and delivery while not the end of the world are not easy. There is an insurmountable psychological impact to pregnancy and childbirth that MUST be observed.

That is why any time I hear someone say, “why can’t the woman just put the baby up for adoption” I cringe. Not to mention that women who are not Caucasian will have a harder time getting parents for their child, and women who have done drugs or drank alcohol before they were aware they were pregnant will also have a harder time finding a family for their child. Ask a poor black woman with no intimate family to afford her who innocently drank alcohol a few times before realizing she was pregnant to just “have the baby and give it up.” Have it? With whom footing the bills? And to whom shall she give it? The overburdened foster system? What if the baby has permanent defects from the alcohol? She’s got no way to know.

When I found out I was pregnant with my son my first thought was, “dear God just undo this.” I was in no emotional or economic shape to give birth to and take care of a child. I had no way to know if we’d have insurance to pay for my care, and we were still in the process of paying off our uninsured delivery of our first child. Have another baby? In my state? With the state of jobs in our area? With no home to live in? With no money to buy healthy food to eat?

There was no way that I would abort. I knew from the second I suspected a pregnancy that I loved this child- but part of the reason I DIDN’T want my child was my love for him. I didn’t want him brought into the kind of life we were struggling through.

And that is why I am pro-choice. Because unless YOU, YOU YOURSELF are willing to take a woman’s child into your own home and raise it yourself, you’ve no right to make that decision for her. Is the unborn child a real life, imbued with soul and breath? That is another thing to be argued about. But consider embryos that implant into a woman’s fallopian tubes. Those are aborted without a second thought, because there is no hope of them being viable. If the woman carries them past the first trimester she will die of internal bleeding. What about the amount of miscarriages that happen? Were all of those sacred life? And if so, why would God allow a God-fearing couple who desperately wants that child to endure such pain?

These are questions we MUST ask ourselves if we enter into the abortion debate. But the greatest question of all we must ask is whom shall we love? The unborn, or the struggling mother? Whom must we embrace? The unreachable, or she who stands outside our door? Whom must we pray for in whispers and moans? Those who are with Father God, or those who must remain on this planet, within our reach?

Ask yourself that. And ask yourself if you were with her, at her side, holding her hand, wiping her tears, and she simply could not bear the thought of bringing her child into this world of pain and distress- would you still judge?

Or would you land with me, somewhere in the gray land between choice and life, choosing to embrace the life that we can see and touch and bear with.

Everyone ends up in arguments.  Every personal relationship has it’s moments of extreme tension.  How we confront them and the way in which we cope afterwards says a lot about who we are, our maturity, and our ability to maintain intimacy overtime.  So how to approach conflict?  Here are a few things I’ve learned in six years of marriage:

1. Tell the person who hurt you that you are hurt.  The assumption that offense is known and acknowledged is a dangerous one.  No matter how intimate the relationship, your spouse, family and friends are not mind readers.  If there is pain, allow it to be exposed.  Be frank.  That is when healing is possible.
2. Acknowledge wrongdoing. If you bring up thing (A) and your spouse brings up thing (B) that you did to hurt them, stop.  Breathe.  Apologize.  A true and heartfelt apology will open the door for your own hurts to be dealt with and healed.  What is more important, that you immediately achieve recognition of your own pain, or that intimacy can continue?  Be willing to be wrong, and you will find your spouse (or friends, or family) willing to admit their wrongs to you, as well.
3. Deal with the fact that you only control yourself. You can’t force humbleness, you can’t evoke change, you can’t create better intimacy by requesting it from others.  The only one you can birth those things in is yourself.  If the most important thing is the continued relationship, you will have to make sacrifices.  If the only thing that matters is your own perceived needs…  You may just go on needing, forever.
4. Always use a soft tone. You may be angry.  You may be red-in-the-face screaming angry.  You may be throwing the chairs up against the wall angry.  But if you approach the conflict that way, you immediately put everyone else on the defensive.  Use a soft tone and a gentle touch.  “Demonstrations” of anger don’t have to be loud and rude.  Softly saying, “I am angry.  I cannot deal with (this) or (that) and I need you to hear me.” will allow for the conversation to grow.
5. Use personal language- don’t say “you did this, you did that, you hurt me.”  Say, “I was hurt when this or that happened.”  “I had a bad reaction to your words.”  “You may not have meant to hurt me by saying this or that, but I was hurt.”  Do not immediately place blame.  Speak sincerely about yourself and your feelings and needs, and allow an opportunity for the offending party to take blame.
6. Don’t bring in a third party- don’t immediately bring other people into your personal problems.  It may be tempting to call your mother before broaching a subject with your spouse, but if you do and then say, “mom said this about what you did” expect the fight to continue.  If you must call someone else for emotional support, leave them out of the discussion.  Your problems with your spouse or family should remain between you and the people involved.
7. Learn how to calm yourself down.  The heat of anger can be dangerous.  Figure out what calms you down, be it breathing slowly or cleaning or fishing or yardwork or painting or handling your Wii (gaming system, for the uninitiated), and if you feel yourself losing control- go do that thing-  BUT-  never just walk out on a conversation.  Tell your spouse (or friend, or family) what you are doing.  Say, “I really want to have this conversation, but if we keep talking right now I will say things to hurt you that we will both regret and be unable to unsay.  Is it okay if I take a few hours to do (this) or (that) and we can talk after?”  If you want to sweeten the deal, you could even say, “here, take this twenty and go see a movie or get dinner while I calm down.”  That way you both feel taken care of, and the discussion can take place over calmer waters.

So, this weekend, have a happy relationship!

No, I’m not talking about fantasy in a sci-fi/fantasy sense- I’m talking sex.

Is it wrong to fantasize?  Many women will admit to fantasies of being held, talked to, emotionally stimulated in some way.  They will admit that sometimes they dream about people they’ve met in passing.  Not necessarily always in a strictly sexual sense, sometimes it’s just about companionship.

But if we are Christian a question remains: is it sin?

Psychologically speaking fantasy is a “safe” way in which to engage in behaviors deemed “unsafe” in reality.  One knows one would pay a price for arguing with one’s mother, so one fantasizes.  One knows one isn’t ever going to date Edward Norton, so one fantasizes.  Fantasy can also be an exercise for certain things one is unsure of- and in this sense women have much more active fantasy lives then men.  Women tend to fantasize about the course of the day, how to interact with a boss, what to make for dinner.  Women tend to think about these things to a much greater extent than men.  It’s not a wonder we’re often seen as a “mystery” seeing as we spend such a large amount of time in our heads.  (And yes- I realize this is a gross generalization.  Some men operate this way and some women simply don’t.)

Yet, the question remains:  when it comes to sex, is it a sin?

Ask yourself a few questions:

1. Do you ever replace real interaction, necessary interaction, with fantasy? Are there times where you know you need to discuss something, and yet you don’t?  Where the anger/disatisfaction/desire you are feeling causes a rift in your relationship, and yet you continue to exorcise it with fantasy instead of interaction?
2. Do you find yourself unattracted to your mate and only stimulated by fantasy?  This is a major problem- and in this way fantasy can be as dangerous as pornography.
3. Does your fantasy life take you out of your daily life to the point that it’s an obstruction? You know the kids staring out of the window instead of listening in class?  Is this you in your job?  Your marriage?

Do you throw yourself into romance novels?  Soap operas?  Do you find yourself hurting and longing for something that you only achieve in fantasy?  While in small doses an argument can be made for the safeness and even health of fantasy, there’s a time when you need to embrace and appreciate reality.

Not to mention communication, communication, communication- perhaps if you tell your spouse that you fantasize about being spoken to in a certain way, held in a certain way, approached in a certain way, you’ll find that his eager to behave this way himself and fulfill you.

But- is it sin?  In Matthew 5:28 Jesus says, “But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”  Where is your heart?  Is it with your spouse, your life?  Or have you given it to something unattainable, something that is only in your head?

Every time I see those two words beside each other in that order I wonder what in the world it means. “Unnatural Relations”. It implies, “relations that go against nature.” What is that? If you look at nature, like nature on a farm, you’ll see that nature seems to go for any relations it can get. Dogs will have sex with rubber balls, stuffed animals, a stray foot pointing out in a convenient direction, other male dogs or female dogs or whatever is convenient. Most animals are that way. They have a lust, they fulfill it.

In that way I’ve always thought of human sexuality as transcending “natural relations”, because we have made sex about more than fulfilling a lust or procreating. Sex, to me, is about two people learning to be one. It is about give and take, sacrifice and dominance, learning to be in control and out of it, giving of yourself and taking of another. That is far more than simply nature, it is a metaphor for all things real and spiritual. It is the dance of creation itself- not because it makes life but because it IS life.

So what is unnatural? Is it unnatural to have sex in a way that doesn’t lead to procreation? Is it a sin to use birth control? Is it a sin when a married and committed couple engage in mutual masturbation or anal sex? Where exactly is the line between natural and unnatural? Is the only holy sex that which is done in the dark with socks still on and both feeling a little embarrassed afterwards?

I really do wonder about these things. When someone tells me to beware of unnatural relations I always want to ask, “what defines natural?” That which is found in nature, that which is primal and crude, or is “unnatural” that which one simply finds distasteful?

Because in my opinion there are a lot of Christian couples that engage in distasteful relations. Maybe I’m still a bit of a heathen.