Oh Boy, It's a Boy

We couldn't be more thrilled.

“Boys are found everywhere -- on top of, underneath, inside of, climbing on, swinging from, running around or jumping to. Mothers love them, little girls hate them, older sisters and brothers tolerate them, adults ignore them and Heaven protects them. A boy is Truth with dirt on its face, Beauty with a cut on its finger, Wisdom with bubble gum in its hair and the Hope of the future with a frog in its pocket.” - Alan Marshall Beck

Little Christ

For Lent, I decided to read through the biblical Gospels. I’m always amazed at what I discover and re-discover as I sort though the four accounts of the life of Jesus. Every two or three years, I re-read the Gospels and they truly never cease to inspire and reform my belief systems.

Naturally, as I read, there comes conviction. The very words of Jesus are hard and often filled with the impossible, but even more than convicted, I find myself wondering if I really know Jesus in the way I thikn I know Him. Contrary to the popular belief that Jesus was a politically correct, constantly passive, sweet and timid man, He was, in fact, virtually the polar opposite. The Gospels are filled with His hard sayings, His confrontational agenda and His ever-so-blatant disdain for hypocrisy and injustice. Jesus was a radical. And while Jesus was full of love and compassion, He was also powerfully and wonderfully filled with confrontational truth that came to divide communities and conquer hearts of sin, changing them into the hearts of the saved.

The Jesus I sometimes try to make into a hippy is, in truth, a Mighty Warrior.

The Gospels, to me, confront passive Christianity. What I mean by passive Christianity is this sort of idea that holding a standard for yourself and other Believers is somehow mean-spirited and anti-Jesus. Accountability to moral standards, ethical business practices and a commitment to truth is what Jesus lived and died modeling and preaching. If we want to be like Him, we must realize that it’s not JUST about loving people and being “nice.” It’s about the hard sayings –the hard truths, the hard conversations, the tough love that sacrifices popularity and promotions and painlessness in order to live the way of the Cross.

It might be cliché, but I want to do the hard thing in life. I want to live like Jesus. It's impossible to do perfectly and painlessly, but the effort, we are told, far outweighs the temporary comforts of this world.

Choices

I spoke with someone very wise this week about what it means to set healthy boundaries and allow others to make choices for themselves. I really struggle watching loved ones make poor choices when I have done everything to help direct them in the right way. Sometimes we can teach, preach, lecture, model, guide and counsel those closest to us toward the right path, only to watch them choose the wrong one. It can be discouraging and frustrating.

This wise friend brought up the story of the rich young ruler. The young man asked Jesus what good he could do to have eternal life. Jesus answered that to receive eternal life; this ruler must follow the commandments and give all he owned to the poor. (Jesus knew this man's heart was more dedicated to his wealth than the heart of God) Matthew 19:22 says, "When the young man heard this, he went away sad, because he had great wealth." The interesting thing my friend pointed out is that Jesus did not chase after him, trying to persuade him to change his mind. He did not coerce or control the outcome, despite knowing the ruler’s choice was wrong. He let the ruler choose and reap the consequences of that choice.

I think as people - parents, friends, children - are often uncomfortable allowing God to be God, so we step in with our high and mighty Messiah complexes, trying to fix our families and friends. We entangle ourselves in the choices of others and often assume responsibility for burdens that are not ours to carry. We have poor relational boundaries this way. We think our excessive and obsessive "care" and entanglement in the choices of our loved ones mirrors Christ. Given the story of the young ruler, however, Jesus did not act this way at all.

Jesus loved by allowing the freedom of choice to remain in the hands of the individual. He taught, preached, lectured, modeled, guided and counseled while permitting free-will.

I think Jesus grieved the decision of the young ruler and the many others who rejected Him as Messiah, but he did not chase after them and force His will or His message upon them. Instead, He trusted the heart of the Father and knew that not all would believe.

Sometimes the best conviction is to allow the choices of another to come full circle. Sin does not go hidden and consequence-free for very long. We call it tough love and healthy boundaries. I think Jesus would have just called it the way of the cross. Matthew 7:13-14 says, Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life and only a few find it. We can teach, preach, lecture, model, guide and counsel those close to us toward the right path, but, in the end, every person must choose for themselves whom they will serve and what path they will tred.

I'm trying to set better boundaries!

Midwifery Decisions

I am pregnant. I am four months along and have chosen to manage my pregnancy, labor and delivery with midwives at The Midwife Center for Birth and Women's Health in Pittsburgh, PA. Since it seems I must explain and often defend my decision to go this route, I wanted to explain my rational in detail here.

I can imagine most everyone’s surprise at my decision to go to midwives. My sister, who has done almost everything before me – cut Barbie’s hair, shave her legs, use a curling iron, get married and have babies – delivered her two beautiful children at The Midwife Center. I have to be honest and say, I thought she was NUTS! Before and after her first child’s birth, I was pretty against any delivery that was not in a hospital. I couldn’t imagine birth without drugs and didn’t want to even consider any other options. Keep in mind though, I hadn’t read anything about pregnancy, labor or delivery either. Nor was I in a place in my life where these things required any research.

Fast forward two years. I was engaged to my husband and my sister was pregnant with her second baby. I had recently gotten into a little tiff with my gynecologist of three years because she would not spend time with me to discuss some cervical concerns I had from a previous procedure. She was always rude to me and I just never really liked her that much. Since I cannot stand male gynecologists, I knew I needed to find a new practice soon since neither my soon to be husband nor I wanted to wait very long to get pregnant. Ha!

It was around that time that my sister and I were shopping for some items for my wedding and decided to combine our trip to the flower-girls ballerina store with one of her visits to the midwives, that my eyes were opened. She was in for one of her 7month check-ups. I was really impressed with the relationship the midwife had with her and the time she took just hanging out with my sister and gaining her trust. It seemed so different than my gynecological experiences, and since I moved around so much, I had had many gynecologists over the years. The midwife actually cared and didn’t seem bothered by the time the appointment took.

I was really overwhelmed with a sense of “home” after that visit so I decided I would switch my care to the midwives, since I greatly disliked my OBGYN anyway. When I first found out I was pregnant with the baby we lost, I decided I wanted to stay with the midwives but deliver in a hospital. It seemed the best of both worlds. I could have drugs but also nice midwives to care for me. But then we miscarried. My cervix dilated, the uterus contracted, and we lost the baby. The pain was horrible but something interesting happened in those intense hours of expelling. My body took over and found tolerable positions. I breathed through each contraction, even the medicine induced contractions, and I got through it. Hopelessness and all. There was no pot of gold at the end of that pain, no baby to make it worth it, only disappointment and grief. But I still made it through.

After talking with one of the midwives, she explained that everything I went through, all the meds I had to take to make me contract, felt a lot like childbirth. (minus the pushing and crowning…which I know is really hard!) I’m not comparing it as if they are the same but in a lot of ways, I feel like I got a taste of childbirth those hard days and I woke up to the power and beauty and pain that women are capable of managing, naturally.

It was then that I started to think about the kind of atmosphere I really wanted when we got pregnant again. Did I want any of the local hospitals with their technology and policies and 40-some% ci-section rates or did I want a more family-friendly environment that had a proven track record of safety and low interventions? And the real question, did I want medication or did I want to do it naturally? After much discussion and thinking, I came to a personal conclusion that while I am NOT a hippy/I will never use pain meds sort of person, I AM the sort of person who has a strong will when I choose to do something. I realized that the reason I always wanted to deliver in a hospital was because I was afraid that I couldn’t handle the pain. It was about fear, not about a love for my baby or even for my own body. As someone who does not want to be controlled by fear, but instead love, I decided to read more about natural childbirth. “Perfect love casts out all fear.”

Since I had already gotten a taste of childbirth, minus the baby and including deep sorrow, I decided then and there that I wanted to try to deliver naturally. I had a new respect for my body as a woman and a faith in my ability to withstand pain for the love of a baby. Hope and resolution of will are profound tools! And the fact remains, it IS healthier for the baby to remain drug-free. It IS a better recovery for the mother to deliver drug-free. It’s unarguably better to deliver naturally, unless something goes wrong. Naturally, if something does go wrong or the baby doesn’t turn I will deliver in the hospital, probably with drugs and still be happy if the baby is healthy. I’m NOT saying I can brave it ALL but I am saying, I’d really like to try.

I know there are many differing viewpoints on this subject. I know you many people have pre-conceived ideas about midwives but I think those are people who haven’t experienced the loving care of a midwife, haven’t done honest research and are afraid. I read Your Best Birth and watched The Business of Being Born by Ricky Lake and Abby Epstein recently and it truly confirmed my stand on this issue. It is my intention to go this route, despite the seeming negativity that surrounds the decision.

Asking Too Much

I haven't posted in a year.

I feel like that needs to be said in a whiny..."dear diary, i'm sorry for neglecting you" voice that I used to have when I was an awkward 12 year old writing in my diary about my crushes and my mean mommy that wouldn't let me wear bright red lipstick on my first day of 7th grade. I guess I feel neglectful; my whining above will have to suffice as penance.

It's been an interesting year. My husband and I bought a house. We're homeowners. And we got pregnant, had a miscarriage, and 62 seconds later got pregnant again. I'm four months along and doing well, minus the tri-weekly vomiting and the constant nausea. I could go on and on about the pregnancy symptoms no one ever mentions when you're a blushing, bright eyed, hopeful bride ready to go off birth control. But I'll save that for another day.

I guess I just wanted to say that today, today I'm lonely. A lot more than a house and a soon to come baby happened this year. In some ways, my husband and I grew up a little since last February. Together we've braved some intense relational storms that have left us closer to each other but distinctly distant to several very close individuals we have been deep friends with for years. Life has a way of changing relationships, and marriage has a way of becoming indirectly isolating. While marriage is like always being on a team, the game can get sort of confusing. And pregnancy, well, that has a way of ensuring that isolation in ways I never predicted or could have prepared for.

I don't think it's all bad and neither do I think this isolation is unhealthy. Two becoming one flesh and then creating life is heavy in the areas of responsibility and mystery and beauty and depth and weight. It's impossible to remain unchanged in the midst of that intensity. But I find myself surrounded by friends who can't quite relate. They're all single and childless. It's not that bridges have been burned, it's just that it takes many more bridges to relate than it used to. That goes both ways.

Needless to say, this loneliness, this isolation, goes both ways. They don't know what to say about my painfully swollen baby boobs and I don't get invited out anymore because the bars they go to are smokey. Mostly I'm fine with that. But today, I miss friends. I miss laughing at stupid things over a few glasses of cheap wine. I miss investing in something other than work, work, sleep, and my growing ass.

I am happily married and happily pregnant. I guess I just want the perfect trinity... I want to be happily social too.

Am I asking too much?

Ready?

I feel like it’s August 1939 in eastern Europe; pending doom is palpable. “Hitler's government envisioned a vast, new empire of "living space" (Lebensraum) in eastern Europe. The realization of German dominance in Europe, its leaders calculated, would require war.”(1) Control, force and manipulation were of primary dominance in Germany and what started with a dictatorial vision later became the devastation of so very many. (over 70 million casualties)

Our country, and world for that matter, seem to be on the brink of disaster; I’m terrified of our decisions. A Great Depression is almost imminent and I feel like the world we now know is about to change. Forever. I know people say this, crazy people… They prophesy doom and destruction that most ignore while others scoff. I don’t want to claim I have any word of God, I just have a sense…we’re living in the beginning of the end. Times are changing; the empire hangs on by a thread.

What the church does and does not do in these times may make all the difference. Oppression and poverty, even persecution of the faith has often led to an outpouring of Spirit and revival, an opening of heaven. Yet western Christians have no idea of what it means to suffer for the faith or to go through hard times. We don’t know war on our soil, calamity or true manifest evil. We’re not ready to deal with tribulation; we’re not equipped to overcome the dragon.

A war between two kingdoms is prophesied but we stand blind, in the middle of a mine field. We hear the cries of the destroyed all around but keep walking, ignorant to the destruction, passive in our defense. The Gospel is under attack; the enemy has breached the walls and the church is destroyed one piece at a time, from the inside, out.

I want to scream, to say “people get ready” but alas, my voice is over-powered by the masses. We sit idly by while germanic ranks steal our neighbors and rob us of justice. We do nothing and say nothing though something is what is required. Offering, of self and life and even freedom for the sake of Truth and the preservation of Justice, is the price to pay. Are we so self-focused and blind that we cannot see the shifting, the pending destruction, the eminent take-over? The end is coming; where does our security lie?

(1) wikepedia: WWII

A Co-existing Forgiveness

Someone recently asked me the age-old question. “Do you have to forgive in Christianity when the person who hurt you didn’t ask for it nor has changed? And if so, how?” I get this question a lot. It doesn’t surprise me. God has had to do a lot of work in me to get me to this point, this point being the knowledge and understanding that forgiveness is a choice. The act of it requires no one other than a broken and honest heart speaking to a Healing and Trustworthy God.

In moments where I’m speaking to a new believer or someone who has known God for a long time but has never had to walk through hard forgiveness, I start explaining the process of forgiveness by giving my “story.” In the end, I simply say that instead of my bitterness and hatred affecting that rapist or that molester or that mean lady, it affected me. Down in my core, in my center, the place Spirit and blood reside, it affected me. It turned fluid to stone and movement into knots. Bitterness destroys. Un-forgiveness kills. Its roots touch hell.

If I’ve told my story once I’ve told it one thousand times. It’s not that mine is more effective but personal testimony, I’ve found, moves mountains. It gives the pain worth. And I quite literally believe that Scripture passage in Revelations which states that we will overcome the Enemy by the blood of the Lamb and the word of our testimony. I like to say, whenever I get the chance, that in this…in THIS area of chosen forgiveness, Jesus works! The way of the cross makes sense. It really is the best way to live, as Rob Bell put it.

After I share my story and encourage forgiveness, the conversation often shifts and I realize something. Most people, people who aren’t dealing with childhood wounds or serious past offenses, are really just asking the question, how do I deal with a person in my life when I find them offensive to my heart and abusive to my soul? How do I copy with a relationship I’m forced to be involved in (in-laws, co-workers, leadership, etc…) when it’s literal emotional torture to be around them?

It turns out, in most cases lately, that people are really just asking how to co-exist. It’s interesting that the question would originate with forgiveness though. As much as I believe forgiveness is a huge issue in our would and in our faith communities, knowing how to deal with difficult people is even greater. The questions abound, boundaries vs. confrontation vs. intentionality vs. co-existence. At what point can you “wipe the dust off?” At what point is “speaking the truth in love” imperative?

It’s my opinion that there are different forms of forgiveness. Going back and re-hashing a painful memory and forgiving the person involved is one form. That’s the form I’m most familiar with. But the other form is trickier because it involves a daily surrender of will and emotions – a constant surrender of self. Walking forgiveness, as I like to call it, is hard. Plain and simple. It’s the stuff “take up the cross and follow me” is made of. Only Jesus Himself was fully capable.

Over the next few days I’m going to make this a prayer focus. I’m going to journal about what this means practically and spiritually in order to give myself, and others if they’re interested, clarity and calm amidst their difficult relational moments.