The Looney household has had a bit of a rough patch the last two weeks or so with the gift that keeps on giving: germs. It made blogging the last thing on my mind, so it's nice to have some time to do it again!
It started off with a stomach bug that Anna brought home and then kindly passed off to Bob and Jack. I think I got a watered down version of it, but still felt a bit crummy myself. And then the congestion set in...immediately after she was done with stomach issues, Anna sported a runny nose and wet cough. The congestion was clear, so I didn't think much about it and figured it would clear up on it's own. After a week and a half of it, plus a really cranky afternoon with Anna, I called her pediatrician and made an appointment the next day. Turns out she had a double ear infection with a burst ear drum in her right ear. Yikes....talk about a HUGE dose of mommy guilt that I hadn't taken her in sooner. Her doctor mentioned that in 99 out of 100 other kids, they would have been screaming bloody murder at that point. In other words, it's usually much more obvious (which only slightly relieved my guilt). I guess Anna has a happy disposition and high tolerance for pain! Lesson learned!! Jack also had an ear infection, so both of them have been on antibiotics plus a nebulizer for Anna to help clear up the wheezing/cough. I think we're just about all back to normal now, but it made for a really tough 14 day stretch leading up to Christmas.
Now, on a more positive note:
So obviously we've known we have a girl for oh, about 14 months now...but it REALLY hit us Christmas day. My sister found this fabulous blue tutu with zebra print lining for Anna and she absolutely loved it!! I'll have to get a better picture without the clashing green onesie on, but you get the picture :) She also got a My First Purse which contained a pink bracelet that she wears all over the place now. Dress-up here we come!! It was so fun to see her so excited about all of it. I remember being a little apprehensive about having a girl when I was pregnant just because I don't deal well with drama, but it has been such a blessing to have one of each!
It troubled me enough that I began to ask for prayer for my attitude within my Bible study group. I realized it was going to take more than my willpower to be able to get through those early months with an infant and not completely alienate my husband and son in the process. Obviously whatever I was doing was NOT getting the job done. I began to pray more often as well, and as a friend of mine eloquently put it, I entered into the first period of my life where I really wrestled with God. Not in a shake-my-fist-at-him way, but in expressing my deep-seeded frustration honestly through prayer, which often went something like this at 2AM: “Why does this have to be so difficult? What is the purpose? Why, after months of being uncomfortable at the end of pregnancy, enduring the pain and exhaustion of labor and delivery, do moms THEN have to go through months of sleep deprivation? Why? I don’t get it, God, I really don’t. I can usually see the good in most situations, but I am stumped about the good in this one.” I had finally hit a struggle in my life that I couldn’t make better on my own just by sheer willpower.
This questioning went on for many nights over the course of about a month, but slowly something else began to happen as well. Instead of just throwing out a bunch of questions at God, I also began to ask Him for help. A lot. I didn’t get an immediate answer to those questions, nor did Anna suddenly become the world’s greatest sleeper, but what I did get was a lesson in what it means to engage with God, to be honest with Him, and to ask Him for help. While I can’t say this cured my bad attitude overnight, I found myself praying more frequently. Not long, eloquently worded prayers like you might hear in a church service, but something to the effect of “God, it’s one of those mornings. No part of me wants to be pleasant for my family and every part of me wants to be crabby. I need your help to make it through until nap time.” And that was it. The more often I did it, the more often it spilled over into prayer for other areas of struggle in my life, and also into prayers of thankfulness for the things that were going right. I began to seek out what God wanted for me every time I had a question.
Merriam-Webster has a number of definitions for the word engage: to bind by a pledge to marry, to induce to participate, to begin and carry on an enterprise or activity, to give attention to something, and also, interestingly enough, to enter into conflict or battle. My wrestling with God showed me He doesn’t need my biblical knowledge or my checklist of see-all-the-good-things-I -did-this-week…He needs me to be humble in spirit enough to be engaged with Him, and that I NEED to be engaged with Him or my attitude just stinks.
Whatever this “engagement” looks like—sometimes worship, sometimes group prayer, sometimes individual prayer in the shower because it’s one of the few times I can be alone—the point is that it’s two-sided now-I feel as though I’m more actively seeking Him.
To close-I love the way our Worship Pastor at WoodsEdge opens up our worship time. Before we begin, he always says something along the lines of “You can sit, you can stand, you can kneel. You can raise your hands, you can clap, you can remain motionless. You can sit back and take it all in, you can pray or you can sing. But here’s the important thing: whatever you do, don’t miss an opportunity to engage with the God who loves you.” Nothing has shown me the power of this privilege-engaging with God-more than being a mom.
I'm planning to update this blog more frequently again after a break, whohoo! Some slight changes though...I feel like God has been hard at work on me the last year or so, and those things need to be shared, so I'm planning more of a mix of mommy adventures and some musings on what He's done in my life.
This came to a head last May when a friend of mine in my MOPS group asked me to share my "testimony" (religious speak for how God has worked in my life) with the other moms. That forced me to perform a spiritual inventory of my life, so I collected my thoughts and wrote them down since, in my humble opinion, I write better than I speak. It was a life-changing exercise, so I thought I would share it here to jump back into ye ol' blogosphere (ok, I promise no more use of the word "ye"). It's long, so I'll break it up.
Motherhood has been the single greatest force in shaping, or should I say reshaping my walk with God.I grew up in the church, going every Sunday morning, Sunday evening, and Wednesday evening for many years with my family.I knew lots of Bible trivia, all the Bible songs, and all the “right” answers.I went to church camp for four years, a wonderful place in the mountains of New Mexico, and got baptized there by my youth minister in the seventh grade (in a VERY cold mountain stream).All of those experiences I count as blessings in my life and I am deeply grateful for them.
When I look back though through a more critical lens, I see that for most of my early life, probably until my mid 20’s, I knew a lot about God, but I didn’t really know Him.I didn’t really have a relationship with Him, at least not a two-sided one.I did the church thing and tried my best during the week to live the way I thought a Christian should live, and of course messed up quite royally in the process.I did little outside of church to seek Him; occasional Bible study and very, very little prayer….think “Lord please help me do well on this test!” and you get the gist of the depth of my prayers. In all honesty, I was a Christian completely unengaged with God.
I think a large reason for the complacency in my faith walk has been a life blessed with little in the way of major distress.My immediate family members are alive and healthy (and on speaking terms!), I was raised in a stable, Christian household with a roof over my head and no worries about where my next meal would come from.I’ve had great friendships, ample opportunity and support from my parents to explore my interests, and financial support to pursue two degrees in college.I married a wonderful man and have two beautiful, healthy kids.In short, while my life hasn’t been totally stress- free, it’s been relatively easy.The peril, though, from this complacent faith has been two-fold: it’s fueled a false sense of security that I am in control, and a false sense of pride that I can do things on my own without help. Neither of those things had, prior to motherhood, allowed room for me to consistently seek an authentic relationship with God.
Enter motherhood, stage right.Nothing strips away the security net of I’m-in-control like becoming a parent.Case in point, a trip to the Container Store where my then 15 month-old son’s explosive diaper gurgled up all over the shopping cart right in the middle of the store, leaving me mortified and rushing out to the van as quickly as possible.And yes, for those of you wondering, I did go back, quite embarrassed, and ask a nice cashier for some disinfectant so I could clean the shopping cart up.Or the time when we took Jack to the emergency room with a 104 fever.When the doctor ordered a chest X-ray to make sure it wasn’t pneumonia, my heart broke as I had to help the technician stretch Jack out on a cold, hard plate while he screamed hysterically so the machine could get a good scan of his lungs.Those are just a few examples of probably hundreds.
The I’m-not-in-control lesson has been easier for me to learn compared to the I-cannot-do-it-on-my-own lesson.It is here that once again, motherhood came in and toppled that tower of pride, forcing me to realize that I can’t do it alone.And despite the wonderful help available to me from my husband, family, and friends, I ultimately need to seek help from God.
This came to a head a few months ago during a rough time with Anna. We mommies don’t function well on broken sleep, but unfortunately, our precious infant babies just don’t understand that do they? Morning after morning I would wake up crabby after being up with Anna multiple times during the night, barely speaking to Bob at breakfast and struggling to even muster a semi-cheerful “Hi” to my sweet son Jack. I was exhausted and the day hadn’t even started yet…how was I going to keep up with my two-year-old too? I was resentful of the fact that feeding her fell solely to me (she wouldn’t take a bottle at that time), which meant I was pretty much always up when she was up. I wanted to be able to roll over and go back to sleep like Bob did, instead of dragging myself up the stairs to change the diaper of a screaming baby before nursing her and then struggling to swaddle her in a blanket so she would go back to sleep. On top of all that, he got to escape to work 5 days a week!! In fairness to Bob though, he deserved none of my attitude because he’s a great dad who has always helped out 110% with the kids. Still though, this ugliness I carried around until about 10AM each morning (when the three cups of coffee finally kicked in) began to take a toll on him, because when mom’s not happy, nobody’s happy. He never knew which wife he was going to come home to: Wife #1 who had managed to cheer up a bit by late afternoon, or Wife #2 who had been in a perpetual state of grumpiness all day. I often lashed out at Jack too, for no good reason. No wonder he went through a period of always wanting his daddy, I wouldn’t have wanted to be around me either!
A Texas mom riding the ups and downs of motherhood along with my wonderful husband, OCD dachshund Haley (a compulsive licker), my faith, and a good stiff cup of coffee (or a few) each morning.
Now, on a more positive note:
