Mommy Brain

Kevin and I are heading out in the morning for our weekend get-away. Half of the kids are already at their friends’ houses, and we’re taking the other half in an hour. We’ll eat dinner here in town and watch a movie, and then head off to Spokane in the morning. I probably won’t post until Sunday evening or Monday.

If you’re the praying sort, I would appreciate some prayers on our behalf. I went to the doctor on Tuesday for this cough/sinus thingy, and she started me on some antibiotics for bronchitis. I am allergic to three different antibiotics, so she tried me on a sulfa-based one, which I’d never tried before. Well, I had a horrible reaction. Itching, panic attacks, shaky legs, muscle aches, nausea, and fever. My mom had a similar reaction to an antibiotic last year, so I called and asked what it was. Sulfa, of course.

Anyway, I’m on antihistamine to get rid of the allergic reaction, but I’m feeling pretty yucky. The panic attacks have stopped, but I’m feeling completely wrung out and still have a slight temperature. The doctor said there’s no reason to stay home, the rest of the drugs should be out of my system by tomorrow. But I’m also starting a different antibiotic to finish killing off the bronchitis. It’s one I’ve taken before with no problems – don’t know why we didn’t start with that one!

If you feel like sending up some prayers that this medication would clear from my system quickly, that I wouldn’t have any more panic attacks, that the other medication would work to fight this cough, and that my stomach would settle and we could just enjoy our weekend, I would so appreciate it.

I’m not one to find satan behind every bad thing that happens to us, but there seems to be a pattern. Last year before we went away for our annual weekend, I was diagnosed with pleurisy. Could be a coincidence, or it could be the enemy trying to keep us from enjoying the one weekend a year we take for a break from the kids and a chance to talk about and work on our marriage.

I’m so glad we have a God who is faithful, no matter what.

Thanks to Sparrow for the laugh this morning.

Edgar Degas was a French painter known for his paintings of horses and the ballet, as well as portraits of his friends. Degas was an impressionist, but unlike most of the other painters of this school, he preferred to paint from extensive preliminary sketches. Here are two of my favorites that are different from his most famous paintings of ballerinas:

Francisco Goya was a Spanish painter. His paintings were unusual for his time, in that he used his art to portray his feelings toward the Spanish civil war. As well as paintings of the war, he is known for paintings of bull-fighters and women in traditional Spanish dress. Toward the end of his life, he produced a series of works called “The Black Paintings” which portrayed fantasy, insanity, and horror. To be honest, it was hard for me to find any of Goya’s works that I liked, but after searching the extensive list of paintings at Art.com, I found two paintings of boys at play. In my opinion, if you looked at those next to his other works it would be hard to believe they were done by the same artist. Here they are:

Next up: da Vinci and Monet.

Art Appreciation #1

Kevin and I celebrated early. Friday night we went to a concert, where we saw these people play Celtic music and watched these wonderful dancers:

If you like Celtic and world music, you can download a few An Dochas tunes here. (An Dochas means “The Hope” in Gaelic.) I used to play worship with two of these guys when they were still in high school.

I am remembering as I type that I posted about their annual concert last year, which means I missed my one-year anniversary of blogging. After checking my past posts, I officially started blogging over at Live Journal on January 17th, but switched over here to Blogger on February 5th. One year of blogging. Boy, time does fly.

I’m trying to get over a yucky sinus/bronchial thing in time for Kevin and I to go away for the weekend. Thursday afternoon I will be dropping the kids off at various friends’ houses and then meeting Kevin for dinner. I’m hoping to talk him into seeing a movie here in town that night. I love going to the movie theater, but Kevin hates crowds, so the theaters down in Spokane (where we’ll be spending the rest of the weekend) are out. But our little dinky Colville theatre is rarely crowded – unless it’s opening weekend of Narnia!

Friday morning we’ll take off for Spokane for the weekend. Lots of reading, window-shopping, eating out, sleeping in, and talking (with no interruptions) will follow. I look forward to this every year. I am so blessed to be married to my best friend.

Posting may be hit and miss for the rest of the week, what with getting ready to go and all. We’ll be back Sunday afternoon. Any prayers you feel like sending up for me to get over this respiratory thing would be greatly appreciated!

Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone!

As I read Joan Didion’s memoir of the year following her husband’s sudden death in 2003, this passage kept coming to mind:

“Brothers, we do not want you to be ignorant about those who fall asleep, or to grieve like the rest of men, who have no hope. We believe that Jesus died and rose again and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him. According to the Lord’s own word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left till the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever. Therefore encourage each other with these words.
1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 NIV

Those words stood out in stark contrast to this section from The Year of Magical Thinking:

“Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it. We anticipate (we know) that someone close to us could die, but we do not look beyond the few days or weeks that immediately follow such an imagined death. We misconstrue the nature of even those few days or weeks. We might expect if the death is sudden to feel shock. We do not expect this shock to be obliterative, dislocating to both body and mind. We might expect that we will be prostrate, inconsolable, crazy with loss. We do not expect to be literally crazy, cool customers who believe that their husband is about to return and need his shoes. In the version of grief we imagine, the model will be “healing.” A certain forward movement will prevail. The worst days will be the earliest days. We imagine that the moment to most severely test us will be the funeral, after which this hypothetical healing will take place. When we anticipate the funeral we wonder about failing to “get through it,” rise to the occasion, exhibit the “strength” that invariably gets mentioned as the correct response to death. We anticipate needing to steel ourselves for the moment: will I be able to greet people, will I be able to leave the scene, will I be able even to get dressed that day? We have no way of knowing that this will not be the issue. We have no way of knowing that the funeral itself will be anodyne, a kind of narcotic regression in which we are wrapped in the care of others and the gravity and meaning of the occasion. Nor can we know ahead of the fact (and here lies the heart of the difference between grief as we imagine it and grief as it is) the unending absence that follows, the void, the very opposite of meaning, the relentless succession of moments during which we will confront the experience of meaninglessness itself.”

I’m sure the emotions and experiences she writes of in this passage are common to people who have lost someone that close to them. In the passage in 1 Thessalonians, Paul doesn’t say “I don’t want you to grieve.” He says, “I don’t want you to grieve like those who have no hope.” It’s the last sentence in Didion’s passage that seems to be so hopeless: “…the relentless succession of moments during which we will confront the experience of meaningless itself.”

Although Ms. Didion considers herself an Episcopalian and her husband John Dunne a Catholic, she flatly states that she does not believe in the resurrection in the body. She has no hope of seeing her husband again. After being married almost 40 years, it’s horrifying to realize that your partner in life is gone and you will never be in their presence again. It’s surprising to me that more people don’t go insane from grief.

In Ms. Didion’s book, I noticed two main differences in the grief experienced by believers and the grief experienced by nonbelievers. The first is this hopelessness. If we are Christians, the goodbye we say to a fellow believer who dies is, in fact, a “see you later.” We have the hope of the resurrection, and that makes all the difference.

The second contrast I noticed is in the belief that grief must not be given into, it must be “handled.” I think I understand why. If you have no hope, it must be better to push the grief aside and not experience it. There is no hope, and therefore the grief would be heavy enough to destroy a person.

When my friend Beve died last year, we grieved. I saw people cry and laugh and then cry again. I didn’t get the sense that anyone was suppressing their feelings and just “handling” it. We knew that we could grieve and mourn and experience the loss of Beve’s presence, and yet that wasn’t the end. We weren’t sad for her. She hadn’t entered the “eternal dark” as Ms. Didion quotes her husband as describing death. Beve had entered eternal light! Knowing this – and that we would one day be there with her – gave us hope.

As I finished the book and read the last sentence, in which Ms. Didion mentions her belief that “no eye is on the sparrow,” I found myself sad for her. I don’t know her personally, but I pray that one day she will find the hope that is Jesus, and the knowledge that this life is not all there is.

…on using your public library as a homeschooling resource. The title isn’t mine – I think they change things to make sure there are certain keywords in the article. This is the first time I’ve noticed any changes in one of my articles. It was minor – one sentence was re-written. I never realized how protective I was of my writing until I saw that and it got on my nerves! Guess I better get used to it.

(Also, I updated the reading list links on the sidebar. The kids’ lists haven’t changed since they’re still reading the same books as last month, but you’ll find some great titles in the February read-aloud list.)

…for all Anglophiles and lovers of British literature:

Christianity Today has posted opposing editorials on the issue.

Here’s a section from the one that particularly grabbed my attention:

“Christians are willing to go to tribal people, and seek to understand their culture. At the same time, our general approach to homosexuals is to avoid them at all costs. When we do interact, it’s to tell them how wrong they are, rather than trying to understand what has brought them to the place they are in this life. Instead of building relationships and sharing the gospel, we shout rude slogans, and tell them they are all going to hell because they are gay. Instead of realizing we are in a war for men’s souls, we say we are in a culture war, and treat homosexuals like the enemy.

The Waodoni tribesmen murdered those original missionaries with simple spears. The missionaries, who had guns, did not shoot back. They were ready to meet the Lord while they knew the Waodoni were not. After the killings, family members of the murdered missionaries went back to the Waodoni to bring them the Good News, offering their own forgiveness along with God’s. The result? Many tribesmen were saved, and yes, their murderous behavior did change, but as a result of the Gospel, not as a pre-condition to receiving it. My New Tribes friends have told me that paradigm has not changed in the fifty years since the original story unfolded.

Meanwhile, in our current culture war we skewer homosexuals and drive them away from the Lord, all in the name of protecting ourselves and society. We insist that they agree with us, and change their behavior before we are willing to discuss Christ. How odd that Christians are able to forgive the murderers of their own brothers and sisters, dedicating themselves to save the souls of the killers, yet at the same time, those guilty of the supposedly greater sin of homosexuality are shunned by believers and left unevangelized.”

Here’s the opening of the opposing editorial:

“I have been waiting for a national Christian leader to comment on “End of the Spear” and the casting of Chad Allen in the lead role. Their voices are strangely silent. After all of their build up, that we finally have a movie of our own, they seem to be frozen in indecision or mired in accepting silly arguments for Chad’s inclusion.

My deceased wife, Beth Youderian, was Roger Youderian’s daughter. Roger was one of those men who died on “Palm Beach” in 1956, at the end of a spear.

Beth and I were strong supporters of the work Mart and Steve have been doing. Beth would have been appalled at this decision and I feel betrayed.”

If you read the articles, please leave a comment and let me know your thoughts on the matter.

…to use a memorial service as a political platform?

“[Coretta] Scott King’s activism and character were the primary focus during six hours of eulogies and song at the ceremony held in a suburb of Atlanta.

But in reflecting on her legacy, some speakers took Bush to task over his policies at home and abroad.

Former president Jimmy Carter alluded to a difficult moment for the Bush administration when he mentioned the lingering racial divide revealed by Hurricane Katrina last August.

Saying the struggle for equal rights was not yet over, Carter said: “We only have to recall the color of the faces of those in Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi — those who were most devastated by Katrina — to know that there are not yet equal opportunities for all Americans.”

Black leaders and opposition Democrats have accused the Bush administration of botching the response to Hurricane Katrina, which claimed more than 1,300 lives on the southern US coast and caused the flooding of New Orleans.

Carter also made a thinly veiled reference to Bush’s disputed domestic eavesdropping program, which allows for wiretapping of telephone calls and e-mail without court approved warrants.

The former president drew loud applause when he reminded the audience that federal authorities had once spied on and harassed Scott King and her husband, legendary civil rights leader Martin Luther King Junior.

The couple “were not appreciated even at the highest level of government,” Carter said.

“It was difficult for them personally — with the civil liberties of both husband and wife violated as they became the target of secret government wiretapping, other surveillance and as you know, harassment from the FBI.”

In my opinion, this is very poor taste. If it’s a memorial service, then remember the person who has passed away. But if the comments are going to have an agenda then call it what it is – a political rally.

Homeschooling, that is. The longer we do it, the more I love it. I love that my kids are with me all day and that we share our lives. I love that it stretches me. I love that they’re not being stuck into someone else’s ideas of what they should be learning and doing at the ages they’re at. I love that it allows us to do things we wouldn’t be able to do if they went to school.

Yesterday was one of those days. We spent the afternoon at some friends’ house. They are fellow homeschoolers of their seven children. My kids spent two hours riding a pony, feeding goats and hogs, chasing chickens and turkeys, jumping on a trampoline, swinging on a hammock, getting completely filthy, and loving every minute of it.

I am definitely a city girl. I was never made to live on a farm or care for a lot of animals – I am too squeamish and germ-phobic. But since we make our schedule, and it doesn’t revolve around public school hours, we were able to spend the afternoon at a farm.

Aside from riding the pony, Natalie’s favorite part was getting to touch the cow’s udder. “I’ve always wondered what they feel like, Mom!” She wanted to milk her, but the mama had just finished feeding her calf and there wasn’t anything left to milk. So not only did Nan get to experience what her udder felt like, it was still slimy with all the baby calf’s saliva! And she thought it was terrific. Nan and I are very much alike in a lot of ways, but that isn’t one of them!