Object Permanance

There are stages that children go thru. I have heard that it is possible for growth to be a daily experience and yet each stage, each step is good in itself. Enoch is developing object permanance. It is good that he is learning to accept that mommy and daddy continue to exist when we step out of view. It is a sign of growing up.
Enoch is beginning the early stages of trust.

The spiritual ramafications cannot elude me. I find they rise up to ask their own questions. I hear God's gentle nudge and tender question. Yet at times I fear what the answer suggests.

Implications of growth are played out in Enoch's looking for the object that has disappeared. He expects it to reappear. He expects to find the ball in my other hand.

What does my tendency to display a lack of spiritual object Permanance say about the level of spiritual maturity? Is it enough to trust God when He shows Himself large and powerful in demonstration and miraculous intervention? Or is it instead a sign of spiritual immaturity that needs signs and wonders to believe? I used to think Gideon a great story because God made his will clear. And it is. But it is also a story of how God stoops low to meet His children where they are.

What is my response to God's disappearance? To His silence? To His stillness? Do I look expectantly for where I expect Him to manifest Himself next because I know He is there even if I can't see Him? Or do I act like Israel and plot my way back to Egypt along the nearest highway?

I sit here nursing Enoch and wondering how the time got away from me. Somehow I went from expecting to a mother of an eight week old baby. I had every intention of writing more. Every intention of having a written account of the whole experience. Instead there are these empty spaces. The unwritten account. The treasured memory. The thoughts and feelings refuse to be nailed down. They defy the pen or the attempted typed page. The memory is haunting, but memory is such a fluid beast that it is hard to confine it to a specific shape. The birth story needs told. There are other details that also need to be given account of. Perhaps one day soon. For now there are the memories.

Silence

A lot has happened since I blogged here last.

Change happens often among the silent moments.  Morning sickness left with first trimester.  Praise the Lord!

I settled further into work at Meredith Manor and the joys and challenges that it brought.  I love helping people learn to work with their horses and learn to identify what makes their horses tick.

Yet, it was in the silent moments where I was disquieted in my spirit.  I was surrounded by inspirational, strong women who were pursuing their passion and talent.  Yet there is and was a gap between the reality and my dream of working side by side these inspirational women.

The gap grew larger in time with the little love growing in my womb.  His movements and kicks brought to a deeper authenticity the space between who I was and who I was becoming.  The questions begging for entrance in the quiet moments.  "What would be my legacy?  What is my passion, my mission, my purpose?  Which life is mine?"

These strong, passionate and talented women were living their lives.  Would I have the daring, the strength to live mine and not a poor substitute, by pursuing less than my passion and mission?  Would I be willing to stand quietly apart, in an age of liberated women, and choose to go back, to "choose" what so many had fought to leave behind.

In this choice there is a death of sorts.  It is not a death to my dreams, hopes and longings(to these, this choice gives birth to life), rather it is a death to needing to be understood.  How long and how often I have placated and vacillated between standing apart and fitting in.  Yet, one cannot have it both ways.  Standing apart and choosing to do differently means not fitting in.

Authenticity.

To be real, genuine.

I am on maternity leave.  I am not going back to work after.  I am going to stay home with my little love.  It is not an end to work outside the home, but it is an end of sorts.

There are plenty of avenues to living out my passion and talents and creativity.  By God's grace I will find the ones He has made me to fill, while at the same time fulfilling the mission and passions He has placed in my heart to be first and foremost a wife and a mother.

Of Water

 "Don't push the river, it flows by itself" ~Book title by Barry Stevens
I have not read the book. But I love the image that this idea creates.


How often do we expend useless copious amounts of energy working to move things that will move themselves if given the proper amount of time?  


This is one of the things I love about water.  It flows and fits among the crevices.  It fits into the confines of space.  


The large items in our life must be placed carefully because if they are not they get crowded out.  Not so for the water.  The water has the uncanny way of finding its way into the open spots.  Yet, the water will reshape and reform everything else.


The large boulder sends the water moving around, over and under.  It redirects the water, yet overtime the boulder is the one changed.  The water leaves the boulder's presence no different.  The boulder, finds itself altered.


The river flows by itself.  It needs no further incentive then the casual interplay of gravity upon its existence.


Pregnancy and labor are forces that are in many ways like water.  


For more reading on the topic read the article that started this connection tumbling around in my mind. Giving birth is a creative act, and like all creative acts it cannot be forced to conform to society's unnatural time constraints. ~Laura Shanley

Bumps and Kicks

Little love, my bouncing baby boy is now my active little joy.

This afternoon as I was doing a bit of Bible study he kept doing flutter kicks against my tummy.  It is amazing to tell him to kick again and then to actually see and feel him move.  My bouncing baby likes to bounce and move and doesn't like to stay still.

I have been contemplating many of the stories we are so used to reading from the Bible.  Mary telling the angel, that she was willing to be the mother of Jesus has such new depth.  Can you imagine?

I mean first of all she was willing to be seen as an unwed mother at least by her fiance Joseph.  When Joseph finds out he doesn't believe her and almost puts her away.  What would that have meant?

She could have been stoned according to the law.

The angel corrects Joseph's misunderstanding, so she doesn't actually deal with this possibility.

What must have the neighbors believed?

Joseph and Mary get married, but no honeymoon until after the baby.  No sex until after the baby.  Was that hard on Joseph?

How does one do a honeymoon with a baby?  So maybe it means no honeymoon at all.  What is it like to go from engaged to mother without the usual trappings?

Then come the other questions.  Joseph and Mary travel 60 miles or so from Nazareth to Bethlehem with Mary far enough along to give birth.  Did they walk?  Did she have a donkey?  Was it the trip that induced her labor?  Was she in labor before she got to the inn? How long did she labor?  Then there is the trip with the young baby or child as they escape to Egypt.  I am sure that was not the easiest of trips.  Yet how comforting to know that the angels were protecting them.

I am 24 weeks tomorrow.  When I walk my pelvis sometimes hurts.  I cannot imagine walking 60 miles, or riding.  Sometimes it hurts to stand on one foot or walk up the stairs.

This makes Mary and Joseph's trip thoroughly amazing.

Then there is Sarah who was 90.  I cannot imagine giving birth at 90.  It is difficult enough in your 30's.

Ultimately the contemplation just brings to light the amazing-ness of the character of the people revealed within the Bible's pages.

I am just an ordinary girl who is in love with the idea of this little bubbly boy that refuses to stay still within me.  He loves music, and sermons so far, and likes to be active if I kneel or sit in funny positions.  He has been redecorating my body, reorganizing my tastes, my clothing sizes, my priorities and my heart.  Once he arrives I am sure the over haul will continue.  In the meantime the contemplations will go on.