Judah Tries Cereal

Things are quiet around the blog, and there's a reason for it! Isaac's had a summer class, Judah got a cold, I was flattened by a sinus infection, we're packing and moving this weekend and it has been ka-razy.

But. I'll be back.

And I'll leave you with Judah trying cereal for the second time. His reaction was the same the first three times... hilarious. You'd think he was being burned or poisoned or something.

Why Did Jesus Come to Earth and What Is the Purpose of the Church? (When Helping Hurts Part II)

*** Once again I'm joining Shanda and a group of others at This Grace In Which I Stand in blogging through the book When Helping Hurts. 

Well, I am starting this about two minutes before midnight on Sunday, so I'm on time, right? And I write with my bedside table covered in crumpled Kleenexes, the result of a Sunday spent battling a cold. Soooo... we'll see how functional my brain actually is.

So - Corbett and Fikkert took the first chapter to get all theological. To be honest, , it's hard to be

........

That's as far as I got before I decided I was exhausted and needed sleep. So... trying again. Must warn you that I am sick as a dog and not going to read over this before posting. :)

Like I said, Corbett and Fikkert used this chapter to set a theological basis for the centrality of caring the poor. I disagreed with them at several points. That's mostly because they centered it all around two questions - why Jesus came to earth and what the mission of the church is in light of why Jesus came. And see... I read this massive book by Christopher Wright called The Mission of God, and it asks and seems through scripture for the answer to those exact questions. You can read my review of that book here, but in any case, it's sort of reoriented the way I think about those questions. So, I was sort of unsatisfied that they used Jesus' response to John the Baptist in which he in a round-about way reaffirms that he is the Messiah. This passage is great, because Jesus is reflecting back on Messianic passages in the OT, as well as pointing out to John that what he is doing is not political. However, I think the passage shows more of what Jesus is doing and why it points to His identity as messiah rather than really identifying why Jesus came to earth.

Why did Jesus come to earth?
I'd say... Matt. 18: 11
"The Son of Man has come to seek and save that which was lost."
Matt 20: 28
"The Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many."
John 12:46
"I have come as light into the world, so that everyone who believes in me will not remain in darkness."

It seems like Fikkert and Corbett are trying to drive home that Jesus was not just about souls to the exclusion of the body. They're identifying the traditional tension between evangelism and social ministries and trying to say that social ministries matter.

And... they do! But the thing is, I think Jesus came to save sinners and reconcile the world to Himself. That was His purpose, and thus it is the purpose of the Church and the purpose of every believer in the Church - to call all men to Christ.

That is NOT to the exclusion of taking care of the body, caring the the poor, taking on injustice. Those things are a natural outflowing of loving people like Jesus does. That's the crux of it, I think. When we act as though injustice and poverty doesn't matter, something is wrong with our hearts, because a true love of God will transform our lives and our churches enough that we will be transformed and will be transforming our communities and the world.Justice and helping the poor are a natural outflowing of the gospel and Jesus in us. However, it is the outflowing... not the gospel itself.

Someone I know that went to the Lausanne Conference told me that one of the highlights for him was hearing John Piper talk about how God cares about the suffering of man, and that includes the eternal suffering of his soul, for which the gospel of Christ is the solution, and the temporal suffering of poverty, sickness, and injustice, which the church is the solution for. For us believers that take on the love of Christ, we are to care about the suffering of those around us.... both kinds of suffering. Not caring about either kind of suffering is a heart problem on our part. See John Piper here:




I just think it's really important that we don't play down the importance of Christ's central purpose for coming to earth, and our purpose because of it.... Honestly, I think caring for the poor is a much easier thing for our generation to do than sharing our faith. We see issues of justice as our responsibility, but sharing our faith makes us feel guilty, like we're infringing on others. For me, it is a much harder thing to keep central.

Like I said above, I think the purpose of the church is to participate with Christ in drawing all men back into relationship with God. Our love for those around us drives us to care for suffering as we live out this mission. That's why, throughout history, true believers have often been those in society that are caring for the "least of these", just as Christ commanded. That's why the "Christian" Ku Klux Klan and Rwandan believers were clearly missing some part of a full-orbed faith, and man, how sobering is the depth of our depravity? My pastor said the same thing to Kenyan pastors the year after the ethnic riots there.

Did I know before reading that one of the reasons Israel was sent into captivity was her failure to care for the poor? Again, I'd say this is missing the point. Israel's neglect for the poor was a symptom of their greater problem - they'd fallen away from their God. Their rituals were empty rituals instead of worship from the heart. The central brokenness was their missing relationship with God. With that restored, care for the poor would flow forth naturally.

To defend their point that Israel's sin was neglect for the poor, that authors quote Isaiah 1 and 58, but Isaiah 1 opens up with the central problem:
 "I reared children and brought them up, but they have rebelled against me.... they have forsaken the Lord, they have spurned the Holy One of Israel, and turned their back on him."

What about my church? Do they display the mission of God's people explicitly and implicitly? When the poor look at my church, do they see the embodiment of Jesus and His comprehensive healing? 
Ahh.. great question.

I have been so so challenged by the heart of the leadership at my church, and how they openly share their faith. I find that I have been ashamed and listened to the excuse that surely everyone around me has already heard the gospel and doesn't want to talk to another crazy Christian. The amount of people that I've met who decided to follow Christ in the last few years after being befriended by someone in our church really humbles me. It's explicit and implicit, really. The question about how the poor see my church is interesting, because when I first stepping into the church I was so intimidated. Beautiful, made-up people, nice clothes, mostly white. Is that attractive to the poor? But you know, I see increasing diversity in our congregation as people come to faith over the years, and often they come because of the "comprehensive" nature of healing offered. There's divorce care, a marriage ministry, a recovery ministry (for any type of addiction)... and so many people start at these ministries because they are broken, and end up at our church. The church actually requires people to be in some form of service in order to be a member. Of course, people are to greater and lesser extents actually plugged into service appropriate to their gifting, but there is great passion and ministries formed for the homeless, poor, those in prison, for orphans, for poverty in Africa.... just take your pick about what you want to actually get involved in.

Some of those things are currently hip to be into, but I also see the attempt to address comprehensive suffering in the small groups of the church. In small groups we've found the brokenness in each other in pain and sin, and we walk together towards healing. Turns out it's hard. I think it's unusual to even get that far together! 

**** Final note. I'm sort of critical here. Thing is, I am absolutely for helping the poor and broken. I believe it is central to the Christian life. However, I think if we make it our purpose, we may lose all motivation in the end because we've lost sight of the centrality of the gospel of Christ, out of which flows the love for all men and passion for healing the suffering.

Judah encounters the terror that is "older children"

I kid, I kid. Judah's second cousins are adorable. However, this was the first time he'd been around kids that are bigger than him, and this is what resulted.

Little cousin Everley is fascinated by Judah and his stuff, so she hangs out by him while Judah kicks around and smiles happily

Judah's wiggling attracts Everley's attention, and she reaches for him....


Judah stops wiggling and is all like, "what do I feel on my head?"


I was looking at the camera screen and didn't see the fine detail happening here until Judah burst into a blood curdling scream of protest as Everley stuck her finger pretty well into his eye!
Hah! Funny to know that when we have another kid, he'll be the terror they'll have to look out for. :)

In any case, on the same trip Judah got all James Dean in his cousin's car:


He cracks me up.

angsty thoughts on not having a default home

"Default home". That's a weird phrase. I'm trying to capture that sense of the place you go to unless you're called somewhere else.

You know. You'll stay where you are, or wherever "home" is, unless you have a very clear sense of purpose or calling (or a really good job offer) that pushes you to go somewhere else, somewhere new.

Thanks to growing up around the world, Isaac and I don't have that.

I was talking to my mom this week about our future plans and it related back to this. Typically for people our age, they move overseas for a few reasons. If you're career minded, you might go for a really good job. If you're evangelical, you might go if you feel God "call" you (typically the reason people went into missions), or if you're just tempted by the super-spiritual reputation that overseas missionaries have. If you're just young, you might go for the adventure and to escape the rat-race (but you'll come back to it later)....

But all of those things are good or bad reasons to leave your default home.

What do you do when you don't have a default home? Do Isaac and I need to feel called to go somewhere? But then again, since nowhere is home, wouldn't we sort of need to be called to go ... anywhere.... since there is no starting point?

I mean... I suppose the most automatic move would be Chicago. It's the longest I've lived anywhere in the US, and it was where Isaac and I met and married. Still, although it is familiar (which is SO valuable in my life), the connections we have there are a smattering of leftover college friends and two sisters, and people continue to move away because that's the way things go in the big city post-college. Kansas is my grandparent's home, Colorado is my parent's home, Ohio is Isaac's family's home. Texas is where we live. There isn't.... a home.

So, for us to move overseas, our motivations are different. It makes sense in terms of service and need. Isaac can provide education in a field where training is desperately needed overseas, and there's an abundance of teachers in his field here. So... we go where the need is. Why not go? What is the reason to stay? And when I say stay... stay where? Where is the default?

If you just think of America as a whole as the default, I get irrationally resistant. No. America is not my home, I say. I didn't grow up here. I don't understand this place, it doesn't understand me. There's practically an uprising when a President like me gets elected because he just can't  possibly be a real American, right? Yeah. I STILL feel like I don't belong here. I don't want to live here, in a place I'm supposed to know and love but don't. I feel like this is my anti-default. I will stay here.... if God calls me (and what does that even look like?). I don't want to.

Since we have no home, why not go where the need is? Why not make a new home in a new place, together?

And in the end, I recognize that I really am a bit irrational and emotional on the issue.

I remember - The Odd Childhood of a TCK

I remember...
When I thought that my grandma's sandwich lunches for us, made with wheat bread, lunch meat, lettuce, and french's mustard, were the most amazing thing. They came with applesauce and cottage cheese, soooo good. So unlike anything we could make in Indonesia.

I remember on flights back to the US my brother and I would excitedly wait for the layover in Hawaii, where we would go to the nearest vending machine and buy Nacho Cheese Doritos. They were THE best thing ever.
When we got back on the next flight, officially the first in the US, we waited for the drink cart to wheel around and always ordered milk. I remember just how smooth and clean that milk out of the little box was. SO much better than powdered milk.

And this... this is my brother with a WWII hand grenade that he found in a friend's garden. It still had the pin in it. The photo was taken before we found out that grenades that old are extremely volatile and can spontaneously explode. It was a little family fiasco trying to figure out what to do with it after that... you know, how to get it out of the house... and away from the general area....


I remember that cheddar cheese was brought to our city by boat, was only carried by one store, and often ran out. We bought it in huge blocks and kept it for recipes and never had just cheese slices. I swore that when I was an adult and back in America I would buy cheese... and eat it. Plain. All by myself. Yum.

I remember arriving in LA and staying in a guest house there after years in Indonesia. The shared kitchen had a bowl of fruit. Apples, oranges, and bananas. I'd never seen such huge versions of the fruit. The oranges were orange instead of green, and SO sweet and juicy. I was amazed.

Fruit overseas... well... check this out

This photo is amazing on many levels. It's in our back yard. Those are papayas that up at the tree. That's my brother climbing. My hubby can never believe that my mom was okay with all the crazy climbing feats. I was much less daring. This is me, climbing to our tree house, which was pretty awesome.


Note. I am wearing leggings. Too bad it wasn't cool at the time.

And this... this is us going to church. Umbrellas can be used for rain, but their primary purpose is to keep off the sun.


PS... I like how Caleb's socks are halfway up his calves. Very nice.

and... this is where Judah gets his blue eyes.


That's my sister. She's graduating high school in a few weeks. WEIRD. I think the occasion calls for a much more embarrassing (and still adorable) photo.

When Helping Hurts... Introduction

I'm joining a group of people over at This Grace In Which I Stand and blogging our way through the book  When Helping Hurts: How to Alleviate Poverty Without Hurting the Poor and Yourself by Brian Fikkert and Steve Corbett.

Given that I was gone all weekend and only just got back to blog, this will be unpolished and rather stream-of-consciousness. I did read it earlier and think on it, but I'm only just now writing.

So, apparently each chapter will begin with an exercise to get you thinking and making it personal. I was super intrigued by it.

The tsunami that hit Indonesia in December 2004 wiped out many of the small businesses. These small businesses are owned by poor people and serve as their primary source of income. Most of the shops, equipment, materials, and inventory were destroyed. four months after the tsunami, your church has decided to send a team to assist with the restarting of these small businesses. 

Ahh... this was good. Make it personal and practical. It also makes ME look better than I actually am at this sort of thing, because it just so happens that the example here is where I grew up. So... I have a leg up. Isaac and I actually almost quit school that semester and went to help with the relief work after the tsunami, but ended up not being needed. My brother and my parents went, though.

So, lets say this is the situation I'm in, and my church is going. What would I do to plan and prepare for the trip? Well, again, I've got a bit of an advantage here. I would immediately connect with anyone I knew who might know people working in the relief work, and see if they were working on rebuilding and small businesses. Partnering and seeing what's already being done is super important. I'd be immediately in contact with the Indonesian embassy to work on visas and passports and tickets, all of which have to come through before you know if you can even go. I'd be gathering the group or potential group going and holding planning and strategy meetings.

What resources will you bring with you? 
Nothing other than what we all need for ourselves. If we have to bring materials from out of the country, the businesses will not be sustainable. Everything has to be available locally for it to be practical. If we were business experts and could start an ongoing business idea, that'd be different. As it is, though, we're restarting businesses that were decimated, so clearly the materials are available. Plus, the area that was decimated in the tsunami was on the coast. If you go back into cities in the center of the island, everything is the same and you'll be helping their businesses by buying materials from them to take to the devastated coast.


Whom will you choose from your church to go on this trip? 
Hmm, this was an interesting question. I think the initial response is generally... experts. Business experts, highly educated folks, right? I'd say... no. In actuality, American business is nothing like the small businesses in Indonesia, and forgive me for saying that often the experts are the most spoiled. The people I want to come to a devastated area are the people that are most flexible, patient, and passionate about people. Those are the ones who will do the most good when they end up in sweltering heat, dealing with the Indonesian "rubber time" and discovering  that nothing ever happens as you want it to.  I'd look for people with international experience, people that have traveled (outside of snazzy hotels) and know what to expect in the developing world. Of course anyone with experience in Indonesia is helpful. In this situation I think people with carpentry and design ingenuity could be very helpful.

What will your team do once it gets there? 
This is where I get stuck. In my head as I thought about this, I pictured the small businesses I saw in Indonesia. Small kiosks selling chips and soda and water and candy. Motorcycle taxis. Little carts that are wheeled around town selling snacks, or that will be set up at night and make fresh hot food. How do you restart these businesses? Thing is, we could build the carts and stands and bring in new motorcycles, but what then? How do we know who had these things beforehand? Or... are we intending to simply find those that are deserving and able to run these businesses and thus we'd have to have a filtration process to find the right people? Or are we planning on doing a sort of small loan to those who want to buy these "small businesses"? It's at this point that I start to feel muddled and confused and I'm just not sure what's best.

Story Time.... One Of My Heroes

Isn't that such a classic sort of photo? Looks like it's from a magazine in the '40s or something?

Actually, that man is a bit of a hero of mind. I'm not sure how old he is in this photo, but that's Cloyce and his wife Cleora. Great names too, right?

Here they are as a young couple. Must be... just after the turn of the century? Cloyce was the son of a farmer in rural Ohio.
I think Cloyce proposed to Cleora when she was 16 or something ridiculously young.

Here they are years down the line, with their family.
My eye is drawn to the beautiful daughter in the back, and her handsome brother. More on them later. As you can see, military service runs in their family. Cloyce actually was in WWI and then was a chaplain in WWII. Looks like his son, Hal, was in the Navy. Can you imagine seeing BOTH WWI and WWII?

Cloyce was a pastor, a Methodist pastor, back in the days before they were known for being liberal. He pastored in the rural Midwest. The website of one of his churches describes the cabin church of under 40 people. As you can see in the first photo, he was a man who loved the Word of God.

There they are again, maybe in the 80's? Cloyce and Cleora were married over 50 years. Actually, I think they were married somewhere around 70 years. Talk about spending your life together...

Then there's this photo, from the 90's.


And that's me, the little middle-school dork on the right. Cloyce was my Great-Grandfather. In that photo he is 100 years old. Incredible, right? He was living in a nursing home by that time, but I have vivid memories of him at this age. When he turned 100 he was on some talk show. There's a photo of him meeting George Bush Sr. at some city event, and Great Grampa started kidding around and gave GW Sr. a hard time for forgetting Great-Grampa's birthday. So.... a personal birthday card was sent. Hah! In fact, a quick google search pops up the George Bush Presidential Library and a quote from his speech that day:

May I salute a man I just threw a horseshoe with, Cloyce ..., 97 years old. Boy, I hope I'm like that when I'm 97, and I bet the rest of you do, too.

What is most amazing to me is just how alive Great Grampa was at 100 years of age. He wasn't just waiting for time to pass, he was still living well. He was a story teller, a sweet man with such a legacy in his own past and among his own kids and grandkids. At 100 years of age he still got up every morning and an exercize bike while praying... for everything.

In fact, when the family gathered for Great Grandpa's 100th birthday party, he pulled aside my grandmother (that beautiful lady in that early photo) and her brother (the handsome young navy guy who also became a pastor and who I fondly remember as my Great Uncle Hal), and asked them for permission to remarry. REMARRY! At 100 years of age!

So, the lady in the above photo is my Great Grandfather's second wife, who was nearly 20 years his junior (which still makes her in her 80's!). I remember her telling the story of him coming around to hang out with her at their nursing home and eventually asking if she would, "be his beau." Isn't that adorable?

It blows my mind to think what my Grandpa lived through. Two World Wars, the Great Depression, cars, TV, and then the Internet taking over America, the invention of jazz and rock. When he was born the US wasn't 50 states and airplanes didn't exist..

I wish I knew more about my grandfather, but what I know and remember about him blows me away. 

They say that my my Great Grampa's last words were, "Cover me with dirt."
I love that. He seemed to go to death unafraid, unintimidated, and living right on....

Four interesting Posts...

Emerging Mummy wrote a post about self-image... and kids. The story is beautiful, go read it. This struck me, especially as a new mom.: 

I battled for years with evil songs set on repeat that sang into my ears "You're fat and ugly...if only you were skinnier....if only you were prettier....if only you weren't so fat...you're disgusting...."

When I gave birth to our daughter, my husband kindly asked me to not say those things in front of her. He didn't want her to grow up hearing her mother say these things about herself, teaching her to be so critical of her own self. He didn't want her hearing words like "I need to go on a diet" and "I'd be pretty if only I'd lose the weight" or "My breasts are just too big" or "I'm so ugly." Which meant that even if I thought it, even if I needed to articulate it later to him or to a friend, could I please just not say it in front of her?

For three years now, I have watched my tongue. I have - even at the heights of pregnancy and high blood pressure induced swelling - managed to keep my songs on a low level of volume. When I sing along, it's quietly and out of earshot.

I do not want her to ever feel that her body, her self, is anything less than just as God intended. She'll have her own battles to wage. And I don't want to send her into battle, already distracted by her mother's songs in her own ears.

Rachel Held Evans wrote a post about submission, and to be honest it was the best post I've read on the issue. I stay away from talk of women's roles and submission, because I do not understand it, it makes me emotional, and it's so... directly related to my identity. This post, though, describes exactly how Isaac and I have worked it, and what I thought as I studied the "submission" passages last year. Read it here, but below are a few thoughts

Didn’t Paul instruct Christians to submit to one another?

I don’t submit to Dan because he is a man and I am a woman. I submit to him because I love him, because I deeply respect him, and because I made a promise to put his needs before my own.  I would hope that he would find that more meaningful than if I submitted to him simply because it was my “place.”

...I suspect that both egalitarians and complementarians would agree that an attitude of humility is necessary for true, heartfelt submission.  We are to imitate Christ, who “although he existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant…” (Philippians 2). 

The essence of submission, then, is not the absence of power but the voluntary relinquishing of it. 
It’s not about sticking to a prescribed hierarchy; it’s about walking in humility. 

Dan and I are equals. But for our marriage to thrive, we both have to relinquish our power now and then.  Sometimes I submit to Dan, sometimes he submits to me.   Sometimes submission is easy, sometimes it’s hard. 

But I can only be responsible for my actions.  It’s not my job to try and force “mutual submission;” it’s my job to humbly submit.…which may mean watching “Mad Max” instead of “Persepolis” on Netflix Instant Play (not that I’m holding any grudges about that one).


I wish I could send out mass email to college girls everywhere reminding them that if Christ is our example of leadership, then what they should be looking for are men who are servants. It matters not whether a guy likes to take charge or work behind the scenes or whether his prayer time lasts longer than yours. What matters is that he is willing to put other people’s needs before his own.

Kristie wrote a post about working in Student Ministries... and man... I echo it (except that I am married, have a baby, and am not a stay-at-home mom)! 

I'm 28. I want to meet the boy, fall in love, get engaged, plan a wedding, and get married. I want to have babies, be a stay-at-home mom, and have my days dictated by play dates, feeding schedules, and naptimes.

I don't, however, want those babies to grow up to be teenagers.

That's what serving in student ministries has taught me.

 Mason wrote a Confession of a Former Homophobe.  I echo a lot of his words too.

Do I think I have all the answers to these tough questions of sexuality? No, not anymore. That’s not the point of this post, I have no interest in playing that game on my blog or in my day-to-day life. Easy answers and quick condemnations haven’t gotten us anywhere.

Yes the Bible has things to say about our sexuality, yes we need to take what it says seriously, and yes those things might require a more thoughtful interpretation than we’ve often assumed.

But amid all the questions of hermeneutics and exegesis, one thing I’m sure of is this; we as followers of Jesus are called to love and the way I acted towards the GLBT community was anything but loving.

For that I’m sorry.

 And... the Pew Research Center put together a Political Typeology quiz. It's just a few questions, you can be done with it in 5-10 minutes. Take it. I was grouped as Post-Modern, however I'd say changing just an answer or two would have put me in the New Coalition Democrat bucket. This is what they had to say about Post-Moderns. 

Post-Moderns

13% of the public

What They Believe

• Generally supportive of government, though more conservative on race policies and the safety net
• Strongly supportive of regulation and environmental protection
• Most (56%) say Wall Street helps the economy more than it hurts
• Very liberal on social issues, including same-sex marriage
• One of the least religious groups: nearly a third are unaffiliated with any religious tradition
• Favor the use of diplomacy rather than force

Who They Are

• The youngest of the typology groups: 32% under age 30
• A majority are non-Hispanic white and have at least some college experience
• Half live in either the Northeast or the West
• A majority (58%) live in the suburbs
• 63% use social networking
• One-in-five regularly listen to NPR; 14% regularly watch The Daily Show

Interesting that I am a very "religious" person in the most nonreligious group. I am living in the South but my group is mostly in the Northeast or West.  I live in the city instead of the burbs. However, I definitely do use social networking, listen to NPR, and watch the Daily Show.

No, I am not a stay-at-home mother

Isaac and I have been married for six years. For about, oh.... ALL six of those years, I've been the main breadwinner in our family. Isaac is currently a stay-at-home daddy. That puts us in the minority in America and especially for the evangelical community.

Last week I received four emails via a group of women I'm connected to. The emails all slammed working mothers. Things were said like... the employment rate would go up if women stayed at home. Kids would be off the streets and out of gangs. Women can't really take care of their household and also work. If we weren't so greedy and extravagant women would be able to stay home instead of providing the family with extra money for extra stuff. Women are meant to be caretakers, men are meant to work. We women can't be in submission to our husbands if we are working. Men should be the providers. How can we be fruitful and multiply if we are working outside of the home? .....

I disagree with so much of what was said on so many levels. I fumed over it for days, and finally responded personally because although I don't know the woman, what she was saying was going out to a number of women. Some of them are working too, and some of them have no idea what is actually a Christian way of thinking about motherhood or marital roles and would have no way to really filter what she was saying.

It's gotten to the point where I'm so far from that mentality that it truly sounds crazy to me now. I agree with some things. I agree that children desperately need to cared for and should never just be dumped with any old caretaker and not taught or nurtured by parents. I agree that our society is filled with bad parenting. I agree that my husband and kids need to be my top priority after God. I believe that what God wants for my family needs to override career goals for EITHER a mother or father.

But. I do not believe that the Bible says that women should not work, or that men are meant to work and women to stay at home.

It's simply not in the Bible. Even the quintessential Proverbs 31 woman appears to be a businesswoman.

Actually, it's kind of ironic. The ability for one parent to stay at home while the other supports the family is something the Christian community in America talks about all the time, and yet it's virtually impossible for most of the world. In Indonesia, China... most of the places I've been, many of the women work because they have to. They tend the fields or gardens, they work as maids or factory workers.... because there isn't any other way around it. Our paradigm and what we are saying women need to do is not even on their radar.

Gah. It all annoys me. Balancing work and home IS hard, and our situation right now is not ideal. I am tired... but I'll do it for a while because this arrangement helps Isaac meet his goals, it takes care of Judah, and it keeps the bills paid. I also really like I've spent the first part of our marriage as the provider, and I like that Isaac has experienced and now appreciates the stay-at-home parent thing far more than most dads. Thing is, I'll probably be a stay at home mom one day, and that is totally great. I respect stay-at-home moms. It's a HUGE job. I just hate it that judgement is cast on all working moms as if we are unsubmissive or neglectful.

Thoughts on Motherhood on Judah's Fifth Month and My First Mother's Day

Motherhood has been a strange thing. I was all prepared to find it really hard and resent the incredible neediness of our baby boy, since I know that's something a lot of women wrestle with despite loving their babies.

Really, though, while I am tired after the full days I take care of Judah, and although he still isn't sleeping through the night... I find him absolutely delightful.

It's the rest of life that has increased in weariness because I'm so tired from taking care of Judah and work, and because a baby's schedule limits everything. I am overwhelmed more easily. I can't find margin to do anything extra between going to work and coming straight home to take care of the kiddo and make dinner. The hardest thing is reworking how Isaac and I connect, since we have to be really intentional about quality time now and we used to just take it for granted.

So... life is a strange dichotomy. It's tough, hard to keep all the balls in the air. I've been pretty tired and discouraged many times this month. And then it's also characterized by some of the most beautiful, overwhelmingly tender moments that I think will be some of the most special of my life. That contrast is a strange thing, such high highs and low lows!

Judah is amazing. I'm overwhelmed by my love for him. As a kid I always thought of children being lucky to have good parents. I guess I never realized that as a mom I'd feel so overwhelmingly lucky that he, specifically that beautiful blue eyed baby, is MINE. It's such a privilege to be Judah's mama, and I tell him that when I'm putting him to bed.

When he's fallen asleep while I'm holding him and he snuggles into a little package and purses his lips together like he does when he's falling asleep, I could burst with all the wonderfulness.When we're on a walk and he's wide-eyed with wonder at the light and breeze and cars and leaves.... I can't believe how adorable he is. When he's in a playful mood and trying desperately to get my attention with giggles... wow.


(Below... this is what Judah thinks of Daddy's TV shows...)


Judah is almost through several milestones. He's almost sitting up, which leads to some great moments like this one:



He's got a lot more hand control, which leads to those fingers scratching any material within reach. This video was a few weeks ago when Joy had worked all week on helping him learn to put his paci in his mouth. He's almost got it down now...



He's figured out rolling over, which has officially made falling asleep a lot harder since now the play potential of the pack-n-play has totally expanded.

And... he loves being scared, watching cars, and peek-a-boo.I wasn't watching the camera below so I cut off Judah's face until halfway through the video - skip to there...

The Papua Family

It's been a rough few weeks. Too much work on Isaac's plate as he finishes up the semester of grad school. Too little time for us together. Lack of sleep. It was wonderful to have family here for the week, but now then they left. I felt drained... tired. As Bilbo says - "like butter, spread over too much bread." Felt like I was barely holding it together. BUT... it's over now. Isaac is done with the semester and we've had some good time together. I got two nights of enough sleep. I feel peace rising.

In the midst of the emotion, though, there were photos online of a Papua wedding. Every few years there's a wedding of two people who grew up in Papua. Half the time they weren't even dating when we were all there and have been long distance since, but somehow they find each other. This time a few classmates gathered for the wedding and afterward stopped in Chicago. Note the combination. My childhood home, my American home, and a few pieces of my precious Papua family... all in one place. Makes me feel weepy.

And then.... Alysa blogged. Alysa was, once upon a time, my English teacher. And a high school Bible study leader. And when I moved to Chicago, she and Jack were there and became like family. And now... now she's a friend. And all those crazy friends of mine crashed at her house in Chicago, and she wrote about it. Read it here. She talks about moving over there as a young single woman, committed to spend three years there. I was in high school for two of those years, so my most poignant time in Papua was part of her time in Papua. Her words made me all teary, because sometimes I wonder if I'm crazy because I love it so much. I love the place, I love the people, and I loved that particular time. The people that were there feel like my family. Am I crazy? It's beautiful to hear someone else say the same things.

Alysa wrote:

There's a definite connection I feel with these particular families because they actually did take me in. I spent holidays with them. They fed me more meals that I'd care to admit. They took care of me when I had malaria. They followed me up the hill at night to make sure I got home safely. They remembered my birthday and made it special. They let me sleep in their guest room when riots and tensions broke out and it just wasn't safe for me to be alone. Or simply when I was feeling lonely. They gave, and gave, and gave.

And then there's this indirect connection that runs super deep, too. And it's with ANYBODY that has lived in Irian, especially those that lived there during the time I was there. I might not have known them well when we lived in the same community, but BECAUSE we have that common bond of Irian, and we know the same people, and we understand the culture and we did life there, then there's this deep connection. (FYI, Irian is the old name for Papua)

It's a strange thing, and a beautiful thing. A little hard to explain too. When we're trying to get together with some guy I went to high school with it just seems weird, because that was 10 years ago and who keeps in touch with high school friends, especially of the opposite gender? Well, when they're family you do! And I just love that when I got married so many of my friends went to Isaac and welcomed him to "the family" So now, even though he wasn't there and he isn't a very sentimental person, he gets it. And he loves those people too.

I'm thankful for that love, even though love is a little painful too. Oh, and being family does mean some hurt feelings, fights, and dysfunction. :)

Growing up in Indonesia - and how I relate to President Obama

Last week there was an  article on Obama's mother in the New York Times. It was fantastic.  She fascinates me, and every time I read about Obama's childhood I find myself rather emotionally relating him and his transient childhood.

Read this:

To describe Dunham as a white woman from Kansas turns out to be about as illuminating as describing her son as a politician who likes golf. Intentionally or not, the label obscures an extraordinary story — of a girl with a boy’s name who grew up in the years before the women’s movement, the pill and the antiwar movement; who married an African at a time when nearly two dozen states still had laws against interracial marriage; who, at 24, moved to Jakarta with her son in the waning days of an anticommunist bloodbath in which hundreds of thousands of Indonesians were slaughtered; who lived more than half her adult life in a place barely known to most Americans, in the country with the largest Muslim population in the world; who spent years working in villages where a lone Western woman was a rarity...

A timeline of her life is here, complete with photos. The article told a number of stories and relayed a number of interviews from Obama's time in Indonesia, which of course is most interesting to me.  I spent time in Jakarta, but the Jakarta of Obama's time is so much like the three years I spent in Ujung Pandang. This... is exactly what I remember:

The Jakarta that greeted Ann Soetoro and her son was a tapestry of villages — low-rise and sprawling — interwoven with wooded areas, paddy fields and marshland. Narrow alleys disappeared into warrens of tile-roofed houses in the rambling urban hamlets called kampungs. Squatter colonies lined the canals, which served as public baths, laundry facilities and sewers, all in one. During the long rainy season from November through March, ca­nals overflowed, saturating cardboard shanties and flooding much of the city. Residents traveled mostly on foot or by bicycle or bicycle-propelled rickshaws called becaks. Power outages were common. There were so few working phones that it was said that half the cars on the streets were ferrying messages from one office to the next. “Sec­retaries would spend hours just dialing and redialing phone numbers trying to get through,” Halimah Brugger, an American who moved there in 1968, told me. Westerners were rare, black people even rarer. Western women got a lot of attention. “I remember creating quite a sensation just being pedaled down the street in a becak, wearing a short skirt,” Brugger said. Letters from the United States took weeks to reach their destination. Foreigners endured all manner of gas­trointestinal upsets. Deworming was de rigueur.

Yet the city had a magi­cal charm. People who were children in Jakarta in that period, including Barack Obama, reminisce about the sound of the Muslim call to prayer in the days before public-address systems, and the signature sounds called out by street vendors wheeling their carts through the kampungs. Tea was still served on the veranda of the old Hotel des Indes. Ceiling fans turned lan­guidly in the midafternoon heat, and kerosene lamps flickered in the houses lining the narrow alleys at night.

My parents, like Obama's mother, intentionally tried to live in the real Indonesia among Indonesians instead of being sucked into a mini-Western world. I love that about her. When I read about her life, I totally get the Ann that was in Indonesia. I knew people like her - people that had transitioned between cultures and had left their own quite intentionally, people passionate about justice and development, people who seem to effortlessly move amidst Indonesian culture and yet were unmistakably Western and outspoken. It's the young Ann that I am truly amazed by - what made this average American girl move into this cross-cultural lifestyle?



The thing is, by choosing that life, she may have been giving Obama more than she bargained for. Indonesia really has been quite racist against black people - I lived on an island populated by black people and the rest of Indonesia thinks they're practically animals and can't believe I lived there. There was a story in the article about Obama being mocked by Indonesian kids and Ann telling a friend that he was "used to it".

“We were floored that she’d bring a half-black child to Indonesia, knowing the disrespect they have for blacks,” Bryant said. At the same time, she admired Ann for teaching her boy to be fearless. A child in Indonesia needed to be raised that way — for self-preservation, Bryant decided. Ann also seemed to be teaching Barry respect. He had all the politeness that Indonesian children displayed toward their parents. He seemed to be learning Indonesian ways....“I think this is one reason he’s so halus,” Bryant said of the pres­ident, using the Indonesian adjective that means “polite, refined, or courteous,” referring to qualities some see as distinctively Javanese. “He has the manners of Asians and the ways of Americans — being halus, being patient, calm, a good listener. If you’re not a good listener in Indonesia, you’d better leave.”

There are indeed some of the characteristics of Obama that I relate to that I think both of us of us were at least partly given by the Indonesian culture we lived in. Indonesians are taught not to brag, not to react with outward anger, not to be overly emotional.

Self-control is inculcated through a culture of teasing, Kay Ikrana­gara told me. Her husband, known only as Ikrana­gara, said, “People tease about skin color all the time.” If a child allows the teasing to bother him, he is teased more. If he ignores it, it stops. “Our ambassador said this was where Barack learned to be cool,” Kay told me. “If you get mad and react, you lose. If you learn to laugh and take it without any reaction, you win.”

And then there is the fact that life as a child of a global nomad leads to much transition. I can relate so much to this part.

Ann uprooted Barry, at age 6, and transplanted him to Jakarta. Now she was up­rooting him again, at barely 10, and sending him back, alone. She would follow him to Hawaii only to leave him again, less than three years later.....When we spoke last July, Obama recalled those serial displacements. “I think that was harder on a 10-year-old boy than he’d care to admit at the time,” Obama said, sitting in a chair in the Oval Of­fice and speaking about his mother with a mix of affection and critical distance. “When we were separated again during high school, at that point I was old enough to say, ‘This is my choice, my decision.’ But being a parent now and looking back at that, I could see — you know what? — that would be hard on a kid.”