Category: musings

Posted in musings

an open letter to my  pregnant friends worried about their birth plans

Posted on by kristinabean

Dear Mamas-to-be,

You might be coming up with your birth plans now, weighing your options and wondering what’s best. You might hear that birth is dangerous and that you need to be in a hospital just in case something goes wrong (my mother told me that). You might hear that your body is wonderful and capable, designed to give birth well if you just give it space and let nature work (my pregnant friend’s  husband told me that last week).

The thing is, they’re both partly right. The human body is an incredible thing, and women of all times and places have given birth without medication or intervention, relying on the support of their fellow women to endure the pain and bring new life into the world. It is a beautiful and a glorious thing, to see the body pushed to its limits and persevere, living out the fullness of its created potential.

But the flip side is that women have been dying in childbirth throughout all times and ages as well. We seem to forget that birth resides under the curse, that the presence of sin in our world and ourselves means that a powerful force has opposed itself to the life-giving work of God, of which childbirth is a huge part. It is not a shame or a failure to rely on the support of modern medicine to endure some of the pain and avoid some of the dangers that sin has brought to childbirth.

I want you to know, mamas, that your bodies are wonderful and beautiful however your birth plays out. If you give birth without medication, with your loved ones standing by to empower and encourage you, that is good. If you give birth with an epidural because your body can’t handle the pain and needs a rest, that is good. If you have a c-section because your baby isn’t coming out any other way, that is good. What matters is that you listen to your body, your baby, and your circumstances, instead of letting an idealized or stereotyped view of childbirth push you one way or the other. Hold the tension of the wonder of your body and the brokenness of the physical world, and proceed with confidence and humility, open to what your body and your baby need.

And if all the birth preparations are leaving you anxious and overwhelmed, remember that the next eighteen years of your relationship with this baby are far more important than the labor and delivery! Leave the unknowns to God, go forward with some common sense, and put it all in perspective 🙂 You will do great, and your babies will be blessed to call you mommy.

Posted in musings

scandal – ammunition for the cynics and those who have closed their ears to truth

Posted on by kristinabean

I have a coworker whose brand of humor consists in vulgar and somewhat obscene or bigoted remarks towards various racial, sexual, or religious groups. I have no idea if this individual seriously believes these comments or if they just find these cynical stereotypes funny. Either way, it keeps reminding me of Lewis’s comment  about flippancy in The Screwtape Letters: that it is one of the best defenses against God a human can build up around themselves.

My coworker reserves the worst of their caustic humor for the Catholic Church, not because they have any personal negative experiences with it, but simply because of the stain of the sex abuse scandal (and a lack of any positive experiences with committed Catholic Christians to counteract it, I think). It makes me both sad and angry… Angry with perverted priests for letting their sinful actions give the Church a bad name, angry with the church hierarchy for tolerating sin (in the name of grace?) instead of rooting it out, angry with the media for making it seem like a Catholic problem when it’s really a human problem (the same thing happens in Evangelical churches, in public schools, in the foster care system, in other religious institutions – where there is power, there is abuse of power, and where there are fallen human beings, there is sin). And I’m sad that my coworker has chosen to let flippancy and willful ignorance blind her to the life-giving truth in the Church’s message, in the gospel itself.

But that is what scandal does. The sinful and ignorant actions of those professing the faith, from sexual abuse to superstitious practices, push others away from the faith and make it more difficult to know Christ or be part of authentic Christian community. We aren’t perfect, but it is our responsibility to follow Christ as best as we can, growing in holiness and spiritual knowledge, to show Jesus to the watching world. If we are carelessly letting our sinful passions direct our lives, or adhering to teachings and religious practices that are out of line with Scripture, we blur, stain, and distort that image. It is hard, sometimes, to stay innocent and hopeful and loving when faced with someone who derides things that are dear to your heart and seems to want to believe the worst about you or a group you belong to; you want to match their sharp and hurtful words, or you become discouraged and unsure about yourself and the things that matter to you. But that would be to sink to their level, the level of flippancy, cynicism, hatred, and ignorance. The temporary satisfaction isn’t worth the self-degradation.

Posted in musings

doctors, thyroids, depression, and pregnancy

Posted on by kristinabean

My favorite doctor ever is my endocrinologist. She’s actually a physician’s assistant, but to me it’s pretty much the same thing. I think she’s the only doctor I really enjoy talking to and trust unreservedly – and it kind of makes sense, considering I’ve been seeing her for seven years and through two pregnancies. And when you’re pregnant with a thyroid condition, you really get to see your endocrinologist a lot! I am in there every 4-6 weeks through the whole pregnancy, as changing weight and hormones affect the dosage of thyroid hormone I need, so Marie and I have developed a fairly good doctor-patient relationship 🙂 She sees my lab results come in and knows who I am without having to look up the chart to remind herself; I see her and know that I’m going to get my questions answered and my concerns addressed in a friendly, competent way. (I am hoping to eventually find an ob that I trust in the same way!)

Yesterday I went in for my first appointment of this pregnancy with a host of concerns that I thought might be related to my thyroid condition: my increased fatigue (although it’s always difficult to tell how much is first trimester tiredness and how much is thyroid fatigue), my chills, my decreased appetite, and my increased moodiness and depression. They’re all part of the vaguely non-specific cloud of thyroid symptoms that could just as easily be caused by the pregnancy itself, or life stress, or something entirely random. I was hoping they were thyroid-related because then she could just increase my dosage and they would get better! But unfortunately my lab results looked great – they were even solidly within the much tighter range Marie likes to target during pregnancy, and at a place where I knew that I wouldn’t be having thyroid-related symptoms if I were not pregnant (after seven years of monitoring your TSH levels, you start to know where your body feels best, and that’s honestly pretty much where my labs were). Because she is an awesome doctor who considers her patient’s concerns as well as just the lab numbers, however, she did increase my dosage slightly in hopes that it will help; as it will need to increase anyway when I start gaining weight, there isn’t much risk of going too far and triggering hyperthyroidism, which has it’s own issues for me and the baby.

What it means for me practically, though, is that I’m going to have to get intentional about things like exercise, sleep, and spiritual quiet time, since I can’t blame my mood issues (which have always stabilized during pregnancy in the past) on low thyroid hormones. It’s not easy to work those things in when I’m exhausted and down, but it’s going to be important for my physical stamina later in pregnancy as well as my mental well-being now, so I need to come up with a routine and make it habitual. Sigh. It’s hard to get up and do something I don’t really want to do when I don’t even have the energy and willpower to do things I enjoy and want to do, like writing here or reading a good book, both of which have fallen off since the pregnancy hormones started wreaking havoc on me.

Have any of you dealt with this general fog and malaise during pregnancy? How do you cope with it best?

 

Posted in musings

peanuts

Posted on by kristinabean

When I was in elementary school, I loved peanuts. Especially the kind roasted still in the shell, papery and crumbly at first, then rich and buttery on the inside.

My grandma used to love peanuts too, and every time she came to town we would buy a bag or two to set out on the kitchen counter. I remember what a treat it was to stand around the counter with her and whoever else was around (my mom working in the kitchen, perhaps, or my dad sharing in the snack), crushing the shells and slipping out the brown nuts, accumulating a pile of dusty debris, the slow process of unshelling the perfect companion to conversation.

She must have held those moments dear as well, because every summer when I would go away for summer camp she would send me a care package with a bag of peanuts. Every summer, every time, without fail. To get a care package to a week-long summer camp on the other side of the country reasonably early in the camp requires much forethought, but she never let me down: I could always count on her peanuts and Maria cookies.

We don’t eat peanuts much together anymore, and haven’t for years. I had forgotten all about it until Rondel discovered roasted peanuts this week, actually. Her diverticulitis makes it much less enjoyable for her! But I’m glad I thought of it again, that I have those simple rituals of our relationship to remember. Because things don’t have to be complicated or extravagant to be important, and love colors even the most mundane things with beauty and value.

Posted in musings

“closed-hand” issues and confusing terms – a quibble with my pastor

Posted on by kristinabean

In church on Sunday our pastor was distinguishing between what he called “closed-hand” issues (what C.S. Lewis might have termed Mere Christianity, the essential doctrines of the faith) and “open-hand” issues (points that aren’t clearly taught in Scripture and about which Christians are free to disagree, like the details of the end times or evolution). I was nodding along with him, as this is familiar territory for me, expecting him to take it in a truly ecumenical Lewisian fashion, when he suddenly burst out sola scriptura as a core, essential, inarguable tenet of the faith.

Excuse me?

I’d like to give him the benefit of the doubt, and suggest that he simply meant to say that Scripture is inerrant and authoritative, the primary guide for our faith, because I don’t think any Christian group through the millennia of the Church would disagree. But what he actually said was that Scripture is the sole authority for the faith and for Christian living – and that is not Biblically taught and was not held by the Church for the majority of her existence. Logically, this makes sense. The Bible can interpreted in a million ways, some of them drastically different and leading towards widely varied ends, so as a sole authority it doesn’t seem to be very well-suited for keeping either orthodoxy or orthopraxy intact. There has to be some way to determine which interpretations are valid and which are heretical, and since Jesus is no longer living on earth to deliver those kind of judgments, it would make sense for the authorities within the Church, led by the Holy Spirit, to have that kind of authority.

If the Church isn’t led by the Holy Spirit, than to trust her authority and direction on the interpretation of Scripture would obviously be a dicey matter, no different than turning to any random person on the street and following their opinion. But we do see in the Bible Jesus promising to send the Holy Spirit to remind the apostles of everything He taught; we see the Spirit coming down with power and transforming the apostles and other believers; we see the early church following the decisions of the apostles as to which laws and traditions to live by. Was that just because they didn’t have a written Bible yet? Did all those councils and traditions and oral decisions become unnecessary once the Bible was assembled? Considering the number of heresies and divisions that have arisen in the 16 centuries since then, I don’t think so. We still need a person, or people, led by God, to clear up arguments and prevent error from creeping in to our understanding of the inerrant Word.

So please be more clear, pastor, about your terms and definitions. Please try not to exclude the vast majority of Christians throughout time and space from your tight definition of the “closed-hand” issues one must believe to be truly Christian by narrowing down the broad historically-accepted truth into your Protestant doctrine, which may or may not be true (I’d love to hear your arguments for it!) but which is most definitely not universally believed by even the great Christians of the past.

Posted in musings

Pentecost thoughts (a day late)

Posted on by kristinabean

I learned this year (from Wikipedia, of all places) that the Jewish holiday corresponding to Pentecost commemorates the giving of the law on Mt. Sinai. (See Acts 2 for the Christian Pentecost story if you’re unfamiliar with it – it is when the Spirit first comes down upon the new church.) This makes sense, of course, since Easter corresponds to Passover and the deliverance of Israel from Egypt!

But it struck me as very fitting that the Holy Spirit should come down to indwell the church on the same day that God had given His law to His people, in light of the prophet Jeremiah:

 “Behold, the days are coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant which I made with their fathers when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant which they broke, though I was their husband,” says the LORD. “But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” says the LORD: “I will put my law within them, and I will write it upon their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.”

– Jeremiah 31:31-33

The external law, which was the binding condition of the old covenant, has been replaced in the new covenant by an internal law: by the direction and transforming power of the Holy Spirit living within God’s people – and so while the old covenant was broken by Israel’s disobedience, the new covenant can be fulfilled through the grace and power of God Himself, since He is now on both sides of the relationship. We no longer need to follow a list of rules, but rather to abide in Christ (which is not less, but more, than mere obedience), and it is the Spirit abiding within us that renders it possible.

And that great new hope, the beginning of the fulfillment of the wild promises of God to a wayward people, is why we celebrate Pentecost.

Posted in family life, musings, recipes

meal-planning for the creative and spontaneous mom

Posted on by kristinabean

I think cooking and grocery shopping are two of my favorite housekeeping activities 🙂 It’s fun imagining different ways to use the fruits and vegetables that are seasonal and on sale, or figuring out how to use up the remnants of a leftover or the last bits of produce in the fridge before they go bad without making an emergency trip to the store, or balancing all the different food groups throughout the day to make sure the boys are eating a well-rounded diet. In a way, it’s like a puzzle that never gets old because so many of the variables are always changing! (And I must confess that I would get bored pretty quickly if the variables didn’t change – I could never work off a strict rotation of menus because I get tired of cooking the same things and like to mix it up and experiment with new ideas fairly regularly).

Most of my inspiration comes from the produce sale list… I see, for instance, that red bell peppers are only 50 cents each this week and I wonder what I could make with them that my bell-pepper-disdaining family would eat (I love peppers so I’m always attempting to convert the rest of them). Maybe on top of a bruschetta with some sort of cheese – something with feta and ricotta, perhaps… I call those “little toasties” to the kids because they sometimes will outright refuse a food just because it has a strange name and I’d rather not have to deal with that if I can avoid it! And there’s one meal down: I would throw together a quick pasta or veggie to accompany it, depending on what leftovers we have and what’s in the pantry, and let the bruschetta be the main star of the meal.

I think one of the factors that makes this sort of meal-planning easier for me is that I don’t think every dinner has to include a meat. I was a vegetarian for eleven years, so as long as there is some sort of cheese or bean in the main meal I feel like it is complete, and especially if we had a high-protein breakfast or lunch I don’t think it necessary to emphasize the protein at dinner. Instead, dinner ends up being the most vegetable-heavy meal of the day most of the time. We’ll see if this needs to change as the boys get older, of course 🙂 Meats are just harder for me to be creative with because I lost those eleven years of experimentation, so I get more easily bored by the options I can reliably cook.

Right now we’re entering into one of my favorite meal-planning seasons because there is so much seasonal fresh fruit! Fruit is an easy side dish to round out a meal, a healthy dessert if I’m feeling nibbly after dinner, a no-guilt snack to pull out if the boys are hungry an hour before dinner, and a quick breakfast if I’m running late to work. It significantly reduces the amount of prep and forethought I have to put into meals… and the hot weather in general lends itself to quick, light foods instead of the heavier meals that require thawing time, prep time, and cooking time (as delicious as those meals are in the colder weather!).

What are some of your tips and tricks for feeding your family every day?

Posted in musings, quotes

prayer for a new day

Posted on by kristinabean

Sometimes the best prayers are short and simple, expressing in a few words what I struggle to communicate, capturing the essence of what I desire to offer to God and become in Christ without turning into a litany of praises or requests. And first thing in the morning, when I’m foggy from too-little sleep and worried about the day to come, a simple prayer can remind me of the perspective that truly matters.

“At the dawn of a new day, fill us with your mercy,
That the whole day may be a day of joy and praise.” – from the Divine Office

Isn’t that such a beautiful way to look at the beginning of a new day? That we may be filled with God’s mercy and so live out the day in joy and praise – that we may be filled with Christ and thus live in Christ and for Christ – that our unity with Him may be increased, that all the good that is in Him might be in us and in the world through us.

Posted in family life, musings

filling my marriage with love

Posted on by kristinabean

Despite the financial and practical headache of divorce, I think it is often easier to split up than to hold a marriage together, even (especially?) when there are kids involved. Children make it harder to find the time to invest in your marriage; the stress of added expenses and responsibilities leads to shortened tempers and sharpened tongues; the lack of sleep and increase of worry contribute to emotional and impulsive choices. Our own flaws, quirks, sinful tendencies, and past baggage drive us away from each other as well, their effects exacerbated by the absence of time to relax to and put things in perspective. And as we grow more accustomed to each other and our infatuation settles down, we start to notice only the things that irritate us and take the rest for granted.

My primary love language, to borrow from Gary Chapman’s schema, is quality time – so when school and work and sick kids have prevented us from having a good conversation or a chance to snuggle and just be together, I start feeling unloved and the irrational thoughts just flow from there. I get angry at every little thing he does that isn’t perfect. I barb my tongue even as I desperately hope he’ll want to spend time with me. I start blaming him, in my head, for every struggle we’re having financially or in parenting. So if we didn’t make it a priority to spend time together and rebuild that feeling of love, it would be extremely hard for us to make this marriage work. Similarly, if I don’t make sure that I’m doing the things that make my husband feel loved – like listening to him well, giving him physical love and closeness, and taking care of the little things that need to be done around the house – he is going to be more stressed, more on edge, and more likely to lose his cool when things with the kids or school get frustrating. Actively investing in each other, intentionally trying to give each other love in a personally meaningful way, prevents so much strife and so many misunderstandings! And yet so often we neglect it, and take each other’s love and happiness for granted…

All this is to say, take the time to learn what makes your spouse feel loved and then live it out! Build up the love and joy in your marriage and in your home – there is only so much you can do alone, of course, but I believe in the majority of cases both spouses want to fix the malaise and tension in their relationships, and all it takes is a little bit of intentionality.

Posted in family life, musings

building a marriage on mutual respect

Posted on by kristinabean

One of my happiest memories is that of my parents complimenting each other, whether implicitly or explicitly, face-to-face or behind each other’s backs. Everything felt right in the world when my mom and dad were admiring and relying upon each other, whether it was in little things like cleaning and chores or in big things like vision or logistical skills. I’m not saying that my parents were perfect; in fact, they probably picked on each other more than they complimented each other (and they will never be reconciled to each other’s driving style!). But they had an understanding and appreciation of each other’s abilities, accomplishments, and efforts – a realization that their marriage was so much stronger with the gifts both of them brought to it than when either of them tried to dominate or control the relationships. Though they have never been particularly demonstrative or romantic people, I saw in this dynamic the deep love that they had for each other. And so it is this mutual respect and interdependence that I want to cultivate in my own marriage, so that both my husband and myself can bring our strengths to the table with confidence instead of pride or insecurity, rely on each other in our areas of weakness without feelings of shame, and generally form a team that functions out of a place of mutual love and encouragement.