Crazy Toddler AND Twins?! It's About To Get Real Up in Here

Oh friends. Oh dear sweet friends.

I've missed you all so much. I can't believe it's been so long. I've just been a little preoccupied. Cooking a couple little chick-a-dees. Side effects include extreme nausea and some vomiting. Not condusive to blog composition or generally living like a human being. So there's that.

But let me back it up.

March 2.

I woke up and figured I'd take a pregnancy test.

Despite The Desert... Marriage Can Bloom

I'm thrilled to be visiting over at Fancy Little Things, sharing about marriage growing, thriving, blooming despite a less than perfect example in my childhood.

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I was putting the dishes away, scrubbing the kitchen counters, tidying up the house. I imagined the smile on Nathan’s face. How relaxed and thankful he would be when he came home. “The house looks great, hon.” His exact words, every time. Bursting with gratitude and love.

I smiled to myself, and told my toddler, “Daddy is going to be so happy.” In that moment, I felt a tug, a memory from my childhood. As if my mom were speaking those words over tiny little Marie. I choked on the thickness of the two worlds, standing in two kitchens. These two mothers, decades apart, cleaning their homes, waiting for their husbands to come home, a child in each kitchen watching.

I remembered the dysfunction of my parent’s marriage. The ups and the downs, both members with their faults, daily dealing deadly blows to their union. A marriage that the cleanest kitchen in the world couldn’t save for the lack of Christ, in the home that was crumbling all around.

There I stood in two kitchens. As a child, watching a marriage gasp for air, parched and dehydrated. Surrounded by a loveless desert, my mother fruitlessly sweeping at all the sand. As a woman, I continued, watering my marriage with prayer, service, honesty, sacrifice. 

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Transformed By The "Interruptions" of Motherhood

On a Friday in August 2011, my afternoon plans were interrupted when my water broke. 

Thousands of interruptions have followed.

Interrupted sleep, meals, relationships, hobbies, TV shows, showers, projects, chores, dreams, careers,...

A beautiful stream of interruptions slowly breaking me down.

I cried, hard, the 4th day of this journey. Too little sleep. Too many interruptions. Too much, too soon. Too little of me, too much given to him.

Here I am, 19 months later, close to tears after a day full of interruptions. Interrupted plans, nap, chores, time with God. 

Too little for me, too much for him.

These interruptions aren't things, annoyances, garbage to be tossed aside in favor of more desirable, more urgent, more rewarding tasks.

This is my son. 

"Keepin' it Real" with Jennifer Lawrence

I'm super excited to be a guest blogger today at Christianity Today's Her.meneutics, a blog "providing news and analysis from the perspective of evangelical women." I'm discussing Jennifer Lawrence, Anne Hathaway, and the Christian love affair with authenticity. What do you think?

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Image courtesy of Tumblr, agittated

Award season is over. Every last Actor, Globe and Oscar has been handed out, and yet, a debate rages on over this year’s big winners. It’s not about who got snubbed or who wore it best… it’s about who we like more, Jennifer Lawrence or Anne Hathaway.

America has spoken, it seems, and Jennifer Lawrence, with her sassy comebacks and adorkable facial expressions, is winning. She fell up the stairs at the Oscars, and we like her more for it. She’s our new BFF. What’s not to like? She’s silly, relaxed, clumsy even in couture. She talks about fast food on the red carpet. She teases Jack Nicholson. Commentary from Huffington Post to Vanity Fair declares Lawrence as “real,” while Hathaway comes off as “rehearsed.”

Jennifer Lawrence is “self-effacing and funny. She seems like an excellent party companion,” writes Ann Friedman in New York Magazine. “When she jokes about sucking in her stomach on the red carpet or her publicist hating her for eating a Philly cheesesteak, it feels real.”  

She’s the right amount of real, found that sweet spot on the authenticity spectrum. She seems to have taken a page out of John Ortberg’s book, nailing “the self-deprecating faux pas (SDFP) designed to show the speaker is normal like everyone else. It has to be vulnerable enough to be embarrassing, but not so vulnerable as to get you kicked out of ministry employment” or Hollywood, as the case may be.

Maybe that’s why we are so enamored with her, because we are so very enamored with authenticity....

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No More Stinking Thinking

I have the honor of guest blogging over at LaurieWallin.com today. I'm joining her discussion on "breaking up with what breaks you down." I'm breaking up with negative self talk. What do you need to break up with?

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My toddler’s vocabulary is just now developing. Our interactions mostly consist of repeated inquiries after his father. “Dada? Dada? Dada?”

Dada is at work, kid. For the millionth time.

Since I’m the only person here during the day who can utter coherent sentences, my house is pretty quiet.

Aside from the hurtful words that haunt me.

Words from my past waft in, drift through the air, tickle my ear. Abusive adjectives reach into my present, clamp down on my shoulders. They scratch at old scabs, pour salt in old wounds.

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