Geek in Heels - Page 152

May 24, 2010 • In Christianity, Personal, Relationships, Touching

If We Had All the Answers, We Wouldn’t Need Faith

I read this story on WithoutWax.tv and I had to share…

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Emotional Whiplash

Whiplash is a word I’ve used more than once when describing the emotions I often go through as a pastor.

Yesterday was a difficult day. I apologize in advance for the length of this post, but I need to write this now more than you need to read it, so please bear with me. Let me give you a little back story to help you understand.

Over the course of the past 2 years Brandi and I have had two sets of friends who have experienced the loss of a baby. Todd and Angie Smith who lost their baby after 2 hours of life and Mike and Holly Phelps who lost their baby late in their first pregnancy.

I can’t even begin to imagine the heavy heartache and deep loss they went through. And while getting pregnant again doesn’t take a way that pain, you can imagine how excited I was to hear that both couples were once again pregnant.

While each couple faced their own unique challenges, they were both on track to have healthy babies. I couldn’t help but think of what a bitter sweet experience it would be for both of them. A glimmer of hope in the midst of the darkness they’ve been walking through.

In the early hours of yesterday morning, in hospitals just two blocks away from each other, both couples had a pre-term delivery.

Yesterday morning I walked into two different hospital rooms. Both scenes could not have been more similar and yet more different.

Both rooms had moms who were laying in hospital beds. Both rooms had dads who were right by the bed holding and rocking a tiny infant.

However, the similarities end there as one baby was breathing and the other was not.

Todd and Angie’s room was full of prayers, crying and pure joy. There was life.

Mike and Holly’s room was full of prayers and crying, but no joy. No life.

The whole way to the Phelp’s room I cried. I knew the situation I was walking into. I cried out to God…

How could this happen to them again?

Why God, would you allow this family to endure this pain yet again?

Haven’t they been through enough?

Why God?

I’ve been criticized in certain circles for writing a book called Plan B, which is about God, crisis and pain. A book that clearly states I don’t think there are answers to all of life’s questions and complexities.

I dare any one of those critics to stand in the room with this young couple and even try to answer all of the questions they had yesterday as they sit there holding their lifeless child.

I don’t know if I’m allowed to say this as a pastor, but I’m going to anyway… Isn’t it amazing how in a moment like that you so desperately want God near, but at the same time you also feel secretly mad at Him?

Reality for Christians often means we have more questions than we do answers.

Reality is sometimes lacking the faith that will give us a sustained hope.

Reality is even though we know God is with us sometimes we feel completely alone.

Reality is even though we believe, we also doubt.

There’s a big difference between trust and understanding. They say trust is what we need when we don’t have understanding. So today I’m praying for trust. A big, huge, helping of trust.

It’s funny but the final paragraph of Plan B says,

I’m asking you to trust that one day faith will win over doubt, that light will win over darkness, love will win over hate, and all things will one day be redeemed. I’m asking you, right in the middle of your Plan B pain, to trust this process that is going on in your life.

I never knew when I wrote those words how much I would need them on a day like today.

Boys Will Be Boys…Or No?

Last night, I was taking Comang on his evening walk when I ran into a group of boys playing baseball.

There is almost always a group of middle-school-aged boys playing on this block when the weather is nice (I think one or two of them live on that street) — they are usually skateboarding, biking, or just hanging around.

However, this was the first time I’ve seen them playing baseball…on this busy urban street.

Allow me to clarify: they were spread out over the two sidewalks on either side of the street, with two bases on one sidewalk and the other two on the other. They were throwing and hitting the ball across the street, stopping frequently as cars drove by.

I know that this is a potentially dangerous game, but I am not their mother so who am I to judge? I continued walking my dog and stayed on the far end of the sidewalk, trying my best not to be intrusive as I always do whenever I encounter this group of boys.

As I walked by their makeshift diamond, I suddenly heard a CRACK!

Then I felt it. The unmistakable bend of air as the newly-hit baseball flew right by me.

It was just a mere inches away from my stomach.

I froze. Comang froze at my feet.

Then I heard…

…LAUGHTER?

I could not believe it. These boys were laughing at almost having hit me.

I flew into a rage. “DO YOU THINK THAT’S FUNNY?!!”

The continued to snicker.

“I AM PREGNANT. WHAT IF YOU HAD HIT MY STOMACH? WHAT IF YOU HAD HURT MY BABY??!!!”

No change in reaction.

I was tired from having been out all day. It was getting late, and dark. So I did the easiest thing: I walked away, tears stinging my eyes.

I recounted the story to J as soon as I returned home. He was unsurprisingly sympathetic and angry. Since we are just starting to enter the warmer months and these boys are always hanging out on that street, we decided that we should change Comang’s walk route to extend over a different block. It is a bit more inconvenient, but at least that block is quiet.

I’ve now had the night to think about the incident. I know that whoever had hit the ball had little to no control over its trajectory. HOWEVER, I also know that they should have at least paused the game while a pregnant woman (yes, my belly is big enough to be noticeable now and I was wearing a form-fitting shirt) walked by.

I thought about contacting their parents — at least the parents of the boy(s) who live on that block — but I’m not sure that would help because I’m pretty sure that they do not speak English.

What would you do, or have done in this situation?

POP! Goes the Baby…

A big “con” of having an anterior placenta is that I will not feel the baby move as early, or as often as other mothers. Luckily, I first felt the sensation of fluttering butterflies at 16 weeks…but not much since.

The big exception was when we went on our babymoon and I felt her swimming around whenever the plane changed altitudes. But other than that, there have been slight flutters here and there but never frequently and hardly exciting.

Last night, as I was doing the dishes, I distinctly felt a “pop” in my lower abdomen. Like a big, STRONG bubble bursting inside my uterus. The sensation was so particular and distinct that I immediately placed my wet soapy hands on my stomach. And it happened again…

…and I was able to FEEL it from the outside!

Later that night, I felt a short succession of pops as I lay on the couch cuddling with Comang. And I was definitely able to feel those with the palm of my hand too.

Unfortunately, the popping stopped as soon as J placed his hands on my stomach.

It’s amazing how my being able to feel her move has gone from 0 to 100 in just one day, because I woke up to the feeling of her popping this morning too!

Maybe I should start calling her “Piggy,” after guinea pigs who popcorn:

As the pregnancy progresses, I know that I will eventually be able to see her move from the outside too. I know this is perfectly normal, but the prospect freaks me out a little because it reminds me of the Alien movies.

How far along were my mommy readers when you first felt the baby move? Did your stomach move like the video above when you were further along in your pregnancies?

P.S. — I promise to catch up on my weekly pregnancy updates soon, along with updated belly pictures. You won’t believe how big I’ve gotten…my stomach seems to have “popped” overnight too!

Street Pianos Headed to NYC!

One of the (many) things I love about NYC is the abundance of street and subway performers.

May it be a classically-trained prodigy giving an impromptu concert, a struggling musician performing for dollars (often with the wish that a record executive will “discover” them), or an out-of-luck bum drumming some beats on some upside-down plastic containers, you can bet that these performers add as much art and culture to the city as do those who play sold-out shows at Carnegie Hall.

Heck, even street salesmen are world-famous performers here!

This is precisely the reason I was so excited to read that NYC will soon follow in London and Sydney’s footsteps to install street pianos in public places for anyone to sit down and tinkle out a tune.

According to The Village Voice,

This … is a pretty wonderful idea. New Yorkers are a talented bunch! Think of all the impromptu cabaret sessions that could come out of this! The project — actually called “Play Me, I’m Yours” — and its pianos are coming around from June 21 to July 5. All the locations are here — Manhattan has 27 locations — but the pianos will be making their way around all five boroughs (from the Bronx Zoo to Flushing Meadows), so you’ll likely cross paths with one at some point.

I can’t wait to see the pianos around the city and see what the talented people of New York have up their sleeves! And if I’m feeling brave, I might even bang out some songs myself…

Do you play the piano?
If so, would you participate in the “Play Me, I’m Yours” project?

I wouldn’t be afraid to participate, just as long as the piano is free and there isn’t a long line. As for my repertoire…“November Rain” is a favorite “safety” song of mine, but if I were feeling particularly playful (or silly) I wouldn’t be afraid to go with some Super Mario songs, or the theme from Forrest Gump. But then again, there’s always the classical and sentimental “Clair de Lune.”

What song(s) would you play?

My Name is Jenny and I am a Serial Subscriber

I subscribe to over 500 sites via Google Reader (sadly, if your site doesn’t have an RSS feed, it’s likely that I’ll never visit it again unless it is spectacular) and I always have a heck of a time trying to “weed” through my feeds in an effort to lessen the number of posts/articles I have to read each day.

And yes, I must read ALL of them because I’m anal like that.

Unfortunately, as many feeds as I “unsubscribe” each week, my “subscribe” number is always higher.

How can I resist when there are sites like ZooBorns (which my friend Jillian introduced via Twitter earlier this week and started a “zOMG so cute!” frenzy)…

Or the weirdly obsessive, “Thanks, now I’ll always see that…” site Cannot Unsee?

What say you, readers? Do you have any tips for cutting down on your Google Reader subscriptions?

…or are you a helpless serial subscriber like me?

. . . are there any new sites you’d recommend?

Star Wars Opening Crawl

And here I thought the sequence was entirely CG…

The rudimentary method is quite ingenious, and I’m a bit saddened to learn that the remastered movies have replaced the manual crawl with CG versions.

I wonder if the opening crawl for Flash Gordon (George Lucas’ inspiration for the Star Wars films) was done using the same method?

Via Gizmodo.

5 Months

It’s amazing what can happen in that time.

a little seahorse at 2 months

a BABY at 5 months

Free Range Kids

In light of yesterday’s post regarding The Bubble Wrap Generation, I found it strangely appropriate that I learned about “Take Our Children to the Park…& Leave Them There Day” this morning on the radio.

I was not surprised when my favorite NYC blog, Gothamist, picked up on the story and ignited a furious war among its readers.

Would YOU leave your 9 year-old child alone in Central Park?

Because I think that I would.

My parents taught me independence from a very young age. After teaching me to safely cross the street, to not talk to strangers and never get into an unfamiliar car or building without them, they trusted me to walk the ½ mile to kindergarten every day.

I was a quiet, introverted person as a young child too, so I didn’t go out too much…I much preferred to sit at home and read. However, my sister — my opposite — loved to go out and play with the neighborhood kids. She would spend all day outside without adult supervision, returning in time for dinner, starting at the age of 4.

Did she ever get lost? Yes. But my parents had taught her to seek policemen in case this ever happened, and my sister followed suit. (And the one time she got lost at the beach, she had the common sense to go to a lifeguard…at the age of 3½.)

I think my sister and I turned out okay. Neither of us experienced any major injuries or traumatic incidents while growing up. We both did well in school, attended prestigious universities, and while I am preparing to be a SAHM, my sister is currently working on her PhD in art history and archaeology.

Are we the exception?

I’m genuinely curious as to how my readers grew up. Were you allowed to go out, unsupervised before the age of 10? Were you allowed to tinker in the kitchen by yourselves, preparing food with sharp knives and hot stoves, starting at the age of 6 as my sister and I?

I know that the world is a dangerous place. But the sheltered, over-protected life only seems to have arrived within the last generation or two. Wasn’t the world ALWAYS a dangerous place? What prompted parents to change their ways?

(And again, I’m not looking to spark a debate. If anyone can enlighten me with facts or even theories, I would really appreciate it.)

Going back to the topic of “Take Our Children to the Park…& Leave Them There Day,” I have to agree with Gothamist reader GoldenRuler, who writes:

if you can’t trust your 9 year old – especially an urban 9 yr old – to be in a park or get around the city by herself, then you should question your parenting skills.

ANYTHING can happen at ANY age, and the sooner they learn how to take care of themselves, the better – and how else to help them build their confidence and skills than by letting them venture out alone? this doesn’t necessarily mean you go from holding their hands on the slide to complete abandonment in one day. done gradually, with informative guidance and common sense (i.e., not letting them run to the corner store at 1 AM in east new york), and taking the kid into consideration (all kids mature at different ages and ways) it’s perfectly normal.

Fallingwater Animation

I have always had a soft spot for architecture. I mean, who hasn’t seriously considered becoming an architect after reading Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead?

And as cliché as it sounds, Frank Lloyd Wright has always been my favorite architect and Fallingwater my favorite residential building.

Visiting Fallingwater has been on my to-do list for over a decade. Unfortunately, the 6+ hour drive to western Pennsylvania is too daunting for this lazy geek. Perhaps we can make a weekend trip of it years down the road, with kids screaming in the back seat, “Are we there yet?!!”

For now, I can almost feel like I’m there…AND see how it was constructed in this beautiful animation by Cristobal Vila.