I'm Not Every Woman

The first time I heard this song, tears came to my eyes with the opening line. I sat in my car, completely still and silent...and encouraged. What a beautiful message of relief and rest for women, who so often feel they have to be everything for everyone.

Finite

by Sara Groves

I'm not every woman

It's not all in me

I'm proud and guarded

When it comes to my needs

Try to keep the whole thing rolling

Try to keep an on time train

This frenetic fascination's

Really driving me insane

Anybody feel that?

Anybody feel that?

Anybody feel that?

What God meant by woman

I'm hard pressed to find

I'm chasing paper dreams

And a guilt undefined

Fighting to stay younger

Trying to stay thin and in control

Searching for a magic formula

A thing to soothe our souls

Wonderin' where the peace went

Wonderin' where the peace went

Wonderin' where the peace went

I'm finite I come to an end

I'm finite I come to an end

Try to keep the whole thing rollin'

Try to keep an on time train

This frenetic fascination's

Really drivin' me insane

Anybody feel that?

Anybody feel that?

Anybody feel that?

I'm finite, I come to an end

I'm finite, I cannot pretend

I'm finite, I come to an end

I'm finite, I cannot pretend

If you can, download the song so that you can hear her sing it. If not, you can go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISqVc4KNxpg to listen to it.

picture from http://www.contactmusic.com/video/sara-groves-i-saw-what-i-saw

The “T-word” and a Parting of Ways

When I first became pregnant with Ian almost two years ago, I had a number of friends tell me that I should sign up for weekly updates from Baby Center. And let me tell you, they were right! When you can’t see your growing baby and watch how he is changing, it is thrilling to get an email with a picture of what he looks like, facts about how he is developing and how big he is. Then the baby gets here and in those first few months, every piece of advice or information feels like a lifeline that’s been thrown out to saving a drowning mother.

But as the months went on and Ian grew, I began to feel a parting of ways was on the horizon between these weekly emails and this new momma. Developmental milestone charts felt stressful to look at – what if Ian didn’t show some skill that the chart said all babies at his age should be able to do? I gradually paid less and less attention to the emails and just focused on Ian.

I’ve made a lot of mistakes in the past year, but one of the best decisions I made was to choose to not worry about if Ian was “on track”. Somewhere around month 5, I stopped looking at charts and reading about what was coming next. I don’t add up how much he is eating from each category in the food pyramid. I don’t read about what toys we should be introducing at which age and I try to hold our plans very loosely. I decided to just be and let Ian be. Otherwise, I would be a miserable and anxious mess.

What I know is this…Ian is a smart, healthy, and happy baby. We have a great pediatrician who will let us know if Ian is ever behind in a certain milestone. We try to eat a balanced diet and I believe that at the end of the week, he has gotten what he needs. When Ian is bored with one toy, he finds something else that is more interesting to play with (which usually isn’t a toy at all). And if I follow his cues and trust my natural instincts, I think he will continue tell me what he needs and what “stage” he is at right now.

I once heard someone say, “don’t worry, when he gets married, he will walk down the aisle, be able to feed himself and wipe his own bottom.”

Which brings me to the t-word and a parting of ways. Up until his first birthday, my weekly emails have said “your baby at x-weeks/months”. Now it says, “Your TODDLER at 12months, 1 week”. Toddler?? He may be growing up fast and becoming increasingly independent, but he is still a baby in more ways than not. I’m not in denial and I know that at some point over this next year, he will transition to being a toddler. One day I’ll look at him running around the house and think, “wow, you really aren’t a little baby anymore.” But that day isn’t here yet, so I’m not quite ready to apply the term "toddler" to my baby. Soon enough the day will come, but not now. I understand why people call babies toddlers as soon as they turn 1, but it’s just a word that represents a shift that happens at different ages in different babies.

Realizing that helps me to see that it’s ok for a parting of ways from my weekly emails now. They have been so helpful, but Ian is an individual and isn’t on anyone else’s timeline. I’m just going to watch him, trust the instincts God gave me, and love him. And for now, I’m still calling him my baby.

Power Down

On the bulletin board over the desk in our room, there is a blue piece of cardstock with a 7-point list written in black sharpie. It is a list of the resolutions BJ and I have made together for 2012. Each point on the list represents an important change that we would like to see in our hearts and habits throughout this year. The first point is one of the hardest for us to do and one of the most important in our world right now – “power down.”

The age of constant access to entertainment, instant information and social networking has brought with it both wonderful advancements and dark unintentional side effects.

On the one hand, I know when an old friend from high school has something significant happen in their life. I can see pictures of family and friends in other states while getting a sense of how they’re doing and what’s happening in their world. If one of my professors emails me or a customer places an order on my website, I know it almost immediately. As soon as I open up the internet, I can read headlines from all over the world.

On the other hand, how much more intentional would I be at making time to see and talk to people if I wasn’t getting a quick blurb about them every time I got online? How much more reading would I do if I wasn't able to so quickly pull up a soundbite of information about world news?

One of my darkest personal struggles with all of this instant and surface level information is the same problem I had when I was in middle school and was trying to come up with an AIM screen name (let’s hear it for the 90’s!). Nothing I could think of seemed very “cool” compared to everyone else’s ideas. Something as dumb as a screen name made me feel less than. While the in-flow of pictures and status updates lets me see people I otherwise I wouldn’t, it also provides a continuous opportunity to feel less than when I look at these snapshots of other people’s lives. I find it interesting that I am actually more concerned with putting on a good face online than I am in person. If we run into each other at the store, more often than not you will find me without make up, unshowered, and wearing the same thing I wore the day before. But rarely will you see me post a picture of myself looking like this. If I know that this temptation is there for me – the temptation to compare myself to other people and to present my best face for everyone to see in my snapshot moment – then distancing myself from the triggers of those temptations is going to be important.

Perhaps the most dangerous side effect of "too much power" in our lives is the risk that it poses to our tangible world outside of the virtual realm. What does it do to the time we have with Ian when emails are automatically pushed through and interrupt the game we were playing? How does it change the relationships we have people when we think we know what their lives are like because of something we saw online? How does it change the way I view our marriage if I spend too much time watching TV romance or looking at pictures of other people’s relationships? What happens to our time with the LORD when the first thought of the day is about checking email or facebook? I believe that there is an enemy and that one of his biggest strategies is distraction. So at the end of it all, I have to ask – what is it that he wants to distracts us from? What doesn’t he want us to see? What life does he not want us to experience?

So we are powering down in 2012. We are going to learn to return to the silence we were once ok with and we are going to learn to rest there. One month into the year and we aren’t doing as well as we would have liked to, but we’re going to keep working on it. If it’s hard to do, then the fight must be worth it.