Rethinking Domesticity

Those that know me know that I am domestically impaired. I've never made a secret of it. In fact, my husband thought it was cute and "no big deal" when we were dating. I even have magnets that HE bought me saying "just say 'no' to cooking," "just say no to ironing (which I definitely do)," "just say no to laundry," and "just say no to cleaning." I was always in trouble for having a messy room, messy desk, messy car (though I prefer the term "lived in").

In the real world, these things are occasionally necessities, like you definitelly MUST do laundry at 1 in the morning before your son's baseball game when his uniform has spent a week being covered in mud and grass stains. And cleaning up IS necessary when, say, one's mother is coming to visit. And I do like to cook...but more in the hobby way. NEEDING to do it takes out all the joy.

I've been trying to be more domestic though. We've been wanting to improve how we eat, and I am all too inclined to not have a plan at 4:30 in the afternoon with nothing thawed (If you know me, you might start realizing that ADHD might be a running theme here)...but I've made some observations over the course of this experiment

1. If you cook 3 meals a day, you have 3 meals worth of dishes to wash, 3 meals worth of pans to clean, the table needs cleaned 3 times a day, and if you are like me or have my kids, it might even effect the status of the floor.

2. I've noticed when I clean, I notice a whole plethora of other things that need done. Now, if I hadn't been cleaning, I wouldn't have noticed these other things...but now I can't seem to rest until they are done, and when I deal with those things, I now notice other things.

3. I'm grumpier. It's amazing how working to pick up a living room, and say, having a six year old leave every belonging she has ever owned strewn across the room can cause levels of ire and frustration that I have almost never known.

4. So I'm having a hard time believing that having my act together actually lowers my stress. Thus just doesnt' seem to do it. (There was an episode of WKRP in Cincinnati where Johnny Fever and Venus Flytrap get drunk to show on air how alcohol effects reflexes, only Johnny's actually GOT BETTER the more he drank. Maybe I am an anomoly and just function better in chaos)

5. Not only that, but most of the moms that I know of who actually "have their act together" in this area seem to suffer from the same thing. Now, because things are dusted or vacuumed, they MUST can every tomato in a five mile radius, or they are a complete failure if the tile in their bathroom is not regrouted in a manner that reflects the skill of a man who has been doing nothing but grout for the last 20 years. Not only that, but if you compliment their house, they will wince and point out all the things they "forgot" to do. Very few women ever seem able to vacuum for a few minutes, run a feather duster over some things, throw the dishes in the dishwasher, then say "Okay, I'm happy now, I'm going to go read a book, get a tan, and enjoy life."

So, in conclusion, my main question to myself, I guess is "if eating healthier and trying to be more organized is supposed to make me live longer, do I really want to live longer if it means I spend that time washing dishes and mopping?"

(I know, I'm just whining...but what is a blog for if I can't whine?)

addendum: Now see, I know why I read the beloved Sisters....Rebekah is there to show me what I am doing wrong!!

Yet Your Desire Will be for Your Husband

"To the woman He said, 'I will greatly multiply yourpain in childbirth. In pain you will bring forth children: Yet your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you." Genesis 3:16

I have heard two interpretations of this from pastors in the last several months. The first was when I stopped and listened to a sermon on the radio from a Calvary Chapel show (I know -- not my usual thing, but it amazed me that as I was scanning that the pastor actually spent five minutes talking about how you can't come to faith unless the Holy Spirit draws you.) Basically, he interpreted this as once a guy and a girl get married, the man starts focusing on work, etc. and she starts wondering "why doesn't he pay more attention to me?"

The other pastor that addressed this text in a Bible class, put the emphasis on "he shall rule over you" and believed that "your desire shall be for your husband" was that woman will desire that power to rule, but in the end, it belongs to man.

This post that I have referred to before on the Concordian Sisters' blog has had me thinking on this for quite a while.

These aren't the first times that I have heard such interpretations of these verses, and the big issue that I see is that in an age of birth control and planned family size -- and subsequent separation of sex and reproduction, we fail to see how really truly powerful this proclamation is, and so we find ourselves reading other things into it rather than letting the text speak for itself.

In Genesis 2, God blessed Adam and Eve and told them to be fruitful and multiply. Having children was something inherently human, even before The Fall. It was integrally part of who we were, and what our purpose was.

Think of what that meant. Having children was an unadulterated blessing. Nothing tainted it. There was no fear of childbirth... no pain, no death, no destruction of figure, no bodily deterioration. Nursing didn't hurt and wasn't complicated or tainted with carnal implications and cultural negativity. Babies inherently trusted and that trust was not in jeopardy from parents who would be tempted to put their own needs first. Exhaustion would not exist. Our children would be without sin and our marriages would be peaceful. Punishment and discipline would not be issues. Fear of harm coming to our children or spouses...death was not in the picture.

Now, look at what the fall into sin meant....Pain, possibility of death in childbirth, infections. Loss of figure, physical problems, c-sections, infertility, etc. Babies crying for hours at a time because of colic, exhaustion, isolation, depression; husbands that weren't supportive or worse yet, weren't there. Breastfeeding problems, formula feeding, the terrible twos -- the worse threes; adolescence. Bickering siblings, disobedience, punishment, frustration, harm, injury, handicaps; death.

Common sense would say that we should all go the route of Scarlett O'Hara who told Rhett Butler after Bonnie's birth that she was done with sex. But that was exactly the thing that was so inhuman about Scarlett O'Hara. To do so is displaying a blatant lack of trust in God and in marriage, which He created. Despite all of these things that wear us down, ranging from our own vanity (which has its roots in the knowledge that we are heading toward death, and we shouldn't be), to the exhaustion that children bring, to the fear and the grief that come along with them and forever taint whatever joy they bring...our desire is still for our husbands. We still want that love, that intimacy, that ultimate union that until this century, brings more children.

And with all of that, we have to put our trust in a man who is also a sinner, and even if he is a good man, he will hurt us. He will fall short. He will sometimes not understand our burden. And at times, we will hurt him, and hurt because we hurt him. We will fall short. And we will not understand the burden that he is under to care for us like Christ loved the church and gave His life for her, either.

It is a frightening thing being a woman under the curse of sin.

Whether one believes that contraception is good or is sinful or has not thoughts on it whatsoever... as a society, it has taken fertility and made it somewhat more foreign to the human experience, less natural, and has made verses like these a bit more alien to our experience...more unfathomable.

It definitely isn't about wanting a little more attention and an occasional date on Friday night, though it gets lonely when we are not valued and cherished. It isn't about craving power and headship -- though that is always there when sin is there.

Thankfully, God is faithful. Children, all children, are still a blessing from God, even with the sometimes terrifying, exhausting burden and chaos that they can also bring. When He provides the blessing, He also provides the means to care for it, to show more love than we ever knew could be there. More than we ever will, God knows what He is doing, and He gives us the means to bear it.

Hawaii, Day 1

Right after Christmas, my parents took us all to Hawaii for their 50th Wedding Anniversary (all three kids and their spouses, and the minor children -- Courtney, Chris, and Maggie). The first week, we took a cruise around to the major islands. The second week, we stayed at my parents' timeshare at Ko Olina, which is right outside of Honolulu on Oahu. Two things kept me from posting for this long. The first is that I really just needed time to process it. It was a wonderful trip. The second was that my card reader broke, and it is getting harder and harder to find a reader that takes sD cards. I guess that is a clue that it might be time to get a new camera sometime in the future....

This started with an early morning rush to get to the airport. The instant we got off the plane in Honolulu and walked through the doors, heat and humidity hit us. In three days we'd undergone major climate change. We left Indiana which was in the 20's when we left and then landed in Las Vegas (where I grew up) where it was in the high 50's. Despite what my mother thinks, it felt WONDERFUL, and we walked around the neighborhood in short sleeves. I can't begin to tell you how much I missed mountains -- and these were MY mountains. Mount Charleston, the Spring Mountains, Red Rock Canyon, Sunrise Mountain. Jeff commented how much Honolulu, especially at the airport, felt like the Philippines.

We flew Hawaiian Air, which was very nice, and we quickly learned the words we'd be hearing continually all over the islands Ma Halo -- "thank you" was the one we heard the most, even more than Aloha. Once we landed, we made our way to the Wiki Wiki bus (which brings back memories of the ferret on the Budweiser commercials "wiki wiki") which took us to our luggage, then my dad herded us out to catch a Roberts Bus that would take us to the docks.

If you every DO take a trip to Hawaii and want to do tours, Roberts Hawaii is the way to go. The cruise ship had this huge list of tours, and the prices were OUTRAGEOUS. When we got on the Roberts Bus that would take us to the dock, they handed us a sheet of comparable tours that they offered for often 1/3 the price. And the tour guides were wonderful.

So then we got to the ship and went through all of that rigamarole to get on the boat. We met a really nice non-denominational pastor's family while we were waiting. They were from the Big Island of Hawaii, and locals often get special deals on the Hawaiian cruises for rooms that aren't taken. They'd found out they could come THAT day. He actually had to leave the ship twice and take an airplane back to his congregation to lead services twice during their trip.

Here is where you are going to find out how truly lame I am. I had to get a picture of the cruise ship from off the internet. I am usually all about taking pictures of scenery. In fact, I usually don't have many pictures of my family and friends because I don't want them to get in the way of the scenery. This trip was different. Most of the pictures you really can't tell where we are...isn't that sad? But I do have lots of pictures of the family.

But anyway, here is the ship, the Pride of America. NCL's Hawaiian ships are the only cruise ships registered to the United States. From what the staff told us, most cruise ship companies said that it could not be done and still make money because you could not work out paying the staff the same way most cruise ships do in other countries. To register the ships in the U.S. means that they had to follow U.S. guidelines on how they paid their staff. I'm willing to bet that this is a picture of her docked in Kona on the Big Island, because that was the only port where we couldn't come up to shore and instead had to take the little boats in (little is relative, each could hold about 100 people, easy).

The evening was wonderful. They had incredible food on the ship, and it wasn't at all like "Love Boat" portrayed. The ship had several restaurants, most of them were included in the cost of the ticket (some were extra special, and there were extra charges to eat there). You could eat what wanted and wear what we wanted.

After dinner, we found a quiet deck and my husband read the renewal of vows for my parents. They've truly had a challenging 50 years. Not all of those years were good in any of our memories, but I am really thankful that they stuck it out. I know they have been a blessing to me, and now in their retirement, I know they are a blessing to each other. They've taught me a lot. I was also glad that my children were there to see it.

An Object Lesson in Prayer

Last week, on a discussion list, a friend observed that sometimes you might find yourself praying for something that is opposite of what someone else wants. For instance, like when I want it to just stop snowing and warm up...when in reality, that is probably the last thing that the farmers want (and also, that is the last thing I will really want if a mild Winter means we'll have a mosquito season like last Summer).

Another person responded saying that's why we should pray the Lord's Prayer and other liturgical prayers like The Litany. When you look at those, they don't have the aspect of "me, me, me" or "I want." She called it treating prayer like it was a genie in a bottle (and especially with "The Prayer of Jabez" and so many other health and wealth gospel messages out there, I definitely see her point).

She made a very astute observation. The Lord's Prayer and prayers like The Litany direct our prayers beyond ourselves. They lead us to consider God's will and to trust in it, to look to the needs of our brethren, and also point out God's gifts to us, and focus on the things that we don't always consider in our "unscripted" prayers.

Someone else pointed out that they also do not dictate to God what the answer should be, but trust in His judgement. Also, a very astute observation.

I shared though, that I had once heard a very good sermon by Pastor Petersen where he encouraged us to go to God with our wants, no matter how small, how numerous, and how seemingly petty. God is our Father. We want to hear what is in our children's hearts, and God wants to hear what is in ours as well. He wants us to trust Him. He also doesn't want us to screen our prayers as to whether they are proper. It's okay to pray about the weather, or winning the Little League game, or having my team go to the Super Bowl.

We take our requests to God, He decides what to do with it, just like when our kids ask us to go to the zoo or for a new toy. And telling Him how we'd like it resolved isn't the worst thing either. God may have a completely different way of dealing with the request (and often does), and as we mature in faith, we trust more, and maybe we get better at that, but sometimes, we just know what we want, and we share it. Deciding what to take to God is kind of another way of not trusting in Him, because we are deciding what is worthy of Him and what is not.

When Jesus said to suffer not the little children to come unto Him, I am very sure that if those children knew they were sitting on the lap of God, they would ask to see a miracle, or for that toy they really wanted. But Jesus wanted them to come to Him anyway. And then He told us to be like them.

In the midst of typing all of this out, my son was doing his lessons in the other room, and had started to lose his patience with his work. I asked him what he had eaten, and he said he had eaten an apple. I have been trying to teach him that having some protein keeps him full longer and keeps his blood sugar even so that he can think better and keep his mood tolerable. I told him to grab some protein and kept typing. I heard him groan a few minutes later and heard him snap at his sister. I had him come to me. He said he couldn't find anything to eat. I told him that rather than just sitting there miserable and making Maggie miserable as well, he should come to me and ask for help. He was right, we were a little low on protein...but we did have eggs.

I asked "Why don't you fix an egg?"

I saw his jaw clench "Do I have to clean the pan?" There was attitude in that voice.

My response was to get irritated. It was a common rule that if you cook something, you clean it up, and it hadn't been followed much lately. So I, much more calmly than I felt, told him that I thought he needed a few minutes alone, and he stormed off to his bedroom.

And then I thought about it. He was beyond coping. I told him to come to me for help, and then I sent him away because I was mad at the manner in which he asked. That is not what I was typing, and that was not what God would do for me (though the cool-off period was probably good for both of us.). He certainly has cared for me, even when my manner was not the best. Chris was asking me for help with controlling his emotions and his metabolism, because he was not able to do it himself at that point in time. He needed me...and there would be other times for teaching him to prevent these moments, which in all fairness are much rarer than they used to be. So I got up and made eggs (for all of us), and I cleaned the pan. And it was a much better afternoon.

Sometimes it is funny that at the very moment when I start thinking I am delving into something wise, God shows me my sin, teaches me something, and humbles me. At least He is gentle and kind