I tried to upload a few videos from our vacation to youtube and that was a fail, but I succeeded in figuring out how to add an image that links to my favorite blog’s {pretty, happy, funny, real} Thursdays, converting from blogspot to wordpress no less. I feel pretty good about this. So, by next Thursday I need to have photos for all four categories. It’s an exercise in capturing the contentment of everyday life. You can read about it by clicking the link on my sidebar. It’s the one with the chicken on it.

So many things come up when I try to sit and write, as I have half a dozen times since May, that I almost think God may be trying to tell me blogging isn’t really my thing. Although to be fair, I have spent a fair amount of the time I could be using to blog on Pinterest instead – my new obsession, follow me here – so I really shouldn’t attribute things to God He doesn’t deserve. It’s just that it takes me so long to write anything and it is rare that I get more than 45 minutes to myself in a day. Today I figured out the {phfr} link only thanks to Piggle’s happiness. It’s not every day he can entertain himself for so long.

He really is doing so well. Everywhere I go, he gets fussed over and no one else can withstand his fist-in-mouth grin either. He learned to crawl, sit up and pull to a stand more or less in one week, which lead to our 24 hour sojourn at the hospital because of a fall and subsequent brain injury. Yes. Brain injury. Don’t be afraid, it was a very MINOR brain bleed with no lasting repercussions.

I decided to keep working on this post on Saturday, so I DO have video!! This is Piggle two days after his fall. He is UNSTOPPABLE.

This week he is working very diligently on sitting down after he has gotten himself to a stand. He gets progressively less scared and therefore cries less every day that he practices. He still doesn’t like to fall, though.

I am getting by. All of this activity and growth amounts to Piggle needing me all night more than he ever has. I’m glad I read good ol’ Dr. Sears to refresh my memory this week and to keep me from trying crazy things that probably wouldn’t work anyway just to get some sleep. He’s an all-night nurser and wants to be right in the crook of my arm until about 3:30 or 4 when he inexplicably doesn’t want anything but is just very put-out. Usually that’s when Henry takes and walks him so I can get some solo sleep. It’s tiring. Some mornings I am not fit to talk to when Henry puts Piggle in the bed again at 7 so he can get ready for work. But I’m always surprised by how easily I can get out of bed and make breakfast. I don’t know where the energy reserves are coming from. God is good.

In the intervening months since I wrote last, I have been cooking and buying our food more frugally and yummily than ever before (If you read this and are interested you can scroll down her page and see the “Happy Home: Food Organization” posts all listed) – with a break this last month for our own vacation and that of the family for whom I cook. Cleaning and laundry could definitely take up the rest of my energy, if not the time I have, but I have been seeing friends and reading a bit. So many projects around my house are calling out to me, but as soon as I think I have a moment to start one I realize that I’d better shower or it might not happen for that day and by then Piggle is awake and needing me. I have just enough time (energy, resources, etc.) to do what I’m doing and some days I’m okay with that and some days I’m sad I’m not making anything or stressed that I should’ve started someone’s gift and haven’t yet. We probably watch too much t.v. (which is a feat since we don’t have a television or our own internet).

I want to post pictures of some kind of creative project, but for the last week or so Pinterest has afforded me all the creative fun I have time for. Maybe I could post pictures of food I make if it’s super yummy and somewhat creative. We’ll see. I’m determined to at least participate in {phfr} each week AND to post a weekly video of Piggle for his Auntie Jo WHO…

Is leaving us for grad school in North Carolina next week. Sad and funny story all together: I was crying about this all last weekend and in the early part of the week. On Monday when I was lying in bed feeding Piggle I started crying quite heartily and he misinterpreted my sobs as laughter and started giggling himself. It was just a giggle or two at first but when I looked down and saw his adorable face grinning up at me I couldn’t help myself and started laughing too, so we were lying there side by side on my bed just laughing ourselves silly for no reason. Babies are good for that kind of thing.

Henry is still searching, searching, searching for a job. We’ve tentatively come to the conclusion that it would be really sad and almost pointless for us to leave here. Even IF we find a job that pays substatially more than this one, were we to move to a city where no one we know lives, we might be more well-off financially but I’d feel even more isolated and lonely than I do already. Not to mention not being able to find another church like this one very easily anywhere else. I don’t want to commit to anything, but I think that we’ll stay. So that’s really, really happy for me. One doesn’t just stumble into a community like this anywhere.

What else? Oh! Speaking of my community: I’m for sure going to be on the worship team again which makes me really excited. Piggle spent his first service in the nursery last week because he’s starting to hate being couped-up and it’s a long service for a little person. Plus, being around other kids is one of the main joys in his young life and what better place? They are, after all, his future best friends. I am also entering talks with our women’s ministry leader this next week to reinstate the mom’s ministry and probably some kind of creative workshop nights through the Fall. I’m super excited about this. I taught a jewelry-making class at our Women’s Retreat last Spring that was full of eager women and sadly short on time. I want to do it right. And then I want to offer classes for all kinds of things: photography, writing, painting, knitting & crocheting, etc. Done right, this could be a great outreach ministry too.

Hopefully I’m not getting in over my head this Fall. At least I won’t be pregnant. Hopefully.

Here’s a video of Piggle from yesterday where he’s doing most of his new things:

I said forever ago that I would write about my first best friend. I got inspired on our women’s retreat when a mixer question about your first friend was asked. I’ll make it a paragraph:

I met Annette when I walked into my kindergarten classroom on the last night of the schoolyear for our graduation three little pigs play. She was lounging at my desk chatting with two other girls like a grown-up and had already figured out who I was and that we shared a desk – she being in morning kindergarten while I went in the afternoon. She had curly red hair and glasses and the way I remember it, we spent every recess together after that. We went on to have the same teacher for first and second grade, although we always sat across the room from each other. When we sat in little groups in our second grade classroom, I think her group was holding a mini U.N. counsel while mine was seeing what would happen if you mixed boogers, spit and eraser shreds on your desk. Annette is, not surprisingly, a runner now. She had an analog watch which she could no only read accurately in first grade but with which she could tell a person how many minutes were left in recess. I remember asking her what time it was often and she didn’t even bother telling me the time, just that we had 20 minutes left. She figured out how big the track around the playground was and then how many times we’d have to run it in order to get in a mile a day. I don’t know WHY a first grader would have been motivated to make sure she ran a mile a day. I didn’t even have a good concept of what a mile WAS, but Annette and I ran the correct amount of laps on the track each recess. I don’t even think I had enough sense to be in awe of her. In any case, she wasn’t bossy or showy about her smarts in any way. I think she was the first friend whom I instinctively obeyed because everything she did made so much sense to me. The other hilarious thing I remember vividly as happening at least once a week – although it probably happened only twice – was that Annette would get sick but not say anything to anyone (because she was so stoic) and when we were going somewhere in a line (with Annette inevitably at the front) she would projectile vomit in the hallway without so much as a whimper. Ah…elementary school.

I am SO tired right now. Gilead kept me awake much of the night because he kept losing his pluggie and getting hungry…pesky hunger. However…I am feeling so much better than I have in a long time. I am happy to report that he is sleeping in his own little bed next to me (co-sleeper), I have been working out every day for over a week and now that I’m cooking I have been making myself scrambled eggs with veggies in the morning and I have broken up with coffee. After a HORRIBLE night last week where I hardly slept at all because of too much caffeine that day, I decided enough was enough. It makes me feel sick every single time I drink it and it’s just not worth it anymore. I went on a walk with a couple good friends last week and we talked about how God has to work and work and work on you to make a change in your life and then once you get to the point of actually doing it, it feels like the path of least resistance. I am slowly making changes to my diet. Or, I guess, slowly sticking to positive changes that I think I want to make for good. It’s another thing which I think is a hallmark of being an adult: giving up the idea that you can go on doing some bad habit you want to NOT do and then give it up or make up for it in a day or a few weeks. Anyway, for me, coffee was a bad boyfriend.

While I can’t say that I LOVE cooking still, I do enjoy that feeling while I’m in the middle of it – I can’t quite believe that all these separate ingredients sitting on my counter have become something else entirely under my very eyes. When it’s really working well, it feels kind of effortless. But that usually only happens when I’m making something with which I’m very familiar. My farm products are making a huge difference, too. I don’t know if I would have been able to see such a difference in what I’m using if I hadn’t started cooking so much, but the difference is amazing. It all looks and feels and tastes so much MORE…if you know what I mean. The raw milk alone is so different and so much more delicious than the milk you can get in the store. I almost can’t call that other stuff milk. I’ve even found my attitude about cooking and convenience food changing. Even a few weeks ago I would have wanted to eat fast food even if I knew it wasn’t good for me and we didn’t have the money. Now, the thought of eating fast food kind of makes me sick. I mean, I do eat at Chik-fil-a once in awhile, but I’m no longer looking for excuses to eat out. What once seemed like a monumental effort (i.e. cooking up some eggs for myself in the morning and washing a pan) just seems like part of life now. I like that.

Jenn’s Recipe for the Best Muffin Sarah Scherf Has Ever Eaten

(adapted from the Joy of Cooking Basic Muffin Recipe)

Preheat oven to 400.

Whisk in stand mixer:

2 large eggs (farm fresh and free range if you can get them)

1 cup raw cream (if you can get it)

2/3 packed Trader Joe’s organic brown sugar (TJ’s has high quality)

1 stick melted warm butter (I’ve also used coconut oil)

1 tsp vanilla

Add on top of wet mixture:

2 cups TJ’s white whole wheat flour

1 TBSP baking powder

1/2 tsp sea salt

1/4 tsp ground nutmeg (optional)

1/2 bag TJ’s chocolate chips

Mix on low speed (don’t over mix), divide into greased muffin tins, bake 12-15 minutes. Sometimes I have to bake them a little longer. They are dense.

Gilead is taking more regularly timed naps now during the day, so I can count on some time to exercise and some time to cook. Right now he’s in the bouncy seat next to me and he’s sucking his thumb. It’s really adorable.

That was two weeks ago after we got the Bumbo seat. We are running out of places he likes to be for more than 5 minutes. I think we need a Johnny Jump-up or whatever they call them now.

What else? Henry’s job search continues to drag on. I think this round has been a flop. The newest company he really wanted to work for hasn’t bothered to get back to him. We watched “Inside Job” last night and afterward both felt kind of hopeless about the economy and whether our government really cares to look out for the interests of the majority of  us, regardless of who is president. I have to thank God, though, that he still has his job. We still have it better than a lot of people. There was a brief interview with a man living in a tent city in Florida after he lost two jobs, because unemployment doesn’t pay for a mortgage.

Anyway…we both say multiple times a day how happy we are with our little family. Gilead, of course, is perfect.

A month ago, we drove down to Charleston, West Virginia to visit Henry’s Grandpa, Edwin, for his 101st birthday. We spent less than 24 hours in Charleston, had two nasty encounters with hotel guests, and on our way down encountered something so moving that I’ve thought about it often since then.

I can’t turn on the radio right now because I don’t want to hear any more endless talk about Osama Bin Laden’s death. I heard half an hour yesterday morning and that was enough. I can’t lie and say that I didn’t immediately feel a sense of rightness, the way you can’t help but do when the movie villain gets his just desserts. Later, I felt ashamed that was all I had felt and now, sickened by all the talk, I feel truly grossed-out by this country’s media coverage. “Grossed-out” is not strong enough a word for so many wrong events in which so many nations have been involved leading up to this man’s death. I can’t tell you how much it grieved me to hear that some of his family members were killed with him. I know this won’t reach many people, but I wish our “enemies” – if that’s what they are – could know that not ALL Americans are dancing and celebrating at Bin Laden’s death. I’m not saying Bin Laden didn’t need to be captured and I realize there was almost no chance he was going to “come quietly,” but I wish this country could go about it with grim faces instead of glee. And I feel that the less talk about it, the better it would be for our own souls and our appearance to other nations.

I’m not going to do a “where were you?” thing about 9/11. It doesn’t really matter. I felt like I couldn’t take it all in; couldn’t feel sad enough for what the situation warranted. In a way, the events that have followed 9/11 have forced on us all a kind of mourning even if we couldn’t feel it at the time. I feel really thankful for documentaries like “Restrepo” – of which I have to admit I haven’t seen all – which are doing real reporting about what our soldiers are experiencing during this “war on terror.” We are being impacted, whether we know it or not. I just wonder sometimes about this country. We have an awful lot of freedoms we take for granted. And abuse…

I was driving the stretch to Dayton. We’d just merged onto I-70 going East when I saw several fire trucks and emergency vehicles parked behind a solid wall of people lining a bridge over the highway and facing East. I made a comment about how strange it was and how a horrible accident must have happened in the West-bound lanes. But then the same thing repeated itself two bridges farther East and then every bridge after that. Soon we began passing clumps of people lining the highway in fields and people’s back yards – all looking East. We turned on the AM channels, hoping to hear word of what was coming, the anticipation of what we would see building. We started to speculate: was it troops returning home? Some sort of rally? In all our excitement, we missed the actual reason for it all. Two news helicopters flanked a battalion of police motorcycles followed closely by a semi truck towing a huge I-beam on a flatbed covered by an American flag. Then, for almost the entire ride to Dayton, we passed thousands and thousands of people on motorcycles. Several of them had M.I.A P.O.W flags on the back. A few were towing coffins. We were stumped. It wasn’t until Henry called his stepdad to have him Google it that we realized the I-beam was from the World Trade Center and was being escorted by an honor guard of almost 10,000 riders from Ground Zero to a new monument in Indianapolis.

When I heard what Harold was saying on the other end of the line, I started to cry. I’m still trying to figure out why I was so moved by that honor guard, or by seeing a piece of rubble from the 9/11 attacks. I know I felt a lot more on that drive on I-70 than I ever had in the days and weeks following September 11th, 2001. It certainly seemed like a much more appropriate expression than celebrating the death of a man. Seen through the lens of my child’s life, the future makes me quake. What will happen in his lifetime if these last 10 years have been so full of war and hatred and natural disaster and poverty? What will the next 10 be like; the next 30? How about when I’m no longer there to protect him?

All I know is that I have a renewed conviction not to imbibe America’s zeitgeist as if it were the Gospel. What are we if our belief in a Lord who literally forgave and had pity on his enemies as He was being tortured and put to death for them does not lead us to live counter-cultural lives; to pray for the men who would drive airplanes into our cities and hope for their salvation? Because as I’ve been editing this I’ve realized I don’t want to shame anyone, I should say that it’s only because Christ forgave us as He was dying that we have been given the power to forgive our enemies. We don’t have to manufacture it. Christ Himself is our well. Thank God.

I just finished watching the video companion piece – done by my friend Chris Scherf of Second Look Films – to an article written by his wife and my good friend Sarah about dresses. I was one of (10 was it?) the women asked to be photographed and recorded talking about a favorite dress or dresses in general. The article and video goes live on the Christianity Today “Books and Culture” website later this week, but Chris sent us a sneak peek. I’m not going to link to it because I want you to also read Sarah’s article, which I have not read either.

I don’t want to do the immediate reaction thing – especially because the whole production has yet to be published – but after I watched the video I realized it touched on so many things I’ve been thinking about lately during my hours of free thinking time while I care for a baby and cook. Almost literally, that’s all I’ve been doing. I’ve started making dinners for a local family. More on the cooking later. Not how-to’s about cooking (although goodness knows I’ve inundated myself lately with stories and images of food and will even more once I start reading “Kitchen Confidential”). No…I have decided that I will not add my meager teaspoonful of wisdom on cooking to the sea which is already published online and everywhere else. As other opportunities for me to make money cooking have come up this week I have had to laugh at how things turn out. I never would have thought that COOKING would be my way of making money after Gilead was born. It’s actually kind of fun but I would not consider myself a cook.

In this video I can be seen lounging (with bad posture I must say) in a man’s button-down shirt and jeans with my extremely short haircut for part of the shoot. Afterward, I’m wearing the only dress that fit me to the end of my pregnancy and which still feels flattering even though I can’t wear it due to breastfeeding. Chris took an extremely scattered interview and made it sound much more coherent, but I still laughed at how even the interview reflects the general scattered-ness of my life and thoughts lately and how I’m wrapped up in the practical aspects. After my segment about the impracticality of dresses (because of weather constraints and thigh-rubbage) each of the others talked about how dresses are so feminine and how they have chosen to wear and love dresses to highlight their femininity. Two women in particular – a mother and daughter who won’t even read this blog because they don’t own a computer – had a striking philosophy about the wearing of dresses. The mother spoke of having had a profound change in the way she saw the world after she had a child and how it was important to her to highlight the difference between men and women for her children and to fight against androgyny. I had to laugh at myself for looking so androgynous in my segment and also, I think, for trying to hold onto a body and a way of living that I no longer have.

The daughter talked about her favorite regency period dress she made which has inspired others to offer her free “makeovers.” She talked about modern dresses not being practical and about watching others’ reactions to the way she dresses and feeling amused when they seem uncomfortable. I wish I had had the worldview this girl has when I was her age. In some ways, though I’ve come so far, I wish I had it now. I have a haircut which I no longer want but which I got because it was “different.” Different than my hair had been for a long time. Different from other girls’ hair. Just different. I have a bunch of clothes – and keep buying the same kind – which only highlight the places of my body which have profoundly changed since I had a child and which I now hate and feel self-conscious about. Some of this is due to monetary constraints but when I take a step back to view my behavior it would seem like I don’t know how to embrace being a mother. I have chosen to still receive and pore over Jcrew  and anthropologie catalogues to revel in what I know, even as I do it, is simple lust for what I don’t have: a model’s body, expensive clothing, a lifestyle that looks so perfect and stylish and independent. I watch Project Runway.

Maybe looking at it this way and wishing for something else is just another version of wanting to be different and not embracing what I have right now. I don’t know. The sort of ironic thing is that the more I see these two women at church, the more I have come to see them as timelessly beautiful and appealing in the way they dress, be it ever so counter-cultural. They have been more than a little bit of the inspiration for my making myself a few tee-length gathered skirts this spring and wanting to wear dresses and skirts more often and not to care about whether my legs are shaved or, actually, how good or bad they look. I’ve also been trying to figure out, from a design perspective, how to make clothing that is feminine and beautiful and COMFORTABLE which I can wear to nurse my baby or to be pregnant or to move around taking care of children and cooking. It’s a tall order. I’ve found myself just grousing in the background of all my thoughts that we’ve come to this pass where to be stylish seems synonymous with being wretchedly uncomfortable and unable to really move or risk getting dirty. Not to mention with being uncomfortable with the very shape of our bodies in some instances. I HATE shaving my legs. I HATE tight waistbands around my belly (now more than ever). I HATE the tight crotches on pants when I sit. I HATE high heels and bikinis and shorts and mini-skirts and tights. I’m sure if I thought about it I’d come up with more things. The problem with all of it is that I love, like everyone else, to just LOOK AT what our culture thinks is great femininity in high style. It’s thrilling to me. And yes, maybe there is part of that which is innocently directed toward beautiful fabric and good construction. Especially for me. But shorts? Bikinis? On most women? Come on. Not only is it inherently impractical to the lifestyle of any woman who doesn’t have it in her means to employ OTHER women to do her “dirty” work, but the more I think about it, the more I think that those particular types of clothing (oh! skinny jeans!!) take the concept of particular women’s bodies with what is particularly beautiful about them and make it seem like those things don’t matter if you don’t have the type of body upon which all clothes might hang as though they were on a store mannequin or, let’s face it, a hanger. They also make it seem like we should all have the types of bodies any part of which we should be willing to display to a roomful (or beach-ful) of critical, assessing women and (let’s face it, lustful men) rather than only to one appreciative and loving man – should we be married. Does a husband care whether our thighs feel a bit fat right now? Does he care if our bras push down that extra bit of back-fat while we are post-partum and nursing a child? No! It would be an intolerable world if he did! I think maybe “style” belies the truth that female bodies were not meant to be propped up and displayed and judged. They were meant to work – and I mean that in the best sense of the word. The way women’s bodies actually DO work is a miraculous and beautiful thing. When we’ve got a beach full of women wearing almost nothing alongside a public which harasses a mother wanting to breastfeed her child in public, we have a problem.

Seeing myself in that video was hard. I can’t deny that I thought I looked as fat as I feel right now. The dress was definitely more flattering than the pants and shirt I wore, but even the dress didn’t hide the places I don’t like. I remember in the midst of pregnancy telling a friend that I loved my stretch marks. She thought it was so mature of me. Ha. I got a LOT more stretch marks after that and I’m here to say that I definitely don’t love them at the moment. Neither do I love my big, wobbly belly, my boobs that don’t fit into anything, my everything that doesn’t fit into anything. I have to re-think how I wear clothes. I’ve begun to realize that I had it easy for most of my life. I was always a shape and weight I wanted to be and when I wasn’t it was relatively easy to lose weight. Now, most of my time is taken up with caring for an infant. I don’t know if or when I’ll be back to the weight I was. I struggle with sugar cravings and give in more than I want to. I’m slowly trying to make healthier food choices. I feel bad about my body right now most of the time. I don’t really know what my point is except that now more than ever I get mad at the images that are all around me, and I’m not even talking about the ones which are overly sexualized – which are most. It just doesn’t feel fair.

I was at a baby shower yesterday for a friend who just found out – at 5 months pregnant – that she is having twin girls. I was talking to a woman from our church whom I admire so much and who happened to mention Lent. I said, “Oh my gosh. I keep forgetting it’s Lent.” She told me she thought it was easy to forget as a new mother because new motherhood feels like Lent anyway. Lent and Easter, she said. I do know what she means and am hopelessly proud of myself for being so self-sacrificing (until I remember that a lot of it comes with the territory and it was something I chose) but it got me thinking again about the meaning of Lent.

Thankfully – and I do say this with all seriousness – I’ve had the luxury of coming to understand Lent as an adult with her own desire for a relationship with God. It’s hard enough to think about it the right way under those circumstances. I can’t imagine myself – no I CAN imagine myself – as a preteen staring down those 40 days with a will to do it perfectly. Oh the guilt. I don’t know though, so far the liturgical year has defied my determination to make it about me. I digress.

I will begin more at the beginning. Yes. This week has felt like Lent, for sure. It started with stomach flu for me and Henry, continued with a cold for me and a lot of housework and the like to catch up on, threw in a stroke for my grandma Swank and thankfully has ended with a much-needed reminder of what Lent means at church this morning.

On Thursday I went to what we’ve come to refer to as “girls’ night:” a gathering of some of my best friends from college who have stayed, or come back, to make lives in the Chicago suburbs. Julie, Megan, Becky and I gathered at Julie’s new house in Naperville. We were missing Clare, who lives in Wisconsin now and Heather, who was sick. As you can imagine, I was looking forward to the good food, a stiff drink and some girl talk around the table and, as per usual, it did not disappoint in those regards. In any other regard where it might ever disappoint, the fault is entirely mine. I only venture to write about this because these girls have now been with me through a LOT of years and a lot of phases and they know me. They are also unfailingly supportive, so when I talk about coming away from girls’ night feeling really crappy, I know they’ll understand. This gathering of women is unusual. There is absolutely no cattyness. These women don’t know the meaning of the word. It’s like a big cheerleading rally for the victories in our lives and it’s a very safe place to have a meltdown.

Anyway, I didn’t have a meltdown. I didn’t particularly have any victories to share either. And like many of the areas of my life right now, that’s the hard part. Let me just tell you: Julie runs capital campaigns for churches, some of them HUGE churches. She’s going to run ours, by the way. Everything Julie touches turns to gold. She has untold levels of energy and enthusiasm and makes everyone she meets fall in love with her. There is NOTHING Julie can’t sell and I do mean that in the best possible non oily way. Megan is a dentist who routinely works 11 hour days and has brought in, through personal contacts, probably twice the amount of patients her practice had before she went to work there. I don’t need to tell you how much schooling and hard work went in to becoming a dentist because you know. Becky is the social work director for a whole school for kids with Autism and I can’t tell you how many difficult, unpopular jobs she has done and made look like the best work in the whole world since I’ve known her. She’s another indefatigably positive and down-to-earth person. Clare and Heather are the two hardest-working, smartest teachers I’ve ever known even though they are both not currently teaching due to each having two children, at which they both excel even more than they did at being teachers. They both did grad school WHILE teaching full-time. Clare is an exceptional writer and somehow Heather still reads and has, while caring for her two children, started a business making children’s clothing.

I know I fit in this group somehow because we all just keep having a great time together. But sometimes…it’s hard to figure out where. I’m NOT indefatigably positive. I haven’t had personal success. In point of fact, it’s embarrassing to give updates on my life in this group because I’ve never even held an exciting full-time job, much less seen personal growth or success in that area. I’ve barely even held ANY full-time jobs. Since college, my updates threaten to become a litany of self-pity and so I try to say as little as I can. And lately…especially lately…I feel like either God or we have us in a perpetual Lent. I have SO much college debt and we have a good chunk of credit-card debt – some portion from failed business ideas of mine. Henry is ill and has been for 6 years and it impacts our lives on a daily basis. We’re stretched so perpetually thin financially that I am thankful (so thankful!) to be going back to help a friend from church in a sort of babysitting capacity soon, which has been my only REAL occupation since I graduated. That’s it. I’ve been a babysitter.

Hang on here, I’m going somewhere.

So, I come home and I complain to Henry and I struggle to get the housework done and I feel guilty about not eating well this week and I think, “oh what the hell. It’s already too late anyway. I’m not going to do much with my life at THIS point. It’s impossible even to do some simple crafts having to care for Gilead all day and he’s become my excuse for everything. And that’s it. This is what my life is and I can’t even do the wife/mother thing well enough. It’s been a couple of weeks and we’re already back to the convenience food and not cooking. I can’t even do the MOST BASIC THINGS to the best of my ability.” At these times, I truly don’t know what I, personally, have going for me.

That’s when I get it. THIS is what Lent is supposed to be about. Not giving up sweets so that I can feel good that I’ve gained some personal victory over my cravings. Not giving up t.v. so that I can get on my soapbox about how it’s ruining family life because I feel so self-righteous over having given it up. It’s not SUPPOSED to be about self-denial for its own sake. It’s supposed to be about penitence. About reorienting myself to the way things truly are: that I am IN NEED OF JESUS. Just that, not that I need a little boost from Jesus to get me started and then once I get on the right track I can “take it from here.” Not that I need to spend more time reading my Bible every day (which would be any time at all right now, frankly) or whatever other spiritual discipline I can tick off my list to feel better. NOT that if I can just get our diet together then Henry would get well and would find a job and make a bunch more money so we wouldn’t feel so desperate all the time. NO!!!! This, how I feel right now, THIS is the point: me on the floor, spent, understanding that there IS no “getting it right;” that all I have is Jesus. Not a method or a diet or a f*^%ing boost. Just Jesus. A person. And I need Him.