First Reflections on Being a Momma

Yesterday was my third prenatal doctor visit, the first quickie. The doc put the stethescope-type thing on my tum and before she could finish saying "Let's hope the baby cooperates" we all three could hear a really hearty swish-swish-swish-swish heartbeat. It's something next to magical, let me tell you. It's Lovely.

Rarely are there moments when you reach a certain happiness, and when you do, there's no telling how you'll react. Watching this baby grow is among my happiest experiences. And I've found I'm a blissful laugher. There's nothing funny to the situation, but laughing is all I can do. My friend Sheri wisely pointed out today that this gives me better perspective on Isaac's name. I laughed, okay.

After the magic moment had passed, my amazing blood pressure had been confirmed, my weight found to be still the same (I've lost and gained back poundage leaving me at my pre-preggs weight...something's about to change, I expect), and our next appointment scheduled, Keith and I got in the car to head home. I started thinking back on hearing for the first time our baby's heart pumping blood through it's little peach-sized body. We've had the opportunity to see Baby Bean twice on sonogram and see the heart beating, but we've never heard it.

I said outloud how awesome it was to hear our baby's heart, and then did what any other savvy person in 2009 would do -- mass texted my family. My mom wrote back that hearing your baby's heartbeat is one of the best experiences of your life. Instead of agreeing with her in my head though, I immediately dissected her statement. My mom's speaking from experience; she heard my heartbeat when I was the size of a peach. My heart beating was her baby's heart beating. But how can that be, since it's always been mine.

All this time, Baby Bean has been our baby, but for the first time, I realized the enormity to procreation -- Baby Bean is our baby, yes, but Baby Bean is also Baby Bean. An individual, who will consider its heart beating to be its own heart, not the heart of its parents. How existential, you're thinking. But seriously, when this baby's born, it'll be our child forever, and its self forever, rarely thinking on what it means to be our child, whose heart was beating inside me, like my own. It's a lot more than just having the same last name, similar looks and manerisms, and the same family history.

Baby Bean had always been indistinguishable from me until yesterday. How strange to realize that I'm carrying someone else's self around, as much as it is also mine. How neat. How ineffable a thought. There's a lot more to this being a momma stuff than morning sickness and diapers, that's the truth.

No Comfort or Aid for the Enemy -- No Way?

A few weeks ago Keith and I were innocently roadtripping to Chicagoland, singing to Christmas music, looking out the window, when all of a sudden I was accosted by this on the back of a semi-truck:

Behold, the exact antithesis to Jesus's message, preaching, LIFE, was plastered on the back of a U.S.-goods carrier. What is going on in this "Christian country" of ours? One conclusion to draw, which I have drawn already, is that the United States of America is not a Christian country, and any icon with an American flag coupled with a statement boasting of hate for the enemy rather than love seals that deal.

This is not to say that Christians don't reside in this country, or that God is not present here. America is simply not a Christian country, but is she a Christian nation? What's the difference? Is there one? I'm only using the word "nation" because of its strong biblical overtones. Nation, from the Greek ethnes, is a people-group, not a municipal, government-organized State with a ruler. People-groups live within countries; they did in first-century Rome, and they do now.

Something I'm trying to understand is that there is no more Israel. I could get tarred and feathered for saying that, according to one radio talk-show in particular, but I can't be convinced any other way. The biblical Israel is gone, the one with whom God covenanted and shared his prophets and miracles. They finally said "no" so God finally said "no," and, thus, his grace is all the greater in Emmanuel. But any idea that America is an Israel of the 20th- and 21st-centuries just doesn't float many boats any more. How can a Christian nation (that had no president, no concept of secular law, a year of Jubilee for crying out loud!) exist in the form of the United States, or any country now? It can't. It's gone. Israel began handing out her purity when she begged God for a king, and now we still have what she asked for.

I just wonder, who here loves their enemies? Who believes Jesus really told us to love those who hate us and strike us and kill us? What would happen if we did love them, whomever they are? Our war enemies? Is this impossible?

The Beginning

Books inspire me. Not all books. Good books. Well, not all good books either. Uniquely good books that strike a vein carrying a flavor of off-beat, turn-your-world-upside down blood that runs through a few of my veins, on occassion.

I named this blog after one of these books, Till We Have Faces, by C. S. Lewis. It's a book you do a lot of treading in, head-scratching, almost quitting, and, in the end, crying over. It's quite a novel. The story-teller and protagonist is named Orual, and she's looking, looking, looking for true love, or rather, an ability for herself to be able to love truly. In the end, she discovers her ugliness and embraces an agape-sque love. Really remarkable.

We all need to vent, to our best friends or spouses or unfortunate baristas caught up in the morning rush of coffee and scones. We all need to challenge what we think of as love, what our families think of love, what our country thinks of love, what our world thinks of love.

This is an unashamed Jesus-follower blog. I'm trying desperately to find him in this world, and find how his Truth fits into 21st-century Earth (or rather, how Earth fits into his Truth?). I want to air my dirty laundry thoughts, my questions, and hear yours, if you've got any. I learn best through talking "it" out and having my conviction or idea challenged. Challenge or commiserate away. Here we go!