Practical Rest: When Busy Women Welcome Sabbath
February 1st, 2012 by Jonalyn
You know I care about resting, that I try to practice Sabbath rest. But I don’t practice faithfully or consistently. In other words, I’m always looking for better ways to practice rest.
One reader of RubySlippers, a woman I met at a speaking engagement in New Hampshire recently explains how she rests. As a mother of three under the age of 6 (Eldan five, Evelyn 3, and Oliver is nine months), married for eight years to a school teacher (Andrew), a regular participant in her local congregation, you could assume Danielle never gets to rest.
Eldan, Evelyn and Oliver
Danielle originally sought me out through emails confirming her prayers for my rest. She’d pray in the wee hours of the night while she was not resting, for me and my sleep. Sometimes we figure we were up at the same time. She’s my encourager that the sleep deprivation will one day end.
Danielle is an experienced veteran on the challenges of rest, she’s also a new blogger at Thinking Out Loud. And she’s figured out a few peaceful practices I think you’ll enjoy. They’ve changed the way I welcome the Sabbath into my life.
~ ~ ~
Danielle, before we talk about how you’ve learned to rest, can you tell me about a crazy moment when resting seemed like the last thing possible?
I can think of a specific instance right after Oliver was born where I was nursing him, Evelyn was screaming from the bathroom because she’d had an accident and Eldan had just hurt himself and was at the same time hollering from his room! Things like that happen a lot;)
I know you live with sleep deprivation. Can you give us a little snapshot?
Sleep, ha! I vaguely remember what that is. Evelyn has been a terrible sleeper so I’ve been running on overtired for three very long years! We just moved Oliver to his own room and a glimmer of hope is shining ever so dimly, but it’s coming!
What’s your Sabbath practice looked like in the past?
When I first read your blog post (Practicing Sabbath: Tips for the Practice) I was really challenged. We try and take Sunday off. We attend Sunday school than spend the rest of the day as a family just chilling, but I have a hard time “turning off.” So the first Sunday after I read your post I “tried” to rest! HA! I got so stressed out because my life with three kiddoes is not restful and no matter how I tried to NOT do anything the more stressed I got that I HAD to do things!!! Revelation!!!! Ding ding went the lightbulb.
Rest has little to do with what we are doing but HOW we are doing it.
The next week I purposed to enjoy my family, and do the necessary tasks with the mindset of resting and focusing on the little things that get so neglected through out our busy week. I just purposed to slow down my pace and enjoy the process. AHHHHH! It is still a journey for me where I am welcoming my Savior along to help my find the rest I sooo need each week.
Danielle and her family
What did a typical Sunday look like before you tried to rest?
I remember before we had children and even with just Eldan we really rested on Sundays. We’d watch football, nap, read, or take nice calm walks. As the years went we got busier with Church and just the craziness and chaos that extra children just naturally add. Sundays turned into a catch up day. I rarely even napped anymore. Sundays became very busy and chaotic.
Can you give me two or three examples of tasks you do during your new Sabbath with the mindset of resting and focusing on the little things?
Danielle with Oliver
I spend a lot of time snuggling!!!
My kiddoes like watching football with us so Andrew and I usually have one of the children curled up with us on the couch. We both also try really hard to share the tasks of the day or do them together.
It makes a huge difference to just focus on togetherness. If the older two are really high strung, we will put on a movie for them in their room and ask them to play quietly. We try and limit television throughout the week so there is no guilt involved when it comes to Sundays!
We’ve also, for the most part stopped going to Sunday evening church. This way once we are home after Sunday morning, we are just home. It helps to not be rushing everyone to eat and get out the door. Also, we can still get the kids to bed at a good time which helps in keeping a spirit of calmness. This just works best for us with young children.
What are some tasks you do together as a family on your sabbath days?
Hmm, it can vary ; a few things that come to mind
~ making lunch
~ watching a show together from Netflix and eating on TV trays all in the Living room!
~ We have several Wii games that are for the whole family and we will often play those together.
~ We just bought chinese checkers (its definitely interesting with a three year old, but it sure makes it fun and silly!)
~ We read out of the Message to our children and will often read some passages on Sunday evenings.
My husband has actually been doing something all the time that has made a huge difference. it may seem really dumb, but our kids are young and LOVE competition. He makes every task, a game. He basically says, “Hey, guys, I have a game!!”
They run in and will do just about anything. So much of how we approach things rubs off on our children and their attitudes. my daughter just tonight helped my pick up A BUNCH of Peas that Oliver had thrown all over the floor! She and I laughed the whole time and she high fived me at the end, like it was the greatest thing she had done all day!
Please understand as well that even amidst our search for rest often chaos ensues!! Its just part of the phase of life we are in, but we can keep seeking peace and rest and asking God to help us find it!
How would you encourage other moms of little ones to rest without making it another to do list or guilt thing?
I have been purposing to keep Mondays (as much as possible) a catch up day. That way on Sundays when I’m starting feel overwhelmed with the laundry and dishes and crumbs collecting, I first ask God to quiet my soul, and then I remind myself that I have Monday to, “get it done.”
There will always be things to “do”. I have to remind myself of the precious treasure our rest days are in this busy thing called life.
What is one activity that you recommend for Sabbath days?
Build a Knex creation :)
Loved hearing from you, Danielle. Thank you for letting us into life styles of the purposeful and peaceful.
Consider the way the Jewish command to rest one day out of seven might bring more peace into your life.
I think the attitude Danielle shares about approaching her Sabbath as a day of togetherness is very practical. Imagine who you could share your Sabbath days alongside? Your mother, your friend, your spouse, your child.
Consider how doing things with purpose and pacing follows in God’s footsteps, when he rested and noticed the world he had made in 6 days. Spend one day in seven noticing the world you’re creating.
Picking up peas can become playtime, pulling out all your books and noting their spines and titles, dipping in, letting yourself fall asleep can become worship. Imagine a day where cuddling becomes the end goal.
Any stories you’d like to share of your rest? I’m all ears.
Tags: family, food, motherhood, spiritual growth
Posted in family, Sabbath rest | Comments (8)
When Men Fall: Vulnerability as a Prerequisite for Heroes
January 25th, 2012 by Jonalyn
I believe that our beliefs about our humanity, our femininity and masculinity directly affect what we will do, how we will grow, how we will fail and how we will recover.
I’ve only 200 pages left of Daniel Walker’s “God in a Brothel: An Undercover Journey into Sex Trafficking and Rescue” (these are iPhone pages, out of 2051). The book walked me alongside Walker as he infiltrated countless brothels around the world, including women trafficked in our own Atlanta, Las Vegas and Los Angeles.
Photo Credit: modernsocialworker.blogspot.com
Each chapter ends with a page of helpful statistics that reveal how widespread this problem runs. Men who frequent brothels come from every walk and every appearance in life. However, he did say the stereotypical sex tourist was “overweight, unattractive and with few social skills.” What could this mean?
Is there a connection with us in the western world denigrating the unattractive and their search for validation. The cult of beauty doesn’t merely affect women. If men cannot find approval here, will some buy it elsewhere.
While actively fighting to record and amass evidence to incarcerate the pimps of these brothels, Walker also leads us to a place of pity. Henry David Thoreau,
“Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.” Henry David Thoreau
Are these men imprisioned by lust and greed or are they truly living every man’s fantasy? Walker talks about the enslavement and deprivation that the sex tourists create for themselves. This made me wonder, what if we rescued men from false ideas (e.g. conquering heroes deserve the fawning of many women, sexual conquest means men are sexy and wanted, sex with virgins leads to purity, multiple sexual partners of multiple ages, ethnicities multiple times prove they are really Men’s Men) as proactively and passionately as we rescued their victims from human trafficking.
This battle of ideas is precisely where Paul says the Evil One wages war. “We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ” (2 Cor 10:5).
Walker showed me how the brothel was as much a part of God’s creation as a crystal cathedral, that God has not surrendered this ground to anyone, and that women and men working there were as much his image bearers as you or me. Walker adequately teaches that human trafficking isn’t the main or only problem, that this atrocity flows from poverty, sexism, gender inequality and addition. I believe sexism and gender inequality is something I can actively do something about today in how I write and think about and love men and women. This is why I co-run Soulation.
In the final chapters I saw Walker break. His story explains why and how, a story I will not tell you here.
Suffice it to say, I believe Walker makes it clear that his broken theory of gender (masculinity means men must have adventure to be happy, women cannot handle certain hard things about life) led to certain decisions (I can’t tell my wife how bad it is out here, it would be cruel to hurt her with this information) that paves the path for his double life and pushes him down a slippery road that forces him out of undercover missions.
He find he needs rescue just as women and children need rescue.
If you have any interest into the problem of forced prostitution, reading God in a Brothel will help you see the layers of reasons behind why women and children continue to be trafficked, raped, destroyed. The problem may begin with men’s demands for sex, but it doesn’t end there.
You may even find yourself part of the problem.
What I appreciated most was Walker’s honesty of the messiness of rescuing others. Especially when you think your own stance is mighty enough to lift others up.
Walker realized, rather late, that his “work inevitably and insidiously began to affect my attitude toward my own wife . . . perhaps most destructive was my growing inability to be completely vulnerable and open with Alice about all that I was seeing, doing and becoming.”
Bingo. Whenever men think invulnerability is key to masculinity the evil one has reared his head. This is a lie.
Neither male nor female can become appropriately human if they are trying to be invulnerable.
Walker’s work reminds me of another person’s. She is also engaged with rescuing children from human trafficking. A new friend, Melissa Hartwick, is moving to Nicaragua in a few days. As she explains,
I’m moving to a place where I will have to have a guard outside my house at night. I’m taking on the responsibility of 5 children, with another 10 or more likely to join me within the first year. I’m becoming a full time mother to teenagers at the age of 23. We won’t have hot water. We don’t even have a kitchen counter. We will live mainly off of rice and beans and water. We’ll be battling lice, ecoli, and parasites, and have very little medical care in the case of anything serious. I’ll be feeding these kids, giving them clothing, overseeing their schooling, and teaching them trades.
I’m leaving my entire family. My sister just had a baby. I’m giving up years of playing with my niece and time with my brother and his new wife. I won’t be able to come home to visit often at all, because I can’t just up and leave my children. Which means that I will only be able to see my friends about once every other year. I’ve also sold everything I have in order to help fund this home.
I had a dream job. I was a bridal gown designer, and I even had some of my dresses in local fashion shows and magazines. But I shut my company down in order to love these children. And yet, and I want you to really get this point: it does not seem like a sacrifice. Because these children are the most important thing in the world to me. I cry knowing that one of my daughters is being beaten, and I am not there to save her from it. I ache knowing that my children are going through pain, and I am not there to help them through it, to love them and hold them and tell them everything will be alright, that Papa God loves them so very much, and so do I. That they are part of a forever family now, and I will never leave them, just as their Papa God will never leave them.
What’s perhaps most interesting to me is that Melissa, like Daniel, longs to rescue as well, and yet, she doesn’t believe her sex is the stronger one. She grew up learning that women are naturally subordinate. While struggling against the idea only recently did she land on RubySlippers and other blogs helping her see another way to understand God’s idea for women. Just a few weeks ago Melissa wrote me for the first time,
I want to let you know about my life work, as I think it will be encouraging to you. 
In 23 days I am moving to Nicaragua to start and operate Casa de Gozo, a rescue center and home for orphaned or abandoned children and children at risk of sex trafficking and prostitution. Please keep me in your prayers, especially as I will be living there and running this by myself. Thanks so much, Jonalyn!
Melissa Hartwick
Melissa Hartwick
I began writing Melissa, sending her books to prepare her heart and mind and praying for her.
I see that Melissa’s desire to help is already accompanied by a believe in her own personal vulnerability. She isn’t winding her gender identity around her mission to save the Nicaraguan children. Instead, she’s giving up her trappings of identity, her career and her family, her comforts and her American future to slip her hand into Jesus’ hand and follow. I pray she will not break like Daniel Walker.
But, if she does, I know the God of the broken remains near. And that this God is ready to use the broken (God Wants the Broken) of this world. The story isn’t over for Daniel Walker, nor for Melissa Hartwick, nor for you or for me.
Daniel Walker got it right, his mission was about Rescue: men, women, children. We need salvation, not by another human, but but a Being great enough to understand our human weakness and great enough to pull us up.
Tags: feminin/masculin-ity, Gender Studies, loving Jesus, motherhood, reviews, sex, vulnerability
Posted in gender roles, God in a Brothel | Comments (8)
How to Spot . . . and How to Treat a Chauvinist
January 18th, 2012 by Jonalyn
I thought they were my friends, they were strong, attractive, Spanish guys. We were in the same honors math classes together.
Photo credit: redbookmag.com
I wore a powder blue fitted dress with white patent leather pumps. The heels were carved of stacked wood, but the dress hit the 4″ above the knee rule.
That day those men started talking.
In Spanish.
About my legs.
Having taken French I wasn’t exactly sure what they were saying.
But the way they said it.
The tone, the eyes, the elbowing.
I knew even before the translation.
The dress changed the way they saw me. And I had worn it, not to be eye-candy, but because I felt delicious in those colors.
Chauvinism in my high school?
Or was is simply appreciation of my legs?
What is a Chauvinist?
Photo credit: digitalmusicinsider.com
According to The American Heritage Dictionary (my fav) chauvinism is “Prejudiced belief in the superiority of one’s own gender, group, or kind”.
Prejudiced belief, that means beliefs untried with the people of this world.
I’ve met chauvinists in church green rooms after a sermon. I’ve shared a stage with them. I’ve worked for them, lived with them, shared meals with them and even dated them. They don’t all look like Dwight Schrute or talk like Michael Scott or score like Jack Donaghy.
Some of the men I’ve loved the most are chauvinists. They assume things that blow their cover.
They eat first.
They are exempt from serving someone outside their gender, group, class.
They are in charge, no matter what the subject, place or need of the moment.
They are top dog.
Three Ingredients in Chauvinists
If you want a quick test for the first tell-tale sign of a chauvinist, look for lack of empathy.
The second is their drive. Chauvinist are driven by the dual engine of immaturity and insecurity.
Take my friend, Saul, for example (don’t worry, that’s not his real name). When we get together, he assumes everyone wants to hear his stories. He rarely asks others for their opinion, nor does he ask them about their experiences. And he cannot listen without spring-boarding, using my example to tell a larger, louder, longer story.
Saul never got a chance to grieve some very damaging events in his teen years. He is emotionally immature. So in some ways after dinner with him, I feel like I’ve had dinner with a junior higher. I feel like I’ve served him, but he’s assumed he entertained me all evening.
His Me Monster behavior indicates, also, that he cannot tolerate competition or someone else gaining control.
Saul’s life is a model example of fallen masculinity, the third aspect and philosophical foundation for male chauvinism.
The code of fallen masculinity says that a “real man” will out-compete others, out control others and finally (and most significantly) have a steady disdain for women. For more see, Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen’s My Brother’s Keeper.
If a man disdains a woman (just as if a woman disdains a man) he will not come right out and state it. Rather, he will show you, by small freighted statements.
Photo credit: blog.amigram.com
Let me give you some examples.
“You throw like a girl.” A clear example of disdain for women, letting a novice female arm insult a boy’s desire to learn. Let’s just say you throw poorly, as we all have to learn.
“Sissy, pansy, pussy.” All of which use slang aspects of women to insult a man.
“Dumb blondes.” Are they ever thinking of a guy with yellow hair?
“Woman drivers.” Not usually a compliment.
“Women can’t publicly preach (or lead, or direct, or manage) men. They are distracting (or too emotional, or weak, or irrational, or just plain unfit). If you think, as I did, that the Bible is clear about this and a woman’s role, compare Judges 4:4, 2 Chron 34:22 with 2 Tim 2:12-15. For more see my essay with Dale, Unmuted.
“Putting on a little weight there, aren’t you?” to a pregnant woman. How could you ever mistake a woman’s new life in her womb for extra cellulite?
“My wife could never be the main bread winner.” This one needs follow-up. Why?
“I bring home the bacon, I don’t cook it.”
“Gotta check with the wife.” This one is subtle disrespect, as it includes a statement of asking permission, but all while reducing the personhood of one’s spouse. Another version, “The woman can’t get out her in time.”
“You have all day to vacuum the living room. Don’t do it now while I’m in here.” I heard this statement this last week
“Women have roles.” Though a non-chauvinist could say this, it is less common. I find it most interesting that it is often men commanding women at large to get back into the role God ordained for them (insecurity over what will happen if a woman is in charge of . . . a man?!). Even if Scripture mandated roles (something I no longer see) it would be women’s responsibility before God to find that place, not a man’s to put her there. Also, interesting that the opposite is less common, “Men have roles!”
“Sorry, honey, but this might be just an area you have to submit to me.” Ignoring Ephesians 5:21.
“Since Paul says the marriage bed is undefiled and I am the head of this home, my sexual gratification should be your number one priority. And I want this . . .” Refusing to see the context of the marriage bed being undefiled (for more see Heb 13:4). Refusing to understand that head is a metaphor literally turned on its head in Eph. 5, to mean first of all service, giving up all rights, including the right to live (“laying down his life” Eph 5:25 and 28).
and my personal favorite,
“God made men more rational, therefore He asked men to have the tie-breaking vote, to make all final decisions in the home.” What root grows this statement? Some might say it’s the natural outworking of submission or headship from the New Testament. I disagree, as the healthiest husbands I know do not pull the submission card, nor state how they make final decisions. Rather healthy marriages in practice look like two equals working out of their giftedness, not playing their prescribed gender roles. (for more on this please see Unmuted: The Welcome Colors of a Woman’s Voice).
Think these statements are outdated?
I’ve heard them all in the last 10 years.
Can you tell how each of the above statements are motivated by lack of empathy, insecurity, immaturity and fallen masculinity? For more on one of the roots for male domination of women see the book or my review When a Man You Love is Abused, by Cecil Murphey.
If you’d like more elaboration or explanation of any statements in this list (e.g. How exactly is is chauvinistic to think that the man should make all final decisions?), please ask in the comments.
Not all Chauvinists are Men
Here’s the most important part of this post: you and I are in as much danger of chauvinism as any white male. Why?
First, women are a (small or large?) part of keeping chauvinists enabled, empowered and cheered forward simply by believing that men are inherently better.
Often, it’s because we actually believe there is nothing so magnificent or noble as a male. Part of this is good, think of the old marriage vow “with my body I thee worship.” But another part is not good . . . I think of Kate Winslet’s character’s comment to Leonardo DiCaprio’s character in the excellent book and movie, Revolutionary Road.
Photo credit: static.moviefanatic.com
“Don’t you know what you are?” Winslet.
“What?” DiCapprio.
“You’re the most beautiful thing in all the world . . . a man.” Winslet.
Now I’m for mutual admiration and desire in marriage, but a man is not the crown of creation and neither is the woman. If you want a crown of creation, it’s the two working together (Gen 2:23-25).
And if you believe women are overall better human beings just by virtue of their femaleness, you are also a chauvinist… a female chauvinist. I’ve seen it in church circles when men or women claim to be more spiritual, more moral, more enlightened, or in any other ways superior in worth to a man. Want some female chauvinist statements? ask me.
How to Treat a Chauvinist
How do you treat a child who is immature, insecure and wounded?
You love her. You listen, you wait and you empathize with her world. Until you find her open to hearing from you. Unless she is your student or child, you do not blast into her world with statements like “You are an immature, insecure mess!”
How do you treat a full grown man who is immature, insecure and wounded?
The exact same way.
I’ve bit my tongue more than once when grown men with beards and degrees and power tip their chauvinistic cards.
I recall a crowded room dominated by testosterone where I met a well-traveled apologist. I invited him to engage with me about the subject of Christian feminist with the question,”How does that argument line up with what Christian feminists believe?” The room quieted.
“Christian feminists?” he snorted. “They don’t exist.”
I smiled briefly and went back to the buffet to calm down. I knew what I wanted to say,
“I beg your pardon, you’re speaking to one.”
But, I don’t think that was the way to win him. He certainly wasn’t looking for relief from his misconception, neither were the other men in that room.
Instead, I worked with respect and peace on the panel next to him. I disagreed about some of the ways he answered the theological questions and I shared them.
But I did not disarm him of his view that Christian feminists don’t exist.
Jesus said it well, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”
How do we keep from chauvinism ourselves? How do we foster empathy and ward off insecurity, immaturity, the fallen male code?
That’s for another post, for I can say right now . . .
If you can battle your insecurity with courageous voyaging into your soul . . . (for instance, discover what keeps you from having an open mind in certain areas)
If you can discover the places you are not yet an adult (I recommend Changes That Heal by Cloud and Townsend and the Holy Spirit for that journey) . . .
If you can cultivate empathy so that you can understand the root of chauvinism, then . . .
you are living worthy of being called a child of the Most High. You are refusing to be a clashing cymbal, rather . . .
you are a fragrance of the kingdom that has no end, where Truth Slips her hands through Beauty’s arm and Goodness graces every person, ever race, every gender.
Postscript . . . Chauvinism is NOT the Same as Chivalry
Photo credit: karenswhimsy.com
Because I have a deep concern to love the men in my life, because I’m also wary of being called a flaming femi-Nazi, I want to be clear about a few things that are NOT chauvinistic.
It is not chauvinistic to open a door for a woman, just as it’s not chauvinistic for a woman to bandage a man’s sliced arm. This is what it looks like to use our strengths to serve the opposite sex.
And it’s sexy and cool and utterly fitted to this fallen world where we need each other. We are not independent one from the other, as Paul said, “However, in the Lord, neither is woman independent of man, nor is man independent of woman” (1 Cor 11:11).
When the Spanish guys in my high school complimented my legs I don’t think they were being chauvinists, not yet. It began when they began referring to me by “Legs,” when I stopped being a peer with them and went to being an object for them.
Chauvinism is the enemy of friendship, love, servanthood.
So when L on our construction site asks me if I need help along the icy hill, I accept it and appreciate him, knowing he is using his awareness and strength to help me out.
Helping those outside of our gender, group or kind is not chauvinism, rather its the opposite.
Tags: feminin/masculin-ity, Gender Studies, loving Jesus, marriage, prejudice
Posted in gender roles | Comments (45)
New Year Wantings & Co-Parenting Safely Through Rapids
January 11th, 2012 by Jonalyn
Dale doesn’t think new year resolutions are all they’re cracked up to be.
I tend to disagree, mainly because I’m a lover of opportunities to change in grandiose ways, ways I can write about and check up on. Dale is a changer in bits and pieces, he’s also big on changing when the need arises. As he says, “I’m not waiting until a new year to change something.”
And he hasn’t. A few weeks back we struggled to find a place for us both to feel like we weren’t drowning (Mercy For Christmas). I felt annoyed and terse and unappreciated. I know he felt the same.
We were working hard, but often not wing-to-wing, more like two whirling tops. Nothing like this morning when I looked up from my laptop and say to him, “I can’t believe how many emails I still have to just read,” putting my cold hands on my flushed face.
He pauses long enough to cool the smoke from his racing fingers on my laptop and looks back at me, “Take them one by one.” I smile and feel known and like he’s in this with me. I feel togetherness as I dive back into the inbox.
We’ve found a new way to co-parent, a way to find time when we need it, a life-giving change.
Dale decided to give up his writing, any creative writing, any book ideas, any memoir hopes. He’s pulled them all off the stove because he couldn’t, in his words, “Do it all.”
How many men can say that?
I don’t know.
But I was relieved to know Dale understood he dilemma that so many women face. The 2:3 ratio.
You can have 2 of the 3: a husband, kids, a career.
You can have a husband and a career, but not kids, not well-loved ones.
You can have a career and kids, but no husband, not a happy one.
You can have a husband and kids, but not a career, not a good one.
But not all three. Not if you’re a woman.
Of course, that’s an overstatement, but does it resonate with any of you?
I sure get it.
Dale’s decided to take a hit in his career so he can be more present with Finn.
And you know what? Just a few breaks mean a world of difference for me, for Finn, for him. I’ve even begun brainstorming ways I can watch Finn longer so Dale can get back to writing. But we will see.
I can’t do it all, either.
We’ve both agreed that we don’t want to see Finn as time punched into a chore we dread. Finn is not time we waste or time we have to just grit our teeth and get through to get back to Soulation. Finn will pick that up, and he’ll understand that he’s not as attractive or interesting or important.
And we don’t believe that.
So, for now, Dale is waiting on his writing. As the resident true artist in our house (yes, I’m an artist, too, but I don’t have the artistic temperament ), he needs lengthy bits of time to write.
It was hard for me to watch a man I know is a gifted writer put that aside. He will work managing Soulation, writing emails, managing writers and video ideas.
And he will work alongside me, continuing to make time for me to write in my fits and starts (like this morning).
For now, we’ve found a boat to carry us through another rapid. It’s safe and dry and cozy–that’s a nice word for small.
And, for now, we’re smiling into each other’s eyes, watching the water and peeps rush by.
We’re not as fast, but we’re together.
New Year Wantings
This year, I’m wanting to read weekday nights and watch fun things like Mad Men weekend nights. Last year’s “Year of the Book” lit up my hunger for reading again. I’m not letting it go. It’s too wonderful.
I’m wanting to watercolor once a week. I will not feel bad about not doing more.
I want to learn Spanish and talk more with Finn in Spanish.
I’m wanting to practice my Spanish with my sister (thank you, Abby!) each week on the phone.
I’m wanting to save energy so at night I can talk and listen and make love to Dale.
I’m wanting to leave my house a little messier and leave those I love a little more peaceful.
God give me my all my wants and save me from them, too.
10 Year Anniversary at Huntington Beach - see Finn's foot?
Tags: envy, family, feminin/masculin-ity, Gender Studies, marriage, motherhood, spiritual growth
Posted in family, gender roles, love | Comments (6)
Smiling Too Much
January 3rd, 2012 by Jonalyn
We spent New Year’s in Pebble Beach at a dear cousin’s home. We walked Carmel’s beach and watched picture-perfect blond women walking scores of blond retrievers.
Beautiful women, beautiful children, beautiful dogs.
Some posing for pictures with beautiful teeth to add to the mix.
Watching the Pacific along 17-Mile Drive
We saw vacationers smiling next to the 17-Mile Drive Lone Cypress. We watched couples cheesing next to Tuck’s Box and along the Pebble Beach coast line. We watched families in designer dress trip merrily along the streets.
We noticed the pressure to be looking as if you’re not caring that you’re being looked at, to look away when your eyes meet another’s. I found my eager smile quickly pushing people’s eyes away, leaving me cheesing for no one. I wondered if I was smiling too much for this area.
But I maintain my conviction that everyone appreciates a genuine smile, especially the most cool, the most surly, the most aloof.
A genuine smile from Finn at sunset
Honest, into your eyes, smiles–a hard won virtue to practice. I started practicing when I left my little Christian school for a public one at the beginning of my senior year. I’d leave for home each day amazed at how few people smiled back.
A difficult art form because you can
smile too much,
falsely
automatically
without your eyes
or, even worse, too long. Some snapshots of some cheerleaders illustrate this perfectly. Their smiles well, I’m sure I can’t believe them.
Photo credit: http://www.totalprosports.com/2011/11/18/ncaa-football-weekly-locks-week-12/
On my wedding day, on the long walk down the aisle to meet Dale, I felt this frozen, smiling exhaustion. Even while I was happy.
I began the walk smiling and then tried to meet each pair of eyes with a broader smile.
Even on my wedding day, I was not okay unless I could make everyone else feel okay. Talk about codependent.
I had nothing wider to offer Dale when I got to the end. My cheeks were trembling with the effort, but one look at him and I knew he knew I was happy, just with a glance at my shining eyes. My lips could relax and sit down until I was asked to turn to the audience again and perform.
Tired, peremptory smiles.
Forced, obedient smiles.
Dale watched a young family with two girls yesterday outside our restaurant. The younger whining when the older wouldn’t share her bread. One adult offered hers, but pulled it out saying, “Now, I only give bread to girls that are smiling. Can you give me a smile?”
How do we teach younger ones to smile?
That is not the kind of forced cheerfulness I want to see, or to expect, from Finn, from any young girl,
from any grown girl.
I’m reading God in a Brothel: An Undercover Journey into Sex Trafficking and Rescue by Daniel Walker these days. I have to intersperse it with The Wind in the Willows to keep from disgust and hatred for men who prey on women and children (more on that in an upcoming post “How to Spot and How to Treat a Chauvinist”).
Walker describe his undercover work of watching the forced, obedient, tired smiles from girls as young as six to women in their twenties, from teens in Atlanta, to women as far apart as South America, Asia and Las Vegas, all bound together by subservience to sexually pleasure a man.
The beginning of doing what we hate, masking who we are, walling away what we feel from others and from ourselves, begins with a forced smile. It starts with requiring a smile to get a child to behave better. It can end with manipulation, deceit and losing touch with who we have been created to be.
But another year of this is too much. Change among women can start for you in 2012.
For this year, may we practice the virtue of goodness toward this broken and beautiful world. We can begin by smiling as genuinely toward the stranger and those we love as we smile for pictures.
Practicing our Smiles in 2012 - this morning along the Pacific
Tags: body, motherhood, spiritual growth
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Gifts of Vulnerability for Christmas
December 21st, 2011 by Jonalyn
To my faithful ~ Dale and I have come to a deeply practical, life-giving understanding. I look forward to sharing in a future post how our new set-up has changed all of us, including Finn. This turning of a new leaf will be an appropriate bit of sharing for the New Year.
For now, I want to give you a reason to consider donning vulnerability along with peace, joy and love this Christmas.
I have a friend that trades with me. It’s taken us four years to get to this point.
We have sons close in age so on Tuesdays we swap the boys.
- Photo credit: Dale Fincher, December 2011
This week, my friend is super busy with work. Still, she made it a point to take time to ask me to watch her son for 45 minutes so she could get some alone time. I was so glad to help, and 45 minutes? That’s nothing.
Dale and I loaded the one-year old boys up and took them to the park.
A rather packed and humdrum day began to glow as we watched F and S giggle over the heights of the swing. We pushed them up into the last rays of the sun, warming them from the chilly playground.
We trotted them over the bridge to the library’s warmth where we played Dora on the computer and put books into the child’s book drop over and over.
Before I knew it, before we’d had a chance to really explore the millions of legos strewn in the playroom, my friend came back, nails sleek and shellac’d ready to claim her little one.
It was when I saw her smile I realized she had given to us.
She gave us the gift of receiving our gift, and receiving well, with grace and gratitude.
We gave her time, to be a mom who (in her words) is safe for one more day from mom jeans and a scrunchy.
Have you considered how the most womanly of gifts can’t be wrapped in paper and bows? Consider how difficult it really is to give things like:
- time
- attention
- questions
- thoughtfulness
- words
- health (if I am spiritually, mentally and relationally healthy I make for a much better friend!) (thank you, Sal for this list)
You could even title this list “The Gifts of Vulnerability” for each of them require friendships with safety, peace, mercy, joy, hope–all the things Jesus meant to bring into our lives. As he put it “Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with them, and they with me” (Rev 3:20). To be with Jesus means we set our purse down, we pull our shoes off, we sit and have warm soup and bread with him.
Immanuel (God with us) means we are safe to be needy without fear. It is the thief that comes to kill, steal and destroy. The evil one’s work creates fear and guardedness. As my mother-in-law would say, “Is something killing you, or stealing from you? that is the work of the thief. It is not from God.”
Like last week, when I needed God’s comfort through the friendship of good friends, I realized that those I actually called for help, those closest to me, were women I can cry with and not fear judgment or quick-fix instruction. They image God’s hope and mercy, love and peace.
They are friends who rarely misunderstand or offer, as Sal calls it “unsolicited advice. They are friends who encourage my instincts, validating my thoughts and feelings.”
We need to ask and receive to see how much friends can give.
Think about your friendships. Who can you be honest enough to cry with? Who can you cry with and not feel like you must apologize for your tears? Who can you share a need with so that they can fill?
This last one can be tricky because we don’t want to demand our friends meet all our needs. Here are some ways you can give the gift of vulnerability to your friends this Christmas.
- My week is so crazy, I feel like I’m going to explode if I don’t get some time to myself. I was thinking of getting a manicure tomorrow. Are you available for me to drop (insert child/s names here) for 45 minutes?
- I have company coming tomorrow and it would be a huge help if I didn’t have (insert child or dog’s name here) running around my legs. Any chance I could drop him by your place for two hours tomorrow?
- I’ve missed cross-country skiing (insert hobby/art/sport) so much. I was thinking we could both go cross-county skiing if we took the kids in the chariots. I’m free Tuesday morning. Any chance you could join me at Catamount?
- My friend/husband/family member just leveled me. I think I need someone to tell me if I’m going crazy. Do you have a moment for me to tell you what happened?
- My husband and son are sick and I need to get to the store. I was wondering if I text you a list of groceries if you could pick them up for me? I can swing by this afternoon and get them.
For me, it’s an honor to know a friend is close enough and open enough with me to ask. It comes as a great compliment. It means that I make them feel like they can be honest about that they need.
And Christmas, if anything, must begin with our acceptance of gifts bigger and better than we ever thought possible.
Photo Credit: http://pieceful-moments.blogspot.com/2010/12/first-noel.html
A version of these words was originally published at my female and friendship blog. Want to read more about becoming a better girlfriend? visit Let Me Be Me.
Tags: friendship, loving Jesus, motherhood, vulnerability
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Mercy for Christmas
December 14th, 2011 by Jonalyn
As a young girl I played “Mercy” with other friends. The wrist-bending game where the loser had to shout, “Mercy.” The word that meant punishment would end, the word that was embarrassing to yell.
Dale and I watched an episode of Midsomer Murders last weekend. The kind vicar with the bitchy wife was the murderer. Several times Dale and I made significant eye-contact over the slow harping way she pulled him down to the gutter. She was Wormtongue, she eroded his worth and his pleasure. In the end you wondered how she played a part in his crimes.
A day later Dale and I would talk with hurting eyes and slow words about how we had failed to love each other. I had hurt him in ways I had not let myself realize. He said, his eyes filling, that the vicar’s wife reminded him, for one splitting moment . . . of me. I couldn’t stand it.
And yes, I had my list of offenses, too.
He had hurt me.
Old patterns, but new ways. The stepping on Dale’s value, the stepping on my time. The juggling of Finn, the lack of sleep, the sexual missing of each other like ships in the night, his desire, my apathy, the current sickness that still keeps my beloved in his bed, too achy to even cuddle against my eager body.
My throat aches, but I will the sickness down, deep into my belly where I am too tightly wound to enjoy food. Finn pulls out of his double ear infection enough to count him nearly well.
But, today I work alone at the coffee shop.
I talk with a dear friend and text another, the two women who hold my hands up, who listen to me crying at night on the phone and remind me of why I married Dale.
“Because he loves you so well,” one says.
So well? I started weeping, even with weeks like this, I know she’s speaking truth.
But Oh, these wretched weeks of sickness.
Sickness without and within.
So I’m watching Finn solo, again. December 1st, Dale left for a Jeep trip and got stuck in a blizzard. Not really his fault, was it?
He comes home more than a day late. I’m left with Finn and wondering when I get time. Alone.
Monday comes and I take Finn to a friends with gladness, so Dale can put in more hours on his memoir on spiritual abuse. I feel I’m contributing to good work. I put Finn to bed and write.
Bump and Stumble and Bursting get penned, but I notice the pattern, that I write when Finn sleeps, that Dale writes when I watch Finn.
I wonder if we can call this co-parenting and shoulder on, not without ticking off my time gone, wondering when I get my break.
It does not come.
Finn gets sick Tuesday and I commandeer his care, even when Dale offers.
Wednesday finds Dale sick, a sickness that gave him one day respite. That was the day when Dale works hard (too hard) on installing a new sound system into the aforementioned Jeep, a system that MUST be installed Saturday because it’s the only day the friend will be in town to install it.
Dale also got up extra early that morning and took Finn to our babysitter, because I was breaking down.
Dale breaks down that evening.
I pick up Finn from the babysitter at 11:30, insisting on watching Finn as Dale says the Jeep’s sound will be done soon. It’s 5pm when he returns and I swallow resentment.
Even though, even though . . . Dale offered to watch Finn all afternoon if I needed it. But no, I could watch him.
I.
Can.
Do.
It.
Saturday eve Dale is sicker than he was Wednesday. The promise of getting Saturday afternoon to rest, of Sunday getting time to me, of Monday, of Tuesday. . . gone
Impossible to keep, impossible to know what to ask, impossible to change.
How can I expect day labor from Dale when light is denied him. He is unwell.
I am well.
Am I?
There are sicknesses deeper than those of body.
I heard God in the wee hours of Saturday night, the hours when I wrench my body from sleep and stumble over to Finn to re-dose Motrin or re-store his fluids with milk, I hear God.
“You are strong,” he said.
I almost replied, “Damn right I am… look at all I’m doing!”
“You are strong,” he said, again, “Strong enough to care for Dale. I made you strong . . .
to serve.”
My badge of honor, my strength, a badge for entry into the hall . . .
of servants.
Can I stay outside that hall?
Lately, I’ve been asking friends to pray for me, for expectation to shift into what is the real, even if it’s a desert of realness.
Desert to me means accomplishing little, it also means waiting without a due date, it means surviving without producing.
My days are slow in passing this December. I’m tired of playing with blocks and doing the dishes.
I’m stunned with ennui and cold.
I cannot make the fire as well as Dale, nor can I clean the dishes or make Finn laugh like he. I cannot make love or make delightful meals, my partner-in-arms is sick. I feel him as a ball and chain around my ankle and instantly feel disgust at the way I feel.
But I can ask God
to
heal
me.
I can become a woman who serves, without storing resentment.
I can call my therapist (which I just did) to request a meeting. For her to teach me about how to serve without being subservient, how to ask and receive help, even (and especially) when the help isn’t the way I want it.
How to give mercy, so I can give it, this Christmas.
Wrapped in my flesh, served without a side dish of guilt.
I just finished A Live Coal in the Sea, by Madeleine L’Engle, a story of wonderful, beautiful, painful life. A novel where the sins of the mothers’ infidelity are visited on the second and third generation, where mercy mingles with resentment.
The title is taken from a thousand year old quote by William Langland, 14th century, “But all the wickedness in the world which man may do or think is no more to the mercy of God than a live coal dropped in the sea.”
All the wickedness which woman may do . . . or think.
Make me part of your sea of mercy, God,
make me learn the gift of mercy to myself,
so I might give it for Christmas
to those I claim to love.
Inspiration from this post woven from:
~ Spoken word poet, Alysia Harris, Cab Rides & The Morning After , disclaimer for mature content and language.
~ Andrew Peterson’s “Serve Hymn”
~ Midsomer Mystery, Death’s Shadow
~ Madeleine L’Engle, A Live Coal in the Sea
~ John Milton’s “On His Blindness”
Tags: family, feminin/masculin-ity, food, Gender Studies, marriage, motherhood, sex, spiritual growth
Posted in family, gender roles, pain | Comments (11)
