Whose Will Be Done?

"Mommy, can you set the timer for one minute?"

"Well, sure, dear.  What for?"

"I asked God for a Creature Power Suit with Creature Power Discs, and I told him that one minute from now in the mailbox would be a good time."

"I have no idea what you just said."

"Creature POWER Suits, Mommy, like from Wild Kratts."

"I . . . don't . . . these are . . . can you just explain a little . . ."

"MOM.  I asked GOD . . . for some CREATURE. . . POWER. . . SUITS. . . like in the P . . . B. . . S . . . SHOW.  Where they rescue animals with their CREATURE P - O - W - E - R - S."

"Ohhhhhhh.  Well.  I . . . um . . . Okay.  Well, let me know what happens when the minute is up."

[three minutes later]

"So, Theo, anything in the mailbox?"

"No, just mail.  But I told God that while you were making lunch was an okay time, too.  So maybe it'll come later."

"Okay.  So, what are you going to do if God doesn't give you this Creature . . . thing?"

"Mom.  It says in the Bible that God will give you whatever you ask for."

"Yes, it does.  But it also says that you should ask according to what God wants, not just what you want.  You have to ask in the right way, with the right heart, not just tell God to give you stuff."

"I said please.  I was very polite."

"Oh.  Well, uh, carry on, then.  Let me know what happens."

The Wonders of Germany (Sort Of), Part Whatever

So... this is what I looked like on the Germany trip:

Slightly rebellious, but presentable.

Needless to say, I haven't cut my hair since, so here's how I look now.

They call me Simba in the hood, you know.

Actually I should say "looked." I got a hair cut, because it's 90 degrees outside in [Our Fair City] when it's not raining, and having the equivalent of a giant fluffy cat on my head, while spectacular and good looking, is not fun.

Because unlike my father, my hair still grows.

But wait... (there's more!) what kind of hair cut?

The Mohawk.

I always shoot for memorable first impressions.

Hi! My name's Isaac, and no I am not a punk rocker and no I do not skip school.

Today is the championship meet, and to express my excitement and support for my team, I got a Mohawk. The team color is blue, so...

Walla.

That's me. Someone call the grandparents, make sure their hearts haven't stopped...

Cheers,

Isaac

Before . . .

Well, our new yard is, to be perfectly frank, not what we (I) had wanted.

It's going to take a great deal of work to make it even remotely acceptable.

It doesn't look so bad if you just stand on the back deck and look around, at noon on a bright, sunny day.

Nor even if you just take a peek into the back yard from the edge of the driveway.

Small child added for scale.

But if you start to look closer, you can see years and years of neglect and bad landscaping decisions.

I'm sure this used to be, started to be, or was supposed to be some nicely-laid pathway.

Instead, it's a sand pit with some concrete stepping stones, too small and too widely spaced to be of any use to anyone.

The trees in the back aren't the sort of trees one deliberately plants as a screen.  They're just junk trees, weed trees.  They've grown up in and around the crape myrtles that were probably planted intentionally as a screen and are now so choked out by trees and invasive vines that they may not be salvageable.

But I have a plan.

I also have a man with a chainsaw . . .

. . . and two fascinated spectators.

"Are you sure it's safe to sit here, Mom?"

Just you wait.

Strange Sights

I've finally seen some hummingbirds at the feeder.

I don't have any pictures yet.

But before they started coming around, I did get a few photos of a very strange sight.

Well, it was strange to me, in any case.

A half dozen birds visited the hummingbird feeder, took turns drinking, and then flew away after about fifteen minutes.

None of them were hummingbirds.

They seem to be finches.  I'm inclined to say house finch, but I'm a little shaky on the difference between house finches and purple finches.  I'm a little shaky on bird identification in general, in fact.

I'm pretty sure these are female finches, but, again, I'm a little shaky.  If you told me authoritatively enough that these were immature bald eagles, I might believe you.  ("Astonishing growth rate the first year, you know.  Often travel with other species, of course, for camouflage.  Remarkable birds, old girl, don't you know?")

I haven't seen any other birds do this, and the finches haven't come back.

Weird.

(Of course, maybe they're thinking that about me.  "Okay, she's got sugar-water out.  That's fine for an appetizer, but where's the main course?  Weird.")

On the Just and the Unjust Alike

July is typically one of the wetter months here in [our city], but these daily afternoon thundershowers are a little disconcerting.  (I just finished reading Oryx and Crake.)

It has rained 20 out of 23 days in July so far.  (And this is after a wetter-than-average June.)

We have reached our average monthly rainfall, with a week (and three "50% chance of rain" days) to go.

The City of [our city] has used the reverse 911 thingie to alert us to flash floods twice this week.

It's been, you know, weird.

On the other hand, several good things have come of this unusual weather pattern.

• Our confidence in our new home's ability to handle water is rock-solid.  If the roof hasn't started leaking, if groundwater hasn't started seeping, if windows haven't started weeping this month, they're not going to.
• I haven't had to use the soaker hoses the structural engineer suggested for our soil/foundation problems.
• I haven't had to water the garden.
• We've eliminated "drought" as a possible explanation for the lawn dying.
• We've enjoyed a demonstration of the effectiveness of the emergency alert system.

All in all, a very productive month!  Thanks, weather!

The Wonders of Germany, Part IV

Our first city in Germany was Berlin. At some point in time, we went to the Berlin Wall, which is famous for its deeply philosophical, creative, moving, and beautiful artwork:

(Edited)

Awwwwh thanks Berlin! We appreciate it. 

Much Better

The shout-out to Dark Knight more than makes up for it.

 Okay, I still have no idea who/what/why this is. It's a monarch or rich person of some kind. It's not doing anything except standing there. I promise the crop doesn't cut out anything. But he's wearing glasses, which don't seem to fit the robes and such... anyhow it's great artwork.

I told you there were philosophers

 At least with this one we know the why, but still no info on the who or what.

I saw this great quote on the wall, but something stuck out, apart from all the love notes...

It's not beer...

 Cheers,
 Isaac

Happy First Birthday, Baby J!

When I was living in Paris, my husband was a pastor at an anglophone church with a significant Filipino population.  My experience at the American Church in Paris is still the most important formative spiritual experience of my adult life (save, perhaps, childbearing), and the Filipino Fellowship looms large in my memories of that time.

One of the ways the Filipino Fellowship mentored me in the faith was by introducing me to practices of discipleship and worship that were foreign to me.  Some of them, I'm embarrassed to say, I initially dismissed? tamed? marginalized? by categorizing them, behind my benevolently accepting smile, as the quaint cultural idiosyncrasies of less-educated and slightly superstitious, but clearly devout, brothers and sisters in Christ.

The first time my cultural superiority complex was chastened was on the occasion of a significant First Birthday Party at the church.

The child we were celebrating had been born a little too early, and her mother had had life-threatening complications.  The whole church had prayed for mom and baby, not sure for several weeks whether either would live.  Thanks be to God, they both did, and the church enjoyed a special connection with this sweet child.  When her baptism and first birthday came, everyone was especially touched.

First Birthday Parties were a huge deal, for the Filipino Fellowship.  Undocumented immigrants, people who didn't know where their next meal was coming from, people who were nurses and teachers and bankers in the Philippines but had left to become domestic servants in Paris, people who sent every spare centime they had to their families in the Philippines, people who worked impossible hours to get by--all somehow found the time and money to throw elaborate parties on the occasion of their child's first birthday.

My beatifically superior smile was in place for the first few of these parties I attended.

"Gosh," I often thought.  "I don't think Dave Ramsey would approve of these parties.  I mean, maybe people who can barely pay their rent should, like, just bake a cake and call it a day."

Coupled with these parties was an equally easy-to-dismiss practice of insisting that the church schedule the child's baptism as close to the first birthday as possible.

This was occasionally an inconvenience--imagine a family that insisted that their child be baptized during a church service that was already filled to bursting with holiday rituals, visiting choirs, or special music whose liturgical importance seemed to take precedence over the mere scheduling of a little family photo op.

Besides, I thought--why don't they have it a few weeks after the birth, like normal Christians do?  (Because, you know, the people I went to church with for the first twenty-five years of my life were normal.  Everybody else was, you know, culturally conditioned.)

The Sunday little M was baptized and feted, I finally got it.  And I was ashamed.

Instead of my usual cluck-cluck-clucking behind the smile, I was thinking, "Wow.  She made it.  A year.  That's something to celebrate.  This once, I understand the party.  We weren't sure this one would make it."

And that, of course, was when I understood.

In a country where access to reliable medicine was still imperfectly and unevenly enjoyed, cultural practices reflecting high infant mortality had not yet been abandoned.  For the Filipino Fellowship, every First Birthday Party was a special one.  Every child was one they weren't sure would make it.  Every first birthday occasioned both relief and profound joy.  "Thank you, Lord, that we get to keep this one."

That was the day I stopped seeing those elaborate festivities as the syncretistic holdovers of an imperfectly converted aboriginal population (not that I even knew I was doing that) and started seeing them as moments of Christian discipleship.  These First Birthday Parties discipled the Filipinos in gratitude and thanksgiving.

Because the Filipinos still knew what Western medicine and governmental stability had allowed me to forget (or repress, anyway): that life is so very precarious, and its preciousness stems not from our control over it, our decision to invest it with meaning, our thinly-veiled sense of ownership over those whom we call "ours," but from our lack of control.  God's gracious gift of medical knowledge and power has not overturned the divine prerogative to give and to sustain life.

Each day my children are alive is testament not to my prudence and care, but to the everlasting love of the God who is the author of all life.  Their health and happiness is not my right reward for decent parenting or the inevitable outcome of a life of privilege, but the graciousness of the God who makes rain to fall on the just and the unjust alike.

And although I don't like to think about it, the converse is true as well: their deaths, too, must some day--Lord willing, a day far in the future--be testament to the love and graciousness of the God who calls them to himself.  For all that they were born of my body, they are not mine to keep.  They were entrusted to me to love, and given to me to enjoy, but they are not mine to control.

I've gotten to keep "my" babies for a combined total of 22 birthdays, and I don't think the gratitude I've expressed to God for that gift comes close to what a Filipino family expresses every time they have a First Birthday Party.

Today, a good friend celebrates the first birthday of her precious son, J.  (She has been blogging about their experience here.  I cannot recommend her blog highly enough.)

Like little M, he was born too soon, and like little M, he was upheld in prayer for those hard months (a bit longer than M's few weeks!) when his parents weren't sure how long they would get to keep this one.

Like M, his first birthday seems set apart from other first birthdays.  I don't recall crying over any of my sons' first birthdays, but I've been crying about J's for a week now.

I'm celebrating, of course, that he has made it to today.  I'm grateful that his family will get to keep him, that they will spend the day eating cake and fielding a hundred phone calls and putting cranky, over-sugared kids to bed, that they have as much reason as any of us parents to imagine his first day of kindergarten or which sport he'll play or what kind of girl he'll marry and what color their children's hair will be or how he'll thank them in the acknowledgements page of his dissertation or which Nobel Prize he'll win.

But I'm also celebrating--well, celebrating isn't quite the word.  I'm also remembering, with a solemn kind of gratitude, the impetus to prayer that his first few months of life were.  I grateful for--and Baby J and his mama will surely forgive the self-centeredness of my thoughts here--the stark, soul-searing light that his life has shone in my own, the divine word delivered through him that I am not in charge, not even of "my" children's lives.