2011 In Review

This was a big year.

In Media and the Arts, I discovered The Civil Wars and fell in love. In fact, in general this year I feel like I've gotten up to speed in my genre of music, and my ipod playlist makes me very happy. I hardly had time to watch movies or read books, but I did finish The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck (and am blogging about it) as well as start on The Hunger Games (I would devour them but I wait for them to come to me for almost free via paperbackswap.com). I've been watching several TV shows but the only one I am really enamored with is Friday Night Lights, which is finished and you can get on Netflix. 

Despite our finances (which pretty much suck), a high school best friend getting married required a visit to England and that allowed us to take a jaunt over to Ireland, my first time there.
Isaac finished a 4.5 year graduate degree in Theology (ThM). He picked this program because he liked that it was so well-rounded. Greek, Hebrew, Theology, Church History, and Bible, all in one program. I was pretty worried when we moved down here that this school would be super conservative and would make Isaac super conservative with them. My fears were allayed after I audited a class with him and all of my questions were met with thoughtful, open-handed answers. Isaac blasted through the program, his GPA rocks, he's amazing at languages, and his thesis grade is an A- (especially incredible because he doesn't think he's a natural paper-writer). It was a long haul and I'm SO glad it's over, but it's also been good. Although Isaac wants to be called "Master of Theology" now, I do think he's actually ending the program more humble and yet also with great philosophical and historical grounding. He may or may not also be more of a nerd. Oh who am I kidding. How can you do 4.5 years of graduate work in theology and not be more of a nerd?

This year is the most fulfilled I've been professionally. By far. It's amazing how someone can take a chance on you and that makes you want to rise to the potential they've seen in you. I'm thankful my boss sought me out and gave me the jobs I currently have. I feel like I'm taking ownership and simultaneously learning/being challenged and simply using the gifts I already have. I enjoy going to work. I feel like I'm useful and productive.... two things that are pretty important to me. In all of this I feel like an adult, a productive member of society, and a part of a team.
Judah was born just over a year ago, so it's mostly this year that I've learned to be a mother. It's been a great year. In the early months I was one big sap over the beauty of nurturing life, and here it's been a year and today Isaac and I were flipping out again over how adorable we think he is with his chubby cheeks and big blues. The struggles of knowing how to balance discipline and tenderness are made bearable by the joy of Judah as a person. I love him. I love being a mother.

We finished up our two years of living with roommates this year, and when we moved out I planned a post about how it'd been. Although we didn't have a lot of space and we had to manage the chores and sometimes fit four people into a kitchen, it was filled with talks in the living room, games of Catan and Trivial Pursuit, and roommate dates. That post I was going to write didn't happen, though, because as the weeks passed it was evident that our roomies' marriage was spiraling and is now ending in divorce. I haven't posted about it because it isn't really our story to tell. What I have learned, though, is that marriage is not our stability, the Lord is, and that divorce affects much more than the two people in the marriage. It affects all who are friends of the marriage, and for us that has meant months of fighting for the relationship, feeling the betrayal, confusion, anger, loss, and walking with Steph through the pain. That was the hardest thing about this year. It's hard to know how to feel about being roommates now, even though it went down after we moved out. The present calls all the past memories and experiences into question, and I guess that's exactly how the wronged party feels when they look back on their marriage as well.

In the same vein as above, I've seen the church in action this year. Our church has a really good small group program. Through this divorce and some other friends struggling, I've seen the church be the church and and step in with truth, love, support, and hope. It's been rough, ya'll. People suck sometimes, and they say and do terrible things when you've known them long enough that they don't keep up appearances for you. Sticking with people and being good friends is really really hard sometimes, and sometimes it's easier to ignore a problem than to face it and be a good friend. Sometimes you lose friends. Sometimes being honest may actually bring them back in the long run, though, and we've seen that too. The leadership of our church warned us that community was hard, and they were right. However, I believe in it more than ever. In real community you can't escape each other, so you either leave or you grow, and growth isn't usually easy. Now more than ever, I highly value our little community group.



This goes with the mothering thing, but Isaac and I have begun to learn to parent together this year. Parenting changes your marriage. Ideally new parents would have a weekly babysitter, have one parent home full-time, and have a room to themselves. We don't have any of the above, and sometimes we approach things in parenting from opposite perspectives. There's been a lot of talking over presuppositions and reworking our schedules so that we are getting time together. Taking a two-day road trip to and from Chicago this past week was a great way to end the year (even if our kid was sick) because we had so much time to talk and reminisce. I'm SO glad that we're pretty good at communication because it's been invaluable through this year of learning to parent. Also, just because something like parenting is a challenge to a marriage doesn't mean it's a bad thing, it's just something that we learn and grow through. Again. Worth it. Thankful for marriage. Thankful for him.

2011 was filled with the unexpected. It was challenging but good. I feel like more of an adult after this year. On that note, the chances I will stay up to midnight? Rather small. I am a boring and sick mother (with a sick baby as well!) who needs her sleep! 

A Sick Chicago Christmas

It's been a rough Christmas vacation week for this family. The road trip up to Chicago went pretty well because Judah slept the entire way. He had a fever when I carried him into the hotel the first night, and that was just the beginning of him getting sicker and sicker. He's had a cold once or twice before, but nothing like this. This terrible cough, spiking fevers, listlessness, loss of appetite.... pretty scary. He's been a completely different child. I considered taking him to urgent car on Christmas Day. His spiking fevers seem to have stopped, but he's obviously still never sick and I don't know if I should just wait it out or take him to the doctor before we leave the city.

It sucks to have all of that go down while we're in our very rare time with family and in our favorite city. We were really looking forward to having him play with his cousin. Oh well, nothing we can do about it! Isaac and I are sick now too, but not as badly has Judah has been. We've still been able to enjoy time with Isaac's parents and sisters and their spouses and kids.

It was surprisingly emotional driving into the city. It's always sentimental, and it's striking because of how much time we spent wandering the city during college. I've spent nearly as long in Dallas now as I spent in Chicago, but it's been in our apartment, at church, at the grocery store, etc. Most of the city I recognize but I haven't been to or made my own - you know? In Chicago as we drive through I have been on every street corner with friends or out with Isaac, roller blading or catering or going to festivals. Every corner is a story to me.

This time we drove in from the southwest, a route we don't usually take. We came off of 55 directly onto Lakeshore Drive in between the Field Museum and Grant Park, suddenly dropped in the middle of memories. I looked to the right where I've catered a hundred times and it was like a punch in the gut, seeing the route the bus took when I sat and talked to Clark on our way to a catering event, the last time I saw him before he committed suicide my senior year.

I looked left then, and saw Grant Park. I've been there a hundred times as well, but it is vivid with memories of Mandy because that's where we always roller bladed to together with whatever guys would go with us - winding through the rose gardens and statues.

Isaac and Judah and I unloaded at Navy Pier and got to see it all decked out for Christmas. When we finished we drove back out off of the pier, down Chicago Avenue, and just past our old house in the Ukrainian Village. I was in tears as we drove out of Navy Pier because again, it was my roller blading route with Mandy, and she is gone. Her memorial is set up just blocks from my sister-in-law's apartment.

Once the shock of those memories passed, we just remember again how much we love this city. It's impossible to take advantage of it and see all the friends and places we'd like to see, and mostly we've been staying with family and nursing our sick boy. I know the photos and videos of the few moments when Judah is on his feet will be striking in the future, when the three cousins are all baby boys and we are all young couples and aunt Tiana was still in high school.

7 Quick Takes

1. Isaac and Judah and I went to the seminary family Christmas Chapel today. I took time off of work to go, which was really something I had to do after last year. Judah was a week old and it was going to be his first outing, so we got all dressed up and ready to go share in the Christmas spirit and show off our little one in Isaac's world. And then we found out I'd left the car seat in my car, which I'd let my mom drive to Arkansas to visit my sister. Totally my bad. And in the post-partum emotions, it was a complete tragedy.

Today I remedied that mistake. We gathered with other students and families, watching Chaplain Bill play the trumpet and Kit Bogan sing a solo and Sparkle (yes that's her name) bust out the gospel. It was festive and fun and beautiful.

2. The whole event also confirmed that I have a very active child. Seriously - our row was filled with other kids around Judah's age. There was a little girl a month older than him that sat sweetly on her momma's lap, unable to walk yet. And then there's Judah, who wiggled madly when I held him and when I'd finally let him down he was off like a shot, practically running around chairs and people. He's desperate to wander, move, just be active. It's great. And it's a pain when we're supposed to be sitting in one place and focusing!

Judah's active-ness is also the reason he has a nice shiner today. He refuses to stop, even when his coordination can't keep up with his speed. He almost always has bruises on his forehead, and yesterday the coffee table got in his way and bonked him good.

3. Loss. In the last couple months three friends have miscarried. This is a hard thing about this stage of life, this loss of new life, the mourning of a child you've never met. I ache over it.

4. I was looking through the photos of someone in Papua (see here, not sure if the album is public or not) and just wondering. If we go there, will we stay there? Will we know it and the people around us the way Syd and Nola do? Or would we work for a few years and then move to a new place?

5. Judah can talk... or at least he thinks so. He carries out extensive conversations with our cell phones, the mirror, himself, and on occasion us.



6. My baby brother is turning 17. What??? MY sister wrote about it here, and she mentioned him toddling around clapping. That is so surreal because that is just what Judah does now, and now the mental image of baby Judah and baby Matt is entirely confused in my mind.

7. On Monday Steph and I made four kinds of Christmas cookies, and we were up till 12:30 finishing up the project! It was completed with lots of conversation, Christmas music, messes, and pictures. Ex-roomie love.

The Road Less Travelled - Discipline (part 2)

Whoops, I posted this on the wrong blog. If you're interested, go and read it here.

Circumcision, Flu Shots, and Birthing Centers - One Year In

Last year before Judah was born, I wrote two posts (here and here) about the many decisions you make when you have a baby. I was still wrestling with a number of them myself when I wrote it. I thought I'd follow up those posts with my thoughts one year later.


1. Are we ready to have a kid? When is the right time? 
Advice for people trying to decide if they're ready or not: Are you newlyweds and really young? Give yourself some time. Are you struggling financially? Please check your insurance and do a little research to find out if you can pay your bills after the baby is born. Marital troubles? Having a baby will not solve them.

All that said.... if you're pregnant, that little one is a person, and focusing on caring for that little person is your top priority. It's no longer time to worry if it's the right time - you're a parent - and it's wonderful. We weren't ready yet and I wouldn't trade it for anything. If you do have a choice, be wise with it the same way you should with any decision.

2. How do you pick a doctor?  

Lessons learned here. I picked a doctor's office that was well reviewed and accepted our insurance and had weekend and some evening hours so that I could get Judah there after work if needed. We went to appointments regularly for six months. Then the bills for immunizations started coming and I started understanding them. $300 each time. What??? Yes, they accept our insurance, but pretty much the insurance didn't cover the immunizations. So - finding a nice office didn't do me much good. I ended up finding out that county health clinics would provide immunizations for $15 bucks, which is totally worth it for me

We've stopped going to the doctor at all, and if Judah was sick I'd probably take him to a walk-in clinic. If you've got good insurance you'd probably have much better luck.

3. Birthing center or hospital or home birth?
Now I increasingly say... hospital. I've known enough people with complications to think that it's worth it to go to a hospital. If you do a little research you can figure out which hospitals are most friendly to all-natural birth if that's your thing, and get a doula to coach you at a hospital. The desire to go all-natural doesn't necessitate a home birth or a birthing center.Also, now that I've been through a birth I know that it's SO nice to have a day of recovery time in the hospital. Even with an easy vaginal delivery I wasn't able to walk for a day and having food delivered, the nurse's help with Judah, and me able to have help and coaching with recovery was really nice.


4. Epidural or Natural Labor
 Hey, whatever you want to do. Really. I did an epidural. I really think I could do natural labor - it doesn't scare me as much now, especially since I know my chances of having a fairly simple labor are good considering how it went the first time around. If you want to go all natural and end up needing an epidural and even a c-section, don't stress. Thank God for the blessing of medical expertise that means you end up with a live healthy baby that 200 years ago would probably have died in that same situation.

4. Circumcise or leave intact?
Hot button issue. Post forth-coming.


5. Flu shots
Everyone in the medical field told me to get a flu shot when I was pregnant. Everyone. Tons of people who aren't in the medical field told me it wasn't necessary. Sooo.... truth is I can't remember whether I got it or not. Neither Judah or I got them this year, but supposedly it's most important when you're pregnant and have a newborn.


6. Immunize?
Again, everyone in the medical field told me this was important. As I said last year, having been overseas and seen the power of immunizations and seen friends get the exact diseases that some of those immunizations protect against, I was all for it. However, scroll up and see my lessons learned about how pricey immunizations can be. Check your local county or state health clinic for affordable options.


7. Breast or bottle feed?
The second option should really be formula, because I both nursed Judah and bottle-fed. He was a good eater and I knew it was healthier for him to feed him myself. Pumping after going back to work was a massive headache, but we managed to go with exclusively mother's milk for 6 months and mostly mother's milk for 8 months as I dried up. Judah didn't get sick at all during that time. We then did formula until a year, which is soooo expensive and I'm really glad we can now use whole milk.


8. Respond to cries or institute a sleep/feeding regimen?
 Last year I said, "If my baby easily moves into a schedule of eating and sleeping, great. We'll give it a shot. But if it isn't working, I'm not gonna force it." With eating we were pretty flexible.  I highly recommend just following your baby's cues for feeding. Their needs change, your schedule should change with their needs.

We argued over the sleeping regimen. Once he was a couple months old I was willing to try to follow Judah's cues and encourage but not force him to go down at certain times and eventually stay down. I really think there's a delicate balance. Babies slowly learn to sleep longer and longer, and by five or six months really don't need to eat at night anymore. Isaac and I might have disagreed on how we felt about cry-it-out, but we agreed that the goal was not crying or silence, but a baby who slept well and had been dealt with lovingly (neither spoiling or neglecting is loving - how to strike a balance?). Some parents may end up training their kids to always cry themselves to sleep by enforcing cry-it-out, and is that really what you want? Other parents may continue to respond to a kid that really no longer needs to wake up and/or eat, never realizing that they're actually harming the kid's sleeping schedule because he or she no longer needs to wake up.

Gently train your kid to sleep. That is a delicate balance and we had a number of nights where we argued about how to respond to Judah. Sometimes we'd let him fuss. Sometimes we'd go get him and maybe feed him. For months now (when he's not teething, at least), we put him down with a paci and blanket and he falls asleep peacefully and silently and sleeps till morning. Yeah baby.

9. Co-sleep or sleep separately?
 Did you hear about the Milwaukee ad that likened co-sleeping to sleeping with a knife? Geez. I guess you really need to be careful co-sleeping. We did a little of both. At first when Judah woke up to eat every few hours we'd always start him in his crib. When he woke up I'd get him out of his crib and take him back to bed with me to nurse. Inevitably we'd both fall asleep. That meant I got way more sleep than I otherwise would have. It also worked because I'm a very still sleeper. Eventually we focused on putting him back in his own bed and that helped him learn to sleep through the night. 


10. Stay at home, go back to work, work part-time, day care, etc?         
Heh. Well. After six weeks I went back to work full-time. Ironically it's been the most professionally fulfilling work year of my life, at the same time as being a mother has been so incredibly fulfilling. Balancing those two things has been pretty stressful. However, it's been pretty awesome to be able to come home and work from home with Judah during Isaac's seminary classes, and it's so nice to know Judah is being watched by his daddy when I'm not home.

Still.... I wish I were the one home most of the time. The truth is that my heart aches for that because I know they grow up so fast. This season has been good, though. Good for me to work, good for Isaac to get precious time with Judah, good for Isaac to finish seminary (next week!) without having to take time off. 

Thanksgiving + Colorado + Family + Teething

Thanksgiving was up in Colorado with my family. My family is growing! There's a brother-in-law to be in this photo, as well as the two new little ones! And this is only the beginning....
We soak in the family time. Lots of talking, playing games, watching football, cooking, and more talking.

My grandpas in the back are so great!

Thanksgiving itself was absolutely lovely. Gorgeous weather. We had something like 22 of us stuffed into a small house that day, so we overflowed outside. We discussed how this is the kid's table, despite the fact that there are two sets of married couples/parents and another engaged couple out of the group of us. When do you stop being the "kids"?

We spent some time looking at old pictures and videos, including photos of me as a baby with my great grandparents. We took the opportunity to take a series of photos of the two great-grandkids with their great grandparents. I'm glad we'll have the photos!

It's sobering to know that I don't know how long they will live and how much Judah will remember them. I actually was nearly in tears over this during our road trip home. You know, it used to be that the immediate family was just one subset of the tribe. Your individual family identity wasn't as important at the tribal identity that was passed down from generation to generation. These days we don't have a tribe, so where are we left when the generations before us pass away?  This makes it extra hard to lose them - they are our only connection to our past.

I'd love to say Thanksgiving was filled with beautiful times of aunts and uncles and grandparents bonding with Judah.

But instead, because of the teething, I got a lot of this:

Oh mom, please pick me up again. Please, please!

FYI - my grandparents are the cutest thing ever.
Oh wait, no not true. My niece is.

A Funeral in the Shadow of Mount Cyclops

At the end of September I wrote about the death of Paul Westlund, a missionary pilot. He died in a plane crash on the island I grew up in. The photos of the funeral, taken by another pilot (Clive Gray), are stunning. They were a balm to those of us from over there who couldn't be there to mourn with the community. It also reflects the amazing ministry of a missions pilot, intersecting with the missionaries who fly to remote villages and the Papuan villagers in those villages.

This picture is stunning. Look at the flood of people coming down the hill. That is the road up to my school where the funeral was held, and they are taking the casket down to the cemetery below the school. I love the crowd of faces of many colors and beautiful Sentani and Mount Cyclops in the background.

The casket was carried in stages, with great symbolism. It was carried by the Papuan and Indonesian maintenance guys that worked on the airplanes Paul flew. It was carried by his fellow pilots, the men he flew and worked with for years, men who have lost a brother and are sobered by the risk of the job they do daily. And then it's carried by the men below, the translators who have been working in remote villagers, enabled only by the pilots that fly them.

The old lady below was at the funeral and was the mother of a Papuan church planter who also died in the crash.


I wept I looked through these and other photos. I saw my friend watching her father be buried. Her brother, wearing one of his Dad's trademark floppy hats. The community gathering of missionaries, Papuans, Indonesians, honoring a man loved by many whose quiet example seems to have gone much further than anyone knew. The evidence of the church as it's grown, from early evangelism to indigenous churches and church planters and multi-generation believers. It's the Church global - missionaries from Ireland, Japan, Korea, Canada, the USA, Germany, New Zealand... etc.

There is deep sadness and yet also peace and joy. I wish I could have been there.

In a bare apartment on Park Lane

We drive to Park Lane, past the four or five other sprawling apartment complexes that house Hispanics, Blacks, and refugees from around the world. We turn right into the complex we head to every Wednesday and drive around to the very back. We pass a tall Sudanese man, two Burmese men in their sarongs (Isaac says, "skirts"), and a crowd of refugee kids playing soccer.

When we knock on the door they answer with enthusiasm and we shake hands and take off our shoes and set our bags on the couch while we all settle on the woven mat in the middle of the carpet. Their apartment is about as big as ours, ours only looks nicer because it's decorated and theirs is pretty barren. They have the couch, the floor mat, and a tv on a tv stand set up with a dvd player (how is that the TV is ALWAYS first priority?). On the wall are pictures of Jesus. They've told us firmly they are Baptist, but all their religious decor looks Catholic to an American eye. There's a map of the public transport system and a photo of the Chin Baptist congregation at the church they attend.

In what was meant to be the dining room is a small table with two chairs that no one sits at. In the corner are two old Huggies diaper boxes, now filled with hand-me-down toys for the twin two year old girls, Mary and Elizabeth. The kitchen is small and it seems that they're using the dishwasher as a storage facility. The rice maker is always on and the stove usually has some sort of stew or curry that obviously includes parts of the animal I wouldn't be comfortable eating.
Dal Mang and his brother-in-law Mung Pi have been in the country three months and a month, respectively. They are Burmese but were living in Malaysia, just like the first refugee family I worked with. That's great for all of us, because when the language barrier becomes a problem we resort to Indo/Malay and I get my personal language fix for the night. Dal Mang works at Pei Wei as a dishwasher and Mung Pi is waiting on a job. Right now he's playing nanny, though, because Niang, Dal's wife, has been in and out of the hospital for weeks. The first week we were there she was happy and healthy, but after that they told us she was pregnant and sick, and eventually was so sick she got dehydrated and unable to keep anything down for days on end. For the last few weeks she's been home but nearly bedridden because she's weak and can barely walk. I can't even imagine how scary it is to stay at a hospital when you know nothing about the language or culture.

Dal Mang and Mung Pi settle on the floor in front of Isaac, who brings a white board and ESL worksheets he makes. They work on grammar and vocab and trying to say the English out loud and with confidence. While they work I attempt to keep Maria and Elizabeth and Judah entertained, which is basically impossible. The girls find Judah alternately intriguing and annoying, and when he walks up to them they push him over or hit him. He, however, thinks the place is fantastic with all that space to practice toddling, and mysterious things like salty plums to find on the floor and eat until Mom spots it (!).

I ache for them, as I have each family that I've worked with when they're new. I think this family in particular catches at my heart right now, when their initially cheerful mother is lying pale and weak in her bed while the girls run around a house and dad struggles to work an intro level job.

Psalms 10:

But you, God, see the trouble of the afflicted;
   you consider their grief and take it in hand.
The victims commit themselves to you;
   you are the helper of the fatherless....
¹⁷ You, LORD, hear the desire of the afflicted;
   you encourage them, and you listen to their cry.

Driving Eastern Colorado

"Granny has quit driving: 1995 Grand Prix.... Will consider trade for guns or old tractors."

That's from the High Plans paper that I picked up during our dinner at a diner on our way home from Thanksgiving. Remember when I described our midnight drive in West Texas? Well, that was nothing compared to driving Eastern Colorado. West Texas has tiny podunk towns and scattered ranches and farms. Eastern Colorado has nothing. I mean... to the extent that we'd drive for miles and miles and not see any lights on the horizon. No highway lights, no town lights, no scattered farms or ranches.

There is nothing there.

It was surreal. Through most of Eastern Colorado we hit a grand total of three small towns. None of them had a fast food restaurant. Where we ended up stopping was a town with one diner and a gas pump (not a gas station, mind you, an unmanned gas pump). The entire downtown would look somewhat like this:



The type of place where you look to the right and left and see the end of the block and the end of the town. When you did hit a small group of houses here or there, they came with signs like this:



It was culture shock, a bit, to realize just how much of a solid block of land this was that was almost completely uninhabited. What is life like for those who live there?






I'll tell you what did happen in this area. We killed about 200-300 native Americans (that had signed and were abiding by a peace treaty already in place). You can see how much we are really using the land we fought so hard to own and dominate:



Life in the area was exhibited a little in the paper I read and the people at the diner we stopped at. Cowboy hats, livestock auctions, farm equipment, and church. It made for a fascinating, if rather barren drive home.

From 2011