Looking back and challenged by today

Before we left Bolivia, one of our dear teammates gave us a beautifully bound wooden book with a pink butterfly tile mounted on the front and brown paper pages.  I decided rather quickly that I wanted to make it into a baby book for Jubilee.  I'm somewhat artistic and love to write, but I'm not much for scrap booking.  I don't have the patience or creativity to cut out paper with special scissors or come up with fun captions and such.  So, I'm thinking I'll try to do more of a baby journal, with pics and some of the normal baby books things like "firsts" and birth facts and the like.  Scotty is out of town for a few weeks and I find myself with time on my hands in the evening.  I'm finding these nights to be very productive, whether it's catching up with reading, calling friends, or just working a little on projects that I've thought about but haven't made any progress on.  Tonight, I finally typed out some ideas of stuff I want to write in Jubilee's book and it's been a good mental walk through of the last 7 months and reminder of how God has graciously worked in my life in that time.  It seems like eons ago that I found out I was pregnant.  I think anything pertaining to our life in Bolivia just feels like it was long ago because we are in such a different world here.  Thankfully, bed rest seems like it was a long time ago and I actually don't look back with any sort of bitterness because God blessed me so greatly during that time.  I saw a whole new depth of sacrificial love coming from my husband, a new sense of community through the families who reached out to us in the neighborhood, made some precious memories with my compassionate little 3 year old who loved just to sit by me and be together, and generally felt so insanely well-cared for that I have no complaints that are worth voicing.  I also wrote a bit about God's divine intervention in my fear-clouded mind at the beginning of the pregnancy and the way that He powerfully pulled me from that dark place to a place of resting in Him and His ability to wholly care for us.  I haven't even gotten to the part where we arrive in the states and might need to reserve a whole chapter for the awesome ways that God has worked things out for this home assignment.  Wow!  I struggle(d) so much after Zion died with thinking that God could only reveal deep things about Himself in my life through suffering, but I get the feeling He's proving me wrong on that one and going crazy to show me how much He delights in blessing me.  It is good and so undeserved.

I'm loving that this time is allowing me to slow down and take deep breaths.  Yoga videos especially help with that.  Seriously though, it is hard even when you don't have a lot of responsibility and there are 2 extra family members to help occupy the time of your one child, to slow down and be at rest.  Truly there are an infinite number of ways to fill your time, stay "busy", make unnecessary things necessary, and generally move yourself quickly through life without doing a whole lot of worthwhile things or taking time to see God.  I've even found myself less involved with Natty these days because she is so entertained by my parents and I have other things I "need" to be doing.  I'm starting to realize how little time is left before a new baby will be on the scene and I won't be able to hang out with Natty as much as I might like.  I want to carve out special time for the two of us, especially while Scotty is out of town.  I also want to take more time to pray.  For those of you who think (and I'm so one of you) that if you just had more time to pray, you would do it more often...I bet it wouldn't be as easy as you think.  I have enjoyed consistent Bible reading and prayer with my coffee in the morning, but how awesome would it be to take even more time- by myself and with my husband??  I'm going to work on this while Scotty is gone, too.  And, I want to remember what I learned while on bed rest- sometimes not doing anything is the best thing you can do!  I felt so justified in just sitting around the house all day with my daughter because I knew it was what I had to do to take care of myself and my unborn child.  So, I delighted in snuggling on the couch with Natty and playing toddler computer games.  I loved just hanging out with a mom from church and talking about everything and nothing.  Natty and I would sit on her bedside and stare out the window and play "I spy".  All of these things were more enjoyable when there was nothing else that could take me away from doing them- I wasn't allowed to do anything else.  But here, now that I am free, everything else vies for my time and attention.  Have we been to the library recently?  Or had a play date?  Or gone shopping?  Or any number of other things that concern only me?  It's hard for me just to sit down with my daughter and play uninterruptedly for much time at all before my mind starts wandering to how we can "maximize" our time in the states.

Anyway, I digress.  Doctor's appointment in the morning.  The first of my weekly visits until the end.  Believing all will be well!

Donuts and gators

So we had a family afternoon today and decided to start out the activities with a trip to Krispy Kreme.  Next to birthday cake, this is probably my favorite sweet treat.  I always have the same experience when I eat a KK donut.  First, is the heavenly flavor that just doesn't compare to anything else in the world.  The donut always disappears too fast and before I know it, my hands are empty and my belly is feeling sugary and in need of some kind of protein to balance the extremeness.  Then, the doubt sets in.  Should I have gotten the plain, classic, glazed?  What about the raspberry filled?  Did I justify consuming these calories and artificial ingredients with the perfect snacking experience?  Did my hips just expand by 5lbs.??  I usually get over that line of thought quickly enough, but it always pops up and darkens my KK experience just a little.  Today, the three of us sat at an old-fashioned counter happily munching our donuts, sipping milk and trying to get a glimpse of donut-making action in the back factory.  Natty always goes for sprinkles and did a much better job of nursing hers along to "rest" in between bites.  We reminded her that as soon as she finished, we would head over to the lake on campus to look for alligators.  We wrapped it up and drove to my alma mater- a beautiful, Florida campus filled with brick buildings and big oak trees and thin, tan girls running in short shorts.  Today was the perfect winter day- blue skies empty of clouds and cool enough to warrant a long-sleeved shirt.

 Scotty dropped me and Natty off by the lake and we sat down on a park bench to wait for him to park and to scope out potential alligator spots.  I think that I've never not seen a gator when walking around this lake, but today we were out of luck.  We enjoyed throwing things in the water to attract fish, walking the dirt paths, scuffling in the dead leaves, calling the gators and snapping photos.  This kind of day is what I dreamed of while sitting on my tush in La Paz, hoping that I could participate in these types of activities with Natty and Scotty.  Scotty and I reminisced about the day we went to the lake and had a friend take engagement pictures of us shortly before we were married.  It felt a little odd to be walking on the same campus, 10 years after graduating (no way!) as a young, naive girl to current day me with my husband, daughter and baby-to-be.  But, it was just the kind of thing we love to do and as much of a bummer as it was to not see any gators, it sure was another fulfillment of so many hopes and dreams I had before coming back.

I am an introvert.

It's gorgeous weather today- perfect blue skies and temps in the high 60s.  There are few leaves on the trees right outside my bedroom window, which makes it look more wintry than it really feels.  I'm trying to finish up my book about introverts in the church and decide if I agree completely with everything the author believes about how introverts should think and respond to the practices of mainstream, American evangelical churches.  I have wrestled all my life with my tendencies toward being solitary and independent, because it is easiest and most comfortable to me, in the context of Christian community.  I know that it is healthy to push myself a bit in these areas and be an active part of the bigger picture.  The challenge is figuring out how much a part of that picture I "should" incorporate into my daily life and walk with the Lord and how much to accept the personality that God has given me and work within the introverted mindset, knowing that we all make up the different parts of the body of Christ.  This book has definitely given me some ideas to chew on, but I feel like I've been led to believe for so long that an extrovert fits into the church more easily, that I don't know if I'm sorting through these issues with that stuck in the back of my mind or if I'm uncomfortable with some of the author's theories because they don't strike me as particularly Biblical.  It's all a bit muddled at the moment...  One thing that rang very true to me was a list of introvert attributes, most of which I resonate completely with.  I'll list those here:

1.  Prefer to relax alone or with a few close friends
2.  Consider only deep relationships as friends
3.  Need rest after outside activities, even ones we enjoy
4.  Often listen but talk a lot about topics of importance to us
5.  Appear calm, self-contained and like to observe (notice the word "appear"- things aren't always inside as they seem on the outside)
6.  Tend to think before we speak or act
7.  May prefer a quiet atmosphere
8.  Experience our minds going blank in groups or under pressure (yes yes yes!)
9.  Don't like feeling rushed
10.  Have great powers of concentration
11.  Are territorial- desire private space and time
12.  May treat their homes as their sanctuaries
13.  May prefer written communication (hence, the blog)
14.  Do not share private thoughts with many people.  Scotty found this one particularly amusing as my blog has led me to share very private thoughts with lots of people.  But, the benefit of writing for an introvert is that I don't have to tell any of you these things face to face, which would be much harder for me.

Can you see how many of these might make being a missionary very challenging??  There are certain expectations of having the right answers in the moment, always being available for people, having an "open-door" policy at your home, leading Bible studies, etc... that don't come at all naturally for me.  I have realized more and more that my struggles relate to being an introvert, but for a long time, I just thought I was a selfish person.  Ok, well, I really am, but it's not just that.  It's good that the author leads you through some practical steps to determining what you might need to incorporate into your life as an introvert to be able to find the refreshment and times of reflection that fill you up for continued ministry.  Scotty has done a good job helping me do that and trying to protect me from too much activity, even when I know he doesn't understand my hesitance.

Well, I could go on, but I wasn't even planning on blogging on this subject to such depth today.  :)  I'll save other thoughts for another day.

Scars.

As you ladies (or husbands of ladies) who have had C-sections know, the major surgery that brings your baby into the world leaves a scar.  The mark probably varies from woman to woman, but the scar left on my body from Zion is pretty thick, pretty hard and a bit crooked.  The last time I was at the doctor, he mentioned cleaning up the scar when he does the C-section for Jubilee.  He said he'd cut out the old scar and somehow close the new incision from underneath in a way that leaves something smaller, lighter, less noticeable.  That sounded good.  When we were worshiping at church this morning and pondering what God has ahead of us in the new year, I felt Him guiding my thoughts back to the conversation with the doctor about my scar and showing me that He was going to do some metaphoric scar lifting as well.  Throughout this pregnancy, I've felt led to believe that it was going to be different this time.  God has been challenging me to believe He could and would do a new thing that turns out differently from what we experienced with Zion and to trust that Jubilee, as her name implies, will bring us great joy and rejoicing.  Today, I felt like He was telling me that He was going to use her birth- a healthy, uneventful, good one- to cut some of the ugliness out of the scars on my heart left from losing my son.  Experiencing what I've come to believe just isn't possible for me- a good and normal outcome of pregnancy- will be used by the Lord to soften that scar that losing a baby too early left behind.  He's going to cut that ugly scar away and what will be left will still be a mark- each baby leaves a profound one behind in one way or another and I wouldn't want to ever lose the marks Zion left on our lives.  However, He's going to stitch differently this time in a way that makes that wound a bit smaller and brings healing.  As often as I've gotten this impression, I still have a hard time believing that it could be true for me.  I wrestle with not wanting to give into the sense of relief that because I want to somehow prepare myself for the worst, or at least something hard. He's already been so good to give me this period of rest and joy and actual enjoyment of my pregnancy that I was longing for- but it still isn't enough sometimes.  I even almost chose to not write this blog until after Jubilee would be born, in case it didn't turn out as I great as I'm hoping...  But, maybe this year God is wanting me to not only believe in, but experience in a new way the good and enjoyable gifts He loves to give His children.  This part of His character is something I've doubted from time to time since losing Zion.  I'd love to be taught otherwise.