Late May in the Garden

Late May in the garden is:

Everything running rampantly green...

 I now understand the "growing like a bean stalk" metaphor. These guys are taking off up the trellis! On the right hand side of this picture you can see the delicata squash I've got started in the middle of the patch.

Hunting for cabbage worms...

In my kale, broccoli and cabbage plants. I'm spraying, but also picking off worms by hand.

Successfully growing something I've never grown before!

My sugar snap peas are just about as tall as I am and FULL of little white blossoms.

The snow peas are a dwarf variety, so they're not as tall, but also producing blossoms well.

This greens patch is about to get mostly eaten up in salads this week, to make more room for that cucumber plant in the top left. I did that on purpose! I have more lettuce and spinach coming up in a different patch.

The zucchini plant is also expanding nicely. It's in the middle of the sugar snap pea trellis. When they're done a few weeks I'll pull them out and let the zucchini get nice and big.

I have a hard time getting a great shot of the whole garden, but I love how GREEN it is! Everything is growing!

From Understanding to Faith

Another reflection on the lectionary reading.

Lately I've seen a higher number of urgent requests for prayers, both who I know and in social media: a coworker with a close friend dying, a mom with cancer, a grandparent in decline, a newborn who's not going to live. Then there were prayers of blessings I wanted to send out, healthy babies being born and celebrated. Perhaps there are always this many prayer requests in my newsfeed but I don't notice them. But I noticed them this time and I felt a little hopeless. I thought about these people and I thought about prayer the entire way home on Tuesday. I left the radio off and hoped my prayers while driving counted. I thought about the fact that a life in ministry means receiving a lot more urgent prayer requests. I thought about praying for people through social media and what does that mean?

My upbringing taught me about the power of prayer. Prayer heals all manner of sickness, physical, emotional, relational. I believe that. I believe that God hears our prayers directly from our hearts and it doesn't really matter how we say or think them in the English language. But when you're feeling weighed down it's heartening to read in your lectionary passage:

...the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit...

Romans 8: 26-27

"Intercedes with sighs too deep for words...who searches the heart..."Such beautiful words about God's relationship with us. God does not rely upon words as a method of communication. Sometimes it takes a beautiful, truthful passage like this that transforms my "understanding" that God hears our prayers (even in the car) back into faith.

Caleb - 16 Months

Caleb at sixteen months is a 2 foot tall spitfire of a child. He's off and running from the moment he awakes to the moment he goes down. We've got a fun routine where I get him up, changed and dressed for the day, then say "Go find Daddy for breakfast!" He runs as fast as he can across the length of the house to find Brian sitting in the kitchen, waiting for him and he always giggles and hollers when he sees Daddy. It's the cutest thing ever and I love that I don't have to carry him around as much. For the most part he's a happy kid, full of smiles and giggles, but that toddler stubbornness has emerged in full force. When he wants something, he can make it fully clear.

little boy, big personality

His favorite thing to do is go outside. He wants to run around, to grab dandelions, play with the other kids on our street. He wants to be taken for a ride in the stroller, and he tells you by getting the stroller and trying to pull it out of the garage himself. He prefers not to walk on the grass. He waves excitedly at anybody passing by. He assumes everyone, especially kids, want to be his friend and will walk right up to them and ask for the ball they are playing with. He runs with abandon, propelling those tiny legs forward with no regard for the hard pavement below.

A special treat: homemade strawberry ice cream

His favorite foods continue to be fruit: applesauce, mandarin orange. And french fries. He's shown an interest in my green smoothies, mostly because they taste like fruit! And yogurt, he'll eat an entire cup for a snack. The new food I was surprised by with him is corn dogs. That kid will eat a corn dog like nobody's business. He's still at the stage where, when he's full, he's full. There's no, "but I want dessert."

Daddy's little helper in the workshop

Post-dinner is chase time. No matter when we are, when he's done, he expects someone to get up and chase him around. Maybe this is what they do at school? It's certainly what he does with Daddy!

A rare Mommy-baby photo

We've quit bottles altogether, as of a couple weeks ago. We no longer have to do a "nighttime" drink. He's still in cloth diapers on the weekends (pray Jesus for saving money on diapers.) He's not talking much at all yet, but he's babbling like crazy in long sentences. I swear, when he does start talking it's going to be in full sentences, not a word here and there. He loves his sleep and continues to be the best baby when it comes to sleeping.

Mondays are hard, yo...

As always, it seems like the current stage is the best stage, even if we're seeing defiance in our little guy's eyes. We can't wait to start on swim lessons, take Caleb to the beach and see what words he starts with first...

Reading in his underwear. As you do.

Self-care, the church and holding it together

I recently had a meeting with my pastors and a church committee in which I was asked about self-care. You have to understand that this was a meeting to hear about my call to ministry and it had completely come off the rails. Since then I've been doing a lot of prayer and introspection about why that meeting was so difficult and I've come up a few understandable reasons, but back to the question of self-care.

Self-care?? I have no idea what look I gave my pastor because I was mostly trying not to cry at that moment, but he oh so helpfully responded "You know, they'll want to hear if you spend 30 minutes on the bike in the evening or something." Thirty minutes on a bike?? In the evening?? I thought. Do you people not understand that I have a full time job, a child, a husband, meals to be made, a house to be kept somewhat clean and I'm about to take on seminary? I'm going to need to join a gym to check mark a box for ordination??? I attempted to quiet my brain. Just get through this meeting, Amy. Breathe, focus, you're almost done. 

I'm not really sure what happened between then and when the committee (all of whom, except for my pastors, I'd never met or seen before) prayed over me, but I did finally get to gather up my shredded diginity and flee. (I headed home. It was my husband's birthday. I really, really tried not to make it all about my awful meeting and ruin it, but I totally failed. It was a rough day.) It was a few more days before I could muster the courage to email my pastor and ask for a lunch meeting to dissect the humiliation of this meeting. She told me to be kind to myself. With the exception of letting the housework pile up, where my kindness grows in abundance, that's not my strong suit.

But I was still thinking about self care. It's a question I'm going to have to answer in the future. The first things that come to mind is therapy and working out. It makes me want to roll my eyes. I've never had therapy, I didn't grow up in a family that utilizes it. It was something that people on tv, wealthy people, people with a lot of time on their hands, used. I now have lots of friends that utilize therapy as part of self-care and I respect that, but I haven't dipped into those waters yet. And working out? That goes back to the issue of 24 hours in a day and my lack of motivation. But I kept thinking about what self-care really means, beyond the surface, and here's what I see in my life as self-care. I think it's a pretty damn good list.

1: Sleep. I prioritize sleep and a consistent sleep schedule. We do this for Caleb and for ourselves. Our house is a sleeping house.
2: Eat. I eat good, wholesome food, most of which I make from scratch myself, which brings me to my next point:
3: Hobbies. I practice regularly at hobbies that I love. These include cooking, gardening, reading and writing. Yes, I make meals because otherwise my family wouldn't eat, but that's a task I take joy in, most of the time. Yesterday I made queso fresco for a corn salad. There's fresh cheese sitting in my fridge. It's delicious and I relished the quiet time I spent at the stove stirring warm milk and lemon juice into cheese curds.
4: Family. I have a healthy, happy marriage with my husband. We treasure one another and our time together. We practice relationship care by prioritizing time together and treating each other with respect and extra kindness. We keep the lines of communication open. I find joy in playing with Caleb, listening to him giggle, watching him explore. We keep our family ties strong and pray with our families and ask them to pray for us.
5: Body Image Balance. For the first time in probably 10 years, I don't have a gym membership and I don't feel guilty about it. I take long walks with my husband, get in my 7000-10,000 steps a day, I've lost the baby weight (I mean seriously, that's an accomplishment) and I feel good about my body.
6. Friends. I have a group of women friends that are active in the life of the church. They are a support group I can go to with questions about seminary and ministry. They pray for me and I for them. They babysit my son when our life gets chaotic.

The young woman in me wants to apologize for this list, or make concessions to the criticisms I already hear in my head: "You can't do this all and seminary. This will all change when you start school. Basically your family with starve September - May and your marriage will crumble. You will have no idea what's happening on all your favorite shows. You can't do it." To which I say: "I'll figure out. I always have. Leave me alone."

The "idea" of self-care can be a scary closet monster that might come out and bite you if you don't follow a prescribed routine. But the older I get, the more I can believe that there isn't one right answer for a problem. There certainly isn't here. This is my current version of self-care and it's working pretty damn well.

Family Togetherness Weekend

It's 6:30 am on Sunday morning. I'm at my desk in our makeshift office, looking at out at the sunrise over our front yard. It's been such a wonderful weekend so far, and I'm reflecting on why that is.

Our Saturday could have looked very different. I woke up stressed about going to the grocery store. This is highly unusual for me: I go to the grocery store every weekend, but I was worried about potential road closures on the highway, about the length of the grocery list and how much I'd have to spend, and spending so much time away from Brian and Caleb. So I did what any normal mom would do: I begged Brian to come with me. "Can we please make it a family trip??" So we did, and while I don't think it'll be an every weekend routine, it was so nice, the three of us making the grocery store rounds. Caleb loves to observe people and take in the world around him, so this is right up his alley.

We had a fun day of playing and around 5pm we left for a friend's birthday party. Earlier in the week we thought I might go by myself, but I asked Brian if he would consider having all of us go together. Starting at 6, with a 7pm bedtime for Caleb, was a dicey but we decided to risk it anyway. Again, totally the right decision. Caleb was a little love, warming up to everyone quickly and eating more sugar in the form of Rice Krispy treats than I think he's ever had at one at time. He was quite the little entertainer. We ended up not getting home until 7:45, and after a quick bath that resulted in Caleb laying down in my nap still dripping wet, we bundled him swiftly off to bed.

At the end of the day I told Brian I was so glad this day didn't go the other way: Where I did the grocery run by myself, gone for two hours of the morning. Where I left at dinnertime, missing bedtime (again), off to the party by myself. The three of us had such a sweet time together and I'm just about ready for our Sunday to unfold the same way!

We managed to color coordinate on Friday morning.