A Crap-tacular Project ...

I have undertaken a personal challenge for this year - in 2015, I (and helpers) will divest our home of 2,015 items in an effort to beat back clutter. I know we're only 2 months down, but I'm still feeling pretty good about it.

I vacillate between a sort of cheerful, lazy acceptance of the state of our little home, and a soul-crushing level of frustration, guilt and shame. I have never been the world's most terrific housekeeper, probably, and having two little boys adds exponentially to the clutter. The result being, OMG look at this house I can't believe a person (neighbor, family) just came in here with it like this. Sometimes I'll post a candid shot on Facebook of the boys doing something super-cute, and then later I'll look at it and think, OMG look at our house I can't believe .... etc.

My younger (by 3 years) sister has been part of my inspiration on this. She does not have any kids, but even before we had the boys, her place was much neater than mine. I recall this very specific instance maybe 10 years ago when she'd moved into a small one-bedroom apartment, and she was simply puttering around the house, and I was idly watching her, and all of a sudden it hit me, this exact thought: OHHHHH! She.Puts.Sh*t.Away! I'm a little embarrassed to admit this was such a revelation, but yeah. She puts things away when she is done with them. I do this well while cooking, but that's it. Then a couple of years later, she moved into this really cute but very small house, and mentioned that she'd simply had to be intentional about living with fewer possessions, making difficult decision about parting with a lot of her belongings.

Then about six months ago I began following Joshua Becker at the blog Becoming Minimalist. He has convinced me that it's time to get rid of a major amount of stuff. One of the themes is de-cluttering, which is exactly the correct term for what I need. He is basically anti-organizing - to him organizing is just moving your stuff around, and it always has to be repeated, and for goodness' sake don't buy things to (theoretically) organize the stuff you have : Have Less Stuff. I have re-branded this as, Have Less Crap. Because that is a lot of what we have - crap. Arts and crafts crap. Kid crap. Paperwork crap. Etc. Another blog I just found is 365 Less Things; this is not an official recommendation because I'm still checking it out, but the titles of the posts seem promising. Also, unclutterer. And our family's birthday season is upon us - all four of our birthdays are within a six-week period, and I'm going to try my best to keep everyone to one toy, one book, one outfit. Making a concerted effort to keep anything new that's not really necessary (pens, stickers, birthday party favors, etc.) from coming into the house in the first place.

I'm also trying to de-clutter my mind and my to-do project list; there's an e-mail and social media component. Pretty sure I'm going to delete my twitter account, I'm deleting Pins like crazy. I've made a list of projects I've undertaken over the years that I never finished, and have established an order in which to complete them. My office, which is actually pretty good (that's likely 90% due to the fact that I share it with someone). Our spare bedroom is atrocious, but we're slowly making progress. I think I finally have my husband on board; initially he was concerned that I was going to give away everything we have. I explained it's not my goal to get rid of it all, just about 50% of it all :). (Yes, really). I got pretty discouraged over the weekend - we've done so much, and there's still so much to do. But today I'm feeling more hopeful. We are climbing out - slowly clawing our way to the top of the heap. My ultimate goal is to feel more at peace in a cleaner home, which will be easier to keep clean once there's less stuff collecting dust bunnies, and I won't be hunting/swearing/mentally collapsing every time I need ... anything :).

In case you're wondering, 2,015 items breaks down to:

168 per month

39 per week

5.5 per day.

I'm sure you're thinking, 2,015 items is a lot, especially given the above-referenced blog titled 365 fewer things. I've been unsure what a fair way is to count things - like, if I donate a box of 24 crayons to Simon's Sunday School class, is that 24 items or is it one? I have been sort of splitting the difference, doing half one way and half another. You know, approximately. A pair of shoes is 2, a set of plates and bowls is whatever number of individual things; paper and other stuff gets a lowball estimate. Hey, if you can do it better ... go do it your way :). By the end of February, we'd given up 292, which is 44 short of the goal of 336. But on March 1st, we'd boxed up 77 kid items (toys and books) for the consignment sale (see below), tossed 26 Happy Meal-ish type toys and 1 old makeup brush, and donated 7 glove/scarf/hat items to Goodwill (here, counted a pair of gloves as 1). So that's 111 items in one day!

"Divest" in our case means get out of the house, period. We are donating a lot to various places, we'll sell a ton of kids' toys and books at our church's consignment sale (and what doesn't see automatically gets donated), paper is being recycled and shredded, and various junk items are simply trashed.



Here are some projects I have completed (three Pinterest wins):

Cupcake "bouquet" for my sister's birthday

(She loved it)

Mason jars painted on the inside

I did these quite awhile back
but the photos I took were awful.

Why three shots of the same thing?
'Cause I'm like that :)

This is a melted-crayon project. I started out with the usual
vertical drippy lines, but then saw some like this. Tip that I include
for no particular reason at all - melted crayon will come out of light-colored
carpet easily, just using Resolve. Other tip: use your brains
and don't do this project on light-colored carpet. 

Various Readings - Dead Pets

I mentioned the recent death of our cat, Chicken, in my last post. I've gotten numerous messages of support on facebook - I didn't realize quite how many people had met her over the years, but what with the leg-licking thing I mentioned in the other post, she tended to make an impression - a wet, gross impression, but still (also, she was very sweet and cute and affectionate, so ... ). I also didn't realize how many folks had taken care of her for us, when we were out of town. We will probably get another cat sometime (Simon really wants a dog, but I am simply not up for it), but I think I will enjoy a break from scooping cat litter for awhile, and maybe I'll manage to get rid of some of the Chicken fur that has accumulated on every surface, before we make any moves toward another pet.

This is the first pet death that Simon has been through. We had another cat, Cat Stevens (we usually called him Steven), who died when Simon was about 18 months old, so he doesn't remember that. We've read a number of books and whatnot about it, so I hope this is helpful for other parents:

1. City Dog, Country Frog by Mo Willems. We know Willems from his books about Trixie and Knuffle Bunny, and this is definitely a different tone. This is a wonderful book, and it is about animals but you could use it to talk about any death. It made me cry the first couple of times we read it, when Simon was younger, and I definitely cried when we read it this time around, last week. It does have a good message about death being a part of life, not something to be afraid of, and that we miss people/animals when they're gone, but we go on living. Nice.

Matt is going to loan "our" copy (it's a library book) to another family at David's preschool, because their little boy evidently has had a lot of questions lately. The preschool is the basement of the Quaker meeting house with which it is affiliated, and the cemetery is just on the other side of the small parking lot. One day this kiddo and his mom were coming down the steps behind us, and I heard the boy asking his mom about the cemetery, and who is there, and when people die. His mom replied that most people die when they are quite old, and then the boy asked how "they" (the dead people) get to the cemetery. His mom replied that someone takes them there, and of course the boy then asked who, and his mom replied, "All the people who love them," which sounded just beautiful to me.

2. Goodbye, Mog by Judith Kerr. This is the last (obviously) in a series of books about Mog the Forgetful Cat. We had the original Mog book when we were growing up, I suppose I didn't realize there were any others until (this is one of Joanna's few "la-do-da" moments in life, so listen up) Matt and I were in Blackwell's Books in Oxford (yes, England, not Mississippi) and I saw several of them lined up on display. There's Mog's Bad Thing (which is yes, peeing in places other than the litter box), and Goodbye Mog, and I don't know how many others, but those are the two I bought. I was in the middle of this world-famous bookstore, nearly weeping in the children's section.

So we read this to the boys at bedtime, on the day Chicken died (she passed away early in the morning; she had been really really sick and I kind of thought she would die sometime that night, and ... yeah, she'd been coughing and hacking and making throwing-up sounds and I was trying to comfort her and not succeeding and then she just --- stopped). It is a little confusing, especially from our theological perspective, but I still really like it. The book starts off saying that Mog was old and tired, "dead tired," and that she wanted to go to sleep, so she did. That makes me slightly nervous because when a person dies you're not supposed to say "it's like they're sleeping" and when discussing plans for Chicken the day before, I'd been careful not to say that she might have to be "put to sleep" but used the big word "euthanized" instead. And then, most of Mog (leaves) but "a little bit stayed behind to see what would happen." This was a translucent sketch of Mog, that the family couldn't see, and at first I described it as "like a ghost" but then switched to "like an angel." Mog was really worried that the family would not be able to get along without her, and then when they got a new kitten it appeared to be the "wrong sort of kitten" that would not fit in. But the kitten can see the ghost/angel Mog, and so Mog teaches her what to do, and once the kitten gets the hang of it and Mog is convinced the family will be okay, she goes "up and up and up and straight into the sun."

Which brings us to the third story:

3. Rainbow Bridge - not a book, but a story, that was included with the little carved wooden box that came with Chicken's ashes. I'd never had a pet cremated before, and the whole experience was pretty nice. Now with a name like "Rainbow Bridge" there's no way this is not going to be the cheesiest, sappiest story in the world, and it was sort of, but I liked it. According to this little story, when a pet dies, they go to this sort of place of limbo, where they and all these other pets are frolicking about and having a great time, until their owner dies, and when the owner comes along, s/he and the pet go across this Rainbow Bridge together, to Heaven.

(Isn't that nice? I think it's a sweet idea). In our family I do tend to defer (but not submit, dammit) to Matt on most theological issues, as he is more, uh, learned. But on the subject of, "do pets go to heaven?" I laid down the law to Matt that our answer, when/if that question is asked, will be, "Yes." Because (a) who the hell knows? not me (I think that'a a Holden Caufield-ism), and (b) Simon is six (practically seven) and it is not going to hurt one tiny thing on earth if he (rightly or wrongly) believes that his dead cat is in heaven. Later in life he can make up his own mind, but I'm thinking that for now, this is a totally harmless thing to believe .... look, this kiddo already knows that all the little kids who died at Sandy Hook are in Heaven, and the people who died at the Boston Marathon bombing are in Heaven, etc. If he wants to think the cat is in Heaven, and it brings him some comfort, then by all means the cat is in Heaven.

Someone at our church, after reading my last post, recommended Will I See My Dog in Heaven?, written by a Franciscan friar who appears to believe the answer to that question is a resounding "Yes." My fellow (sister) church member says he backs this up pretty solidly, he's not just saying it because it feels good. I've not had a chance to check it out yet - maybe I'll make Pastor Matt read it first?

So I'm still thinking about Chicken the Cat just about every day, I'm still being reminded of her frequently, and when I do I'm sad and I miss her. She and I were together for a long time, and for a couple of years it was just the two of us. Simon is ready to get a new pet ... a parrot. I have actually always wanted a parrot, but I always had one or more cats, so ... but I am really hesitant to get anything that has a cage, because it stinks. I realize getting another cat means a stinky litter box (believe me, I know), but ... I don't know. We'll just have to see.

One more photo of Chicken. The white curve at the bottom of the photo is my pregnant-with-David belly; she's sitting on my lap and this are my blue pajama pant legs under her. All the Sesame Street figurines are from the Greatest Toy Ever, a Christmas present for Simon

when he was 1, maybe, from Aunt Tara, and either  Simon or David played with it Every.Single.Day for about four years straight.Unbelievable. And we still have just about all the "characters,"

as we have called them, which is even more unbelievable. 

:)

I Am Not Ashamed, But Maybe You Should Be - Part 5

(IANABMYSB: Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four)

I recently read a lovely little story on NPR's website about the prohibitive cost of diapers for low-income families, the resulting health issues for the babies and toddlers, and a nationwide network of diaper banks, where folks in need can get diapers free. To read the article, click here - it's really pretty short. 

(Again, this is why I am not allowed to read comment threads). A couple of folks seemed to really get what I would consider to be the "point" of the article, that this is a need, we all complain about how much diapers cost but for some folks it is huge deal, and it's nice that there are folks out in the world who are trying to address the need. One person in particular said yes, cloth diapers are really ideal but folks may not realize that even in difficult circumstance it is possible to wash them, and perhaps we can more toward educating people. A few took the opportunity to vilify disposable diapers. 

And, this was the first comment to follow the piece, and it had 9 "thumbs up" votes. I have deleted the author's name from this post, but it's right there on the npr.org site for all the world to see. I will hereafter refer to her as "the Lady," because I'm really trying to write this without any profanity. All I can say is, I'm glad I do not know this Lady, I'm glad she is not my mother or my sister or my friend: 

(emphasis near the end: that's mine)

 

• 2 days ago

"As young parents, my spouse and I were quite poor. We were graduate students, lived in the country in a tiny rental house because it's what we could afford. We grew our own food and made our own baby food, etc. etc. Before having our first baby, we accumulated a large enough supply of cloth diapers and received a diaper pail as a gift. We maintained the soiled diapers and diaper pail in accordance with sanitary practices which we took time to learn about and practice. That pail was extremely heavy by the time it was necessary for me to drive the 15 miles each way into town after loading the heavy pail full of wet diapers into the car, the baby and baby equipment, to the Laundromat. I washed the diapers at the laundromat but rarely dried them there. I would load them into a clean receptacle and load the (still heavy but now clean) diapers into the car and drive us back out to our rental spot which had a clothesline outside. There, in all seasons, I would hang the diapers outside to dry. It was all difficult, labor intensive work and required planning ahead and conscientiousness - but those are just a couple of the many important qualities necessary for being a good and responsible parent. My own parents were always very poor. They had five children. My mother would never, ever have re-used a soiled diaper. She would have stayed up at night and hand-washed diapers if need be. There were times when we couldn't afford "feminine hygiene products" and we would use cloth and laundry and labor! This report is just absurd and reflects a kind of helpless, hapless, dependent, irresponsible, whining point of view and probably describes people who should not BE parents at all. Life is not for the lazy and parenting is not for the helpless."

whoo …. …. …. goodness knows I read a lot of crazy stuff online, but I think my mouth was actually hanging open by the end of this. Even a day later I'm at a bit of a loss for words. But here are some. Matt said, "I'm glad her hardscrabble upbringing has led her to be so judgmental." I say:

(Did you also walk 10 miles each way to school and back every day, uphill both ways, in a snowstorm as my Grandpa did? That's kind of what this sounds like)

Since we are talking about mamas and cloth diapers, let me throw my two cents in. When I was about 2 years old, my family was living in a small apartment in a small city. My dad worked his construction job during the day and then went to the plot of land they'd found to build our house in the evening. We ended up moving into the house earlier than planned, before all the indoor plumbing was completed; I believe this is because a super-creepy neighbor in the apartment building was bothering my mom a lot. So when we moved in we had a well with a pump, and an outhouse (suck on that, Lady, we had no indoor plumbing). This meant little to me as I was still in diapers and I have no memory of it, but I'm sure the other members of the family (mom, dad, older brother) were relieved when that was alleviated. It was a long time before we had a washer and even longer for a dryer. My mom, too, schlepped (although this is rural North Carolina, so probably "carried" is better) a stinking pail of diapers to the Laundromat week after week, and we still didn't have a washer long enough that I can remember packing a lunchbox and going with her, so I'm assuming that meant my little sister, who arrived when I was almost 3, was in cloth as well. And, my parents grew a lot of our food, and my mom canned everything she could, and she sewed a lot of our clothing and between her various skills and my dad's, they managed to keep us fed on little money.

And  you know what? My mother would DIE (I mean, she's deceased already, but go with it) - she would absolutely kill herself and die, before she used any of those details to make some other mother feel like crap because they did any of those things differently, much less because they used disposable diapers. She would never ever ever have used any of her life story and choices to imply that the way she did it was better, that everyone should do it that way, or that other choices were somehow "less than." 

Life is not for the lazy and parenting not for the helpless, indeed. Jesus H. Christ - what in the world is that, Lady? We ("we" being "reasonable people") are talking about two pretty specific things here, diapers and how much they cost. I'm glad you have some sort of forum where you can air your superiority, because I can't imagine a person sitting and listening to you actually speaking your point of view for very long, because … it sucks. Sorry, I have a graduate education and a huge vocabulary, but sometimes the simplest phrase is the best. You may be a fine person but you are coming across as a total jerk, and apparently at least a few people agree with you to some extent.

So there are a couple issues here, and because it's me I'll go one by one:

1. Cloth vs. disposable diapers (this is the smokescreen issue here, but it is an issue): I've told you about my mother, Lady, now let me tell you about myself. I am the mother of two small boys, and we used cloth diapers on the older one for the first year. We chose this because we, too, are concerned about the impact of disposables on the environment, and cloth does feel more natural and the boy had hardly any diaper rash whatsoever. But, and, we used a diaper service because we lived in a hippie/yuppie environmentally friendly apartment building and several other families used the same service, and we had the money to do it. Because I worked 45 - 50 hours a week, and my dear husband was working and taking care of the baby 4 days a week, and I was pumping breast milk and there was plenty of laundry anyway, and … yeah. I didn't need the additional hassle.

And my second son? Let me tell you about him; he is the inspiration for this blog. He's now 3 and 1/2 and is doing splendidly, but he was in the NICU for 3 months and had to have open-heart surgery at age 4 months and had a million doctors' appointments and tons of medications and supplemental oxygen and we were exhausted and scared and if some uppity … other mother … had approached me at any point and suggested I "really should be using cloth," I quite possibly would've punched her in the face until she fell down, kicked her until she was unconscious, and perhaps then suffocated her with a Boppy breastfeeding pillow until she was dead. Yes, really. And before someone says, well, that's different, I'm going to go ahead and say, you do not appreciate the crushing stress that chronic, severe poverty can create. And Lady, please don't cite being poor in graduate school because you know everyone's poor in grad school, right? 

Disposable diapers are a modern convenience, one of many. If I were this kind of person, I might ask why you got to use the Laundromat - why weren't you in the creek out back, pounding the little jokers on rocks? That'd be real mothering. There are lots of good things that come with modern parenthood, like cribs your baby won't strangle in and better car seats and carbon monoxide detectors … and diapers that, when they are full of poop, can be folded up and thrown away. 

And, Sister/Lady, we moms and women need to stick together, not turn on one another over something as silly as this. Don't you know that whenever you denigrate one woman "doing it the easy way" and hold up the old-fashioned as the ideal, you're taking us back to when this kind of crap wasn't a choice - it was our duty by virtue of being born XX that we got to spend every waking moment taking care of someone else. 

2. So here's the "But Maybe You Should Be" part:

Lady, you seem to be an absolutely unkind person, and probably not just on this particular subject but on the general subject of what makes someone a good person who deserves to be happy and raise children. At least one other person commented that the solution to not being able to afford diapers is, "maybe don't have children you can't afford." I can't … I can't even really begin to thoroughly address this, I don't know where to start with y'all. There's one idea of, who the hell can afford kids? I mean, really, they are expensive and yes there's the concept of relative poverty and women in lesser-developed countries raise multiple babies and they breastfeed and use cloth diapers because there aren't really any other options for them, but that's not what we're talking about, right? We are talking about judgment and superiority and security/insecurity in the choices you.have.made, not really about the choices any other parent makes. 

Congrats to you, Sister, that you did all this back-breaking work and successfully raised your kid in this particular way. You need to be validated in what you have done, you need to feel it was not just the better choice but obviously the only correct choice, because otherwise … it was all for nothing, right? You coulda gone the easy route with the exact same results, so obviously what you did Has To Matter.  You are obviously A Good Parent.  Congratulations! But you understand that (a) there are approximately 100 million other ways to be a good parent, and (b) even if you are the World's Greatest Mom (you know if you got a coffee mug that said that, it's not real, right? It's not an actual award? :) ), please hear me: that does not make you a better person than someone else. That does not make your life worth more. That does not make God love you any more than Poor Parent with Disposable Diapers X. We are all the same, that's the great thing about living in the United States and/or believing in God, if you do - we are equal in the eyes of the law and God. 

We are all afraid, and a lot of us are afraid all the time. Once you have kids, and you hold a tiny fragile newborn, or an adopted older child with a nightmare history in your arms, it's a long time (if ever) that you feel 100% relaxed again. We make a million decisions about our kids (breastfeeding, immunizations, education, religion and yes, diapering) and ourselves (career, whether to move, how to manage money) and sometimes it turns out horribly and sometimes it turns out awesome and most of the time it's somewhere in between, but really in the end we are just sending the kiddos out into the world every day on a wing and a prayer, hoping like hell they don't get sick or hurt and that they learn how to make good decisions and we do all we can and then realize, shoot, it's not all up to me/them. 

Sometimes the world just does horrible things to you and ultimately, there is sometimes not one single thing you can do about it. Being "a good and responsible parent" is difficult to argue with, but (again) - a - there are lots of different ways to do that and - b -  it is still not a guarantee. God, I wish it were. I wish there were some formula by which you could chose Option A + Option B + Option C and that all equals a kid who is going to complete college and have a career and be a productive American taxpayer, and chances are pretty good that they'll do all that to some measure. But they might not. They might end up with a mental illness or substance abuse problem or do something stupid and go to jail or they might end up getting shot in the face in the first grade a couple of weeks before Christmas - and none of that says anything about anything, other than that "life sucks, sometimes, and terrible things happen." Life is not for the lazy and parenting is not for the helpless. God, what a heartless person you seem to be. 

The reason my Mom was so super-non-judgmental? Something pretty sucky happened to her, when she got pregnant in 1967 at the age of 16. She was treated so poorly and judged so harshly that I think it became sort of her life's work to do the opposite. She was kicked out of high school though she was a straight A student and cheerleader; the father of the baby (my half-brother) was allowed to continue because, well, life in fact is not fair sometimes and though I would contend was as fully responsible as my mom for creating the situation, this was 1967 and he would not be "showing." 

It was only thanks to an understanding school counselor that my mom was allowed to finish high school by correspondence. Her parents eventually kicked her out of the house, they reconciled at some point but in between she was basically all on her own. She eventually worked her way through college and met and married my dad. So she Pulled Herself Up by her Bootstraps, yay! And guess what? Again, she would never hold herself up as some success story, especially if it meant the fact that she ultimately succeeded was used in some way to make some other teen mom (or anyone, for that matter) feel they had to do the same thing. 


My mom and I didn't have many conversations about this experience, but I know the difficulty she encountered was the reason she always immediately called us out for criticizing other people. And I can say with virtually 100% confidence that if you held her and her Pulling Herself Up and her cloth diapers and sewing Halloween costumes and all that up as an example? She would say, "Yes, I did that. But it was so hard, and I was sad and alone and stressed most of the time, and I would've loved some help." She would never use herself as the reason why someone else should be treated, or spoken of, or even thought of, unkindly. So put that in your pipe and smoke it, Lady. I'm tired of talking to you. 

Some Tough Shots

As I posted on facebook last week, I kind of forgot about the 3-year anniversary of David's open-heart surgery (8/12/2013). I'd thought about it the week before, but then we went to the beach and all, and it completely slipped my mind until 8/12, when I had to fill out some paperwork for David's new preschool and both enter the date and write "Repaired AV Canal defect" on a list of medical conditions.  I don't have a lot new to say, so here are some flashbacks:

(To read last year's surgery entry, click here - it's pretty good, which I can say because it's mostly stuff from an article I did not write)

And here's some other stuff I have written about the surgery:

Shiphrah, Puah, David Moses and the Red Line (this was my first "real" writing, I think, and I still think it's about the best thing I've written, or at least it's my favorite)

Exodus Things and Stuff, Parts I and II

Misgivings and Doubts

Tubes and Probes and Wiggling

After Surgery Stress and Letdown and More Post-Surgery Letdown

Hey Hey Dr. K (a letter to David's heart surgeon) and A Quick Response (in which I explore the differences between the words "sheepish" and "sheepless")

And (WARNING) here are some previously-unreleased photos. Difficult to see, yes:

(These first 3 are the day and evening before the surgery)
(he looks so small and lonely in this shot to me)

Yes, this is horrible. But we were so glad he was alive, we didn't really notice at the time. 

This is a few days later - he was in the hospital a total of 7 days. Pretty amazing. 

So he's doing so much better now, these seem ancient. And I did end up making a cake, but the photos are still on my phone and I'll publish them soon.

Thanks again to everyone: Dr. K, Dr. Aaron, all the nurses and other docs, and all our family, friends, and complete strangers who have prayed for and supported us these 3.5 years. God bless.

Please Read This

This was posted on Scary Mommy yesterday; I think this woman was really brave to share her story and what she's going through currently: Moving Past a Loss. If you are not familiar with the emotional process of a miscarriage, the entry and the ensuing comments (mine's down at #120, I hope it helped) will probably help you understand more. Thanks.

Yawn ...

Not sure what the next couple of months will hold as far as "ability to post/blog." We are starting to realize this moving thing is for real - this weekend Matt and I are going to visit about 7 rental homes, and get an official-ish tour of the new church. We've started to pack up some books, pottery, etc.; I actually got a package of color-coded Avery moving labels but I think that may ultimately only serve to make me think I'm further along than I am ("I have labels. I'm obviously way too organized to have to worry about this."). Something about that last sentence is really awkward, I admit, but I'm not currently motivated enough to do anything about it.

Christmas Ornaments and Nazi Whorehouses, Redemption Part 2

(The last entry, Part 1, was seriously exhausting to my little brain. 

So most of this one is other people's words)

(No profound insights in Part 2, if in fact
there were any in Part 1. Mostly quotes.
I will share that there is a ... physical and  mental 
health crisis for a family member (not Matt or boys) that is
currently occupying a lot of brain-space). 

[[  Part 2  ]]

I love thinking about the various forms of redeem, redemption, etc. In a recent phone conversation, my maternal aunt shared with me a letter her father had written to her mother from France, during World War 2. My grandfather (Loyce, he died before I was born) wrote that his unit was being housed at some chateau (which, he explained, "means castle" :) ), that before the American soldiers were there,  had been used by the Nazis as a whorehouse. The kiddos were listening when I related this story to Matt so I used the phrase "house of ill repute" though I followed it with clarification that my Grandpa Loyce had likely never used that term, he just used the, ah, colloquialism. Which is probably not a word he knew either.

The Way of Perfection - St. Teresa of Avila (1567)

CHAPTER 15 Treats of the great advantage which comes from our not excusing ourselves, even though we find we are unjustly condemned.

"But how disconnectedly I am writing! I am just like a person who does not know what she is doing. It is your fault, sisters, for I am doing this at your command. Read it as best you can, for I am writing it as best I can, and, if it is too bad, burn it. I really need leisure, and, as you see, I have so little opportunity for writing that a week passes without my putting down a word, and so I forget what I have said and what I am going to say next. Now what I have just been doing -- namely, excusing myself -- is very bad for me, and I beg you not to copy it, for to suffer without making excuses is a habit of great perfection, and very edifying and meritorious; and, though I often teach you this, and by God's goodness you practise it, His Majesty has never granted this favour to me. May He be pleased to bestow it on me before I die.

God be in my head, and in my understanding,

God be in my eyes, and in my looking;

God be in my mouth, and in my speaking;

God be in my heart, and in my thinking; 

God be at my end, and at my departing.

(Sarum Primer)

An Isak Deneson quote I didn't read directly from anything of hers, but was referenced in another book I was reading

“All sorrows can be borne if you put them into a story or tell a story about them.” - Isak Deneson