Forward Progress

Day’s Verse:
Nothing between us and God, our faces shining with the brightness of his face. And so we are transfigured much like the Messiah, our lives gradually becoming brighter and more beautiful as God enters our lives and we become like him.
2 Corinthians 3:18

Despite our best efforts at avoiding baby-fever, with about 5 weeks left before our due date, we’re having to face the reality that this baby will be born whether we’re 100% prepared or not. Because we are who we are, Ian and I hate to approach anything unprepared, so the next few weeks are looking a little busy. That’s okay, actually, because it means we haven’t spent the last 6 months obsessing about every last detail of my pregnancy and our impending parenthood, and as a result feel pretty relaxed about it all. People have been becoming parents forever, long before the plague of how-to parenting books and baby products tsunamied over our society. We’ll do fine. Continue Reading >>

Disparities

Day’s Verse:
You yourselves are all the endorsement we need. Your very lives are a letter that anyone can read by just looking at you. Christ himself wrote it—not with ink, but with God’s living Spirit; not chiseled into stone, but carved into human lives—and we publish it.
2 Corinthians 3:2-3ish

Our son is due in a month and a half — that’s right, August 14, a mere 50 days from today — but because I continue to wear the same clothes, I keep having weird disparities between my mental image of my body shape and reality. I keep underestimating how much space I’ll need to squeeze between things, for example, so instead of just slipping through that crack, I find myself awkwardly caught and looking ridiculous. At this point I never forget I’m pregnant, but my mental image hasn’t quite caught up with this yet. Continue Reading >>

Carpe … Sun

Day’s Verse:
All praise to the God and Father of our Master, Jesus the Messiah! Father of all mercy! God of all healing counsel!
2 Corinthians 1:3

Yesterday the weather gave us a break in the form of one of those rare, perfect Seattle summer days. They don’t come often, at least not in June, but when they come it’s glorious. Fortunately, Dad had already planned on taking the day off, so we decided to seize our opportunity and do a bike ride somewhere we never usually ride. We decided to ride from Kingston to Port Townsend and back, a route that looks like this: Continue Reading >>

Painting The Boy’s Room

Day’s Verse:
Save your breath for the wise—they’ll be wiser for it;
tell good people what you know—they’ll profit from it.

Proverbs 9:8-ish

Working from an extremely sophisticated paint schematic (shown below), four lovely helpers converted our spare bedroom from a kind of dismal, Seattle-winter-sky-plus-purple color into the a room cheerful enough that I’m frankly a little jealous.

Super High-Tech Paint Schematic

I didn’t take any before pictures, because it was just the extra bedroom. Most notable feature of said bedroom was a set of 4 white corner shelves. They were quarter-circles that fit into the corner next to the window, put in by the previous owners. We decided that they took up too much space, corners being prime bedroom real estate, so boldly moved to remove these shelves. Hours later, we were cursing the former owners, who had used four screws per home-made shelf: Two 2-inch-long wood screws going into each wall near the corner and screwed into wall anchors; and two 3-inch-long wood screws screwed directly into studs on the outside of each shelf. That would’ve been bothersome enough, with all the twisting required to get those out; but, on top of that, they had stripped the outer screws during installation, and then painted over all the screws. This meant that we had to drill around the exterior screws and then use pliers to slowly twist these incredibly long screws out, not to mention dealing with the stupid paint filling up the non-stripped screw heads. I’m telling you, those screws left holes in the wall reminiscent of the size of holes in Jesus’ hands. After taking out those shelves, I’m pretty sure Ian or I would have gladly throttled the previous owner with no qualms whatsoever. Continue Reading >>

Why We Vaccinate

Day’s Verse:
Do you hear Lady Wisdom calling? Can you hear Madame Insight raising her voice?
She’s taken her stand at First and Main,
at the busiest intersection.

Proverbs 8:1-2-ish

About 15 years ago, a study came out that seemed to link autism and vaccinations. Hearing this, many alarmed parents put on the brakes and decided not to immunize their kids, hoping to protect their darling bundles of joy from autism. As a result, we now have a rather astonishing number of un-immunized teens and young adults running around. Now, even at the time this study came out, it wasn’t a 100% for-sure thing (nothing in science ever is). Parents jumped on this bandwagon eagerly, wanting to protect their kids, but without strong scientific backing for that decision. Continue Reading >>

Ostrich Woman

Day’s Verse:
After looking at the way things are on this earth, here’s what I’ve decided is the best way to live: Take care of yourself, have a good time, and make the most of whatever job you have for as long as God gives you life. And that’s about it. That’s the human lot. Yes, we should make the most of what God gives, both the bounty and the capacity to enjoy it, accepting what’s given and delighting in the work. It’s God’s gift! God deals out joy in the present, the now.
Ecclesiastes 5:18-20-ish Continue Reading >>

Innnnnput

Day’s Verse:
For Wisdom is better than all the trappings of wealth;
nothing you could wish for holds a candle to her.

Proverbs 8:11-ish

The way I assimilate change is to try to understand it. I research it. Having head knowledge helps me feel more in control of situations I’ve never encountered before, even when head knowledge doesn’t guarantee success for those situations.

When I was in high school, I took a class called Athletic Injury. It covered, very lightly, types of athletic injuries high school athletes encountered and various ways of identifying and treating them. I found it deeply fascinating. But when it came down to it, I wasn’t very good at it. Wrapping tape to immobilize a thumb or mitigate shin splints eluded my normally straight-A-student skills. To compensate, I read the textbook diligently. I practically memorized the book and spent hours practicing taping a variety of patient victims friends and family. In the end I did just fine in the class, but I worked harder in that class than most of my standard academic classes. Continue Reading >>