Aching for Life

I often am moved or humbled or challenged by sermons at our church , but tonight's message especially spoke to me.  (When the sermon video gets posted online, I'll link it here!) John Ortberg spoke on letting go and trusting God - a message that sounds so cliche that it seems impossible to be touched by it. Yet I was caught by surprise by how it touched a very vulnerable part of me - my struggle with fear. You see, he recorded the sermon at a gym called "Circus Center," a place where people can take classes from trapeze artists. As John explained why he decided to present the sermon there, he quotes Henri Nouwen: "The Flying Rodleighs are trapeze artists who perform in the German circus Simoneit-Barum. When the circus came to Freiburg two years ago, my friends Franz and Reny invited me and my father to see the show. I will never forget how enraptured I became when I first saw the Rodleighs move through the air, flying and catching as elegant dancers....

Zane: While sleeping, nursing, or awake: **Snort, sniffle, snort, snort** Zeke: When Zane is crying: "Don't worry, baby! I'm there. I'm there." In the morning, jumping into our bed and smothering Zane with kisses: "Helllooo-y! Hellloooy! My peanut! My pizza! So little! So little!" Singing the ABC song: "A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, Ello-enopy..." Another song: "Los pollitos dicen, pio pio pio, cuando tienen ham-bre, cuando tienen fwee-oh."

Zeke: "Me baby!" Nostalgia A few weeks ago, Ryan's mom was in town and we went to the Stanford pool to squeeze in a last swim while it was still summer hours and the afternoons were still hot. At one point I was swimming laps while Mom was watching Zeke, and as I approached the far end of the pool, Zeke's back was toward me. Something about the way he was standing - the slight angle, the relaxed stance, gave me a glimpse of what Zeke might look like in a teenage boy's body, and my heart clenched a little.  I was reminded of how fleeting his little-ness is, how unrelentingly quickly the days will fly by until he will be the one with the bigger and stronger body, until he will even more his own person than he is now. All of parenthood is nostalgia, I suppose.  How many evenings I spend now while absent-mindedly playing or reading with Zeke with half my head reminiscing over the yonder years when I had evenings and weekends open before me like blank sketch...

It’s not a special occasion. Not a birthday, not an anniversary, not the beginning or end of a calendar year or school year. There is no imminent transition. Yet tonight, on the most ordinary of nights, I am taking stock the only way I know to take stock now – which is when the stars align and I have space in my head and time on my hands and – quite simply – I can. Tonight was one of the rare nights when I went to worship service alone. Ryan is in LA visiting his parents. And it’s not like we chat with each other normally during service, but somehow, by sitting alone, my head felt clear. (I guess that’s one of the clear signs that I’m an introvert.) The sermon tonight was the third in the series “The Truth About You,” and entitled “ You’re Never Really Ready .” Using Matthew 28:16-20 , our pastor talked about how Jesus called his disciples when they were incomplete (just a group of 11) and lacking in faith (“some doubted”) and gave them the Great Commission. He went on to talk...

" For  children are not obligated to save up for their parents, but  parents for their children.     I will most gladly spend and be spent for your souls." - 2 Corinthians 12: 14-15

Peach blossoms at the community garden Every day for the last few weeks, whenever I take walks with Zeke or just look at the cherry tree just outside our back patio, all these thoughts about springtime last year rushes to me. For weeks I've been meaning to write them down, and for weeks I've decided to wait till later, after I'm done writing the literature review for my thesis, after I'm done soaking in my last week at home with Zeke. Well, my birthday has come and gone without me sitting down to write even a basic journal entry (my habit is to do some soul-and-life-stocktaking on March 7 each year), so March 9 2013 is the day I will stop and record some of these things. Blossoming My anemones are blooming! Let's start with that cherry tree. "Oh," I want to tell Zeke - "Oh, if only you could have seen how this tree welcomed your arrival last year!" For a few weeks it was a cloud of white, shedding snowy petals. This winter ha...

This past week was Zeke’s first full week with Jean, our new nanny, shared with another family. And as much as I savored those three hours every day to sit down and focus on writing my thesis or to run errands with both hands free, by the end of the week, I felt this strange unrest – as if something wasn’t fitting quite right. I realized it was because it was such a dramatic reduction of focused, awake, sun-drenched, active hours with Zeke. It was essentially down to just the hours between his waking up and his first nap, because after his second nap, I am usually distracted with preparing dinner. Today is Friday, his stay-at-home day. Ryan took him to lunch and then I got to play with him out in the courtyard after lunch, and then put him down for his afternoon nap in a leisurely way. I’m watching him nap on the monitor right now, his chubby arms folded, his giant head pushed up against a bundle of blankets, his full little legs curled up into a right angle, and my heart is ful...