Just moments ago I found myself hollering at my students “I don’t like having to defend my choices to you! I am aware of what is going on in other people’s classrooms. I know what they are and are not doing. I have a reason we are doing things the way that we are.”

Then I thought about the conversations I have been having recently with God. I wonder if He ever wants to yell that at me. I am so glad He has more patience than I. But maybe I need that hollered at me.
“Abby, I don’t like having to defend my choices to you. Don’t you trust me enough to know that I make the best choices for you? Yes, I am aware how it has worked for your (sister, friend, someone you heard about once). Don’t you think I set that up as well? I have reasons as to why we are doing things this way. Trust me.”

I have a good friend who lives down the street. Brooke is a single woman who loves God and the city. Basically, she listens to God and then does what He tells her. It seems to be working for her

One day, through a series of happenstance (that can only be God when you look back at them) she started babysitting for a woman who had recently left an abusive relationship and needed someone to watch her three kids while she waited tables (lets be honest, how great of a shift do you have to have in order to make it worth coming to work after you have paid the sitter?) Brooke was initially torn about babysitting. Who wants to commit your Saturday afternoons? She considered farming out the job to me and my husband, or another couple that lives in the neighborhood. But the Lord spoke into Brooke’s heart and she listened.

God told Brooke, you are single and you will never have more time than you do right now. I want you to do this. Can we pause there for a second…. I know that there are some serious struggles to being single. I can’t imagine how hard some of it all is and I don’t want to be one of those married people who is all “single is FUN single is FREE what the heck are you complaining about!” Single is lonely sometimes, waiting on God is hard, feeling a little like your adult life is in limbo must be kinda weird….like you are pregnant without a due date. I think it is cool that Brooke recognized that God had her in a circumstance purposefully. He wasn’t all “Hey, when you are partnered up, then you can do something. Till then, chill out.” And God doesn’t say to me “You were of use to me when you didn’t have all those husband, baby, house strings. But now that you have all those obligations I don’t expect you to serve me.” He uses the circumstances He put us in in the first place.

Anyway, so Brooke goes to babysit. She sees that this mom, Elizabeth, is doing everything she can, but seriously: not enough hours in a day (Lord, can you do something about that? 26?). She comes back to the small group we host at our house and asks if maybe a group of people can come over to weed wack her backyard. Brooke’s heart is burdened for Elizabeth.

Elizabeth starts attending 1027 and bringing her kiddos. She feels loved their. I have the peanut and she finds the time to take her three children grocery shopping and then bring my family dinner. Meanwhile, Christian and I are trying to come up with the perfect childcare plan. We only need someone two days a week, surely, surely we can just trade with one of the part time mom’s at the church, right? They have one kid, we have one kid….. then we started praying about it. Three days later Christian and I confered. It went like this “I got a name, did you get a name?” “Yeah, what name did you get? “What name did you get?” “You first.” “No you.” (We are so mature.) “I got Elizabeth” “Good, me too.”

I called her and the conversation went something like this. “Do you want to swap two days a week childcare for two nights a week childcare?” “Yes.” “Great.”

And now? I hate using the term “babysitter” because that isn’t what the relationship feels like to me. Bonus parent maybe, advisor, parenting mentor, really good friend. Bearer of wine and dinner after a parent teacher night from hell. Yeah that too. She adores the peanut, and we adore her kids. Her daughter calls the peanut her sister and makes up stories to the picture books as she holds the book out to show her the pictures.
I was talking to Brooke, about how blessed I feel. About how when I was still in the hospital the Lord put Elizabeth so heavy on my heart I asked Christian if we should change the peanut’s name. About how she has blessed my family so incredibly by answering the Lord’s call. She told me she felt like the kid with the fish. She brought what she had (three hours on a Saturday) and the Lord has multiplied that beyond her wildest dreams. The Lord has multiplied her gift to meet the needs of the people around her. How cool is that?

And that is my prayer. Lord, help me to hear you. And may you multiply the fish that I bring.

I grew up in a house with two older sisters. The Lord deemed my parents as excellent girl-raisers. So they got three girls. A couple at my church is expecting their third girl, I believe it is a compliment from God. A sign that they are doing a remarkable job with the first two.

Anyway, while each sister has her different strengths and weaknesses, there is definitely a thick stripe in all of us that marks us as from the same tribe. We all marched in the marching band in some capacity, we all did the musicals, we were all in the high school choir at some point and took some honors classes. We all came to know the Lord at relatively young ages and were active in our faith by high school. This didn’t escape the eye of many teachers and various peers.

One way that we attempted to distinguish ourselves, mostly in a joking manner, was being “the good daughter.” I am not even sure how it happened, how we started yelling it. But one of us would announce, “I did the dishes, so I am the good daughter today!” or “I’m the good daughter because I helped cook while everyone else sat around on their butt!” When Em was the only bearer of the grand-babies, she had serious good daughter status. How do you compete with that?

Later it morphed into, I am the good daughter because I am the only one who didn’t mess up today. I won’t broadcast their business on the internet, but I remember the day that two major mess ups came in, one on each sister. I was the good daughter that day for sure. I remember it happening because it was so rare!

We still do it, joke about being “the good daughter.” If you are the first one to call on a birthday or anniversary, or if you are the only one in town. You are the good daughter. It is all in good fun for us. But I agree with the sentiment that there is a sliver of truth to everything you joke about.

I think we, me…my sisters…all of us, we like the idea of being favored. Who doesn’t want to be the favorite? If you are the favorite then the good you do is extra good, and the bad you do isn’t so bad after all. Who doesn’t want to be seen through that lens? The part that makes it a little messed up, is the comparison aspect. If I am the favorite that means I am held in MORE favor than someone else. I don’t think only children think being the good kid is any big deal. Of course they are the favorite, there isn’t another choice.

That is how the Lord is different. He doesn’t operate with a concrete amount of favor and once He runs out, sorry about your luck. God is big enough, His love is big enough that everyone can be His favorite. (Someone on the prayer team at my home church prayed that over me, I am not smart enough to realize this on my own.) No seriously, wrap your mind around that. This second you can start claiming that according to God, YOU are the good daughter. Somebody at work not treating you right? That sucks, but rest in the fact that you are God’s favorite. Really hard on yourself because you can’t lose the rest of the weight you are trying to lose? Keep trying, God favors you.

It doesn’t make any sense if you think about it too hard. How can each person be favored, doesn’t the word favor connotate picking something above the rest? (Whoa there English teacher I think you are taking your job a little too seriously…. What you gonna diagram the next sentence?) It does. Normally. But God doesn’t have to operate within those rules. His love is big enough to allow me and you to be His favorite. So bask in that. You are favored by God. God favors you.

All of this is true, you have to believe it. Because today I am His “good daughter.”

I grew up in a pretty middle class exsistence. Two parents, two siblings, a dog. Sometimes things were tight, but mostly if we really wanted it, our parents found a way to make that happen. Even if that meant picking up a paper route to get to horse camp, or an after school office job to get to Spain. I certainly didn’t know what it meant to not have enough food, even if it wasn’t the fruit snacks and doritos that graced my friends cupboards. We got by.

At the lake, where there were more people to feed and keep happy but there were the incredibly generous grandparents, as well as some sort of system in place to insure everyone got their piece. A caper chart, a line going by age, an aunt telling the older cousins “only three meat balls till everyone has had some!” There was either so much that everyone could have as much as they wanted (candy on the porch), or some system in place to make sure that everyone at least got enough (half a pan is more than one serving, put the lasagna back).

In the fall of 2007 I started teaching at a “high needs” school. High needs is politically correct for poor. In this case really poor. Ninety-eight percent of my students were on free lunch. The other two percent had lives so chaotic no one bothered to fill out the form. It was my first experience with never enough. The books we were assigned by the county to read? There weren’t enough for every tenth grade classroom to even have a class set. You had to anticipate the reading of them, and then sneak in and take them before the other teachers. Even then I only got 28 for my class of 34. We didn’t have enough desks. In fifth period it was first come first serve. My kids would race to class in order to ensure they did not have to sit on the floor. In October we ran out of paper. This was a complete shock to me, but teachers (older and wiser than me) had seen it coming and squirled away as much as they could the previous months. They still ran out. I ran out of extra pencils and paper. There weren’t enough expo markers or computer time. There wasn’t even enough toilet paper in the student bathrooms.

It is crazy what always running out of things does to people. You are constantly scheming to get what you need. Constantly. If there are ten extra pieces of paper in the fax machine, you take them. If you find an extra dry erase marker on the floor you put it in your pocket. You do not stop to consider that it is someone elses. You need it. Do I have extra tape? Technically yes, but I am going to shrug my shoulders and say “sorry” because I can be pretty sure that when I do eventually run out of tape, there will be none available. When you get an email that says: come by the library if you want xyz, there is a stampede of grown people. It makes you stingy, it makes you take things that aren’t yours. An incredible amount of your energy is taken up by figuring out how you can get what you need.

I think it is easy to judge behavior when you don’t understand. I remember when I was seventeen and earning my gold award at a homeless shelter for families. Whenever we gave the kids anything, even if it was the same thing to every kid, they would steal it from each other. I thought this was ridiculous. Now I get it. Who knows when you are going to have a chance to get another pencil? Better take as many as I can get now.

It wasn’t until I started teaching in this environment that I truly understood why God would describe himself as “enough” as “more than enough.” If I believe that God is more than enough for me, (not just sing it, but really believe it) then I would act in a manner that shows I believe all of my needs will be met. I would give more. I could give away so much more because I wouldn’t have to worry about stockpiling. So much of what I don’t give comes down to trying to make sure I have enough just in case. But God says He is the enough. I don’t have to scrimp and save. If someone else asks for something I have I can certainly give it to them.

I also don’t have to take more than I need. For me right now that means food. I don’t have to take a ton of something. I can take enough, and trust that that is enough, and I will have an opportunity to eat more of it at some later junction. (Isn’t that weird? I am an adult. I do my own grocery shopping, I don’t have to eat 15 packs of fruit snacks because I can buy them whenever I want. Why do I feel like I need all of them RIGHT NOW? I have issues.)

I’m not saying that I don’t have to be responsible, or a good steward of what God has given me. I can act in a way that proves I have a never ending supply closet somewhere in my home. Because I do. Because God is enough.

You reopen a blog thinking you were going to write mostly about Jesus and two months later you tell the world about your boobs. What can I say, God works in mysterious ways?

Anyway, I follow the site Babble pretty closely. Yesterday they published an article about breast feeding vs. formula feeding that I thought was pretty reasonable. I also thought it wasn’t really anti-breastfeeding. It just wasn’t pro breastfeeding. But, as you find out when you get pregnant, somehow having a baby makes your body in a weird way public property. Thats right, even if you haven’t posed for Playboy, people, strangers, strange people who don’t even HAVE boobs, are allowed to have an opinion about your boobs. And what you should and should not be doing with them, and where, and when, and for how long. It is totally weird. Really, truly, weird. I wish there were a better way to describe it. It’s weird.

Most articles and blog posts you read take a really strong stance. And I get it, I do. I do think breast feeding is important and most women not doing it for longer is simply a product of our incredibly crappy maternity leave and care in this country. I think everyone should be super positive and encouraging about breastfeeding because if it weren’t for a friend stopping by after her 12 hour shift to get the peanut to latch, another friend paying for a lactation consultant, and some excellent advice from my sister and aunt who used to be a la leche league coach, I would have never been able to make it work. I was supported, that is why it worked for me.

But, there is a difference between being supportive, and making people feel like crap if they opt to formula feed. Especially if they have given it an honest try. Breastfeeding while Juliet was tongue tied was the most painful experience of my life. I had fibromyalgia for years, and pushed out a baby, and breastfeeding made me want to DIE. But that is a sign that something is wrong, so if that is how it is for you RUN to someone who can help you! So I get a little bristly when someone (even on the internet) puts “hard” in quotations marks when they feel like women just use it as an excuse. They, apparently didn’t get their nipple chewed off by their oldest (the first time the peanut yells YOU DON’T LOVE ME! She will see the scar….by 16 she’ll be like mom, put your boob away, fine I won’t wear this short skirt) so maybe they should back off.

So I do support breastfeeding, but I do think that sometimes the hard gets glossed over because people want everyone to try it. In my experience not being totally honest about anything only makes that thing more difficult for everyone. With that I will say, there are pros and cons. Oh and I am only one person with only two boobs the experience that I am describing only applies to those two boobs.

Pro: It is free. You burn extra calories. It is ridiculously convenient. Seriously, no going for a bottle in the middle of the night or worrying about if you will have clean warm water available, is the baby here? Are my boobs here? Good to go.It made air travel very easy for us. Crying? Nurse her, she stops. There is something very cool about your body being able to provide for your child. For me, getting Juliet to latch and then going through the whole tongue tied thing made me feel like God uniquely designed me to advocate for her. It gave me confidence that I could be this babe’s mom. I love coming home from work and her bouncing around like a maniac because she wants to get to me. Maybe if I wasn’t the bearer of the boobs she would still do this because I am her mama. But I do love that moment. It has provided some very sweet moments that I may have missed because I am so go go go. I had to stop, and let her eat, and just hang out and hold her. I needed a reminder to do that sometimes. Especially when she was very little. You don’t have your period. How cool is that?

Con: It hurt until we got the tongue untied, then it still hurt for a little bit. But we worked through it. I got approached for nursing in public, and it made me a little skiddish to nurse wherever whenever. Though I did get the opportunity to tell someone if they didn’t like it they could arrest me. I also got a profuse apology from the property manager. I felt kinda like a bad-ass. I also got over the skiddishness. I hated pumping. Hated it. Leaking, but they make pads that work great. For me the cloth ones didn’t cut it. I needed the disposable ones. But don’t forget them when you teach high school boys! I have been more bra sizes in the last nine months then I was during my entire pubescent period. I thought they would just get big, then go back. It did not occur to me how much milk I needed to be making would be evident just by looking.

Looking at this list I think for me the pros absolutely way out the cons, and most of those cons would not have existed if a.) someone would have told me or b.) I would have had a normal experience. But pumping, it still sucks (no pun-intended). I do wish the way we talk about breastfeeding would be more approachable in this country. Instead of “breast is best” I think I will go with “hey, everybody likes boobs, even your baby, why don’t you give ’em one!”

We’re having a little problem at our house. Our kid is a dog food lover. She has gotten increasingly mobile in the last couple of days. She scoots all around the house and is delighted when she gets under things, the excersaucer, the end table, the dining room table. In her new found mobility she has also found the ultimate goal of cruising around on her belly.

The peanut is totally into the dog food. She makes a bee-line for it and none of her favorite toys can distract her. Not even the stuffed dog that can say and spell her name. Heck, not even the actual dog can distract my child from the dog food. She loves it.

She loves playing in the dog food, playing in the water, and most importantly (and unfortunately) shoving as many pieces into her chubby chubby cheeks as she possibly can. Until, of course, some mean parent comes by, jams their finger in her mouth and makes her get rid of everything in there she was storing for later. It is truly gross. And a little dangerous, as she bites your finger with her four sharp teeth the whole time you are getting the dog food out of her mouth.

When I posted the dilemma on Facebook my two dear sisters pointed out that perhaps the eating of dog food is genetic. They cited the one time I ate dog food, in a car, because my two lovely sisters dared me to do it. Thanks guys. Now the whole world knows that you tortured me that I ate dog food. But the presiding parental sentiment was that I should let her do it because she will anyway. Alas, dog food is a choking hazard and I really don’t want to be the parent who let her kid choke…..on dog food. Imagine the headlines.

But maybe my sisters are on to something. She may not get the dog food loving from me, but I can’t deny I like things that are bad for me. Exhibit A: Reality television, especially anything featuring the Kardashian sisters. This can’t be good for me, mentally, emotionally, or spiritually. And Netflix offers episode after episode on demand. It’s bad. Exhibit B: Food, in college I ate a grilled cheese sandwich and two pints of Ben and Jerry’s for dinner on more than one occasion. Because I could, also because I could and only go a tiny bit over my meal plan. I wish I still had a meal plan.

I can’t be the only one. Anyone else attracted to the proverbial dog food in their life?

Apparently the Oscar nominations have come out today. I only know because I hear people talking about how they have never seen those movies. (Although, Toy Story 3 got nominated, that is on my: When does it get on Netflix? list.) Not only have I never seen the movies that are nominated, I have no interest in seeing most of them.

My taste in movies isn’t what we would call refined. I used to like those dark and twisty films, the ones where nothing came out right and everyone ends up more messed up than they started. At least, I think I did. Maybe I spent a short period of time pretending I liked those films…..hmmm….

Ever since I started teaching I have had little use for the Oscar worthy films (except, the exceptions: Babe, Up, Wall E, Beauty and the Beast). When I go to a movie I want to see something that takes my mind off of everything, something that I can escape into for a moment. I read too many essays of kids who have survived far too much. I am not really interested in having that mess portrayed on film. I know it exists, and I know that I don’t ever want to know how it really is. My kids are far too good at describing it all first hand.

Call me low brow (after all I do like dips and soups featuring Velveeta) but I like movies that end…..well….more or less happily ever after. I like to feel good after I have left my cushy seat and sticky space on the floor. At least, I like to feel emotionally good, I also enjoy the slightly sick feeling of too much popcorn. But I like those 90-120 minutes to take me to a place where the couple who should end up together does end up together, where parents don’t mess up epically, where lost dogs find their way home, and if I am really lucky animals talk.

I have been thinking recently about how Christ followers truly are strangers in a strange land, aliens in an alien world. We are not meant to be forever in this world, and thus are not totally comfortable here. I am not saying I don’t enjoy my life, or there aren’t moments that don’t feel absolutely perfect. But I think those rapturous moments are preludes to the rapture. Glimpses of the amazing life we have waiting for us in heaven. I think it feels wrong sometimes because this isn’t the way God designed it. I know that. Deep in my soul I feel it. Lots of people do. I think it is why we don’t want to watch movies that remind us of that ugly truth. We all are longing for our happy ending. And God says we’re going to get it.

This morning I woke up at 5. I was in shock because the peanut normally wakes up at like 3 claiming she is starving. STARVING! Help her parents are starving her!!!! We usually don’t go in until she has cried for ten minutes, she has never failed to just start screaming louder at the ten minute mark. If she knew how to call child protective services, she would and scream at the top of her lungs THESE PEOPLE WON’T FEED ME! This would be fine, but she is almost nine months old. I was told babies start sleeping through the night at 6. I was lied to.

But last night I didn’t wake up, until I sat up at five shocked that I hadn’t been woken up earlier. In my haste to get out of the house on time I guess I was pounding around pretty loudly. Christian woke up to make sure I hadn’t fallen down the stairs. I promised him I had not and then remarked “Hey, the baby slept through the night!”

Turns out the mommy slept through the night. Thanks honey, for covering the 3 am feeding.

You know, I have heard some version of this story numerous times by numerous parents……only it is always the dad who is the heavy sleeper……..

So, my day job is teaching high school kids. I think the litmus test for teaching high school should be do you think immature high school boys are funny? If the answer is no, you will be unable to keep your sanity. However, if the answer is yes, you can be entertained all day. This particular post has no spiritual application. I just thought the conversation was hilarious.

I have a large Mexican contingent this semester in my last block. These three boys have promised to keep my on toes. No post lunch napping for me! This was the conversation we had the other day.

Me: Okay, now that we know what plot is I want you to get into groups of two or three and think of a movie you all have seen. Then I want you to diagram the plot. I will call on you in 5 minutes.

Boys (to each other): Okay we all have seen “Girls Gone Wild”

Me (interrupting): You can’t do “Girls Gone Wild”

Boys: Why not? We’ve all seen it. You said, pick a movie you’ve all seen, we’ve all seen it.

Me: You can’t do that movie because it doesn’t have a plot…..Not that I have seen them, but from the commercials on TV, there is no plot

One boy: Sure there is the exposition they tell their name, then they are like no no I can’t then-

Me: No boobs! The rule is no boobs so you can’t do “Girls Gone Wild” choose something else.

Later we were doing this activity where you circulate a story so each group does a different piece. They received a story about a princess trying to find her father.

Boy: Then right as the bounty hunter is about to kill the dad, the princess flashes him-

Me: Don’t I have a no boobs policy in here?

Boy: Flashes him with her flash light and he is blinded for a second so he misses with the ax. What were you thinking teacher?

Me: Oh, of course, what was I thinking……

Boy: Oh and we diagrammed our movie

Boy 2: Yeah it is “Dear John”” but no homo

I walked away. After the battle of the boobs I didn’t have the energy to fight that one……

Yesterday Starbucks announced that it is going to start serving their coffee in even larger proportions. As if my bladder needed more to handle (teachers can only pee during hall passing period you know.) It is like 30 something ounces. Basically it is like going into Starbucks and coming out with a Big Gulp.

I know the Starbucks Trenta is a bad idea for me. I do. But I also know that there will come a day when I will look at the difference in price and decide what the hey, it isn’t that much bigger than a venti. Then I will walk out of the store with a gallon of sugary iced coffee goodness that is a single serving as it only has one straw coming out of it. That is what I will tell myself anyway. Then I will pee myself faster than when I was nine months pregnant and decided I could hold it all the way home from work. Another bad decision in my life.

I can’t help it. I like too much of a good thing. I like to overindulge. Food, staying  up too late, reading into the wee hours of the morning because just enough isn’t enough for me. I want whatever I want until my stomach hurts, my eyes are bleary, I pee myself. There are people in my life who are so good at discipline and  moderation. I am praying I become more like them. Especially before I have the Starbucks trenta option presented to me.