A Leaf on the Wind?

Over the past several weeks, I've been struggling with my role as a stay-at-home mom, a wife, a daughter, and a friend.  As an introvert, even though I love my family and friends, I truly value my alone time.  I'm learning that's not really a great thing for a new mom.  Women in this position need the company of other adults - and it doesn't even always have to be other mommies.  

I've been re-evaluating my relationship with God and the church.  Instead of feeling closer to God these past few months, I've felt further away from Him.  I'm back at church but still dealing with a spiritual "blackout" that I want to push through.

I've been wondering why I haven't been writing - even when I have time.  I identify myself as a writer.  I love to write.  I have lots of ideas.  I just don't sit down and do it.

I think a lot about how to be a better mother to my son.  What kind of person do I want to encourage him to be?  Is it possible to walk way from the Mommy Wars and still be involved in the motherhood community?  Can I refuse to take sides without going AWOL?  Can I put aside my own insecurities and raise my baby boy to be a gentleman who respects women and his elders?  Who looks past appearances and treats others with love?

Image from www.etsy.com.

With all these thoughts swirling in my head like the leaves that will soon fly through the autumn air, I'm taking on a bit of a new identity.  A new symbol.  A new inspiration.

The feather.

Feathers are the means by which birds can fly.  Not the only way, of course; bone structure and anatomy play a role.  But a featherless bird cannot fly.  Birds that can fly doesn't think about flying.  It's part of their genetic make-up.  They just do it.

I need to stop thinking about being able to do something - and just do things.  I've spent too much time trying to talk myself out of things that seem too hard for me.

Feathers also represent writing and fighting.  Words and warfare  Feathers, once altered, can be used as quill pens to spill a soul on paper, or the means to guide arrows to the hearts of their targets.  I am a writer and a fighter.  My husband once told me he married me because I'm strong.  I don't always feel strong, but frequently, fighting just to get through a bad day or a period of difficulty is enough to qualify us as strong.  We don't have to be heroes.  We don't have to be faultless.  


Feathers also represent God.  As believers, we frequently turn to Psalm 91 as a prayer of protection and safety. Verse 4 reads: "He will cover you with his feathers.  He will shelter you with his wings.  His faithful promises are your armor and protection."  In my mind, I see the image of a worn and weary refugee, huddled beneath a pair of majestic, shining wings.  It's an image of rest and peace.  Those bright feathers promise hope.

So, instead of a leaf on the wind, I'll be a feather.  Ready to fly, or be honed into a tool for writing or fighting.  Flexible, faithful, true.  

The Cat is Out of the Bag...

...and I'm not talking about that time Thor and Loki had it out over an empty sack of Meow Mix, either.

I mean to say that, after months of genuine indecisiveness, I finally turned in my resignation at work.  I'm officially a stay-at-home-mom.

I feel relieved to have finally made my choice, but I'm surprised that relief is pretty much all I feel.  I thought I'd feel elated and overjoyed and a big rush of warm fuzzies as I hugged and kissed my baby.  I thought I'd feel proud, having made the decision that my husband and I agreed was best for my family.

Instead, I sort of feel a little bit...empty.  Like I cut the cord in a huge area of my life and I'm in kind of a freefall right now.  And challenged, like I'm standing at the base of a wild, snowy mountain and I've committed myself to climbing it but I really haven't packed enough supplies and I've never climbed a mountain before and in fact, I didn't even watch any mountain-climbing videos on YouTube or anything.

After just a few weeks of staying home with the baby (several of those days with family or friends visiting), I can see that raising children is not a job for lightweights.  When Ross got home from work yesterday, I was exhausted.  Nope, I hadn't finished three loads of laundry, gone grocery shopping, and groomed the cats.  I had fed and changed the baby and thought about what I would made for dinner (eggs, fried taters and turkey bacon).  And that was enough.

I can see how motherhood, which is supposed to be about family and community, can be isolating instead.  I can see how a mom, even a mom who is a good person and full of lots of love, can get frustrated and resentful towards a new baby.  Suddenly, your freedom disappears overnight; you're often expected to make decisions about returning to work long before you're physically or emotionally ready; friends and family and total strangers and the creepy staring lady at Giant Eagle all want to see your baby NOW and get upset because they weren't the first on your list to be invited over;  your timetable now revolves around feeding a little guy who, in our case, is still figuring out how to eat, which frequently makes mealtimes stressful and unpredictable (the bonding quotient there is pretty much zero); you begin to dread evenings because you're either afraid you'll miss a feeding if the baby monitor doesn't pick up his cries, or you'll stay up all night because his "self-soothing" pug-like grunts just. Don't. Stop.

I thought it would be easy to quit my job.  Maybe it would have been, if I despised my job or even felt indifferent towards it.  But I actually liked it.  I liked my co-workers.  I liked what I did and I felt like I did it well.  It was also hard to beat a 6-minute commute (which passed by a Starbucks).  Plus, the information I gathered from working in a pediatric office has been invaluable during my pregnancy and now, with a preemie in the house.  I had an amazing, engaged, compassionate supervisor and I had a good time working with some really fun, lively girls - going from that to being home with three suspicious cats, an often unreadable baby, Klondike bars and Netflix is a huge change.

We haven't been to church in a while because, well, yeah, we have a newborn and we've been advised to keep him out of crowds for a while.  Although we've got offers to visit and help from some of the church gals, it's not the same as being in the Word and enjoying fellowship with our spiritual family.  I thought I'd automatically feel closer to God after my son's birth, because, after all, I recognize God as the Heavenly Father, and now I was a parent, too, but that didn't happen, either.

I guess it comes down to expectations.  The same unrealistic expectations that drive wedges between spouses in the first few years of marriage can overwhelm new parents.  I didn't exactly expect the kind of rosy-cheeked, wide-eyed newborn so frequently depicted in movies and on television...nor did I expect to snap back into my pre-pregnancy body in a few weeks...and I certainly didn't expect to get a full night's sleep any time soon after his birth. But maybe my problem was that I really couldn't prepare myself for a new baby - especially the way he ended up coming into the world.

So, that's what I'm going to focus on these next few weeks - making realistic expectations for myself and my baby.  Just getting by, one day at a time.  

The anxiety of making The Big Decision is over.  I have no obligations to anyone but my God and my family.  It's okay for me to breathe.  And fail, sometimes.  And try again.  And ask for help.  And not take everyone's advice, if I don't want to.

Because really...the 17-year-old cashier at McDonald's might not be the most reputable source of infant knowledge, knowwhatImsayin'?

Playing It S.M.A.R.T.

This weekend, I taught the youth group about goal-setting.  (Yes, we teach the kids both spiritual truths and "practical" ones...but so much the better when those two can be combined!)  I used the S.M.A.R.T. goal model that I was taught at Starbucks.  The kids giggled a little about how corny the acronym was, but, you kow what?  I think they understood it.  Some of the kids came up with really awesome, lofty goals - one wants to open a day-care, another wants to own a dance studio.  Some goals were a little simpler - to improve grades or to lose weight.  But I was proud of all the kids, because they took the lesson seriously and really thought hard about something they want to accomplish or change about themselves.

So I decided, on this last day of the worst year of my life, that I'm making some changes, too!  I'm not trying to look at these decisions as resolutions, because for me, ike many of you gentle readers, resolutions have a sneaky way of getting broken rather quickly.  I'm making these changes to improve the quality of my life - spiritually, emotionally, and physically.  So, these are the things I'm going to try to commit to in 2013...

1. Lose 32 pounds by my 32nd birthday!  This gives me 10 1/2 months to gradually lose weight by making healthier choices daily - not by starving myself (pfft, like that ever works anyway).  It also filters in time for me to make mistakes (hello, Grandma's butter cookies!) and slowly adjust to comsuming less calories.  If I were a more determined person, I could accomplish this more quickly, but I know myself.  THIS is the way to set myself up for success!  My resources include my friends on MyFitnessPal, an app/website that helps count calories and connect me with other like-minded people.  In addition, I'm trying to bake more of my own sweet treats, rather than buy them, so I am more conscious of what ingredients go into them.  My reasons for this goal include: avoiding the health problems that plague my family (diabetes, heart disease, etc.) and having more self-confidence.  I am also hoping that, by becoming healthier, my chances for having a successful full-term pregnancy may increase.  The doctors have run many tests on me and there is nothing "wrong" with me, but it can't hurt either, can it? 



Dear Jesus: Thank You that these
things have gone out of style...

2. Write, write, write!  I have two novels running laps in my head.  Each day another runner joins the mix, and yet I'm not giving them the time to spill out onto the pages, accomplishing their goals!  By the end of 2013, I want to have finished and edited (and maybe self-published!?) one of my novels.  Although they are both my babies and very precious to me, I think my odds are the best if I work on my superhero story, Normal Was Never Enough.  You can expect updates and more blog posts about this story as I progress.  I would like to sit down and write everyday, but I think that's another set-up for failure.  My goal is to work on the novel three times weekly.  I also want to make sure I am updating all three of my blogs at least once weekly.

3. Make God my number one priority.  I love Jesus.  I've been a Christian for (now, I think it's official) over half of my life.  But it's becoming increasingly easy for my to put other things first.  I want to reverse that trend and make more time for the Lord in my daily life.  I know there's not a simple trick to this.  But I'm asking God to help me fall in love with Him again first.  Everything else will follow. 

4. Keep my friends close.  I have been blessed with a number of wonderful, supportive, funny, beautiful and loving friends.  Yet during the past year - probably because of all the trauma we've endured - I've found myself pulling away from companionship.  Part of it deals with that self-consciousness issue I mentioned above.  Am I just the "funny fat friend"?  Am I really cool enough to be hanging out with these incredible girls?  I am realizing that asking myself those questions is actually a sign that I need to spend less time alone.  Because who thinks like that?  No one should!  My goal is to try to spend a little time with one (or more) of my girlfriends at least every two weeks.  Even if it's an hour-long stop at Starbucks between one woman's mommy duties.  It would really benefit me to get out of the house, anyway!

5. Get.  A.  Job.  This is probably the most urgent of my goals, for financial reasons as well as psychological ones.  I thought that being unemployed would mean that I would have more time and opportunity to work on my hobbies and take care of the house.  Well, it did.  But being unemployed certainly didn't suddenly give me the desire to wipe counters or scrub toilets.  Why did I think that it would?  I have no idea.  I need a job to help support Ross in taking care of our financial needs, but I also need a job to give myself more structure and human interaction - even on the days when I prefer my pets over other people!  I should mention that I have received a few offers and am still considering some of them, but right now I'm still waiting on hearing from My Dream Job with the Carnegie Library.  (Those of you who pray may want to offer up a few pleas for me, since I really feel this is the perfect fit for me, but I probably won't hear anything until the end of this week at the earliest!)

Still not quite sure how I landed such an amazing guy!

6. Be a better wife.  It's not about being more submissive, or more meek, or more docile.  I want to be a better support for my husband, who is truly the greatest man in the world to me.  I want to learn how to compromise more effectively, love him in the ways that best encourage him, and help him reach his own goals.  I'm not saying I haven't done that in the past (almost) three years, but I know in my heart that I can do better.  Step one: we both need to out down the iPhones and talk to each other.  I refuse to let technology weaken my marriage!

Wow.  Looking back over everything I just wrote makes 2013 look like a year with a lot of challenges in it!  But I am trusting God that he will help me meet them all head-on.  I'm really excited to leave 2012 behind me and shake its dust off my feet.  It was a sharp and ugly bend in the road, but it's not the end, and I am truly beliving that the months ahead will be smoother, clearer, and more straight-forward a drive on the highway of life!

God knows I need it!

Best wishes, blessings and a joy-filled 2013 to all of you.  Thanks for the support over the past few years.  I look forward to entertaining you for many more years to come.  Unless all the technology changes again; then we'll have to do this all telepathically or something.

I guess I'm okay with that.  Happy New Year!

Job-Hunting is Like Giving a Cat a Pedicure...

...awkward, draining, and potentially lethal.  And very, very humbling.

Don't you just hate it when a teacher or employer makes you "assess yourself"?  All those painful, awkward questions...making you think about your talents, your challenges, your successes and failures...

Ugh.

Well, this time it's not a well-meaning authoritarian who's forcing me to evaluate my skill set.  It's just little old me, sitting at the computer with my warm can of Pepsi Next and a cat chattering at the window (our local cardinal couple is taunting Loki).  And I am poring through literally hundreds of jobs in the Pittsburgh area.  Most of them are well above my skill set and experience range (you know, like the Director of Marketing and Technological Advancement and Other Things You'll Never Comprehend Department at Carnegie Mellon).  A lot of them don't work with my availability.  I'm not being picky; I have religious obligations on both Saturdays and Sundays and therefore cannot regularly work weekends.  It's not like I'm sleeping in until 3:oo PM and then going out to party all night!

So I am at a bit of a standstill.  I joined LinkedIn about a month before I lost my job at Fenner.  It's funny...about three months ago is when I started seriously looking for other work.  It wasn't that I was unhappy at Fenner.  I certainly couldn't complain about my hours (perfect), or co-workers (generally awesome), or the commute (8 minutes with traffic)!  It was that I wanted something more fulfilling.  A different career path.  So I started poking around.

And here I am, still poking. 

On LinkedIn, I've seen some of the people who graduated with me from Clarion.  Granted, I don't know most of them personally (the English and Theatre departments were relatively intimate, mind you), but I'm looking at their current job titles and wondering how they possibly ended up so awesome and important and special.  Not that Clarion grads aren't all of those things, of course.  They are!  I went to school with some pretty amazing people!  But I had to ask myself if maybe...just maybe...some of those fancy titles weren't a little bit puffed up - even by the companies themselves?  I mean...a cashier could call herself a "Financial Exchange Overseer"...couldn't she?  A janitor could say he's a  "Systems and Facility Maintenance Coordinator".  Even a blogger could list "Social Observation Analyst and Reporter" as a job, right?

So, hard as it is, I'm trying not to get caught up in the allure of important-sounding monikers and fluffy, highfaluting job descriptions.  I'm trying to look for jobs that are close in proximity to my home (I'm not that interested in a 45-minute commute...again), for reputable companies, within my skill set, and offer decent pay.  Simple.

Apparently there isn't much out there for a conservative, well-spoken, educated, book-loving, high-energy, customer-friendly 30-something with fantastic taste in footwear from Carnegie.

Well, nothing that pays more than $9.50 an hour, anyway. 

I gotta keep on truckin'...

Being Wrong Can Be DELICIOUS!

Recently, my sister-in-law and her hubby sent Ross a gift card to Trader Joe's for his birthday (he reluctantly admitted that he is entering his "mid-thirties" now...and he doesn't like it).  I had only been to Trader Joe's once before, and it was when the store near South Hills Village had just opened.  It was crowded - very crowded - and I could barely move around, much less find any great products or deals.  Unfortunately, it left a little bit of a bad taste in my mouth.  I hadn't had the chance to see what people were raving about, so I just sort of shrugged it off and kept shopping elsewhere.

However, we ran out of chicken breasts this week.  And that gift card meant that more chicken breasts were already lovingly paid for by Jay and Lindsey!  So off I went.

Let me tell you...now that I was actually able to move around the store and not be accidentally crammed into a corner by over-eager, elbow-tossing hipsters...I really like the place!

Other than a few posts I wrote a few years back about my favorite bargain places to shop, I don't typically try to promote any particular brand or product.  I'm certainly not being endorsed by anyone!  But this post is as much about self-discovery as it is about organic-food-discovery.

I had this image in my head - and I have absolutely no clue where it came from - that Trader Joe's was for slightly snobbish, holistic, earth-mothery people who still managed to drive the biggest gas-guzzling SUVs on their block.  That the food was overpriced and just as uppity as the customers.  Wow - was I ever wrong!

Sometimes, it's awesome to be wrong.  Because, when you find out you're wrong, you get a whole new insight on life.  And, in my case, you get to save a huge amount of money on your grocery bill while trying new things (kale, anyone?)...and that makes an acceptable side dish for humble pie!

I went twice this week and actually found myself doing double takes when I checked the prices.  Trader Joe's version of Nutri-Grain bars was only $1.99?  And it's made with organic ingredients?  Nutri-Grain bars are $2.50 when they are on sale at Giant Eagle.  It didn't take long for me to realize that all of my perceptions were completely mistaken.  Strange how crazy ideas can get into our head and then flat-out refuse to leave, huh?

I was also delighted with the variety of slightly quirky products that Trader Joe's carries.  I brought home their "Inner Peas" - a crunchy and light snack actually made from green garden peas - and it's pretty tasty (my hubby calls them "pea fries")!  Also, my new favorite carb is their whole wheat Tuscan pane bread.  I bought another loaf today even though I still have half a bag left.  I don't want to run out! 

"So," I joked with my lovely, organic-friendly sis-in-law, "It appears that you have converted us!"

"Muah, ha, ha!  That was my evil plan all along!" was her reply.

Best evil plan ever! 

Entering New Territory...

For much of my life, I'm afraid I chose to take a pessimistic viewpoint.  On pretty much everything.  People probably woulnd't like me; I probably wouldn't get the roles I auditioned for, I probably wouldn't ever get married; people would probably misunderstand me; I'd probably never be happy.

I wish I could say that, when I found Christ, that attitude changed overnight and I woke up a wide-eyed, fantastically-coiffed Disney princess with a melody in my heart, but things didn't work out that way.  Instead, my journey away from pessimism has crossed a long bridge of realism and there have been detours into rationalism and egoism, fanaticism and legalism, materialism and idealism. 

I still sometimes struggle with anxiety stemming from assuming the worst about people and situations.  It's not debilitating, not anything that needs medication or counseling (at least I think not), but it sometimes interferes with my relationships and my sense of peace.

Today was one of those days where NONE of that applied.  It should have, but it didn't.

Around 3:00 today, I was called into my manager's office and respectfully told that since the company had recently lost so many major clients, lay-offs were necessary.

And I was one of them.

I cocked my head to one side and heard words coming out of my mouth, but I don't remember thinking them or even really saying them.  I said something along the lines of understanding that the situation must be stressful and difficult for her, and asking for a reference, and asking if the change was effective immediately.

Yes, yes, and yes, came the replies.

And I shook her hand, thanked her, and left the office.

I returned to my desk, pulled down the pictures of my husband and myself, put my empty coffee mug into my bag, and - in the back of my mind, somewhere - I thought that it was infinitely convenient that I'd left my cloth grocery bag in my desk the night before, so I had somewhere to put my pictures and coffee mugs.

It seemed to me that the layoffs were being done quietly, so I didn't say anything as I left.  I assume that my co-workers thought I was headed to another doctor's appointment, and I left it at that.

I feel that this was a fairly sudden decision.  I had just been moved from my cardiology account to work on two I hadn't worked on before.  I had moved to a desk in another part of the office, and I was really excited for the challenge.  I was ready for a fresh start, to apply some of the things I had learned previously, and to really put my all into working these new accounts.  I had determined that I wouldn't get behind on my work, that I would stay positive, and that I would be as organized and neat as I possibly could. 

Even though I'd only been on the accounts for a week, I was feeling pretty good. 

Today was definitely unexpected.  I left the office in a little bit of a daze, but when I got to the parking lot, I was in my right mind, at least enough to destroy a large bug that landed on my door, while simultaneously waving good-bye to two of my co-workers and talking to my husband on the phone (shock does not, apparently, affect my ability to multi-task). 

Ross took things extremely well.  He even joked that I told him the wrong way.  I was supposed to ask him to join me for lunch - like he did when he lost his job at the Treasury Department.  Of course, I came home and immediately applied for unemployment and starting the job hunt.  Dollar Bank, I am hoping, would take me back, and there are a lot of options out there for me.  Still, I am dead-set on having regular daylight hours so I can continue to work with the youth at church.  At this point, that is now my number one priority. 

It has to be.  If I overanalyze, I might lose my mind again.

So, in the meantime, I'll write, I'll photograph, I'll keep dreaming.  I will do something.  I am grateful that I am quickly coming to terms with our most recent loss, or this whole situation would be an ugly bomb of mascara-smeared depression waiting to explode.  See?  God knew.  People can say what they want.  I don't care.  I don't believe that God brings evil situations into our lives, but I do believe that he gives us the opportunity to learn from them and use them to prepare for our futures.  The way that this last miscarriage unfolded brought me sorrow but a lot of peace.  If this one had been like the last, losing my job would have been absolute chaos.  Knowing myself, I believe it would have sent me packing back for the road towards pessimism.  Maybe worse.

But that's not how things happened.  And there's a reason.

Just last night, Pastor Stephanie shared with our leadership small group a lesson: that stretching for your goals is impossible without first having goals.  Sometimes they are God-given, others they are given by parents, employers, or teachers. 

And so here is mine, without fanfare, without fuss, for all the internet to see: as I am looking for another job that allows me to keep working with the youth, I am going to finish my book.  The one that's been rolling around in my head for a year and a half now, the one that's been on my mind almost as much as my grief.  The one that makes me laugh when I think about it.  The one that I picture in my head like a movie.

The one that was meant to be written.