Weakness as gift

My mom is visiting her mom after having spent 5 weeks with us as we welcomed baby DW into our lives. So this week is the first time we've been left truly alone with our kiddos. One thing I've enjoyed is all the cuddle time with both my children. L, who has always been very independent, has wanted and enjoyed hugs and kisses more in this time of transition. And DW just patently prefers being held to pretty much anything else at this point. And I'm happy to accommodate.

But I was thinking back to my early 20s when I did a fair amount of living overseas for months at a time. This was pre-skype, pre-convenient email. And I suffered from intense bouts of loneliness. It did not help that I traveled to countries with little sunlight and lots of foul weather. During one of those trips, I read the book Five Love Languages. This book proposes that different people have different love languages and if you try to "speak" a language that another doesn't understand, they won't see your actions as love. The "languages" were quality time, words of affirmation, acts of service, physical touch and receiving gifts. Quality time and physical touch resonated with me as languages I understood.

But there I was, on some distant continent, far from people I cared about and I wanted to throw a bat through a window. It seemed extremely unfair to have physical touch be a love language when I was extremely single. At the time, I had never dated anyone and would not have known how even if the opportunity presented itself to me. And then there was the whole deal about how God designed sex for marriage and man, if dating felt far off for me, marriage really felt far off. Basically, I felt cursed to have an empty love tank. Ultimately, living a healthy life in my body would be a struggle the rest of my singleness. It was something I managed by God's grace--I took up more athletic endeavors in my mid-20s--with alternating bouts of peace and torment.

Now, I'm writing this as my newborn sleeps in my lap. Those days seem very far off. As the mother of young ones, I'm constantly touching and being touched. Books sometimes warn parents that moms can be worn out from constant touching and want alone time away from her husband. Maybe it will come to that someday, but that day certainly hasn't come yet for me. I love the sweetness of our current phase. My daughter will sit in my lap and rest her head on me while describing the most mundane realities of life. "Daddy blue eyes,""Baby DW sleeping,""Red bowl,""Blue shirt,""Stacky blocks all-fall-down." My son loves being held and petted. I could do without the wailing parts, but really the rest is great.

What once seemed like a curse has now become a gift. I have hugs for my kids all day and when my husband gets home I've got plenty more snuggles left for him too.

A moment of public grieving

NB: The following is not a complaint. I'm not asking for accommodation nor am I wishing for a different life.

While my day to day life in the past 18 months has been decidedly domestic, I am a linguist* by training. Today, I received an announcement for a conference workshop that is right up my alley. I have work I'd love to present there and get feedback on. I'd probably even be interested in the other presentations offered. Exciting stuff on the order of magnitude of being a U2 fan and getting a backstage pass--VERY EXCITING.

SO NOT GOING. The conference is in Australia. I don't think we budgeted for Australia this year. Then, it's in December of this year. As in, one month after a requisite family flight to my cousin's wedding. As in, I'll have a still-nursing, 8-month-old son.

What a bummer. I love my cousin; I love my children; my husband makes good money. I'm still sad that I can't even think of participating in this.

Ok. That's off my chest. Back to playing with the kids.

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*Linguists are not necessarily grammar, spelling, and punctuation freaks--at least I'm not.

Grace offensively

My facebook feed has been filled with an surprising number of Christians who appear to be defending a glee-filled response to the killing of Osama bin Laden. That feeling is something I can't connect with, and I've been reflecting on why that is. I think it's because I've been thinking about God's grace lately.

I recently read Zahl's Grace in Practice: A theology of everyday life. One of the points he stresses is humanity's original sin and how close each of us is to total depravity. It's from that state that God rescues us by having a perfect Jesus pay what we owed. Jesus died for Osama bin Laden. We might not be able to forgive him, but the Jesus I know was willing to die a death powerful enough to provide forgiveness to bin Laden. That's how big God's grace is.

And while I have never and don't plan to actively participate in killing people, Jesus made anger equivalent to murder in Matthew 5. So while justice demands that bin Laden pay for the deaths he caused, justice demands that I pay for the murders I've committed too. That's how sin works. It universally evens the playing field; Zahl describes it as the even distribution of sin. Before a holy and perfect God, no one is more or less sinful. We're all just sinners; none of whom should be anywhere close to what is holy and perfect.

I think that the notion of justice is what is attractive about the death of Osama bin Laden and perhaps the notion of retribution. However, Jesus as I understand him is about grace that offends justice. So when I think about how God saw bin Laden, I don't think God was disgusted or offended by him. I believe that until the moment bin Laden died, God was wanting him to come home the way the prodigal son's father wanted to see a wayward child come home. While I doubt that bin Laden ever did accept Jesus's death as payment for his own judgment, this does not make me happy or want to run out into the streets.