No, I'm not dead.

I am surprised that I've gone 23 days without blogging, but I don't feel guilty.

Yes, I wanted to embrace the everyday blogging thing, but I have so much going on right now that I doing my best to prune and say "no" to as much as possible.  Apparently, feeling like I need to blog regularly is one of the things that was pruned.

Life is interesting, which is some kind of Chinese curse, right?  I kid.  We're just busy packing a bit at a time, looking for houses, and generally trying to stay calm.  Last week, we were both so blue & frustrated with the house search thing that we just had to take a couple days off from it. 

The reason all of this is happening right now is because of kids.  We want to get a place ASAP so that we can get licensed for foster care & adoption and get a kid within the first couple months of 2011.  That's the goal. 

We're working on trusting God completely with that one.  Sometimes it feels like a faith tug-of-war.  Go this way.  No! Wait!  This way.  Do this.  Now wait.  Go do this now!

This very moment, I'm having a "what's the point?" kind of moment.  I'm breathing and praying and asking God to keep talking to me and changing me in the amazing ways he's been doing this past month or two.  I don't want to confuse stepping out in faith with freaking out and trying to make things happen.  I don't want to confuse trusting God with the details with giving up and being lazy. 

I know that amazing things are happening.  I know that God is working things out in ways we cannot see.  I just have to keep reminding myself.

I know you're reading this

I'm sad because two of my best friends, Ben and Sandra, are moving to Arizona tomorrow.  As they set sail for that land of sand and racism, I figured I'd take the opportunity to send out a love letter in the form of a blog to them.

I met Ben at church a few years ago, and I wanted to like him because I had heard good things about him and my friend, Tracee, liked him, but I just didn't get it.  The night I first talked to him, I thought he was a little bit bratty.  As I got to know him a little better, I realized that it was just that he doesn't always have the gift of making it clear when he's being sarcastic or joking. 
We really became friends on my last trip to Mexico, in 2008, where the gift of sarcasm brought us together.  As the only ones with that gift on the trip, we often sought each other out to make snotty comments or jokes that no one else truly got or appreciated.  Also, we were often the last ones awake, and we chatted by the campfire, with the only topic I really remember being movies.  It impressed me that he had seen Once and loved it. 
I may have also claimed him as my new best friend, which he took in stride (at least on the outside). 

In the beginning of 2009, Sandra came on the scene.  The news of this fairly serious relationship came as a bit of a surprise to most of us, but I think it surprised the two of them, as well, because it happened so swiftly.  Ben had been out of town (out of the country!) for about two months, and during that time he realized just how much he cared for her.  One night, when I dragged him with me to Barnes & Noble to buy a couple of the Twilight books (see! He's a good friend to a girl.), he told me about her and the conversations they'd had and his feelings.  I was pretty geeked. 
At the same time, I was nervous.  It's always a little bit iffy when your friends start going out with someone you don't know, because I think we've all had the experience of one of our friends going out with someone we don't like, or at least someone who we just don't mesh with. 
I can still see her face when I walked into church the first time I met her.  I hadn't seen Ben in a long time and I came up and hugged him from behind while he sat (which is really the only way to hug him, being that he's 12 feet tall & about as cuddly as a piece of plywood).  She didn't look at me strangely or in any sort of possessive way.  She turned with her huge-normous smile that she has and said, "Robin!" 

I got to spend time with her alone a couple times, and was impressed with how smart she is, how widely read, her heart for God, and her loving spirit.  It sounds like she'd be a boring sap, but that's the best part!  She's not!  She's awesome and funny and sometimes sarcastic and everything that Ben is and is not.  They are wonderful.  Once she moved here and they got married, it was like I had a 2-for-1 best friend package. 

So, I got that for almost a year, minus their excessive traveling.  It makes it a little easier that they traveled so much, because sometimes it felt like they were already gone.  But now they won't be back next Tuesday or in a couple of weeks, and I don't know who I'll have theological conversations with.  They just seem to be the only ones that it ended up happening with. 

I guess I'll just have to get a bunch of Obama stickers and some Che Guevara shirts and go visit them in Arizona. 

Trying not to fight the change

Right now I'm plugging through Men at the Crossroads: Beyond Traditional Roles & Modern Options for class, and I'm having a bit of a hard time.  At first, I was feeling pretty bratty about it, thinking things like, "Oh, poor men!  They have it soooooo hard!" and rolling my eyes at the different men's movements. 

What makes me angry is when men, especially Christian men, moan about society being all about women and how men are at a disadvantage now.  Um, hello?  No, they're not.  Women still make 20-30% less then men do, we're still expected to be more like men at work....but this isn't why I'm here right now.

Basically, I was blowing off all questions and issues that men may have.  Sometimes I get a glimpse and understand a little bit the stress that men are under, but I often think it's all their own doing with their machismo and weird ways of thinking and why don't they just knock it off?!  And this doesn't help. 
I want men to care about and try to understand women's issues, so why shouldn't I do the same for them?

So, I go back to my reading with a different frame of mind.  I will listen to these lectures with interest and compassion, and my eyes will look forward, not at the ceiling. 

It's only okay

I didn't write earlier, while it was still Sunday, because I had a headache and was busy feeling sorry for myself.  So there.  Harrumph.

I was feeling down because my teaching was only okay and I gave myself a stress headache beforehand and I was beating myself up about not being a perfect speaker.

I've only taught 5 times.  I know that no one else expects me to be perfect, but I feel like they're all quite ready for me to not teach anymore.  I don't know if they realize that I'm new to this and I have to grow and learn. 

My problem is that I have too many ideas that I think go together and flow, but they only really do so in my head, at least not without a lot more connection.  This isn't a new problem, but one I've run into writing papers- I get entirely too many sources- and here on the blog, where I quite often get long-winded when I don't mean to or want to do so. 

So I must learn to prune my works a bit and find the main ideas I want to express, keeping all the other stuff for a different work of its own, or as support for something else.  I don't have to express everything I'm thinking just this minute.

Reading:  I read my notes & parts of Hosea again, and I finished Out of the Silent Planet, which was pretty good, but Lewis went a little overboard with the descriptions.   I was often waiting for something to happen besides description of the flora. 

Today? Oh, it was mediocre

I was up till past 5freaking30 this morning, so I ended up skipping church, which I guess was okay because I missed all the Father's Day whoo-hah.  After attempting to call my own dear father, I went back to bed. 

But I did buy him a book!  I bought him the audio version of The UltraMind Solution on iTunes, because I'm really digging on it and I think my parents will, too.  This book is blowing my mind, and part of me can't wait to try the dietary changes the author recommends because he makes it seem like magical fairy dust will come down and everything will be better. 

Believe me, I'm going into it with skepticism and not a ton of enthusiasm, because I'm not particularly excited about giving up gluten & dairy, if even for 6 weeks.  But if I see a change, you know I'll tell you about it.   Everything this guy is saying makes a lot of sense:  that our medical practices have gotten all out of whack and that we now treat every part of our bodies as completely separate and disconnected from the rest, and then we throw different pills at each part whenever something goes wrong.  He posits that our diets are so dysfunctional that many many of our ailments, both physical and psychological, would be greatly improved, if not cured, by taking better care of ourselves, with the chief manner being a change of diet.

Like Pollan & Schlosser, he says tat we eat entirely too much processed food that is lacking in basic nutrients.  The FDA guidelines for vitamins and minerals really only get us to a survival level, not a place where our bodies are healthy and thriving. 

I'm excited about this approach because I have noticed and lamented the fact that I could make a fairly long list of things that are amiss in my body, and in Seth's.  I'm entirely too young to have a laundry list of medical problems and not wanting to bring them up to the doctor because I don't want to have to get one more prescription. 

So, I read the book.  The author repeats himself a lot, and I'm skimming a lot, partially because he doesn't really have to convince me and I'm not wowed by his illustrations of lipids and cell walls.  At times, it feels a little like a horoscope, in that he's casting such a wide net that everyone would have to say yes to some things in his checklists.  The thing is that I find myself wanting to check off nearly everything in his list of woes, and I do believe that medication mainly addresses symptoms instead of causes.

I suspect that, starting in July, we're going to be eating very differently, at least for a while.  And we'll see how it goes.  I really want it to help with a lot of things, because that will be our impetus to continue eating healthily. 

Hugs, friends!  Tomorrow I keep reading this book & I'll probably read the C.S. Lewis one I have up there on my Good Reads list.  I don't remember exactly which one it is, so you'll have to look up & slightly to the right. 

Redefining My Boundaries

As you may know, I've gotten slightly more into politics over the last two years or so.  Though I've always done my research and voted, I never really paid much attention to what was going on or read the news much.  Not that I became a political junkie or anything, but I started reading more articles, which led to getting more invested in one point of view or another, and it also means that I saw a lot more of the ugly side of things. 

You might not be aware of this, but our media is very polarized right now (NO!) and things like Twitter and facebook make it much easier for that polarized spirit to leak out of your computer and get all over your friends and family.  For me, though I tried to stay neutral and only enter the political posting waters from time to time, I still found myself getting more and more angry at people- not simply for their posts that I may disagree with, but for the attitude I inferred from these posts.  There is a real spirit of anger, judgment, and hatred that turns my stomach, but I was getting caught up in the mire of being angry because these other people were always so angry! 

The other day, Glen Beck pushed me past my breaking point.  So what was it that I broke through and what am I leaving behind?  All my mini-political junkie trappings.  As painful as it is to me, I'm not watching the Daily Show or the Colbert Report anymore.  I'm not following columnists on Twitter.  I'll hide more people on facebook if I have to, but I'm not going to fight anymore, even in my own head. 

It's not my job to be right.  It's not my job to convince people that...well, of anything really.  At least not in the "I'll convince you with my words and badgering and facts and figures" kind of way.  I am an influence on people, and especially on a decent number of students.  What am I teaching them by posting snarky political things or arguing with my friends and family in a public forum?  Not love and respect. 

Am I saying that one should be uninformed?  Not at all.  I just need to concentrate on what my job is and what my job is not.  I am a teacher and leader and example; hopefully of love, mercy, humility, and grace.  I know where my priorities lie. 

This has gotten old.

I've been mostly incapacitated for about 2.5 weeks now.  Well, not quite incapacitated, but it feels like it.  First, I had a week of asthma that truly sucked.  I've never had what I would call asthma attacks before, but this was bad:  very tight lungs and sheer exhaustion.  Once I finally went to the doctor, I found out that both my inhalers were expired, which is why they weren't helping very much.  New inhalers helped a lot, not that the lack of inhalants was what caused the attack.  That remains a mystery.

Or it was from sickness.  (Sweet, fancy Moses, I just typed "frum" at first.)  I had wondered if my complete exhaustion was just from the asthma or from my body fighting something.  Once Seth got sick, I was quite proud of my body for successfully fighting off his illness.  Then I got it.  Blerg.  I started feeling sick 10 days ago, and I am super tired of it.  I had a good, old-fashioned flu.  Achy body, fever, stuffy head and headache, and cough.  I thought I would be over it by the end of the week, but it won't leave!  I missed my last class, didn't visit family with Seth, and missed church.  Gah.

At my professor's suggestion (she's a sicky who totally understands being wiped out and having to take care of yourself), I have requested an incomplete for this quarter.  I thought I could do it, but my sleep has gotten even more jacked up than usual with this sickness draining my energy (naps lead to being up all night, even though I am completely exhausted), and even when I am up, I can't always concentrate on research.  I was feeling kind of guilty about requesting it, but after I took the dogs to the dog park yesterday, barely exerted myself at all, and came home feeling wiped to have my husband say, "You don't look like you feel good," I decided to go for it.  I'll keep plugging away and get my stuff done ASAP (like, next week), but it will be nice to have the stress off. 

This illness has prompted a number of people to say, "You're sick a lot," which has pissed me off a bit.  It pisses me off that I do seem to be sick often, and it makes me feel like it's viewed as a personal failing on my part to have such a weakling of an immune system.  I don't think of myself as an unhealthy person, but maybe I am.  Or maybe my body just doesn't react well to my previous modus operandi. 

Nevertheless, I am changing things.  Seth's health added into the equation, we need change.  We've already begun changing our diets, and I'm trying to shift it into a higher gear.  I'm having more vegetarian days and I'm planning on loading up on fruit and veggies and just concentrating on eating real food as opposed to processed junk.  I've been doing this for a few weeks already and I do love it.  I've also noticed that, possibly due to sluggishness but I'll take it, I just don't care about eating and food that much, which is a fan-freaking-tastic change for me. 

Wrapping up: I'm hopeful about our food and excited about eating better.  I'm kinda depressed today because I want to be well and go running and I just want my sleep to be fixed already once and for all. 

//end depressing and ranting blog post//