operating instructions: quotes

I just finished reading Operating Instructions, Anne Lamott's memoir abut her son Sam's first year of life. I'm not a huge Lamott fan -- I only vaguely remembering reading Crooked Little Heart when I was a teenager, and an English teacher quoting Bird by Bird. At times I find the "honest, confessional" style of writing a bit much, and I didn't like the political comments in the book. I don't really understand reconciling your faith with demonizing one political party or the other (seemingly a staple of American politics at the moment), whichever "side" you're on. However... she is a good writer! Some of the descriptions and moments she captured in the memoir are bang-on, or created such a unique picture in my mind, that I had to write them down.

"I've had the secret fear of all mothers that my milk is not good enough...but Same seems to be thriving even though he's a pretty skinny little guy. I'm going to have an awards banquet for my body when all of this is over." (An awards banquet ... I love that!)

"His hands are like little stars."

"It's so great to have so many friends who had babies right around the time I did ... because they all have extremely bad attitudes and sick senses of humor like me. It would be intolerable to call a friend, a new mother, when you were feeling down and for her to say some weird aggressive shit like 'Little Phil slept through the night yesterday, isn't that marvelous since he's only eight weeks old, and guess what, I'm already fitting back into my pre-pregnancy clothes.' You'd really have no choice but to hope for disaster to rain down on such a person."

"If I could have on wish, just one crummy little wish, it would be that Sam outlive me."

"I went and stared at the crucifix for a long time and breathed it in. I believe in it, and it's so nuts. How did some famously cerebral and black-humored cynic like myself come to fall for all that Christian lunacy, to see the cross not as an end but a beginning, to believe as much as I believe in gravity or in the size of space that Jesus paid a debt he didn't owe because we had a debt we couldn't pay? It, my faith, is a great mystery. It has all the people close to me shaking their heads. It has me shaking my head."

"Part of my wants my body back, wants to stop being a moo-cow, and part of me thinks about nursing him through kindergarten. I know a woman who nursed her daughter until the girl was almost four, and of course we all went around thinking it was a bit much, too Last Emperor for our blood. But now when Sam and I are nursing, it crosses my mind that I will never ever be willing to give this up. It'll be okay, I think to myself, we can get it to work, I'll follow him to college but I'll stay totally out of the way...
This is the easiest, purest communication I've ever known."

"One thing about Sam, one things about having a baby, is that each step of the way you simply cannot imagine loving him any more than you already do, because you are bursting with love, loving as much as you are humanly capable of -- and then you do, you love him even more."

[upon news of her friend finding a lump in her breast] "Just like that. Boom. Can you imagine? Just like that. I feel a dread like hearing sirens late at night, like I did with my dad. I know it's bad. There's no doubt in my mind."

"Life is full of unexploded land mines, and she [the friend with cancer] seems to have stepped on one."

"I laughed so hard that it broke up the thin candy shell of fear that was covering my heart, and I could breathe again."

[on going up and down a wooden step for exercise] "Everyone's doing it. It's the most now and happening form of exercise, although my person belief is that thin smooth thighs do not necessarily speak of a rich inner life."

"When I held Sam alone for the first time, after Steve and Pammy had gone home the night that he was born, I was nursing him and feeling really spiritual, thinking, Please, please, God, help him be someone who feels compassion, who feels God's presence loose in the world, who doesn't give up on peace and justice and mercy for everyone. And then one second later I was begging, Okay, skip all that shit, forget it -- just please, please let him outlive me."

thoughts on my body, one year postpartum

I've been thinking about my body lately. Which, to be honest, feels a little strange to admit.

The past two years, and especially this past year, have been so darn physical. The process of having a baby and nurturing a baby, at times, made me feel like all I was, was a body. It was a huge adjustment from living as missionaries in Uganda. My life had direct purpose in Uganda. I used my brain to teach students every day. I seemed to be an active player; it was easy to explain how my role fit in the unfurling of God's kingdom. We wrote newsletters, for goodness' sake!

I remember lying in the bath in the weeks after Hudson's birth feeling like I'd been put on a shelf. I seemed to be on a time-out from real purpose, real work. I was on a treadmill of bodily functions -- his and mine -- and it felt like I was consumed by it all. I had to fight with my mind, tear it off of the topics of milk supply and baby eczema and how many dirty diapers a newborn should have in a day. I would rip it away from these things it clung to like Velcro, and turn it in the direction of God. Okay, five minutes in prayer rattling off about things I feel like have nothing to do with me, then back to devouring baby books.

Lying in the bath that day, I felt God remind me of His love for me. His delight in me, His joy in my joy, His love not tied to a list of things I have "accomplished" in a day. Then I felt him gently reprimand me.

You see this journey of motherhood as separate from Me, as in competition with "spiritual matters." Who do you think created it? 

Hm, good point. I began to see the two as connected. I began to turn the one in the direction of the other. My challenges and questions became things I could actually pray about it. New things I learned about my body and my baby's body could be directed into praise to our Creator.

A few things brought this all to mind again lately. Reading a  book where the author talks about how yoga helped her reconcile herself to her body, helped her to heal after being ravaged by bulimia and a warped view of sexuality. Listening to a message this morning about God's definition of beauty compared to this world's. Reading a Time article last night -- "The Goddess Myth" -- criticizing this earthy ideal that mothers are being held to. The writer claimed that the pressure to embrace natural childbirth and breastfeeding is hurting mothers. I don't want to add to that pressure or paint a fantasy. A lot of days, being a new mom is boring and repetitive. Other days it's really hard. But, having said that, I have been caught by the beauty in this process. Surrendering to the processes of pregnancy, normal infant development, breastfeeding ... It has freed me to find joy in this season. Becoming more attached to my baby, not less attached, has been the best thing for my postpartum mental health. My body has taught me a lot in the past year, and even though it looks different than it once did, I love it more than I ever have.

I had always thought of that verse, about our bodies being temples of the Holy Spirit, to mean that our bodies house the Holy Spirit. But today, I'm thinking about the way temples around the world have been built. Every little bit of architecture, every bit of the design, has meaning. Sweeping, majestic cathedrals are meant to stir you to worship. As Christians, our bodies not only house the Holy Spirit; they also give us endless material to be freshly awed by the imprint of our Creator.

This body
I'm seeing it in a new light
Holding it out
Separate from me. 
This time I don't see 
All the things that I would change
All the things that don't match
The girls in the magazines. 
This time I'm looking with awe
Wonder 
Gratitude at this design. 

This body, at this season, 
Is  the 
Centre of my home. 
Everyone circles around it
This body hold us 
Together. 
My husband desires this body
Returns to this body
It keeps us close. 
My baby needs this body
Nourished by this bdy
It binds us close. 

These arms, 
These hands,
These breasts, 
This warmth 
Are the comfort 
The solace
Of my family. 
Before words could be understood,
Before smiles could be shared,
This body was my son's 
First definition 
Of love. 

This body moves to rhythms I can't understand. 
This body creates
This body grows 
This family 
Shaped by 
This body. 

At the steps of this temple
I worship. 

This body is beautiful. 

October 2017

to hudson, on his first birthday

"Some days are diamonds, some days are stones."

That lyric has turned over in my mind quite a bit this past year. The day you arrived in this world was most certainly a diamond. 

But after that, the diamonds and the stones get all mixed up. 


When I look back at this year, when I hold it out in my hand, what glitters most are ordinary moments, moments that I thought were just stones at the time. 

Your round little newborn head bobbing up off my shoulder. 
You in your high chair at breakfast this morning, your soft white hair puffed and matted, your mouth smeared with blueberry juice. 
Tiny hands and fingernails on my skin while you nurse. 
You bundled in Isaac's black winter coat, snug and warm against his chest as we walk through the snow. 
Sweaty, milk drunk naps on my lap. 
The days when you lied still on the change table, when looking at my face was enough. 
The time you excitedly squatted down beside a woman's wheelchair at Giant Tiger, touching the rim of the wheels and saying, "Vroom! Vroom!"
Your little foot turning as you fall asleep, or flopping onto my leg so that you know I'm there. 
Your Dr. Seuss body in brightly patterned sleepers.
That smile and look on your face when we share a joke, something I didn't realize I would be able to do with a baby so early. 
Your fat stage.
That time you were sitting in the bath, belly and arms shiny, clapping two plastic cups together, and I realized -- you are irreplaceable, I couldn't make another Hudson, and so my heart is a new level of breakable.
 Hearing a happy "Pah! Ba-ba-ba-ba ..." beside me as you suddenly wake up in the morning. 
Your swipe of long hair at the front that you've had since you were born. 
Sloppy, open mouthed "kissies." 
Waving good-bye to Daddy out of the window, watching him walk to work. 
You at my feet removing Tupperware from the bottom drawer, piece by piece, while I do dishes. 
The stunning realization that I am the mom in this situation. It doesn't matter what the book says, what the advice is, what works for someone else -- it's my job to sift through all of this and make the judgement call. The freedom in that thought, and the weight of that thought. 
Big toothless smiles -- and then toothy smiles -- from the baby swing at the park. 
Your penchant for eating toilet paper. 
The way you wave good-bye, a few beats too late and with your arm stiff and making circles, like you're tossing pizza dough. 
Your small voice saying "Ma-ma" and "Da-da" -- redefining us in more ways than you realize.


A million little diamonds, flecks of something precious in ordinary dull stones.


We love you, Hudson Stephen Shelley. Thank you for making every stone sparkle, and making me think that maybe I should have looked at life this way all along. 

To listen to the song with the lyric -- admittedly, nothing having to do with babies, click here.

love warrior - quotes from the book

Quotes from the book Love Warrior by Glennon Doyle. Don't agree with Glennon on everything, but she is a beautiful writer and gives a lot of truth to chew on. A very thought-provoking book!

Chapter 1 

[in high school, in the cafeteria at lunch]
"Before I take a step forward I wish vehemently that we had assigned seats. I look out at the sea of faces and understand that we are all drowning in freedom. Where are the adults? We need them here."

[in the hospital being treated for bulimia]
"One day a girl with sliced-up arms says, 'My mom sent me here because she says no one can believe a word I say.' I look at her and I want to say: Does she see that you tell the truth on your arms? Like I tell the truth in the toilet? By the time we landed in the hospital, most of our families considered us insensitive liars, but we didn't start out that way. We started out as ultrasensitive truth tellers. We saw everyone around us smiling and repeating 'I'm fine! I'm fine! I'm fine!' and we found ourselves unable to join them in all the pretending. We had to tell the truth, which was: 'Actually, I'm not fine.' But no one knew how to handle hearing that truth, so we found other ways to tell it. We used whatever else we could -- drugs, booze, food, money, our arms, other bodies. We acted out our truth instead of speaking it and everything became a godforsaken mess. But we were just trying to be honest."

"The hidden, truest rules about how to matter as a girl are: Be Thin. Be Pretty. Be Quiet."

Chapter 4 

[on the bathroom floor, facing an unexpected positive pregnancy test]
 "...I get stuck on that phrase as it runs through my mind. Free for all. Maybe grace is free. Free for the taking. Maybe it's even free for me. This free-for-all overwhelms me, fill me, covers me, convinces me. I decide to believe. Something in me says yes to the idea that there is a God and that  this God is trying to speak to me, trying to love me, trying to invite me back to life. I decide to believe in a God who believes in a girl like me.
"The God I decide to believe in is the God of the bathroom floor. A God of scandalously low expectations. A God who smiles down at a drunk on the floor, wasted and afraid, and says, There you are. I've been waiting. Are you ready to make something beautiful with me?"

[realizing the difficulty of getting sober]
"This is the difference between God and booze. God requires something of us. The booze numbs the pain but God insists on nothing short of healing. God deals only with truth and the truth will set you free, but it will hurt so badly at first."

Chapter 6
[holding her baby for the first time]
"I am this baby's mother. He is mine. I am his. He is the key I've been waiting for my entire life. I am unlocked. Chase and I belong to each other."

Chapter 7 
[reading people's responses to her honest Facebook post]
"I marvel at the honesty and pain. Many messages are from people I've known for years, but I'm discovering that I never really knew them. We've spent our time together talking about everything but what matters. We've never brought to each other the heavy things we were meant to help each other carry. We've only introduced each other to our representatives, while our real selves tried to live life alone. We thought that was safer. We thought that this way our real selves wouldn't get hurt. But as I read these messages, it becomes clear that we are all hurting anyway. And we think we are alone. At our cores, we are our tender selves peeking out at a world of shiny representatives, so shame has been layered on top of our pain. We're suffocating underneath all the layers."

Chapter 9
Types of listeners to the news of her marriage -- the Shover, the Comparer, the Reporter, the God Reps, the Victims, etc.

Chapter 10 
"The surf continues to hit the sand rhythmically and dependably and I trust it will continue. The sun is setting but I know it will rise again tomorrow. There is a pattern to things. This makes me wonder if I can also trust that there is a pattern, a rhythm, a beauty, a natural rise and fall to my life as well. I wonder if the one holding together this sky might also be capable of holding together my heart. I wonder if the one making this sky so achingly beautiful might also be working to make my life beautiful, too."

"I don't know how to fix my marriage. All I know is that I need to tear down my own walls and face what's underneath . . . I look out at the sea, up at the sky, and down at the sand. I think, I can be brave enough to tear myself down -- because the One holding all of this together will hold me, too."

Chapter 13
"It strikes me that it's always the most religious people who are most surprised by grace . . . We sweep up our mess and hide our doubts, contradictions, anger and fear before showing ourselves to God, which like putting on a fancy dress and makeup to prepare for an X-ray."

"We are all desperate for reunion and we are trying to find it in all the wrong places. We use bodies and drugs and food to end our loneliness, because we don't understand that we're lonely down here because we are supposed to be lonely. Because we're in pieces. To be human is to be incomplete and constantly yearning for reunion."

"Fear doesn't make perfect love untrue any more than passing clouds make the stars untrue. I know how to find my way back to truth, to love, to peace, to God again. All I have to do is be still and breathe and wait for the clouds and fear to pass."

Chapter 15
"But what the hell does sexy even mean? I wonder if the word sexy is everything that made sex a lie to me . . . Sexy was one type of body and one color of hair and spending an entire life looking into the mirror instead of out at the world . . . I'd been trying to be that kind of sexy for twenty years, and I realize that's going to have to change. That definition of sexy is what poisoned my husband and me and it's never going to work for us again . . . Maybe I can find my own sexy."

"Women who are concerned with being pretty think about what they look like, but women who are concerned with being beautiful think about what they are looking at. They are taking it all in. They are taking in the whole beautiful world and making all that beauty theirs to give away to others."

"I consider the possibility that I've been right and wrong my whole life. I was right to want to be beautiful and sexy; I was just wrong to have accepted someone else's idea of what those words mean. It strikes me that I need to throw out the dictionary the world gave me about what it means to be a mother, a wife, a person of faith, an artist, and a woman and write my own."


Unsure which chapter ...

"Be brave because you are a child of God. Be kind because everyone else is, too." 

People Like Us - Quotes

I just finished reading People Like Us by Joris Luyendijk, a former Dutch news correspondent to the Middle East. While the style of the book is easy to read, the concepts are thought-provoking. Luyendijk reveals the inner workings of the international news machine, and reflects on how the Middle East in particular is often misrepresented and misunderstood in Western media. Note to self: read his other book, Hello Everybody! 

Some quotes ...

"I had always thought that the 'news' was a compilation of the most important things in the world. But after six months as a correspondent, reality set in. News is only what is different from the everyday -- the exception to the rule. With an unknown world like the Arab one, this has a distorting effect. When someone is shot on Dam Square in Amsterdam, it's news, but Dutch people know that people aren't normally shot there. They've been there themselves, or they know someone who went there and returned safely. But how much do Dutch people know about daily life in the Middle East? . . . If you are told only about the exceptions, you'll think they are the rule." (37)

"Dictatorship itself is the most important thing to report about in the Arab world . . . Writing 'around' this was like reporting on France or the Netherlands in 1943 without mentioning the occupation."

"Did the hundreds of thousands of anti-war demonstrators in Europe know what Saddam did to his subjects? I was not aware that many of the demonstrators thought anything other than: 'Of course dictators are bad, but war is really horrible, so we're against it under any circumstances --- Peace, man!' I'd say dictatorship is war, too; a regime's war on its own people." (214)

"The borders of the Middle East had been drawn by foreign, largely European, powers at the end of the First World War in order to facilitate their domination of the area." (quoting Henry Kissinger in Diplomacy)

a light shines in the darkness

Over our Christmas break this year, we spent five days on a trip to Nakivale Refugee Settlement in western Uganda. Needless to say, it was an incredible experience that I believe has deeply impacted both Isaac and myself. I'm sure I will write more about that experience in the future.

While not everything was planned ahead of time, it became clear in advance that we would be expected to speak to some church leaders to give an encouraging word and to clarify our connection to them as fellow Christians. ("Many Africans think whites don't believe in God," we were told. Wonder why???)  I was also told that I may be asked to share some encouragement with Christian women specifically, knowing that many of the women and girls in the camp had been victims of sexual violence.

In the weeks leading up to the trip, I was anxious about these possibilities. Teaching English? Yes, I can do that. But giving a spiritual word of encouragement to a group I don't know, across cultural and language barriers? I kept saying, "Well, I'm not a pastor..."

Deep down, there was an added layer to my insecurity. How can I stand before a group of refugees, people who fled from their homes and in many cases have lost everything? What would they think of this little white girl, so oblivious to true suffering, giving them an encouraging pat on the back? How could they hear the Gospel as they sit in difficult situations that may not change?

In Western culture, one of the greatest arguments against the Gospel is suffering. It's become a trump card in the argument against the existence of a loving God. In the West, a single encounter with loss can shatter a person's faith and send them teetering right off the fence and away from God.

And there in Nakivale ... that whole group would be a testament to the suffering and evil in this world.

It wasn't a conscious thought, but it was an undercurrent in my mind.  Hmm... how do we flex the Gospel to fit this group? How do we face those difficult questions? What angle do you take with such a group?

It sounds a bit silly when I type it out, but the thoughts were there. And those thoughts, I realized, are so misplaced. The Gospel was made for people in suffering.

Yesterday I was flipping through the Bible and landed in the latter part of the Psalms. Not psalms of David, but psalms penned by Jews finding themselves in Babylon. Away from their home countries. No hope of return. They'd lost everything. And then I found another bookmark in Isaiah. Passages about a God who is fiercely angry on behalf of the oppressed, who sides with the suffering and sets himself against the unjust. And then there was another bookmark, a wrinkled church bulletin shoved in the New Testament. Letters from Paul. The author, a persecuted man who eventually lost his head for the sake of the Gospel. The audience, a church well-acquainted with violence and loss of freedom.

And then there's Christmas. The story of a God so grieved by the brokenness, the sin produced by the will of fallen humanity. A God so moved by our suffering that He stepped into it, taking on flesh and knowing poverty and pain and death for our sake, that we might be joined with Him when He returns to make all things right.

The number of people in the Bible who experienced pain, poverty and loss far outweigh those who lived a smooth life, especially in the New Testament. If anything, as someone who has had very few storms in life thus far, I am the outsider. I am the one who doesn't entirely "get it." As a member of a privileged part of the Body of Christ, yes -- we have a responsibility to help in practical ways and to "spend ourselves on behalf of the hungry and oppressed" (Isaiah 58:10). But we do not need to be ashamed to present the Gospel, even if on that day that's all we have with us to give. 

This Christmas my sister's church had the congregation sit in darkness, and then as reader after reader read a different verse about light, a lamp was turned on. Eventually, the room was filled with light. Light shines best in darkness. 

Christianity is not a religion of the prosperous, the privileged. God has been a shield and source to the oppressed for thousands of years. Christ himself is no stranger to suffering. We don't have to twist the Gospel or wonder how it will be received by those in difficult situations -- it was meant for them! Our hope is not fragile, it is not breakable, it is not stumped by the darkness in this world .... It shines fiercely in the midst of it. It cannot be put out.

bits of braeside

In my grade 7 English class students read "Where I'm From," a poem by George Ella Lyon. The poem is basically random scraps of memory from her childhood -- different sights, sounds, tastes and feelings. Together, they make an interesting picture. Students have to write their own "Where I'm From" poem, and it's always interesting to read what they share.

I've done this for three years, but haven't written my own yet! Last night lying in bed I decided to do my own English assignment and write a poem about summers as a kid at Braeside camp. It was fun to remember the details, and each one brought back even more memories!

Where I'm From

I am from the churning of pedals

Rubbing of bicycle wheels on the grass.

From the endless Pool Hill and

Riding with no hands

From fresh red scrapes and

Wrinkled white spots

The scars we wore like medals.

I am from one-piece bathing suits and

Slippery brown bathroom tiles.

From pool noodles as horses and

Swirling rounds of ankle tag

From warm puddles on concrete and

Cold cannonball splashes

Wet shadows stretched out and

Disappearing in the sun.

I am from powdery sidewalk chalk

Bumps on my knees

Creaking of swing chains and the

Thump of shoes on park sand.

From Fudgsicles fringed in ice and

Small cuts in the corners of mouths

Sucking the last juice from

Rolled-up Freezies.

I am from tan lines and

A riot of freckles

From bleeding, wrinkled toes.

I am from knotted hair shaded

Green

And streaked white by the sun.

From thin legs stretching from shorts and

Sandals left at the door.

I am from dripping ice cream cones

And sticky marshmallows

Tasting of smoke

From burgers and buns and

Crackling candies --

Fireworks in my mouth.

From paper bag penny candies and

Cereal bowls on the porch.  

I am from contests

From hold-your-breath to

Mouths stuffed with sour candies to

“I see Braeside first!”

I am from watching the big kids and

Beating the little kids –

The middle ones know the taste of

Winning and losing.

I am from the pop of a bonfire

The spell of the

Jumping orange flames.

From “White rabbit! White rabbit!”

To drowsy jokes and secrets

From pit after pit

Circles of murmured conversation and

Separate memories

Flecks of fire

Sprinkled under the stars.