Only A Mere Woman

      I wasn't able to go to the March For Life this year, but I was able to listen to the last few of the speeches while cutting sweet potatoes, which I then proceeded to not cook. Anyway, I liked a lot of what I heard, mostly. Maybe I don't fully understand the purpose behind the March. Maybe it's just supposed to be a show of numbers, of the people who oppose abortion in our country. Maybe it's not to make persuasive arguments as to why we are pro-life and anti-abortion. If that is the case, then my objection is no issue at all. However, if we are trying to change minds and hearts, then I think we should stop "God bless"ing everything, and stop "Jesus is Lord"ing, and stop praying for the conversion of specific people during our speeches. No, I don't want to erase God/Jesus from the March, but I have family, friends, and people I follow who identify much, much more with the reasons for the Women's March, and their hearts are not being sway...

     As Christians, our worldview boils down to God vs Satan, Good vs Evil (lack of goodness). But, I think, we lose sight of that, and that's the way the Devil likes it. He gains power by separating, sowing discord, dividing, cutting off. He worms his way into our lives in the form of comparison, self-doubt, critique. He destroys our ability to see other people as people like ourselves, delighting when we can only see the "other", the not like us part. He wins, when we no longer see him as our common enemy, but think the other person is instead. And we tear each other down, rip each other apart, in an attempt to build ourselves and our side up, and he laughs, because we can't see how it destroys us in the process.       I've been noticing a trend, lately, that focuses around building each other up. The Girls Gone Strong community, focusing on strengthening the whole person, and not just the body. The Momastery community, full of Love Warriors. Othe...

For the messy, raw Part 1, click here . If you'd rather skip and focus on what I have been doing to manage my depression, please continue reading.      So we muddled through until Little Miss was born in August. I decided to have the placenta encapsulated this time, but I don't know taking it helped any or not. We decided to start with learning to track my fertility with the Creighton model of NFP , and began the end of October. While it isn't certain what causes postpartum depression, it has been speculated that hormonal imbalance is a plausible cause, and Creighton seems to be the best way for us to see how my body is functioning. We are blessed to not only have a good instructor reasonably close, but a NaPro trained doctor in town as well. Our instructor was able to give us a referral to the doctor, who was able to get me in to see him in November. And that really is a bit of a miracle, considering how busy he is. We had my hormone levels tested, and when the results ...

Part 2 HERE , if you don't want to read about the messy bits.      Today might not be the best day to be doing this, linking up with Flourish in Hope and Half Kindled for their annual PPD linkup. It was a bad day. I couldn't get a handle on my emotions. There was no logical reason for me to be having mini-breakdowns all day - Code Monkey was home, the kids were as good as they ever are (which, if you know us in real life, you know they are strangely spectacular, in spite of me), the sun was out, I've actually had over a week's worth of uninterrupted sleep at night, etc. Reading the posts about the struggles other women have had with PPD and similar disorders was icing on a very nasty emotional cake. But, perhaps the reason I should. The feelings are still fresh in my body. And reading about others is healing; I'm not the only one. I'm not crazy. I'm not just making this up. I'm not just lacking in self control.       Hah! Self control. If only you ...

     Things have been kind of, well, tumultuous here lately. And by lately I mean pretty much since Little Miss was born, so, like, nearly 7 months. But not in a bad way - more like in a growing can kind of be tough way. I have been thinking and pondering and contemplating so much, but haven't really felt like buckling down and blogging about it, mostly because I'm really good at making excuses to avoid as much "conflict" as possible, even if it really makes things worse in the long run. Cryptic, I know, but I'll explain eventually.       Today, though, I did something I * never * do:  I tucked my outside shirt in. HUGE  victory for me in the body image department. You see, I never got around to explaining how ashamed I have been of my body, though not for the reasons you might think. I've never been fat; I've never been too skinny; I don't have stretchmarks anywhere that people would see in everyday interaction. In fact, my body was the env...

    Growing up, I always wanted to be more like my Dad. Maybe it was because I was already a lot like my Mom, or because his coolness factor was higher because he was gone a lot and more mysterious as a result. I don't know. As I've grown older, I've noticed more and more similarity between myself and Mom, from the curling of our hair and our general build, to our tone of voice in the phrases we use. I've also come to appreciate being so similar to her, for she truly is a woman I want to emulate. Granted, everyone has shortcomings, but in spite of those I believe she was a fantastic mother. She would stifle her intense fear of creeping crawling things so our curiosity wouldn't be stifled. She powered through her fear of horses, and allowed me to see the realization of my dream of having one of my own, even to the point of taking care of him if I went somewhere overnight.  She gave the best support she could give when I came to her with a problem. She gave me room to...

     I am a servant. You are a servant. Whether we like it or not, we are all servants. We can't help it; it's built into our nature, and there is no escaping it. Everyone is a slave to something, whether it be our passions, our jobs, our families, what have you. The only question is, who do you choose to serve? Christians are often ridiculed for choosing to give up their "freedom" when they choose to serve Christ, but the reality is no one is free from service. The self-serving man is still just as bound to serving as the one who chooses to follow Christ. The only difference is in the masters they choose.