New site!

I was thinking this afternooon about how much I love having "best of the web" type sites on my Bloglines feed (e.g. Neatorama, Geekpress, etc.); at the same time I was lamenting the fact that I often run out of room on my Weekly Favorites for all the great links I've found...so I decided to just start my own "best of the web" site where I'll chronicle all the good stuff I come across.

So go check out my new links blog, Jennifer's Favorite Links (it took me a couple hours to come up with that ingenious title). Should be a fun site!


UPDATE: To clarify, I'm not shutting down this site. Just adding a separate one for links.

Weekly favorites

I tried to keep this one at 12, but these are all so good I just couldn't leave any out! So, I present to you 16 of the best things I've read this week:

1. Is there anything good about men?: This transcript of a talk given by Roy F. Baumeister is really thought-provoking. My husband emailed it to me with the subject line "one of the most insightful things I've ever read".
   
   
2. Remembering Billy: Dom Bettinelli excerpts a touching story by a man whose life was saved by an unlikely hero.
   
   
3. A day in the life of a homeschooling mother of eight: I have a fascination with other moms' daily schedules, so I really enjoyed Danielle Bean's post...although it made me tired just reading it!
   
   
4. Michael Crichton on G.K. Chesterton: I thought Crichton's comments about Chesterton's Eugenics and Other Evils was very interesting. Some things never change.
   
   
5. The effects of a home's architecture: This is a long post but definitely worth a glance. I'd never thought about just how much a home's architecture can influence a family's life. Very interesting.
   
   
6. Married on a crucifix: A beautiful piece about making the Cross the foundation of a marriage.
   
   
7. To fly free in space: One of my favorite NASA pictures of the day in a long time. Click on the photo for the full-sized version. Simply amazing.
   
   
8. How to make your wife's day: MamaBlogga has 7 great tips for showing a mom in your life that you appreciate what she does. Personally, #5 is my favorite.
   
   
9. Conquering pornography: Catholic Dads have some good tips for people struggling with temptation to view pornography.
   
   
10. The two million women robbed by WWI: This is a fascinating and heartbreaking article about what happened after World War I. More than two million young men were killed or incapacitated in the war, leaving a generation of women left with no one to marry. An interesting, touching read. (via Tea at Trianon)
    
    
11. Moms' guilty secrets: My guilty secret is that I really enjoyed scanning this post and its comments. There's something really refreshing about moms coming together and admitting that we're not perfect.
    
    
12. Nuns in Sydney: A quick article about some nuns from Tennessee who have already arrived in Sydney for World Youth Day 2008 (that expects a turnout of more than 500,000 people!) Whenever I heard about WYD I wish I was Catholic when I was younger. I would have loved to go to that. (via A Shepherd's Voice)
    
    
13. Weaker vessels: Jessica has a nice reflection about St. Peter's reference to women as "weaker vessels". This is definitely true in my experience.
    
    
14. Those nebulous "what if?"'s of parenthood: Red Cardigan has a great post about how we parents tend to waste time worrying about vague "what if?"'s. Though this post is specifically about homeschooling, it applies to all of us.
    
    
15. Mid afternoon of the soul: Darwin offers an interesting post on God, faith, emotions, and dark nights of the soul. This post on a similar subject is good as well.
    
    
16. Tons of good tips: Check out this huge list of useful tips, on everything from blogging to photography to food. If the whole list is a bit overwhelming, you can skip straight to the winners list.
    

I have quite a few great links I wasn't able to fit in, so I would like to request that the entire internet go on a two week hiatus so that I can get through my link backlog.

If only!

I'm happy to report that the pain of breastfeeding has finally (mostly) subsided. And thank God, because it was some of the worst pain I have ever experienced.

In those long nights a couple weeks ago, when I'd hear the baby stir and break into a cold sweat because I knew the pain that awaited me, I became convinced that I would be the most content, happy person on the face of the planet if I only didn't have to deal with this pain. I didn't even mind the night wakings, I told myself. I didn't mind the chaos of having three under three, the hospital bills or the difficulty of getting out of the house with so many little kids -- if only I didn't have this pain, I would be the most grateful, joy-filled woman on the planet, dancing through my days with glee for the countless blessings that surrounded me. That's what I told myself anyway.

What made me think of this was a little deja vu moment I had yesterday morning. After another night of little sleep I was lamenting how easy everything would be if only I got more sleep! If only I could get just a few more hours of rest I would be the most grateful, joy-filled woman on the planet, dancing through my days with glee for the...oh...wait. I already said that.

And, actually, I also said it back when I still had the DVT (blood clot) when my second baby was born. If only I could walk, if only I weren't in so much pain every time I stood up! I'd be the most grateful, joy-filled woman on the...yeah. You know where this is going.

When I thought about it, I recalled that before the DVT it was supposedly sleep deprivation with my first child that was standing between me and sainthood. And before that it was the aches and pains of pregnancy. And before that it was morning sickness and exhaustion. And before that it was difficult clients with my business. And so on and so on.

It all came together for me yesterday, when I went shopping with my mom because she wanted to buy me a nice dress to wear to an upcoming event. I got irritated and grouchy because I was tired, the shopping trip was taking forever, nothing looked good on me, and it seemed that every 20 minutes I had to stop what I was doing and nurse the baby. As I threw some clothes back on a rack with an audible sigh to let the world know how difficult it all was for me, I had a much-needed moment of clarity: there I was, in a mall, surrounded by a kind of accessible luxury that would have baffled kings and emperors of eras past, being able to nourish my beautiful baby while out with my loving, supportive mother who was going to buy me something nice for no particular reason other than that she's a generous person...and I was not happy. I was actually in kind of a bad mood.

In that moment something occurred to me for the first time ever: maybe this is a choice. Maybe I am just choosing to be in a bad mood.

I've always assumed that your emotional state, whether your happy or sad or joyful or peaceful or whatever, is due almost entirely to external forces. If things are going well, you're happy. If they're going bad, you're sad. Pretty simple. I would have thought that it was impossible to say something like, "Today, I am going to be grateful. I am going appreciate all the beauty in my life. I'm not going to get frustrated and whine." I mean, you can't make that statement because it depends on what happens, right? I can't say that I'm not going to get frustrated because it depends on whether or not frustrating things happen to me!...right?

I'm actually starting to clue in to the fact that that's not right. To be sure, certain extreme situations like grave illness or the death of a loved-one would make it pretty much impossible to choose to by joyful. But I don't currently have any circumstances like that in my life. The things that tend to leave me spewing negativity are (to name some recent examples) stuff like the downstairs toilet being broken, the oppressive heat and humidity that just won't end, the toddler and the one-year old doing something bad (thus requiring me to get up) while I'm nursing the newborn, a surprise poopy diaper after going through the epic process of getting all the kids in their carseats, etc. These are not good reasons to be negative.

Though I'm a happy person generally and am very grateful in broad terms, I spend an inappropriate amount of time feeling frustrated or in a bad mood (supposedly) because of my circumstances. And given all the suffering in this world, and all the gifts I have in my life, it seems somehow insulting to people who actually do suffer to spend the entire drive home from the grocery store fuming about that annoying thing that happened while I was filling my cart with food.


So, ever since that moment of clarity at the mall yesterday, I've been trying an experiment: I've decided to choose not to get frustrated about any little things that don't matter in the long run. And, to my great surprise, it's actually kind of worked!

I recently read St. Francis de Sales' Introduction to the Devout Life, and in it he offers some good thoughts for people who struggle with inappropriate thoughts of a sexual nature. He explains that there's nothing sinful about simply having the thought come to mind; the important thing is to reject it, to not take pleasure in it or entertain it in any fashion. As I've gone through this little experiment today of choosing to be grateful and joyful at all times, I've realized that St. Francis' advice applies to all kinds of negative feelings.

For example: when I walked into the living room this morning to see that the kids had gotten into a large gift box for the baby and strewn the contents all over the living room, thoughts of self-pity and frustration and a little bit of anger came to mind. So I tried just rejecting them by saying, "I am not going to get upset about this. I'm just not." And, undoubtedly due to God's grace, it kind of worked! I wouldn't say I was flooded with joy or anything, but I was able to see how utterly insignificant this incident was in the grand scheme of things, and just view picking up bits of wrapping paper off my living room floor as God's will for what I should be doing this morning. I think I even smiled a little bit.


Given that my little experiment has only been going on for about 24 hours I'm not quite ready to proclaim that from now on I will remain in a state of perpetual gratitude and joy. :) But I think it's been a big step to let go of my "If Only" spirituality ("if only I wasn't so tired...", "if only it wasn't so hot...", "if only we didn't have so much clutter around here...") and admit that, the majority of the time, I am simply choosing to indulge in self-pitying thoughts, always seeking to find some external event as an excuse for my behavior.

Given my personality and my tendency to be easily irritated, this is one of the more challenging spiritual exercises I've undertaken. So please keep me in your prayers as I attempt to banish the phrase "if only!" from my vocabulary.

Finding myself

This morning I found myself watching Dora the Explorer. Not with the kids. Just me. I put the show on to amuse the little ones but somewhere around the 50,000th time they heard "I'm the map!" they decided they had better things to do. The toddler ran off to play with his chalk board and the one-year-old had some pots to pull out of the kitchen cabinets, leaving me the only one watching Dora. It took me about ten minutes to notice. (More disturbing was the fact that, once I noticed, I continued watching. After a rough night with the newborn it was about at my level.)

With a snicker I thought, "Boy, ten years ago this is really not what I thought I'd be doing when I was thirty." If you had asked me when I was twenty what I'd be doing on a random Wednesday morning when I was thirty, I would have hoped that perhaps I'd be in San Francisco for a board meeting for some tech company. Or perhaps in New York to visit a new client? Meeting with Goldman Sachs about taking the company I had started public? Sitting on the couch watching Dora the Explorer would not have been an option that came to mind.

As I shuffled over to the laundry room to throw some clothes in the dryer, I was reminded of a thread going around on a local mom's email list. In it various mothers from my area are lamenting the fact that they've "lost themselves" since becoming mothers. I've heard countless friends, bloggers, and women on email lists voice this complaint, and have received tons of emails from another site I run (that has to do with motherhood) from women who want to know how to get their old selves back now that they're moms. And certainly I can sympathize. The old me from my pre-mommy days is loooong gone. But does that mean I've lost myself? I used to think so.


I've been thinking about this for a couple years now. When it first came to mind was around the same time that I began to believe in God, so I felt like he might be just the one to help me with this matter. In some of my first efforts at prayer, I asked God to show me what his will was for me -- i.e. how to find my true self that seemed to have gotten lost along the way, or perhaps that I'd never found.

Waiting for his answer, I passed the time by going about my daily life. I sorted laundry, wiped the kitchen table, changed diapers, all the while eagerly anticipating what the answer would be. Am I destined to achieve success as a published author or as an entrepreneur? Would my peers be impressed with me because of some amazing website I would create or because I would manage to make big bucks while working from home?

And then, after more than a year of waiting for God to reveal a glamorous and exciting path for my life, it hit me: this is what I'm meant to do. I am meant to be a mom, here in my little house in suburbia. I am meant to create a loving home for my husband and children, to help lead them to God (as they also lead me), and to humbly, gratefully, go about all the often mundane work that that entails. And maybe that's it.

The peace that this realization has brought made me realize: when my life became consumed with my duties as a mom I didn't lose myself. The hustle and bustle of living my vocation as a wife and mother had melted away a lot of worldly baggage and left me with a much more common, simple, plain -- and authentic -- version of my life. No, I hadn't lost myself. I'd finally found her. It just took me a while to realize it because my pride didn't like what it saw.

Thinking about all this as I did the laundry this morning, I was reminded of the part of the baptism ceremony this weekend where I vowed to reject the "glamour of evil". I thought that "glamour" was such an interesting choice of words: it wasn't the "destructiveness" of evil or the "horror" of evil, but the "glamour". That phrase reminded me of the mindset I was stuck in when I felt that I'd lost myself since becoming a mother. Looking back, I could just imagine evil whispering in my ear, "But you could be so much more! Is this all you want from your life, to sweep floors and wipe spitup? When are you going to get back to your real life?"

I was tempted to look right past the plain housewife in the mirror to keep searching for what I thought would be the "real" version of me, the woman who impressed people with her accomplishments at cocktail parties and had a life that was fabulous by society's standards. But I'm glad I didn't. Because when I stopped looking for Alternate-Universe Glamorous Jen and humbled myself to accept my life as it is, being a plain 'ol suburban wife and mommy, going about the little tasks of turning my house into a home and creating a rich life for my husband and children, I found joy that I could have never imagined. And I found myself.

Life and meaning

A couple of articles I came across recently reminded me of a lot of the "life wisdom" ideas I came across when I was an atheist. I was always seeking to know more about our existence, I suppose you could call it a quest for the meaning of life, so I took a keen interest in finding out what the great minds of our time had to say about how we can find purpose and fulfillment in life (without getting into any of that religious nonsense of course).

Unfortunately, in pretty much every case I walked away feeling depressed about what I just heard. All of the secular advice was along the lines of "live for today" or "help others" or "don't be afraid to live your dreams" or "be a good person". It sounded great, but I couldn't get around the fact that we're all going to die. As I saw it, what does it really matter if I'm a good person or a bad person, if I am happy or sad, since the entity that I think of as "me" is going to cease to exist in a relatively short time? When discussing the matter with other atheist or agnostic friends, the conversation usually went something like this:

ME: What does it matter if I spend this weekend volunteering at the soup kitchen or burglarizing people's houses? I mean, I am not going to exist for very much longer! Why should I care?

THEM: It's about your legacy. Imagine how many people you could help at the soup kitchen, and how many people's lives you'd negatively impact if you stole all their stuff.

ME: But they're going to cease to exist too.

THEM: Well, your actions could have far-reaching effects into future generations.

ME: OK, let's take the 5-billion-year view. Let's fast-forward to when the sun is a red giant that's either swallowed up planet earth or burnt it to a crisp. Then does it matter if I spent my weekend feeding the homeless or stealing stuff? Does anything I ever did matter?

For me, this is what it boiled down to: when the last life form is gone from the earth, did anything that ever happened here matter? My answer was: obviously not. To my way of thinking, "meaning" was confined to the human brain. It was something we people came up with. So when people were gone, so was any kind of significance to anything that ever happened or would happen. The Holocaust, the great wars, the hidden good and bad that played out in people's private lives -- I couldn't figure out how to make a logical case that any of it mattered once earth is a smoldering rock. Once we all cease to exist, if there's no force outside of the material world in which some part of us lives on, we might as well have never existed.

I firmly believed that all of that was true. But it sure didn't feel right. In my heart it felt wrong -- really, really wrong -- to say that the events that took place on this earth would not matter one day. Though it would seem to defy logic (as I saw it), I knew the Holocaust mattered. I knew that every injustice, every good deed, every act of kindness ever committed somehow mattered. It mattered now, it would matter after we were all gone, it would matter five billion years from now. I just couldn't figure out why.

This was one of the many things that fell into place for me when I considered the concept of God and the soul. Though I "saw" no evidence for these things at that point (because I was still thinking in terms of believing only in what could be proven by visual observation or measurement), it resonated on a deep level that something was going on outside of the material world: that "meaning" came from somewhere above humans; that the events that took place on this planet would still matter, even billions of years from now; that our souls would live on to remember what happened here, even after our bodies died.

---

The crashing sounds and maniacal laughing (or is that screaming?) I hear coming from upstairs mean that naptime, and therefore my blog posting time, must be over. I want to wrap up this post by noting that I offer these thoughts in the spirit of personal reflection. This is part of my story. The last time I wrote a post on a similar topic it seemed to offend non-believers who do find objective meaning in the world without religion. I hope that is not the case this time. These are only some memories that came to mind that I wanted to ramble about for a while, and not an attempt to criticize anyone who sees the world differently.

How the baptism went

I am aware that the issue of infant vs. adult baptism is a divisive one among Christians. We can all come together in unity, however, in that no Christian denomination advocates for toddler baptism. Now I know why.

On the plus side, my son's college education may end up getting paid for by America's Funniest Home Videos.


Oh! And here's a little tip for any converts out there who may have never seen a baptism: there's going to be a quiz!

Unfortunately, I did not know this. We were standing at the front of the church with all eyes on us when the deacon walked up to me and asked (into his microphone so the whole building could hear), "What name have you given this child?" Between being on the spot in front of everyone and the distraction of fantasizing about having a straight jacket for my three-year-old, I confused baptism with confirmation and thought that we were supposed to have given our son a special baptism name. I was about a half a second from proclaiming something like, "We name this child Aloysius Benedict!" when my husband interjected with my son's actual name. To my great relief I only looked like a little bit of an idiot.

But the quiz didn't end there! The deacon then asked me, "What do you ask of God's Church for this child?" What?? Don't I get to phone a friend or poll the audience? Narrow it down to 50/50? In the uncomfortable silence that ensued I realized I had to answer, so I thought about just riffing. I was about to announce something like, "I ask that my son serve the Lord in all that he does! I ask that he be a man of deep prayer, humbly seeking God's will at all times! I ask that--" when one of the godparents mercifly chimed in with the right answer: "Baptism".

On the way home I expressed to my husband my firm disapproval that our so-called baptism preparation class did not alert us to the answers to these questions. Just imagine how many other people must get caught off guard like I did!

"Uhh," my husband replied, "Didn't you hear the deacon's speech?"

"Not really," I admitted. I'd been off in my own little world, thinking about what new parish I'd like to start going to if my toddler ended up throwing the temper tantrum that he seemed to be on the brink of throwing.

My husband then informed that the right before he walked over to me the deacon closed his speech by saying, "I'm going to ask you what name you've given your child. Respond with your child's name. Then I'm going to ask what you ask God's Church for this child. Say 'baptism'.'" Evidently he immediately walked over to me after telling us this -- like not even a five second delay. Maybe people will just think that my deer-in-the-headlights response was because I was on drugs or something.

This is why I never leave the house.


Anyway, in a moment of proof that miracles do happen, when the moment of baptism took place my son was calm and still. The child who throws a screaming fit when I rinse his hair in the bath actually let a stranger pour water over his head three times. As I watched the water streaming from his hair into the font I was caught of guard with joy. For a brief moment my nervousness went away and I was filled with immense relief and happiness. It really felt like something big was happening here, like a great cleansing was taking place. I felt peace in knowing that my son's soul had been permanently marked as belonging to Christ; that no matter what happens -- even if I were to die and he wasn't raised with faith -- that he'd always have something deep within him to draw him home, as I did.

Unfortunately that feeling was quickly overshadowed by anger and a few other very un-Christ-like sentiments when my son loudly demanded to play with the baptism candle and threw a fit when we would't give it to him. As I carried the world's newest Catholic kicking and screaming into the cry room, I said a quick prayer that perhaps this whole situation will one day add some humor to some volume of the Lives of the Saints. :)

Google's algorithm is amazing!

Look who's the #3 search result for "socially awkward person"! Number THREE. Out of the entire internet.

It's like they're psychic.

What is your favorite weekday meal?

I'm sitting at my desk to create my new rotating three week menus (I got the idea here) and realized that my recipe repertoire is pretty pitiful. I could use a few more dishes to round out the menu and to have as backups, so I though I'd ask you guys for your input: what is your favorite basic, weekday meal?

I'm looking for recipes that require less than 30 minutes of active prep time (though longer cooking time is fine). No need to type out the whole recipe -- just the title and a brief description would be fine, I'm sure I can Google around for the details.

Thanks in advance!

Weekly favorites

Here are 15 awesome links, in honor of the total number of hours of sleep I've gotten in the past week. :)

1. A touching story of motherhood, life, and conversion of heart: Due to a lack of time and an abundance of chaos, I almost never read long blog posts. But I read all of this one, and it was worth every second. Take the time to read this whole thing at my favorite new-to-me blog, Abigail's Alcove.
   
   
2. People of the lie: Newly released photos of the staff at Auschwitz show "photos of laughing and smiling SS officers; officers relaxing in deck chairs; officers and officials eating and drinking; singalongs (including one graced by the sinister presence of Dr. Mengele)", and more. These people weren't smiling because they thought they were doing evil. They were able to relax and enjoy themselves because they were confident in the stories they told themselves. This is exactly what I was thinking of when I wrote this post.
   
   
3. A detox from selfishness: David Buetow writes for NPR about how having a dog changed his life, saying "It was extreme detox from selfishness...I found that I actually liked being relied upon." A very nice piece, although kind of sad that men in our culture must learn this from their dogs.
   
   
4. A glimpse of hell: Darwin recounts a chilling tale of a foretaste of hell. Also, don't miss this post, the title of which has become part of our household vocabulary.
   
   
5. Choose a room color to influence your mood: I love this kind of stuff. If I weren't so lazy this would inspire me to go paint some of our rooms. (via Lifehacker)
   
   
6. "I hope you're right": Julie writes a stunning post about the recent loss of her father in a tragic accident, touching on the significance of the fact that he believed in God and she does not. Her post here about the meaning of the body is also beautiful. Please say a prayer for her father.
   
   
7. Rotating three weekly menus: Having a newborn, a baby and a toddler has left me struggling to keep up with the whole food preparation thing (me: "What, they want to eat again? They just ate five hours ago!") So I was thrilled to discover Lisbet's post about having a rotation of three weekly menus, and serve the same meals for lunch by day of the week. Great idea!
   
   
8. My advertisement for me: I just loved Michelle's honesty in this post, where she shares the "ad" for a new best friend that she posted on her MySpace profile. Introverts unite!
   
   
9. Cannibalizing our children: Sadly, this is a real story from the world of reproductive technology and not some excerpt from a creepy sci-fi novel.
   
   
10. Breastfeeding is offensive: (WARNING: VERY PG-13 CONTENT) These pictures are worth a thousand words. I'm a breastfeeding in public agnostic, but I do find it frustrating that in our culture a mother could breastfeed her child in line at the grocery store and that would be offensive, while the breast-fest on the covers of the magazines next to her is considered acceptable. Dear world: you can't have it both ways.
    
    
11. Blog action day: I like the concept of a Blog Action Day, where bloggers agree to all post on a certain topic on a particular day. Seems like a good way of drawing attention to issues that often get swept under the rug by big media. I'd love to see Christian bloggers do something like this.
    
    
12. 10 Tips for writing bookmarkable content: I think this is a great list. Though it's particularly about writing blog content that gets buzz, I think they're good tips for writing blog posts in general.
    
    
13. Putting on lipstick for your husband: The way I currently prepare for my husband's arrival home is to review my mental inventory of everything that irritated me that day so to make sure I don't miss anything when whining to him. But imagine how nice it would be if I took a moment to apply lipstick instead. Hmmm. (via With a Grain of Salt)
    
    
14. 10 plane crashes that changed aviation: Popular Mechanics has a very interesting piece about the hard lessons that have made airline travel safe.
    
    
15. The cathedral builders: LOVED this article about the work of motherhood. I have so many thoughts that it may turn into a separate post, but I wanted to share it for now. And may I never forget the cathedral workman's answer: "Because God sees." (via #!/usr/bin/mom)
    

Have a great weekend. And, if you have a sec, I'd love to hear what link(s) you liked (if any). No big deal, but I'm always curious about what other people find interesting.

An indelible mark

Often when I think back on my life I am struck by how utterly unlikely, how completely surprising it is that I ended up becoming a Christian. Before I received the Eucharist for the first time that was the most prescient thought in my mind: how terrifyingly close I came to not being there that day. How only a few seemingly coincidental events, a couple of lucky breaks, led me to spend that cold April evening in the warmth of a church, instead of passing yet another night in a world without God.

I've gone over and over the events that led me there. I was quite content as an atheist. I was surrounded by worldly pleasures. I was happy with myself and my life. I felt confident in my beliefs. I was hostile and cynical about the idea of religion in general, and thanks to some bad experiences growing up I was particularly scornful of Christianity. I never once thought that God might actually exist, not even as a child. I wasn't searching for answers because I thought I already had them. I wasn't looking for objective truth because I didn't think it existed.

Looking back, I was kind of a worst case scenario in terms of potential for conversion. It seems so unlikely that I would ever become religious at all, let alone a Christian.

The series of lucky breaks that led me to have a change of heart and mind, that ultimately led me to God, are too numerous to detail here. One of the reasons I haven't yet written a conversion story is simply because it would require thousands and thousands of words to explain. But, to consider it all in total, one of the things that strikes me when I look back on it all is how clearly I see the hand of God in my life. I see now that even when I was most lost, when I'd fallen so far away and was so consumed with sin and selfishness that it would seem impossible that a person could ever come back, God was there. It was like there was some small magnet within me that was leading me to a home I didn't know existed.

I was pondering all this earlier this week as I looked through a dresser drawer, and I came across a thin, worn box. I think that finding it was an answer to my question of how on earth I got here: it contained my baptism candle.

Because it was never discussed in my family, I often forget that I was baptized in the Catholic Church as an infant. My mother's parents were Catholic and it was part of their culture to do so, so they had me baptized. (That was the first and last time I was in a church with both of my parents for a religious event until my conversion this past Easter.)

I know from my research that Catholics believe that you receive grace through baptism, even if you're an infant and are not conscious of the event. My understanding of it has always been purely intellectual, from what I know of reading the Catechism and Catholic apologists. Other than a cursory review of the theory to make sure it sounded reasonable, I never gave that doctrine much thought since there were bigger issues to figure out. But as I held my baptism candle in my hands and thought back on the almost miraculous series of events that led me to where I am today, I believed. Not just in my head, but in my heart. As I thought back on my life and all those unlikely events that gradually, gently steered me away from the destructive path I seemed determined to follow, I felt the hand of God. I could see and feel God's grace working in my life despite my best efforts to resist it. And I believe it had something to do with my baptism.

What I was looking for in that drawer when I came across the candle was something to wear to our church this Saturday, when my oldest child will finally be baptized. They say that by pouring holy water over his head he will be born into the Holy Spirit; that he won't be guaranteed salvation but he will be helped by God's grace; and that his soul will be sealed with an indelible mark of his belonging to Christ, a mark that nothing, not any amount of sin, can ever take away. Based on my experience, I think there's something to those claims. And I pray that my son experiences the same.

Wordless Wednesday

Should we want to be sexy?

Literacy-chic of the great blog Words, Words recently had yet another post that really got me thinking. In reference to a commentor who claimed that some breastfeeding mothers don't value their bodies, she writes:

We feel the need to operate within this "sexy-not-mommy," "mommy-not-sexy" dichotomy that exists in society...To put it bluntly: breastfeeding breasts can still be sexy, and breastfeeding moms can still have sexy thoughts about their breasts.

I actually started leaving a comment to jump into the debate about whether or not breastfeeding moms can also be sexy, but as I typed a thought struck me: do I even think that being sexy is a worthy goal? I'd never really thought about it before. I've groused around on this blog about how our society over-values sexiness, but I'd never stopped to ask if there's anything valuable about being sexy.

I mulled it over as I went through my afternoon, asking myself if I think that we women should ever want to be sexy. And I surprised myself when I came up with the answer: no, I don't think we should. I think it's beneath us.

The way I've come to see it, if someone finds you sexy it's a euphemistic way of saying they see you as an object of lust. I think we've been misled to desire to be sexy by our contraceptive culture, which believes that sex is mainly about surface-level pleasure and only very rarely about creating new souls (but you already know that, since I'm always boring on about it, as I did here and here). :) I offer the video below as an example of what I think we women should strive for in terms of physical attractiveness. Of course we want to be visually appealing in one way or another -- it's hardwired into our natures. But there are plenty of ways to do that, as women almost always have up until the present era, that preserve our great dignity as women, humans, and children of God. The women in this video are beautiful. They're lovely, feminine, graceful and elegant -- but they are not sexy. Such an adjective seems far too base, and borders on insulting.

Anyway, this is actually a new thought for me and I was kind of surprised to find myself coming to this conclusion, so I thought I'd throw it out there for comments: is being sexy a worthy goal, or does it devalue us as women? Should we ever want to be sexy?

(Thanks again to Literacy-chic for the great post that got me thinking about this in the first place!)

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UPDATE: I just realized that I have been misspelling Literacy-chic's name for months. The first time I saw it I misread it as Literary-chic and that just stuck. SO sorry!

The Father of Lies

When I was first exploring Christianity, one of the things I never understood was why Satan is referred to as the "Father of Lies". Why lies? It seemed like kind of an arbitrary thing for him to be defined by -- I mean, lying is bad, but there are certainly worse things, right? Why wasn't he the Father of Hatred, or the Father of Anger, or the Father of Cruelty? Frankly, the Father of Lies didn't sound all that ominous to me.

And then I began to notice something.

Thanks to the writings of great apologists like C.S. Lewis, I suddenly saw that all humans throughout history have had the idea that we're supposed to be doing what's "right" and "good". Almost nobody ever says "I'm going to do something totally bad and evil today!" Even Hitler claimed to be doing a "good" thing for his country.

We all have a strong, mysterious need to insist that we're "good people"...yet we all have an equally strong, equally mysterious tendency to do things that are not at all good. It was when I took a step back to see what happens when those two forces combine that I realized where Satan gets his nickname. Our innate repulsion at the thought of doing something evil means that there's only one way that actual evil can flourish: through lies.

Rapists tell themselves that the women wanted or deserved it; shoplifters tell themselves that they need the stolen merchandise, or that the big company won't miss it anyway; when a wanted child is born very prematurely it's a precious "baby", when an unwanted child is killed at the same gestational age it's "just a fetus"; in an example I just came across today, the animal cloning process creates "a whole new genetically identical embryo", whereas the human cloning process creates the less personal-sounding "stem cells".

Once I came to this realization I saw examples everywhere -- most of all in myself. I didn't let the house get trashed because I was being slothful and selfish, it was because I "didn't have time" to clean up. When talking about a person with whom I was irritated I wasn't gossiping and being uncharitable and hypocritical, I simply wanted to alert my husband to the situation and this person's character defects so that he could keep her in his prayers. When I slept in on Sundays instead of going to church I wasn't being lazy or disrespecting God, I was just choosing to keep the Sabbath holy in a different way -- and, besides, I wasn't officially a Christian yet anyway so it probably wasn't even required of me.

It didn't take much reflection to realize that it was entirely through lies that I did bad things. I've never once said, "This action that I'm about to take is seriously bad and wrong, but I don't care." No way. I was a good person. I always had a good story to tell about why what I was doing was really just fine.

The above examples of my behavior are recent ones -- this is the kind of stuff I've done since I knew better! When I think about the kinds of things I used to do back when I told myself that what's good and evil is a matter of opinion, that there's no one "truth", I realize how extremely dangerous moral relativism is. I understand why it's Pope Benedict's big cause. I see now that "good" is inextricably entwined with "telling the truth," and "evil" is inextricably entwined with "telling lies". And you can't seek the truth if you don't believe it exists. Based on personal experience and what I've observed of the world, I've come to think that one of the most soul-damaging things a person can do is to tell themselves that there's no such thing as objective truth. Because Evil is always lurking around to provide a nice neat story for you to tell yourself about why bad things are not bad at all. And when your definition of good and bad is not moored to an objective Truth, above human opinion, it makes it all too easy to slide down a dangerous path, and for Satan to earn his reputation as the Father of Lies.

What I miss about not having kids...

Some of the comments to this post got me thinking about what, if anything, I miss from my pre-kid days. The travel? Nah. Living in a little loft downtown? No. Being able to sleep in on weekends? Certainly not, I relish every waking moment with my precious children, even if it's first thing in the morning! (I'm lying. I do miss that one.)

Anyway, the events of the past 24 hours have made me realize that there actually is one thing that I really, really, miss about my life before children: having this whole parenting thing all figured out.

When I was pregnant with my first child I stopped taking new clients for my business so that I could just focus on enjoying the pregnancy, reading, and learning. I met other likeminded pregnant women through the midwives at the birthing center and through Bradley class, and boy did we have some opinions about parenthood! From childbirth to babies to breastfeeding to discipline, I was a sort of one-stop shop for all answers as to the "right" way to parent.

Now that I was all knowledgeable about kids and stuff, I took a keen interest in other people I knew who were parents. I remember meeting a friend of a friend at a birthday party, who mentioned that she really wanted to breastfeed her baby, but gave up after a couple weeks because of low milk supply issues. The horror! Though I nodded politely, inwardly I sort of imagined a neon sign with an arrow hovering over her head that flashed in bold colors, "NOT DEDICATED TO BREASTFEEDING". Had she not heard of pumps or lactation consultants or La Leche League? Perhaps somebody (ahem) was just not trying hard enough.

And then there was my husband's coworker's wife who frequently mentioned that she spent a lot of time cleaning up after her two-year-old, who had a penchant for pulling things out of draws and cabinets. Old Jen Who Had It All Figured Out thought something along the lines of, "Just get control of your kid! Simply teach him that he's not supposed to do that and offer him alternative ways to amuse himself. It's all about consistency and discipline, honey."

And then there was my friend who let her three young children watch TV. Clearly she hadn't read the research on children's brain development and television! I couldn't quite find a polite way to inform her that it is not ideal for young children to watch television, even for just an hour a day, and that she needed to find some nice classic toys for them to play with -- perhaps wooden blocks, or a wagon -- and use that to entertain them instead of the television. Sheesh!


So as I stood in my living room this morning, eyeing a can of formula because my baby isn't getting enough to eat despite herculean efforts at breastfeeding, watching my one-year-old pull every single pot and pan out of the kitchen cabinet, listening to random crashing sounds coming from the living room where my toddler was throwing toys at the window while watching Dora the Explorer, I realized exactly what it is I miss about my pre-parenthood days: having all the answers. I'd like to have Old Jen Who Had It All Figured Out back. Because Current Jen Who Evidently Sucks at Parenting has learned many a hard lesson that she really, really does not have this motherhood thing all figured out. :)

The sugar pill and the real thing

Over these past couple weeks of woe Vicodin basically became a part of the Food Pyramid for me, so the topic of analgesics and other drugs has been on my mind.

For some reason I thought of a friend's story of a drug trial he participated in in college. A pharmaceutical company was offering to pay people $1,000 to have a minor medical procedure performed in return for feedback about a new pain medication they were testing. After a quick calculation of how many six packs of Schlitz they could buy with that kind of money, my friend and his roommate signed up. Participants were aware that some people would be given the real drug, whereas others would receive only a placebo, a sugar pill, to control for potential psychological factors (e.g. people feeling pain relief because they expected to, not because the drug was actually working).

When I asked about the results my friend said that his roommate wasn't sure if he was part of the control group -- his pain was pretty bad, but it seemed to go off and on, so he was pretty sure he got the sugar pill. When I asked my friend if he thought he got the real drug, he said with a laugh, "Ooooooh, yeah. You know the real thing when you get it." In what was probably an annoying attempt to play devil's advocate, I pushed him on the issue. How did he know that the pain relief wasn't just the placebo effect, the results coming only from his mind? He responded with a laugh, "Because it completely knocked me on my a**."


Though it's not a very eloquent way to phrase it, that's how I feel about Christianity.

Every now and then I get a comment suggesting that all of changes I've seen in my life since my conversion can be chalked up to a sort of placebo effect. Perhaps I wanted Christianity to be true, so I saw what I needed to see to make it true.

First of all, the fact is that that I didn't really want Christianity to be true. I perceived the entire religion to be a nothing more than a fairy tale that people used as a mental crutch. I thought that Christianity was synonymous with things like homophobia and sexism, so I gagged at the idea of ever calling myself a "Christian". And I really, really did not want the Catholic Church to have any truth to it since I thought it was a corrupt institution that made people feel guilty about everything.

That aside, perhaps some hidden part of my subconscious wanted it all to be true. Or maybe it filled some need I wasn't aware I had, or I just wanted to see results because I'd invested so much time researching and reading about it. Maybe it's all the placebo effect. Maybe I got a sugar pill.

Like my friend in the pharmaceutical study, the notion makes me chuckle to entertain it. I can't prove it to anyone else, but I know what I've experienced. And it ain't no sugar pill.

Even in my pre-religion days, I was always interested in self-reflection and self-improvement. I read lots of popular secular books about how to be a better person, find happiness, improve relationships with others, etc. and tried all sorts of techniques to improve these things. So I'm pretty well aware of what my capabilities are in terms of making changes in my life: and it's not that impressive. Years of trying to improve my life on my own yielded very few results.

And then I stumbled into Christianity. I never intended for my attempts to live as a Christian to bring about much change in my life. I saw it as an intellectual endeavor rather than self-improvement project. I had come to the conclusion that the religion seemed to have some truth to it, so I thought I'd try living the way this Christian God would want us to live if he existed, just to see what happened. I thought of it as an almost entirely intellectual exercise.

Pardon the expression, but I find that what happened next is best described by paraphrasing my friend in the pharmaceutical study: I was knocked on my a**. It was like the foundation of my life started crumbling below me and I found myself riding a landslide to a totally different existence. Rather than the surface-level, temporary changes I'd seen in my life when using secular methods that relied on self alone, with Christianity I experienced a deep transformation that went down to the root of my soul. It was not something I could have brought about on my own.

When things started to happen like pride, cynicism and irritability being edged out by love, hope and peace, it was not of my own doing. I liked being prideful, cynical and irritable. It's just who I was (and, most importantly, it made for good blog posts on my old blog). But, sometime after I started the Christianity experiment, all of those traits began to leave a bad taste in my mouth. I didn't want to change, but it's almost as if I had no choice -- I so deeply craved more of the peace and joy that I'd found only in the Christian religion that I no longer felt comfortable living life the way I had before. Much like being on a drug, my perception of the world around me, my actions, my desires, even my innermost thoughts were altered. Some force had acted upon me, slowly transforming me into the better person I never intended to be.

All my life I'd always thought that Christianity was a sugar pill. I thought that people swallowed it and then saw whatever they needed or wanted to see to make themselves feel better. But now that I have tried it for myself, I see that Christianity brings with it Something real, powerful, and external to the human mind. I agree with my friend in the drug study -- you know the real thing when you get it. And this is the real thing.

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UPDATE: I realized after re-reading this that I should clarify that, as I've mentioned before, the results were not instantaneous. I don't want to give the impression that I had a thunder-and-lightning conversion experience, since that certainly is not the case. Also, even in the midst of becoming a very different, better person as the result of Christianity, I still didn't feel God's presence in the way other people seemed to. Ironically, I still felt rather spiritually dry even as all these changes began to take place. So, to be clear, the results were huge, but they came about slowly and didn't involve much raw emotion for a long time. That was actually one of the things that really surprised me about the whole thing: I thought that having a religious experience was all about emotion and feeling. I would have never guessed how much God can change you even when you're just going through the motions.

Weekly favorites

I emerge from my sleep-deprived stupor to bring you a bunch 'o great links I discovered this week. I threw in a few extra ones since my posting frequency will probably slow down until I get my brain back.

1. What's the best advice you ever heard?: Don't miss the comments to my post about good advice. All the responses were so great! Add your own if you haven't already.
   
   
2. How I became a millionaire while working in my pajamas: Millionaire Mommy Next Door shares the story of how she and her husband started successful businesses. Though the title sounds a little gimmicky, this is a really solid post. My husband does a lot of small business consulting and says that this might be the best one-page summary of how to succeed as an entrepreneur he's ever read.
   
   
3. Baby-haunted: I found this short article to be very thought-provoking, particularly the description of modern America as "baby-haunted". It reminds me of how I feel when I look at my empty, quiet suburban street. (via Joyful Chaos)
   
   
4. My "flailing butterfly" is no longer going to cut it: This amazing video has inspired me to brush up on my shadow puppet skillz. I can't let my toddler see this lest he realize that my shadow "rock" and "talking dog" are really pathetic.
   
   
5. Amputating the family from family life: One of my all-time favorite writers, Mark Steyn, has the best take I've heard yet on Alexis Stewart's writing about her efforts to have a child, noting that her story symbolizes "a world that insists one should retain time-honored traditions when decorating the house for Thanksgiving but thinks nothing of re-ordering the most basic building blocks of society."
   
   
6. Watch your car in a crash test: Consumer reports has a very cool feature where you can see crash test videos for tons of cars. (via Monastic Musings)
   
   
7. From the husbands' perspective: Peter writes a much-needed post where he honestly addresses the fact that husband's needs are often blown off by society. He writes, "If a woman says she needs better communication in marriage she is applauded and encouraged. If a man asks for more attention to his sexual needs he risks being dismissed or denounced as a sexual aggressor." I see this happen in many discussions of marital problems, so I'm glad to see someone bringing the topic out into the open.
   
   
8. Four ways to encourage comments: Mamablogga has another helpful post, this time about how to get comments going on your site. (My tips? Write about contraception, housewives, or start debates with atheists. That should do the trick.)
   
   
9. This is so going to be my kids in about ten years: And why didn't I think of this when I was a teenager?
   
   
10. Why would God call an impatient introvert to have a large family?: Hope has an inspiring musing about why God would call someone like her to have a large family. I loved her answer. (Don't miss her other recent post, All You Need Is Love, where she shares the one parenting philosophy that always works.)
    
    
11. Is this man cheating on his wife?: A fascinating / disturbing look at what can happen when the lines between reality and virtual reality get blurry. (via Middle-Aged, Not Muddle-Headed)
    
    
12. Why I'm Catholic: Tertium Quid has a well-written post about the factors that influenced his decision to convert to Catholicism. I can relate to a lot of these reasons.
    
    
13. The Friendly Christian: Bill at The Friendly Christian is publicly examining his beliefs, and is often frightened by what he finds. (Unfortunately I often find that a lot of good arguments in favor of Christianity aren't represented in the comments.) Kudos to Bill for his honesty, as well as his politeness when discussing heated topics.
    
    
14. Toiletgate: Is it wrong that I'm enjoying reading about Toiletgate over at Suburban Turmoil? It all started with this article that Lindsay Ferrier wrote for Nashville Scene. (via Toddler Dredge...sort of...Veronica told me about the site in the comments)
    
    
15. Anybody want some M.C. Hammer pants?: Something made me think of Craigslist's "Best Of" collection this morning, and now that's 30 minutes of my life I can never get back. The M.C. Hammer pants post almost made me choke on my water, and I was amused by this letter to The Dogs from The Human as well. (I would link to the main Best Of page but with all the profanity it's not appropriate for anyone at work, on a family computer, or who doesn't want their monitor to melt.)
    
    
16. Imagining the future: Very cool blog that shows what people in the past imagined the future to be like. (via Toddler Dredge)
    

Have a great rest of the week!

Awesome

To whom shall we go?

Like a lot of people, I've been thinking about spiritual dry spells in light of all the media coverage of Mother Teresa's "dark night of the soul". (Not that Mother Teresa's loss of spiritual consolation is really news, since Christians have known about it for years, but nevertheless it's hard not to think about it since it's getting so much media and blog coverage.)

It's particularly interesting to me since, oddly, my conversion started in a dark night of the soul. After reading the works of great apologists like C.S. Lewis, G. K. Chesterton, and other less famous authors, I came to believe on an intellectual level that God exists and that the Christian claims are true. Yet I felt nothing. I had sort of expected that God would throw me a bone after all my years of unbelief, that once I said, "OK, Lord, I believe in you," that I'd hear a chorus of angels and be flooded with peace and joy. I thought that I would instantly "love" Jesus like all my Christian friends from childhood did, that God would touch me on an emotional level in at least some small way.

But that didn't happen.

Weeks stretched into months, months turned into a year, then two years, as I plodded along in my spiritual quest, feeling almost nothing. I often started my prayers with little jokes like, "Is this thing on?" and ended with, "I am totally talking to myself here. This is weird...Amen." I would sit in the pew at Mass and numbly listen to the scripture readings. I watched without emotion as the priest consecrated the host. I looked at the tabernacle and the crucifix and felt nothing.

So why didn't God reveal himself to me, and why did I keep going?

As for the first question, I would say that he did reveal himself. His presence was all around me, it always was, I had just looked right past it. Kindness, love, peace, hope, joy, recognition of true beauty -- these things don't come from molecules alone. Just because I didn't immediately feel thrilled about it doesn't mean God didn't show himself to me.

But it's easy to give up when you don't have strong emotions, what are often called spiritual "consolations", to make the practice of faith pleasant for you. So why didn't I, a lazy quitter who is notorious for not following through on plans as soon as they get inconvenient, give up? I thought about it a lot at the time. I made the calculation of how much more free time I'd have if I cut out things like Mass on Sunday, spiritual reading, daily Mass, prayer, praying the Rosary, etc. But I couldn't bring myself to do it. I couldn't even bring myself to seriously entertain the idea. Walking away wasn't an option.

The reason I wouldn't -- couldn't -- give up is beautifully summarized in Chapter 6 of the Gospel of John. The day after Jesus miraculously fed thousands of people with five loaves of bread and two fishes, a crowd followed him to Capernaum. He started preaching again, and ended up laying out some hard, inconvenient teachings. Many people left him (even after he'd performed an amazing miracle just the day before), and walked away to return to their former ways of life.

Jesus turned to the twelve apostles and asked, "Do you also want to leave?" Peter's response, so disarmingly simple, often echoes through my mind: "Lord, to whom shall we go?"

When I felt discouraged by never having "felt" God's presence, by having so few consolations for the great effort I put into my faith, I'd remember the words of Peter. If I leave, to whom shall I go? Now that I had heard the Christian explanation for this crazy experience we call life, nothing made sense without it. Having taken a look around through the Christian lens, seeing beauty and suffering and good and evil and hope and tragedy and life and death as seen by the Christians and their Church, I could no longer make sense of the world without it. It was like finally finding the box top that made all the puzzle pieces come together.

When I think of Mother Teresa, St. John of the Cross, St. Teresa of Avila, and all the other great saints who experienced spiritual dryness, I often imagine that this is perhaps how they felt about faith as well. Perhaps they took a look at how absurd life would seem without God and his teachings, at the immense fruits that came from their lives when they lived as if God did exist. Perhaps they also thought of Peter's simple question, "To whom shall we go?" and realized there's no one else to go to, for there's only one Truth.

For me anyway, my feelings on dark nights of the soul are this: sometimes it might be hard to believe it's true. But it's impossible to believe it's not true.

What advice changed your life?

As I enter into what I think of as my own personal Mommy Boot Camp, the adventure that is having three