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Categories Everyday Life

An Inconvenient Convenience

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I work within five minutes walking distance of both of my banks. So when I needed to transfer some funds this morning, I took off my lab coat and jaunted off for a quick walk. After all, it would take at least 5 minutes to get up to the parking garage and out of it. Then I’d have to tangle about in traffic just to spend another five minutes traversing the parking garage maze again. It’d be much simpler-and better for me–to walk. And so I did.

What I didn’t count on was my bank not opening their lobby until 8:30. So, when I got to the bank at 8:15, I couldn’t go in. I started on my way back, then stopped short, realizing that I wouldn’t have time to get anything done before heading back to the bank again anyway. So I walked up to the drive-through and tried to do it that way.

The teller wasn’t quite sure it was safe for me to walk up to the drive-through. Cars just speed up to those things, you know. She warned me to keep watching over my shoulder–but she did let me complete my transaction.

I got to the other bank around 8:20 to discover the same situation–but this time the drive-through was filled with cars. So I sat outside the doors for ten minutes until the lobby opened up. Then I deposited my money and walked back to work.

I understand the convenience of a drive-through bank window for some people–particularly for mothers of young children for whom unpacking everybody just for a quick deposit might be overkill, and for disabled individuals for whom getting out of a vehicle is a huge rigamarole. But for the rest of us, are drive-through windows REALLY that convenient?

Call me old-fashioned, but I prefer to walk into the bank. Yes, I have to turn off the car, leave the AC, and walk a whole twenty steps or so. But I get my money just as quickly, and I have personal contact with my bankers–such that they know who I am and recognize me when I come back in. On the other hand, driving through the drive-through means wasting gas idling while the person in front of me dinks about, it means messing with a machine that is nothing if not unwieldy, and it means opening my windows and letting the AC escape anyway.

It seems to me that the spurious “convenience” of the drive-through window is very little compared to the significant inconvience of not having the option of visiting the lobby. After all, since motor vehicles are the only entities generally allowed in drive-throughs, having only the drive-through open necessarily excludes at least three classes of people: those who walk, those who bicycle, and those who use public transportation.

What might be a “convenience” to some is just plain exclusive to others. And, an inconvenient truth regarding drive-through bank windows? They promote the waste of fossil fuels and the emission of greenhouse gases by idling vehicles, while penalizing those who choose eco-friendly forms of transportation (namely: walkers, bicyclists, and users of public transportation.)

Categories Everyday Life

Just About Everything

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There isn’t enough time in a day to do everything. So I settle on doing just about everything. Still, I manage to get quite a bit done.

I got up today at 5:30–and as you can see, I’m just starting to wrap up now at 11:30. But check out what just about everything means today:

  • Get up :-P
  • Fix bed
  • Dress to shoes (Okay, you caught me, I’m going through my “Flylady” morning routine)
  • Fix hair
  • Do makeup
  • Take meds
  • Make and eat breakfast
  • Unload dishwasher
  • Devotions
  • Brush teeth (using left hand to increase the mental workout)
  • “Swish and Swipe” bathroom
  • Return a dozen items to their proper places (clearing the clutter in my bedroom!)
  • Do a ten-minute Spark People kickboxing workout.
  • Run to my parents to retrieve my baby shampoo
  • Take a dozen photos of the bunnies out back.
  • Renew my library books online
  • Assemble tonight’s dinner (a bean and tomato concoction I thought up last night)
  • Get car dropped off at the shop
  • Work a little over 8 hours (2 diet educations, 4 new admits, 1 follow up, 1 set of rounds. Not bad.)
  • Read an article on family mealtimes
  • Pray over a couple dozen issues while taking the stairs at work
  • Read a chapter on Nutrition programs for children
  • Pick car up from shop
  • Go grocery shopping
  • Water indoor plants
  • Start yogurt going
  • Enjoy a leisurely discussion with roommates
  • Work on quilting
  • Practice piano
  • Make tomorrow’s lunch
  • Go to Ice Cream with friends–and have a great chat about…what we don’t talk about (in mixed company)
  • Check Lincoln’s “Dial-a-Registered-Dietitian” voicemailbox
  • Practice recorder
  • Read all the new posts on class discussion board. Respond appropriately.
  • Write reactions to family mealtime article on discussion board
  • Create job description for marketing project
  • Set out clothes for tomorrow
  • Read a chapter of a novel
  • Catch up on a few blogs
  • Post on my own blog

And now I should probably work on the last thing on my list–getting ready for bed.

It’s been a full day today–but Mary’s Fuller! That is, tomorrow is likely to be full too–so I’d best get a bit of sleep before tomorrow begins!

Categories Everyday Life

The Next Generation

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My family has been going on “romps”–long rambling walks through the pastures of my grandparents’ property–for as long as I can remember.

In the beginning, we romped our way to the old stove, where my mom and aunts used to use cowpies as pretend food to be cooked on the wood-burning stove.

The cousins set off for a romp

Later on, we romped across fields and through pastures in a circuitous route to the “crick” for some “wading”.

The windmill--or at least the bottom of it

And most recently, we’ve romped through the little stream right below Grandma and Grandpa’s house, out through a few pastures and to the windmill and the “cracks.”

This weekend, I saw that my grandparents were a bit weary and the younguns’ far from worn out–and so I began to gather whoever was willing for a romp. One cousin heard that there was a romp in progress and asked my Aunt Martha, who has been the instigator of romps for as long as I can remember, what the plan was.

Anthony in the 'cracks'

She said she didn’t know. That I was planning it. That maybe it was time to pass romps on to the next generation.

Which got me thinking. Aunt Martha was my age when I was born. She probably wasn’t much older than I when she instigated the first romps. And from my earliest memories, she was the fun-planner for the family. She had funny stories to share, she had gifts for everyone, she had some way to make each kid feel oh so special.

The whole crew at the top of a hill

And now I, the next generation, have the opportunity to do the same.

I thought of it as I walked along beside my young cousin, discussing long legs and whether our other little cousin came along just to have some one to talk at. I thought of it as I called some cousins near to show them gooseberries–and to encourage them to give one a try–even if they are rather tart. I thought of it as I held open a half a dozen barbed wire fences so children could slip between the wires. I thought of it as I untied the water bottle from my waist so a straggler could have a drink from the windmill-pumped well water. I thought of it as I assisted cousins across the boggy little stream as we neared home.

On the way home again

I thought, “Wow. I really am the next generation.”

And I thought, “I couldn’t do it better than my aunt Martha–but I’m sure gonna try to do it just as well.”

Categories Health

Pregnancy

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What should I be eating now that I’m pregnant? Everybody talks about eating for two, but what does that look like? My friend’s doctor said she could gain as much weight as she wanted–but then I’ve seen her struggle to lose weight after she had the baby. And then there’s this pregorexic thing. I mean, I don’t want the baby to make me fat, but I certainly don’t want to become anorexic or anything–especially not while I’m pregnant.

So…

Did I manage to scare all of you who read the first paragraph of my every post in your feed burner or on Facebook? You needn’t be afraid. I am not pregnant. I am still a virgin (that’s for my few brave high school readers–you can do it!).

Instead, I’m taking an online course in Life Cycle Nutrition. As part of that course, I have been asked to review the USDA’s “MyPyramid for Moms” website. While all I have to do for class is review the site and discuss it on the class discussion forum, I thought I would share my thoughts with you all as well. So here goes…

MyPyramid for Moms

Advantages:
  • Calculators Galore-You can calculate a personalized MyPyramid Plan that tells you how much of each food group to eat during each trimester. You can compare what you’re eating to the recommendations. You can even calculate how much weight you should gain during your pregnancy.
  • Understandable information-What information is present is written in a fairly easy to understand style.
  • Personalized Plan-The MyPyramid Plan for pregnancy and for breastfeeding is personalized to your height, weight, activity level, due date, and whether you’re breastfeeding completely or partially. It’s further broken down into trimesters of pregnancy and months after delivery.
Disadvantages:
  • Wordiness-You’ve got to sort through a lot of text to find what you really want to know
  • Not very specific-for example, the site proclaims that “when you are pregnant, you have a higher need for some vitamins and minerals”, but fails to mention which vitamins and minerals you need more of.
  • Skirts the issues-MyPyramid never actually says how much your nutrient needs are increased during pregnancy. It has an eating plan–but you’d never know from MyPyramid that for most women, “eating for two” means only an additional 300 calories per day (about the calories in a large candy bar.)

Please take a look at the MyPyramid for Moms website and let me know what you think. Was my assessment correct or am I way out there? Even the non-Mom’s can participate in this one. Just do as I did–enter 12/01/09 as your due date for the pregnancy calculators and enter 05/01/09 as your child’s birthday for the breastfeeding calculators. I’d love to hear what you think (and your insight might add something worthwhile to my class’s discussion of the topic as well!)

Categories Reflections

A Riddle

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I am priceless; I cannot be bought with money.
You can use me, but you cannot own me.
You can spend me, but cannot keep me.
Once you’ve lost me, you can never get me back
What am I?

Answer: Time

How many times have I complained that I haven’t any time? Yet I am allotted the same time as anyone is: 24 hours in a day.

How many times have I complained at how swiftly time moves? Yet time moves at the same rate for everyone: 60 minutes to the hour.

I complain about time as though I were the only one constrained by it–as though I were the only one that felt its subtle bonds. Yet time is an impartial master, placing the same bonds on every man.

My experiences with time are not unique–but I can choose to let my response to time be unique. I can choose to embrace time as my friend rather than struggle with it as my enemy. I can choose to seize each moment rather than complain about every moment lost. I can choose to remember the past with fondness, look forward to the future with hope, and live today to the fullest.

And so I shall. I shall live my newly hectic life to the fullest: interning in the CCU, taking a 5-week summer course, enjoying this weekend’s family festival, preparing a marketing proposal with a friend, coordinating our church’s 20S ministry. And maybe somewhere, in the midst of all that, I can take a moment in hope of the future and go house shopping. Just maybe.

Categories Everyday Life, Following Christ

Exhale

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“My son, if you become surety for your friend,
If you have shaken hands in pledge for a stranger,
You are snared by the words of your mouth;
You are taken by the words of your mouth.
So do this, my son, and deliver yourself;
For you have come into the hand of your friend:
Go and humble yourself;
Plead with your friend.
Give no sleep to your eyes,
Nor slumber to your eyelids.
Deliver yourself like a gazelle from the hand of the hunter,
And like a bird from the hand of the fowler.”

Proverbs 6:1-5

Not having heard a “No” from the Lord, I said “Yes” to a friend.

The Lord’s “No” didn’t take long in arriving.

Thankfully, my friend heard the same voice, and did what I would not: Humbled himself, pled with his friend, and delivered us both from our own hands.

Now I, and he, can breathe again. A nice, long exhale.

Categories Reflections

Mish-Mash Monday

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Don’t you just love all these amazingly alliterative titles? The ones I participate in are only the tip of the iceburg: Simple Sunday, Thankful Thursday. I regularly read Tiny Talk Tuesday posts, Works for me (or Wordless) Wednesday posts, Silly Saturday posts–they go on and on. So far as I know, no one has ever “patented” the “Mish-Mash Monday”–so today I’m claiming it as my own. Mish-mash is the way my mind feels, so mish-mash is the way my blog will be today.

Mish-Mash 1: Sea-Stitch

A couple of missionaries from our church are back in town on furlough. Richard and June spoke yesterday in the service–and I was reminded that I should post a link to June’s Sea-Stitch ministry. Sea-Stitch is a practical ministry that trains Philipino women and men to cross-stitch and gives them supplies to create cross-stitched works of art. June’s goal is to provide enough work that each of the stitchers can buy food for a family of four three times a week off of the proceeds. This practical ministry has provided many Philipino families with food–and has been a medium of introducing the workers to the family of God. Many of the workers have accepted Christ as a result of this ministry and have become active participants in churches within the Philippines.

You can support the work of Sea-Stitch by following the link to their website, checking out the neat cross-stitch designs, and purchasing some cross-stitched bookmarks, Bible covers, greeting cards, or wall hangings. (I personally picked up a good selection of greeting cards yesterday.)

Mish-Mash 2: Cup of Coffee

I had a cup of coffee yesterday–the first I’d had in ages. And I was wired the entire morning. I was still tired, and yawning constantly. But my heart felt like it would beat out of my chest.

“Like a warm cup of coffee” is unlikely to have quite that effect on you–at least it didn’t on me. Instead, this blog I stumbled upon (via a link from someone–I can’t remember who) is likely to encourage you and get you thinking about what it means to be a Christian woman in today’s world. I have enjoyed Sarah Mae’s thoughtful and thought-provoking discussions.

Mish-Mash 3: Why O Why?

Why can’t life just be easy? Why does it have to be complex? Why do I have to think things through? Why do I have to guard my heart? Why do I have to guard my mind? Why do I have to hold my tongue? Why do I have to seek wisdom? Why can’t wisdom just be plain? Why do I have to search her out?

And why do I always find myself questioning the Potter?

“Woe to him who strives with his Maker!
Let the potsherd strive with the potsherds of the earth!
Shall the clay say to him who forms it,
‘What are you making?’
Or shall your handiwork say,
‘He has no hands’?”

Isaiah 45:9

“But indeed, O man, who are you to reply against God? Will the thing formed say to him who formed it, ‘Why have you made me like this?’ Does not the potter have power over the clay, from the same lump to make one vessel for honor and another for dishonor?” Romans 9:20-21

When, Rebekah, will you see that it’s useless to strive with your Maker? When will you see that He will reveal His will in His own time? When will you let it be sufficient to know that God has good plans for you and that He will bring them to pass?

Soon, I pray.

Categories Reflections

Pride in Disguise

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I call it self-sufficiency, trying to make it on my own. I call it being a grown-up, this unwillingness to ask for help.

“I’m a big girl now,” I say to myself, “I can’t always be daddy’s little girl.” I’m going to prove myself, I’m going to make my own way. I don’t need a leg up from anyone.

I call it living my own life. I call it not being presumptuous.

I call it lots of things, but really it’s just pride in disguise.

Categories Faith, Reflections

I’ve been…

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Sorry I haven’t written lately. I’ve been too busy.

“Busy doing what?” you might ask.

Too which I can only respond: “Dreaming.”

It had been ages since I knelt in worship–even longer since the kneeling turned to sitting. I used to kneel in worship all of the time. And when my knees started to go numb, I’d transition to sitting on the floor, basking in the presence of God. Many of my most intimate conversations with God have occurred on the floor of our church during a worship service. But it had been a long time since I’d been on the floor–and a long time since I’d last had that kind of conversation.

When I knelt in worship this Sunday, I wasn’t expecting anything spectacular–I just wanted to worship God. And when my knees grew tired of being sat upon, I shifted onto my bottom. I wasn’t expecting God to drop in–but He did.

“When did you become so pragmatic?” He asked. “When did you stop dreaming?”

You see, I used to be a dreamer. I dreamt of making a difference in the world. I dreamt of seeing great things, of doing great things. I dreamt of seeing blind eyes receive sight. I dreamt of dancing in the arms of a lover. I dreamt of owning a house that I’d minister out of. I dreamt of marriage and children. I dreamt of traveling the world. I dreamt of so much. My goals are nothing compared to my dreams.

But somewhere along the way, I stopped dreaming. Things hadn’t turned out the way I intended. I turned 21, not only unmarried but with no prospects in sight. I was 24 and still in school. I prayed for revival, but I didn’t see it happen. I stopped dreaming. I stopped believing that dreams could come true.

It’s not that I didn’t miss dreaming. On the contrary, I sorrowed over my lack of faith, my absence of dreams. I even wrote a little song about it:

Once upon a time I thought big thoughts
I hadn’t yet learned they were impossible
Once upon a time I dreamed big dreams
Before I learned to not believe

Teach me again the faith of a child
Teach me again to see
Teach me again, God oh so big
Teach me again to believe

Remember the child
dreaming to sweat drops of blood?
Remember the child
Crying for revival to come?
Bring back that heart,
that longing,
that hunger
Teach me again to believe

I heard Michael W. Smith’s “Missing Person” with new ears. I’d heard the song, sung the lyrics a thousand times without ever giving thought to what it was saying:

There was a child who had the faith to move a mountain
And like a child he would believe without a reason
Without a trace he disappeared into the void and
I’ve been searching for that missing person

He used to want to try to walk the straight and narrow
He had a fire and he could feel it in the marrow
It’s been a long time and I haven’t seen him lately but
I’ve been searching for that missing person

It brought tears to my eyes–I wasn’t the only one who felt that way. But for all my searching, I wasn’t getting anywhere closer to finding the missing dreamer inside of me.

At least, not until God asked me His question: “When did you become so pragmatic? When did you stop dreaming?”

I didn’t really have an answer–or if I did, it was a pretty defensive one. “Well, Lord, what do you want me to do?” I asked in frustration.

“Listen to the dream.” He answered back. “Let it well up in your heart once again. And let Me make the dreams reality.”

I struggled with God a bit: “So how do I know that dreaming won’t just lead to disillusionment? I’ve dreamt before–and where has it gotten me? Have any of those dreams come true? How do I know that dreaming isn’t just a waste of time–something to keep me occupied so I don’t notice when life passes me by?”

And God responded: “My kind of dreams aren’t a waste of time. My kind of dreams don’t keep you from enjoying life. The knack, Rebekah, is to dream My kind of dreams. The knack is to discover where your dreams and Mine intersect–and to jump on them for the ride of your life.”

And then He began to awaken the dreams. But this time, they’re not the fantasy castles of a little girl. This time they’re the dreams that involve blueprint writing, financial affair setting in-order, deep soul-searching. So I’ve been busy dreaming–finding the missing person I thought I’d never see again.