bekahcubed

Categories What's on Your Nightstand?

Nightstand (May 2014)

4 Comments by

Generally, I would take advantage of a long weekend to get my Nightstand post up and ready to go with all the bells and whistles – but my brother and sister-in-law came down to visit Daniel and I for this particular weekend and I was much too busy spending time with them to do internet stuff.

So you’re getting the little list I put together before I returned the last batch of books to the library – without expanded comments or books read since then. But something is better than nothing, right?

This month, I read:

  • The Convenient Marriage by Georgette Heyer
    An intriguing one as Heyer goes since the hero and heroine are married from the very beginning of the book. I’m enjoying working my way through my library’s collection of Heyer.
  • Ruth by Lori Copeland
    I only finished this because it was the only fiction I had out of the library. The heroine was an impulsive fool, the hero a “good man” who wasn’t a believer until the day before he married the heroine, the plot absolutely implausible. I didn’t like it at all. In fact, I’m considering just being done with Copeland – I’ve been either “meh” or “blech” on the last half dozen or so of hers that I’ve read.
  • Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card
    This is the second book in the “Ender’s Game” series, and we own a copy of the first two in one volume. I loved Ender’s Game when I read it last year, and I started reading Speaker for the Dead immediately afterward – only to give up in desperation. The story was too different, the style too different. There were new characters that I didn’t know and love yet. I couldn’t do it. But when I ran out of fiction from the library this past month, I picked it up again – and absolutely loved it, devoured it. Whereas Ender’s Game is very action-packed, Speaker for the Dead is all about relationships and the inner workings of peoples’ brains. Card is a gifted writer, that’s for sure.
  • The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart
    A re-read for our church-lady book club. I led the discusion and found it provoking all sorts of new thoughts in my own mind. Love it, love it, love it.
  • The Wolves of Willoughby Chase by Joan Aiken
    I read along with the Reading to Know Classic Book Club – and enjoyed this little Gothic tale immensely.
  • Yesterday’s Schools by Ruth Freeman
    An interesting look at the evolution of schoolhouses in America from the colonial days to the mid 20th century. The emphasis is on New York schools, as the author was apparently an educator there, but I could see resemblances to schoolhouses I’ve read described or seen in person elsewhere. It took me a while, with rather a lot of confusion to figure out that every eight pages or so was misplaced such that I had to skip a page to have a continuous paragraph and then go back to the previous page. Very odd. But I’m glad I read this itsy-bitsy little volume from my local library.
  • Paranoid Parenting by Frank Furedi
    I’m working on book notes for this one, but don’t know when they’ll be done. This was a great look at how parenting has turned into a can’t-win game – and children are losing out because of it. The subtitle is “why ignoring the experts may be best for your child” – and I agree completely, except when I’m the expert :-)
  • Betty Crocker’s Bread Machine Cookbook
    I might have only made one recipe from this book – the second one, for Buttermilk Bread. It was amazing. I made it a dozen times. I really need to get this book out again and make some more recipes to see if the rest are as good as that one.
  • The Gift of Health by Karin B. Michels and Kristine Napier
    Just another prenatal programming book. More interesting than the other two, more practical as well – but a bit too “diet-book” like for me, with two weeks worth of menus and recipes for each trimester. You have to go to the end of each chapter to see the food group recommendations that give you the option of creating your own menus within the nutritional guidelines the authors recommend.

What's on Your Nightstand?

Categories Following Christ

Contemplating the Word

5 Comments by

I was unfamiliar with the practice of Lectio Divina until I read a post from Tim Challies criticizing it.

According to Wikipedia, Lectio Divina is:

“a traditional Benedictine practice of scriptural reading, meditation and prayer intended to promote communion with God and to increase the knowledge of God’s Word. It does not treat Scripture as texts to be studied, but as the Living Word.”

This particular practice takes four phases:
1. Reading the Word (Lectio)
2. Meditating on the Word (Meditatio)
3. Praying the Word (Oratio)
4. Contemplating the Word (Contemplatio)

The second sentence of Wikipedia’s introduction to the practice makes clear the intent and focus of Lectio Divina versus other approaches to Scripture: “It does not treat Scripture as texts to be studied, but as the living Word.”

Challies’ criticism of Lectio Divina, drawn primarily from David Helms’ Expositional Preaching, comes from a strong belief that the Scriptures are texts to be studied – and that the study of Scripture should be our primary relationship with it.

I struggle.

I believe strongly in studying the Scriptures. I love inductive Bible study. I delight in asking questions of the text and using the text to answer those questions. I enjoy cross-referencing and digging deeper into the meanings of words and phrases, looking at how one writer uses a phrase and how another does. I am a fan of expositional preaching. Studying the Word is important to me.

Yet I am also something of a mystic, one who sees Scripture as the Living Word of God, capable of working with our reason but also beyond our reason. Often Scripture is poetry, except more living than any man-turned-phrase, poetry that acts as a balm for hurts reason cannot touch. It is a sword, piercing beyond the brain to the will.

Why must we approach Scripture as either/or? Why cannot we approach it as both?

I prefer to. If I had to describe my favorite approach to Scripture, it would be as a scholastic Lectio Divina

I read the word (lectio) and questions or connections come to mind. I dig into the Word to find answers to those questions or to evaluate those connections.

I meditate on the word (meditatio) and other Scriptures, related words, sometimes disparate thoughts from what seems like nowhere arise in my mind. I jot them down and then dig into the Word to evaluate connections or contrasts between the current text and the new Scriptures that came into my mind. I look at both the words of the text and the new related word that came into my mind, evaluating how the words are used similarly and differently, how the one sheds light on the other – or perhaps doesn’t. I evaluate my strange thoughts in light of the text and sometimes find that they shed light on the text or encourage me to dig deeper, while other times they seem just rabbit trails.

I pray the word (oratio), putting what I’ve learned and seen into my own words and asking God to help me internalize (through attitudes) and externalize (through actions) His living truth. Sometimes He reveals attitudes or actions that are in disobedience to His word, and I am called to repentance. Sometimes He reveals specific actions that I must do to apply His word, and I am called to put them into practice. Sometimes He directs me to go back to the word yet again to dig for something I’ve missed.

I contemplate the Word (contemplatio) as God reveals Himself the Living Word through Scripture. I worship Him, sometimes through thoughts which run through my mind, my pen, or my voice – but sometimes through simple, incomprehensible wonder.

Yes, this is my favorite approach to Scripture – I recognize it as I read through the steps of the Lectio Divina. Yet even as I write it out in my own words, I long to experience this scholastic Lectio Divina more often, more faithfully. Instead, in the busyness of the days, I settle for just reading and possibly exploring one or two questions or connections, without taking the time to meditate, to pray, to contemplate.

Challies is undoubtedly right that emphasizing mystical connection with the Word to the exclusion of empirical study of the Word is dangerous, but I am grateful that his criticism brought to my attention the four steps of the Lectio Divina and reminded me of the value of not stopping at the first step but taking the time to truly savor the Word of God – yes, in the text itself, but also in the Living Word that it proclaims.

Categories Everyday Life

I’m a desert dweller (almost)

2 Comments by

Have you ever heard of a food desert?

The term refers to areas where access to fresh food is scarce.

I learned about food deserts in school and acknowledged that such places theoretically exist, where people (especially those without access to reliable transportation) have a hard time purchasing fresh foods – especially fresh fruits and vegetables.

I thought of Lincoln’s downtown, where there are few grocery stores and where many of the residents (okay, my context is almost entirely based on being a student and employee at the University of Nebraska – Lincoln) don’t have cars.

Surprisingly, when I looked at the USDAs data (check out your location here), I discover that Lincoln’s downtown is NOT a food dessert, but where I grew up IS.

This despite the fact that I spent my childhood and certainly my teenage years walking or riding my bicycle to the Walmart Supercenter or Super Saver (the most amazing grocery store EVER) that were less than 2 miles away. Huh.

Then again, the criterion for limited access in urban areas is that a large (>33%) proportion of the population is not within 1 mile of a grocery store. So I qualified. I hoofed it 1.5 and 1.8 miles respectively to Walmart or SuperSaver.

Oh, and I just forgot, there were a couple of HyVees too. One at 1.4 miles and one at 1.6 miles or so. Yep, I guess I was in a food desert. Strangely enough, I felt like I had the best access to food I’ve ever experienced in my life. Imagine that.

Wichita Food Deserts
I live and work towards the center of this map, right next to or on the green “food deserts”. The red squares are the supermarket complexes nearby.

Now that I’m in Wichita, I’m one street away from a food dessert.

I have one grocery store complex (Walmart Neighborhood Marketplace and Dillons) at 2 miles (an easy enough biking distance); another complex (Walmart Neighborhood Marketplace, Dillons, and ALDI) at 3.2 miles (for me, still a decent biking distance); and a third with all three stores at 3.9 miles. I struggle to come up with the store that’s within 1 mile of the majority of my census tract – but we’re still definitely not deprived.

So, I’m almost a desert dweller, officially. In reality, I’m not so sure.

Categories Work

Where’s baby’s bottle?

Leave a comment by

I keep a doll in my office to demonstrate breastfeeding. I keep it behind my desk because it’s really there for demo, not for children to play with. But that doesn’t stop children from wanting to play with it.

Generally, I let the children play.

One child, however, had a serious question: “Where’s this baby’s bottle?”

My breastfed baby doll

I told her that this baby didn’t have a bottle, that this baby was breastfed.

At first, mom tried to find something else in my office to take the place of a bottle. Could her daughter use the banana from the puzzle as the baby’s bottle?

She tried, but the banana just didn’t quite work.

Mommy realized that she’d just about missed a teachable moment.

“That baby doesn’t use a bottle. She gets milk from her mommy.”

Child’s eyes got wide – her mind was blown.

Milk from mommy? What a novel thought.

Small steps towards normalizing normal.

Categories Homemaking

I’ve lost my Homemaking Mojo

5 Comments by

Usually when Daniel asks me if he has any more underwear, I tell him that yes, they’re in the basket in such and such a place-I’m just behind with folding.

But when he asked several weeks back, I had to report that he had none. None. I’d fallen behind such that he had no clean underwear. Now, thanks to our packratrish tendencies (actually, my tendency to think that any clothing can be reused or repurposed), we were still able to find something he could wear, albeit not the most comfortable fit. (TMI? So sorry.)

I’ve lost my Homemaking Mojo, you see.

I had such a wonderful laundry system set up. Every morning, I threw in the load of laundry prescribed for the day (Sheets on Monday, Darks on Tuesday, Underwear and other things washed on Hot on Wednesday, etc.). Every lunchtime I switched the laundry from washer to dryer or hung it to dry. And after work, I folded and put away (some of the time.) It worked so well, I was never behind except on folding (which isn’t quite as desperate as being behind on washing and drying, you have to admit.)

But I got behind and tried to catch on a Saturday and that blew my Homemaking Mojo clear away. I spent the entire day handling a mountain of laundry, resulting in extreme laundry exhaustion – which means I didn’t do laundry again for a week and ended up with another mountain. And then my husband didn’t have underwear.

So now every ten days or so I freak out, realizing that my husband will soon run out of underwear, and I quick throw in a load of underwear – leaving the rest of the laundry to pile into a higher and higher and higher mess as our closets gradually empty.

There’s an easy fix, you know. All I need to do is throw in a load of laundry every morning and switch it every noon.

The problem is that laundry isn’t the only area in which I’ve lost my Homemaking Mojo. In a frenzy of preparation for guests, I spent a day doing dishes and cooking. And I’ve barely cooked or done dishes since. In a cleaning frenzy (for guests again), I spent myself on housework and can’t even be bothered to move my cereal bowl from the sofa-side table to the sink these days. In a fit of organizing (trying to get my craft room up and running-which it now is!), I wore myself out and am now letting all my organizational systems decay.

The house seems insurmountable. It’s not just the laundry I need to pick back up. It’s the dishes, the cooking, the cleaning, the garden, the grocery shopping. Even just picking up those wonderful one-thing-at-a-time systems I had going seems overwhelming, because it’s reestablishing a half dozen patterns I’ve let slide.

But really, Rebekah, you don’t have to pick them all up at once to make progress.

Just take one step at a time.

Transfer the load of laundry from washer to dryer at lunch today.

You’ll find your mojo one small step at a time.

Categories Everyday Life, Health

How to take “as needed” painkillers

1 Comment by

Typically, when you get a bottle of painkillers after some sort of operation, the instructions will read something like “Take 1 to 2 every 4 to 6 hours as needed for pain.”

If you’re anything like me, you don’t like to take more meds than necessary, especially not painkillers – so you struggle with figuring out how exactly to take “as needed” meds.

Your temptation may be to go as long as absolutely possible between taking meds – resulting in excrutiating, hard to control pain. I’ve been there and done that. It’s not good – and it actually doesn’t help you take less, because you have to take more at that point to control the now-out-of-control pain.

I’ve had a couple of surgeries – a septoplasty and a wisdom tooth extraction – where I tried holding out longer than I should have and ended up with more pain than I should have. My sister, the Physician Assistant, told me to NOT wait until the pain was bad to take my painkillers. “That’s less effective,” she told me, “You need to keep your blood levels of the painkiller high enough to control the pain.” Foolishly, I didn’t listen.

After my second wisdom tooth extraction a couple months ago (they’re all out now!), I finally figured out how to take those “as needed” painkillers.

The instructions on my pill bottle were to take one or two every 4-6 hours as needed for pain.

I took one pill as soon as I got home from the oral surgeon’s office, and jotted down the time and the number of pills I took. As soon as I felt pain returning (4 hours later), I took another and jotted it down. 4 hours later, I felt the pain returning, so I took another and jotted down the time. So far, I was taking one every 4 hours.

But my situation changed overnight and it took 6 hours to start feeling more pain. I took one pill and jotted down the time. It was another 6 hours before I needed more. Then ten hours. Then 13 hours. Then 4. Then 6. And so on and so forth.

I took 13 pain pills in a total of 112 hours. That’s one every 8.5 hours on average. I never experienced any side effects of the painkillers, I never felt excrutiating pain, and I had no problem at all not taking them once my pain was gone.

Success.

Moral of the story: Take your painkillers when you have pain. Write down the time you take them and the amount you take so that you don’t exceed the maximum dose (in my case, 2 every 4 hours-which I didn’t even get close to reaching, much less exceeding.)

There you go.

Categories Marriage

Married…Unbelievable

2 Comments by

After 14 months of marriage, I still pinch myself on a weekly basis.

Is this real? Am I really married? It’s hard to believe that after 14+ years of hoping and dreaming, I’m now married.

Marriage if everything I’d hoped for and not at all what I expected. Or maybe the other way around. Or maybe neither and both.

All my dreams of marriage couldn’t come close to the reality of sharing life with my husband – sharing our minds, our hearts, our bodies. I couldn’t have grasped the wonderful mundane of sharing our days, discussing the news, reading his papers, laughing at Facebook videos of our nephews and nieces.

There are certainly some things that are better than I expected, some things that are worse – and some that are just different.

I (foolishly) expected that being married would make me content. I learned that my heart is an idol factory. It moves quickly from marriage to babies to quitting my job to be a full-time homemaker as potential saviors. Contentment continues to require work.

I expected marriage would include fighting. Everyone tells us that. When they hear that we haven’t yet fought, they tell us to just wait – that first one will be a doozy. I begin to not believe them. Daniel and I argue, we disagree, we both get emotional and hurt one another. But we haven’t fought. At least not the way people describe marital fights. Instead we talk through things, we learn to forgive, we keep short accounts by the grace of God. Maybe it’s our personalities, maybe (probably) it’s purely grace – but I pray this will always be true of our marriage.

I expected Daniel would be the stereotypical man: he wouldn’t really care what I got him for Christmas (’cause all he really wants is sex anyway), he wouldn’t care how I decorated the house, he wouldn’t really want to know every detail of my day and my thoughts. These and dozens of other stereotypes, I internalized without realizing it – and discovered that I was dead wrong. Daniel is picky about gifts and aesthetics. He wants to know every detail of my thoughts and feelings. He doesn’t have an “empty place” in his head where he retreats such that he honestly answers “Nothing” when I ask him what he’s thinking.

I thought having a husband for a head would mean that my only struggle would be submitting. Things would be easy because I could let my husband make decisions and he could be strong for me when I was falling apart. This turned out to be only partially true. Yes, Daniel is frequently strong for me when I am falling apart, reminding me of truth when my head is clouded. Yes, some decisions Daniel makes easily, which means I don’t have to make them. But I also have to be strong – I am my husband’s helper when he is confused or overwhelmed or anxious. Decision making is more often a joint venture, in which I need to help Daniel research and clarify issues – in which I need to learn how to communicate both my thoughts and my feelings, as well as how strongly or not strongly I think/feel them. Yes, marriage has lightened the load in some ways – but in other ways, it has made strength and good decision making more necessary rather than less.

I’m sure if I were to think more, I could come up with dozens of ways marriage has been different than I expected – but, for now, the biggest one is the crazy weird weekly wonder that I’m actually married. It really is unbelievable.

What surprised you about marriage?

Categories B3RD, Everyday Life

Trying times

Leave a comment by

Warning: This post is about trying to conceive and I do refer to sex in my treatment of the topic. If this is something you’re uncomfortable with or that will be unhealthy for you, feel free to skip it.

At my preconception visit, both the medical assistant and the doctor gave a decent bit of advice for the trying time.

From the medical assistant: “I got one of those ovulation kits and took it for a month so I knew what day I ovulated. Then we saved it up for when I ovulated the next month – we had a baby on our first try.”

From the doctor: “Relax. Have fun. Call me if you don’t conceive after six months of trying.”

Now, it might appear that these are contradictory messages. Yet, I think both contain wisdom.

It’s worthwhile to get to know your body before you conceive. Knowledge is power – and making sure that you’re trying when you’re capable of conceiving can certainly help the process along.

That said, I think there are tons better ways than using an ovulation kit from the drugstore. If you have used either natural family planning (NFP) or fertility awareness methods (FAM) of birth control, you’re already familiar with your times of peak fertility based on signals like basal body temperature or cervical mucous. All you need to do is look over your past charts and figure out on what day of your cycle your peak fertility is at. Easy peasy.

If you haven’t been using NFP or FAM, do a little research and start logging your fertility signs now. Even if all you’re doing is checking your cervical mucous (a zero-cost activity), you can get a pretty good idea of when you’re fertile. Just swipe your vagina with a clean piece of tissue before going to the bathroom and then stretch that mucous between your two fingers. Is it stretchy and egg-whitey? There’s a good chance you’re approaching or at peak fertility. Is it nonexistant or just a little creamy? You’re unlikely to conceive just now.

Does that mean you should follow the medical assistant’s advice and “save it up” for when you’re fertile? I don’t necessarily think so. You should try to have sex during your fertile window – but it’s valuable to remember that sex isn’t JUST for procreation (even if that’s what you’re focusing on at the moment.) Here’s where my doctor’s sage advice comes in. Relax. Have fun.

Don’t turn sex into a baby-making exercise. Yeah, be sure you aren’t choosing your fertile week of the month to abstain; but otherwise choose to let sex be about loving and enjoying your spouse.

So, what’s the six month thing?

My doctor advised me to give him a call if Daniel and I haven’t conceived within six months of starting to try. Having difficulty conceiving after a prolonged period of “unprotected” sex can be a sign of infertility – and it’s always worthwhile, if one is having difficulty conceiving, to check out possible causes. Because I am nearing my 30th birthday (and therefore have only 5 years in which to get pregnant before I enter my gynecologically “elderly” years), my doctor recommended looking into things after six months of trying without conceiving. It is important to note that I will not be considered to be infertile at this point. Infertility is defined as not conceiving after 12 months of regular unprotected sex. For the younger woman, doctors will probably recommend trying for the full year before investigating for possible causes of infertility.

If you’ve been tracking your fertility with NFP or FAM, you’ve been collecting valuable data that can be used by your doctor to evaluate possible causes for difficulties conceiving – which is just another reason to NOT abandon your careful tracking during the trying times (and another reason to start tracking if you haven’t been already.)

In summary: Find out when you’re fertile. Relax. Have Fun. Call your doctor if you don’t conceive within six months to a year of trying.

Categories Book Reviews

Book Review: My Man Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse

3 Comments by

Last month’s read for the Reading to Know Classics Bookclub was My Man Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse, selected by Cassandra of Adventist Homemaker.

I’d already read everything my old local library had by Wodehouse (therefore closing him out in my “Read through the Library” challenge), so I wasn’t entirely certain if I’d be reading along here in April.

But when I looked through the list of what I had already read, I didn’t find My Man Jeeves within it – and it so happened that my new local library had an audio version (but not a printed copy.) Considering that the audio was only 4-6 hours long (I don’t remember how long exactly), I figured I might as well play along.

Once I started listening, my first thought was that I had heard this story before. Did I read it in the past and just not log it? I let the CD continue to play and paid it no more mind, listening as the stories became increasingly unfamiliar.

And yes, they are stories with an -ES. I expected this to be somewhat like the other Jeeves and Wooster tales I’ve read, quick-to-read novels with a defined story arc that carries through the entirety. This was not that.

Instead, My Man Jeeves is a collection of short stories about Jeeves and Wooster – and also about Reggie Pepper and his man. The stories were originally written for magazines and then compiled into this volume – and Reggie Pepper was an early incarnation of the man who would be Wooster, the not-so-smart-but-friendly chap who narrates the Jeeves books.

Each story follows a similar plot: Wooster (or Reggie) or one of his friends gets into some sort of scrape, often a love affair or a threat from a wealthy relative to cut off his allowance, which Jeeves (or Reggie’s man) helps extricate him from. Generally, things get worse before they get better, in a comedy of errors that Jeeves almost always anticipates.

But what makes these simple tales shine is Wodehouse’s characteristic wit. He writes in a down to earth style, full of slang (which is sometimes not that comprehensible since it’s from the 1910-1930s and possibly British in origin) but completely delightful. I never fail to laugh at Wodehouse’s descriptions and narratives.

Another delightful aspect of Wodehouse’s style, which appears liberally in My Man Jeeves is his attention to style – that is, to men’s clothing. In almost every one of Wooster’s escapades, Wooster happens upon an article of clothing (or sometimes a way of wearing his facial hair) which he considers all that but of which his dignified valet disapproves. When Jeeves expresses his opinion (always subtley, of course), Wooster bristles and tries to assert his authority – only to find that he’s now getting the cold shoulder. Jeeves still does his job, of course, but Wooster relies on him for much more, such that the cold shoulder is unbearable. Often, once a predicament is resolved through the brilliant ministrations of Jeeves, Wooster rewards him by discarding the offending article.

Listening to my review, I realize you could easily feel that Wodehouse is a tiresomely repetitive writer. And honestly, there is rather a lot of repetition in this particular volume. But, if you’d rather do short stories instead of a full novel, this is a good intro to Wodehouse. (I ended up enjoying the short stories because it meant I didn’t have to remember much of a plot line between ten minute segments of listening!) On the other hand, if you’re up for a little longer read (although still short compared to most novels), you might jump right in with some of the later books about Jeeves and Wooster. Carry on, Jeeves is a more fleshed out version of one of the early stories from My Man Jeeves (the reason it had seemed so familiar when I first started listening) – and that would be a good start for someone who’s wanting to try some Wodehouse.

I’m awfully glad, though, that I read (er, listened) along this month – and am grateful to Cassandra (and her late father-in-law) for suggesting the title. Check out what other readers are saying about Wodehouse at the Reading to Know Classics Bookclub round-up post.

Rating: 3 stars
Category: Comedic short stories
Synopsis: Bertie Wooster (and his literary progenitor Reggie Pepper) gets into a series of scrapes from which his loyal manservant saves him.
Recommendation: If you’re looking for an introduction to Wodehouse that you can easily read in small chunks, check out this collection of short stories. Otherwise, you might as well go for one of Wodehouse’s excellent novels starring the same characters (well, Wooster and his man Jeeves, anyway.)

Categories Everyday Life

Our patriotic neighbor

1 Comment by

We have a neighbor who is very patriotic.

I’ve never met him but there’s absolutely no doubt in my mind that he’s committed to the USA.

It’s the red, white, and blue you see.

Yes, a flag flies proudly from the flagpole in his yard – but plenty of people have a flag flying in their yards.

The Stars and Stripes hangs beside no ordinary house. This is a red, white, and blue house.

And in front of this house lies a flower bed planted with red, white, and blue flowers.

A few days ago, I drove home from work and saw my patriotic neighbor doing some yard work dressed (you guessed it) in red, white, and blue.

Now that’s patriotism.