Adventures in Cloth Diapering

Okay, I admit my dear hubby thinks I've gone crazy lately, but I'm trying cloth diapering. It's really not what you think. Most of the diapers come "pre-made" from people such as cottonbabies.com. No pins required! So they definetely get wet faster, but not that much faster, if you use the cloth inserts you can get with them, and the "liners" trap pooh so that they aren't hard to wash. It's the second day, I'll let you'all know how it goes. I am thinking about trying this: http://www.cottonbabies.com/product_info.php?cPath=22&products_id=148 , the "try it" kit from cottonbabies.com. I'm also considering making my own diapers and using hemp because it is extra absorbent and I'll never be able to afford the pre-made hemp ones.

On Contemplation, death and dying

Contemplation. Just sit and contemplate that word for a moment. Contemplation is the work of a moment while simultaneously being the work of a lifetime. Contemplation is something done intentionally in the spare moments of life, as well as in planned moments of life. Contemplation gives our life a sense of order and sometimes even a sense of purpose by helping us toward peace and towards relaxing.
So, then, why is it so hard? Right now, at 30 weeks pregnant, I find myself being afraid to look into the future, afraid to imagine myself holding a babe in my arms, afraid of a repeat of the terrible loss of the last pregnancy, where my husband and I held our baby as he died a day after his birth.
So right now, you can say I am afraid of contemplation, even though I’ve preached the importance of contemplation to others since contemplation and spirituality helped me get through the death of my wee one almost two years ago.
Somehow I am afraid to imagine good times coming. It is as if I am afraid to hold the pain – or the joy – close and instead I try to pretend that there is no end to the pregnancy, and no coming life change of either a healthy girl or the dreadful alternative.
My entire life I’ve heard the importance of having a relationship with God and the various ways to keep up the relationship, but few have addressed the “dark night of the soul” of the time spent wandering and wondering what will happen. The truth is that everyone faces these times to some degree or another, and being a Christian, or indeed, a member of any religion, does not shield us from these times.
So why is it that as human beings we are so invested in pretending these times don’t happen? Is my asking this question about humanity in general myself, once again, avoiding the issue, hiding behind intellectualism? Why are we afraid to sit with the pain and instead see pain as an enemy? Why is death the great enemy, when for the Christian it is to be a marvelous beginning?

On Buddhism

C.S. Lewis stated somewhere in one of his books (I believe that it is Mere Christianity), that all religion has some truth in it or no one would follow the religion. I have found this to be true on many occasions. Each religion has central truths that highlight a particular aspect of the human condition, and generally meet a felt need of human beings. For Buddhism, the need I would like to highlight is the four noble truths.

4 noble truths:
1. Life means suffering
2. The origin of suffering is attachment
3. The cessation of suffering is attainable
4. The path to the cessation of suffering is possible by following the Eightfold path of Buddhism.

The truth is that life does mean suffering, and that some suffering does come because of our over attachment to things other than Christ. While Buddhism states that the end of suffering is attainable, as Christians we believe that suffering does not end until we die. Finally, as Christians we believe that the end of suffering is possible. However, where we differ is that we believe that we believe we live in a broken world and suffering is unavoidable in this world. However, Christ helps us through the suffering.
Two other major human needs we see highlighted in Buddhism is the human need for mindfulness and/or meditation as well as the fact that stuff and things do not satisfy. As Christians, and indeed as human beings, religious or not, we need to remember that stuff does not satisfy, and that meditation helps along the way.

I'M PREGNANT!!!

Hey, just remembered that I forgot to announce on my blog that I'm pregnant. I'm at 6 weeks along but so far it has gone wonderfully. No morning sickness, no vomiting, no nothing. It's been 15 months since I was pregnant last. Our son was born on Feb 12th 2007 and died on Feb 13th 2007. He had Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome and was pretty much dying before the problem was diagnosed. I am trying to be really careful during this pregnancy to ensure the same thing doesn't happen again. If he couldn't have survived it would have been with a heart transplant or 3 open heart surgeries, so it really was a nightmarish situation. There were alot of tears cried and right now, it is kind of hard to be pregnant because it is too easy to think about what happened. So I try not to think about it and just concentrate on reducing the risk by doing all the right things.

On Memory

Memory is not accurate at all. That's the conclusion I get from the book I just finished which is titled "Truth in Memory" and is edited by Steven Jay Lynn and Kevin M. McConkey. I was always a strong believer in repression but it sounds like there is scant evidence for it for the more extreme forms of repression. I always believed in repression because I had seen it in my own life. I had had trauma that I had dealt with and for a long time I stuffed it in the back of my head and did my best not to think about what had happened. In a sense, that is repression. But it was always there and finally I was able to talk about it. So that was not the "extreme" view of repression that is often advocated by therapists. It was always there - I just chose not to think about it.

Memory is tremendously flexible. Our life experiences are constantly changing our "schemas", or internal representations of what we know. Thus the old memory can be re-interpreted. We may discover that what we always thought was tremendously shameful is not so shameful at all. Perhaps we did something as a teenager that we thought was terribly wrong. Maybe ten years later, in our twenties, we found out that our shameful experience is a common experience. The shame and guilt seems much less then, doesn't it? And God forgives us.

By the way, if you want it right now, it's on sale at Guilford Press for $5 plus shipping, but not for much longer...

Emerging from a cocoon

Often a person is similar to a caterpillar that has gone into a cocoon. The person is in a cocoon where at first they felt safe, but eventually, as they started to grow, the person began to feel that the cocoon was limiting and constraining. Imagine having to stay in the small area in a cocoon without being able to see the big world out there!

Thus, one of the tasks we have as humans is to help others, gently, to come out of the cocoon that they have made for themselves, or that others have made for them.

Eventually a beautiful butterfly emerges. With the help of others or God, we emerge from our cocoon. Aren't we all in a cocoon in some areas of our lives?

As we emerge from the cocoon we become more and more the person God wants us to be. Emerging from the cocoon, and helping others to emerge, makes us, in a sense, more human than we ever were before.

Solution based therapy: applications to everyday life

I read, during my period of tennis elbow, a chapter in Clinton and Ohlschlager's book, Competent Christian Counseling, on brief solution-based therapy. While I will write more about this later, I found it quite instructive because it's philosophy is one I never thought of before. The idea behind solution based therapy is that no one does the undesirable behavior 100% of the time. For instance, someone who is often depressed still has times when they are not depressed. The key to this method is figuring out why they are not depressed when they are not depressed. Perhaps they have stopped ruminating for a short time. Perhaps it was because they exercised. So, the key to this method is to expand the desired behavior until it becomes the dominate behavior. Doesn't this sound like it could all of us?

My husband's weight loss!

My husband has lost about 9.5 INCHES around his waist in 3 months! IT is AMAZING and I am so proud of him! I know it's been a struggle but it is so nice to see him getting healthier and feeling good most of the time. His weight issues have always been difficult on our relationship but I am hoping we are finally turning a corner... I love him so much!

His family saw him a few weeks ago and they couldn't believe the difference! It was so exciting to see them be excited. He loves it when people ask him if he lost weight (duh!) or ask how he did it. I hope Type II Diabetes (non insulin dependent) has finally given him the kick in the ass he needed. I love him but am still figuring out the best way to help him along and not just nag him to death...

A Classical education is better than TV

I'd like to homeschool my daughter in a few years when we get out of debt so I can stop working. For now she is going to a great private school and learning like crazy! I've got her doing Singapore Math because I think American math is way too far behind... don't let me get started on that. Anyway, most of the time she loves it! She's taken the word workbook on the book and crossed it out and written in playbook instead!

So, we watch too much TV in our house and too much of the time I want to play with her, but.... this or that happens. So I am wondering about replacing some of the TV watching, and some of my reading, with a classical education. I can't do it all and work, obviously, but I am thinking about a foreign language and grammar. I'll keep you posted once I order the book to get started...

On writing...

It's been awhile because I took some time off because I have had tennis elbow and I figured I'd better give it a rest. As you can tell from the title of this post, I like Stephen King's book On Writing. I haven't liked much else of his, though, because I'm just not into it. To each his own. I am also busy taking a class in counseling right now and learning about ethics and stuff... it has really re-vitalized me!

But back to writing. I've set myself a goal of having a publishable manuscript by end of December 2009, but I'm not sure how to get there with a child, trying to get pregnant, going to college part time, and working full time.

But I've got about 50 thousand words. I've cut out about 10 K words to get down to what is really important. I've also eliminated a few extra characters to center in on the important characters and ideas. So I have to figure out how to meet the goal. Guess it's like getting a PhD part time: the way you eat an elephant is one piece at a time... perseverance is important...