McDonnell Place

Friday, June 30, 2006

This Means I'm Still Pregnant

Don't Calculate Without God; July 5th from "My Utmost for His Highest"--

Commit thy way unto the Lord; trust also in Him; and He shall bring it to pass. Psalm 37: 5

Don't calculate without God.

God seems to have a delightful way of upsetting the things we calculated on without taking Him into account... the one thing that keeps us from the possibility of worrying is bringing God in as the greatest factor in all of our calculations.

In our religion it is customary to put God first, but we are apt to think it is an impertinence to put Him first in the practical issues of our lives. If we imagine we have to put on our Sunday moods before we come near to God, we will never come near Him. We must come as we are.

Don't calculate with the evil in view.

Does God really mean us to take no account of the evil? "Love... taketh no account of the evil." Love is not ignorance of the existence of evil, but it does not take it as a calculating factor. Apart from God, we do reckon with evil; we calculate with it in view and work all our reasonings from that standpoint.

Don't calculate with the rainy day in view.

You cannot lay up for a rainy day if you are trusting in Jesus Christ. Jesus said-- "Let not your heart be troubled." God will not keep your heart from being troubled. It is a command-- "Let not..." Haul yourself up a hundred and one times a day in order to do it, until you get into the habit of putting God first and calculating with Him in view.

Wednesday, June 28, 2006

What Thoughts Swirl in the Head of Evan

"I dreamed about you prayin’. And I was in Honey and Poppy’s room upstairs and I was playing with letters, with the a and r, and the r put his Buzz Lightyear hat on. And Uncle John was climbing on the window and he started flying and tried to get down. He was tryin' to land on the steps. It was a good dream."

"I like all of this. I'm going to eat all of this. And then I will grow big... bigger and bigger, and I'll be big like daddy. And then I can have a moustache."

(Because it's all about facial hair, really. Nothing like the anticipation of growing facial hair.)

Tuesday, June 27, 2006

Misery Loves Company

When you're in these final stages of pregnancy you know how you sound, how you come across; whiny, self-consumed, and negative. That's why it's so good to have friends who have felt the same way themselves, like my friend Dana who has felt that way three whole times herself before.

Saturday we went to a birthday party for Evan and Madalyn's friend, Sydney. I was in a lot of pain and struggled to enjoy myself. (Look, it's not easy to enjoy yourself when you can't even keep up with your kids because, frankly, you're just trying to keep your clothes on; the bigger selections from your maternity wardrobe that are trying to pop off of you like the blueberry girl in Willie Wonka.) And Dana was there to take note of these frustrations and had great pity on my being "in waiting."

Our husbands were supposed to play golf last night while we let the kids play at her house, but when the forecast said rain, she knew I still needed a distraction from the sleepless night ahead of me- a night so sleepless Shaun said he was certain I'd be titling today's blog "Sleepless in Orlando." So Dana not only insisted on still getting together, but also was firm that we would throw a mini birthday party for Madalyn who officially turns two Saturday, on my due date.

She bought a cake and ordered pizza and had a present wrapped all pretty for Madalyn. She almost bought a pinata, for Heaven's sake, because "it was only nine dollars." (That was before she envisioned Evan and Aaron swinging golfclubs around. And it was a great night, even without swinging golf clubs and destroying their recently pressure-sprayed windows, and she and Chris didn't even flinch when OUR CHILD coerced their child into opening and emptying an entire "rainmaker" filled with rice and styrofoam popcorn onto the floors of three rooms in their house. I had to hunt down their vacuum against their will before we left with Dana objecting and fighting me the whole way...

See, Dana's great for many reasons. As you've already gathered, she's generous and gracious, but she's also funny and has a relaxing sense of humor and enjoyment of life. An excerpt from a recent email to show what I mean:

As i was getting the kids ready for bed tonight and they were brushing their teeth, Aaron kept trying to tell me something about Madalyn, but I couldn't understand what he was saying. He kept repeating "Madawin square, Madawin square". Finally, Aubrey told me that Madalyn threw a chicken nugget on the floor and so she didn't get any goldfish, and Mrs. Katie said: "Madalyn Claire".......aha! Lightbulb moment. Aaron was trying to say Madalyn Claire. =) So for the duration of our toothbrushing and bed preparation, the kept saying Madalyn Claire, Madalyn Claire!!!

and another:

Your not going to believe this: about 3 hours ago, we were sitting in the family room, and shannon was in her ultrasaucer right by the sliding glass window, when a black bear walked into our back yard and right up to the glass door and started sniffing the glass and the BBQ grill and then it just laid down on the concrete!!!! So, do you want to buy our house... it comes with baby gators, and a wandering bear - who could resist... next time you want to come over so the kids can play in the back yard, i'll be sure to get a tranquilizing dart gun, and IF i don't use all the darts on the unruly kids, maybe we'll have some left over for the bear.

But right now, what I'm appreciating even more than her humor and love for life, even more than her generosity or her graciousness, is Dana's empathy. She's the kind of friend who will drive you home if a cockroach haunts your dashboard and you just can't seem to get back behind the wheel because you have a fear of roaches that is precisely THAT BIG, inherited from your father and bad experiences growing up, (like when one crawled out of your babydoll's hair and over your arm when you were six.) She's the kind of friend who you could confide in IF- just hypothetically "IF"- the only two nights you recently slept in your third trimester were when you had a glass of wine in the bath before bed. (Like just "IF" you happened to be in that situation; just supposing that was something that had happened... that your husband had talked you into...) you could lament to Dana.

Because her husband sells drugs for a living.