03.23.07
The Bizarre feature of Womanhood
Our lady is careful to take responsibility for her actions. That said, she never ceases to be amazed at the affect hormones can have on these actions.
In our heroine’s case, these varying levels of hormones influence her thought life, and our newlywed finds herself irrationally angered at her husband, and alternately sighing with love for him in eager anticipation of his arrival home from work.
When the concrete-conquering hero does return home, he is greeted by the smell of dinner, and the loving comment, “Take your shoes off!”
She keeps up a flow of sparkling communications through dinner, graciously prods into the happenings of his day, and then goes to bed, exhausted. These events leave him in no doubt of his wife’s fluctuations, and cause him to wonder why such things happen. Meanwhile, she hopes to maintain stability, and keep taking her horrid multi-vitamin.
03.17.07
What a Day!
Sometimes women do bizarre things when with each other. In our family, the most famous is our tendency to go bargain hunting when all of us have plenty of treasures waiting for us at home.
For some reason, viewing the arrangement of the trinkets of others brings inspiration to us. I am like the women in my family in this way. Little things make me happy: The two trays I picked up from a garage sale yesterday for a dollar, the fun I had with ladies of my family, the drinking of tea, the laughter of inside jokes or movie quotes, the thrill of the hunt, both for treasures or ideas, the overdose of candy, the snug home I get to host everyone in.
Here are some pictures of our adventure:
03.14.07
Primroses
My week has been tripping along. So far, the interesting occurrences have been limited to a dog chasing me on my walk.
This would not ordinarily be worth noting except that, the said canine left off his bully-like pursuit of a medium-sized pig to pursue his interest in me (I say HIM quite authoritatively, for we all know that a female would have had more sense than to chase a pig up a driveway needlessly, regardless of size) (not that dogs ever have valid or logical reasons for upsetting farm animals, regardless of sex). This meant that he had to stop chasing the squealer, turn, and pass a rooster making wheezing gasps- all in order to get a good look at me.
Frankly, I don’t know what startled me more: the rooster with an apparent case of emphysema, or the pig being forced up the driveway, despite its loud protestations. Either way, I have learned from my little LeBeau that dogs are often not as brave as they seem, despite the speed of their charge. Upon observing me whirl around and put my foot down in his direction, the animal slid to a stop several yards away and watched me leave this curious scene behind me.
I feel sorry for the pig. And the Rooster. He really should have that cough checked out.
03.02.07
Of Exercise Videos and our Neighbors…
As a young woman occasionally tangled up in the mass of weight loss ideologies that cause equal obsession and depression, I found that since it was snowing yesterday, I would try a workout video as an alternative to my normal walk.
So I requested, from our trendy library at their trendy website, a trendy cardio DVD put out by SHAPE magazine. I had to hide it from my husband because of the scantily clad model adorning the cover.
As soon as my husband went off to his physical therapy I pushed the couch back and excitedly warmed up for some dance movin’ cardio. It was not to be. ‘Lisa’, the instructor with the plastered on doll-like make-up ( and, interestingly enough, the same doll-like vacant stare) and smile, began moving her feet and body to such complicated movements that, even I, with my superior coordination skills, could not keep up. I even rewound and watched intently, rewound and tried it, rewound and couldn’t keep up.
When she enthusiastically encouraged, “count it! It will help!” as she sped off with 87654321, I perservered, determined to get my best bikini body. After bumbling around my living room succeeding at a complicated footwork series that didn’t even remotely resemble the salsa, I finally decided to put my sweat to good use – put the couch back, and went for a run/walk to meet my husband. After that thirty minutes of stupidity, even the snow couldn’t deter me.
The DVD goes Back to the library today, where I am sure some fit woman is waiting to keep up with ‘Lisa’.
As I write this, my (live-in boyfriend/husband/patient) neighbor comes outside with his multiple personalities. Upon hearing his (pagan church-going wife (that is, they go to a “Pagan Church”)/girlfriend/caretaker) person announce grumpily that it is snowing again, he embraces his inner 1950’s western movie Indian and lets out a war whoop. He doesn’t resemble the 50’s icon in either shape, or, thankfully, clothing level-though he often takes the garbage out while flaunting his hairy beer belly to the world.
I sit here , take another sip of my Rose Petal black tea and reflect on why my husband doesn’t love apartment living.
03.01.07
Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones on Meekness
My husband is reading Studies on the Sermon on the Mount, and shared this extended quote with me this morning, which I not only found significantly convicting, but also thought-provoking and encouraging:
…the man who is meek is not even sensitive about himself. He is not always watching himself and his own interests. He is not always on the defensive. We all know about this, do we not? Is it not one of the greatest curses in life as a result of the fall—this sensitivity about self? We spend the whole of our lives watching ourselves. But when a man becomes meek he has finished with all that; he no longer worries about himself and what other people say. To be truly meek means we no longer protect ourselves, because we see there is nothing worth defending. So we are not on the defensive; all that is gone. The man who is truly meek never pities himself, he is never sorry for himself. He never talks to himself and says, ‘You are having a hard time, how unkind these people are not to understand you.’ He never thinks: ‘How wonderful I really am, if only other people gave me a chance.’ Self-pity! What hours and years we waste in this! But the man who has become meek has finished with all that.
Thankfully, Dr. Lloyd-Jones doesn’t leave us there, desperate about our lack of contentment and humility. He encourages us by pointing out on the next page that only the Lord can give us this meekness:
Nothing but the Holy Spirit can humble us, nothing but the Holy Spirit can make us poor in spirit and make us mourn because of our sinfulness and produce in us this true, right view of self and give us this very mind of Christ Himself. But this is a serious matter. Those of us who claim to be Christian claim of necessity that we have already received the Holy Spirit. Therefore we have no excuse for not being meek. The man who is outside has and excuse, for it is impossible to him. But if we truly claim that we have received the Holy Spirit, and this is the claim of every Christian, we have no excuse if we are not meek. It is not something that you do and I do. It is a character that is produced in us by the Spirit…What have we to do? We must face this Sermon on the Mount; we must meditate upon this statement about being meek; we must look at the examples; above all we must look at the Lord Himself.
May the Lord continue to Humble us as we bring ourselves before Him!
