christianity

{formed & fallen} overlap

/ abby hummel / 9 Comments

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It is a very, very strange thing to be carrying a child who is exactly half-way gestated on the same day doctors would have said a different, older child should be completely at term. In the shocked, overwhelming beginning of this pregnancy, I felt like loving the baby we have was a way of betraying the one we had just lost. Sometimes now loving the other one seems like a betrayal of the one who -by some miracle I cannot yet wrap my mind around- grows right on schedule and has all the right body parts, frequently jabbing them into the walls of the home my own body provides. The other miscarriages were spaced far enough apart that the pregnancies would not have overlapped in any way, so this is a new sort of grieving. (I am not complaining – I think the bittersweet path that leads to a baby in your arms is far preferable to the one that just seems bitter, but it’s a little more intense.)

There was a day in July when I took three naps and developed a blister under my ring, and while I was sick of hoping for news of a baby coming… I knew it was happening. After the Wal-Mart test confirmed this, my college room-mate squealed on the phone with me even though she was in a library in Indiana, and I put a sign on the big blue chicken coop to tell Aaron he had someone even more important to take care of. We hugged and he hoped for a cute little girl like the one he had seen at lunchtime with little braids over her shoulders. I slept a lot – A LOT. I shared the anxious joy of close due-dates with someone dear who had a similar history to me and we prayed for two healthy babies to come this spring.

Just a few weeks later, I bossed my midwife’s new nurse around when the dread crept over me, demanding blood tests that proved I was right to be concerned. Arriving  home from the decisive ultrasound that showed a way-too-small baby who never even had a heartbeat, my computer was playing a song called, “God will take care of you.” To this day I have no idea how it ever got into my music library in the first place. I sat on the couch and sobbed while the friend who had squealed earlier read me Psalms over the phone.

Then I was relieved and guilty about how great it felt to not be sick anymore, and I thought making the announcement sign for the chicken coop -still folded on Aaron’s dresser as if to taunt me- was the dumbest thing I’d ever done. I sat around and it took hours to get anything accomplished. I painted my toenails. I begged Aaron for a puppy. I told him I hated our house, I didn’t want to have kids anymore, and I wanted to pretend like none of this even happened in the first place.

Summer trips were not cancelled, so I drove to Michigan alone and listened to the last Harry Potter audiobook, where Harry prepares for battle by internalizing the inscription on his parents’ graves: “The last enemy to be destroyed is death.” It had to be my rallying cry, too. My belly was swollen with death, and I made sure to sip wine conspicuously while giving a too-morbid toast at my sister’s wedding, praying that no one would make awkward baby comments to me because I just wasn’t ready to go there. (It felt very strange to hope I just looked chubby.) I hate that negativity seems so much stronger than truth, because the only thing I remember about finally breaking the news to friends and family was hearing that, “God just wants you to get settled after Aaron gets a job and THEN have a baby. You have too much going on to think about that right now!” That still hurts. I’m sure many people told us they loved us and they were sorry.

And while I spent the weeks after in a haze of confusing blood tests, there was so much love all around. I remember the beautiful postcard from the squealing psalm-reader, old friends who visited from afar with gourmet cheeses and Cabernet Sauvignons, and friends nearby who cleaned my closets and made me leave the house with them and brought us meals for weeks. Meals! For weeks! They made my life infinitely easier and cut our household spending that month by almost the exact amount of all the co-pays and lab fees associated with the whole debacle. I heard that song about God’s care ringing in my head every time I heated a meal, paid a bill, and wrote a thank-you note. Was I “over” it? No. Was I cared for? Yes.

Sometimes I still get really angry thinking it would have been better if I hadn’t even been pregnant, or wondering why we couldn’t have just had this baby then. Why mess with the heartache if we were going to get a healthy baby a few months later anyway? I marvel at the ironic mystery that God still said yes to some of the early prayers of anxious summer joy — two babies (healthy twins!) arrived last week for the people we shared our due date with. (I also got the puppy I asked for! hooray, hooray!) None of this makes any sense yet. It might always be like that. Sometimes not knowing is a gift, even when it doesn’t seem that way.

Today I know beyond any doubt that I was created for eternity, proved like C.S. Lewis says, by desires and love that cannot be satisfied by anything on earth. I dearly love two babies, each formed in the image of God, and the strange timing of these pregnancies does not diminish either of them. Both of their lives are worth celebrating, even if I’m not sure how to do it. And my current pregnancy with Li’l Kicker here does not remedy the real problem of any of my miscarriages. Any death happens because of the fall, and while it is very normal to especially long for a miraculous pregnancy, there is no promise that anyone will definitely have a baby, or that having a baby takes away the sting of death. A child always a gift, never a guarantee. I can’t expect this coming baby to answer these questions when I know I have never lacked the only promised child I have ever needed. The remedy for the consequences of the fall is the gospel, not having a baby.

“Since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead… for as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.” – I Corinthians 15

“God so loved the world that He gave his one and only son, that whosoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life.” – John 3:16

{Mary consoles Eve} by Sr. Grace Remington, OCSO

{Mary consoles Eve} by Sr. Grace Remington, OCSO … (yes, I know it is Jesus who crushes the serpent)

I will rejoice and be glad in your steadfast love, because you have seen my affliction; you have known the distress of my soul. – Psalm 31:7

 

 

various updates

/ abby hummel / 7 Comments

I really do not want to beat the dead horse of complaining about the 2014 Polar Vortex, but this week we can celebrate that overnight on March 3rd it stayed… above zero all through the night! I know, it’s practically the subtropics. After properly bundling up, I only lose feeling in my fingers when out for walks with Max now, not my fingers AND toes AND knees like I would in chillier temperatures.

The Max Update: 
This gentle giant weighed in at 35 big ones for his four-month checkup, and he is perfectly capable of getting anything he wants off the dinner table or kitchen counter. (I just found him licking the cutting board I had set in the sink after slicing a thawed venison roast into stew cubes.) For reference, his brother – our “second pick” from the litter and one of the bigger pups – is 23 pounds, so we are expecting him to be massive as an adult. He is fully house-trained (hallelujah) and when we keep him well-exercised, he is a delight to have around. My biggest fear right now is that I might love Max more than the baby after it’s born.

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The Baby Update: 
Surprised by that news? In a good way? Us, too. My official due date is July 31, but I am very determined not to be one of those people who complains about “still being pregnant” after their due date, so I’m trying to mentally prepare for going overdue at the height of summer. I’m also mentally counting down the days until reaching “viability,” where the baby would have a chance at surviving if I had to deliver early, and I’m only just now hitting the point where I don’t regularly dream about holding a baby while drowning in blood or planning baby funerals. I know the pre-term labor, NICU, stillbirth, infant loss, late miscarriage, etc., statistics, and my past experiences do not give me a “get out of the bad luck club free” card in any of those areas. I’m taking lots of medicine. I have to get lots of shots, which completely eradicate any “2nd Trimester Energy Surge” I was hoping for. I’m at a higher risk for future bed rest. I still don’t feel very “excited” most of the time, which I feel weird about. In some ways, even though I can feel it kicking and swimming around, this baby seems less real than the other ones. I’m frustrated that I’m quickly approaching another due date half-way pregnant and not all the way there — though several times before I have hit that milestone without being pregnant at all and I think that’s probably worse. We were supposed to discover the baby’s sex at my last appointment, but the baby was very modest and wouldn’t give us a peek of any private areas, so all we know for sure is that Aaron and I have a stubborn baby. (Please, stifle your laughter.) Lots of weird, hard feelings? Yes. But joy, too, and awkward jokes about pregnant ninjas when I have my black long-johns on, sighs when Max wants to sit on me to hug the baby bump, laughter during lighting-speed sprints to the bathroom, and high-fives when we find ways to save on future baby expenses. This feels scarier for us than it might for some people, but there is much love and grace in all this, and we are overwhelmingly thankful!

The House Update:
There will be pictures soon! But for now, we are exercising some mad domestic MacGyver skills and doing everything we can to fix a few things up for free. We’ve already installed new kitchen lights — which make the whole place feel better — and I have high hopes about my $3 bathroom redecorating plan for the upstairs bathroom.

The Rest-Of-Life Update: 
This probably deserves it’s own post as well, but we have been so blessed with a warm welcome to this area already! Being only a few hours away from our old town means we’ve had a few more friends-and-family connections, and being a bigger city means we’ve been reconnecting with old friends from Hillsdale, too. I hopped in to a community Bible study class right away, and we have tried to be really proactive about visiting  churches, which seems to be paying off. Our neighbors seem reasonably friendly despite the chilling temperatures, and Aaron is enjoying the work he does even though the commute is a beast in icy conditions. Still no favorite pizza crust!

So – that is how we are falling forward (sometimes more successfully than others) into the newness of these moments God has given. It’s hard, weird, scary, good, happy, sad, silly, annoying, lonely, funny, and exciting. Sometimes all at once, even. But those good parts are becoming more prominent and  I’m very thankful to be moving every day closer to spring!

“Oh, that we might know the Lord! Let us press on to know him. He will respond to us as surely as the arrival of dawn or the coming of rains in early spring.” -Hosea 6:3

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(Looking forward to Spring for sure! It HAS to be coming. And everyone who knows how tall Aaron is should be impressed by this picture!)

stirred by that Ghost

/ abby hummel / 12 Comments

(I’m still in enough of the puppy honeymoon that I think everyone must want to see pictures of this little guy all the time…)

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Yes, he is sitting on the couch in a bold moment of naughtiness. Hopefully those moments are becoming less frequent. We’ll see.

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Some of the scariest blessings of the new adventure have been wrapped up in anticipation of another very cute little addition to our family. It’s still sad to think about not having a baby this spring, but my doctor assures me we have no reason to doubt this new little one is on track to join us by the middle of August. (I don’t quite believe it myself yet!)

There are still plenty of questions and fear coming with this joy. I have been thinking of this Sabbath poem from Wendell Berry quite often:

A child unborn, the coming year
Grows big within us, dangerous
And yet we hunger as we fear
For its increase: the blunted bud

To free the leaf to have its day,
The unborn to be born. The ones
Who are to come are on their way,
And though we stand in mortal good

Among our dead, we turn in doom
In joy to welcome them, stirred by
That Ghost who stirs in seed and tomb,
Who brings the stones to parenthood.

(Wendell Berry – Sabbath 1982, V, “To Mary”)

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(New baby last week, growing strong at four months!)

As you do not know the way the Spirit comes to the bones in the womb of a woman with child, so you do not know the work of God, who makes everything. – Ecclesiastes 11:5, esv.

Please keep praying for us, but even more for others suffering under the heaviness of any sort of baby-waiting.

restoring souls

/ abby hummel

“The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want.
He makes me to lie down in green pastures;
He leads me beside still waters;
He restores my soul.”

For as difficult as moving and settling in a new place is, I’m starting to feel like we’re getting our systems down  Maybe just because I’ve been so frank with friends and family about some of these challenges, they are starting to seem less daunting. The life we’re building here will be different than the one in Iowa, and that’s okay. I have been seeing a new doctor and I like him. Max’s first vet appointment was yesterday. I can get to the dog park on the edge of town without using a GPS, and I even accurately navigated myself home from downtown St. Paul when my phone battery died last week. (Still no luck finding my favorite Chebe Pizza Crust. It must be out here somewhere.)

We’ve had some positive experiences with church hunting, but we had another crazy week that spurned lots of conversations about a bad sermon. We almost left 10 minutes into the service but decided to stick it out because it was so cold that we didn’t want to have to go right back to the car after we had parked so far away. The main gist of the message was that God wants you to have a full emotional tank, which you can’t have if you are stressed out, and that the 23rd Psalm gives you license to back out of anything you aren’t enjoying. You know, because God wants you to have a restored soul. I sat there thinking about what the last six months had brought us (huge family commitments all summer, losing another baby, deciding to move, selling our house, closing a business, moving to an unfamiliar town in a new state, buying a house, etc.), about some of the big things going on this month (Aaron’s commute and new job, setting up the new house, establishing a business when I don’t know anyone, no disposable income until I’m working, puppy, a little extended sickness, no friends yet, unending polar vortex, insurance/registration/licenses/paperwork, etc.), and all of unknowns in the next six months. You know what? I get a little overwhelmed just thinking about it all to write it down. But I don’t, for a minute, question that we might not be doing the right things.

And maybe the sermon came out wrong or I didn’t grasp what the guy was saying, but I think it totally missed the mark. While “stressful living” is not a competition and you shouldn’t seek it out, it is okay to be under lots of pressure. It is okay to be really stressed out. It does not necessarily mean you’re disobeying God or that you need to change something about your life. Sometimes being “stressed” happens because you are overly anxious or irresponsible… but sometimes it’s just the modern vernacular for acknowledging life is risky, which is always true even though it’s obvious at some times more than others. It hasn’t stopped feeling very risky for us in the past few months, and it will probably continue for a bit. (I took one of those online “stress tests” and determined that Aaron and I are both at a very high risk for developing all sorts of illnesses and maladies within the next year.)

“He leads me in paths of righteousness for His name’s sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil, for you are with me;
Your rod and your staff, they comfort me.
You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies;
You anoint my head with oil, my cup overflows.”

If we’re walking in obedience, and I do think we are, then this life right now and every difficulty or blessing that comes with it is our path of righteousness. Even when so much right now feels rough and pretty scary — though I certainly wouldn’t call it valley-of-the-shadow-of-death — the solution is not using pleasure to cover up difficulty. (What does Ecclesiastes say? “‘I will test you with pleasure; enjoy yourself.’ But behold, this also was vanity.”) Instead we have to take comfort in what God is doing, in his presence, in his rod and staff — you know, the things used to beat dumb sheep into getting where they need to go — and in the promises of our future feasting and home.

So, yes, it’s important to make sure we pursue restoration and enjoy life in the hustle right now. For us, this means we need to find good people to be friends with, we need our funny TV shows, and we need to delight in the ruckus that is Max. He won’t be a puppy forever – which is good and bad news, I tell you. We have both already had weekend trips to visit friends, and we’re looking forward to receiving visitors here soon, too. But those things don’t really solve the problem. Instead, stressful times just reveal how broken we are and how deeply we need restoration all the time. Stress has not created this need. When life is more settled, it’s easier to let everyday routines cover that up. Stress also doesn’t get to become the defining factor in our lives, even in seasons permeated by risk and difficulty.

“Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life,
and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.” – Psalm 23.

Would you believe that there may actually be some green pasture-like grasses underneath all these little drops of still, frozen water outside my front door? There is goodness and mercy in all this — even if it is obscured by the fact that the snow is almost as high as the mailbox.

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Minnesota beginnings

/ abby hummel / 3 Comments

When we decided to move to Minnesota, I didn’t have a lot to go on beyond vague notions of what it might be like. My college room-mate occasionally visited Minneapolis, and she always told me how cold it was. Because she was raised in Alabama and had one of those old-fashioned ear-flap bomber hats lined with real rabbit fur for Michigan weather, I didn’t take that warning very seriously. Ahem. Instead, the biggest frustration was that living in Minnesota would require even more driving to spend time with family in Michigan. The compensating consolation was the excellent water access, which was notably absent in Iowa. We often said, “It doesn’t have much of the Great Lakes, but it has a great number of lakes.”

Other than that, while Aaron got excited about researching Cassava and I started freaking out about moving for a temporary job and feeling so behind in life, I clung to the positive associations I had with Garrison Keillor’s Prairie Home Companion (because breaking into bluegrass songs and wry comedic sketches during regular life would be a dream come true for me), and Caribou Coffee. Now I admit I actually enjoy the specialty drinks at Starbucks better, but I appreciate the idea of Caribou’s celebration of pioneering and The Wild over Starbucks’ hip affluent consumer vibe. Folk music and antlers helped me get used to this idea, you could say.

Then, on a beautiful October afternoon, I waited in a coffee shop near St. Paul (neither Caribou nor Starbucks, and not particularly noteworthy either) while Aaron interviewed with his new team, and the sun beat warm through my window. After months of praying, with the “high” of recently selling the house fueling our sense of adventure, I wasn’t really waiting for a text from Aaron telling me how it went or if he had an answer. I knew moving was right even though it didn’t line up with any of the things I had wanted for years. We were doing it.

While I sat at that little coffee shop, God may or may not have spoken to me through an American Idol song. (When we get outside of scripture, I’m not really sure how that works always… It’s safer to avoid taking a firm stance.)

Settle down, it’ll all be clear
Please pay no mind to the demons – they fill you with fear
Trouble might drag you down
When you get lost, you can always be found
Just know you’re not alone
I’m gonna make this place your home. – Philip Philips, Home

These are things I want to remember, because if I thought this story started a few weeks ago when we moved here, I’d be wildly disappointed to find I had missed my chance to cash in on the big (only) thought that comes to mind:
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(It’s so cold in Minnesota that someone beat me to the punch and already published a book about it!)

 

rough newness

/ abby hummel / 6 Comments

After what honestly feels like the most unsettled month of all time, we find ourselves in a new year, a new town, a new house, and we’re starting to get some of the puzzle pieces of this new life put together just enough to start re-dreaming.

We didn’t plan to move to Minnesota until what really feels like the last minute. We committed to this job less than three months ago! Aaron has a commute that will take up hours of his life (and our family time) during this season, which is just unavoidable if you are the sort of person who needs a yard and works in a big city. I don’t have any piano students yet, which means the budget is t-i-g-h-t for the foreseeable future. We don’t have friends yet, or a church – although we did visit one close to the new house and plenty of people said hello so we certainly plan to visit again. I can’t remember how to get to the grocery stores without looking it up on my phone and I can’t find one that carries my favorite brand of boxed pizza crust mix. I say all this not to complain, but to acknowledge that transitions are always rough, and this week I am feeling that roughness a lot.

We sat down on New Years Eve and talked about the year past, which we have wondered about and anticipated for our whole marriage, and I couldn’t stop talking about how I am scared to be so out of control in every bit of things. We have lost a life that was working and have to figure out the new one, which may or may not have much in common with the old one. It sounds so negative to speak of things in these terms, so I have to reframe these conversations and rename these fears. I want to think of this as entering a new life with so much beauty and goodness and wonder to uncover and receive. I want to be grateful that it isn’t going like I planned, because what I strive for is never the very best. I certainly didn’t expect all the goodness we experienced in Iowa, but it was there waiting anyway.

Because if I think of this in the way I want to, I would just write about how much I miss the park by my old house, and the high ceilings, the dishwasher that worked, the people I knew, the kids I saw every week. I would tell you how much I miss the Fareway meat counter and our church and knowing just where to go when I needed to get out for a bit. I would lament about how disappointing it is to be a longer drive away from our extended families, which means significantly fewer visits in the next few years. Instead of staying in that longing, I want to figure out how to accept the unsettled mess of today a little longer. Because even when I thought I had it made, I was never really in control and I was always flying by the seat of my pants anyway. (Nostalgia is such a liar.)

There are no serious New Years Resolutions this year. Just a few practical must-do’s, such as getting a piano studio off the ground and possibly getting a part-time job while that starts up, and then upgrading a few things done on the house. (Like I said, I really miss a working dishwasher. There are also several things offending my aesthetic sensibilities.) But I want this year to be full of receiving grace I could not have orchestrated or dreamed of myself, and I want to have a good attitude about it in the meantime. I’m going to fail at this, probably a lot, but when I’m not keeping it together, I want to fall forward. I want to fall into the newness of whatever moment God has given.

One of the beautiful, new, delightful gifts (already!) has been the arrival of this little pup, who has been hoped for many, many times in the past five years. The timing of getting a seven-week-old puppy while your moving boxes are not unpacked is probably not advisable, but we decided to take advantage of a litter with the exact parentage we wanted. It’s probably better to do this before we start to ever think about new furniture, really.

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So we are trudging through the joy (cuddles and cuteness!) and duty (chewing and housebreaking!) of having little Max, and someday when we stop sleeping in winter coats so we don’t freeze to death when we take him out in the middle of the night, I will probably have many wonderful updates about how the rest of life is coming together, too.

All his work is done in faithfulness. …The earth is full of the steadfast love of the Lord. – Psalm 33:3&4

Advent, Interrupted. (advent 2013)

/ abby hummel / 3 Comments

“Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head. – Matthew 8:20

Instead of following any of our usual traditions, this Advent kicks off an intense season of unsettling. While I am listening to Handel’s Messiah, because that’s just what you do before Christmas (also, it is less annoying than the radio), there is a decided focus on projects like this…

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…instead of usual things we might do at this time of the year. Instead of covering little boxes with ornamental paper, I’m covering big boxes with Sharpie-d words like, “KITCHEN/OFFICE/ETC/FRAGILE/HEAVY” (sometimes all on the same box… uh…) and covering oddly shaped packages with shrink wrap, which is like a giant roll of Saran Wrap. Instead of buying candycanes to stir my hot cocoa and preparing favorite traditional dishes, I’m creatively mixing random foods from the freezer into “adventurous meals” in an effort to move it empty.  I miss setting up a Christmas tree, placing a wreath on the front door, making snowflakes, hanging stockings, sitting by the fire with our special Christmas mugs. (Aaron’s is a Grinch.) I’m missing church Christmas events, special times with friends, surprise gifts for people I love, familiarity, routines, and control. Instead, I’m saying “good-bye” to much of this and will have to start all over in the new year.

It’s funny that this season is entrenched in tradition and patterns, and that those annoying radio songs focus on things that stay the same (chestnuts, mistletoe, snow and lights, etc.), because the beauty of the real story is that it isn’t about what stayed the same. The history of captivity, wandering, rigid moral and civil codes, receiving and ignoring confusing prophecies, war, tumult, siege, exile, and silence culminates in an unplanned pregnancy, a sub-par birth situation, an emergency move to Egypt, an entire town bereft of little boys. This does not speak to maintaining long-standing magical-feeling traditions. The beauty of this all is that these interrupted circumstances pointed to what was superior and everlasting, and it wasn’t customs or feelings or family gatherings – it was the faithfulness of God and the fulfillment of His promise.

“The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. …From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ … He has made him known.” – John 1

While I would rather be lighting candles, singing verses of O Come, O Come, Emmanuel, and reading Messianic prophecies over special dinners, I’m packing up my home, moving away from dear friends and students, spending weeks running around for family gatherings when I would rather be nesting into a new home, and not really doing much of my usual Christmas stuff. This is going to be an Advent with lots of practical reminders of Christ’s coming down to us — from timeless to temporary, from eternal life to a taste of death, from glory to a manger and then no place to lay his head, from the splendor of heaven to the unsettled mess of earth. (Which is more of a condescension than trying to function with the unsettled mess of my living room, though in my mind they seem pretty comparable.)

{concerning vocation} reading round-up (11.22.13)

/ abby hummel

A few links on dealing with difficult jobs to follow up with what I shared earlier this week… enjoy!
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The Gospel Coalition has written several articles I think are great here. Is Your Job Useless? tackles the idea of doing God’s work in your job, even if it doesn’t seem like purposeful or enjoyable work to you.

 Five Ways to Find Joy in a Job You Don’t Love is particularly helpful with practical suggestions for difficult situations. I love the point about looking for what aspect of God’s character is exalted in your tasks, even if they don’t seem meaningful or fulfilling to you.

How to Humanize the Workplace is a great look at healing for brokenness in messy workplaces.  This is probably most helpful or useful if you’re in management, but I would have had more productive discussions in my circumstances if I had been able to explain my perspective with the sorts of terms used in this article.

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Following up on that note, this article about investing in your work highlights some important things to think about for long-term career growth, especially that making significant sacrifices for a job where your bosses, managers, and coworkers do not make decisions that honor your dedication and position disrespects the dignity of the life and vocation God has given you.

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I actually haven’t read Tim Keller’s book Every Good Endeavor, but Aaron’s going through it with his men’s group and I have appreciated what he’s shared from it. It’s at the top of my list for Christmas vacation reading!

In Quitter, Jon Acuff tackles several practical aspects of getting from your day job to your dream job. His admonition that dreams are only worth chasing if you’re willing to chase them with all your spare time was the kick I needed to start teaching piano in the evenings, even though I was exhausted. Guess what? It ended up being not-that-exhausting… The mental and spiritual boost of working to get where I needed to go was immensely encouraging.
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Finally, a solid exhortation from Albert Einstein. (Or maybe just Pinterest. Be sure to read what Abraham Lincoln said about quotes on the internet.) My life improved dramatically when I stopped buying the lie that my challenges were the result of a bad attitude. I realized I needed to think outside the box to discern the opportunity in the difficulty.

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Dr. Leaf Blower

/ abby hummel / 5 Comments
My friend had the following conversation with her children on the way over to our house this fall.
“You’re going to have so much fun at Mrs. Hummel’s house! Her husband is blowing their leaves into a pile so you can play in them.”
“What should we call Mrs. Hummel’s husband?” – 8 year old
“He’s Mrs. Hummel’s husband, so that would make him… what?”
“Umm… Mr. Leaf Blower?” – 4 year old
Well, that’s Dr. Leaf Blower to you now, kid. That’s right. There is a PhD in the house. We can cross this one off the 30-before-30 list. Aaron defended his dissertation so he’s officially all Philosophized, Doctorized, and formally recognized as being both outlandishly smart AND diligent.
phd
I’m pretty smart, but Aaron is smart in things I can’t wrap my brain around. It took me a few months to memorize his job title. (“Working in a Plant Pathology lab as part of an inter-disciplinary Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology program,” is a mouth full, in my defense.) And when I think about this PhD and the hard work it took to get here, I’m so grateful for Aaron’s work ethic and his courage in risky situations. This man has been perpetually stressed for about 10 years. I know this man started off this adventure five years ago by putting overtime beyond overtime in to ensure that his presence was a blessing to his lab mates, aware that his work would communicate to others that Christianity is supposed to make you a better scientist, not the opposite. In the first part of grad school he was still in the military, and this man would spend four or five days almost without sleeping when he had Drill weekends, and then get to the lab even earlier as soon as he got home. This man sat on the couch and read papers instead of attending sports games. (Breaks were more frequent in hockey season after we had a TV, of course.) This man never complained about the inconveniences of our tightwad budget, like eating sandwiches and leftovers for lunch every day, and using an old cell phone that barely texts – forget 3G network access! This man was cheerful about the added financial risk of my self-employment so we could both live out the dreams God gave us. This man who loves the outdoors spent many a beautiful weekend day (sometimes both of them) working on his projects in the lab. He has spent most of the last five years in a white room without windows, and hasn’t really even had coworkers to share the days with for quite a while. This man dutifully tackled many of his highest pressure assignments in the seasons where I have been most grief-stricken and needy instead of the encourager I wanted him to have, because grad school doesn’t wonder what would be most convenient for your personal life when setting up experiment deadlines.This man has been diligent even when he was definitely thinking things like this:
grad school[From #whatshouldwecallgradschool, which is not appropriate reading for minors or grandmothers, but is fall-on-the-floor hilarious to those who are in graduate school.]
I can’t say exactly where the credit goes for this successful presentation and defense of the dissertation. Was it the slave labor he has accomplished in the last five years at the laboratory bench? The good reputation of his peer-reviewed publications? The prayer warriors who have been lifting him up, especially during this last big push to wrap up everything? The decadent cheese trays I prepared as refreshments for his committee of judges? Some combination of all those, I bet.
After a great presentation and record-making short deliberations from his committee, we ate dinner out in a state of ecstasy before he came home and watched The Hobbit trailer several times over in a manner befitting his accomplishments.
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Then the sense of romance and adventure wore off, and we got back into courageously tackling all the other risky situations in life, because that’s what diligent people do.
(And if you want some thoughts about this holiday of Veteran’s Day, here’s a link to some reflections on Veteran’s Day itself, and all posts related to the military.)

reading round-up (11/08/13)

/ abby hummel

Well — life has been exciting around here lately. There is a new home for us with a very exciting story coming. There is also the tiny detail of, oh, having a Doctor around all the time now, which is relieving and exciting  after  five-and-a-half years of slaving.
For some reads to tide you over until I can think coherently enough to finish other posts  soon…
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Many of my friends blog and I just can’t get over how awesome it is to read something that makes me think, “I wish I knew them!”  when I actually do know the person. Reading this post on housekeeping from my friend Bethany provided one of those moments this week.

“Whether you are home during the day or not, we are all home-makers. …Adults do chores. End of story.” 

Amen. If you need me, I’ll be Pledge-ing in my kitchen.
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I had some Bad Experiences with theological debate in high school and sometimes shy away from talking about theology because I don’t feel like it’s worth stirring controversy, but I was so excited reading this post describing how the Cross is not the whole sum of the Gospel. It was like reading a secret journal entry I haven’t writen yet. (It made me think of this clip from The Office.)  Back on topic – the fact that scripture starts off with “There was evening and then there was morning,” and takes us all the way to “If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain” leads me to believe that God points us not just to the cross, but to a different (though very closely related) event as the crescendo of salvation and history.  The salvation story doesn’t end at the cross, and we shouldn’t talk about the gospel as though it did.  The crucifixion and Good Friday are only “good” through the lens of Easter Sunday. Since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead!
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You can count me a huge fan of Wendy Alsup’s blog, and I really appreciated her post about growing hard-hearted in suffering. I have often said (complained) to my husband that this a very poor season to be wrestling with fresh grief again. Not that true grief ever really goes away, but a fresh heap put on top seems excessive, and this encouragement is timely.
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On that note, I loved this description of grief as an air horn.
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Finishing out as we started, with talk of homemaking, preparing for a new house means digging around for some extra decor/DIY inspiration. I’ve been enjoying a few ideas from Liz Marie, Remodelaholic, and some Apartment Therapy home tours like this one with cool built-in storage (be warned – sketchy items in their “decor”).