birthday

31: memento mori & memento videre

/ abby hummel / 4 Comments

Turning thirty-one offers a little relief in settling into true adulthood. Part of this means that if my idea of a good time is talking about latin catchphrases on my blog while my children “nap” (today this means “alternately fuss in their respective beds for an hour or so”), I can do that. I’m an adult now.

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these grew in my yard. happy birthday to me! 

So, memento mori and memento vivere are the words that come to me when I think about this past year.  “Remember your death” and “Remember to live.” Especially during Lent and Holy Week, I see how inseparable these are, kind of like twin mottos that uphold each other. Most of the lessons and highlights for this year fit neatly into this intersection.

Memento Mori & Household Stuff.
Around my birthday last year, my mom and her siblings moved my grandfather into a nursing home and sold their big iconic family house in the woods. I morbidly joked to Aaron that meant he wasn’t allowed to die in the near future because my early widowhood backup plan (raising the kids in that house) was now off the table. But a big part of that process, which I followed from afar, was clearing out the basement and closets, sorting trunks full of unlabeled pictures, and nearly continual donation trips to the neighborhood Goodwill. I’m pretty sure my mom still has loads of this stuff in her own basement now because it’s hard to sort through things when you’re so emotional. My grandparents were not hoarders by any stretch, just upper middle class Americans who had lived in the same house for 45 years. (Which is to say, the ideal best case scenario for my end of days, too.) I’d read The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo before we moved here and implemented what I could from her discarding plan (especially the “joy spark” question) as we packed and unpacked, but I’ve been challenged to continually tackle the clutter battle as a way of life. Because really, memento mori: I’m going to die someday, and I’d rather have my kids talk about their memories of me or the words I left them than know they will be sighing about cleaning out my basement, which I am quite sure was just sighed over and cleaned out by the children of this home’s previous elderly owners before I bought it, too. With this in mind I passed out all the kid toys that made annoying sounds, recycled 80% of the professional photo prints from my wedding (no one is ever going to look at them!), and donated a whole extra van load worth of household stuff… And you know? There’s a lot more living in our home when there’s less picking up, so it’s worth decluttering in the spirit of memento vivere, too.

Memento Mori & Projects
I am always, always up for planning a new project. The number of possibilities (household! Diy! education! reading! church! writing! handcrafts! start five podcasts!)  rolling around in my head is absurd, and I’m humbled every time I open my binder of family recipes, because I see a note in my Grandma’s handwriting. “This is the first edition of the long awaited Niemi cookbook – more to follow.”

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Surprise! There were no later additions to this collection. And it’s not just because she got sick. It’s because life is what happens within limits and you can’t do absolutely everything. This is true for all the ideas in my head, too, and memento mori here means making peace with unstarted and unfinished projects (which are legion), because I’m going to leave a bunch of things undone when I die anyway. Abandoning ideas more quickly, even ones that already made it to a mid-project stage, doesn’t mean that perseverance and completion are unimportant. It just means I can have a clearer head to discern and finish the ones that do matter.

Memento Vivere & the St. Louis Climate
Maybe you have heard of “hygge,” the Scandanavian lifestyle ethos that is trending everywhere these days? It’s all about the quality of being cozy and hospitable, and as a knitter, a candle-lighter, a true woman of the north, I want to embrace this. I feel silly complaining about warm weather after experiencing two of the most brutal winters on record during the short time we lived in Minnesota. But man, it’s unbearably hot and steamy for four or five months out of the year here, and I’m not paying to join the neighborhood pool until the kids learn to swim. We’re going to be trapped inside for much of the summer as long as we live here. So I’m doing my best to memento vivere and ignore the siren call of the Hygge life during winter, embracing every sunny day we can get out for a zoo trip and bundling the kids for playground time now. Winter here is for living, not hibernating. This means we can fully embrace the vibrant splash pad scene here when it warms up. Maybe order some fun inside activity gear. Buy Tazo Passion Tea in bulk to DIY my favorite coffeeshop summer treat. And save excessive movie watching for August, as backwards as it seems.

Memento Vivere & Motherhood 
If my life is a memoir, the chapter I’m living right now is titled “Everyone Is Crying.” There are a lot of good days with the kids, especially now that nearly all outings are possible with both kids on my own, but it’s amazing how easy it is to slip into the belief that life is what will happen next – When they can procure their own breakfast so I can hide in the basement and write every morning until Aaron leaves for work; when we finally get the house projects done so I can get a piano again; kindergarten, glory.

But if I wasn’t waiting to start my life until the kids were born, I’m not waiting to start it now. I really don’t have enough time to do the things I want (and even need, really) to do for my own peace of mind, but remembering to live means figuring out how to fight for even a glimpse of peace in the middle of all this hustle. So maybe spending mornings at a gym with a nursery isn’t an option, but I can still grab the stroller for a walk or turn up fun music to have a “dance party” with the kids. (In doing this I have learned toddler interpretations of the lyrics to basically all my desired workout songs are definitely “explicit.”) Maybe I can’t sit down and write like I’d want, but I can play hard with the kids in the morning and let them watch a few shows after their nap so I can spend an afternoon lost in a book even when there are not enough solo hours to craft paragraphs myself. A little extra screentime isn’t as damaging as growing up with a crazy mom, you know.

This year memento vivere means that anything worth doing is worth doing even a little bit. Because if I have to wait until I can spend an hour at the gym or drink hot coffee alone or sit still long enough to create something beautiful in my journal or on a set of knitting needles to really live, I’m not going to be able to live contentedly with what God has given me. And that’s no life at all.

 

 

 

on turning thirty

/ abby hummel / 3 Comments

Every year on April 12, I perform a series of adult birthday rituals.

I call someone who sent me something that I somehow misplaced, a document which contains information I need to finish filing my taxes. I vow to be more organized next year, and to do taxes in February. I text message my friends about how much I should bill the government for the time it took me to get everything pulled together. I submit the returns and take myself out for happy-birthday-done-with-taxes-starbucks. I revel in my newfound freedom from the IRS and think about what it means to be another year older. And I usually hack out a quick blog post. It’s kind of become my routine.

This year I am thirty, which is KIND OF A BIG DEAL. I’m more tired than excited about most things, which makes me feel a little old. This year may have been the most intense and best one yet. I am still not ready to think about upcoming goals, necessarily, but both of my children are magically napping at the same time, and I have been thinking about the things I’ve learned in the last few years.

– Plenty of good advice does not apply to me. Maybe I’m reading different books, maybe blog articles have changed, maybe I’m giving other people a better picture of life when I ask them a question? Those are possible, but I also think I’m much quicker to discern when something that could be right for someone else is not going to work out for me. I don’t feel guilty if so-and-so advised me to take one path and I do something else.
– I have to work with my personality, not against it. The first time I took a Myers-Briggs Type Indicator test, I was 17 years old and told an adult what I had learned: Of the sixteen personality types profiled in their system, I was an  “ENFP” – I liked keeping lots of friends, working with people, having deep conversations, creativity, dreaming about possibilities, starting new things (and struggling to finish them), and I was driven to find meaning in the world around me. Reading the description was like reading my own diary! The person I was sharing this with told me that sounded like a celebration of immaturity more than an explanation of who I was. (I don’t think they meant to be hurtful. And like I said, I’m not taking bad advice personally anymore.) Every time I’ve taken one of those MBTI tests since then it has told me I’m … an ENFP. After thirteen years, I don’t think this is something I’m going to grow out of. Most of the frustrating circumstances I’ve faced in my adult life have been magnified because I considered my personality a hindrance. Yes, I have to finish projects, and yes, I have to handle details even when I would rather find meaning in the world around me. But I’m also seeing now that I’m going to accomplish a lot more by embracing who I am, even if it’s a little more all-over-the-place than whatever standard of personal maturity I’m measuring myself against.
– It is very possible that I was born 30 years old. Other people talk about the shows they’re watching on Netflix, but Aaron and I have nothing to say: we have accepted that we strongly lean towards the WW2 documentaries. (Every so often I tell him I know the good guys win, but I can’t handle any more Hitler and we watch space exploration documentaries, which are also fairly depressing.) Other than that, waking up to hot coffee is my idea of a good morning. I have Birkenstocks and a minivan. I kind of feel like I’m living the high life.
– Real life is changing my reading preferences. My favorite genre in high school and college was utopian/dystopian fiction. Talking about the subtle nuances between those two terms for a few hours would be my idea of a good time. I’ve read Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World at least six times. I had portions of George Orwell’s 1984 memorized for a while. I took a college class where we surveyed Utopian fiction throughout history and considered it the most fascinating experience of my life. I was thrilled that so many people read the Hunger Games because I could finally talk to other people about an alternate reality world. Maybe growing up means becoming more in tune with reality? I wonder, because we really branched out from our WW2 documentaries and watched V for Vendetta this month. Instead of being fascinated, I kind of felt like I was watching the news.
– Politically-oriented talk radio is a terrible way to fill your brain. Even if the majority of the facts are correct, the way something is communicated matters. Consuming rants and inflammatory programming appeals to pride and our desire to be right, but often costs us our ability to disagree respectably.
– It’s not always worth it to save money. Do I need to be cutting edge on everything? No. But savings is not the highest goal in life, and many of the cost-cutting measures we have utilized in the past 8 years have cost us in other ways more than we saved financially.
– Better to admit I’m wrong later than to wish I’d said something true sooner. I can trace my own fear of being wrong as the source of many tough situations in the last few years, and (humbly) going out on a wing to say something unpopular or new has always been worth it. Sitting on something I feel strongly about usually means it just blows up later because yes, things were unwell, but I’m not even in a great position to recover well because I KNEW IT and I HAVE BEEN RIGHT ALL THIS TIME, when speaking up sooner probably would have saved going down a bad road in the first place.
– Loving someone is never wasted. With moving so much, it can be easy to see how much it has cost me to love other people and wonder if it was actually worth it, especially in relationships that drop off when we aren’t close by. It is hard, but good, to trust that God is accomplishing his purposes through friendships that are short, stilted, and interrupted, even when it seems like it might have been pointless.

birthday flowers

[birthday flowers from my sister]

Thirty is a big milestone, but it’s good. I’m grateful for the growth from these lessons, and others left unshared. My life is full of more grace and laughter because of them. “I have been bent and broken, but – I hope – into a better shape.” – Charles Dickens. 

blessed sojourning

/ abby hummel

The Lord watches over the sojourners – Psalm 146:9

Every single pregnancy I’ve experienced so far has had some milestone in the first week of August, from the first positive pregnancy test several years past to Annie’s delivery twelve months ago. Her birth and losing a baby right before that pregnancy mean both last year and the year before, I spent this date in labor. That’s about as detailed as any public birth story will get from me, but I think it’s an ironic blessing that I spend this week once again exhausted with crushed ribs, heartburn, and the constant presence of the rolls and punches of a child who seems to have some particular athletic inclinations even in the womb. I don’t know if moving makes this stage of pregnancy harder, or if it’s being pregnant that makes moving harder, but I’m not going to lie: this has been a tough week and I think it’s going to stay that way for a while. Yet my sentiments from last year still stand: There is no third trimester anywhere near as uncomfortable as the one that doesn’t happen. We’d be very surprised (and in a state of medical emergency) if the new baby were to arrive this week, so I think our big move to St. Louis will suffice for this year’s Notable Early August Event.

These feet are not as swollen as last time! Which is unbelievable, but really awesome!

These feet are not as swollen as last time! Which is unbelievable, but really awesome!

How’s moving? It’s hard, but good. Last Saturday we were in Minnesota, where Annie woke us up very early so she could get some extra springy-doorstop play in before we left. All the stuff that survived my extreme-minimalist purging had been packed into a moving container earlier in the week, so we spent the morning cleaning out the “Coon Ranch,” the house we bought at the end of 2013 before I had seen it in person, for the last time. I will not miss scrubbing the cracked ceramic tile floor in the kitchen. We said good-bye to that house, then returned a mattress to our neighbors who were also dear friends, and she said, “Even though you have to leave, I am so glad you came!” I shed a few tears and agreed with her. We drove a few hours south, and right before we fell asleep on a guest bed in Iowa, Aaron said, “I miss the Ames house more than the Coon Ranch.” Maybe nostalgia is still just a huge liar? Who knows, but I agreed with that sentiment, too. Traveling south reminded us clearly of good things in Iowa, different good things in Minnesota, and even more unknown good things to come in Missouri, (which, apparently, does NOT sound like “misery” in the local dialect!? Who knew?).

Aaron locking up the Coon Ranch for the last time...!

Aaron locking up the Coon Ranch for the last time…!

After a quick stop in Iowa, we drove to St. Louis with a poor baby girl’s carsick moans accompanying us the whole way. It was tough on her, but at last we made it! We’re staying in a furnished apartment for now, which has the marvelous bonus of an outdoor pool (saltwater, so fancy), luxury bathing facilities for humans (a sweet soaker tub) and pets (a “Dog Spa” shower room down the hall, which means Max is cleaner than he has ever been before in his life), and generally the ritziest living conditions we’ve ever had. I have stayed in a hotel fancier than this… maybe twice in my life? First-world comforts make these 700 square feet feel very tight with all of us here, so Annie sleeps in her pack-n-play in our walk-in-closet, just like she did in Minnesota, and I am certainly hoping we won’t be here long after the new baby arrives. Still, it’s great to have a nice place to land while Aaron starts his new job.
annie in toybox
And now my eyes are glazed over from looking at so. many. different. houses online, and I’m extremely impressed at what a trooper Annie has been for our real estate excursions so far. Most of these houses we’re investigating have enormous backyards (one right on a private lake!) with lots of bedrooms and space, and it’s pretty marvelous to think about enjoying one of these places long-term. (HA! WATCH US MOVE AGAIN!) This doesn’t exactly feel real! It’s easy to look back at the last two years and wonder what on earth just happened?, but this craziness has been matched with so much joy in having little Anne here with us for a whole year. I usually sing her the Doxology before naps and bedtime, but the several thousand times the familiar Psalter tune has sounded with this sweet girl in my arms this year does not seem to be enough to express the wonder and thankfulness all around.
Anne, five days old.

Annie, five days old. How has it been a year already? We love you so!

Praise God from whom all blessings flow
Praise Him all creatures here below
Praise Him above, ye heavenly host
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost!

Evenly 28

/ abby hummel / 2 Comments

“O God, from my youth you have taught me, and still I proclaim your wondrous deeds. So even to old age and gray hairs, O God, do not forsake me.” Psalm 71:17-18

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You would not assume I have any perfectionist traits if you stopped by my home at any time, particularly right now, since I tried to finish taxes this morning without crating the dog. (The result? I have not finished submitting the taxes and there are bits and pieces of the cover to “Grace Based Parenting” all over the living room. Yes, this is hilariously ironic.) Despite my – hopefully improving – free-spirited tendencies with most details, I do have a teeny compulsive anxiety trait that has plagued me as long as I can remember: I have very particular need for numbers to be in order. I always add the numbers on license plates while I drive, and certain phone numbers or birthdates are more “pleasing” to my numerical senses. In middle school, if I worked on algebra assignments before bed, I had very strange mathematical dreams. When I look at a digital clock, I am doing math problems with the numbers much longer than I’m paying attention to what time it is. (Right now, it is 1:21, which is 11×11. You can also use addition so the ones on outsides to add up to the two in the middle.) This is weird. There is probably a name for this sort of thing. It doesn’t interrupt my life or relationships, so it’s not really a problem – just a quirk. I hope.

The birthdate of April 12, 1986 really works out for me because each number is even. I think birthdays in the Spring months should be on even-numbered dates and fall birthdays should be odd-numbered. (A few years ago, I was pregnant with a baby due in April and told Aaron I was nervous it would have an “odd” birthdate.) So now, in a strange way, I am breathing a little easier to be 28 and not 27 because it feels better to be an “even” age. (27 is slightly redeemed by being “Three-cubed,” or 3x3x3.)

Turning 28 on 4/12/2014 was almost a dream-come-true for my numerical neuroses, even if it is more reason for Aaron and I to joke that we are getting old and crotchety. On the way out for my birthday dinner, he said, “How can you be 28? I’m only, like, 25!” Even when we can’t keep track of the numbers, our life reflects a little more maturity (or boring-ness, take your pick.) We used to speak of camping more often; we now find that cooking over the backyard firepit and sleeping in our own bed is satisfying. “Requiring frequent walks” was a strong argument in favor of adopting Max. I get sick of having so many clothes in my closet. I don’t think I look old now, but pictures from college (or my wedding) do look young. It was a little strange to see that most of the athletes on Olympic podiums this year were younger than me. There is no denial in any of this that life is going forward and that means getting older! Maybe an obsession with that mathematically-pleasing birthdate is altering my senses a bit, but I can’t shake loving the secret I’ve whispered among friends: getting older is good, and it gets better every year.

Even when things don’t look like they were “supposed” to, every year there is more grace and growth, more unexpected gifts, more glory revealed. There is more joy (and less fear), more comfort in my own skin,  more beauty to discover and display, more delight in becoming just who I was created to be. So right now, the excitement of turning the corner into 28 feels like a drop in the bucket compared to whatever lies ahead.

“The righteous flourish like the palm tree and grow like a cedar in Lebanon. They are planted in the house of the Lord; they flourish in the courts of our God. They still bear fruit in old age; they are ever full of sap and green, to declare that the Lord is upright; he is my rock, and there is no unrighteousness in him.” – Psalm 92

 

 

 

 

 

Reading round-up (4.11.14)

/ abby hummel / 4 Comments

Yesterday I shared a little bit of the everyday beauty of this last week, and today I’ve got some of the bigger, more extravagant graces of the season along with some weekend reading for you!

[One] For as “boring” as Iowa sounded when we first moved there, I always felt it worked out well for us to connect with traveling friends while we lived there. Our house became a common stopping point for many friends and acquaintances traveling between the Midwest and the “Real West,” usually Montana or Colorado. With a comfy couch in the back room, easy quiche and baked oatmeal recipes, and a fabulous patio to enjoy in the warmer seasons, we had a pretty decent bed&breakfast going on. I worried that moving to Minnesota would mean an end to some of that flurry, but I’m pretty sure that is not going to be the case. We have had an amazing influx of visitors in the past little bit! There was our first official hosted dinner with some Hillsdale friends, a few nights hosting my dearest Jenny (also on Hillsdale business), and now my parents are here for an impromptu birthday-and-DIY-weekend. (We really know how to party around here.) Another uncle is likely to arrive a few days after my parents leave, as well. We were gifted with a bed for our guest room, and we’re putting it to great use! Max is not at the greatest stage for hospitality, but he likes people so much that he laid at the door in despair when Jenny’s flight was delayed.

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[Two] I usually read a lot in the summer, maybe because it’s too hot to do many crafts. I don’t know how much I’ll be able to do this year, but I know the first place I’ll look for recommendations is Bethany’s blog. (Again — the blogs of real life friends are always the best!)
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[Three] I have a funny relationship with controversial religious topics, so I don’t generally mention them on my blog as often as I think about them. I’ve really enjoyed a few articles about the intersection of the church and homosexuality lately. While I would hope and pray this is not a sorrow my daughter has to bear, I hope that she will hear this same truth growing up in our home: “Although I have found the experience difficult, it has never been difficult to reconcile with my faith. One of the best things my parents gave me was an understanding that the Christian life is often difficult, and that God takes and uses our sufferings to make us more like Him.” (From A New Kind of Coming Out in Christianity Magazine, UK.) Additionally, I appreciated Jen Hatmaker’s blog “Where I Stand,” because I think there is a huge need for people who stand for the clear teaching of God’s word on marriage and sexuality AND good neighboring, wound-binding, and loving kindness. These values are not mutually exclusive!
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[Four] I thought these two articles were a great balance for each other — one talking about appreciating what we can from polarizing teachers and another on the importance of naming and speaking against false teachers. (For the record, I don’t even agree with a lot of the stuff in the first article because I am so bothered by some of the personalities mentioned! But maybe I need to rethink some of that? Right now I don’t even want to appreciate anything about the influence of Donald Miller, for example.)
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[Five] Is Christianity just about pragmatism?Here are some wonderful thoughts on the wild work of a backwards God in our Oprah-driven hearts from Emily at Weak and Loved.
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[Six] If you, like most people, get the majority of your information about Genetically Modified crop controversy from links posted on Facebook by people who are not scientists, this article about the true cost of labeling GMO’s would be a good read for you!
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[Seven] And on the topic of even more significantly important and controversial advances in science and genetics, this article describing 10 Things You Need To Know About IVF is well worth a read. It’s one of my many soapboxes in life, but really… It’s much better to read and pray about this before you’re possibly in a position to make decisions clouded by years of heartache.
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So… Maybe more controversy than I originally intended to mention here? (May as well get it all out there: I use an e-collar for training my dog and plan to both regularly vaccinate and possibly occasionally spank my child if it is the most effective way to keep her safe while she grows up.) You can read other Friday quick-takes over at Conversion Diary, if you’re interested.

Have a great weekend, friends. We are celebrating my 28th birthday with the installation of a dishwasher. This is even better than the year I got a circular saw!

three, cubed

/ abby hummel / 1 Comment

Since I teach algebra this year, I’m getting a kick out of the fact that my birthday means I’m “three-cubed” instead of the straightforward twenty-seven! Last year I made a list of things to work on before turning 30. In the meantime, I’ve accomplished a few things and decided a few goals need to be revised, but it’s good to know there’s still plenty of living to get in before that big milestone!

Sometimes April is hard for us. We pass lots of dates this month that recall God’s faithfulness in all circumstances. My 25th birthday in particular was one of the most difficult days of my life, and we’ll probably always feel a bit of a void for some little birthdays we wanted to be celebrating this month. In a few weeks we will celebrate Aaron’s Iraq homecoming anniversary – a special memory that is connected to lots of ugly, hard experiences, too. I love that the Northern Hemisphere weather reflects the church calendar so well, that nature is full of little green buds sticking off branches and new life coming out of the ground to remind us the Resurrection is real.

On a less thoughtful note, Aaron asked what I wanted for my birthday, and I felt really upset: “I don’t want more stuff! I want less stuff!” I don’t think he’s going to clean out my closet for me or anything, but my parents will be visiting this weekend and I think my mom will be a more willing participant in that project.

Thankfully, I haven’t accumulated any major new griefs or extra material possessions this year. I did, however, treat myself to a drive-through latte this afternoon as a “thank-you” to myself for finishing our taxes on my birthday.0412131316(I used a Christmas gift card, of course.) I’m so thankful for the gift of another year of blessings and growth!

chapters

/ abby hummel / 5 Comments

There is exciting progress in life at our house lately! Mostly for Aaron – but it’s one of the benefits of marriage that you get to celebrate extra over your spouse’s blessings because of the whole one-flesh thing.

Finally! The book chapter he slaved over, the one that kept us home for Thanksgiving last year instead of celebrating with family, is published! It’s a technical reference publication, not exactly light reading for scientific laymen.

aaron book collage

Finally! The last day of his status as “inactive Reservist” with the Marines was Saturday, so the military chapter of life is completed.

desert "cammies" in the closet - proud to have them, but excited to pack these away !

desert “cammies” in the closet – proud to have them, but excited to pack them away, too!

Tomorrow begins the “chapter” of his life as a twenty-eight-year-old, too. Every birthday I think of the flat-rate box I proudly brought to the post office and sent to Iraq to mark his twenty-second year, decorated with stickers and markers, and it makes me ever grateful for the chance to share the special day together now. So tonight we celebrate with brownies and venison stew, enjoying the luxury of beating hearts, relative sanity, and four limbs attached to his torso, while marveling how old and young this feels all at once.

post its.

/ abby hummel / 1 Comment

One of my greatest little loves in life is post-it notes. I love everything about them. The weight and thickness of the paper, the eternal stickiness of the post-it strip, the colors that come together in packages, the way you can write lots of notes on different sheets and put them  in pretty arrangements on a mirror or a desk, the cute designs in the corner of some fancier ones… sigh. I have a drawer in my desk devoted specifically to post-it notes. They are organized by function (for instance, the bright pink flower-shaped pads do not have one), beauty (because I don’t actually use the yellow stack with a green fern outline in the corner, I just look at them) and size (so I can easily write out my grocery lists on the larger lined ones).

Also, I do not use imitation post-its. They must be the genuine thing. I buy real ones and bring them to work because I refuse to use the impostors.

One of the great things that happens with post-its is the hilarious cartoons at Savage Chickens. Tonight I’m freaking out a little bit, feeling like I haven’t accomplished much with my life so far, and this little one seems particularly appropriate for me:

keeping it all in perspective

My birthday is tomorrow… so despite how I may feel about what I am or am not accomplishing with the life I have lived so far, here’s to another year of not getting killed and eaten!