July 2018 – Growing In Grace

Sleepy Smile

Posted on July 20, 2018April 5, 2020 by Chel

Lately I have been enjoying moments of nursing more, especially as I increasingly see how quickly my baby is turning into a little boy – who will not be nursing forever. Nursing can be hard work, especially when I myself feel tired, but it also can be very sweet. One such sweet moment occurred earlier this week. I was tired after a long day, and was greatly looking forward to going to bed. I tried to creep quietly into bed so-as to not wake our baby (as he still sleeps in our room in his Pack n Play), but I was not quiet enough and he woke up crying. I snuggled him close to nurse, with my mind still on bed, but I spent a few moments gazing down as I nursed him. And as I did so, I was struck by how precious it is to be able to share these quiet, sleepy moments with him. This was an especially tender moment, as he was in such a soft and snuggly and gentle mood. He popped his head up from nursing, and in the darkness just barely illuminated by his one small bear nightlight, he smiled up at me and at my husband. His sleepy smile was the type of smile that was so big it took up his entire face; he squinted together his eyes and leaned back his head and showed all four of his dear little teeth. My husband and I soaked up this moment, treasuring it. And I pulled our baby close, and kissed him, and breathed in his baby smell, and felt his warmth and squishiness.

Messy

Posted on July 17, 2018April 5, 2020 by Chel

My husband and I are finding that as our baby gets increasingly mobile – he can now “creep” about the floor remarkably quickly! – our home gets increasingly messy. Even when my husband and I try our best to tidy up the living room at the end of the day, just a few minutes after we come downstairs the following morning, toys and baby things are strewn about everywhere – cars, shapes, stackable cups, balls, rings, animals, teethers, puzzles, activity stations, stuffed animals, pillows, blankets and more. Sometimes all of these baby items make our relatively small living room feel too crowded and chaotic and unpredictable and out of control and disorganized…in a word, messy. But it also feels lived in, as all of these various items are reminders of moments shared in this space – moments of laughter and connection and learning and play, and also of tears and frustration. As our baby learns and grows, and as we learn and grow with him, messiness happens, but even our small and limited living room is proving capable of holding these experiences. This messy living room is the very space in which relationship and connection is occurring, and in which each day we are getting to know our dear little baby better and better – and, I hope, in which he is getting to know us. And when we think of this, my husband and I truly wouldn’t have it be any other way.

This tangible picture of messiness as a means of play – and therefore, connection – that I get to experience daily with my baby makes me think of the more abstract “messiness” of connection that I experience in relationship, particularly relationship with my husband. Lately my husband and I have been having some hard conversations within the “living room” of our marriage; while there is a part of me that wants to “clean up” this relational space instead of allowing complex emotions and different perspectives and sometimes contradictory desires and varying opinions and numerous needs and heavy stressors to get “strewn about”, doing so would actually mean our relationship was not particularly “lived in”, and would likely make it hard to truly be engaging with one another. So my husband and I have been trying our best to process our relationship by discussing how we each are experiencing one another and our marriage, how we are feeling known and loved well, and how we could be knowing and loving one another better – we are trying to “play” in our relational space with one another. This is sometimes hurtful and hard, and we both often fall short of how we aspire to love one another, but it is also usually ends up fostering greater mutual connection and closeness and knowing and learning and growing. And I think over the years, we are becoming increasingly able to trust in our love for one another within the messy “living room” of our marriage, and to then trust that this love is strong enough to hold the honesty of painful emotions, truths, and experiences alongside joyful experiences. Or, said another way, we are learning that our love for one another is strong enough and safe enough to hold mutual vulnerability, for even though we at times hurt one another – both intentionally and unintentionally – at the end of the day we know our hearts are for one another, and, by God’s grace, always will be.

The Goodness of Watermelon

Posted on July 8, 2018April 5, 2020 by Chel

My baby started eating rice cereal and pureed food several months ago, but only within the past several weeks has he been eating finger foods as well. Watching him experience food in all its textured, flavorful, chewy glory has been delightful to witness: He seems genuinely amazed and proud to be able to touch the food on his high chair tray with his very own fingers. He also seems to find great fulfillment and purpose in diligently practicing his pincer grasp, whereby he – increasingly successfully – attempts to bring the morsels of food, accompanied by several fingers that often seem to have wiggly lives of their own, to his mouth. This arrival of any food/fingers to his mouth is often celebrated by a broad, open mouthed, toothy “hippo” grin such as completely melts my heart. There truly is no one else with whom my husband and I would rather share our meals, or our days.

One of baby’s most unbridled expressions of joy so far during this finger foods process came about when I gave him a piece of watermelon several days ago. I was eating watermelon with my own lunch, and as he was watching me very intently, I offered him a piece of his own. He immediately broke out in an eager smile, then proceeded to open his hands wide in excitement. Soon, he began to use his fingers to explore the cold, juicy texture while giving the sound he often makes when excited – a little “huh” chuckle that is often accompanied by smiles and sometimes even by flapping arms alternating with the tensing of his arms and legs as he squeezes out his excitement. He used his ever-improving pincer grasp to bring the juicy melon to his mouth, said melon which he then sucked on, took out of his mouth to again look and laugh at, returned to his mouth to suck and chew on, and even eventually swallowed (or at least partially swallowed). By the end, he was still full of smiles and laughter, and his adorable face and little hands – as well as his highchair, bib, and everything else within reach – were covered in pink, juicy, sticky evidence of the watermelon he had so loved.

As is often the case, getting to see the way in which my baby delights in the world around him encourages me to see and reflect upon the world in new ways myself. His enjoyment of food –especially watermelon! – is no exception. Witnessing his experience with watermelon leads me to wonder about food as God originally intended it to be. As everything that God created was good (Genesis 1:31), I imagine food is no exception. Not only did God originally create human beings as good, and food as good, he made human beings with taste buds to register the delicious goodness of food – and as far as I can tell this is not something that God had to do (as I’m sure he could have thought up other ways to ensure people partook of enough energy to sustain life). And yet he did! And the fact that he did can and does bring us great joy and fellowship, even as I got to experience as I ate lunch with my dear little baby. As an aside, this reminds me of a professor at my undergraduate institution who had a heart that was especially worshipful; one of his sermons included an exhortation to take time to truly look at the world around us – an example of which included the amazing complexity of taste buds – for if we truly do so, we will not be able to help but be moved to worship God. This makes me inclined to think that enjoying watermelon together, or any food, can lead to worship.

I like thinking about how food enjoyed well can lead to worship and can also be a space for fellowship, which leads me to believe food can be life-giving in a literal sense but also in a spiritual and relational sense. I especially appreciate recognizing this goodness of food, as I also know how food eaten for less wholesome reasons or in other ways can be particularly soul deadening. One of the many implications of living life after the Fall (Genesis 3) is that even good things can be grossly distorted, and I think food, including human relationships with food, is no exception. I even think that sometimes food itself can mistakenly become an object of worship, or that relationship with food can take place of relationship with others or even with God. I experienced this for myself in a particularly extreme way in my junior high years when I became anorexic and isolated, and today still notice I can sometimes look to food as a form of comfort or avoidance or indulgence or rest or happiness, or as a way to control, or as a way to “fill” emptiness I may feel in my heart.

Yet seeing my baby enjoy food in a way that I imagine is close to how God originally intended brings me great joy and hope that even in this fallen world the goodness of food can be redeemed – that it can be enjoyed in its rightful place, for what it is, and that it can lead to worship and fellowship and life.

The Overnight Visit

Posted on July 3, 2018April 5, 2020 by Chel

Our baby experienced another large milestone this week – he had his very first night away from mommy and daddy. Perhaps an even bigger, concurrent milestone was that my husband and I had our very first night away from him. This night had been some time in coming; our anniversary is at the end of June, and to help us celebrate, my parents planned a visit in which they hoped to both soak up time with baby and also to watch him overnight for one evening of the trip. My husband and I had been greatly looking forward to Nana and Papa’s visit, but were uncertain as to whether we would actually be able follow through with leaving our baby for an entire evening away – although to help encourage said follow through, we made sure to book a local hotel in advance so that we had an external commitment. (As an aside, I find it both humorous and humbling to find that while, before baby was born, I insisted that I would be able to prioritize marriage and would be intentional in finding ways to be alone with my husband regularly, ever since baby was born I find it incredibly challenging to be away from baby for more than a few hours. I now understand why not all parents get out often!)

This past week the long-awaited visit with Nana and Papa finally arrived, and included many sweet moments shared together as a family, including zoo adventures and playing with toy towers and walking and going to Target and baby generally enjoying being the center of attention, along with all the lavish of snuggles and coos and admiration this role entails. Baby seems to be slowly leaving the “stranger danger” phase of development, and is instead beginning to enter into a stage where he mostly likes the attention of others, especially Nana and Papa, and particularly if my husband and I are still in the room. Baby plays more gently and quietly with others (instead of being his usual boisterous and busy self) but still has many smiles to share, some snuggles to give, and much shared enjoyment. He particularly relished being on outings where Nana and Papa could hold him while he looked at the interesting world around him – some of his favorite moments of being held seemed to be while looking at zoo exhibits and at toys in the store. And as baby delighted in engaging with Nana and Papa and in looking at the world, I delighted in watching baby and my parents together, enjoying one another. It was so very sweet to be able to share the joy of him with them, and in doing so it felt as though the joy of motherhood multiplied. These felt like such sweet, quintessential “grandparent time” moments, and left my heart feeling so full.

Thankfully, this fullness of heart borne of several days of time shared with my parents led to me feeling ready – or at least as ready as possible! – to actually try to spend the night away with my husband. These moments from earlier in the visit helped me see that baby is able to be with others (away from me) more than I might think, and that he may even enjoy doing so. I know that my parents certainly enjoy being with him. This time shared together also led me to reflect on how I want to be able to let my baby go enough that he actually gets to be with and form relationship others; I do not want to anxiously keep him to myself and always try to “protect” him even now that he is growing bigger. While my desire to be with my baby is motivated by my love for him, I wonder if loving entails a balance of both holding close and letting go. My parents were offering to love me (and my husband) by watching our baby, but I think that me accepting and trusting was also a way for me to love my baby and to love my parents (who cherish time with my baby). Being away to celebrate our marriage was also, of course, a way for me to love my husband.

With these thoughts in mind, Friday night arrived. After packing an overnight bag, I fed baby and gave him his bedtime bath and put on his jammies and nursed him and snuggled him close – and then my husband and I kissed our baby and told him we loved him before giving him to Nana to rock to sleep. And, away my husband and I drove, just the two of us, for our first time of being out of the house as just two for more than 3 or 4 straight hours since baby was born. And it was surreal and refreshing and precious and weird and wonderful and exciting and celebratory – and it truly happened! My husband and I enjoyed doing small things reminiscent of how we used to share time together prior to baby – we went to dinner and talked about everything and nothing, we wandered around and looked at random points of interest, we got ice cream and coffee, we drove around and listened to music, we laughed at one another’s jokes, we enjoyed having no responsibilities for over twelve whole hours and watched corny hotel movies and marveled at a night of uninterrupted sleep, we slept in, we went to brunch. We reflected on our marriage and the ways in which our love has grown over the years, how much both we and our lives have changed since we were first married, how gracious the LORD has been to us. We enjoyed being able to focus on just one another, having uninterrupted conversations where we could make one another feel important and seen and cherished, being just two. And, after cherishing these sweet moments as just two, we drove back home to our dear baby. I would not trade a night away with just my husband celebrating our marriage, but I also would not trade having our dear baby to go back home to afterward. And I think that each is sweeter for the experience of the other – I appreciate my husband (and time alone with him!) even more after having our baby, and I appreciate being with our baby even more after having a short bit of time away with just my husband.