My best friend just had her second baby.
Her firstborn (age 5) affectionately named the baby "Babytummy" in utero. I loved it so much, I decided I'm going to call the baby by this name for his whole life.
It was an emergency C-section. Our other best friend and I spent the majority of the night in the hospital with her after the surgery. We tag-teamed with her mom who had been up with her and by her side all day.
Being a C-section baby, he had a couple mucus plugs. As the nurse explained, babies born vaginally get that final squeeze on the way out. Babytummy, like many C-section babies, would just have to cough it all up.
I ended up being the one to hold him through his first night on this side of the uterus. I stared at him... long and hard, from every angle. Most babies look like rats to me, truth be told, but Babytummy is perfect in every way.
I stared, in complete awe at the thought that he had been smushed up inside my best friend just hours before. I was fascinated by the thought that nine months before -hopefully- he was a mutual orgasm. I reflected on how a couple months before that, a year or so ago, ...he wasn't even a dream.
I was disgusted with myself as I recalled having told my best friend only a few weeks before we found out she was pregnant how I thought a baby was the most horrible thing that could possibly happen to her in her life right then. And on the surface, my concern made perfect sense.
His dad is now MIA, just another stupid fucking kid running from real manhood, from his life vocation. She's in the middle of a custody battle with her ex-husband over her firstborn. He's with his dad in another state until the next court date. She has no money, while he and his new squeeze are raking it in.
Fun fact: Babytummy was born on the day I was supposed to be getting married.
These and a million more thoughts as I watched his little heart beat under the bundle of blankets helped me to appreciate how amazing God is.
Our lives do not play out in that ideal way we hope. Babytummy's daddy should have been there in my place that first night of his life. I should have been consummating a marriage vow. On the surface, our lives are pretty messed up. God knew, though, that Babytummy was to be born on August 19th, 2011 and that he would be everything we each needed. Everything.
I'm grateful God does things His way.
I'm grateful Babytummy was the male with whom I spent the night of August 19, 2011.
Sunday, August 21, 2011
Monday, August 1, 2011
A Shadow in the Clouds.
I avidly wrote poetry and kept a sketchbook for approximately one year before I came to terms with the fact that I sucked at both. I was ok with not being particularly talented in either area, since I recognized that writing and drawing helped to alleviate some of the pent up depression and anger I felt at the time. Times like these, I wish they still worked for me.
I recall one theme of characters I would draw - angel fairies and black shadow people. The angel fairies represented peace, grace, goodness, love, caring. Reflective of my feelings then, they were often trapped, lost, or compromised. The black shadow people when drawn in groups of 4 or more would represent the nameless and lost of society. If only one or two were drawn in a piece, they tended to represent forces of evil.
In one piece, I drew pathways to Salvation. A Thorned Heart with raybeams rested at the center top of the page far from everyone at the bottom. A spiral staircase leading about halfway to the heart grew from the bottom left of the page. To the right of the page, at the same approximate height as the top of the staircase were a grouping of clouds. A pathway up a hill led to a cliff that dropped off into fire on the bottom right of the page. A group of nameless, lost black shadow people stood in the middle at the bottom trying to understand where they were and where they needed to go.
Some got lost on the staircase of Good Deeds - climbing, growing, but always falling off the top step to land where they'd begun. Some looked to and relied on the black shadow people reaching down at them from the "Now too holy to REALLY get our hands dirty but can't keep going up ourselves" clouds, never realizing that they didn't have their eyes on the right prize. They wanted to appear as holy and elevated as the cloud people and couldn't seem to understand the cloud people weren't really any closer than they were to salvation. A good number of the group delighted in the Mountain of Weakness - a seemingly beautiful, wonderful, light adventure ...that dropped them off a cliff into fiery nothing.
Angel fairies attempted to direct the shadow people away from these paths.
A few even sacrificed themselves to the flames to save a person or two.
In this illustration, I think I've become the character I like least. I'm a Cloud Person. The Good Deeds climbers at least have the satisfaction of trying, of being humble, of experiencing an illusion of progress. The Mountain people are just lost. They deserve love and pity as most of them simply don't know any better, don't know that they're supposed to be looking up.
Then there are the Cloud People - the fucking ridiculous bastards.
See, the Cloud People started out alright. Many spent their fair share in the fire. They climbed the Mountain, fell, and were rescued enough to start looking for other paths. They did the Good Deeds thing for a while, but eventually realized they were powerless in their Salvation. They fell a few times, but perservered. Then, they recognized all they really needed to do was look upwards and wait. They realized they needed to have the faith that they were going to reach the Thorned Heart without any obvious way to get there. Eventually, angel fairies (grace) descended upon them and they were being carried to the Heart. Something about seeing the Good Deeds people still going at it and seeing the Mountain people perpetually falling, they stopped receiving the gift of grace. Although grace would never drop them, they had the power to stop receiving it. They stopped ascending.
They got stuck in limbo. They realized how much further up they still needed to go and got scared. They wanted to help everyone else look up to see Truth. But they developed pride. They were enlightened, seemingly successful having tapped into the right path. They were brought too far to choose to fall again, yet they could no longer relate to any other shadow people without looking down on them. Looking down at others, they couldn't look Up anymore.
I'm looking down at others - those who are trying to figure it out, those who are lost, and those in flame. I'm looking over at the Good Deeds people who are really trying. I'm watching people pass me on their way Up.
I'm not looking Up, but I refuse to go back.
I don't know how to fly from here.
I'm afraid of falling, since this cloud hangs above fire. If I fall, I might hit someone being carried to a better state of existence and bring them down as well. If I fall, I risk crushing more than just me. If I fall back to the middle, I'm stuck knowing I can't climb back up via Good Deeds and that the Mountain of Weakness will never really make me happy.
In a lot of ways, this sucks a bajillion times more than being completely clueless. I now know that my biggest obstacle is me. I keep getting in my own fucking way. This is depressing.
Help me fly. Please.
I recall one theme of characters I would draw - angel fairies and black shadow people. The angel fairies represented peace, grace, goodness, love, caring. Reflective of my feelings then, they were often trapped, lost, or compromised. The black shadow people when drawn in groups of 4 or more would represent the nameless and lost of society. If only one or two were drawn in a piece, they tended to represent forces of evil.
In one piece, I drew pathways to Salvation. A Thorned Heart with raybeams rested at the center top of the page far from everyone at the bottom. A spiral staircase leading about halfway to the heart grew from the bottom left of the page. To the right of the page, at the same approximate height as the top of the staircase were a grouping of clouds. A pathway up a hill led to a cliff that dropped off into fire on the bottom right of the page. A group of nameless, lost black shadow people stood in the middle at the bottom trying to understand where they were and where they needed to go.
Some got lost on the staircase of Good Deeds - climbing, growing, but always falling off the top step to land where they'd begun. Some looked to and relied on the black shadow people reaching down at them from the "Now too holy to REALLY get our hands dirty but can't keep going up ourselves" clouds, never realizing that they didn't have their eyes on the right prize. They wanted to appear as holy and elevated as the cloud people and couldn't seem to understand the cloud people weren't really any closer than they were to salvation. A good number of the group delighted in the Mountain of Weakness - a seemingly beautiful, wonderful, light adventure ...that dropped them off a cliff into fiery nothing.
Angel fairies attempted to direct the shadow people away from these paths.
A few even sacrificed themselves to the flames to save a person or two.
In this illustration, I think I've become the character I like least. I'm a Cloud Person. The Good Deeds climbers at least have the satisfaction of trying, of being humble, of experiencing an illusion of progress. The Mountain people are just lost. They deserve love and pity as most of them simply don't know any better, don't know that they're supposed to be looking up.
Then there are the Cloud People - the fucking ridiculous bastards.
See, the Cloud People started out alright. Many spent their fair share in the fire. They climbed the Mountain, fell, and were rescued enough to start looking for other paths. They did the Good Deeds thing for a while, but eventually realized they were powerless in their Salvation. They fell a few times, but perservered. Then, they recognized all they really needed to do was look upwards and wait. They realized they needed to have the faith that they were going to reach the Thorned Heart without any obvious way to get there. Eventually, angel fairies (grace) descended upon them and they were being carried to the Heart. Something about seeing the Good Deeds people still going at it and seeing the Mountain people perpetually falling, they stopped receiving the gift of grace. Although grace would never drop them, they had the power to stop receiving it. They stopped ascending.
They got stuck in limbo. They realized how much further up they still needed to go and got scared. They wanted to help everyone else look up to see Truth. But they developed pride. They were enlightened, seemingly successful having tapped into the right path. They were brought too far to choose to fall again, yet they could no longer relate to any other shadow people without looking down on them. Looking down at others, they couldn't look Up anymore.
I'm looking down at others - those who are trying to figure it out, those who are lost, and those in flame. I'm looking over at the Good Deeds people who are really trying. I'm watching people pass me on their way Up.
I'm not looking Up, but I refuse to go back.
I don't know how to fly from here.
I'm afraid of falling, since this cloud hangs above fire. If I fall, I might hit someone being carried to a better state of existence and bring them down as well. If I fall, I risk crushing more than just me. If I fall back to the middle, I'm stuck knowing I can't climb back up via Good Deeds and that the Mountain of Weakness will never really make me happy.
In a lot of ways, this sucks a bajillion times more than being completely clueless. I now know that my biggest obstacle is me. I keep getting in my own fucking way. This is depressing.
Help me fly. Please.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)