I think I forgot to mention it last time, so let’s pretend it was because I’m a good wife and didn’t want to rub in the fact that VINCE WAS WRONG IN GUESSING THE GENDER OF THE BABY (ahem) but for the record…we’re having a boy. Ta da!
His name is Kavanagh and we’re at 23 weeks, and both of us are doing great – one morning I ate one bowl of vanilla ice cream, some stewed peaches, two shots of espresso with milk, three strips of bacon, two pieces of bread, some lettuce, tomato, mayo and pepper.
So, yes, that means I had coffee, ice cream with fruit, and a BLT for breakfast, and I’m eating like The Very Hungry Caterpillar.
Sometimes, most of the time, I go through these days like it’s no big deal because, well, this isn’t our first rodeo. I can feel him kicking right now, and usually it’s familiar enough to not pay attention to. But there are other times when I stop to think about it and realize we are having another baby, there is a tiny human in there, and I’m so stunned I hardly know what to think.
We never in a million years expected this little guy, but this year has shocked us with so many things we never expected, we should get used to it, I guess. His ways are not our ways.
Our expectations are wildly deceptive. I scrolled facebook and saw an ad that said, “Dream of being published?” featuring a gorgeous 20-something, tan, white-blonde girl in a heavy sweater, short-shorts, and messy bun; she sat in a pristine room with an airy curtain and smiled at her iPad. So glam. So attractive.
So false. Don’t fall for it.
Here I am, sitting on the bed with the laptop, next to two cats and a basket full of unfolded laundry (hashtag glamlife), staring at the screen for twenty minutes and getting nothing else accomplished. Let’s not talk about what my hair looks like.
The mission, should I choose to accept it, is to tweak an article. You know, just a couple of simple fixes – add a space for a link here, make a few statements about something there, no biggie – and the editor says, It won’t take you more than a few minutes.
Ha. You can always tell someone who’s not a writer by a statement like that.
He is sort of right; the actual typing will probably take all of 22 seconds. It’s the thinking part that takes at least 45 minutes of staring, typing, back spacing, and deleting until everything clarifies into the appropriate “tweak.” Yep. Piece of cake, no problem. Twenty minutes down, twenty-five minutes to go. Yay.
A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.
– Thomas Mann
That girl in the ad was smiling at her tablet, for crying out loud – not throwing it across the room in utter and complete vexation at 224 pages of misloaded documents and jacked up indentations and formatting. Those lying marketers.
There was no mention of her messy kitchen heaped with dishes and neglected breakfast leftovers, or the piles of papers and to-do lists all over the desk and coffee table, or the computer cords stationed throughout the house so you can charge whenever the low battery alert comes on, or the stifled expletives when documents won’t load correctly on various platforms.
Maybe I should do something with my hair, I thought. Maybe that would make this feel more glam.
(Eh. It helps a little, but still doesn’t fix the formatting in Word for me.)
But we’re just as guilty of having wildly deceptive expectations at the other end of the spectrum, too. We aim too low, we expect too little, and we have not because we ask not because we doubt too much.
We think we will never get there (wherever “there” is). We think we’re not good enough. We think we have to settle. We think our child will never get their act together. We think too much of ourselves and too little of God, under the ruse of piously thinking we’re doing the right thing by not asking too much or expecting too much, because (insert pulpit voice) God’s ways are not our ways, when we forget that that is true because He is so much better than we are…not worse.
I just finished reading Job. This was also not my first rodeo.
I’ve probably read Job between 12-15 times in the last twenty years, but this time I finally realized why reading it has always been a drag for me (is it for you, too?).
It’s not because the subject is about suffering. We read about suffering in pretty much every other book in the Bible, and in most stories in general. But I realized I get frustrated because when I read the Bible, I’m going there to learn about God’s character, and Job primarily isn’t about God’s character – it’s about human nature. And us humans, we’re a piece of work.
These verses are about our presumptions, pride, know-it-all-ness, superiority, and desire to grasp for reason and accusation when life doesn’t make sense. The verses in Job are, for the most part, absolutely no good for a cute Instagram meme (be skeptical if you see one, and check to see what part of Job it’s from) for the same reason we wouldn’t quote the lies of Pharoah in Exodus or the threats of Tobiah and Sanballat in the book of Nehemiah. We can’t take these verses singly without first checking whom (or Whom) they apply to.
Taken alone, they are only half the truth. They are our ways, not His ways; they are the expectations at the low end of the spectrum.
Once I understood that, reading Job this time around was a joy. Well, maybe not a joy, but at least more encouraging, because human nature is fascinating, yes?
And the Lord said to Job: “Shall a faultfinder contend with the Almighty? He who argues with God, let him answer it.”
– Job 40:1-2, ESV
Sometimes I’m a slow learner, which is why I’ve needed to read it so many times to understand even this much. It’s probably why He’s surprised us twice now: He is continually calling us to raise our expectations.
This is where God calibrates our nature against His.
Our ways would’ve had us done having kids before Finnegan. We would’ve missed out on his bright sunshine, and all the joy Kavanagh will bring with him.
Our ways would’ve struggled and striven for another ten, twenty years, never finishing books and wondering why hope deferred was a constant way of life. But Vince’s book releases next Tuesday, and my next one comes out in October.
Our ways would’ve ruined our marriage, our parenting, our friendships, and future ministry. But He has us growing and learning in each area.
Our ways are not His ways…and He says it as an assurance, not a threat or veiled burden, as it is sometimes communicated to be.
My way would have me throwing the laptop across the room when adding page numbers ruined the spacing of the last half of the manuscript.
But His way is to bring calm, so I can learn how to fix it, and approach the dilemma as writers have for centuries – which, of course, is researching Youtube videos until we get it figured out, and then watching funny cat videos on Facebook for stress reduction therapy.
Which, also for the record, is probably the real reason the lady was smiling at her tablet.
