disconcerting

Today, Krysta posted this link to some free music:




So far, I am enjoying me some JJ Heller; however, I decided to putz around on her website and found her blog. Turns out she's due to have a baby girl six days before me, and she has graced us with some lovely photos of her nursery (compliments of Lovely Little Things). If you're interested in decorating, you should really check it out.





Forgive me for feeling slightly deflated when I contemplated the current state of things in my own little girl's room:





Yikes. It's not even the right color.

a little dream psychology

I had a dream about the little lady last night. There were some strange elements—I came to the hospital to have a baby but didn’t feel or remember much of anything until she was born. She was absolutely beautiful but was somehow already able to walk. The most disturbing part was that I never established any sort of real attachment to her. I kept leaving her behind and forgetting about her, and I had this intense anxiety that I had entirely missed my chance to bond with her. Here she was, already walking, and I didn’t even know how to feed her.

Except for the fact that she was a drop-dead gorgeous baby, I think this might be categorized as a nightmare.

Lately, I’ve been doing a lot of the necessary research on labor and delivery, and I feel convicted by my dream--that maybe I'm becoming paranoid and not trusting God. Information is good, but I can't let it make me worry. Prayer would be good. Yes, maybe I should go pray. Ok, I'm gonna go pray now.

writing is a tricky task.

Writing is a tricky task. I dream of having something truly worthwhile to say, something that other people would want to hear. Maybe I could publish a memoir someday? Does a 24-year-old have any right to contemplate writing a memoir? Still, I want to be involved in the craft somehow. But how?

This summer has been both discouraging and encouraging along these lines. In many ways, I have felt thwarted. In fact, almost completely diverted. The writing class I had planned to take in Virginia Beach, which was, amazingly, one about creating a spiritual memoir, ended up starting around the time we left. I’ve also found that I’m not one to volunteer information about being pregnant, despite the fact that this milestone fills my thoughts. This blog is the perfect place to practice, but it haunts me with its archives full of forced word choice.

Other circumstances have recently spurred me on, however. Yesterday I was given several chapters from a book-in-progress about living with hormone fluctuations—my job is simply to provide feedback. I feel an excitement creeping in, because here is a subject on which I could genuinely contribute, not as the writer, but as a person speaking from experience. As a side note, I’ll admit, I wouldn’t mind having my name listed in the acknowledgments. Even more encouraging, the spiritual malaise of my first trimester (and really the last year of my life) is giving way to a deeper, truer relationship with God, and I’ve discovered I have more to talk about than just being pregnant. I don’t want this to become a mommy blog (Baby A, or Wee Strong as we call her, can have her own website); I want to keep talking about matters of the spirit. Hopefully a little deep calling to deep will happen, both the result of and beyond the realm of motherhood.

Finally, I’ve decided that a painful reading through old blog entries might make an excellent exercise in developing my voice. I don’t want to write something just because it sounds good. I want to write it because I mean it. I can detect a false motive in a single word when I read some of my past blogs—I don’t want this to make me feel ashamed, so that I end up deleting most of my entries. I want this to remind me to test the words I use now for authenticity and truth.

What I’m saying is: I have something to say. I should say it.