Author Archives: Amy Jane

The Wonder– a Tuesday Tale

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From Gary Schmidt’s book, Mara’s Stories: glimmers in the darkness.

Framed within a story of a rabbi’s daughter telling tales in a death camp during WWII, all the tales are a mix flavored by older ideas and images, and embedded in the un-ignorable “now” of Jewish oppression and the camps.

Chiam (whose name means life) had just lost his father, and now his faith. Immersed in the destruction and death of the camps the boy fought to simply stay empty.

This particular morning Chiam had an assignment, and waited in the mud with a line of other boys and old men for his turn to help carry a huge vat of watery soup back to the barracks.

When he stepped forward he saw it was his own rabbi who would be helping him carry the load back through the cold and slippery yard.

Somehow the rabbi knew at once that Chiam had lost faith, and gently probed the boy’s wounded loss, insisting,

“He is the all and ever-present. He is here… even in this place.”

Chiam resisted the suggestion.

“I have seen the world, Rabbi, and I know that God cannot be here.”

“What would God have to do,” asked the rabbi, “to prove Himself to you, young Chiam who has seen so much of the world?”

“He would have to make a wonder, Rabbi. God would have to make a wonder.”

As they talked and walked, the muddy ground grew more and more treacherous underfoot. As they approached the steps of the barracks the old rabbi’s grip slipped and hot soup sloshed on the shins of the guard at the door.

Chiam braced himself for the blows he knew would come next. He knew the old man would be killed for his clumsiness, and maybe Chiam too. The boy felt ready to welcome death in such an empty and meaningless world.

But two heartbeats, then three, passed without the guard looking at them. The rabbi steadied himself and they entered the barracks together and setting down the vat of soup.

Chiam looked up into his rabbi’s face, eyes shining with a new hope. The old man leaned forward, cupping the back of Chiam’s neck in his hand, and drawing the boy forward until their foreheads touched.

“Even here,” the rabbi whispered. “In this place.”

Growing through 2 Peter 1:5-8

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This actually came up in Sunday School several weeks ago, but I was thinking of it again and wanted to share it.

In 2 Peter chapter 1, the author reminds us that God’s “divine power has given us everything required for life and godliness,” then goes on to list a progression:

Make every effort to supplement your faith with goodness, goodness with knowledge, knowledge with self-control, self-control with endurance, endurance with godliness, godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love.

As the mother of young children who’ve made a confession of faith, I suddenly saw this differently than I had before.

I saw this as a list of spiritual development paralleling stages of natural development.

The girls have each made a confession of faith, so that is their starting place. In this new context, with the Spirit’s help, they are now learning goodness.

As a few more years go by their main occupation will become their schooling (adding knowledge). Then, I see this exponentially applying to the adolescent years, they add in increased self-control.

As a young adult (I want to say especially as a young parent) we add endurance, because I think we never truly learn how much we can be stretched until “child(ren)” happens to us.

I see godliness as something we all are working toward, but that we see most consistently in, well, in people older than me.

As a tendency to base the majority of your behaviors off of obedience to a very clear understanding of what God would have us do, I see godliness as something that takes a bit of familiarity with the Word and sensitivity to God’s leading in your life.

Something, in short, most visible with spiritual maturity.

And to finish with the brotherly kindness and love, I think this is the natural progression of our interaction with others. Initially (and this is where I’m at in teaching my children right now), we choose to be kind, because it’s the right, God-honoring thing to do.

Ultimately, we want everything we do to be motivated by love.

When we are genuinely doing everything out of a pure love, that, I believe is the measure of maturity.

9-Month-Old Issues

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This advice may or may not be good enough to return to. But I spent some time putting it all down is someone else’s “comments,” and figured I would tuck it away in my archives for future reference.

The main content is in response to a three questions raised by the mother of a 9-month-old:

  1. Katherine frequently screeches as loudly as she can…I’ve been trying to figure out why and if there’s a pattern…it seems to be when she’s frustrated or mad or annoyed. Is there any way I can teach her not to do this? And/or teach her a better way of expressing herself?
  2. She has started squirming all over the place when I try to change her diaper or her clothes. When I lay her on her back, she flips to her tummy and scoots away. How can I train her to hold still while I’m changing her?
  3. She’s really mobile and crawls like a sprinter. She loves to explore and get into everything…especially the cats’ food and water dishes. We have a Pack-n-Play, but that’s where she sleeps at night, so I don’t want to use it as a play pen – I want to keep her play space and her sleeping space separate in her mind. I feel like I can’t get anything that requires thinking done while she’s awake because I’m constantly diverting one disaster after another. I’ve taken to staying up wicked late to work on things after M and K are asleep, but then I wind up tired and grouchy in the morning…because as soon as Katherine wakes up, I’m up for good too.

My response:

For “physical discipline” before K is ready for “flicks” or whatever, I defer to a friend of mine who primarily uses immobilization (e.g. holding her hands between yours) for a number of counts.

As Kathy points out, the primary purpose of disciple is memorable discomfort (I think she actually uses the word pain, but it doesn’t have to be painful (in the literal sense) to be memorable.

That said, I wouldn’t use “discipline” for any of these three issues yet. Not at 9-months.

For #1, definitely start working on the please sign. This should cut down on the frustrated screeches.

However it will do nothing for the “thwarted” (my preschoolers are quite familiar with this word) screeches or the “I’m glad I’m alive and have found my voice” screeches that are delightful in their own way, but never comfortable in the hard-surfaces (loud) home I understand you to have.

For the times when you don’t like the attitude of the screeches (I did this with a wild 3-y-o just a night ago, so it has broad application) you can Puh! a pop of air in her face (instant/temporary mute) and use your cue-phrase. Ours is “low voice” and we still use it with our older kids when the volume gets just too big.

When it’s a happy screech you can encourage clapping, “wah-wah” her mouth with your hand or hers to break up the sound and/or encourage a new one, or model a lower pitch to express delight. (pitch exchanging, like sound-copying/exchanging is a good thing to do with your kiddo).

You could introduce (though expect it to take decades to nail-down) the concept of indoor-voice, allowing special play-time outside to use/encourage the outdoor voice.

#2: Never make her go through a diaper change empty-handed.

Yes, sometimes the squirming is defiance, but sometimes is the roar of “No fair! You’ve got candy (mobility) when I don’t!” And that will drown out *any* attempt at discipline. She only knows she can’t do what she wants most in the world.

Give the kid something to do. Be creative. It will be a long time before she understands the delayed gratification diaper changes are an example of.

This is the age I wouldn’t flick/slap yet, not even if you think it’s defiance. I do all my diaper-changes on the floor, and (when necessary) I hold down the upper body with my feet.

Side note: I think if you start the physical discipline too soon, the child learns too soon it’s your big gun, and how if they can tough-it-out it’ll unnerve the parent.

This isn’t the age where you want to be asking yourself, “Am I hitting hard enough? Do I need to do it more?” when (and she won’t yet– I think this is still too young to truly make the connection) she doesn’t modify her behavior in line with your efforts.

#3 Get an ergo. All the stuff about 3rd-world moms being wonderful b/c they wear their babies all the time is connected (in my mind at least) to the reality that most of them don’t have other options– who wants to set their babies down in an un-safe place?

That may sound snarky about those moms (I don’t mean it that way of course), but praising necessity… well, it has its purposes I guess…

You may already have a challenge getting started with this, because I don’t know if K’s been “confined” regularly up to this point, but the earlier you start the “Normaler” this will be for her.

As long as you’re actively working around the house (and afraid she’ll get into trouble), I’d say wear her.

Definitely for “witching hour” (that challenging time of dinner and transition in the afternoon/evening) if no other time, you’ll find it useful to have her on your body.

As to letting her play in bed, I differ from what seems to be general consensus so far. I think she should play there at least a bit.

Baby Whisperer brings it up, and I think it’s valid, that you want baby to have positive associations with her bed, and if you can get her used to being there as a play place (depending on her personality) you may get more sleep time because she won’t feel the need to get out to start playing. A few crib-safe toys or (eventually) a snack-trap of cheerios could keep her entertained that blessed 5-15 minutes extra your snooze button doesn’t offer any more.

Naturally you want to keep those play times as obviously distinct from sleep times as possible, and I wouldn’t use the bed for time-out’s or any punishments for that same reason– wanting to keep as positive an association as possible with bed.

And, yeah, I know that’s long, but you did ask. ;-)

Write Like a Man

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Kaye introduced me to The Gender Genie a while back and I thought some visitors here might be interested in my results.

I tested my novel (the opening chapters at least) and they came back accurately guessed to be written by a female. So, as there was a “blog post” catigory, I started playing with random posts to check the genie’s continued accuracy.

I found the results interesting, and possibly inflammatory, depending on who wants to interpret them.

The personal story/relational ones I checked came back with the guess they were written by a female:

And my analytical/practical advice stuff came back with the guess it was written by a male:

ETA: I checked a number of my male-centered Tuesday Tales and these also came back as male-written.

I find this somewhat gratifying, maybe for the same reason no woman wants to hear “You throw like a girl,” when playing a sport with men.

Going beyond basic politeness, I like to be able to hold my own and prove myself a reasonably competent participant on the neutral terms (i.e., by the rules) even if they might be a bit skewed to begin with (we all know that the strongest man will always be stronger than the strongest woman).

And I’m speaking literally here, so, please, nobody pick a fight. I’ll ignore it. ;)

Mama Tip– Pedialyte

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If you have a kid (or a spouse) who’s been sick, odds are you’ve been told to push fluids– especially Pedialyte. The main problem: they have to include suggestions on how to make it more palatable.That’s how simply nasty the stuff tastes.

The last time I was forced to think about this I bought some Pedialyte of the “unflavored” variety and mixed it (instead of water) with apple juice concentrate.

No complaints and great compliance. Works for me!

Power?

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There was an excuse for soft-porn in the paper the other day.

It was an article about sex-is-power, and had images from a “girl-band tryout” and a several-years-old image of an (also) under dressed Britney Spears. I was thankful the pictures were B&W, but it still floored me they fronted a newspaper section (okay, so it was both surprising and not that the paper would do it).

Jay and I both read the whole article.  It talked about the wave of exhibitionism on youTube and other places, and how “sexy” is the path to *power* in today’s world– and how these young women will do anything to feel powerful.

At the end of the article all I could feel was hollow, and sad. I didn’t really feel like it was inaccurate. On some level I felt that it was rubbing in my personal powerlessness as an (average-looking) mom, knowing that even well-written words are not going to compete with images for the minds of “the masses.”

But more than that, and at the top of my mind enough to be the first thing out of my mouth when Jay and I finally could speak again, was, “No wonder the elderly have no power in this society.”

We’re All Psych Cases– or at least sinners

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I am doing some light research about some psychological issues for my novels (latest article, “The mystery of loving an abuser”). One of my novels has a side-character enmeshed in an unhealthy relationship, and the protagonist in a different novel avoids something similar.

Both times, though, just trying to figure out how all these minds work and the interplay just fascinates me.

It made me think of an observation I made after reading a blog post about discovering Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

Maybe it’s just me, but whenever I read descriptions like this I get a twinge, seeing shadows of myself. But then I remind myself that things like wanting to feel significant and noticed are normal parts of being human, and are not in themselves unhealthy.

I never cease to be impressed by the appearance that nearly every problem or disorder is the extreme of a normal human feeling and/or a natural part of growing up that didn’t pass in its proper time.

I think the hardest part about learning more about these issues is discovering how statistically irredeemable people with these problems are.

I don’t like irredeemable.

I think I would have been like Frodo with Smeagle (in Lord of the Rings)– it would have scared the snot out of me, and I wouldn’t have have the guts to pull it off without a Sam to share watches with, but I’d have wanted to risk it.

When we remember that all sin is Sin in God’s eyes, and that all sin separates us from God, hoping for the villain’s redemption is maybe a way of hoping for our own.

When there is hope for him, there is hope for me, you see?

It also holds out a hope for those I love that I know are still separated from God.

Is anything too hard for the Lord?

The Braided Rope– a Tuesday Tale

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I have written this off the corner of a memory of a description of a tale.  I welcome anyone pointing me to the original source so I can give due credit.

A young man and woman married despite the desire of her family.

They did not expressly forbid her to marry, for there was nothing wrong with the hard-working young man, other than he was a fisherman.

“You will be poor, and most likely widowed in your youth!” her mother would moan. “Then what will you do?”

But the couple was determined, and as they began their new life together the wife shyly presented her husband with a gift of her own lovely hair, braided into a small ornate rope. He tucked it into the inner pocket of his jacket, in order to have it always close to his heart.

As everyone had known would happen one day, the fisherman’s small boat was caught out in a storm, and he knew he was lost.

With all his great muscles straining, he fought the winds and rowed until the waves ripped the oars from their locks.

Looking toward the shore he saw his beautiful wife standing on the rocks looking out over the ocean.

Her long hair whipping in every direction because of the fierce winds, he feared she would be knocked into the sea. At the same time he knew she would risk that for her last chance to see him.

The fisherman pulled out the ornament of hair she had given him. It was frazzled and matted from long months in his pocket, but he didn’t notice. All he saw was his bride standing by the water, and felt sorrow not at dying, but for leaving her alone, and his own grief of parting from her.

Impulsively, he kissed the cord of hair, and saw his wife look up suddenly.

In a gray boat tossed like a toy in a gray sea, she saw him.

She held out her arms to him, and without thinking the fisherman dove into the ocean.

Kicking off his huge boots and pulling with all his power through the icy water, the fisherman felt the braided cord clinging to his fingers as he swam. Waves continued to break over him, but they never pulled him under.

Every time he cleared his eyes again, there was his wife standing in the shallows, her clothes dripping in the downpour. She would be waiting with a rope to throw him– if he made it close enough.

He began to feel a warmth that reminded him of her arms. He swam more slowly, and the sound of the wind seemed to be growing muffled.

At that moment he felt a rope against his hand. Coming instantly alive he wrapped it round his forearm and began to fight the waves with renewed hope.

The cold was burning him now– innumerable lances of pain weighing down his limbs and screaming at him to give up, but in the rope he could feel the touch of his wife’s hands. She, who loved him enough to risk being pulled into the sea. His anchor. His tie to land and life.

The combination of storm-twilight and salt-spray now obscured her from sight, but that she held him– defying the sea– was undeniable.

At last he felt rocks underfoot. He stumbled toward the shore as though running downhill. The rope was still in his hand when he collapsed beside his wife.

“That was a good throw, my love,” he said, as she clutched his head to her pounding heart.

“We must get where it is warm,” she said.

“How far do you think you threw it?” he persisted, leaning heavily on her shoulder as they walked toward shelter.

“It was with you the whole time,” she said

The young woman held up the end of the rope he still clutched. He could see it was firm and untangled, woven in the same pattern as the token she given him so many months before.

But this rope was far longer. Long enough to reach from storm to shore, and strong enough to bring him safely home.

“And all the times you’ve been away,” she said, “I’ve never let go of it.”

Something to Remember

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Don’t rebuke an adult the first time s/he does something stupid.  Odds are good they know it was dumb and are mortified enough they’ll never forget it.

This has been true for me more times than I care to remember.

I Have a Wonderful Husband

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Just in case there is any question.

(I realized a visitor popping by might see that previous title and guess I’m a whiner or don’t have a good man. I’d hate for either assumption to be believed.)

On this blog I’ve written some of what I love about my husband, and given an example of his protectiveness that was quietly affirming.

And in the last two weeks as I’ve been recovering from pneumonia (and the overdoing it while sick) his vacation time has been spent covering for me again.

Basically, I didn’t want to miss another opportunity to honor Jay and thank him for all he does to serve this family. We would not be able to make it without him.

I know I have a very unique man. I also know that God has been giving Jay special grace for this challenging time and teaching him things through it.

This has not been an easy time for him.