All Things Lucy and Ethel....the names of my new stretchmarks

And the 3rd Trimester welcomed Asher and I with it's magical symptoms this week:

heartburn, backache, and oh yes more stretchmarks!!  The new stretchmarks are named Lucy and Ethel.

I notice myself starting to feel extremely armored to life when I begin to focus on material objects.  I am just like my father in this way.  Tonight my ipad screen cracked and I spent way too much time figuring out how I am going to get through work in the next week without that damn tablet while it gets fixed.  That is usually the sign when I have to pull back from my materialistic neurotic mental ramblings and read something that reminds me what life is all about.  This is where I can thank my lucky stars that I have trimmed my facebook friends list down to only the people in my life who I feel and process life in same manner that I do:  The deep feelers, thinkers, self-depreciating humorists and appreciators that I know and love.  So far, it is working.  Luke even viewed my page briefly tonight and said "all your friends talk about are yoga, peace, and love....hippies."  I told him that was the point.  But tonight I found this quote on another person's wall:

 When we speak of our hometowns, what we really mean is, ‘The place where my sisters and I grew up’, or ‘The place I met my first best friend’, or ‘The place where my kids were born.’ Yes, home is the landscape of people, places, and things upon which we live our life- but it is mostly about the people. That is why home can be a suburban neighborhood, or a struggling farm, or a ship at sea, or a war-torn nation. After all, home is where hearts are.”

That quote reframed my already overly active and materialistic brainwaves for the day.  You know I love to explore the concepts of home.  Tonight I needed to go back to those concepts and leave the iPad Screen Neurosis at the door.  My awesome friend Alyce reminded me of this book that I NEED to read before Asher is born.   My Name Is Asher Lev will be bought and probably devoured through by Monday morning.

The book is about a young artist named Asher who grows up in an Hasidic Jewish Family and has a growing passion for drawing and art!!  You know how there are books on this earth that I call my "soul books."  I think this is one of them.   I think every book I read right now I want to be a soul book.  Bloom by Kelle Hampton was soul book,  Daring Greatly by Brene Brown is a soul book too.  So were Angela's Ashes, The Little Price, The Weetzie Bat Books, and Everything's Illuminated.

Photos from the weekend, Stretchmarks, and meaninglessness

First off photos from the weekend:

This is my cousin Taylor.  She is an art students at the Kansas City Art Institute and here is her art blog:
http://taylormswank.blogspot.com/


The train ride from St. Louis to Kansas City was very enjoyable.   Shyla really enjoyed the ride as well.  It was so great to be present with her as she labeled every farm animal she saw out the window.  She tells me she loves me about every 5 minutes.  I love that my daughter has heard that word so many times in her short little life that she repeats it whenever she has the chance.  On one occasion she pooped on me after saying it.  Cheap shot. Cheap shot.

I read Donald Miller's book "A Million Miles In A Thousand Years"  on the way to Kansas City.  It seemed appropriate for the ride.  Here is my favorite quote from the book :

“And once you live a good story, you get a taste for a kind of meaning in life, and you can't go back to being normal; you can't go back to meaningless scenes stitched together by the forgettable thread of wasted time.” 
― Donald Miller, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life

The book was a reminder to me that living a life of intention and story is not about winning possession and human glory but sacrificing for the sake of creating meaningful moments.  The question that I really took away was, what extra meaningless  crap in my life can I put to the side to create more meaningful moments in the story I am currently living with my family, friends, and God...the author of story and meaning??   Or here is another way to reframe the question, where can I add meaning to otherwise meaningless and mindless activities?? 

 The lack of meaning for all the time I spend in the car driving each week could certainly be used more appropriately.  I think I need into go back to books on CD and mandatory mix tape exchanges with my friends.  Staring mindlessly at roads all day makes me brain swell.  Taking the train instead of driving  to KC is another way I am adding more moments for meaning to my time with Shyla. That was 5 hours of reading and bonding time with my daughter.  I need that time.  I really needed it after last week.  
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Stefanie's baby shower was really fun!!!   It was so fun to meet people I had only heard stories about through the different chapters of her life. Stefanie is such a glowing mom!!!!  I think at least 5 of the girls at the shower were pregnant and all due within 3 months of each other.  Shyla screamed "I love you" to 
everyone in the house and played with this little boy named Deacon.   
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Cafe Gratitude: Last night I had the amazing experience of hanging with Jessica Taggart and Leslie Caldwell at Cafe Gratitude last night.    I had this hot tonic drink called "I am Cozy" and this pizza called "I am Creative.".   I think I need to have more opportunities for coziness in my life.  I think talking to Leslie and Jessica isn acozy in a room full of words  that say "fortitude, gratitude, cherish, blossom, love " fulfills that  description.  I left my camera in the car for this experience, but will gladly relive it with anyone :). The experience is better then any photograph.


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Jacob's Well: I went back to Jacob's Well for the first time in like 8 months... maybe a year.  To be honest, I think I was avoiding that community for my lack of spiritual community that I had in St. Louis.  To put into other words, it hurt too much to go there b/c I found that I was lacking that sort of community in the place I was currently living.  Feeling displaced is so confusing, yet beautiful once you feel rooted.  Anyway, I got a chance to see Tim and Mimi Keel.  Tim talked about how concepts like grace and love are fierce and how God uses such gifts to completely disrupt our lives.  I think the last three years and yes BOTH pregnancies were God's way of disrupting my "plans."   I am still pondering this.  It felt so great to be back there, yet feeling rooted in my own city that I currently reside...yes...home....St. Louis.
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Stretchmarks: Now back in St. Louis and in the swing of my work routine that brings in revenue for my family, I found a new stretchmark from the ever progressing baby Asher.  Here is the thing, no one else except me cares about this dumb, meaningless additional mark to my body.  I have awesome body art and a fun life.   I will never understand why I fall into the stupid lie of feeling like I want to bare  children but want no physical symptoms of it????    Why do we do this to ourselves.  Yay stretchmarks!!!  Much like many things in life, they never resolve.  They are always there to remind us of the amazing things our body was able to do for 9 plus months.  I guess that is how God is.

I want to love what my body is doing and what it has done.