Vipers

Blogger messed up and did something crazy. This post is actually from a few years ago, no idea why it reposted it.


I’m in a not good place. I'm in a general state of irritation and frustration. And for the love of all that is holy, anyone who even TRIES to say “It’s just the hormones” gets whacked upside the head....okay maybe THAT statement is just the hormones. But on the whole my not good place is not the hormones. It is life and being an adult and the impending responsibility that is motherhood. People who don’t say the prospect of parenthood terrifies them are either lying or need to be educated on the damage slash good a parent does their kid. Regardless of which side you fall into on the old nature vs nurture debate, one thing is clear: either way it’s the parent’s fault. After all, it’s their nature, and they’re the ones nurturing. Rotten eggs or golden apples, it’s mommy and daddy who teach the baby what to be.

With each passing day I think more and more about what I want to teach my kid. I’m contemplating making her or him a book for each stage of life, not because I think my kid will be the only kid ever in the history of the planet to learn from their parents mistakes, but because there is so much I want to teach him/her and show him/her and help him/her explore. The day after we found out there was gonna be a baby I made a play list on my ipod to listen to while I’m pregnant because I wanted to baby developing some good taste in music as early as possible (seriously, my kid ever touches a Creed album and I’ll know I’ve failed horribly). I think about toys and playtime and chores and how to teach responsibility and generosity and kindness. I know a lot of that is a long way off, but I can’t help it. I want my kid to be a good, and genuine person, who puts others first and loves unconditionally and keeps their word........and then I get hit with this feeling like I’m aiming too high. Maybe I should just wish for him or her to be president or something. Because, and here’s where my not good place comes in, I feel like I don’t know anyone like who I want my kid to be. Don’t get me wrong, I know a lot of really great people who all have great attributes. But I feel like I don’t know very many people with integrity. I told my husband this morning that right now I just feel like everyone I know is a liar.

Harsh I know. First of let me explain that I’m not excluding myself from this, saying that I alone am awesome and everyone else sucks. I’m definitely included in the moral majority here, I think everyone is. And I don’t mean to say that everyone I know speaks only lies all the time. My point is that at this moment in my life I feel like I am surrounded by people who are not honest about who they are, their words and actions aren’t an accurate portrait of their hearts. I feel like we are all so consumed with image maintenance that we have lost all integrity.

I’ve been thinking a lot about Matthew 23:27 and 28. In these verses Jesus tells the pharisees that they’re like “whitewashed tombs, which on the outside look beautiful, but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and all kinds of filth.” Jesus said that the pharisees were like that, looking clean and righteous on the outside, but that on the inside they were full of “hypocrisy and lawlessness”. I cannot express how deeply I long to not be like that, or how sad I am that I see the truth of that statement in people all around me.

John Ortberg said “Human conversation is largely an endless attempt to convince others that we are more assertive or clever or gentle or successful than they might think if we did not carefully educate them.” It’s not that I think that people who hide their problems or wrongdoings or faults do so maliciously or with intent to hurt people. I think that we are afraid of what people will think. I think that we want to be seen a certain way and will do everything in our ability to get other to see us in this light. I think we are afraid to put a spotlight on our shortcomings because we don’t want to face them and we don’t want to be judged and we don’t want anyone to know our private business. But the Bible says someone already does know our private business. In the first few verses of Matthew 6 Jesus says that we should be careful not be righteous in front of the world because the reward comes from doing what is right when it’s just you and God. God isn’t concerned with your public persona, He is watching your private life, your personal business. The bottom line is that no matter how we want people to perceive us it doesn’t matter, that perception means nothing in the end. Only the truth of who we are, how we live when no one is looking, our integrity, only that means something to God. Not what your Facebook friends think of you or your life.

I know there is a line. I don’t want every single person I know in this world knowing everything about me or my thoughts. Obviously sharing your struggles and your difficulties with someone requires discernment and wisdom. But this is something different than what I’m talking about. I’m talking about your morality matching your ethics. Ethics is the standard of right and wrong you claim for yourself, and morality is the standard of right and wrong by which you actually live. So, ethics is what you say you believe, and morality is what you act out in your life. When these two things match up, that’s integrity. And that is what I am talking about.

The more you hide the truth of your heart and the reality of who you are, the more entrenched you become in whatever it is you are trying to hide. The less integrity we have the more we are inclined to continue on in our behavior. I’m not saying the solution is proclaim all the things we’ve done wrong and tell everyone we know what sinners we are. I think the solution is more quiet than that, a subtle shift. Find the areas of our lives where our ethics and morality don’t match up, the areas where we aren’t living what we say we believe. Confess that. And now the tricky part, stop the behavior. Let God’s grace change us and shape us into the image of His son. Live with integrity in every area. Actually BE the person we present ourselves as.

I know that my irritation and frustration will go away, and my worries of raising a hypocritical lying little hellion will fade (I hope). I’ll try to teach my kid that integrity means being consistent with how you act, and lining your actions up with what you say you believe. And I will never stop striving to be a woman of integrity, or stop being conscious of the example I am setting.

I Forget About This

When i started this blog it was for a different purpose than any other online journal thing I had going. I was going to blog all the time about spiritual truths and things the Lord was doing in my heart, woohoo!! But of course life gets in the way. And though the Lord really has been doing things in my heart, He has also changed my life quite a bit. The biggest change being that I'm about 17 weeks pregnant with Baby Smith. Which I think changes the nature of this blog again, because although I still want it to be an update on all of the spiritual things, it will also serve as a way to update my far reaching family on baby stuff. I know that facebook is sort of for that purpose, but the truth is that I don't want to share every detail of every story and every picture on facebook. Too broad. This is something a small selection of people look at and so I can be more honest, more candid, and because of the format I can also be more longwinded. Which I tend to be anyway. I still will be writing about stuff going on in my heart and spiritual truths and everything of that nature because you really can't separate the two, your life and your spiritual life. It's all entertwined (or it should be).

For today we'll stick with an update:

Baby Stuff: As of our last appointment baby and me are healthy and doing good. Wilbur (as he or she has been dubbed by fam) has a wicked fast heartbeat but apparently that's totally normal. He also likes to wiggle around. A lot. It mostly just feels like going over speed bumps, but Aaron swears he felt the baby move. The only downer at this point is the blood thinner meds, and really the only reason it's a downer is cause of the brusing on my tummy from the injections. For those unaware I tested positive for Factor V Lieden which is, briefly, a blood clotting disorder. My blood likes to be clumpy. During pregnancy you're at a higher than normal risk for blood clots and so to have an additional increase in that risk pushes me into the coveted "high risk pregnancy" category. For full facts and figures google it. The blood thinners I'm on take away almost all the risks, which is really good. And, thank the Lord, we have excellent insurance that pays for the meds in a way that I was not prepared for (seriously, even the pharmicist commented on how awesome it was that I was paying so low a copay for these meds). Otherwise everything is good. Some later date I will devote an entire blog to the sheer and utter panic I feel at the prospect of being a parent, but for the most part, it's all good.

Baby's First Pictures:

<>

Other than baby news there is a lot of other stuff going on. The update ends without details because thanks to facebook the entire world knows my and my family's every last detail so there really isn't a need for me to recap. It all just makes me incredibly sad slash irritated slash completely panic stricken. Interpret that to each situation as you will.

As things get more interesting with the Baby there will be more posts, plus I will just be trying to post more in general since I've sucked at it recently.

Happy Thanksgiving. Be grateful. It's in the Bible.