One of my projects for the indeterminate future is to memorize more hymns and Bible verses. I find it calming to recite ones I know in moments of stress, unfortunately I don't have that much memorized so it's a lot of the same thing over and over.
One of my favorite hymns, and one that I have at least part of memorized, is "Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing." The two following verses are the ones I have memorized (from cyberhymnal.org (warning: plays music):
Come, Thou Fount of every blessing,
Tune my heart to sing Thy grace;
Streams of mercy, never ceasing,
Call for songs of loudest praise.
Teach me some melodious sonnet,
Sung by flaming tongues above.
Praise the mount! I’m fixed upon it,
Mount of Thy redeeming love.
O to grace how great a debtor
Daily I’m constrained to be!
Let Thy goodness, like a fetter,
Bind my wandering heart to Thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love;
Here’s my heart, O take and seal it,
Seal it for Thy courts above.
I like this hymn for two reasons: first, it highlights the fact that my main purpose in life is not to be successful, particularly, but to praise God. It's comforting to know that no matter how much I might snarl up other aspects of my life, I'll always be as free as I ever was to pursue the main purpose of my existence, the only one I'll be continuing long after all my earthly pursuits are over.
Second, it implies that praise is not something I can do by myself. The ability to praise God is a gift from God. I must be taught to sing God's praise, and I must continually be brought back by God when I stray away. And it's not God's just punishment or just discipline that brings me back or binds me to Him--it's HIs goodness alone. We all think of God as a judge, which He is, but we find it hard to think of perfect justice and perfect mercy co-existing in the same person, because that's not the way it works with us. So many times I've been so much harder on myself than God would be on me. Without excusing myself for my own sin, I have to remember that it's God's desire to pour out mercy and goodness on me, and not judgement. Christ makes that possible.
My ability to praise God indicates that I've already been gifted by Him. My ability to praise Him in difficult times doesn't reflect my shining character, but rather testifies to the fact that God is still with me no matter how things might seem. If I'm properly attuned to what God wants for me, praising God will be my chief comfort in bad times and will keep me from being distracted by trivialities during good times.
I try not to be a complainer but I've genuinely come to the conclusion that people put way too much pressure on pregnant women to constantly do the exact correct thing in every aspect of their lives--and particularly pregnant women put too much pressure on themselves. I actually saw one woman asking on a pregnancy message board asking if it was okay to sleep on her right side--she'd read that sleeping on your left side was best for the baby, and was worried sleeping on her other side might hurt it. I hate to think of some poor woman attempting to stay on one side only every night for nine months, particularly since something about my new body makes whichever side I'm lying on quite sore within half an hour or so.
That said, I am trying to play by the rules. But some of the rules are just a little funnier than others. First, two from the official pregnancy book given to be my my dr:
1. If you have a headache, it's not worth the risk to take a pain reliever. For such minor pains, it's much better to go out and take a walk.
First of all, I'd like to visit personally with the author of that sentence so I can give her some minor pain to think about. Second, telling someone with a headache to take a walk is like telling someone with pneumonia to watch a football game: it might or might not be a fun experience, but it has absolutely no effect on the underlying ailment.
Fortunately, my dr. said it was okay to take plain tylenol. And I have--one at a time--four or five times since getting pregnant.
2. Be sure to wash your hands thoroughly after petting your cat or handling any of its belongings.
This might be hard since my cats consider everything in our apartment, including me, to be their belonging. I do wash my hands an awful lot, but I've had 12 years to catch anything the cats might have to pass on to me, so I'm not terribly concerned about this one.
3. I must preface this one by saying this has no personal application to me in any way whatsoever, it just inspired some general thoughts, so no need to feel freaked out when you read it. If you still feel like it might be tmi, go ahead and stop reading. Andy wrote a new blog post about H.P. Lovecraft yesterday, you can read that instead if you like.
This one comes from a book about pregnancy for dads. It goes into raptures about how awesome the second trimester is: the second-trimester pregnant woman is supposed to be over nausea and hormonal emotionalness, and is also supposed to have an increased sex drive, and "she might not even be showing that much yet!".
This, to me, seems to put an awful lot of pressure on the second-trimester mom. I have nothing to say about other factors, but I have to say that while I was remarkably even-tempered during my first trimester, I suddenly got absolutely smacked with hormonal flare-ups starting promptly in the fourth month. It's quite alarming, for me anyway, one minute nothing's wrong, then for ten minutes the sky comes crashing in, then suddenly I'm fine and am wondering why the heck I'm crying.
Now, regarding matters which have no personal application to me in any way. First, although she might not be "showing" much to outsiders (although on the other hand, she might: an actual dr. friend was astounded to realize, upon seeing me the other day, that at my current size I still have 4 months to go--thanks man), she herself probably feels like somebody made a Macy's Thanksgiving Parade balloon version of her and transported her brain into it. I know I've been feeling like that since eight weeks. It's a little difficult just navigating this skiff ("but 'skiff' is appropriate, right?") from room to room, so I'm hoping the expectant fathers who read that book aren't expecting too much.
There were some other funny pieces of advice but my pregnant brain isn't remembering what they were right now. Which is another funny thing about pregnancy advice: who can even remember it all?
That was the tagline from one of the "school notebooks" which we bought in Turkey for archaeological notes of various kinds. It featured a picture of a young woman with a contemplative expression, whose "dreams" must have involved a boat in some way since there was a picture of that too. I personally have a School Notebook emblazoned with the phrase "Gooses in World" and pictures of some actual gooses, along with a lot of random, non-goose-related visual effects. Someday I'll scan them and put them up here, but my goal today is to talk about some pregnancy-related phenomena I've been experiencing, including lots of dreams.
Apparently, pregnant women dream a lot. Because they don't sleep as soundly? I don't know, but in my week to week baby journal there's a separate section for "dreams" each week. Not all that many of my dreams are baby-related, though I am pregnant in a lot of them.
The best one was early on, and it featured Andy and me visiting a tower by a river which had been built by some old eccentric. The tower was in too bad condition too climb up, so to visit it there were flying chairs--chairs you sat in and could fly around in! That was awesome.
The rest of my dreams aren't all that interesting. The other morning I woke up feeling completely freaked out and not knowing why, until I remembered I'd just been dreaming I was staying at a farmhouse with a relative who was apparently slowly becoming schizophrenic. Disturbing.
I also dreamed I drank a Diet Coke one night, a treat I haven't had since learning I was pregnant. It was incredibly delicious.
In other news, the other day I was trying to tie a sweater around my waist and found I no longer have one. A waist, that is--the pregnancy hasn't affected my sweater collection. It also hasn't affected the fact that I live in Michigan, which is why I needed to take a sweater with me in June.