Save us, O Lord our God, and gather us from among the heathen, to give thanks unto thy holy name, and to triumph in thy praise. Psalm 106:47

We live in a world that is all about winning: having the highest scores on a test, possessing clothes better than our neighbor, cheering for our team at the Super Bowl. If a kid tells you they had a soccer game on Saturday, your next questions is probably, “Did you win?” Were you on the honor roll at school? Who won the chess game? Did you get as much money as you possibly could from your tax refund? Win. Victory. Triumph.

Webster’s dictionary describes triumph as “the state of being victorious; victory; conquest; joy or exaltation for success; a card that takes all others (now referred to as ‘trump’)”. It furthers elaborates by adding, “among the ancient Romans, a pompous ceremony performed in honor of a victorious general, who was allowed to enter the city crowned, originally with laurel but in later times with gold, bearing a truncheon in one hand and a branch of laurel in the other, riding in a chariot drawn by two white horses, and followed by the kings, princes and generals whom had had vanquished, loaded with chains and insulted by mimics and buffoons”. Now that’s a triumph – the winner is lauded, the looser treated like a buffoon.

But as Christians, is it right to parade about in triumph while making our enemies look like fools? Most of us would say no. So, it is wrong to triumph period? Of course not. In the psalms, the Psalmist is never afraid of celebrating victories of his enemies. And every time we take the Lord’s Supper, we celebrate the triumph Christ has for us over death. The questions is, then, what should we triumph in?

I came upon Psalm 106:47 during Thanksgiving and have thought about it now and then since. Triumph looks like different things to different people during different times of their lives. I find the triumph I want today isn’t the same as I wanted a year ago. A year ago, I wanted to survive a wedding. Today, that seems like a small matter when I think of this little soul who will be in our care in three short months and how we’re going to provide for him or her. I often wallow in the details of food, and clothing, and paying the bills so the electricity and water stay on. Not to mention, how will we pay for school books, and pencils, and times with friends later? I would consider it a great triumph if this little one grows up looking back on his or her life with mostly happiness and contentment in what we could provide. But many days that seems impossible.

I’m not saying that food, and clothing, and shelter are not important. But they are earthly. Jesus told His disciples not to worry about things. He sent them out to minister with nothing more than a walking stick! No extra coat. No money. No picnic lunch. For as He reminded them, God clothes the lilies. He feeds the sparrows. Why do we spend so much time thinking our Heavenly Father won’t do the same for us – the beings created in His own image and saved by the sacrifice of His only Son? As usual, our focus is off.

Psalm 106 is a replay of Israel’s history. The exodus from Egypt and triumph at the Red Sea. Israel forgets and complains. He provides food in the desert. Israel builds a calf to worship. Moses pleads on their behalf, Phinehas rises up to stay the plague, God provides them with water and a prosperous land. Yet Israel continues to gripe, disobey and serve the idols of their defeated enemies. A story with a very familiar ring in our own lives, isn’t it?

And, yet, the Psalmist continues to plead with God to save Israel. To bring Israel to a place where it isn’t about victory over their enemies or food in the wilderness. The ultimate goal is to “triumph in Thy praise”. To parade about the streets in gold crowns and raised laurel branches, declaring the great acts of God in our lives. To declare that God – and God alone – is great, merciful, victorious, and has given us everything we could possibly need.

That is the true life of triumph. The victorious life. The life of winning. Why should I focus on anything less?

What Keystone?

The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania ought to be ashamed of itself.

In 1776, fifty-six men gathered in Philadelphia and declared their colonies to be free and independent from the tyrant of England. One of their major complaints was taxation without representation. Today, Pennsylvania taxes its citizens to death with more little taxes than you can count on one hand taken from your paycheck. It’s going to take me an entire weekend to fill out all the tax forms just for Pennsylvania alone.

It’s called “The Keystone State” because it was the center of the thirteen colonies – the part of the arch that all the other parts depend upon. It was certainly the best centralized location for the Continental Congress, but I’ll side with Texas in calling their Alamo the “Cradle of Liberty” more than Philadelphia today. Texans remember their battle for liberty. I imagine most Pennsylvanians couldn’t tell you where Valley Forge is.

Who knows when the “keystone” began to crumble. When the British occupied Philadelphia and brought so much commerce the citizens didn’t seem to mind? Or when the rising industrialists in Pennsylvania of the 1860s put Lincoln in the White House so the government would leave them alone but tyrannize the South? The Southern defeat at Gettysburg? Brutal fights over coal and steel? Perhaps no one event did it. All I know is, I’m beginning to think you have to be crazy to choose to live here.

Not only will I get to spend hours with tax forms, but PennDOT has been the bane of my life since my arrival here. Personally, I have fought every step to get my name changed the way I want it. Professionally, I have spent hours (with hours more to go) trying to get an “overhead rate” from them for the company I work for. The website I have to use is anything but user friendly. Expired passwords have required several phone calls. And someone dropped the ball on some resubmitted paperwork. Them or us, I don’t know. I was living in Texas at the time, so it wasn’t me. But that has required even more hours just trying to find the phone number of the department I need to call, only to have to leave messages anyhow. And, I have a feeling, it is going to require quite a bit of paperwork before it’s all completed. After which they’ll probably spell someone’s name wrong and I’ll have to start all over again.

But you have to find something to laugh at in the midst of all of it. So, we’ll laugh at how archaic PennDOT is to start with. Not only is the website anything but user friendly, when you call them they give you the option of staying on the line if you’re dialing from a rotary phone. A rotary phone? Really? Do you still sign your paperwork with quills? They also provide you with a number to call in pot holes on state highways. I am sorely tempted to write that number down and start bombarding them with complaints every moment of the day just to share my headaches with them. Since they’ll never fix them anyhow, I can keep calling till Doomsday.

The Founding Fathers would roll over in their graves. Although, maybe the fact that Benjamin Franklin was one of Pennsylvania’s was a sign of the future of this commonwealth. After all, he came up with the United States Postal Service. Which can’t get a letter to my house in Pittsburgh without me personally walking them to the front door.

In that sense, even Massachusetts is smarter than Pennsylvania: they sent Ben Franklin here.

Modern Technology

When I was a teenager, I got a babysitting job for one reason: I knew how to change cloth diapers. I probably knew how to do that before I knew how to change a disposable one. Wasn’t that big of a deal when my mom had always used them. The only thing you had to worry about was poking the baby with a pin, which I did do. I don’t think any of my siblings hold that against me today.

Fast forward nearly twenty years. I haven’t seen a cloth diaper since my baby brother was a baby and we thought the Velcro they put on his cloth diapers was cutting edge. (For a few months, anyhow. Then the Velcro wore out through numerous washes and the pins were just harder to get in.) I hadn’t met a woman since that used cloth diapers, until I met Tirzah at camp. I think she went that route because they sorely needed to save money in the long run but if cloth diapers can be a “style” they also kind of suit her colorful, vibrant personality.

What do I mean by that? Well, when my mom used cloth diapers they came in one color: white. And while you could buy different colored pins and even colored plastic pants to cover the diapers (which faded), that was about as far as options went. Now? Do a Google search on “cloth diapers” and pull up images – you’ll see what I mean.

Cloth diapers today, at least for those of us who knew them very well twenty years ago, are a breakthrough of modern science. No more pins. No more plastic pants. Instead, they snap on so (if you purchase the right sort), they grow with your baby. And the outside is waterproof. There are inserts to do the soaking and only these need to be changed if the baby is a light wetter. Plus they come in every color of the rainbow. Not to mention designs of flowers, animals, super heroes, Dr. Suess and Sesame Street characters and just about anything else you can possibly imagine. The only thing I haven’t yet seen is pro-sport teams. But not to worry, they do come in gold and yellow stripes so our baby can be well covered for any season in Pittsburgh.

Because, yes, we’re going to do the cloth diaper thing. It is more work, but it does save money in the end. And I grew up in a home where changing a diaper was hard work. These new-fangled ones will almost seem easy. (And my baby won’t be able to hold a grudge for being poked with diaper pins.) I ordered fifteen last week and my mom is attempting to make a couple (because, amazing as it sounds, you can buy a pattern book and everything you need at JoAnn’s for cloth diapers). Ed is going to rig up a sprayer that will attach to the toilet (another improvement in the cloth diaper world we certainly didn’t have growing up), I’ll get a pail, invest in more inserts for the diapers and in April we will be ready.

One more new adventure into this world of modern technology.

Our Active Baby

I am now entering my third trimester, counting down the last three months until “peanut” arrives. And people aren’t asking me how far along I am as much as when my due date is. I rather like that because I can’t always remember what week I’m in. Just saying “April 21st” is much easier.

So, yes, I’m now showing. I wear some maternity clothes. I haven’t weighed this much in nearly fifteen years. But, thankfully, nothing is swelling. The nurses I’ve seen remark that I’m still wearing my rings and except for feeling quite fat, I don’t seem to have grown bigger anywhere else. Which just means I need longer shirts, not bigger ones. But the baby and I are trying to keep in shape even as I grow out of shape. Certainly not running any marathons, but we walk on nice days (I like cold air) and we do pilates nearly every day. It keeps us stretched out and the baby enjoys it. I tell her we’re going to do our pilates and she starts kicking.

The baby is quite active, but he has quite a bit of room to move around in right now. A woman at work yesterday asked me if I noticed the baby more active at certain times. She said her daughter always like to kick and wiggle when she was on conference calls. I’ve noticed my baby likes to kick and squirm before and after I exercise. And he turns summersaults at night. At least, that’s what it’s felt like lately. Ed and I settle down to watch an episode of Castle or something before bed, and the baby starts having a party. The same is true when I read a few chapters in a book before I fall asleep. I’m hoping this doesn’t mean this baby is a night owl. That’s not going to work well with his father’s schedule. Ed goes to bed early because he gets up early. Even though I get to sleep a little later, I head to bed, too. I intend for the baby to do so also.

Other things are coming together. Except for a couple of the things, our spare room has only baby things in it now: a stroller, a highchair, a mattress, a little chair, a box of odds and ends I’ve been given. Still need a crib and changing table/dresser; but I’m on the lookout. We’ll have a car seat soon. Meanwhile, I’m plowing ahead on “before the baby comes” projects that need to get done. And praying the Lord will show us how He’s going to make our ends meet if I quit working, which is our hopeful plan.

After singing in a Christmas service last month, my friend Allyson’s three-year-old Laurel overheard a woman at church tell Allyson that her little girl was such a blessing. Later, Laurel came up to Allyson and said with a big smile on her face, “Mama, I’m a blessing!” What else can you say to that but, “Yes, Laurel, you are.” For it’s true: Children are a blessing. So even though my “nursery” won’t be as adorable as many I’ve seen and the fears of provision for the future sometimes overwhelm me, this I know: this baby is a blessing. And, as the Psalmist said, “I have never seen the righteous forsaken or his seed begging bread.” Amen.

(Note: we don’t know if we’re having a boy or girl, so while Ed exclusively uses masculine pronouns in high hopes of the first Camus boy of this generation, I try to use my pronouns inter-changeably – hence the “she” and “he”.)

Happy Birthday!

 To the best mother in the whole world!

Write Protect

When was the last time you heard that phrase? Do you even remember what it refers to? For that matter, you might even be too young to remember it at all.

I’ve learned that in the office of landscape architects, the office employees don’t get upgrades a lot. It makes sense. After all, the work of the firm is to draw huge landscape plans and print them off or upload them. They have to spend money on the updates to CAD and Photoshop and have really nice, huge printers. Which means I have had to step back in time and remember how to use Office 2003…and sigh over how little it does compared to what I’m use to. Now I can manage without my arsenal of Excel shortcuts that weren’t created twelve years ago, but you have to laugh at computer towers that still have floppy drives.

Now, of course I am not talking about the floppy drives I used in elementary school with disks that really did flop and DOS commands that made them work. These are the harder disks, so we’re talking middle school now. Carol, the woman who is training me, did purchase a zip drive when I first got here, but she refuses to use it. And since her accounting computer is off the network, if we have to transfer something to my computer she hands me a disk.

Last week she handed me a disk and told me that it might not work – she was having trouble with it. I put it in my tower and pulled up the documents I needed. After I transfer them to my computer, I always delete them from the disk so we know I have them. That’s when the pop-up appeared and told me I couldn’t delete them because the disk was write protected.

Write protected…write protected…that phrase had a hazy feeling about it. Like I knew the answer to the problem, but it was stored nearly two decades back in my mind. The first solution I thought of wasn’t the right one. Then it dawned on me: there’s a switch on the disk itself! I used to switch it all the time when I was backing up the stories I wrote and didn’t wasn’t to loose on my own disks. Sure enough, a flip of the switch got rid of the write protect.

My kids won’t know what a floppy disk is. Some of my siblings probably don’t know. They’ll have limited knowledge of CDs. I’m not sure they’ll ever use a phone with a cord…and certainly not one you have to rotary dial. A TV that isn’t a flat screen? Or HD? And what’s a fax machine? An atlas? In fact, they’ll be born knowing more about technology than I do. And it will change so fast, what was here today will be gone tomorrow.

How fast this 21^st Century changes!

Happy 25^th Birthday, Gracie!

To-Do, To-Do, To-Do

I swear I have a To-Do List as long as Santa’s list of good and bad little girls and boys. If it gets any longer it will take over the desk that is referenced on it: “Clean Off Desk”.

Don’t think that counts for cleaning it off.

Even as I write this, I’m mentally adding things to it. Gather 2014 financial stuff. Get tax forms (federal, Pennsylvania, Minnesota…doubled for Ed and me). File taxes as soon as W-2s arrive. Work out the 2015 budget. Resort the boxes in the basement and add to them. Clean under my bed. Honestly, it’s no wonder I can’t sleep some nights for thinking about it all.

It’s just that not only is there always a lot to do as one year ends and another begins, but this year I feel like I’m doing some of it for two people. (And I guess I am.) While trying to get other things done as I’m thinking about three people. Because some days I feel like I can barely handle two – let alone three.

There are just a lot of things I want off my plate before the baby arrives. Things like my wedding album. Or packing my wedding dress away. (It’s clean and hanging wrapped in a closet – just need to get a box to put it away completely.) And thank you notes written. For Christmas…for my birthday in two months…for the box of things the baby is collecting in the spare room. And we won’t even discuss the spare room that is meant to be for the baby. Right now there is space on the floor for the child, while we wishfully hope nothing falls on him.

Sometimes I think I’m over-thinking the whole thing. I tend to do that. Does all this stuff really matter or have to get done? (I mean besides things like filing taxes…) Back in 1974, Ed was supposed to be a Christmas baby. Instead, he arrived in September. Obviously, his parents weren’t quite prepared for that. So, if this baby suddenly arrived today instead of April, almost nothing on my list would get done. And it wouldn’t matter.

I suppose the truth is I get a lot of enjoyment out of making lists. And adding to them things I like to do next to things I hate (like sorting books on my shelf vs. filling out 1040s). Some psychologist would say I have OCD and control issues. And they’d probably be at least hitting the target on that. But then there are things a lot more harmful than writing up lists.

So, I’ll just go home and keep working down my list. And then, maybe, I’ll sleep tonight.