Since the name of my blog is BITSP, you have to know that I am a big fan of beauty. Maybe alot of it comes from wanting to mitigate against those who would make the Christian life seem austere or boring. I believe in total depravity, but, like Calvin, am a humanist, committed to the idea of man in the image of God being wildly wonderful and capable of amazing creation. I also love poetry, art, fashion, movies, music, etc. I am fascinated and enthralled by the idea that God is so powerful, subversive, and omnipresent that he shows up in places where Christians are least likely to recognize him (like in the movie Magnolia, or a Fugazi song, or a life that in many ways looks like a failure). So there’s the apolgetic for beauty. That being said, I realize that beauty can become an idol, and that it can begin to distract us from rather than point us toward the beauty of Christ.

Heath and I recently had a conversation about what true beauty is and if it is so great, how come so often it distracts from The True Beauty? We talked about beauty being an objective reality, that things were objectively beautiful, but that style in many ways was arbitrary. It is propped up by industries that encourage us to throw away and move on to something else “just because”, and it is often devoid of the usefulness and functionality that is a part of real beauty. It reflects a culture that devalues history and tradition, and that changes quickly. It also reflects a culture that is competitive, filled with people each trying to outdo the other. Our personal “style” reflects where we fall in this hierarchy. At the top of the food chain are celebrities, with whose lives we are fascinated and compare our own constantly. I say that they are at the top of the food chain because they receive the most money and notoriety. I suppose evolutionary psychologists would say that the behaviors they exhibit are the most adaptive ones.

As much as I like “style” insofar as it is part of beauty, I also find it a bit tiresome. It seems like it takes increasingly more energy and time to keep up with it as it changes more and more quickly. Now clothing styles seem to change every year instead of every few years, and home interiors styles change every few years insetead of every decade or so (at least where I am coming from, as a middle class person in a non-metropolitan part of Texas, I’m sure its different in other places, like for instance on Park Avenue in Manhattan, where style is way more cutthroat or in the Sudan, where not getting killed is what’s cool). Trying so hard to stay in style, fun as it can be at times, sometimes feels like a waste of time. Fun, but not that important. It also seems wasteful as it leads to more and more production of more stuff, when there wasnt really anything wrong with the other stuff, but now it has to be trashed because nothing has any lasting value, its just a world full of trinkets that are ready for the garage sale in a year or two.

So what does rethinking the place of style in my life mean? As a person who cares alot about how she looks, for better and worse, the implication is that if I knock the style monkey off my back, I might not look beautiful to some people. I am not talking about being a slob or not caring about how you look, I’m just talking about letting go of being cool to make more room in life for things that are more important. So does this mean I should pull out my well-made, expensive, but pleated and high-waisted slacks from ten years ago. No, but chiefly because I garage saled ‘em 5 years ago. And secondarily because they make my butt look like a pancake. But seriously, I wonder if I could live a different life, one where things that didnt matter so much….didn’t matter so much. I think I might have more time to love the people around me and to know and love God. And maybe not as many people would think that I was pretty, or cool, or stylish, but maybe more people would see how living their life around stupid values is a waste and be attracted to the beautiful, wild freedom that a life lived by kingdom values could bring.

I have really been wrestling with these ideas lately and I feel like I can’t explain away or undermine what the scriptures have to say any longer. As much as we all like to point out how the story about the rich young ruler DOESN’T mean all Christians need to go sell all they have and give it to the poor, maybe we should be less quick to talk about what God doesn’t want from us.

The following passages, from The Message Paraphrase have given me cause to think about these things:

Matthew 6:25-26″If you decide for God, living a life of God-worship, it follows that you don’t fuss about what’s on the table at mealtimes or whether the clothes in your closet are in fashion. There is far more to your life than the food you put in your stomach, more to your outer appearance than the clothes you hang on your body. Look at the birds, free and unfettered, not tied down to a job description, careless in the care of God. And you count far more to him than birds.

Matthew 6:27-29″Has anyone by fussing in front of the mirror ever gotten taller by so much as an inch? All this time and money wasted on fashion—do you think it makes that much difference? Instead of looking at the fashions, walk out into the fields and look at the wildflowers. They never primp or shop, but have you ever seen color and design quite like it? The ten best-dressed men and women in the country look shabby alongside them.

I Timothy2:8-10 Since prayer is at the bottom of all this, what I want mostly is for men to pray—not shaking angry fists at enemies but raising holy hands to God. And I want women to get in there with the men in humility before God, not primping before a mirror or chasing the latest fashions but doing something beautiful for God and becoming beautiful doing it.

I guess I just don’t want to feel I’ve wasted my life chasing things that don’t really matter. This is scary and makes me fear at times that others, my husband in particular, would not find me as attractive, but then I think of the hurt that making an idol of appearances has already caused my husband and children, as well as the beauty and winsomeness of people who don’t bend to the world’s judgment of their worth and I think that perhaps it would be worth the risk.

I recently celebrated my 30th birthday.  I never thought I would be one to blink an eye at aging, but it has given me cause to ponder a bit lately.  I’ve thought some about how fast my life is going and how it will probably just increase in speed as I move toward my own death and how some day I will go to the place where “I” as I know it ends and I am with Christ in a way that I’m not now.  Will it hurt? Will it be scary? Will I be captivated by the shining face of my savior and hurry into that new world almost before I can leave this one?  Will it be an accident?  Will it be the bird flu? 

And on a shallower level, turning 30 has led me to think a bit about being “past my prime”.  In terms of physical beauty, but also in terms of opportunites available to me.  Having already made major decisions about education, career, marriage, and children, my course is in some ways charted out for me in a way it wasn’t ten years ago.

However, the thing that has lead me to the most contemplation is an event that occurred in celebration of my birthday.  My sweet husband, with the help of his mom, threw a surprise birthday party for me.  I am so thankful for their loving hearts toward me.  The party was a fun time, but for me it was somewhat marred by the fact that not very many of my friends came.  Chalk it up to the fact that we are all universally, irreconcilably busy with activities of dubious value, but the fact remains that I was really and truly hurt, as much as I’d like to pretend that was not the case.  I wondered if maybe people didn’t like me all that much, or even worse that they just didn’t really think of me at all, the way you don’t notice some bland, benign wallpaper.  So, I was left feeling that at 30, who I was, was not somebody all that special.  (please note, if you are one of my caring friends/family members out there that this is totalizing, melancholy, navel-gazing Courtney speaking here, so take it with a grain of salt)

Now for the contrast.  A few days later, a friend (who couldnt make it to the party), brought a birthday card for me.  She left it on my car, for me to open as I left.  Even at thirty, a token like a card can feel like a big deal (although cynical attitude toward contrived Hallmark holidays and culural mandates to gift giving sometimes give me a pain in the neck).  The card had a nice note written inside with the date written at the top (marking it as something of value, perhaps to be looked back on in the future?)  and contained a gift certificate for a manicure and pedicure at a local salon.  First off, my friend is a super sweet person, known to all for her kindness and generosity, and she is someone I have known for a while, however ours is not a relationship in which a birthday gift is expected.  In fact, a small $5 trinket would have been considered going above and beyond.  I knew that she did it, not because she had to (no one would have expected her to), but I guess because she cared for me or wanted me to feel special, or wanted to extend undeserved kindness to me.  It was a gift that she would not necessarily have wanted for herself.  I have never seen her with nail polish on, but one that anyone who knows me would know that I would like.  Anyway, the whole experience made me go away feeling blessed and a bit like a vulnerable child, who, even at thirty, wants to feel like she’s noticed and she matters.   One whose heart leaps at a genuine kindness shown.  Oh that I might do unto others as I would have them do unto me.

For anyone that has actually seen the movie Requiem For a Dream, I apologize for writing such a banal blog post abusing its title, but what can I say, it just seemed to fit.  As an aside, this movie is intense, disturbing, possibly brilliant, but I’ll just have to blog about that later.

The topic at hand is that after a year of not scrapbooking, but wanting to, I have decided to cut this hobby loose.  I am mostly attracted to it because they make some darn fine paper that I really like and I love looking at pictures of my boys.  I actually used to think scrapbooking was really cheeseball until I got over myself and tried it.  Now, I’m not saying its cheeseball, I’m just saying I dont have time to do it and I have to let it go.  Its as if I have a top ten list of priorities and its number eleven.  I really want the boys to have something to look back at so they can see how precious, wonderful, and special they are/were, but I think it may just have to be semi-ordered photos stuck in an album with little to no comments/captions.  I really dont have time for much of anything beyond my responsibilities as a mom of three very needy boys, four and under and as a homemaker, trying not to let my family drown in a sea of laundry, dirty dishes, unmade beds, etc.  I also try to carve out as much time as possible to be with/talk to my husband which bleeds into my hobbies of reading/blogging/movie watchin’/music listenin’/discussing.  Conveniently, we mostly like to do the same things so we can kill two birds with one stone a lot of times and serve as creative muses for one another, enjoy our hobbies, and each others company.

I am trying to learn to accept my limitations and have more realistic goals for myself.  Concurrently, I have admitted that, in spite of being the daughter of a home-economics teacher, I am domestically challenged (perhaps even disabled).  I am not a lazy person, just hopelessly distractible, inefficient, scatter-brained, and very much just learning (remedially) how to keep a house, all the while having expectations that my home will look like pottery barn.  And you wonder why I haven’t lost my mind already!  So maybe a more appropriate title for this post would have been requiems plural, because in trying to prioritize lately I’ve realized that I just cant do all the good things I’d like to do…like shower. 

Heath came up with a new eating disorder the other day while we were having lunch at Quiznos.  I was chomping my cookie, remarking that I felt like a bottomless pit, that Pax must be having a growth spurt because I felt like I couldn’t keep enough food coming to satisfy my constant hunger.  I was saying how much I loved breastfeeding and its super calorie burning effects and how if it weren’t for a very few drawbacks, I might become a wet nurse or invest in an electric pump and sell/donate my milk to a bank or to the third world so that I could continue eating and not being fat (and do a good deed!) for the rest of my life.

It was then that Heath diagnosed me a lactation bullimic.  I have gotten some good laughs out of that.  Apparently I’m not alone because my mom was telling me about an episode of Desperate Housewives in which a woman was duped into weaning her preschol aged nursling when co-workers snuck him some chocolate milk,after which he was no longer interested in mom.  The ex-nurser then was found weeping in her office and when her friends asked what was wrong, she replied, “I’m going to get fat again!”  I know the feeling.  I have to starve myself and work out to keep from gaining 5+ pounds everytime I wean a child. 

So, until about a year from now…..happy eating! 

I am not really that into country music, although lately I have been into Johnny Cash and I find a pearl here and there.  One of those is the song “Maria” by Willie Nelson. 

 Its just a winsome little song about getting over yourself and loving the one you love.  Anyway, one of my favorite lines from that song is “Maria, shut up and kiss me, the way you’re crazy turns me on and on…”

I hope Heath feels that way about me.  God knows, I’m pretty crazy.  Not in the fun, zany way- although that may be true sometimes, but in the headcase kind of way.  I am thankful that Heath bears with me in my weakness and loves me no matter what.  His love makes me feel safe and he is the best friend I could ever hope for.  I wish I had a few others of his caliber.

He encouraged me recently when I was struggling, reminding me that I needn’t fear any shame, failure, or exposure, but should only use them as occasion to boast in grace.  What could be more wonderful than never having to worry again, ever?  Never having to be afraid.  Being sad perhaps, but never despairing because we have EVERYTHING in Christ.  Nothing really matters, except that he has made us sons of God and therefore we can live lives of reckless abandon in pursuit of love and the Kingdom.  We can live in happy expectation of the party of heaven.

This brings up another topic that arose during my ipod listening creativity surge.  I thought about how we, as a result of the fall, I think, need bad experiences to appreciate good ones.  We can’t enjoy the highs without having lows to compare them to.  We can’t appreciate the beauty of salvation without the horror of the cross.  We can’t enjoy feasts without days of eating the mundane (call this the “nothing tastes syndrome”).  We appreciate our loved ones more in light of the fact that they can be taken from us at any moment.  I have often wondered how heaven was going to be very fun considering that it would be all good, all the time.  However, yesterday I had a revelation that this need for comparison was a result of the fall. In heaven, I think, we will have redeemed senses and affections that will be able to enjoy continual feasting, hearts that will grow fonder without absence, and selves that will be able to celebrate incessantly and with abandon.

I have contemplated for some time getting a tattoo.  What, you might ask, is the appeal?  I think I figured out that its the passion of a tattoo that i respect- that one would care enough about an idea, symbol, person, etc. to etch it permanenty before them in their very skin.  There are definitely many things that are tattoo-worthy if this is the criteria. 

I have seriously considered getting one with the words “Le vainqueur” (”the conqueror” in French to remind me that Christ has conquered sin and death and everything I might ever fear falls cowering to the ground at the sight of the one who has “King of kings and lord of Lords” tattooed on His thigh,(Rev. 19:16)).  I have also considered “Christus Victor” for similar reasons.  Another I’ve considered is the credo of “Romantic” virtues from the movie Moulin Rouge “Truth, Beauty, Freedom, and Love”. 

Writing about it, I’m almost talking myself into it.  There’s only one problem.  I’ve never seen a tattoo that I’ve liked on a girl.  So what makes me think I’m going to like one on myself?  If I could be convinced that it wouldnt look cheap and sleazy I might do it.  Maybe, I should put all my tattoo-desire energies into Heath, because I actually think they can be pretty sexy on guys. Then I’d probably have tattoo envy.  Oh well- that’s enough of this post.

After a lengthy maternity leave, I am back in blogdom.  Pax is a fantastic baby, but I have other things I want to blog about right now.  Let’s just say that the birth was, relatively speaking, not too bad and I am none the worse for wear.

Something exciting has happened in my life…. I got an ipod.  My brother received a newer/better one for his birthday so he gave me his old one, which in my estimation is quite new and good enough for me since I had no ipod before.  I have been enjoying it immensely.  It is great for cleaning house, watering plants, etc.  Life is better when lived to music.  I had about a million thoughts and blog ideas yesterday while cleaning and listening.  It was almost an ecstatic experience.  “The world is charged with the grandeur of God”(says Gerard Manley Hopkins) and I saw it time and time again yesterday when I was listening.  Truth and beauty would show up in the strangest places.

I listened to The Postal Service and really enjoyed the melodic prettiness of their music.  Some of the songs reflected a youthful idealism about love and relationships and the appeal of these songs was undeniable.  I thought about the “falling in love” phase and how I don’t think it should be poo-pooed as immature and shallow, even though it may be in some ways.  I think maybe this phase is there to teach us in some ways about the bliss that we may exerience in our relationships in the new creation and about the bliss the Trinity experiences within itself.  Yes, the intensity of these feelings fades to some degree, but doesn’t something in us always long to feel this way again?  This is not to denigrate faithfulness and commitment but we needn’t relegate all things spiritual to equality with “doing our duty” or enduring a fat, declining spouse(excuse my cynicism here, but I get tired of hearing Christians beat the “love is a decision” drum).  Bear with me here, and entertain the notion that heaven and the relationships therein might be breathtakingly exciting.  More on this later.

Ok, this is going to be a meandering entry because asking someone to write anything coherent about the movie Fight Club is not possible. Don’t bother reading this if you haven’t seen the movie because it wont make any sense to you and its not something I have time to explain with any clarity. The first couple of times I saw this movie I saw it as a movie with good themes, particularly pertaining to the gen-x man, thirsting to feel alive and purposeful so much that a good punch in the jaw was as good as getting high. However, on my most recent viewing, I still saw these themes strongly, but also saw wider application to all of us living in the 21st century.
First off, this is a weird movie and you shouldnt watch it if you dont have the stomach for violence. I dont know what it says about me that I do, but I was okay with it except for the scene where Edward Norton’s character “just wants to destroy something beautiful” and beats “Angel Face” to a bloody pulp. For the most part this movie is funny, insightful, and chock full of fantastic ideas for the person seeking to live out the Christian life in every way to chew on. The protagonist of this story is a working stiff who lifelessly performs his job in order to continue to support his IKEA lifestyle. He has no life, no community, so connection to anything. He starts going to various support groups to overcome his insomnia, to be able to cry and feel. He meets a girl who is also a “tourist” and warns her to back-off and quit ruining his life by showing up at all his support groups. Everything changes when he “meets” Tyler Durden (a role played with sickening perfect coolness by Brad Pitt) and starts Fight Club. He no longer needs his prostaste cancer survivors, etc. when he finds he can get just as much a thrill from guys pounding the crap out of each other. Life has purpose now. You work out to fight, not to look good in a Gucci suit. Sounds like a man longing to be connected with the soil, right? To make a long story short, he descends into an anarchic nihilistic world, that ends with the revelation that he himself is Tyler Durden, founder of Fight Club, and he has to shoot himself in the face to get the Tyler Monkey off his back and integrate the parts of him that are Tyler with the parts of him that are him. The movie is almost worth watching just to hear the fantastic song “Where is my Mind?” by the Pixies at the end of the movie as you watch the skyscrapers he and his cohorts have just bombed fall to the ground.
So why is this movie worth watching and what is the “package”. This movie challenges us about wasting our time, celebrity mongering, living for things that are ultimately meaningless, and defining ourselves in terms of what we do and how much money we make. The “package” is a term Heath coined, that we talk and joke about all the time. The package is what you unknowingly buy into when you fall in love and get married, thinking “what could be more bohemian than this?” But then you find that that leads to having kids, which leads to buying a house, which leads to home improvement, yard maintenance, minivans, money spent at Gapkids, desires for three stone diamond rings, better tvs etc, etc. It happens in spite of the best of intentions, giving credence to the idea of “package” because you dont get parts of a package, if you purchase it,you get it all. Not to say that we and many great folks we know aren’t stuggling to change, rethink, be intentional about the ways we spend our time and money, but it is really tough to sort through what is good and what it best and to stop the rolling tide of “oh, we just got a new tv, so now we need a new entertainment center because we cant fit the new tv in the old one, and so on and so on. Even generous gifts from others tend to beget he need for new things, lest they be wasted. Is it more wasteful to let a fantastic new church outfit for your kid go unworn, or to buy shoes to go with it so they can wear it. Maybe you say they should just wear their tacky tennies or their dino slippers with it? Maybe so, but you get the idea.
Anyway, there are times when it would feel awfully good to throw off the package. I know my husband particularly feels this way when the grass is tall. He hates doing the yard. I feel this way when I start to feel bored/smothered by keeping up with the package. It usually only takes one trip to Pottery Barn to cure me of this, but it does come on occassionally. I am unfortunately pretty addicted to cool. Many purveyors of the package know the values and misgivings of those they are marketing to. This is why you can by a Chez Guevera onesie for your infant from Naissance on Melsrose, a high-end maternity retailer. There is something seductive about buying into the package that markets itself as anti-package, but its still the package and there’s no getting around it. If I were to really let go of the package, I would probably become very uncool.
Recently, I had this ordeal over paint. I have always wanted to paint every room in our house. Its mostly just a matter of Heath deciding he’s willing to deal with the mess. So far it seems like he gets a case of paint willingess about once a year. So, we should have all the rooms painted in about three more years. Heath’s Pop built us these incredible built-in bookshelves for our living room as a Christmas gift. They are awesome, but we decided if we wanted to paint that room, we had better do it before the shelves were installed. I had a color I liked from Restoration Hardware and I had Sherwin-Williams match it, thinking I would save money. It ended up ok, but just a lot lighter than what I wanted. I guiltly decided to buy two more gallons from SW in what I thought would be a better color, but it turned out to be crazy turquoise. I had them tinker with it, but still no cigar. I ended up going to Restoration Hardware and buying my paint from there, so I ended up spending $132 on paint instead of just $36, like the first two gallons I bought (my mother-in-law always says paint is the cheapest way to dramatically change the look of a room). So there is the issue of the money I wasted, but I have to confess to some degree of mental anguish and a few hours of staring at stripes of paint on the wall. I got really sick of having to think so much about paint. Now that its painted the color I like, I love it and am really glad I did it, but was it really worth it?
So there’s an example of the package in action. I love beauty and dont want to despise it in any of its forms, but I love God better, or at least I want to. The package makes this hard sometimes. Fight Club talks about that and how the package can make us lose our mind, or at least wonder where it is as we watch the buildings we’ve bombed plummet beautifully to the earth.

Well, the time to share in the curse of Eve is fast approaching. Although, Pax is not due until Feb. 6, I feel like he’s about to fall out any second. I went to the doctor and found that I am dilated 2 cm. So, I suppose it could happen any time, since in a sense, my labor has already began. However, that is not unusual for me. With both of my previous babies, I had so many contractions so early that the docs always feared pre-term labor. I had a relatively quick first delivery and was dilated to 7 cm with my second baby for some time, causing my doctor to give me all manner of advice on how to deliver your own baby at home on the bathroom floor. However, my second son actually didn’t come until they broke my water a week post-date. He was born within an hour. So, I guess it could still be weeks and I will probably continue to gradually dilate until things start in earnest. It is however time to think/prepare/suck it up for the experience that is childbirth.
When my first son was born, I had decided that I wanted to give birth “naturally” meaning sans epidural. I felt that this would be better for my baby- he’d be more alert, less drugged up, better for me- I’d be back in business in no time and would allow me to have a connection with all the women throughout history who have brought forth children in agony. Being due right at Christmas, I paricularly thought of dear Mary, a frightened virgin, suffering to bring our savior into the world.
I gave birth for the first time at a hospital in Lyon, France. It was probably pretty dumb and I should have been pretty scared, but God took really good care of me and I actually wasnt that scared, probably too naive. I had a translator present at the birth and apparently many French midwives on top of me pressing on my stomach, something I, despite the lack of drugs, dont remember. Everything went pretty well, all things considered. Once my delayed at the French beureaucratic admissions desk husband showed up at my side, I felt a bit more at ease, but I was also at the point where I was thinking “this hurts way more than I ever imagined, I need an epidural.” I could take the contractions okay when I had a little time between them, but now it was all like one big bone-crushing contraction. It happened so fast and no one had been checking me, so I was basically ready to deliver, but I didnt know it and neither did anyone else. Finally, the nurses came in a tossed me roughly on some kind of stupid French torture device that for some reason they thought they needed to slide under the pelvis of a woman in transition labor and told me “too late for an epidural, you need to push”. It was pretty horrible, but also amazing and needless to say I eventually got over the trauma enough to do it again. I guess I did feel pretty good aferward except for the fact that my tailbone was functionally broken, so I wasn’t exactly back in business in no time.
The second time, I had Soren in an hour of my water breaking, so it was pretty quick and I figure I can tolerate most things for an hour. They also let me push sooner, before I got to the “all one big contraction” point. It still was an awful stretching, tearing feeling when he came out (sorry to be so graphic) but it was over and then I felt fine. I really did feel fine this time.
The point of this reflection is “am I going to do drug free this time?”. In all likelihood, the answer is yes. That’s just what I do. But the other question is why? Yes, I think its better for mom and baby, but not in a way that really matters 1, 2 not to mention 20 years down the line. Do I shudder at the thought of myself and others going through the agony of childbirth? Yes. Am I trying to be a hero? Maybe. Am I punishing myself? Absolutely not- that’d be pretty idiotic. Do I see it as a challenge? Yes. Does it make me feel strong? Yes. I thought I could do ANYTHING after the first time I gave birth. Did that delusion gradually subside? Yes. Do I still want to be identified with other women throughout history in their experience of this suffering? Yes. I do fear and dread it to some degree which makes me think “why do I want to do this to myself?” I am not sure I totally know the answer, I can only give some reasons why my heart is pushed in this direction. I hope its not because of some weird perception of who I have to be or how tough I have to be. As with most things, I bet it’s a mix of motives, desires, convictions, etc. So, I go into the future claiming Christ as my victory, righteousness, and strength. I’ll let you know how it goes.