Motherhood is more than leaking out nutrition.

Where does baby milk come from? I don't know. God makes it in our body somewhere. It is the result of some lactational process, a mysterious one. I did this for so long with my children( nearly 2 years for everybody but Ezra), that I really don't know how to do anything else. Is there life after they don't need the milk anymore? Is there a purpose for you when they can't get sustenance from your body? Now, it is about grooming them in and through life. Mother??? they always say, is this right? is that good? is this enough? is that appropriate? That is the baby milk of the toddler and middleschool years. Occasional references for the wellbeing of the soul.
Am I your Alma Mater, my son? Is your soul mothered and reared under the apron of your mother, or are you deceived into the soul of the beast and the world; which could care less for the health and well being of your eternal soul? Beware? The deceptions are numerous. The truth is as simple as baby milk. God is caring and loving and right.

He has already told you, O man, what is good.
What the Lord requires of you.
But to do justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God!

God leads His sheep like a shepherd...

When we see that people do not take compassion on the humility of the child bearing years, they are not following God. It is truly a humbling and humiliating experience. Noone who hasn't gone through those things knows the real humiliation of not caring who sees what when you are ready to deliver. The most modest and the most illicit are the same when it comes the the childbirth experience. The pain and the determination is the equalizer. The culture who is sensitive to the care of God for the birthing process is following in the footsteps of God who is compassionate to His own.
They are my children, because I went through that to get them. My heart is sensitive to their cries where ever they are. As my days and as the days go on, my ears may dull and my heart may not still be moved with compassion for my own child, but the pain of what happens in the child birth experience is what makes me alive to my baby's cry.
He says that He is the God who is more compassionate than the most compassionate mother. He has endured more pain for our salvation than a mother. He leads His sheep like a shepherd and gathers the lamb in His arms and carries them in His bosom and gently leads those who are with young. The hardened of heart drive the sheep and cut open the mothers and add insult to injury. God teaches and comes down to our cries. God is sensitive to the process, because He created it. Blessed are the people whose God is the Lord. In other words when God is merciful He establishes a people who can grow useful and intentional people.

15 minutes with Michael is enough this morning?

My muscle are feeling the burn. I really feel that Michael was the Guy Lombardo of our generation. He made us dance, he made us cry, he made us move and we certainly cannot blame my obesity on his efforts. He and Richard Simmons do the most to get me into a routine of working out. I am sweating to the "Oldies"! A little cardio to keep me alive for my children.
I took a glimpse of the routine that he was going on the road with and it was spectacular, just a little moment of seeing him working out is inspirational to my workouts. I wish that they would go on the road with that show and do tributes to his unfinished last act. I would enjoy it. He was still dreaming and still pressing us to the next level in cardiovascular health. I have to thank God for him. I probably would have had a heart attack years ago, if it weren't for him. It is ironic that it was his heart that gave out, when mine is pumping because of his arts. He is the professor of music and dance that I will always have, as long as his music lives.
Listen to "Blood on the Dancefloor"! It is super. I get my weights and my step and move...
I am working up to more than 15 minutes!

God is good in Childbirth.

He does not allow it to consume us. There is a little person inside and we are its sustenance and bed. They are little and I am big. He gives so much added grace during that season that now that I have been past the years of child bearing the sense of that grace missing is nearly palpable. You need every bit of the grace that God bestows in that time. If you can borrow somebody elses graces, go ahead, you are going to use it all up in the end of the pregnancy. Some ladies walk about stoicly and seem to feel no discomfort and no estrangement from normalcy, I am not one of them.
Yall pray for me. I am going down the line again. I am going through this. There is another little one coming in our house and I am not ready again!:{ Unfortunately, I am not the best example of the well planned family. But I trust that God, who knows our frame chose each one to give to us, like a surprise party, every so often. God has provisions for His little ones. God has the strength and the grace. It may not feel like it at the time. Somebody may have to come in and help, but, even that is Him!

Angela's Ashes, 'Tis, What an Illustrious Man....Frank McCourt? Gone!

What awesome memories and comeradery poverty brings! God bless the memory of a man like McCourt, who could make us laugh so hard at the sadness and silliness of childrearing in the darkest times of history. Not enough to go around; raisins in the muffins like diamonds: scarce, fought over. What a man, to remember with fondness the fighting and grumbling and growing pains. The pains of his birth and his mother’s birth, all having a purpose in the divine scheme of the providence of God. God created us all: the wanted, as well as the ignored. The children of the rich and the children of the poor. God gives us all things richly to enjoy and he helped us to enjoy the joys of poverty, if there can be said to be and enjoyment of it. I wanted to hear him read that passage, just one more time. It is not the same when I read it. They tore down the walls to heat the house and negotiated with the landlord that they had fewer rooms. We rolled at the thought of such a thing. This was truly an exaggeration. It makes us who have endured some want in life know that we will grow past those days. We can appreciate the difficult along with the prosperity. The land where we are, has many provisions for poverty and the impoverished and there are people who struggle and scrimp and save, but nothing like the potato famine. Nothing like the days of the French Revolution, nothing like the Holocaust. Nothing like the poverty of the third world, these stories of dire and unmerciful elements are close to obsolete in America and we can laugh at the storms. Tell me this isn’t Eden?

God was showing man that it is not worth it to sell God down the river. You will never find the satisfaction anywhere else in the world. Still, God is God and he did give the woman to the man. How can we have a relationship with God and one another. Poverty and simplicity of heartaches all over the world were the consequence of sin. Now clean it up. Now birth life, already. Everytime we birth life, we also birth death with it. Choose life.

Laughing about the sadness is definitely one of the healing balms. McCourt was the spoonholder for the serum that could make us laugh about the most unusual things. Sad and sordid, but funny and real and all too often, true. I will miss hearing him read his own thoughts with the intonations that only he could give.

Childbirth,

The most violent contact sport. Continued from February 2008

Swaddled and protected inside my body, the baby does the utmost to try to find a comfortable position. Sometimes, it is to mommy's comfort and then the baby gets way to big to house comfortably. Morning and night mother tries to find a way to sleep that will not impinge on baby's comfort. There is a struggle between mother's comfort and baby's. I had one who lodged herself in the crevace of my thigh, it seemed and I couldn't walk without feeling her head, blocking my joints from full motion. That is what it felt like. She was making her own way inside my body and she has been making her own way ever since. Some babies are placid and go the right way and turn and move at the right time, even then, the consideration is when is this baby going to get out of me. My maternal comfort will never be the same.
It eats what I eat when it is in me and my stomach and gas and indigestion and morning sickness is a monument that another human being has taken up residence and is fighting or pounding my insides. I am torn by love and comfort. I can decide whether to enjoy the ride of this season, or fight against the process of human reproduction which is happening inside me.
Thank God for the painkillers which have allowed the birthing process to have much less discomfort, but, I was one of those stalwart ones who would have none of those. The first 4 pregnancies, I went without any meds at all. A horrible thought. I am terrorized at the thought of going through that pain for hours without meds. Take the medicine! They are going to suffer with brain damage with or without the meds. You really can't tell the difference, in their personalities with or without meds. It's your mind lost or theirs. I say, they will grow new brain cells, so you take the meds because you will need your entire mind to raise them. Take the meds! Whatever deadens the pain and allows you the most comfort in childbirth take it! Don't ever do what I did! The most people who tell you to go without meds are men who don't go through the pain and like to see the result of an awake and lucid baby after the process is over.
It is a violent process. It is a primitive process. There are forces at work that are far outside of your control. You have the worst pain you have ever endured. You have the greatest love that you have ever experienced and you have to share this with somebody who doesn't feel anything of the pain himself and claims as much a right to this little one as you. Are you kidding me? "You are going to take some of the credit for this beautiful creation of God that I am holding after the little part that you played?" I love you and everything, but I am not sharing my moment in the sun with my baby with anybody. Then the baby poops or throws up and you gladly give it to the partner parent and blame that part of the baby on him. :) The beautiful part belongs to me and the ugly part is the other guy's fault. We can't have everything!:{.

Robert Strange McNamara

Architect of the Vietnam Conflict is gone. What will we say about that generation in history? Were they really more impulsive than their predecessors. I don't think so. Just the microscope was on their every decision. At least there were men that were still alive to lead and direct us. Regardless of the fact that I disagreed with that war and that conflict. There was an entire group of men that were committed to that conflict and spared neither life nor limb to defend us. God bless America that there were men who think. What will we say about our generation?
Will Obama's cabinet make any productive decisions? Will they accept the status quo? Will they inject some hope and incentive into this rollercoaster economic status that we've inherited? Someone has to do something. The death of a real man like McNamara marks the end of decisive manhood. Making a decision where the lights and the cameras are on you! He was the first of the talking picture men to do that. I don't think he made a right decision or a good decision, but decisive and forthright, he most certainly was. We must continue to pray that although this President and cabinet is young like Kennedy and McNamara, God will direct them and affect them toward life and not toward death as in those days. Cuban missile crisis, Vietnam, there will always be wars and there will always be men who play at leading. God raise up the men like the McNamaras who will stand and make decisions and stand by them in spite of the populous and considering the populous.

Who was one of the architects of the Industrial Revolution?

Frank Gilbreth, I consider, at least one of the major players in the industrial revolution. Not because his theories and concepts were new or vital, but because they worked with his children and his children rose up and called him blessed. He had a God fearing determination to maintain the family concept, in the midst of as many conflicts against the family as we have and he won. I read his parts of his books and they were full of good common sense and industry. He won because his army was trained and large and motivated against the enemies of family values. Productivity is first developed in the home. Industry is first developed in the home. Livelihood is first developed in the home.
Who will be the architects of the Technological Revolution, now that we are well into the Phase 2 of its success. If it cannot support and defend the union. The union of one woman and one man and their offspring, it will disintegrate and splinter all that we have inherited. Woe unto us when there are many princesses and princes in the land. Every man is living for himself. If we cannot agree how to develop the system to work as a union we are slated to destroy ourselves and the next techtopia will build upon our ashes. God doesn't need us. Honor your father and your mother...Thank you Gilbreth family The World's Work, May 1916 for preserving his honor.