Coen was a little grumpy this afternoon. He woke up from a nap and was crying real tears. He cried through his feeding and after about 20 minutes he finally perked up a bit. So we played. I gave him some mixing bowls which he loved. I also gave him a baking pan and a spoon. He liked picking each one and hitting other stuff with it. I showed him how to hit the spoon against each of them to make a fun sound. Then he took the spoon and banged on the items as well. It cracked me up and I had no idea he could be shown how to do something and then turn around and do it!
Once he got bored of that we read a few books while he chewed on the spoon. Then it was time for a new activity so I grabbed his burp cloth and started playing peek-a-boo. I think it was last week that I got a reaction from the game for the first time. He'd chuckle each time I revealed my face and wait for the game to start over. So today we played for a long time. I must have hid behind the cloth at least 40 times. Sometimes I hid his face but he seemed to like it best when I was the one to hide. Every time I took the cloth away he was delighted to see me and his face lit up and he'd chuckle (still only does small short laughs). He still hasn't mastered object permanence which is why the game is so great to him. Object permanence is being able to understand that things continue to exist even when they cannot be observed. So every time I pop out from that cloth it's as if I magically appear to him. It's also why you can remove an item from the baby that you don't want them to have, hide it, and they'll forget about it. Older children will just go and grab the item from behind the couch, or open the cabinet to get it back out, because they know that the item still exists.
As I was playing with me it struck me how oftentimes we haven't grasped object permanence when it comes to God. We'll see him work in our lives and we know that it's God. We praise him for his faithfulness. We cling to him through our storms and trials. He is there when we need him. God always shows up. But that's all that it is to us sometimes. We think of him showing up but He never went anywhere. Instead He is there, waiting for us to pull the cloth aside so he can say "peek-a-boo." We act like He doesn't exist when we can't observe Him working in our lives. We forget that he exists when we can't observe Him.
But that's completely wrong. Whether we're hiding behind the cloth ourselves or we feel like he's hiding behind a cloth, He's still right there. Sometimes waiting for us to seek Him. Sometimes whispering and quietly working in our lives. Sometimes shouting to get our attention. But he's there.
I need to have spiritual object permanence. It's easy to come to God in trials. It's harder in good times. It's easy to praise Him in good times. It's harder to continue depending on Him during good times.
I love getting little spiritual glimpses through things like a simple game of peek-a-boo. What a gift.
Wednesday, November 12, 2014
Sunday, November 2, 2014
First Heartbreak
I feel like the older I get the more I'm reflecting on random parts of my life. I've been thinking about middle school a lot. I had a really good experience. I was at a small school with people I had grown up with. We were sheltered enough that we had retained our innocence (and stories we heard appalled us).
It's amazing to me that that was literally half a lifetime ago. Today I was drinking my coffee and looking at my Timehop app and saw that Monster's Inc. came out 13 years ago. And then I remembered: Yesterday marked the day that I got my first broken heart, half a lifetime ago.
It wasn't my first boyfriend. I had ended my first "relationship" and broke his heart. But this was the boy next door. A boy I had grown up with. He was 2 years older. We walked to the movies with our siblings and held hands. He burned CDs for me of bands that he liked (mainly A Newfound Glory and Blink 182). We watched movies in the garage with our siblings. I rode on the back of his BMX bike. We hugged. We played Sardines at night in the neighborhood. We wrote notes and handed them off to each other. It was cute. It was so innocent. It lasted for a summer and then was abruptly over. I got dumped by his sister. I found out he hadn't like me for a couple weeks and his whole family had known. I felt humiliated. I was broken. He didn't want to be friends. He said we only hung out because we liked each other. And that was that. We all pretty much stopped hanging out. I vowed to myself to never let that happen again.
It took me 2 years to move on. And I have no idea why. I have analyzed what it was about that relationship and the best answer I can come up was that it was just because it was the first heartbreak. And things like that can scar you. I hadn't loved him. I didn't even really know him. We didn't really have a friendship. He was right in that we only hung out because we liked each other. And he was right in ending it. I don't know what I was expecting. Maybe I was just a hopeless romantic that finally had a guy interested (I was never a pretty girl in my classes), and the rejection hurt. Maybe the fairy tale, Cory and Topanga, boy-next-door story was shaped what I thought relationships should look like.
That experience shaped me though. I became the heartbreaker. I didn't let anyone get close. I ended relationships after a few months. My longest relationship before Doug was 4 months. A big part of that was because I'd figure out that I didn't want to be with the guy a lot faster. So why waste my time? Why get invested and open my heart up to be broken again when I knew it wasn't going anywhere? (Something I knew and ignored with the boy next door). In some ways I'm glad I did this, because most of the guys in high school weren't worth the investment.
A lot of experiences in my life have caused me to try to protect myself. To put up walls and not be vulnerable, because I only saw vulnerability as an opportunity to be hurt. This was one of the first experiences to contribute, but not the most profound. But living that way is so pointless. Yes, there are situations and people to protect yourself from. But to limit your vulnerability, to limit your capacity for pain, is to limit your capacity for joy. And if I want to live my life with joy, I need to be able to be vulnerable. Not letting people in because they might hurt you will keep people out of your life that could lift you up and be a lifelong friend. We learn from pain and joy. Embrace life. Don't cower.
My heart mended and I moved on. It was cracked and broken again a couple times over the years but that's because I was able to open my heart to others. And Doug got to keep my heart. And I his. Both have scars but they're what makes us uniquely us. Without those scars I wouldn't be who I am today. So I can look back with a smile on that first sweet, simple, puppy-love relationship. And be thankful for how it contributed to my future relationships.
It'll be fun in 26 years when I can reminisce about this time in my life, and how much will have happened in the next half of my lifetime.
It's amazing to me that that was literally half a lifetime ago. Today I was drinking my coffee and looking at my Timehop app and saw that Monster's Inc. came out 13 years ago. And then I remembered: Yesterday marked the day that I got my first broken heart, half a lifetime ago.
It wasn't my first boyfriend. I had ended my first "relationship" and broke his heart. But this was the boy next door. A boy I had grown up with. He was 2 years older. We walked to the movies with our siblings and held hands. He burned CDs for me of bands that he liked (mainly A Newfound Glory and Blink 182). We watched movies in the garage with our siblings. I rode on the back of his BMX bike. We hugged. We played Sardines at night in the neighborhood. We wrote notes and handed them off to each other. It was cute. It was so innocent. It lasted for a summer and then was abruptly over. I got dumped by his sister. I found out he hadn't like me for a couple weeks and his whole family had known. I felt humiliated. I was broken. He didn't want to be friends. He said we only hung out because we liked each other. And that was that. We all pretty much stopped hanging out. I vowed to myself to never let that happen again.
It took me 2 years to move on. And I have no idea why. I have analyzed what it was about that relationship and the best answer I can come up was that it was just because it was the first heartbreak. And things like that can scar you. I hadn't loved him. I didn't even really know him. We didn't really have a friendship. He was right in that we only hung out because we liked each other. And he was right in ending it. I don't know what I was expecting. Maybe I was just a hopeless romantic that finally had a guy interested (I was never a pretty girl in my classes), and the rejection hurt. Maybe the fairy tale, Cory and Topanga, boy-next-door story was shaped what I thought relationships should look like.
That experience shaped me though. I became the heartbreaker. I didn't let anyone get close. I ended relationships after a few months. My longest relationship before Doug was 4 months. A big part of that was because I'd figure out that I didn't want to be with the guy a lot faster. So why waste my time? Why get invested and open my heart up to be broken again when I knew it wasn't going anywhere? (Something I knew and ignored with the boy next door). In some ways I'm glad I did this, because most of the guys in high school weren't worth the investment.
A lot of experiences in my life have caused me to try to protect myself. To put up walls and not be vulnerable, because I only saw vulnerability as an opportunity to be hurt. This was one of the first experiences to contribute, but not the most profound. But living that way is so pointless. Yes, there are situations and people to protect yourself from. But to limit your vulnerability, to limit your capacity for pain, is to limit your capacity for joy. And if I want to live my life with joy, I need to be able to be vulnerable. Not letting people in because they might hurt you will keep people out of your life that could lift you up and be a lifelong friend. We learn from pain and joy. Embrace life. Don't cower.
My heart mended and I moved on. It was cracked and broken again a couple times over the years but that's because I was able to open my heart to others. And Doug got to keep my heart. And I his. Both have scars but they're what makes us uniquely us. Without those scars I wouldn't be who I am today. So I can look back with a smile on that first sweet, simple, puppy-love relationship. And be thankful for how it contributed to my future relationships.
It'll be fun in 26 years when I can reminisce about this time in my life, and how much will have happened in the next half of my lifetime.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)