SAHM I am (28 page)

It’s common to hear SAHMs protest, “But I’m too busy! I don’t have time to spend two and a half or three hours in quiet time.” My response is always “Well, I’M too busy NOT to spend three hours with God!”

So, what about the rest of you? Are you “too busy” to spend time with God? Or too busy NOT to?

Devoted to Him,

Rosalyn

I never enjoy discussions about quiet time. They always make me feel guilty. Yes, you all are witness to this sad but true fact—my weakness where Rosalyn is concerned is when she brings up daily devotions. I can ignore housecleaning, or discipline, or organic cheeseball recipes and all the other inane topics she moralizes ad nauseum about. But she mentions devotional time with God, and I suddenly feel like I’m 10 years old again, with the pastor looking down at me from his pulpit, shaking his finger in my face and telling me what a bad Christian I am.

It’s not that I don’t love God. but I can’t seem to sit down and concentrate on studying the Bible for longer than…well, five minutes. And I get lost and frustrated with long prayer lists. I hate memorizing, and I especially hate getting up early in the morning. So quiet time, for me, is just another unpleasant chore I have to do. And I don’t do it, because there are a million other things that are more urgent. Nobody will go hungry if I don’t read the Bible every day. But if I don’t make dinner…?

Then, I feel even more guilty because a “good” Christian would “hunger for the word.” A “good” Christian would
long
to spend time “on their face in prayer.” A “good” Christian would “hide God’s word in their heart.” I want to be a good Christian, but it seems sometimes like a little too much effort.

Z

Zelia,

I used to feel the same way! But when I was in graduate school, I finally “got it.” We are
not
supposed to have “quiet time.” Not at all! We are supposed to have a love relationship with the God of the universe, who adores each of us as individuals. Do you force yourself to spend a certain block of time with Tristan every day, where you engage in intense study of something somebody else wrote about what he said? Where you deliberately work at memorizing a letter he wrote you? Where you rattle off a honey-do list of needs you or other people have? How fun would that be for either one of you?

I would imagine when you spend time with your husband, you laugh and talk together, show affection and listen to each other. It’s not “quiet” at all!

Don’t you think God would rather have that sort of a natural, spontaneous relationship with you, instead of some regimented, formulaic ritual? :)

Phyllis

You know what, girl? Sometimes you’ve got more wisdom in your pinky than a whole convention of pastors will ever have! Thank you. I’ll be thinking about what you said.

Dear Becky,

Has Tom e-mailed you or called you? He’s done neither with me. And I couldn’t bring myself to admit that to Mom, because then she’d know how awful things are with us right now. So I was hoping you’d heard from him. He left a week ago today, and I’m just miserable. Please believe me, I never meant to hurt him so bad. I’m still not sure what I did that was so wrong. I was just teasing around with some of my friends. You know how girls talk about their husbands sometimes…I was a lot nicer than some women are about their DHs!

Anyway, if you’re not mad at me, too, for chasing your brother off to Alaska two months before the wedding, please tell me if you know how he’s doing. I dropped him off at the airport, and he didn’t even want us to come in and wait with him. Just said he’d see me at the wedding. No kiss, nothing. Any advice would be hugely appreciated.

Your sister,

Dulcie

Hi Dulcie,

Why is it that both of you seem to have appointed me as your personal marriage counselor? What do I know? I’m just his kid sister! :)

But, to answer your question, he did call the other evening, and it sounds like he arrived okay and is getting settled. Miserable, but settled. Also sounds to me like he’s starting to cool down and realize he made a very stupid decision! And now you’re both stuck with it.

Trust me, this has all been
very
educational for Jordan and me. We are taking pages and pages of notes—we call it our “Let’s Learn from Tom and Dulcie’s Screwups Notebook.” So, thanks to you, we should have an
awesome
marriage! :)

Okay, I’ll be nice now. You wanted my advice on Tom? You want to know why he got so upset about whatever was in that e-mail? Think about it, Dulcie. He grew up with an alcoholic dad that was always telling him how useless he was, how he couldn’t do anything right. A dad that up and split when Tom was 13 and I was 11. We didn’t hear from him again—got an obituary notice about ten years ago that he died of liver sclerosis. If you had that sort of experience as a kid, how sensitive would you be about someone you love saying you were in the way and didn’t know how to do anything right? He’s gotten to the point where the only thing he is confident in is his ability to pro
gram computers. Do you blame him for running away from the rest of it?

That’s about the best I got for you. Sorry it isn’t more.

Hugs,

Becky

Oh, Becky! He never told me any of that. I never,
ever
would have joked about him if I’d known. All he would say about his dad was that he drank a lot and divorced your mom and died a while ago. I didn’t know. Honest…I just didn’t know.

Dulcie

Yeah, well, it’s not exactly the sort of thing we like to put in our family Christmas letter or anything….

Give him another week or so. I bet he’ll come around enough so you can talk to him.

Becky

Darling,

You’re so good with design. Look at the attached photos for me and tell me which color of amaryllis would look better in my bouquet. Do you like the fuchsia-striped ones, or the white ones with the red star in the center? Oh, maybe I should go multicolored and have one of all of them!

By the way, just for the record, I am not in favor of Tom going off to Alaska for a whole year. What was he thinking, leaving his family like that? It’s bad enough for him to have been home only on weekends, but this is shameful! I’m sorry, dear. I thought I raised him better than that. You poor thing. I’m sure the salary is very attractive, but really, there’s more to life than making money. I’ll tell him so, too, at the wedding.

Well, I’m off to work. Have a great day, honey!

Jeanine

Dulcie,

Did you get the voice mail I left last week with my new office and hotel contact info? I didn’t get a reply, so I wanted to make sure you found it.

Anchorage is very pretty. A little smaller than Omaha. Chilly, too. Your mother wouldn’t have to worry about her flowers trying to come up early here. Everyone seems nice so far.

Let me know if you got that voice mail, or if I need to e-mail you my info again.

Thanks,

Tom

Dulcie dear,

Do you think it would be better to have the whole band or just Shoji play “Ride of the Valkyries” for Morris’s processional? Shoji offered, but I have never heard a violin version before. Would it sound weird, do you think?

Jeanine

Dulcie,

Would you be willing to write a reference for us for the adoption? I know we’ve never met in person, but you know me probably better than anyone else, except Tristan. Our case worker said it would be okay. If you’d like to do this, let me
know and I’ll send you the information sheet on what you have to include in the letter.

I’m really jazzed—tomorrow is our home visit! But I’m nervous, too. I’ve cleaned the entire house, top to bottom. Tristan probably would have all sorts of fun teasing me about how suddenly obsessive I’ve become about picking up. But he’s still trying to recover from tax day.

I hope you’re doing okay. You’ve been a bit quiet this week.

Hugs,

Z

Hi Dulcie!

I have sort of an awkward question to ask you about when you were adopted. Did your parents ever feel sad or anything because they missed out on being pregnant with you? I guess it was probably different for them since they’d had children already….

See, Darren told me last night that he doesn’t mind the idea of adoption so much. Ever since Madeline made that comment to him about all of us being adopted by God, he’s decided adoption is pretty cool. But he’s feeling really sad about not being able to go through a pregnancy with me. He said he keeps looking at all my baby pictures from Madeline, and when I was pregnant with her, and the ultrasound picture and all that. And he told me he really
wants to do all that stuff with me, since I had to go through it alone the last time. (Well, my mom was with me, but it’s not the same as having a husband.) He got really sad, and even looked like he was going to cry—which he
never
does.

So that’s why I was asking. I hope it doesn’t offend you or bother you at all. I’m not trying to be nosey. I just wondered if that feeling of disappointment ever goes away.

Thanks for being such a good friend.

Brenna

I almost forgot! What do you think we should do about wedding favors? I haven’t ordered any yet, and if I don’t this week, I’m afraid they might not arrive in time. I was thinking it would be nice to make them a Branson souvenir/Wedding favor combination. I saw the cutest miniature cedar rolling pins in a gift store on the strip the other day—they had “Ozark Husband Tamer” carved on them. I think there’d be enough room on the opposite side to put our name and wedding date. That would be for the ladies. The men could have corncob bubble pipes with our names and date on it. Wouldn’t that be just so cute?

Gotta run! TTFN!

Jeanine

Hi everyone!

I’ve had a whirlwind day! I scheduled a dentist appointment for McKenzie this morning, and then we all went to the store to buy shoes for the twins, who seem to be having another growth spurt. We ate lunch out, and then I figured I really should stop at Jiffy Lube and get the oil changed in the car, since it was long overdue. While the car was being worked on, we walked over to our hair salon and got all four of us trimmed up. After that, I went grocery shopping, and then the girls were getting really fussy, so I took them home and put them down for a nap. Spent all afternoon doing bills, then laundry. Since I was working on clothes anyway, I decided to sort out the spring and summer clothes the girls will need and get them washed and put away. Fixed supper, put on a movie for the kids, and ran next door to feed the neighbor’s cat for her while she’s visiting her niece in Ohio. Came back and read a story to the girls and put them to bed.