Currently Black Holes and Revelations By Muse see related

Quite possibly my favorite photo ever.

Definitely the best thing I've seen all day.

Currently All I Ever Wanted By Kelly Clarkson see related

On Being a Nanny Part 2

I was having a conversation with one of my good friends almost a year ago about my thoughts on being a nanny. I was trying to explain how there seems to be an unspoken rule that some women choose to be mothers while some women choose to have a career, and we try to pay lip service to how both options are equally valid (while secretly thinking the option we didn't choose is somehow lesser), all the while, leaving no option for a 3rd choice. She immediately started saying something about how it was okay that I was taking the mom path but that she didn't think that was the right option for herself. I started laughing, telling her that wasn't what I was saying at all. She asked me to go on, seeming to loosen up, but still obviously tense and worried that I was trying to force her to join me on the mommy track or something.

"Okay, so we have this view that some women choose marriage and family, and that is respectable, and some women choose to follow their dreams of a career and find success there, and that is respectable. But what if I choose neither? What if I don't get married? Like on purpose, not because I've been desperately seeking a husband and none will take me? What if I continue to actively keep myself from any real career path? On purpose? Where is my home then? Which group of women am I supposed to identify with? Find respect from? Fit in with?"

She didn't really know what to say in response to that because we've allowed no space for that. Feminism and the backlash against it have all but made sure of it. You either marry, have children and busy yourself with creating the perfect, pretty and happy family, forsaking all else, or you busy yourself with chasing men up the career and educational ladder, trying to carry on the torch of the brave women who went before you (or you kill yourself trying to do some combination of both). I constantly feel like I am being asked to make clear which side I'm on. Am I the homemaker or the career woman? (Because I can promise you that I don't have it in me to be both) What if I'm not on either side? What if I choose neither? Can we make space for that?

Of course I'm not saying that everyone must be careerless and childless like me. Or that I will be careerless and childless forever (as if I could even begin to know what the future holds). I'm just weary of being caught in the middle and wondering why we must always fight each other. Are we that insecure about our lives that we feel the need to make everything into a battle? I'm pretty sure the answer is yes.

I know at least for myself, one of the reasons I kept thinking about this is that I was so bothered that I had nothing to show for myself. Nannying definitely isn't helping build my resume for future jobs, the idea of gaining financial freedom from school loans is a laughable goal at this point, and I'm helping raise someone else's child. Mothers can show off their final product when their child grows into a contributing adult (or even when they use good manners around another adult). I probably will never know how the children I nanny for will turn out, and even if I did, their parents would get the credit, not me. I do my best to train other people's children in the everyday stuff of life during the short time I am with them. I don't teach them Latin or Algebra, I try to teach them to be kind, respectful and responsible, and fail miserably at that every day. I'm not even a very good nanny. I care deeply about these children, but none of this comes naturally to me like it seems to with other women blessed with more of a maternal instinct.

I have nothing to show for myself, and even though I'm a woman who is expected to have something to show for whatever side she chose, I think that's okay. That's not the reason I became a nanny...

and yes, I'm listening to Kelly Clarkson. I love her. Shut up.

Currently Gossip In The Grain By Ray LaMontagne see related

On Being a Nanny - Part 1

"so what do you do?"

"you mean, like for a living?"

"sure"

"I'm a nanny"

"oh, how old are you? Are you a student then?"

"no...just a nanny, and I'm 25"

"oh....that's...cool..."

And so it usually goes. Followed by the obligatory awkwardness that comes when two classes intersect. Either that or the random single guy who over-enthuses "that's great!", all but saying how proud he is that I am coming home to my role as a woman. I'm getting better at restraining myself whenever I encounter guys like this. They're rare but they threaten to ruin everything.

It's been almost a year and a half since I quit my steady, regular job with benefits to become a nanny and I am still caught off guard by what I have yet to learn and by the classism, pride, insecurity and worship of success and financial security that still lurks within me.

I don't think I fully realized how much I felt I had to prove myself to others until I had the rug of respectability pulled out from under me. I think I am finally able to leave the above conversation for what it is, and not desperately add "but I have a degree! And it's only temporary! And it gives me lots of time to read books! Did I mention that I like books? Did I mention the degree?" I still want to say these things, but I've learned to let it go.

I am able to laugh now when friends with interesting jobs that utilize their education tell me of their work week or their promotion and all I have to report is that I wiped a poopy butt, gave 7 timeouts and cut a lot of apple slices. It's not the laugh of desperate mockery, trying to validate myself by denigrating what they do. It's a laugh of pure and surprising joy. I laugh knowing that just two years ago, this would have killed me and I can honestly say now, I don't care. I'm okay. I really am. And that's crazy. I really don't think I realized two years ago how much that would have mattered to me, but I see it now. To have the possibility of impressing people taken from me - and be okay with it - that is the most freeing and beautiful thing in the world.

Currently If Songs Could Be Held By Rosie Thomas see related

Remain Attentive to Your Best lntuitions

You are living through an unusual time. You see that you are called to go towards solitude, prayer, hiddenness, and great simplicity. You see that, for the time being, you have to be limited in your movements, sparing with phone calls, and careful in letter writing.

You also know that the fulfillment of your burning desire for intimate friendships, shared ministry, and creative work will not bring you what you real1y want. It is a new experience for you to feel both the desire and its unreality. You sense that nothing but God's love can fulfill your deepest need while the pull to other people and things remains strong. It seems that peace and anguish exist side by side in you, that you desire both distraction and prayerful concentration.

Trust the clarity with which you see what you have to do. The thought that you may have to live away from friends, busy work, newspapers, and exciting books no longer scares you. It no longer gives rise to anxiety about what others will think, say, or do. Even the idea that you may soon be forgotten and lose your connections with the world does not upset you.

You find prayer quite easy. What a grace! People around you are going to the theatre, ballet classes, or dinner parties, and you do not feel rejected or abandoned when they do not invite you to join them. In fact, you are very happy to be alone in your room. It is not hard to speak to Jesus and listen to him speaking to you. You are becoming aware of how dose Jesus is to you. He holds you safe in his love. At times, memories of past events and fantasies about the future pierce your heart, but these painful incidents have become less frightening, less devastating, less paralyzing. It almost seems as if they are necessary reminders of your need to stay dose - very dose - to Jesus.

You know that something totally new, truly unique, is happening within you. It is dear that something in you is dying and something is being born. You must remain attentive, calm, and obedient to your best intuitions. You keep asking yourself, 'What about the ways I have done and said things in the past? What about my many options in the future?' Suddenly you realize that these questions are no longer meaningful. In the new life you are entering, they won't be raised anymore. The stage sets that have for so long provided a background for your thoughts, words, and actions are slowly being rolled away, and you know they won't come back.

You feel a strange sadness. An enormous loneliness emerges, but you are not frightened. You feel vulnerable but safe at the same time. Jesus is where you are, and you can trust that he will show you the next step.

- HENRY NOUWEN

Currently For the Nations: Essays Evangelical and Public By John H. Yoder, John Howard Yoder see related

"When the empirical community becomes disobedient, other people can hear the Bible's witness too. It is after all a public document. Loners and outsiders can hear it speaking, especially if the insiders have ceased to listen. It was thanks to the loner Tolstoy and the outsider Gandhi that the churchman Martin Luther King Jr with his Boston personalist education was able to bring Jesus' word on violence back into the churches. It was partly the outsider Marx who has enabled liberation theologians to restate what the Law and the Prophets had been saying for centuries, largely unheard, about God's partisanship for the poor."

- John Howard Yoder