pinkcaddy

*kendraspondence* - Twirtysomething wife, mama, writer, magic bean buyer. Sending you a love letter from Chattanooga, TN.

15 for 15

January 28, 2012 Bible No comments

My babies are all catching their beauty rest right now, as they should be. It’s late and it’s sabbath. Time to rest: mind, body, soul.

I am still awake and tending the coals of the interwebs since I feel convicted to share the following.

“Fifteen Lessons for Fifteen Years” is a reflection in three parts by Pastor David Asscherick. I could wax on about how moved I have been by God’s word through the vessel of Pastor Asscherick’s eloquent preaching. How he has perhaps had the most influence on my and my husband’s conversion beyond any other pastor. And we’ve never really met Pastor Asscherick! That is a story for another day, however.

For now, this is a celebration of baptism and of forgetting the darkness in our past and looking to the sun-drenched horizon of our future in Christ.

If you have a moment this weekend to scan these, there is so much wisdom contained within these three posts. Even if you are not a Seventh-day Adventist Christian but have a heart for God’s leading in your life or your family, I encourage you to read these. I’ve been blessed abundantly.

baptism

(Link from the picture above to the first part in the series. You’ll find a jump at the end of the linked post to the next parts.)

Stray bullet

January 27, 2012 Baby Girl, Little Man, Lovey Loverpants No comments

Twenty-four hours ago, I was in a horizontal position, like someone hit by a stray bullet. And that bullet’s name was Surprise Stomach Bug. I remained in that position for the better part of the day, except for the moments when I was reacquainting myself with the marvelous receptacle that is our commode, oh how wondrous is your wide open maw, so mighty is your power to flush, so splendiferous is your proximity there in the bathroom where I just noticed that the tile is sort of shifty in this one position waaaah why am I still sitting here?….End: Ode to the commode.

As I lay (lie? I never remember. Good thing I teach writing) along my miserable line of latitude yesterday, when laughter hurt and reading hurt and the very thought of food was OWWW, I had a very long think. I thought how in the dim light of my nineteen year-old wisdom when I was dreaming of my future husband, a requisite was probably someone who would bring me a rose (so cliche!) on important anniversaries.

But yesterday? Yesterday I was giving worshipful thanks for the man who brought me ginger ale and kept my glass full. (I would have given worshipful thanks even if he were covered in a pelt of back hair and a Ron Paul 2012 sticker. As long as he took care of me the way that Loverpants did yesterday.)

Ladies, forget the J.Crew centerfold you are desiring. Pray yourself a husband that will love you through the days when you both feel and look like a moldy bath mat in a high school boy’s locker room.

<3 Lovey Loverpants <3

***

In other news, Little Man turned 20 months and he enjoys great literature. His big sister is pleased.

Achtung, mama

January 20, 2012 Baby Girl, Bible, Little Man, Lovey Loverpants, People Worth Celebrating, Teaching No comments

This morning my alarm was a perfume sample giver-outer standing in my path at Macy’s. She did not want to be ignored. Wake up. Take the sample. Acknowledge me. Or I will not stop.

I acknowledged her. I got up at an hour that rhymes with hix o’flock.

I got up and spent some time in Exodus, chapter 3. God was just hanging out…in some shrubbery…on fire…just having a deep and meaningful with Moses.

God was like the perfume giver-outer.
The one who’s got something to give does not want to be ignored. Can ya dig it?

***

No one with the exception of Little Man was in a jocund mood this morning. Baby Girl was flexing herself into some petrified scorpion position when we were trying to get her dressed and ready for school. Tears ensued. There was no time to put on my cosmetic face. I believe more tears ensued for my students because of this.

***

Class went well despite a student showing us a propaganda video about how textbooks are for cavepeople and soon every baby will come into the world, his parents having registered for a baby iPad with the Dr. Seuss I Can Read series locked and loaded. Not really but that’s what one could project.

***

I hung out with Little Man at the campus cafe while Loverpants attended a networking event. Little Man yelled MAMAMAMAMMMMAMAMAMAM? MAMA? MAMA! MAMAMAMAMAMA! even though I was standing right next to him. One of my students said she admired how whenever she runs into my husband or me, we are always with our children. I explained that this was both intentional and incidental. They are, for better or for worse, very much a part of every fabric of our lives. I appreciated that she recognized this, however, since I spent four years of college reading Steinem and Woolf and thinking that children were a great idea. If you liked having a really lame life. And a purse full of crusty Kleenex.

***

I then got an e-mail from a person who holds our financial future in his pocket and that sent me into a tailspin.

***
I then got angry with my husband because of this e-mail from the person who is not my husband.

I then told my husband that he should leave me alone because I was about to say something really mean.

I then went for a run in the rain.

I then ran up a hill in the rain and rolled my bad ankle and fell on the ground and scraped up my knees.

A woman came running to see if I was ok and offered to drive me home which was so nice.

But I walked down the hill because frankly I like pain and crying and limping and walking downhill in the rain.

***
I am now typing here with a bag of frozen vegetables on my swollen ankle.
I think this is where I need to be.
I think I have been anxious for nothing lately.
I think God really wants my attention right now.

Happy sabbath.

Before bedtime

10 Loves for a Cold January Day

January 18, 2012 Uncategorized No comments

1. I love a tightly-written essay. Preferably by Roger Rosenblatt.

2. I love homemade strawberry marshmallows (strawshmellows).

3. I love my kids’ smiles, unforced, unabashed.

4. I love the feeling of all the tension washing out of my system in a hot shower.

5. I love Zooey Deschanel’s cadence and inflection in “New Girl.”

6. I love Michelle Obama.

7. I love helping a student solve a puzzle with his/her writing, or with language in general.

8. I love finding an old letter from my husband.

9. I love the Montessori method.

10. I love looking at this picture from four Januarys ago….

IMG_1609

McSweeney’s

January 15, 2012 Freelance Projects, Publication No comments

The following is something that is important to me. It is not so important because someone named Chris in California responded within a couple of weeks of receiving my submission and told me that it made him laugh and that he was going to run it within the following couple of weeks. I know that it’s important to be published if you want to be a writer, you should gain ex-po-sure if you want to be a capital W Writer, you should aim for the big name lit mags if you want to live in the stratosphere of the professional writers. Wahmwahmwahhmwahh.

This piece is important to me because the idea came to me when I was freezing my tochis off in my sister’s girlhood bed over Christmas break. I had just paid my student loan bill that day and felt all sorts of depressed about how many more years of this indentured relationship I had with the feds, and how hilarious that the feds now knew my social security number AND ALSO the name of the first buoy with whom I ever mashed faces. Oh katzen. Struck me as funny.

So, in my frigid, sleepless state, I grabbed my laptop and started typing out a little ode to the feds. I just had that feeling that I would rue the night that I refused to capture this inspiration, allowing it rather to float out into the ether where all the memories of loan repayments and first smooches and the ideas of how to negotiate things once and for all with your boss just go and vaporize. The following week, Loverpants took the kids out for an afternoon and I finished this piece and sent it off and felt good, ya know??

All in all, just celebrating the almighty process which is equal parts torture and triumph to a writer. The process as well as the publication. Thanks, McSweeney’s.

 

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