32w 2d insult

What is it that gives insults so much power?

Even now, days later, I'm hurt by something someone said. It wasn't even said with bad intentions, I'm sure. It's just in this person's nature to speak without recognizing the words as being hurtful.

Immediately afterward, I felt humiliated – an overreaction for a very minor insult. Why did such a small thing humiliate me? Why do I let it? I think having witnesses made it worse.

Then, for the next hours... days... my mind formed responses, reasons I could have attributed to the subject of the insult. They were believable but not really true. Why does the brain do this, struggle to create a reality I could better live with, one that's free of tiny humiliations?

It's at moments like this that I get sick of my own thoughts. There's no escaping yourself, though. I hate knowing, even though time has already pushed the silly insult to the bowels of my memory, that it's going to resurface periodically in the future. Insults always do. I mean, every morning, tweezers in hand, I still remember grade school children mocking my eyebrows 20 years ago.

Why?

From "Nobody's Home" by Avril Lavigne:

Open your eyes and look outside,
Find the reasons why.
You've been rejected,
And now you can't find what you left behind.
Be strong, be strong now.
Too many, too many problems.
Don't know where she belongs,
Where she belongs.

31w 6d morning

"Do you like being pregnant?" Andy asked last night, after laughing at me. When he had turned to look at me, I don't think he had expected to see me sprawled on the couch with my belly exposed staring with seriousness at the pale, vein-y roundness.

My first reaction was, of course, silly, but maybe I haven't made it so obvious.

"I love it," I said. "It blows my mind." He agreed.

There's nothing quite like watching another person move underneath your own skin, or waking up to someone nudging you from the inside, and you press your fingers there, and this person pushes back. No one has ever said a more amazing "good morning" to me.

It's to the point now where I can't imagine not being pregnant. June will be a strange adjustment period in many ways. For now, though, I am enjoying life, its good and its bad, its routine and its surprises.

The birds are chirping this Easter morning. He is risen!

After the Sabbath, at dawn on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to look at the tomb. There was a violent earthquake, for an angel of the Lord came down from heaven and, going to the tomb, rolled back the stone and sat on it. [...] The angel said to the women, "Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. He is not here; he has risen, just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay."

Matthew 28:1-2, 5-6

31w 4d sacrifice

It's easy to be happy on a day like today. Above is a shot of my budding lilac bushes. Is there anything better than spring?



The warm breeze is blowing in off the pond, billowing the patio curtains. I sit in the peace and the quiet, save for the sound of the happy ducks and geese splashing in the water. A little voice in my head says, Enjoy it now, for there may not be a lot of peace and quiet and open freedom in the time to come.



I'm okay with that. Sure, a little selfish sadness exists for the solitude that I so love, a little grieving for it. But I think I will find that it's a waste of grief. What are buds compared to blooms? I shouldn't fear change.



Once there was a father who sacrificed his own child to save those who don't deserve saving... It's easy to be happy on a day like today.

From the Lenten hymn Stricken, Smitten, and Afflicted:

Tell me, as you hear him groaning,
was there ever grief like his?
Friends through fear his cause disowning,
foes insulting his distress.
Many hands were raised to wound him,
none would intervene to save.
But the deepest stroke that pierced him
was the stroke that justice gave.