The Good Fight

I remember sitting in our pastors office, with Rob (then my fiance) and very naively thinking "what could I possibly fight about with this wonderful man?"

After a year and a half of dating, smooth sailing, the most "vanilla" relationship I had ever been in, and yet in the most wonderful way. There was not one thing we didn't agree on.

Amazing right?

Not so much actually. This state of twitterpation, of euphoria, was really the worst thing that could have happened to us as a couple.

I don't know if it was the fact that I had never been in a relationship that wasn't volatile and Rob not knowing how not to say yes when it needed to be no or the other way around. Or him wanting to keep me happy, either way looking back it was probably the worst set of circumstances that befell us over the next two years...

In my search for God I have also noticed that I am searching for myself and for my husband.

Somewhere along the way we went from being this devoted couple to retreating to our separate corners before we have to do too much damage control with each other. I wonder when we stopped fighting the good fight. Or if we still are, just separately and quietly...

Just among the many things I am searching for...

Dear God

I have tried to hard to find you. I know there are people that tell me that you are seeking me and I can always find you but its harder than it seems.

How do I see you in the sick, the helpless, the hopeless, and one of the later being myself?

Where do I find the strength to not cry every morning and every long night?

How do I motivate and stir a passion in my otherwise passionless husband?

There are so many fundamentally wrong things with the church and with "religion" that I cannot reconcile.

I am seeking you and your truth but I have hit a wall...

Where do I go from here?

Search For God (Part Two)

So last I wrote, well blogged, that I didn't know if I believed in God or that I could say I truly believed in God without going through the motions. With out it being real. I had to know and I had to find out for myself.

I have not come to a conclusion yet but I am noticing that my problem isn't with God its with men, women and the church. And it is so much more complicated than I do or don't believe and what I actually believe in.

My own husband I have to say has not been very comforting on this journey of mine.

Here I am trudging around my house with the Torah in one hand the Apocrypha in another the book or Mormon under my arm and notes on Kierkegaard shoved into my mouth on my way to the table and all he says to me is "Why are you letting man define what you think about God" Though he has a valid point there was no help there, so I have fully realized that I am in no mans land. I am wandering my own desert (Oy) hopefully not for forty years...

So from the Vatican News Letter to the Screw tape letters by Lewis, and "the hidden meaning behind the Lord of the Rings" in the past few weeks I have read it and I am no closer to my conclusion of what RELIGION and GOD have to do with each other if anything...

I brush my teeth religiously, I read perezhilton.com religiously... I guess I want to find out if I truly do believe why is the previous so easy and going to temple or church so hard? Why do I get irritated with the clergy and then get brought to tears during the sermon? Why do I feel like every christian is faking it?

What is the true way?

I noticed a flaw in my not believing in God since I believe in the Devil and I believe in demons. There is something disturbing about the fact that I truly feel alright in darkness. Demonology has always been an interest of mine and I have always wondered about the dark underbelly of religion. Exorcisms don't bother me but at the same time I am terrified of myself being under the influence of a demon...

It is all so confusing, I guess I am looking for God to reveal something to me. I regret giving up Judaism when I got married and I am thinking that I need to go back to find the path I am supposed to be on, for myself and in the future for my children...

I continue my search thus far and will keep you updated as to what I find...

The Lost Pearl...

This is a story I read in a book but I feel like it highlights my life right now...

One day my family had gone to the shore on a day trip. My brother and I were playing in the water while my parents read on the beach. Soon after playing in the water we found an oyster bed. There were dozens and dozens of shells some living and some already dead.

We had accumulated a small pile of shells and one that I thought was perfect it was slightly open about an eighth of an inch and something was rattling around inside, I wanted to keep the shell so I tried to shake it out, the oyster innards spilt all over my hands and I went to throw it into the ocean off of the pier. As I threw what I thought was waste off of the pier I saw a small glint in the middle of it. I was young enough to have a firm objective of wanting the perfect shell but old enough to know what I had just thrown away.

I marked the spot with my eyes and swam to the exact spot, I told my brother and we furiously searched the bed where I thought the pearl had landed. Soon enough my parents had told us that it was time to leave soon I frantically told them what had happened and we were now all searching for the pearl. But it was gone and we had a schedule that demanded that we leave almost immediately, we had to go and I left the pearl there in the ocean a gift from the perfect shell that I had thrown away...

Years later after I had been married the subject of children came up and I just wasn't ready in my mind there were things I wanted to do, things I did not want to give up between my husband and I and for seven years of our marriage I tried to find a reason to not have children. Shortly after i had given in and gave birth to our first child we had found out that the days of my childbearing were over, and our brand new baby even at that was a miracle. Eight years I had wasted that I could have had children... A gift from a perfect shell that God had given me I had again thrown away... I tried to make Gods timing my timing

~makes you think doesn't it?

Searching For God (Part One)

This blog has been a long time coming. I have written it after much thought and debate... Everything you read here after is personal findings and facts of my own accord...


For a few months now I have not been able to find a connection with God. I went searching for him once before and this time I turned up empty handed. Here it is again after three in the morning and I cannot make sense of it all.

I would have to assume that the catalyst of this past search would be that I was thinking about my son. How I still hear his cries in my sleep. How I can’t get the sound of his last breath out of my head and it is absolutely torture. Every single time I see a dark haired green eyed baby boy I just want to pick him up and go “oh there you are! I’ve missed you!” I know its not going to happen but in my mind if it were that’s how it would play out. I admit I day dream a lot.

Then it continued with how the whole process just does not make any sense to me. I was searching for some one to explain the logic behind Christianity and how those people who show up every Sunday were some how in their eyes more worthy than any one else on the face of the Earth because they had “seen the light” so to speak. Maybe that is what I have the hardest time with. It seems like there are a certain type of “Christian” that acts like a spoiled rich teenage brat. Like they are some how “entitled” to the kingdom of God because every Sunday they go to church and have their small groups and bible studies and then come home and make the rest of the world feel inferior or some how not part of the club.

I have a problem here. I really don’t see how “God” can accept some one who is two faced and belittling and generally a nuisance to the general public by their false sense of entitlement and spewing of right wing propaganda into heaven as to say my Father. Some one who doesn’t believe in God but goes into the trenches of hell on earth every day. Who risks his life for those by even worldly standards are beneath what should and is being offered. It sickens me to think that in “gods” eyes he is less worthy then lets say my biological father, or my sister in law or Mother in Law or even my own husband.

I used to think that my relationship with God came into question and subsequently died with my son on September 12th 2008 but I now see that it has been long and coming and I just want to be able to see where the break was. So I can effectively treat it. If that is, it is a treatable break and not something I am better off just severing all together.

As for right now I do not believe there is a God. I still have my roots buried in religion and tradition because that is the person that I am. It has been a part of who I am since I was born. I just don’t know how I can continue to live my life with out TRULY believing. I need to find out how... Or better yet if I can...

Until Part Two.

Privileged

So many thoughts come to mind when you say the word privileged. So many different things can be taken the wrong way... I'm not talking about the privilege of being born in to money or being genetically gifted... well maybe I am...

Rob and I have suffered so many fertility problems over the past three years... All resulting in the death of an infant son and three miscarriages.

I noticed myself becoming bitter the other day. I mean truly bitter in every sense of the word when the fourth person in my life said something to the effect of "Oh and we weren't even trying to get pregnant"

It stung me to my core...

Its hard enough to be thinking about it every day, every moment of everyday really, and to be blindsided with the face that you don't really hurts. Not that I am upset by people that can because I cant, but I am.

Its not logical and its purely emotional and its an obsession that I don't think will be quenched until we have a baby in our home...

I guess I just wanted to touch on that note of privilege...

Some Mothers

I don't know what it is about some mothers that just irritate me. I guess its just like politics the two extremes are both irrational and sometimes both as equally ignorant. I know that I am not one but in the same sense I am one. I make decisions for a child in my household every day, I bathe, diaper, rock, feed and clothe one every day... So yes I am a mother and have given birth to a child; now that that's out of the way.

I had my mother in law tell me the other day that she thinks she will never be good enough for her daughter. This bothers me so much because my Mother in Law is a wonderful grandmother and she almost never sees her grandchildren.

There is something about the mother that is "called" to be a home maker that just screams "I'm so much better at this than you"

I don't know if the whole home maker mentality even really exists any more or if it is just the scaled down boob job. Look my house is cleaner than yours! Look my kids know french! Look I make my husbands life easier in every way accept I wont give head! OK the last one was a little vindictive, BUT truly, that's how I see it.

I think that it is a total cop out for some one to say they "choose" to be a "stay at home mom" and I am finding empowerment behind that title. Its not a title its the way God designed it to be. though women are just as smart, just as capable as a man at most everything. But men cant breastfeed or give life like we can we are just built for it. So to "choose" it is a fallacy... You cant choose something that you were created to do so why make the rest of us that choose to work feel bad about it?

And furthermore, stop scaring the hell out of those of us that haven't made it there yet!

I am in my mid 20's and terrified that if I am not a mother to a biological child by the time I am 30 I will not have the energy to be good enough, happy enough, clean enough or holy enough... That id I choose to wite my book my children will some how one day go to therapy with one of my husbands colleagues and tell them that they missed out on my homemade baby food, or if I decided to teach that I was to busy grading papers and it scarred them for life that I bought pizza and made sandwiches for more than one or five meals a week.

Why does it have to be a terrorist operation? Why cant we just leave it at every family is different and some families are better off if Mom doesn't cook! I know my kids might feel that way. Or if some Moms don't stay at home, I personally feel that my husband has a more maternal quality than I do. I attribute that to my wonderful mother in law... I on the other hand have a more masculine quality and am OK with that, and have embraced it...

I guess I just want to stop the fighting. Stop the stare down and Babies R Us and the play ground or doctors office...

Because lets face it, no one, is or ever will be the Perfect Mother...

Why Crisis

I really did want this blog to have a more upbeat tone and I wanted it to be about my husband and I but this life of ours it involves so many people from so many walks of life and I am not positive all the time. Not even half of the time. At this point in my marriage of year three of being together with Rob, we have been rocked to our core and I just have to ask why... Why? Someone for the sake of God tell me! WHY?

We did everything right, we went to school first, met each others family and talked marriage got engaged got married went into debt got pregnant and here we are today basically homeless no child and two dogs... Why?

I would like some one to explain to me how all of the idiot parents out there still have their children and I don't have my son with me today... How mothers keep coming back for more with the foster care system and yet I don't have a child and cannot get pregnant... 8 months and nothing...

I mean of course there are bigger whys like Why are there starving children in Africa, or Why is there AIDS or why havent we cured world hunger if 60% of Americas population is over weight? I get those whys...

I just cant put my finger on Why I am not a mother. Here I am in my mid twenties and there is no baby in sight. No reason why I have not "given my husband the greatest gift a woman could give a man".

Its becoming an obsession...

I am having a Crisis of Why...

I will do it tomorrow

Rob and I always say this, and we never get to it. This is just a short note to tell you how this will make you love your partner for not making you do things but will also make you want to murder them for not taking out the trash...

The Safe Word Is Banana...

For those of you that don't know, I love sex. If I could have it twice a day before meals I would. However; Rob and I have jobs and friends and family members, dogs that have to be fed. You get the picture.

I was thinking the other day that movies and T.V. and even talking to friends makes it all seem so easy and romantic and sometimes funny, comical even depending on the situation.

Last time I talked about the need I have for perfect romantic moments. Sex is one of them all the time every time. I don't believe that just because you have kids or a busy life that you can get away with a quickie every now and then and call it intimacy. For those of you that have that as a sex life I am so sorry... Come with me ... we will go some where you can learn to fix it...

Oh wait. I am one of those women...

I don't know how we got here but we never had that whole honey moon thing it was just sex and that's it, not making love and not fucking it was just good ole christian baby making sex.

And any attempt that I had/have tried to make it better is thwarted by ruined plans or laughter. I have to give it to my husband though he has a good sense of humor for all of the crazy things I have thrown at him and some yet to be thrown but if memory serves correctly they will be knocked out of the park like everything else.

How did we get so consumed with sex in the first place? Is it just a depravity of human nature that we have become obsessed with it? Like when I scratch Delilah or Rupert's butt and the leg shake starts? Or are we just a bunch of creative SOB's and I am the one idiot that is thinking about it too much? Probably the second one.

Though I was watching family guy tonight and Peter and Lois were talking about their kids while strapping on leather duds and a ball gag dolling out a safe word like it was an average night for them. I was so envious! Of CARTOON CHARACTERS!

Maybe this is just my life and the only time I will yell banana is if I want one for breakfast... Oh hell I don't even eat breakfast....

Um I think I got gum on Your shorts...

When Rob came to my place when we were dating I always thought it was strange that he never brought over night clothes. I at the time, lived in Santa Cruz with my three male house mates, and he lived in the East Bay. So in my mind coming over to spend the day or even just the night would warrant some sleep wear and a change of something other than a shirt... I guess it may have crossed my mind then but I was just so twitterpated that it didn't matter.

I on the other hand, having thought about the fact that I thought he was so modest that it was kind of sweet. It was very low pressure. Actually, NO pressure at all. I kind of gave it away all up front. (I wonder if he regrets that about me sometimes.)

I thought that him sleeping in jean shorts must have been so uncomfortable for him, when really it was just male laziness. I know this because we have been married now for two years and he still sleeps in his shorts on a regular basis. Though if there were a fire he wouldn't be like me frantically looking for clothes to put on before I ran out of the house.

Well I thought he was trying as hard as I was to make the overnight thing just as magical as you see it in movies. I'm kind of a freak like that, so I try by always shaving/waxing, wearing makeup to bed, you know all the things that you wouldn't do if there weren't the prospect of new and exciting sex in the wings.

He wasn't. But that didn't deter me from trying my hardest. Now you must understand my motivation behind this was truly for the benefit of the morning after kiss. I suffered and still do suffer from, well its been called dragon breath. I am an avid gum chewer, I floss and brush at least three times a day and still its just horrible. I know it has to do with diet but I refuse to give up a lot of my diet so I deal with it how I can...

So I had the genius idea that if gum worked during the day it may as well work at night right? For the most part a flawless idea. I almost NEVER wake up with my mouth open unless I am horrendously sick so whats the worst thing that could happen?

One morning I woke up to find that the gum had rolled out of my mouth... part of it in my hair; and another part of it was on his shorts. This bright green lime mint gum was on his shorts! I'm sure you can imagine how much I freaked. This was so not in the realm of the perfect morning after.

Luckily I got the gum out of every where before he woke up, which I have to tell you was a miracle in itself because to this day I almost NEVER wake up before Rob. I brushed my teeth and slunk back into bed almost mortified and very plausibly; sure that he was somehow going to know what happened. He never found out.

But every morning I wake up to him in his jean shorts, I laugh to myself a little. Especially because he really could care less about the morning breath.

Those are the benefits of being married.

There is something comfortable...

There is something so comfortable about watching my husband play Halo3 while I procrastinate writing my book.

I guess the violence of how the dead players are being thrown about make the violence in my brain seem a little more normal. I don't even know if that makes sense. I must be looking for meaning again where there isn't any. At least not to that depth.

There seems to be nothing new, nothing fresh in my mind. Which you think wouldn't be a problem for someone who is writing historical fiction...

But its MY fictitious take on what REALLY happened to my family over the years. This truly is more of a pet project that my grandfather convinced me to do and that I really want to finish before his death.

Rob thinks that I have the drive and the passion to tell the story the way it should be told. But even in this blog there is nothing spectacular about how I am writing these thoughts down. Or Blogging these thoughts down, whatever...

So I go back to the feeling of comfort I have laying here on my bed, Rob next to me, playing video games as I seethe anger towards this project. I know even though I struggle with it , it is what I am supposed to be doing...

Im Proud of You...

My husband and I have been through a whole hell of a lot in our first year or two of marriage and it was just the other night that we had an "AH-HA" moment together.

However in the midst of everything he managed to say four words to me that made me realize that we really are still fighting the good fight for a reason. That there is a silver lining to every day... He managed to say something to me that my own father never has.

I'm Proud of You...

It was the single most encouraging moment in our marriage this year...

How we met

When my husband and I met he was joining my show "already in progress" so to speak. I had a long career of dating the same guy in a different package with the same problems. And I was sick and tired of it. So I tried online dating, and much to my surprise it worked! TA DA! Well duh it worked you paid it to work for you...

He and I became friends and talked for months about who else we were dating and where we wanted our lives to go and where we saw ourselves in two or three years, and then in five and then in ten...

And I have to tell you while we were up late and on the phone or on a date we were the only two people in the world and it was fine for me. I wanted that, I needed that.

We met on eHarmony and were matched in late 2005 talked through most of 2006 and began dating, took a break at my hand and then were married in November of 2007. A process that now looking back was entirely too short. When they match you, you already know everything from religion to blood type and shoe size amongst favorite books personal goals and what the persons friends may or may not think about them from their perspective.

Now part of me loved that, I love getting to know people. QUALITY people and eHarmony completely delivered that. But once their part was done I let the communication go by the wayside and I was completely and utterly twitterpated with my now husband... this would come back to bite me in the ass later...

eHarmony is fantastic and I would recommend it to any one who is done with conventional dating.
But I would also recommend new couple counseling to ALL the people that get engaged coming from me I think we needed that and after talking to other couples I think they needed it too.

I just don't know what happened between I'm falling for you and I do...

Things they dont tell you when you get engaged.

It has come to my attention that marriage is a club, a right of passage if you will that people desperately want you to join so you two can share in the love and triumph and stability among many other things that marriage brings...

But it also brings heartbreak, death of dreams, confusion and more often that not game playing, oh yes that ever so seductive dance that we do while dating... Much to your dismay it continues while you're married...

When I got engaged no one was honest with me, and now that i am in my second year of marriage I wish they would have been. I think more men and women need to talk about this. I would have been better prepared for the daily struggle of a NORMAL marriage had my friends and FAMILY said something.

No one told me that one day you and your husband were going to look at each other and say that your wedding was a waste of money. Or that your sex life was going to suck, or that neither of you were going to know how to cook. That 90% of what you registered for you weren't EVER going to use and that you might get pregnant before you wanted to despite your best efforts, and that your sister in law was going to make it look shamelessly easy and make you feel horrible without even trying. No one says to you that you are one day going to look over at your husband and want to punch him in the face because the toilet paper is rolling backwards, or the cap on the toothpaste is caked in green goup.

Or that you might have to deal with the death of a family member, or cancer, or a divorce of your closest friends or that one or both of you could lose a job...

No one tells you that above all else, at the end of the day you will be grateful to know that you are going to bed with the only other person who knows how you feel and has your best interest in mind.

I guess what I am trying to say is that I want to talk about these things and I am going to. No more silence on my part, no longer will I go to a bridal shower and say you will never be happier! Or lie and say that it was the best two years of my life! Well in a way it was... but for most of it I was hurt and confused and lost...

That's honest and true...