Second time is not a charm

Today I am thinking about second pregnancies and how different they are from first pregnancies. Of course, I only have my own experience to go on here, but lets just pretend I am everywoman and can speak with authority for all moms everywhere on this topic.

It makes me sad how unspecial my second pregnancy seems to those around me compared with my first pregnancy. In my first pregnancy one of my major struggles was with people - strangers, friends, family, friends of friends, coworkers, everyone - who were constantly touching my belly, especially before I was really showing. It freaked me out and felt invasive, especially when it was people I did not have a relationship with. Bleh. And yet this pregnancy, I have found myself twice asking my husband to try to feel the baby kick and him generously complying, though it is clear he is uninterested, and after about 90 seconds he removes his hand because "it hurts" to keep holding it on my belly in that expectant position. My son is totally and completely uninterested and too impatient to wait for any more than 2 seconds. The only person who wants to feel the baby is my mom, but my interactions with her are too infrequent to fill that void. At this time in my last pregnancy, I had just had a wonderful baby shower, my parents were calling once or twice a week to check in on how I was feeling, my husband was rubbing my feet or back just about every night, we were taking pictures of my big pregnant belly, we had already decorated the baby's room and set up all our furniture and packed our hospital bags, and we were taking a 6 week childbirth class one night a week. I can say with authority that none of that is happening this time around. In fact, my husband has committed to being out of the house 2 nights a week for something with church, I am leading a church class 1 night a week which keeps me out until midnight every tuesday night, and i can count the number of foot or backrubs I've gotten in the last 7 months on one hand. Quite a bit of this revolves around us moving in 3 weeks and not being able to prepare the baby's stuff yet, so I may feel very differently in our new house. And some of this sounds pretty pathetic and whiny when I read it back to myself. Good thing I'm the only one who reads this blog. But it is difficult, at least for self-indulgent, needy me, to recognize that this baby will enter the world so unceremoniously compared with my son. Especially since I plan on this being my last pregnancy. I still am trying to "enjoy" it as much as possible but I feel really alone in doing that. And it just seems like such an imposition to feel like I have to ask people to want to feel the baby kick or to force my exhausted, begrudging husband to massage my swollen and tired feet, that I just don't do it. I have a hard time receiving ungenerously given gifts. I wish I was better at that, I wish I could just feel satisfied if my need was met regardless of the mindset of the person meeting the need, but I can't. I should pray for this to get better, I only have 9 weeks left.

I have hit the wall tonight and am barely keeping my eyes open, but I wanted to blog quickly about the miracle that happened today at work. Last week I had a difficult conversation with one of my staff, in which he announced he was moving his retirement date up 2 months because my incompetence was driving him out. He was right in that I had made a mistake and could have handled a situation with him better than I did, but he was also totally overreacting. I tried talking to him last week and tried taking responsibility for my mistake and making amends, but he would not accept my apology. I wrote him a card reiterating my apology, but he refused to come to work until this morning so he did not get the card very timely. I had been praying all weekend that God would miraculously change his heart and heal the damage between us, and this morning he came to my office and actually apologized for his overreaction, accepted my apology, and took back his "your incompetence is driving me out" comment and put his retirement date back to May 31 as previously planned. This is not someone who is known for their conflict management skills, and he is definitely someone to hold a grudge, so I was pretty impressed with God's ability to soften him up and work healing between us. I am trying not to think unhelpful things like "One miracle down, 246 more to go!" and just be grateful for his blessing on my staff, my development as a manager, and the fact that Jesus heard my prayers and delivered. Praise you god!

Listening

Today at church I felt like I was able to pinpoint my major difficulties lately, both spiritually and professionally, boil down to the fact that I am just really, really struggling with listening. Partly, I just feel really distracted by my own life right now. I guess that is part of being 7 1/2 months pregnant, in a new job, and about to move to a new house, but it is still not a great excuse. I used to be a good listener. I would say in college I was someone who was known for my listening skills. That, and my ability to talk a belligerent drunk person into going to the hospital to be treated for the multiple pieces of glass lodged in their hand. Everyone's gotta have skilz. But lately it is all I can do when someone is talking to me to keep my mouth shut while I wait for my turn to speak again. This disgusts me on a personal level - I mean, I hate being on the other side of that conversation, when you know that someone you are talking with is basically just waiting for you to shut up and let them go. And yet I am doing that to people on a regular basis. Yuck. Also, I notice that I'm having a hard time making space for God to speak back in my prayer times. This was particularly apparant yesterday at Holy Spirit Saturday when we were praying for the Seek folks to receive from God's Holy Spirit. I did hear stuff for people, but I had a very very difficult time dialing my own internal dialogue back and just listening for the nudge, that still small voice, so much wiser than my own. It was frustrating, and continues to be frustrating. I need God's resourcing so much more than usual right now, and yet I have this tremendously difficult time actually letting him talk. So dumb. So not acceptable.

I went and got prayer today at church and that felt helpful, partly just because I was allowing myself to receive without feeling obligated to nurture or provide for anyone, an experience that I find is more and more rare in my life lately. The lovely lady who prayed for me did so sweetly, and one thing she said struck home. She prayed for God to give me times to listen and times to talk, and people to listen to and people to listen to me, and she asked for more balance in that. I am definitely out of balance, especially in my time in relationships spent where I nurture people in (90%) versus the time spent in relationships I get nurturing out of (10%).

So: tasks for this week. 1, Listen well. Pay attention when people speak to me, both to their words and to what they are actually saying, or asking for. Ask God to help me dial back my internal voice. 2, Set aside time with nurturing friends who can feed that need to be listened to. Let God be one of these people too. 3, Let go of some of my focus on productivity and live more in the moment as well as living more intentionally towards something bigger. 4, Get enough sleep, eat meals on time, and arrive/leave work timely. Act like boundaries on my time are important and possible.

lessons learned

Apparently if you don't log into your blog for 3+ days, google logs you out automatically. The fact that I learned this tells me I need to do a better job with my daily blogging endeavors.

I had such a difficult day that I don't want to be reflective or self conscious for one minute, but the guilt about not blogging basically all week has made me log in for these few sentences. Lord let my work week end tomorrow more of your spirit. Fill me with your presence, Father, and give me the exactly right recipe of self control, generosity, gentleness, and joy that only you can. I pray for your will not mine. Amen and goodnight.

Unfocused

I am not feeling very focused so far this week and though it is only Tuesday morning at 7:15 I'm already getting tired of it. Yesterday's conversations with my staff did not go particularly well, and I struggled to stay engaged and listen to people all day. In nearly every interaction I had, my deepest drumming thought below everything else was "Need to make them stop talking. Need to stop wasting time. Need to go back to work" punctuated with self admonishments for not listening well and then half hearted rededication to my goal of listening, engaging, and being present. Not exactly, I think, what God had in mind. It did not help that my usual 1 hour staff meeting took 2.5 hours yesterday, and nearly every other interaction I had was unbearably longer than usual, including my commute. I also felt particularly disconnected from God yesterday, which was a let down after Sunday's cool experience in worship and hearing him speak directly about my week coming up. I ended up staying at work past 7, missing dinner with my family, coming home to a surly 3 year old who was not pleased with my lateness and punished me for it the rest of the night, and then, after all that, having a full on panic attack about money right before bed.

The good news is that there is basically no way today can get much worse than that, so really small improvements could still have a big impact today.