18 weeks and counting

I've officially entered my 18th week of pregnancy. I'm anxiously counting the weeks because my ultrasound appointment is just 2 short weeks away. That means, we're likely to find out what we're having. This is of course, assuming our baby isn't modest. I know with Isa, it took a while for her to get over her shyness. Just before the doctor gave up, she showed the world. It was great.

It's funny, this pregnancy is not like my first. I'd have to say that the first time was much easier and I think for a lot of reasons. One, I was much more active at that time, playing softball and volleyball. Matt and I would head over to Oakland Park and play some frisbee golf. I can remember doing all 18 holes, than tapering back to 9, and finally, just however many I could do as the pregnancy neared the end. Because I was active then, I don't recall being so tired. Now, it only takes a walk to here and there and I'm worn out.

Secondly, I was 6 years younger. I think age has a lot to do with how your body handles pregnancy. I know for me, all those years of beating up my body in sports is taking a toll. And pregnancy doesn't help. Back when I was pregnant with Isa, my knees weren't as bad and my back didn't bother me as much. Now, after being diagnosed with arthritis in my right knee and aggravating my back easily, it's made this pregnancy much more difficult, physically speaking.

I think Matt assumed that I would take this pregnancy the same as the first. I don't think he gets that I'm more tired than the first. It kind of bothers me a bit. I mean, he calls me lazy now because I just don't have the energy to help around the house. Granted, I'm not as tired as I was just a few weeks ago, so I've been doing a bit more to help. Still, this pregnancy has been a bit more rough and I'd like for him to see that, or at least understand. I can't change that I suppose.

Life happens

We're all familiar with the phrase "life is hard." In fact it is. Sometimes more than others, but in general, life has a tendency to throw you lemons. All that remains is how you respond and react. I firmly believe that if life weren't hard we wouldn't need God. People have a tendency to ignore God when things are good, but, when times are tough, really tough, it's all you can do to keep on. Our saving grace is falling on our knees and asking for grace and peace and comfort.

My mom just called, and she's at that place in her life. The month of October has been difficult for my family.

We almost lost my abuelita, and she was ready to go. She had a peace about where she was at and where things could go. You can't help but be in awe about it. After my abuelita recovered, praise God, we then had to deal with the wildfires.

By 'we' I mean my brother, Henry and his girlfriend, Vanessa. At one point, they were packed up and ready leave their apartment. The fire came within 200 feet of their place, but was pushed back by the hardworking firefighters. My brother admired them and praised them for the dedication and diligence they displayed.

More recently, just this past week, my tia (aunt) Maria Elena, my mom's older sister, was apparetnly knocked down by a group of skaters and suffered a head injury. She was taken to the emergency room because of hemorrhaging. My mom's heart broke as she saw her laying in the hospital bed, head swollen and tubes. My tia has lost a lot of weight too, being a single mom, trying to raise 3 boys, who are now men who could care less for her and her situation. They've basically run her ragged.

To hear my mom's heartbreak on the phone is, just plainly, hard. I want to just reach over and hold her and cry with her. But, all I can do is listen and pray that God will comfort her and my family.

We're going out there for Christmas in a few weeks. My heart is anxious and excited all at the same time. I really don't know what the trip will be like.

Unconditional respect?

I recently started reading a book by Dr. Emerson Eggerichs called Love & Respect. I'm only a few chapters in, but I have to say that it's the best book I've read all year. It is challenging me and my beliefs about a godly marriage and what it means to be a godly wife.

I'm tempted to include excerpt after excerpt from the book, but I'd end up posting most of the book. What I do want to include is the verse the book begins with that is overlooked by most men and women of the church. At least until now.

The verse comes from Ephesians and goes as follows:
"However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband." 5:33 (NIV)

Most women undestand that, in marriage, love must come unconditionally. In reality, it's not that difficult a concept to grasp. Even men get that. But, if you notice, girls, we're not called to love our husbands unconditionally, we're called to respect our husbands unconditionally. I had a difficult time with this. I mean, we're taught that respect is earned, not just given freely. But, in the marriage commitment, we are called to respect our husbands, regardless. Heck, we expect our husbands to love us regardless of our failures and shortcomings, right?

Think about it. It would absolutely break our hearts at the thought that our husbands don't love us. To a man, respect works the same way. They know deep down that we love them, but respect them? According to Dr. Eggerichs, that is the man's greatest fear.

You might not agree with Dr. Eggerichs, so here's an excerpt of how this plays out in a typical marriage:

"The Crazy Cycle often starts when women start scolding in their homes. The word scold is often associated with mothers bawling out their children; the dictionary definition, however, says that scolding means to reprimand or criticize harshly and usually angrily and even openly. When a wife comes at a husband with repeated reprimands and "scolding," this is a surefire way not only to annoy him but to treat him with disrespect. Wives, however, tend not to see this. As mothers, correction is a part of their maternal nature. Unfortunately, they tend to mother their husbands also..

When a wife scolds her husband, she's only trying to help correct things, to keep things on an even keel. And there is no doubt at times men need this kind of help. But when a man begins to feel that what his wife is saying reduces him to a child being scolded, there can be trouble. He doesn't necessarily see his wife's heart; he only hears her words, which are saying that she's looking down on him. To paraphrase Proverbs, he would rather live in the wilderness than with this irritating woman. While many wives do not intend to be disrespectful, they appear that way to their husbands, and their husbands take refuge in stonewalling them."

Gamerpalooza

The weekend and, what we have lovingly dubbed, Gamerpalooza, is over. We had gamer friends Mike and Kimiko (aka Solid Mu) come in this weekend from Indiana to join us for a video game concert at Jesse Auditorium called Video Games Live. For those of who don't play video games, there is a lot of work that goes into making a game, especially a good one. And, believe it or not, there are actual music composers and songwriters that use their skill and talent to create music for video games. It's definitely an unappreciated field, with the exception of gamers of course. But that concert wasn't until Sunday evening, and Mike and Kimiko arrived at our place on Friday.

Corny Scary Movie Night
Mike and Kimiko arrived late Friday evening exhausted from an expected 7-hour drive that accumulated 2 hours due to St. Louis traffic and accidents on Interstate 70. Still, the couple looked forward to joining us for our planned events that night. The guys went off to Booches, a local pub in downtown Columbia that has great hamburgers and chili. And, Kimiko and I met up with the girls at Sarah's house for Corny Scary Movie Night. We arrived in the middle of Shawn of the Dead, which was entertaining, to say the least. We then watched Halloween 2 and clips of Creepshow 2 while enjoying yummy-not-so-good-for-you snacks. We threw in a bit of Guitar Hero 2 also.

We arrived home at about 1:30 a.m. The guys had just finished up some Halo 3 gaming. Matt, me, Mike and Kimiko sat in the living room and talked until 3:30 a.m. After hanging with them for just a few hours, we thoroughly enjoyed Mike and Kimiko's company.

Saturday Night Lights
Saturday started off a bit late. I woke up about 10:30 a.m. and put on a pot of coffee. After chatting with Mike and Kimiko, I made up a quick breakfast of scrambled eggs, turkey bacon and toast. We then headed into the living room and began our first gaming session of the day. We started off with some Guitar Here II and finished off with some Halo 3.

Around 3:00 p.m., Matt and I got up to start on the Carne Asada meal planned for linner (lunch, dinner). We were expecting a few more friends for great food, drink, and fun. Everyone started arriving around 4:30 p.m.

At about 6:00 p.m. we all discussed heading to Woodcrest (our church) that evening. They were highlighting a special service called Creative Arts Weekend, a combination of music and drama to tell a story. After a bit of talking, we all decided to head to the 6:30 p.m. service. That way, we could get back home in time to play and not have to worry about getting up early on Sunday.

The service was excellent! The music was wonderfully written and performed and the video was a great addition to the show. Mike and Kimiko are musically inclined so they enjoyed themselves. I took them over to Kidcrest after the service to show them around.

After the tour, we headed back to our place. Sarah and Chris joined us. We played Halo 3 until about 2:00 a.m., when Sarah and Chris had to go home to let their puppy out. Mike headed to bed at that point. But, Matt, me and Kimiko stayed up to play some more. We nearly completed the game, with one level remaining when we looked up at the clock. It was 7:00 a.m.! We went to bed at that point.

The Columbia Experience
Sunday morning was off to a later start than the previous day. I woke up at 12:30 p.m. I think Matt and Kimiko were up at about 10:30 a.m. (crazies). We chatted a bit and nibbled on some snacks. Around 2:30 p.m. we headed over to meet Sarah and Chris at Shakespeare's (the new location). We ate and talked for over an hour and stopped by Best Buy on our way over to Matt's mom's house. She was going to watch Isa so we could to the show this evening. We grabbed the Guitar Hero III bundle that included the game and the new wireless guitar. Now, Matt and I could play together.

We hoped we'd have some time to play before the concert, but after dropping off Isa it was way too late. Mike and Kimiko were going to volunteer to help at the show and needed to be there no later than 5:30 p.m. We arrived and they headed off to their assigned spots and Matt and I hung out and watched the local crowd.

Matt caught a glimpse of an arcade that had Space Invaders, a game he loved as a little boy. So, he headed off in that direction. I walked around and took pictures of the people in costumes. I figured it would be great for Matt and Todd to put up on Short Attention Gamer. We ran into a woman who was nuts about Halo 3. So nuts, that she actually had a tattoo of Master Chief, the main character, on her arm. I'll include photos a bit later so you can see it for yourself. Man, is she dedicated.

Video Games Live
Once we had enough of the madness in the lobby, we made our way to the auditorium and found our seats up in the balcony. We could see the blank big screen and the orchestra and choir preparing for the show.

The evening was great. We were taken through the evolution of gaming music from basic bleeps and blops to the symphonic arrangement of the Halo trilogy. Also featured that night was a phenomenal piano player named Martin Leung. This young phenom played the greats, Nintendo and Final Fantasy. Many in the YouTube community know his as the Video Game Pianist.

The show was capped off by the 3-part arrangement from the Halo trilogy. This was outstanding. The combination of instruments and choir singers was just incredible. It's definitely something all gamers should see and experience.

Side note: Matt missed winning the Space Invaders competition by 130 points.

After the show, we walked over to MSTA, where Matt and Todd work, and also do their podcast (Short Attention Gamer). Kimiko wanted to see the setup. Once there, we took pictures of Mike and Kimiko pretending to be Matt and Todd.

We then headed home and played Guitar Hero III. Note: They've been having issues with the guitar, and, just our luck, the green button on our guitar didn't work. Luckily, Mike and Kimiko brought theirs. Crisis averted. Off to bed about 3:00 a.m.

Farewell Stinks
Monday morning Matt and I called into work. I was going to take the morning off and head in later. Matt, was feeling off and on all weekend so he just stayed home. After a bit of chatting and farewells, Mike and Kimiko got in their car and headed back home to Indiana. You could actually feel a let down in our house. Matt, me and Isa were a bit saddened that they had to leave.

We talked about meeting up again in St. Louis when VGL is there in January. Time to put it into the budget.

Journaling

I was encouraged by our Recovery class leaders to start journaling. According to Dana and Kim, journaling will help us identify and process through feelings we experience throughout the day or in the past. As a warning, I'll be doing some of that on my blog as I think about things. What happens a lot, for me at least, is that I think about things and need to write it down, but I'm at work. So, the easiest way for me to process is this blog.

I'd like to initiate this whole journaling process with my thoughts on this weekend's service at church. Piet kicked off a 2-part series on trust, titled The Speed of Trust, that spoke to my core. Piet talked about how trust is built in relationships and how it's directly linked to being a person of integrity. The message gave me so much to think about in terms of integrity, character and competency. The latter two being keys to defining a person of integrity. Piet challenged us to be more proactive about becoming people of character and competency. To be proactive about how that all plays out in our daily lives. From waking up in the morning to the alarm clock, eating breakfast, spending some time with God, and so on. Piet talked about how easy it is for us to break commitments to ourselves and how broken promises are hindering our development of integrity in our lives. He definitely gave enough for people to chew on and process.

Piet reinforced his message with a verse that fit perfectly into all of this.
"Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says." (James 1:22 NIV)

----------------------------------

This weekend's message: The Speed of Trust, Pieter van Waarde (mp3)

Adventures in gaming

Our home has officially been christened with the multiplayer, shoot 'em up, beat downs that is Halo 3. Matt and I have been handing some cans of whoop*ss, and vice versa with friends from the SAG forums and here in Columbia. One of my absolute favs about Halo 3 (Halo 2 included), and other games like it is that it builds on the online community aspect that the Xbox 360 offers. A lot of non-gamers don't understand gaming, but they do understand community. That's just one of the things that makes Halo 3 a great game. Where else can I sign in and join my brother and sister, who live on west coast, in some rifle action. Ahh, warm fuzzies just thinking about it. Now, where's that rocket launcher?

Broken heart

My heart is sad today. A good friend of ours called us yesterday to ask us to pray for her and her husband. Apparently, he has decided to file for divorce when he returns from duty overseas. It breaks my heart to see this happen to dear friends. This is not the first time we've had this call, but this is the first time there have been children involved.

It's just plain sad that adults give up. We can attest that marriage isn't easy. And contrary to what many Christians argue, divorce is the greatest threat to the sanctity of marriage, not Gay marriage. As a Christian, it breaks my heart each time this happens. What kind of example does this set to your kids? That when times get hard, it's okay to throw your hands up and call it quits?

Hey, I don't live in a bubble. I know that relationships are hard and that circumstances that lead to divorce are no cake walk. But, most of the divorces I've seen and causes can be worked out. It's just that people choose not too. I have to work at my marriage because I'm not perfect and neither is my husband. We just don't let those things get the better of us.

I don't know. I'm just sad today. There's nothing we can do for our friends but be there to listen and pray for them. And we'll do that.