For weeks, she has been admiring her Minnie Mouse panties from afar, talking about them as though she were already a veteran panty-wearer. “You have panties yike my Mee-Mouse panties, Mommy,” she says.

“Yes, I do,” I reply. “Except I keep mine dry and clean.” That’s when I drop my mic, turn my hat around backwards, and saunter away, leaving an explosion of shame shrapnel behind me. Not that she notices.

You might remember the years of my life that went in to potty training Drew, and the untold damage done to my psyche and probably my physical body as a result. I look back on those months as my ‘Nam, me sweating through tank tops while hyperventilating in the stifling, poopy jungle of Thomas The Tank Engine briefs. I don’t think I’ve received proper counseling for that combat. My right eye still hasn’t stopped twitching.

As those years recede into memory, I try to keep from taking Drew’s potty-train-ed-ness for granted. I tell myself that no matter how difficult Madeline will be to potty train, no one, and I mean NO ONE, could be as hard as Drew. Granted, he still approximates the location of the toilet every morning in his bathroom, leaving sheer rings of evaporated yellow to taunt me. Granted, I was up until 10 p.m. on Monday night grinding a kilo of Clorox into the grout of his bathroom floor in an effort to purge the pee demons that just don’t quit with the odor. Granted, he isn’t the best wiper in the world, and still I send up popcorn prayers before scalding his laundry every Wednesday.

But Madeline could never, ever, compete with that. Right? The possibility was haunting me.

And then yesterday, in the presence of dear Miss Linda, my fairy princess Madeline birthed a new era into the training potty and put my doubts to rest. For her efforts, she received a pink M&M. I would have bought her a Barbie car, though, if she had asked me because I get very disproportionate and weird when it comes to all of this.

Fortunately, I had only begun to get desperate. It was about two weeks ago when Maddie first agreed to sit on the toilet. Up to that point, she wouldn’t even acknowledge its presence in the bathroom, much less sit her pristine little bottom atop it. And suddenly, there she was, reading about Big Bird with half her body sunk down into the void of the bowl, her pink toes gripping the cold, white sides. I was excited at first, thrilled. She was sitting on the potty up to three times a day, bringing her book along, or maybe a doll and the doll’s potty.

Most of us find it nearly impossible to sit on a commode without relieving ourselves, but this month I’ve learned this is actually a conditioned response. After two weeks and approximately 45 potty seatings, Maddie still wasn’t doing the deed and this was starting to make me uncomfortable. (Not stage IV labor uncomfortable, but definitely princess-in-the-pea uncomfortable.) Was it the start of a bad habit versus of a necessary warm-up exercise?

I don’t know how preschool teachers do it, yet they always find a way. There’s just something magical about them, I suppose, something within that makes a fairy princess want to please.

But I guess anything beats G.I. Mommy in a sweaty tank top.

But Madeline is a different story. Up until last week, she had never thrown up in her short, pigmy life. It was interesting to observe a little human being with no preconceived notions about nausea. That type of innocence is fleeting, like chaff in the wind. The morning when her sickness began, Gordon got her out of her crib and set her down in the hallway at the bottom of the stairs. Her usual policy is to trot down to the TV room to join Drew in front of some inane episode of “Caillou.” But this time was different, ominous.

She was staring. Her hair was covering her face. Her shoulders were hunched over. If she was not so tiny, and if she hadn’t been wearing pajamas covered in happy flowers, you would have thought she had walked straight out of “The Ring.” Sufficiently creeped out, I scooped her up and put her in her booster seat at the kitchen table. She continued to stare, though not in any kind of real distress — she appeared to be working out the law of thermodynamics in her head. I began fixing breakfast, an activity I knew to be a fool’s errand, but it was too late for me to begin thinking logically. I was succumbing to that willful ignorance that only nausea can produce. THIS IS NOT GOING TO HAPPEN, and I was sure of it.

Eggs, nectarines, and a leftover cherry turnover looked so cheerful on our breakfast plates. We ate in silence. I stole sideways glances at her as she chewed slowly and with an almost bovine nonchalance. She was picking up steam. GOOD, I thought. I took a bite of nectarine just as Madeline shoveled about half a cup of scrambled eggs into her gorgeous mouth. Then it was “The Exorcist” and I was out of my seat, lunging wildly into the natural disaster area like an unprepared first responder. Still chewing my bite of fruit, I had suddenly found myself dealing with this unfathomable, untenable — and yet entirely predictable — nightmare.

Madeline was not upset. She might as well have sneezed. My hysteria, however, was enough for the both of us.

When everything was cleaned up and Madeline was snuggled on the couch in front of “Caillou” to do silent battle with her virus, she said, “Mommy, you stay with me. You stay here.” It felt like being asked to attend an execution. But sit I did, cradling her little body in the crook of my arm. She didn’t know that she might throw up again, but I was racked with dread. All Madeline knew was that she didn’t feel right and that she needed me, yet I knew I might continue to serve as her vomit tarp. I was a willing martyr, a sacrificial lamb. And you better believe I was proud of myself.

If God ever had my whiney, arms-length attitude when it comes to dealing with me and my various sicknesses of spirit, I would want to curl up in a dingy Sonic bathroom somewhere and die. I’m glad he sits with me during my bouts of idolatry, squeezes my hand while I retch with selfishness, holds my hair back in the midst of my complaining. I’m glad his pity is steely and strong, able to handle the mess I make when the illness of my nature overwhelms me. I’m glad he is not afraid of my next episode; that he watches in sadness as the consequences of my wanderings catch up with me. I’m glad that even when I’m reeling from my own wanton narcissism and don’t even notice his presence, that he is there shoring me up and making me clean.

I’m glad he will sit with me on the couch until the end. That someday, even today, he can make me well and whole.

Julie
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You can read this month’s edition of Chatter magazine here.

What Kids Will Like

Kudos and blessings should be heaped upon set designer Bob Lavallee and lighting designer Samuel Rushen for a recognizably Seuss-y set plush with color and all the quirky wing-dings you come to expect when you crack one of Dr. Seuss’ beloved books. And, since there’s almost nothing more fascinating to a child than seeing another child on stage performing, kids will be immediately drawn in by actor Tristin Thomas, a very talented youngster (isn’t there a better word?) with a pure singing voice, clear diction and accessible emotion that will suck your kids into the story from the opening notes. And oh, those notes. Of its many admirable qualities (well, I think this happens to be admirable), most of the show is sung, so any kids who happen to know and love the music already will basically know and love the show. There’s basically zero lag time. Oh and they’ll be humming the whole way home. I saw little girls doing impressions of The Sour Kangaroo (a fabulous Kia Dawn Fulton) even as they exited their aisle seats.

What Adults Will Like

Reminiscing back to the early 80s when, sitting in a patch of green shag carpet, you studied the curious shapes and sounds that define all things Seuss. If you’ve never been a Seuss fan, well, better plan a date night to the Movie Tavern instead. As usual, you’ll appreciate solid performances from the principal characters, particularly actor Major Attaway whose lovely voice and sweet vulnerability make Horton so lovable. As with most Casa shows, I left wishing I could have heard the more extended versions of the beloved songs, but that’s just my theater dork within. But you might like the flip side of that, which is that the show clips along at a quick pace and leaves time to grab ice cream with the kiddos afterwards.

Good to Know

No worries if your kids are witch/monster-averse because this is Seuss, after all, and even though the Grinch appears for a millisecond to sing a funny little line, the scariest thing in the show might be the (really cool) flashlight dance at the beginning of Act II — and that only because it’s dramatic and dark.

If your kids have had no previous exposure to Dr. Seuss (particularly “Horton Hears a Who” and “The Cat in the Hat”), you might start introducing them to all of the bizarre wonderfulness beforehand. It’s always more fun to know what’s going on and be able to pick out familiar characters, especially with such a fast-paced show where everything happens at the speed of lightning and ends before you quite knew it had begun. (Act I concludes like a freight train colliding with a red-and-white striped wall.) A fun game to play with your kids might be to pick out and name all the characters you remember from the books. Quietly, of course.

All in All

As director Jeremy Dumont observed in his audience welcome, the events of the past couple of weeks in our nation and world are still very top of mind. A show like “Seussical jr.” is the kind of hopeful, sweet, and silly celebration of life that meets us now in a particularly timely way, reminding us as only Dr. Seuss can, that “A person’s a person, no matter how small.”

Details

Show runs through May 12. Visit casamanana.org for details and tickets.

What Kids Will Like

Kids will immediately be riveted by the colorful storybook set design by Katie Dill in a familiar re-purposing of her “Rapunzel” set (plus the tree from “Camelot”? I think so. Well done working in your budget!), as well as the well concepted, instantly recognizable costumes by Tammy Spencer (Eeyore even has the pink bow on his tail!). Every actor had spot-on characterizations of their respective roles; no small feat in that odd, quasi-British world that is Pooh. I was especially impressed with Stefanie Tovar’s Pooh — she was gentle, simple, endearing. Scott Zenreich’s Tigger was especially memorable. Of course, if Tigger isn’t memorable, then we have a problem. I think the two-year-old in the aisle next to me was imitating his every lisp and bounce.

There’s plenty to recognize musically in this production of classic Pooh, including the “Winnie the Pooh” song, and “The Wonderful Thing About Tiggers.” Classic elements like the Red Balloon and the unreachable beehive also add familiarity and nostalgia. Preschool Winnie-The- Philes will not be disappointed.

What Adults Will Like

In its typical fashion, Casa brings a polished, well-executed production that is sprinkled with a few moments of adult humor. Perhaps fewer moments than usual, but I suppose if Pooh gets too snarky, then it wouldn’t be Pooh, would it? I would have loved more singing and longer production numbers; the score only began to hint at the fabulous voices these actors have — it would have been nice to take those Ferraris down the highway. The songs they did sing were nothing particularly riveting or show stopping, and the book is gently funny but not sidesplitting. Tigger’s bit with the balloon was the closest I came to guffawing. Again, the quietness of Pooh imposes certain limitations on The Stage; but if you’ve bought into the Pooh brand beforehand, then you’ll get your money’s worth.

Good to Know

There’s nothing too loud, scary, violent, sexy, political or religious in this production. (Could you even imagine Pooh singing “Roxie?”) The show has all the warmth and comfort of a big bedtime storybook, so even your littlest ones will track with it. Your older ones, however, might be hoping for a good sword fight, and that’s just not in the cards.

All in All:

Casa’s is a sweet production that delivers on what it promises: Disney’s Pooh and all his friends discovering lessons of self-sacrifice, sticking together, and determination. A great show for your more sensitive or first-time theatergoers.

Show Info: Pooh runs through April 7. Visit casamanana.org for tickets and show info.

I was not sure how the whole process would go or how crowded it would be. I felt almost like a pupil myself on her first day of school, or maybe a bride about to commit for good or ill. I also thought I might run into people I know or maybe encounter one of the Kindergarten teachers or even Johnny Depp, so I made an effort to look fantastic. No biggie.

On the sheets I was filling out there was no place to indicate a child’s nickname. This bothered me. Drew’s name is “Andrew” but we call him “Drew.” Every preschool application up to this point has asked what the child would prefer to be called (not that we spend our leisure time filling out preschool applications), except for the Fort Worth ISD. I made a little comment to the registrar about it, and then something came out of my mouth that I am embarrassed about.

“He goes by ‘Drew’,” I said. “But it doesn’t matter.”

Wait. Huh?

Since when did Drew’s name not matter? Since the state asked for a proper, black- and-white first and last name and nothing more? Since he is now in school? Since he apparently belongs to the district? It was a slip of my tongue, but it betrayed my deep-seated sense that older, wiser, more official professionals are better equipped to raise my child than I am. I have always feared this, ever since that nurse let me leave the hospital holding an organism that had been living off my circulation system a mere 48 hours earlier. And when you really think about it, I mean seriously, it’s like, OF COURSE a child should be called what is on his birth certificate! Why pick that name if it will not be serving as an actual moniker? What have I been THINKING all this time? Such a deluded little nursery world I have lived in. It totally makes sense that in Kindergarten, nicknames are for lesser species. I totally, completely get that now. “Andrew” it is, forever and ever, amen.

Wait. Huh?

See what just happened there?

My insecurity is thicker than cold Velveeta cheese. Even my metaphors are off.

One thing I know for sure: if I have to give up “Thing One,” “Pumpkin Head,” “Drewloo” or “Puppy,” then we’re moving east to homeschool with the Amish. Those people get goofy, and they certainly they must come up with perfectly acceptable abbreviations for names like “Abraham” and “Elijah” and “Jephthah.” Right?

I bet the Amish don’t even HAVE birth certificates or fill-in-the-blank name boxes on forms.

But they probably don’t like to look fabulous signing their children up for school, and that — well, I just can’t abide by THAT.
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Ah, our dreams for our children. I would have thought Drew’s first cuss word would be in defense of puppies or in order to eliminate global atrocities, but little could I have expected it would be just as run-of-the-mill as they come.

We were eating dinner at Perrotti’s in Fort Worth. This place has some sort of agreement with Satan about the ridiculous goodness of their product. Ever since I was known as the “pizza eater” in first grade, I have understood myself to be a connoisseur of Italian foodery, even without being officially given this label by authority figures. I knew pizza. I still do. And this stuff is good.

(By the way, Perrotti’s is probably not close to you, probably does not deliver to you, and probably exceeds your limits of fat intake and/or shame, so you might as well never even try to eat there. Perrotti’s is ours. It belongs to us. Please do not infer from this post that you should start eating at Perrotti’s. In fact, you should go on the Palio diet just to be safe.)

You can imagine my delight when Gordon suggested we eat at Perrotti’s after church Sunday evening. (He usually harps on the Pei Wei.) I had just endured a lengthy call-back audition for a musical theater production, and was craving some breaded comfort cheese. When the hot pie was placed lovingly in the center of our table, we each drew breath to inhale the rich aroma.

I don’t know where on the green earth he gets it, but Drew has a thing about being in control. One expression of this trait is his demand to serve himself. He wants to wield the large, fascinating Perrotti’s spatula like a Jedi knight. Another of Drew’s control fetishes is his insistence that food be separate from all other instances of food; therefore to place a piece of pizza down upon the remains of salad would explode the cosmic order.

Drew was standing in his seat, a sliver of pizza precariously balanced on the spatula. A string of mozzarella lava oozed down upon his plate, coiling atop the abandoned shards of lettuce. He cringed as the OCD dilemma sharpened its corners and drew up its ultimatum: would Drew let the pizza down on TOP of OTHER FOOD (gasp!), or risk dropping the pizza on the floor while moving the salad out of the way?

He chose door number two. A fool’s errand indeed.

SLAP went the beautiful Love Triangle upon the laminate floor.

I’ve written before about my impulsive rage when things are falling from table to floor, and this time was no different. I didn’t have time to yell or even catch the casualty mid-fall, but I did get a wicked crick in my neck from lunging toward the drop zone. It paralyzed me for approximately three seconds while I evaluated the damage. “Damn it,” I muttered under my breath.

Apparently not under my breath enough.

Drew stood for a moment holding the spatula, stunned. What had just happened here? When he had finally processed the horror of losing his pizza, he sat down in dejection and put the spatula on the table like a useless appendage.

“Oh,” he whimpered softly. “Oh, dammit.”

It was the most forlorn, sweetest little profanity you’ve ever had the pleasure of being offended by. It was so quiet that Gordon didn’t even hear it. I pretended not to. We all recovered, sort of, and managed to enjoy our meal in a new, mature kind of silence.

That night after Drew had brushed his teeth at the bathroom sink, he looked up at me and said, “You’re my best friend, right Mr. Mommy?”

With a little too much eagerness, and with a touch of self-pity and wonder, I fairly cried, “Yes, baby! I sure am!”

Lucky him.
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Then I realized Easter wasn’t even in APRIL this year, which made me even grouchier. Who does Easter think it is? That it can just show up whenever it deems appropriate? It probably won’t even be warm enough for acceptable Easter clothing! What are we supposed to wear for March Easter? Tartan? And what will we do with all of April, anyway? Braid grass?

It’s all a mess. Fresh off of spring break, with all of our broken legs and sunburned backs and depleted wallets, we will pull on old winter coats to search for eggs in the frosty grass — grass recently cleared of all St. Patty’s Day remains. Such a jumble of themes, such a deli-stacked month of celebrations, events, and calendar alarms. I hate that Easter, the most important holiday of all, has to share the spotlight with Cabo and Lower Greenville. I hate that Easter has to get in line, find a spot, clear a campsite, and acquire a permit. If Steve Harvey gets his own talk show, shouldn’t Easter get its own month?

With Easter so early this year, our five-year-old son Drew has already been preparing, thoroughly captivated by the Easter story. Observing the Passover meal illustration of Jesus with his disciples and their empty plates, he said, “Yook, Mr. Mommy, Jesus’ friends ate all of their dinner!” High praise, indeed.

Then he asks questions. And then answers his questions for himself.

Drew: Why did Jesus’ friends fall asleep in the garden, Mr. Mommy?

(Drew: Because it was dark.)

Why are the guards mad?

(They are mad because they are mad. No, Mr. Mommy, they are called GUARDS, not SOLDIERS.)

Why did Jesus die?

(Because the nails hurt his hands.)

What is the angel’s name, the one at the tomb?

(Probably Pat.)

Where is heaven?

(Up there.)

Do you want to meet Jesus, Mr. Mommy?

Me: Yes, Drew. I really do.

Drew’s surface-level interest in Easter advanced a notch the following week. I overheard him and our two-year-old daughter Maddie taking turns briefly crucifying one another in the playroom. Drew was the GUARD (not the SOLDIER), and Maddie was Jesus. “Here, Maddie, lie down on the cross like this,” he commanded.

Pause. I assumed she had draped herself across the couch.

“Ok. Now die.”

Pause. I would give a jillion dollars to see how Madeline must have squinted her uber-eyelashed lids together.

“Ok, my turn to be Jesus!” Drew yelled.

It was then I betrayed my presence. Sticking my head into the room and jabbing a macaroni-covered spoon in their direction, I said: “YOU HAVE TO RISE AGAIN FIRST! RISE AGAIN FROM THE DEAD, MADDIE!”

It seems wrong to have to remind my children that the point of the Easter story is actually that Jesus came out of a tomb, alive. I mean, right? Isn’t that fact the whole shebang? Even if there were intriguing angels named Pat and angry, fascinating GUARDS who were just mad for the sake of being mad, and scary, foreign modes of capital punishment involving humongous nails. Even so…

If my son can get bogged down in details and imagination, so can I. Easter can become many different things and take on many different colors, lost as an afterthought in the midst of a busy month. But when the first rays of light stain the clouds pink on Easter morning, I am only to remember one beautiful fact that changes a billion other facts into something beautiful, too: that Jesus is risen. He is risen indeed.

Even in March.

Julie

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Sick Again? Seek Again.

Here We Come a-Chattering

Throw in a lovable dragon (Socrates, played by Greg Dulcie) and a scene-stealing Gypsy Woman (Stefanie Tovar), and there’s plenty of merriment to go around in director Jeremy Dumont’s production of “Rapunzel.”

What Parents Will Like: With lots of adult humor and pop culture references stuck in like well placed bobby pins, “Rapunzel” will surprise you with asides about American Idol, Princess Leah, and even Raisinettes. My favorite was the sly musical tribute to “West Side Story.” See if you catch it. You’ll also get a kick out of the production effects. And as always, you will appreciate the talent level of the cast and of the crisp technical crew.

What Kids Will Like: When you walk into the theater to find your seats, you and your kids will find yourselves in an enchanted land. Birds chirp as eerie, magical music plays. A pink haze engulfs the theater and enhances the beautiful set design by Katie Dill. (Most of the action takes place on the surface of a giant storybook lying open on the stage. Just TRY not being preoccupied with wondering when an actor will finally turn their ankle in the book’s center crease. That’s a form of dark entertainment in and of itself.)

All the little girls in the audience who came dressed as princesses seemed to be instantly at home. So did their mothers, many of whom were sporting tiaras themselves. But boys will like the show too: swords, dragons, and the ultimate hair-pulling scene that every 3rd grade kid could only dream about.

Good to Know: I often reference my 5-year-old in these reviews because he is very sensitive to loud noises/drastic lighting, and these are the things Casa does with gusto. Most kids love it. Mine has to be left in the lobby. Sometimes dialog is easy to miss, so it might be a good idea to give your kids the context of the story beforehand.

All In All: “Rapunzel! Rapunzel!” is a must-do for a mommy-daughter date or a daddy-daughter date. Or let down your hair with the whole family and see if you don’t get caught up in an Aqua-Net of enchantment.

Show Info: Runs through February 24. Visit www.casamanana.org.

I gathered her sweet bloodiness into my arms and poured her out like Jello onto the counter where I began to dab, wipe, blow, and disinfect her wounds. The Cry was still bellowing out from her mouth, originating somewhere down low — in her toes, probably — ricocheting off the walls into my ear drums where it pounded them like mallet-wielding dwarves. And I don’t use dwarf metaphors lightly.

It was the worst thing that had ever happened to her. It became the standard, the bar for every other awful thing.

It is also her mechanism for sympathy. If I look tired or in pain, Maddie cocks her head like a parrot and asks, “You huwt knee, Mommy? You huwt knee?” If I’m bloated and menstruating and am making quite a show of it, she assumes it must have something to do with one of my knees. If I touch the hot handle of my soup pot and yank it away, a knee must be involved somewhere, somehow.

One time last month we were sitting at dinner when Drew dropped his spoon on the floor. Some mothers become enraged at things like spilled milk or flicked boogers, but I go Gary Busey-crazy whenever somebody drops a utensil. I threw my body dramatically over the side of my chair — my right leg sticking out sideways like a cartoon character — snatched the spoon from the floor, and thrust my right leg back under the table as torque to bring the rest of my body upright in one motion. What I hadn’t counted on was the fact that, well, that the table had not really, shall we say, taken it upon itself to move out of the way. WHACK.

Just as Madeline’s worst imaginable pain is a HUWT KNEE, my bar is set somewhere around the fourth centimeter of active labor. I have never broken a bone or torn a ligament or suffered a 3rd degree burn, nor have I run a marathon or blackened a toenail (those things sometimes go together), but I have endured labor twice, once time under the oppression of an ice-pick catheter and ineffective epidural. So when I tell you that this pain was right up there in the echelons of Women’s Pavilion intensity, you should pause.

Tears welled up. I held my knee close but wanted to beat it with a crowbar out of anger. I found myself breathing rhythmically to keep from losing control and terrifying The Things. Did you know the knee has a funny bone? Neither did I. Have you ever obliterated your funny bone, the one in your elbow? Exquisite agony. Multiply that by nine and you have me rocking at the dinner table like a woman about to birth a toddler. Breach.

Maddie’s eyes were like Jason’s Deli salad plates. Her worst fears were being realized. She was like a doomsday prepper witnessing the end of the world as she had always imagined it. In the sweetest, tenderest little voice she whispered, “You huwt knee, Mommy.” It was a statement. This was no question. The facts of the case were plain to see.

“Yes,” I gasped. “I hurt my knee. So bad.”

“Band-aid on it, Mommy? Band-aid?” I looked up. Her mouth was covered in red sauce; her fist aloft holding its spoon mid-bite. All the world had stopped because another dad-gummed KNEE had gone and gotten HUWT. Oh the humanity. When will we ever be free…of knees?

“No, I don’t need a Band-aid,” I said. I thought about throwing in a joke about Scotch that she wouldn’t get, but restrained myself, mostly because of the pain. “Thank you,” I said.

Two weeks later, she still asks about my knee. We’ll be sitting on the couch and out of the blue she’ll say, “You huwt knee, Mommy?” as if reminding herself that it hadn’t just been a nightmare. She pulls up the leg of her jeans and shows me her own knees, now perfect and white and without blemish, and reminds me of the time she too had experienced the worst, the absolute worst, that life had to offer.

We have hurt our knees, Thing Two and I. We are stronger now, world-weary. Wiser. I know our bond will last and last.

People usually associate Lent with giving up foods like coffee, chocolate, or cheese in order to experience their need for Jesus in a deeper, more cellular way. Some people get up earlier or give up TV or find ways to stop leaning on the usual suspects in order to find God to be richer, stronger fare. I wanted to participate, I really did, but I didn’t think I could handle adding any more difficulty to my life. I was already living Lent, and I was living it against my will.

As it turns out, managing morning sickness is a full-time job. Or at least a “part-time ministry position.” I would pour whole bottles of TUMS into the interior pockets of my purse. Like an angry, pregnant chipmunk, I would walk around with two tablets in my mouth at all times, one for each cheek. I stored an empty plastic bread bag on the floorboard of my car in case I had to be sick while en route to the doctor’s office. My bedtime routine was worse: slap a ham-and-cheese sandwich together and place it on my bedside table. That way at 3 a.m. when I inevitably woke up ready to retch, I would have an emergency snack waiting to soothe the sick. (Gordon frequently woke up with half of a ham sandwich languishing in his face. I’d switch it up sometimes to PB&J to give him a little variety.) It was all so upsetting. The scale was going crazy, renegade. I was out of control. No medication was working. Nobody understood. And all the while, a little pecan-size seed of bitterness was growing and stretching and gaining momentum right there alongside Baby Drew.

The key Lenten passage from that time was Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness by Satan. The devil tempts Jesus with power and praise, but first he tempts him with something simple: bread. Jesus had been fasting, and it’s here we find the most understated verse of Scripture: “After fasting forty days and forty nights, [Jesus] was hungry.”

Ya think?

Satan says to him, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread” (Matthew 4:3). Jesus answers him by saying that a person’s physical need does not represent the totality of his need — that people live not only by physical food but by “every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Mt. 4:4). Jesus could have turned the stones into bread, but he let the stones remain stones.

At the conclusion of one of the first Lenten services at IBC, everyone was invited to take a small white stone home as a reminder that sometimes we are called to let the “stones” in our lives remain stones — stones like unchangeable circumstances that require patience; stones like the needs we feel but choose not meet in order to connect with God in a deeper way.

I felt the Lord gently hugging me, saying, “This morning sickness? It’s a stone. Instead of fighting it, let it draw you to me. Let this be your Lenten journey. Let this stone remain a stone.” I took the white quartz and slipped it into my pocket.

Instead of chocolate, coffee or TV, I had given up my right to feeling good. I carried my little white stone in the console of my car next to the jar of ginger caplets I would raid after every meal to help keep my food down. When I made Gordon pull off at the 121 Wal-Mart for supplies to make a white-bread-American-cheese sandwich, my stone was there, silently softening my heart. Slowly, I grew to accept this light and momentary affliction that often felt so heavy and permanent. I grew to see it as a trigger, a simple question-and-answer that punctuated every hour:

Sick? Seek.

Sick again? Seek again.

When Easter weekend finally arrived and IBCers were invited to bring their stones back to signify the completion of Lent, I kept mine in my car. I didn’t want to give it back. I still haven’t, six years later.

I don’t think it was mere coincidence that Easter of 2007 was when my morning sickness completely lifted. Like fog that burns away at mid-day, my 24-hour, 20-week nausea evaporated into the sunlight and pastels of Easter. A new me had resurrected; a new pregnancy; a new appreciation for who and what I really need — what I needed more than TUMS, more than sandwiches, more than control.

Are there stones in your life that need to stay put? Lent might be a good season to practice the art of just letting things be what they are.

- Julie