Camping

The camping trip was pretty nice. The forecast didn't look so good, and I dreaded everyone being miserable in the rain, but overall, it was enjoyable. We weren't even miserable in the rain one bit.

My mother is pretty laid back when things go wrong. We just made the best of the downpours on Saturday. Thankfully, it wasn't thunder and lightning storming, so we just let the kids run and play in the huge puddles and pouring rain. We moved all the bedding from the tent to the cars, and all the foodstuff and other things we wanted dry to the pavillion before it started really coming down. Everything still got pretty damp, but it could have been worse. The puddles were up past my ankles in some places. I wore capris and flip flops because I knew my feet would be wet, but I was pretty soaked up to my thighs. The kids had a blast, though. They love to play in the rain and it's not very often there's a good downpour without lightning, so we just let them go nuts and get completely drenched and dirty. Little Ryan got chafed, but that was the only lasting negative effect of all the wet fun.

I love cooking on a campfire. We forgot the electric griddle, but it was fine. It was nice that there were no arguments and no one really got uptight about anything. God was so good to let it be dry for breakfast and dinner on Saturday. It got raining one night when we went with Steve and his family before. His sister was pretty miserable even without the rain, but we were able to make fun of his brother's ingenuity, the way his tent was like a military fort defending against the water(and it worked LOL). But when we had to spend the night in the car then, Steve got all frustrated with being uncomfortable. Sure, being uncomfortable is unpleasant, but a bad attitude makes everyone uncomfortable. His attitude wasn't so bad, but when he gets upset and complaining, I have to try hard to not contribute more to the situation. Sometimes, I want to get uptight too and just let fly, but I don't.

The only part of the weekend with Mom that wasn't enjoyable was the concert. Boy, quartet southern gospel isn't my thing. Steve says I'm weird because I don't have preferences in music, but I think I do, it's just that most things are ok and I don't strongly LIKE anything in particular. But there are certain things I strongly dislike, and southern gospel is one of them. :) There was one group of younger guys that had a base singer who looked like a cross between a guy we know and Vince Vaughn. They were cracking jokes and trying to entertain people(and there's nothing wrong with that...it was a concert and not a revival meeting or something), but it just rubbed me the WRONG way, like they were insincere and maybe didn't even like the music themselves, but knew they could fleece the old people who like it. Gosh, I hope that isn't the case.

There was one bluegrass group that was tolerable. The singer was introducing one song and got choked up about it because it was about the Lord breaking you down so He could make you into something useful. He didn't say in what way that applied to him, but I guess it was something recent and painful. I tried to listen hard to the lyrics to that one. I wonder if that's what we're going through....a time of the Lord stripping things away from us. I don't know about Steve, but for me, losing a baby was pretty devastating. I don't want to trust God with childbirth anymore. It wasn't easy to swallow the likely possibility that we'd have a lot of children. Then, it seemed like that was stopped with Steve. And then it was renewed when we had Ryan and it was wonderful, like a miracle of hope returning to something that had been crushed. And then it was crushed again by the Lord Himself. I don't understand it. The scripture He spoke to me during that time was from Psalms. I don't remember where exactly, but it says "You have taken hold of my right hand.".....I looked it up, it's Psalm 73:23. The whole thing is about how it's hard to look around and everyone else who could care less about the Lord and His ways is prospering while I'm suffering and poor. Yeah, that applies.

What struck me about that verse isn't that it's comforting that He's leading me and the wicked will get theirs....it's that He took hold of my RIGHT hand. My strength. He took hold of what I knew, what I was good at, what I thought I was doing and trying to do well for Him.

Maybe I'm just all mixed up about sex and children and all. Steve thinks I'm a prude who thinks the only real purpose of sex is to procreate. That's not exactly true, as I think that it will still be pretty great when we're past childbearing years. But for people who are in childbearing years, I do think it is something to be embraced with the full understanding and welcoming attitude where God might bring another life into existence through it. That's what I think is so wrong with just about everything in our society today. So much sexual sin is self-centered. Sure, sex is about your partner too, but to me, it's a sacred act where God is involved in more than just having created it to be pleasurable. It's renewing the marriage covenant. It's opening the opportunity for Him to make us fruitful. It's intimate and vulnerable and makes us one. It seems like I know a lot of people who can't have kids. Sometimes I envy them. Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to not really think about the possibility of another baby. Periods are full of such mixed feelings for me. Relief is probably the biggest, but then there's also some guilt that I'm not really open to having another pregnancy. I'm an all-or-nothing kind of person. So being in limbo about the whole pregnancy thing is pretty bothersome to me. I don't want to just be on birth control and adjust things with fake hormones to be pretty sure to avoid pregnancy. But I don't really like avoiding sex either.

I don't like jokes about sex. I especially don't like jokes about sexual sin. Maybe I'm uptight about it because I was abused and I think everybody should be serious about it and not take it lightly. It's the single most annoying thing with being an adult. Ever since I was like 9 or 10 years old, I've been bombarded with sex nonstop. I don't have a problem with married people insinuating that sex is good and enjoyable. It is. I just can't get away from innuendo, even at kids movies. That's another reason the weekend was nice.