weaker vessels

I remember, in college, struggling with the ideas set forth in 1 Peter 3, the famous "weaker vessel" passage. I struggled because I didn't like the idea of women being weak, but I also was determined to submit myself to the truth of God's word. If I'd either liked the idea or if I hadn't cared about the veracity of the Bible, well, I wouldn't've had a problem. It ended up being one of those "Okay, I'm sure this is true somehow, but I really don't get it." You know, one of those "I'll take it on faith" passages. Because, as Peter said, "Lord, to whom else should we go?" I was willing to stick with the hard passages because I knew I had no other recourse but Jesus.

Well, I think the past few years, full as they have been of child-bearing and rearing, have helped me understand Peter's words a little better. I'm not sure I completely understand the passage, but I feel like I have more insight into it now.

First, it's talking not to women in general, but to wives. That is, to those who are likely to bear children. Even the word "vessel" implies someone who holds or contains something. And the truth is, when it comes to child-bearing years, I am weaker than my husband. Some writer in Touchstone (Anthony Escolen, maybe?) pointed out awhile ago, when talking about the sacrificial nature of parenting, that every child born into the world necessitated at the very least the sacrifice of its mother's body being broken.

And that's true. Pregnancy and childbirth, and even the whole menstrual cycle, weaken women's bodies amazingly. Even if you aren't bearing children, your body is either suffering from an excess or a dearth of hormones, from puberty through menopause.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I used to try to find some airy-fairy, abstract meaning behind St. Peter's words, and now I'm tending to take them more at face value, more literally. Literally, physically, I am weaker than my husband. I am more at the mercy of my body than he is, especially when my body is serving as the staging ground for a new life, when someone else is taking up residence inside of me and literally sucking its lifeblood from my own and pushing and shaping my very bones and sinews to its own purposes. St. Peter urges husbands to dwell with their wives "according to knowledge" or "with understanding". According to the knowledge, I think, that wives need care that husbands don't, as well as the knowledge that they are "fellow heirs of salvation".

So, for me, what that verse means (I know, I know, evangelical subjective Bible application, forgive me) is: Adam takes care of me so I can take care of our children. And that makes sense. Even to my slightly feminist-leaning self.

peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

What comes after SAHM'ing?

This is a question I've just begun to ponder. First, some happen news that relates to my pondering: we're expecting a new baby in March! We're pretty excited, even though we expect to be pretty tired with three under four. (Though, honestly, I don't know if newborn tired really beats early pregnancy tired - ick.) But, it means that I have, theoretically, at least six more years of full-time child care ahead of me, before our youngest is in school.

So what happens after that? Assuming, of course, that there aren't more kiddoes by that point. I'm beginning to realize that going back to a 40-hour-a-week job isn't that appealing to me. I've been trying to figure out why that is, and what exactly it is I want to do instead.

Part of the reason - a big part - is that I want to be available to my kids should they need me, even though they'll be in school. If they're sick, I want to be able to come and pick them up. When I was in school, my parents both worked or went to school, but a lot of their work was from home, and we knew we could always get a hold of them if we needed to, which was very reassuring. Also, one of them was always home when we got home, which really made home home.

I'm not really pondering doing no work, but I'm beginning to think about doing something from home or with flexible hours, for the purpose of being available to my kids, and being home when they get home.

Then there's the second reason that a traditional 40-hour-a-week job doesn't sound attractive: because what I really want to do for money is to write. Preferably novels, but I like doing freelance articles too (and they're easier to get published).

So my current plan is to take these next six years as a time to slowly (during kids' naps, in the morning before they get up) write and submit and write and submit and work on becoming successful enough in my chosen field that when the kids go to school, I can legitimately take the extra time to write, knowing that I have the ability to make (at least a part-time) living from it.


At least, that's the plan I've come up with as I've tossing the title question around in my head. It also seems to have in its favor the fact that if working at it an hour or two a day for six years finds me largely unsuccessful, well, I'll know I need another plan. Seriously, being a SAHM seems an almost perfect proving ground for a writer. If I can do that while doing this, it means that I really want it. (And any success in the meantime sure helps the family budget. Though I took the profits from the articles I sold so far and used them to buy MS Word - the better to write and sell more articles, my dear.)

Of course, I'm sure that my plan isn't the only one out there, and I'm guessing there are other SAHM's out there looking at the same question. What's your take on the question? What are your ideas, your plans, your dreams? Are there things you're doing now to prepare for when the kids are gone for larger amounts of time? I bet there are a lot of people whose answer is: "I'm going to homeschool", but even then, what happens when they go off to college? Are you planning on taking some extra classes yourself while you teach your kids? Anyone gunning for a part-time masters degree?

Since I've only recently started thinking about this, I'm really interested in what other people think. In fact, if you have some great thoughts and want to write a guest blog, just let me know. :) Or just fill up the comments with great idea. :)

Thanks for your input!

peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

A Civil Campaign

I just finished rereading (for maybe the seventh time) the excellent A Civil Campaign by Lois McMaster Bujold (not Christian, but oh-such-good-fiction - it includes in its merits the one scene in literature that makes me laugh out loud, no matter where I happen to be when I read it, and the most poignant fictional letter I've ever read), and I've been thinking for awhile about something one of the characters says.

Lord Miles Vorkosigan, the main character, is ordered by his emperor to ask his father to give him "that lecture on honor versus reputation he gave me that time." Miles obeys, and what his father ends up telling him is this:

" 'I wouldn't have called it a lecture. Just a useful distinction, to clarify thought.' He spread his hand, palm up, in a gesture of balance. 'Reputation is what other people know about you. Honor is what you know about yourself.' "

I've been thinking about this quotation - this definition, if you will - more than I had before, because I feel like it speaks to something I've been noticing in my life. There is a weird way in which the very physical life of a mother of toddlers (cleaning, playing, changing diapers, carrying, cleaning some more, etc.) forces all of the most important parts of my life to be inward things. When I've had conversations with people recently, I've found myself struggling for things to say. How do you say, "My life is largely made up of menial tasks, but I know more about myself and about God now than I ever have before" without sounding bizarre? And how do you explain that pouring yourself out into a schedule of potty-training, legos, diapers and meal preparation is a path to holiness like none you'd ever before conceived of? What do you do when the changes inside you are so momentous and yet so slow - like the irreparable moving of tectonic plates, the landscape's different but you wouldn't notice unless you could watch it in stop-motion film - that there isn't something new to tell your friends each time you see them?

On the one hand there are the weekly changes in my children ("Look, Gamgee can say "where's Dad?" now!") to point to, or the new, clever housekeeping thing I figured out ("I now know Clorox wipes are great for cleaning out little potties."), but those are only the surface things of my life, and I haven't yet figured out how to talk properly about the bigger things. About how a year ago I was less patient than I am now, but how now I can see how much more patient I'm going to have to become. About how I can better tell when I'm wasting time now, but how the time-wasters that still tempt me are harder to resist? About how Morning Prayer has been a blessing I embrace but somehow when I'm out of my home and at mass, I have trouble praying? About how much I've grown to care about the spiritual development of my children, and how inept I feel in aiding that development along? And that just scratches the surface of the work that I feel my life is about right now.

So I come back to Bujold's definition of honor versus reputation. My reputation right now is small. I'm a stay-at-home mom, and that's most of what most people know about my life. It wouldn't look that impressive in an alumni magazine. (And am I the only one who gets antsy when reading her alumni magazine?) But what I know about myself is that I'm following the vocation the Lord has laid upon me, and I am learning the riches of the love of Christ in my daily work. And, even though it's a harder choice than I ever would have guessed, like Miles and his father, I would choose honor over reputation every time.

But I still want to learn how to talk about big things properly. Writing about them is much, much easier.

peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

p.s. to whet your appetite, here's what Miles' father says a little bit later in that conversation:

" The Count studied his fingernails. 'It could be worse. There is no more hollow feeling than to stand with your honor shattered at your feet while soaring public reputation wraps you in rewards. That's soul-destroying. The other way around is merely very, very irritating."

WFMW: making my own rag rugs

This has been a very crafty summer (see my post on learning to sew), but I think my favorite craft has been the new rag rugs I made for our bedroom and our bathroom.

I've always liked rag rugs, but they simply seemed to complicated to make. How, after all, do you braid rags?

Well, I still don't know the answer to that question. But, thanks to this tutorial from This Vintage Chica, I now know how to crochet rags. And that, my friends, has made all the difference. The truth is, if you know even the most basic single crochet stitch, you can make your own gorgeous rag rugs. And the other truth is, the part that takes the longest isn't the crocheting, it's the cutting of the rag strips.

This rug, now in our bedroom, is mostly made out of our old denim couch slipcover:


This rug, now in our bathroom, is more colorful, and is made out of shirts, sheets and sarongs:

The nice thing about that one is, because I made it myself, I was able to make it extra long, so that we could kneel comfortably next to the tub when bathing the kids. It's also made out of mostly cotton cloth, which means it dries out easily.

I wish you could see what these actually have done for these rooms. The bathroom looks more cheery now, with that bright, soft rug on the tile floor, and the rug in our bedroom picks up the colors from the quilt on our bed and the hangings over the windows and lends the room a mellow, comfy air. This is a great, satisfying craft - beautiful and useful at the same time. (And frugal! You'll never throw out a stained shirt or sheet again! Just cut out the stain and rag the rest for a rug!)

Making my own rag rugs works for me!

peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

to the other blogging moms:

thank you. Truly.

Last night, I was browsing links from Et Tu, Jen?'s weekly links post. I don't remember where exactly I found it, but somewhere between Radical Catholic Mom and The Wine Dark Sea, I came across the idea, the reminder really, that when it comes to our children, serving their immediate needs (real needs) is pretty much always what God would have us be doing. If they need water, then getting up and getting them water is serving Jesus, and he'd probably rather have us doing that than doing any other great devotional work.

Anyway, I was glad to have that at the forefront of my mind, because just as my husband and I were getting ready for bed, my three year old woke up, projectile vomiting and with a fever of about 103. Bedtime was delayed by a good hour as we cleaned her up, tried to get her to drink and take some Tylenol, held her head as she threw up again, tried more water and Tylenol, held her head as she threw up again, changed her again, rinsed more laundry, dug out the electrolyte drink and moved her bed into our room so we could keep an ear out for her during the night.

Through all of this I was nursing my own headache and longing to be asleep. But I still managed to be soothing and present with my daughter. I don't think I could have done that as well if I hadn't had in my head the encouraging thought that this was obviously exactly what Jesus would have me doing right then. I'm so glad I read those blog entries; they came at the perfect time, right before I really needed them, and I didn't even know it.

This morning, Bess still has a fever, but she's been able to keep down crackers and water and Tylenol, and her fever's a much less scary 100.5. Please pray for her and for us, though, for healing and that it doesn't spread through the rest of our family.

But I just wanted to say: it was cool to see how God gave me the reminder I needed right before I needed it. I am amazed, as always, at how the Holy Spirit works through his people. And tickled to see that that includes us momma bloggers. :)

peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

p.s. the other big reason last night was so much better than it could have been? I wasn't alone. Adam was there, holding and comforting and cleaning right along side me. Thank God, also, for husbands. Amen and amen.

Ordinary Time and the Creeds

I can feel Advent and Christmas beginning to bear down on us, even though it's almost August. What can I say? In my family, my mom always started her Christmas shopping in January, and when it gets to the end of summer and I find my Christmas list less than half-fulfilled, I start to feel behind.

But it's still the long, green season of the Holy Spirit, to quote Jessica Powers, and it feels like the whole of the season has been filled with the Creeds.

(A quick side-note: as I'm writing this, my children are having their "quiet time" in their room. Although right now it sounds like what they've decided to do with their "quiet time" is have a shrieking contest. Oh well, as long as they stay in their separate beds while they squeal back and forth, it's okay with me. But somehow, I couldn't keep writing this post without giving you a feeling of the "SHRIEK!gigglegiggleSHRIEK!" soundtrack that I'm hearing in my house right now.)

This summer, we taught our now-three-year-old the Apostle's Creed. And saying it altogether is now part of our bedtime routine, right in between the Lord's prayer and praying for our family. (I give you a direct quotation of my daughter's nightly prayer: "Dear Lord. Please bless Aunt Rho and she can do well. Give her good night's sleeps. Amen.") We made up hand motions to go with the Creed and even my one year old son raises his hands at the end ("and life everlasting! Amen!")

I have trouble now, when I read the Creed during my own quiet time, not using the strongly rhythmic entonation we developed when teaching it to my daughter: "I beLIEVE in GOD the FATHER. ALmighty MAKER of HEAVEN and EARTH." I can't say "he descended into hell" anymore. It always comes out: "he DEscended into hell."

But in a way, it's a good thing. I've thought more about the Creed this summer, teaching it to my daughter, than I ever have before in my life. There was one day, during Morning Prayer, when I just read it slowly, and hit something like contemplation as I pictured what each of those short, succinct phrases actually meant. "He was concieved by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary". Really? Really? How can that BE? After "almighty maker of heaven and earth", how did he get small enough to be an embreyo?


Though I had no idea that this would end up being our theme during Ordinary Time this year, I think the Creed is a fitting theme for this time of year. We look at Christ's birth during Advent, his death and resurrection during Holy Week, and other parts of his life on other high holy days. But Ordinary Time is a good time to stand back and look at the whole thing, the whole of our faith. And where better to find it all put together than in the Creed?

Maybe next year we'll have graduated from the Apostle's the Nicene. :D

peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

looking out for each other

I am (and you may laugh, if you like) a fan of Dr. Laura. In that I enjoy listening to her while I do housework, I appreciate the encouragement she gives to parents and spouses to be good parents and spouses, and I find the issues she deals with on her show thought-provoking. I don't agree with her on everything (I think, for instance, that she doesn't really understand forgiveness - though, to be fair, she isn't a Christian, and so I don't expect her to share my theological views on forgiveness), but I do enjoy and deeply appreciate her work.

So, when I saw her newest book at the library, I picked it up, and I'm about halfway through. It's a lot like her show: easy to absorb, mostly right, encouraging and thought-provoking. The thought-provoking part might be the best part. Reading it in snatches since Wednesday has left me thinking a lot during the day about marriage, what makes a good marriage, and what specifically makes my marriage good. Which is good pondering material as I clean the house, feed the kids and take the occasional, much-appreciated, nice, long shower. (We just got back from camping and I am - oh so truly - all about the running water.)

I've always known - since before we were dating actually - that one of the things that really works between Adam and me is that we are good at doing things together. Once, when we were still just friends, we cleaned out a really disgusting fridge together (it was at the end of an MK retreat) and even though we were, you know, cleaning out a really disgusting fridge, we had a grand old time. That's when I discovered that Adam was a good guy to have with you if you wanted ordinary life to be fun. He's just really, really good at normal things, at day-to-day stuff, at chores, at meals, on walks, at games. In fact, the perfect man for me to marry. (And so, dear reader, I did.)


But though that is still true (truer than ever), this time around, thinking about our marriage and what was good about it, I came up with a new answer: the longer and longer the time is that we've been married, the more Adam and I look out for each other. In fact, we've started looking out for each other so much, that we're starting to look out for ourselves less and less. It's coming about that I don't have to tell Adam when I'm dead tired, and really need a bit more sleep. He notices and gets up with the kids on those Saturday mornings and lets me sleep in an hour, without me having to ask. And it's coming to be that while he won't bother to notice that he's stressed out, but I will, and I'll help him get back to his normal, calm self.

And this new development, coming about now and not earlier, I think, because it has just taken us this long to really get to know each other, is so very good. It lets us both be at the same time less selfish, and more loving.

Someone might say, "Well, you could be taken care of just the same if you both just looked out for and took care of yourselves." Well, maybe. But isn't this so much better? I don't have to look out for me, because someone else is doing it. And I can, instead, focus my attention on someone outside of myself, and learn more about how to love. And here's the thing: I can do it because I'm secure. I don't have to worry about me, because someone else is worrying about me.

It's two gifts in one - or maybe three. It's the gift of being loved, the gift of loving, and the gift of being able to let go of myself.

And (St. Paul was so wise) it mirrors the love Christ has for his church. Isn't that why we can feel safe loving anyone at all? because God first loved us? If I didn't believe that my heavenly Father was watching over me, I don't think I'd ever take my eyes off myself long enough to look out for anyone else. I'd be so scared, so anxious to see to my own needs, that I'd never take the time to see to someone else's. But because I know that my Father loves me, and will take care of me, I can devote time and energy to people other than myself. I can be a parent to my children only because God is being a parent to me.

And it's just so cool to see that principle, that part of God's love for his people, being mirrored in our marriage. God gives me, in the very tangible love of my husband, a picture of the spiritual truth of his love for his Church. He's like a priest who knows that the kids need an object lesson in order to understand the children's sermon. It's just so cool.

There. That's my deep thought for the day: I can take care of Adam because he's taking care of me, and he can take care of me because I'm taking care of him, and really, that can all happen because God's taking care of all of us.

And here's to books that make you think. (Thanks, Dr. Laura.)

peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell