Take Me By the Hand and Lead Me

I realized something this afternoon that has caused great reflection in me today. I sit in front of the computer on this very lazy day wishing somebody, anybody would call me. I do alright most days here in the house by myself with Gabe. He has been teething lately, so his behavior has been extra difficult which makes for some very trying days dealing with my near 9 month old son. Some days though, like today, are especially difficult and lonely while Aaron is at work. Skype sits open on my desktop, still and quiet. No one answers their phone. I think "If only there weren't such an extreme time difference, it would be easier to reach people." But the truth is, the time doesn't really make a difference. Because it's hard to come to the realization that the people you think about in the loneliest of times are not thinking about you nearly as much. Not to be critical, it's just that the old saying "Out of sight, out of mind" really does hold true most of the time. And not to say that our little family or each of us individually aren't loved and missed, because I know that's false. But people are just different. I'm still learning that even if you aren't near the top of someone's priority list, that doesn't mean they don't love you. They express love to you in a way that maybe you just don't know how to translate. I was sitting here feeling so very sorry for myself not understanding why the people I love the most are the people who seem to ignore the phone when they see I'm calling, or see an email from me and choose to ignore it because "Oh...I'll reply later. I don't need to talk to this person right now." But do they understand that even if they don't need me, I am desperately needing them? I miss them, I love them, I only need to hear their voice to feel the loneliness go away for a moment. These are the thoughts that go through my mind when the hurt rears its ugly head. But this time I felt this way it was different, because I remembered that there was someone who felt the same way about me. Someone who I ignored when they wanted to talk. Someone who's messages I pushed aside only to assume I would remember to later reply at a time that fit my desire. That person is God. If we were made in God's image, that means everything we have felt that's pure and genuine, God must feel too. My loneliness crept away when I thought on this, and the void became filled with sorrow for my selfishness. God knows our hurt. If we've felt it, he understands it. And if we caused it, he feels it. I imagine all the things I have done to hurt others and how much more have I been a cause for grief in my relationship with my heavenly father. Too often do we see God as not much more than just a stone cold mono-theistic being who is all-knowing, all-seeing, but never-feeling.

"Then the King will say to those on his right, 'Enter, you who are blessed by my Father! Take what's coming to you in this kingdom. It's been ready for you since the world's foundation. And here's why:

I was hungry and you fed me,
I was thirsty and you gave me a drink,
I was homeless and you gave me a room,
I was shivering and you gave me clothes,
I was sick and you stopped to visit,
I was in prison and you came to me.'

"Then those 'sheep' are going to say, 'Master, what are you talking about? When did we ever see you hungry and feed you, thirsty and give you a drink? And when did we ever see you sick or in prison and come to you?' Then the King will say, 'I'm telling the solemn truth: Whenever you did one of these things to someone overlooked or ignored, that was me—you did it to me."
Matthew 25:34-40


I don't say these things to preach. But rather to share something churning in my heart as I again attempt to forsake the coveted position of the lonely victim. The hardest endeavor is to let go. Halfway around the world, I am slowly letting go of the other side. Still desiring for and missing for, and sometimes yearning for, but not grieving for. If no one calls me today, I'm going to be alright.

Discoveries of a Morning Stroll

This morning Gabe and I decided to go for an early walk around the park before the rain came in. A typhoon was coming, but I figured we had some time to take advantage of the cool morning. As we left the house around 8:45 am, I see people out walking their dogs, a very typical thing to see on the sidewalks around our apartment. As we round the corner of the intersection we live on, I walk past the nice hair salon and makeup parlor where you always see women sitting at the desk being consulted about their makeup choices. I walk past the contemporary wooden house that always has the big dog tied up in the front yard, not caring about anybody who walks past, just enjoying a nap. I walk past the decrepit, old building that always has a smell of sewage on the east side of the street, so I walk on the west side. As I wait at the one intersection between our apartment and Mogami Park, I often see people staring at this strange-looking foreigner with an awkwardly large stroller as they wait in their cars for the light to turn. But they quickly look away when their eyes meet mine. Old women always smile with a look of adoration when they see me and my infant baby. Much like a look of approval, as if even though I was a foreigner, I was doing exactly what women here were suppose to do. I walk past a group of Junior High girls in their uniforms, a white t-shirt and a pair of blue shorts, as they walk into the parking lot of the old Junior High school right next to the road. They look at me with curiosity as they make their way into the building. As I continue walking past the school, I hear a piano player warming up her fingers on the keys in one of the many rooms on the front side of the school with the windows open. I have arrived at the park. I decide to take the back road into the park so I can walk past the cottage tea house, which is usually boarded up when they are not having a tea ceremony. It's quiet in the park. Only a father and son using a long stick with a string and twig tied to the end as they dip it into the small pond next to the shrine temple. I didn't know what they were doing, they didn't seem to catch anything, but they were very studious of the what was under the surface as they gently dipped the long string into the perfectly still water. The water was very dirty, but a beautiful kind of dirty. There was some kind of blossom or small sort of leaf that had fallen onto the surface of the murky, grimy water and completely covered it. It made the water almost look like black marble. Gabe and I stopped at a bench to take in the scenery, smell the coming rain, and me drink my morning coffee and eat my pastry. Gabe is such a good walking companion. He takes in the scenery and enjoys the experience as much as any adult, he doesn't utter a sound when the wheels of his stroller are turning. We make our way through the temple yard, walking past the shrines and prayers people tie to the ropes outside the buildings. If one were to use their imagination, they could see the remnants of the old castle which used to be here and is now a plethora of small and large buildings which are now used for temples and shrines to the Shinto gods. There are many framed signs and scripts along the paths, I wish I knew what they said. I walk up to the offering box with the large rope for pulling after making an offering and look inside the room. It is beautifully ornate and full of traditional lamps and goldleaf. Only the temple preists are allowed inside. It reminded me of the tabernacle Moses built in the Old Testament. There were the outer courts and rooms and the inner room, and the Holy of Holies. This large ornate room was like the Holy of Holies for the Shinto religion. There were many beautiful things in the room that I don't understand, so I just stand back and admire the craftsmanship. In front of the offering box I see cans of soda and juices, some of the jars opened, so that bugs had gotten in and were floating inside. A foreigner who didn't understand would think this was littering, but it wasn't. These were offerings. This is something I don't understand, why would people offer drinks? But I suppose people give of what they have as they make their ritual prayers to the gods looking for good fortune, even if that includes giving your soda pop. We continue our stroll around the quiant park and walk past the old men fishing in the mote. There are always men fishing there. Sitting with their male friends on the bank, not saying a word, just watching the water. I have walked around the whole park and am now back to the road I was on before. I walk past Hokkuo, the delicious french bakery that sits adjacent to the corner of the park. Across the street, the senior citizens are playing a game of Petanku in the amphitheater yard of the Furo No Sato (Shinjo Cultural Center). I stop to watch a few minutes as I listen to the school band warming up their intruments in the Junior High next door. I pick out the harmonies of a clarinet, a saxophone, a tuba, and a piano. The clarinet was the most beautiful, as they played their scales, it sounded very graceful. Surely I thought, "That must be the young group of girls I walked past earlier." The rain was coming soon, so we started the short journey down the road back home. Old ladies passed me on their bikes, some of them giving kind nods as a way of saying good morning. Men with James Dean haircuts and Ken Watanabe looks get into their cars as they very suavly flick their cigarrettes onto the ground. As I walk back home, I am starting to see for the first time that this little town of Shinjo in fact, is a very pleasant town. Life is very normal here. I realize that these things have become normal for me. I like this feeling of acceptance it gives me. Not that I am accepted here, but that I accept being here. How could I have judged this town so poorly? These were people just living their lives like anyone else. I foresee Gabe and taking more walks as the weather gets cooler and more pleasant. I hope I get this feeling again.

A little Insight in to the Life of a Housewife

I've been seeing alot of articles online about how useless housewives are in the present day. According to many, housewives are portrayed as lazy, tv-watching, free-loading, frumpy women who also happen to be needy because of our never-ending boredom. Classy women wouldn't even be bothered by such nonsense, but maybe I'm not so classy. Since we all know that we are strongly influenced by the media we feed to our face everyday, and ideally we would think for ourselves, unfortunately...we are human beings and therefore more often than not, we listen to everybody else rather than determine of our own accord what is fact or fiction. The only reason I feel compelled to vent these frustrations, is that I know multiple times I myself have been compared to these standards of productivity. So to put my mind at ease about myself and all the other housewives of the world, let me spell it out very clearly what we, or atleast, what I do throughout my day.

I won't lie, much of my day is spent surfing the net, watching a movie, completing some random and non-important task, or even sitting on the couch doing absolutely nothing. But I would also like to elaborate on these things.

While net-surfing, yes I often check my email or read news articles about various things, but I also spend much time looking at other things. You will often catch me on babycenter.com where I am looking up tips on how to feed my 8 month old, or how to relieve a baby's cold, etc. You will also find me digging through recipes on the food network, constantly looking for new meals to try out on my family where we would otherwise be eating the same thing over and over or feeding on low-nutrition processed meals from the frozen food section. Facebook is an addicting thing, but if I didn't do it, our curious family and friends in the U.S. would probably have no idea how things were going for us here in Japan where our family has chosen to live for awhile. Everyday I am reading news articles not only to suffice my own curiosity but so that when my husband gets home from work, we will have something interesting to talk about other than our child or how our day was spent.

And yes, I do watch some movies for my own pleasure when the baby takes a nap, but mostly we watch Baby Einstein and children's movies. I also spend much time on the couch where I let my baby crawl all over me as we have multiple conversations about absolutely nothing. Much of my time throughout the day is sitting on the floor playing with my baby by tickling, or singing, or reading from his books and exploring his toys with him.

In the midst of taking care of the baby and meeting those what I call "Domestic Research Activities", I still find time to clean the house, make the meals, get a shower, and doing something for myself to relieve my sanity. Somehow all these things add up to a full day. So yes, if I were to summarize my day for you I would say I watched movies, played with toys, surfed the net, ate some food, took my shower and what an exhausting day of work it was.

I believe this is a typical schedule for most housewives and though we may not always accomplish all of these things in one day, these are still our assigned duties that do not end at 5 o'clock, Monday through Friday. Our work-day never ends. We are always on-call 24-7 to meet the needs of our family. If it weren't for the housewife, the husband would come home to chaos. I'm not trying to prove to people that I'm Supermom, only that housewives have a much bigger burden than people give us credit for.

If all of us "homely" women-folk had educations, maybe people would look at us differently, like we were doing the noble thing. But myself, not having an education, this job is what I am qualified for and I believe if they made motherhood a competitive field in the workforce there would be more female executives than all the Fortune 500 companies put together. We may not be paying our dues to society by certain standards, but we are paying our dues to our children and meeting their needs in ways that no other would be able to. Nobody can do our job the way we do, we are fabulous and a force to be reckoned with. Our home is our company, and we are running it like the meticulous workings of a dual core processor, fulfilling many tasks at the same time.

So to the men (or women) out there who would ridicule us, while you are out doing your job, remember.....when you get dressed in the morning and put on that clean shirt, or come home and sit on your nice clean toilet seat, or take that relaxing shower and not have to look at the mold, or eat that homemade meal, don't forget who made that possible for you.