I am past the point of getting dressed in the mornings and I might make it to the shower during Mason's naptime, but even that is pushing it. I've still had lots of pressure and BH contractions, but they always seem to go away just as I'm starting to convince myself that I'm actually in labor. I actually halfway packed my hospital bag this week, but since I should only have to be in the hospital for 24 hours, it seems kinda silly to pack a bunch of stuff besides a Boppy and nursing tanks. I have a couple of cute outfits for Paisley, but I plan on going home in yoga pants and a tank top, lol.
Otherwise, we're just playing the waiting game now. This last trimester I've had restless legs whenever I lay down to rest, which has been really frustrating for both Marcus and I at bedtime because I'm constantly adjusting and trying to get comfortable and it's very disruptive for both of us. Anyway, I figured out that if I take a hot bath before bed, it helps my legs to relax and I go to sleep much easier. So during my baths, I've been catching up on a lot of reading and it's been wonderful! I've read five books in the bath in the month that we've been here!
I know that all this uninterrupted reading time is going to come to an end pretty soon with Paisley's birth and school starting back, but I am using this time to work on my "Classics List" that I came up with several years ago. I have always been a reader, but when we were exploring the Classical education model for our kids, I felt like there were way too many influential, award-winning books that I had either never read or skimmed over in school just to do well on a test. So I compiled a list of books and have been slowly working my way through the list as I can find the time between my college classes and the kids' school/activities. I also have to fight the urge to be on social media during any free moment that I get, and bath time seems to be a good solution because I surely am not taking my phone or computer to the bath with me! Of course, I might be just as upset if I dropped a book in the bathtub...
It's a pretty extensive list and still have a long way to go, but I am steadily making progress. The great part about this list is that there are books that I never would have chosen on my own, but now that I've read them, I see why they are considered classics. I feel sorry for our generation of kids that will not be exposed to some of these books because these stories are powerful. I just finished Anne Frank: Diary of a Young Girl right after reading Night by Elie Weisel, both of which are about the Jewish plight during WWII. Very gut-wrenching stuff. I've read books about migrant farm workers in California during the Depression (The Grapes of Wrath), Apartheid (Cry, the Beloved Country), and slavery (Uncle Tom's Cabin), as well as mental illness (Flowers for Algernon), racism (Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry), socialism (Animal Farm), Communism (1984), and I'm currently reading about the disgusting conditions in the meat-packing industry and the issue of wage-slavery that immigrants to this country faced in Upton Sinclair's The Jungle.
I am so glad that I created this list back in 2012 because, unlike with social media where something new comes along every 5 minutes, books like these force us to examine our own hearts and they tend to leave a lasting impression. Although many of the books are merely fiction, we still find ourselves immersed in how we would react if we were the characters in the book. I truly believe that great literature helps us determine where our belief systems lie in the real world. In the abstract, it is easy to say how we would act in all situations, but when an author is able to challenge those positions, it either reinforces our convictions or it makes us realize that our beliefs were faulty to begin with.
This is why I feel bad for a generation that is not being raised to read and think through some of these tough books. Without grounding and reinforcement of a belief system, there is a much higher probability of just going with the flow and being blown about by whatever the popular school of thought du jour is. I want my kids (and me!) to be able to articulate why we believe what we believe and why we always come back to the Bible as our moral absolute. We may not always understand why God tells us certain things, but we can trust that His plan is sovereign and that He is in control. There are so many theological lessons that we can learn from reading great books and bringing them back to the Bible, but this post is getting terribly long and I don't want to ramble, so I will save those thoughts for another day! In the meantime, I'm going to go read!
No comments:
Post a Comment