Of Grocery Hauls and Nothingness.

So I just cannot stop thinking about something, which means you get another blog post.

Have any of you seen those "Grocery Hauls" on Youtube? They have Target ones, too, and I am sure other stores, but I am most familiar with these grocery store ones.

Basically, for those who do not know, it's a video of people unloading their groceries and telling you what they bought.

Yeah, I know. But there are thousands of them.

Now, some of them are kind of niche markets, so those can be interesting. Like the Swedish vegan family of 12 who shops once a month. Ok, I'll give you that. That's interesting.

Or I suppose it's kind of interesting to see what a super model buys every week.

But those are the outliers.

Most of the thousands of grocery haul vlogs are not that interesting. They are just people who are unloading their groceries and telling you what they bought for the week.

At first when I came across these I was absolutely puzzled. WHY IN THE WORLD WOULD ANYONE WANT TO KNOW WHAT SOMEONE BUYS AT THE GROCERY STORE?

I kept mulling it over in my mind about why these videos could be popular ("popular" meaning some of them have over a million views). Is is that people were never taught how to grocery shop? Are they in an eating rut and need some other ideas of food to buy? Are they looking for meal planning tips?

I am sure there is some of that. But I don't think there is a-million-views-worth-some-of-that. So I kept being puzzled.

Fast forward a few months to a few weeks ago. I am chit chatting with a girlfriend who makes the comment "You know you have reached the mark of a close friendship when you text each other nothingness." We laughed, because really it's true! There are only a couple friends I can send messages like this to:

"Trying this konmari thing. How do I have so many shirts that spark no joy?!"'

"Needless to say, this summer I want all the good beverages in my fridge."

"I am currently covered in bodily fluids that are not my own."

"I just made the best gravy I have ever eaten."

And there is a good reason I do not text that to just everybody:

BECAUSE NOBODY CARES.






Or do they?

See, I am starting to think people care.

How can I not think that?
What is grocery shopping {besides buying the things that sustain you for life}?

It's nothingness.

And people all over the world are tuning in to watch someone put away their groceries. They are tuning in to watch the nothingness of someone's life.

So here is what I am thinking. Since almost all of us can agree that true "community" (which btw is a word I have grown to HATE) is virtually non-existent in our lives (churches, too), and I think most of us would agree that people need true "community" (which I think used to be called "friends" before social media hijacked that word) to live a healthy life, people are starving for someone they can share the nothingness of their life with.
So they get their fill of nothingness online.

I mean, let's be real. What is Instagram (except maybe for some a business tool)?

Nothingness.

What is Facebook full of?

Nothingness?

What is Snapchat?

Nothingness.

IT'S PEOPLE TELLING THE WORLD THEIR NOTHINGNESS AND THE WORLD WANTING TO SEE YOUR NOTHINGNESS TOO.

I think this is deeply imbedded in the human spirit since we were created by a relational God.

But here is the catch.
Nothingness over a screen doesn't count. {Can we all just admit and accept this fact?!}

At first it seems like the real deal....until you realize it isn't. For a while it suffices....until it doesn't.
It's like processed food. You think you are eating real food, but then you are done with the meal and still feel hungry and you realize that it wasn't real food at all.

Human beings are not created to get our "nothingness" tanks filled via a screen device.
We are meant to have real-life friends.

Hubbs and I talk all the time about how great it is to be with certain friends of ours who we call "low-maintenance" friends. They are the kind you can walk into their house and lay down on their couch.
But sadly, we only have a couple of those, and so we find ourselves pining for people to just spend our life with. We don't want a bunch of friends we put on our calendar for a dinner date in three weeks. That doesn't cut it for the human soul. We want people to eat with TONIGHT. We want people to go drop in on. We want people to text nothingness to.

And I know I am not alone. I just heard of a woman who lost her husband recently. "You know, I am social, so I have people to do stuff with," she said. "But I don't have someone to do nothing with."

How tragic, but how common.

I mean, isn't that what most of life is? If the hours of your life were broken up into percentages, wouldn't most of those hours be full of nothing in particular?
Yes. We have those moments of grandeur. But most of life is just everyday stuff.

And I think that's great. I think the best parts of life, the places we meet the Lord the most, are in the moments of nothingness; the day-to-day.

But we are not supposed to experience those moments alone. Or over something you have to plug in. 

Therefore, my encouragement to you is this: Find people you can share nothingness with. Gather friends who you can lay on their couch.

And I realize this is basically the hardest thing you have been told to do all week, but I am absolutely convinced this is one of the greatest needs in our culture.

So next time some nothingness happens to you....or you go to the grocery store and got a great deal on hummus....call someone on the phone and tell them about it. Don't post it to Instagram. Don't Snapchat anyone about it. Use your voice and speak your nothingness into someone's life.

Because I can basically guarantee you that they want to hear it (they are watching grocery haul videos for crying out loud!). And chances are they want to tell you their nothingness too.

It's Because We Hate Kids

I realize it has been *almost* two years since I have posted a blog, but I have been busy. I have had two babies, renovated a house, lost part of said house to a fire, moved across the state, and have had more house projects than I even remember.

But something happened last week in New York, where they made a new law saying you can murder your baby, that I just felt I needed to say something about, and frankly, nobody reads long Facebook posts.

So here I am. Hello, old friends.

Ok, so I don't need to get into the details of the law; you all know what I am talking about.
But I feel like I need to say something that I have not seen hardly spoken of at all.
Everybody seems so shocked by this law, but you all know why laws like this can get passed, right?

IT'S BECAUSE WE LIVE IN A CULTURE THAT HATES KIDS.

People who love kids don't say it's ok to shove a knife through their brain or chest and then vacuum them up.

But people who DO hate kids say that's ok.

And it's pretty easy to see that people hate kids when they say vile-ness like this is ok, but I see this hating all around in smaller, more "pleasant" ways pretty often, too.

As a mother of two small kids, I pretty much can't go in public with my children and not hear phrases like this:
"Wow! Your hands are full!"
"Oh aren't you lucky! A boy and a girl! Now you can be done having kids!"
"You're sure in a rough season of life!"
"You think this is hard! Just wait until they are teenagers!!"
"Not sleeping much, are ya?"
"This too shall pass."
"Don't you know where kids come from?!"

I think they mean well, trying to "sympathize" with me in a typically, what they consider to be, humorous way.

But I don't need sympathy for the greatest blessings in my life.

I don't need your empathy because I get to spend everyday being with and investing in the lives of the children that have brought more light to my life than any other human being on the planet right now. I am not sad that I am currently living the days that I will look back on for the rest of my life as "the glory days; the stuff of dreams," as my husband and I say to each other every single time we see our almost-three year old run around the yard giggling.

And it's not just strangers and passers-by.
I basically can't be in a group of people who also have small kids without hearing something like this, "Ugh! This kid is driving me crazy!" or "It's just chaos all the time!" or "I haven't showered in days" or "I just can't wait for my body to be my own again" or "Remember the days when you used to be able to get something done without being interrupted?" or "I know someone who has SEVEN kids! SEVEN KIDS! No thank you, two is plenty for me!"

Listen, I understand that children throw toys all over the living room when they are playing. I haven't forgotten that I used to be able to work for hours at a time on a project. I'm not an idiot who doesn't realize it takes longer to put kids into their carseats than it used to take just me getting into the car and leaving the driveway.
I know it.
And I am also the allergy-kid mom who is constantly watching for hives. I am also the mom who has babies that get up 3-5 times a night until they are older than a year. I am the mom who has kids that do not nap. I am the mom who has kids that run places; they do not walk through the house, they run through the house.
So I realize sometimes I am tired and my house is a mess and it can be loud.

But don't you realize that when you say these things--whether you are the stranger in the grocery store or the parent to young children-- what it means is that you either think I do, or you personally, long for the life you had before kids. Life sure was easier without children and easier is better; that's what you are saying. You are saying that they have made your life or my life worse than before.

And the thing is, if your are a parent to young kids, you probably don't even mean that. You probably love your kids.
BUT THAT IS WHAT YOU ARE SAYING.

And if you are the stranger in the grocery store asking me whether I know where kids come from or not, you are insinuating that I am miserable...because kids make their parents miserable--OBVIOUSLY--which is why you just said that to me.

The thing is, most of this kind of language is so embedded in modern culture and modern mom-culture, that the people saying it don't even realize they are saying child-hating phrases, and the people listening don't even realize that they are agreeing with them when they respond, "Oh I know; tell me about it!" with a sigh and a roll of the eyes.

Because that's what we say when people make comments like that.
We agree with them. We affirm that yes, my kids are driving me crazy too, even if they really are not, come to think of it. Because we do not want to be impolite. We do not want to say "Actually, yeah, I DO know where they come from...and this was intentional....and we will do that again, and probably again, and maybe again, to hopefully have another kid....and another...and another." We do not say, "Sorry your kids are driving you crazy; mine don't drive me crazy."

Americans don't say truth like that. At least not to the stranger in the grocery store. And probably not to the friend in our mom group, either. We are too polite. So we let that kind of language slide. We affirm this kid-hating language both to the speaker and to every other person in the room who heard us.

I know this happens because I WAS the other person in the room and at the grocery store who heard those conversations before I had kids. And for those of you who are Believers in Jesus, don't think it's not you, too. I was in BIBLE STUDIES even where every parent in the room would talk about child-rearing as nothing but fatigue and heartache and look at me with a wag of their finger and "just-you-waits" which made me think for many years, "Well, that sounds like hell; I think I will stay happy and child-less my whole life."


And that's how you build a culture that hates kids, Wolfies.


You start saying things to total strangers in the grocery store and mom-friends and people in your Bible study and at your job and at the park and on the airplane and in the drive-through that insinuates that kids make your life worse than before.

And cultures that hate kids start passing laws like they did in New York.


So.
You want to make people think it's a bad idea to kill babies?

Then start talking like it's a good idea to have babies.