a new creation

Well again, I find myself putting months in between my blog posts but so be it! Strangely enough my last post on Mother's day flows well to this one four months later... because now I'm starting my own journey into motherhood! :) Chris and I will become parents to a little screaming, pooping, sleep-sucking miracle in April! 

If you knew me as a little kid, you probably knew of my obsession with becoming a mother. When I was eighteen-months-old my mom tells a story of how I threw a full-blown tantrum in Toys R Us over a baby with a "real" heart-beat. From that point on, I carried my babies with me wherever I went-- all vacations, shopping trips, family walks around the park... My baby dolls even had perfect church attendance for a number of years. One of the best days of my childhood was one Ash Wednesday when the minister not only put the cross of ashes on my forehead but on my baby's little plastic forehead, too. Finally, an adult recognized that my baby was real!! 

Alas, my baby dolls eventually became socially inappropriate and I transitioned into babysitting-- my favorite middle-school Friday night. Many hours have I spent pretending to be mom to other people's kids. (And a few of them I will always count as my own.) 


And now it's finally my turn!! 

Being pregnant is the most out-of-body experience anyone could imagine. The day those (much anticipated) blue lines appeared on my pregnancy test, I knew my body had been invaded by a little alien. My appetite has been stolen and replaced by a fat, 18-year-old college boy's. (Yes, I have eaten pancakes in bed past midnight. Yes, I eat dinner at least twice a night.. usually three times.) My emotional stability has been stollen by a melodramatic teenage girl and my youthful energy has been replaced with my 94-year-old grandma's need for an early bedtime. 

Of course while you all will soon see the obvious changes to my silhouette (bye double zero jeans...), inside of me, invisible to all of us, is the most incredible creation. When my baby was only the size of a single poppy seed, his/her little heart had already started to beat. And only a month later my blueberry-sized baby was growing arms and legs! And as I type this, that little plum-sized booger is doing somersaults! 

Meanwhile I have gone to work, watched movies, baked cookies, wasted time on Facebook and painted my toenails. Not once did I concentrate on creating a tiny set of lungs for my baby. Never willed my baby's eyeballs into existence. God is making this new creation in me. I am quite literally just a vessel. 

Many years ago, God made me into a new creation by His Son's death and resurrection and made me an ambassador for Christ. "So whoever is in Christ is a new creation: the old things have passed away; behold, new things have come... So we are ambassadors for Christ, as if God were appealing through us..." - 2 Corinthians 5:17; 20

What a miracle life is! What a miracle life in Christ is!

-Brigid  

Happy (belated) mother's day to all of you mommas out there! 

When I was a kid, I knew my mom definitely read the best stories, made the best lemonade and was obviously the best PTA mom that Belmar Elementary had ever seen. When I went off to college, my mom became my favorite phone call, my encourager in all things and a dear friend. I became more thankful for the nutritious family meals that my mom prepared for us every single evening, more grateful for the hundreds of concerts/recitals/games/tournaments that she endured for me and my brother, thankful for the hours that she spent quizzing us on our spelling words and even more hours teaching us how to be decent people. 

This mother's day I am even more grateful for my mom now that I am a wife and special-ed teacher of sorts, myself. These are a few things that she's taught me along the way (and why she wins the best mom award each year.)

1. I never knew how great Mom was at being a wife until I became a wife myself. I am still learning how to be servant-hearted to Chris when there is a pile of dishes in the sink or when ESPN is on. (I guess Mom does have a few decades of wifehood on me.) But now I can see the millions of times that she served me and my brother by serving my dad first. 

2. If you go to St. Thomas Catholic Church in Amarillo, TX, you know that my mom could be its patron saint. I feel sure that she has volunteered for every committee and has headed up quite a few of them.  In about 30 seconds I came up with this list of involvement: sunday school teacher, bible study leader, funeral dinner committee chair, youth choir fundraiser, Eucharistic minister, parish council member, Alter Guide president, women's retreat chair, gift-shop person, adoration participant, RCIA sponsor, godparent, not-to-mention all of the other untitled things she has done for our church. I remember as a kid waiting for mom to finally finish gabbing with so-and-so or running to grab the key to sell something in the gift shop, or selling raffle tickets for the next youth fundraiser. My dad used to joke that the "rapture" had happened and that mom was the only one taken.. me, my brother and dad were left behind. ;) All that to say, her example has really stuck with me. I hope that I will become an active member of my parish, a servant to my brothers and sisters in Christ.

3. My mom went back to work as a special-ed teacher when I was a 7th grader. I knew she was a good teacher then but now that I am a working woman myself, I appreciate her dedication even more. Her example inspires me to work harder for my clients and to expect to work diligently each day. I am grateful that I have had her example of how to be a working mother.

So as motherhood draws closer for me I hold her example closer so that one day I may pass on her legacy of motherhood to my children. I often think of the song "gentle woman" when I think about my mom; it's no coincidence that she is named after Jesus' mother, Mary.

Gentle woman, quiet light.
Morning star so strong and bright.
Gentle mother, peaceful dove:
Teach us wisdom, teach us love.

Autism Awareness- God's provision

So when I started this blog I thought I'd keep up with it weekly, but here I am finally starting my second post seven months after my first. About every two months I start a blog post and then never finish. (In fact, I started this post in February..) So, you all missed my unpublished posts about surviving Hurricane Sandy, hosting my in-laws for Thanksgiving, learning how to celebrate Christmas without Christmas decorations and how to love being super poor newly-weds.

And that brings us to April-- autism awareness month. Four years ago I was completely unaware of autism, people with autism or families affected by autism. This is the story of how God has directed my path towards people with autism, autism intervention and a path closer to Him.

Photo by Lauren Guy Summersett 

The spring of 2009 I was a sophomore linguistics major at Baylor without any career ideas. I was just as confused as my first-grade self that had aspirations of being a "nun and a mom." I was in the middle of final papers when I ran into an acquaintance (now friend) at Common Grounds who was writing a paper for "Child Language Acquisition" about a little boy she worked with who had autism. She told me a little about her job doing in-home ABA therapy and I asked if her client needed more therapists because I was desperate to stay in Waco over the summer. Long story short, I was hired less than a week later.

Photo by Lauren Guy Summersett

Photo by Lauren Guy Summersett

I expected to enjoy my new job, but I was surprised at how quickly silent little Adam became my friend, my secret keeper and my teacher as well as my student. It only took a few months for me to realize that I wanted to become a "Board Certified Behavior Analyst" to continue working with children with autism as my career, my passion and my ministry. By the next spring Baylor's educational psychology department started a specialization in ABA and opened the Baylor Autism Resource Center. I graduated a part of the second cohort.

Chris deferred from Princeton so I could finish my masters degree but I knew that once we got married we'd be moving up to New Jersey for Chris' graduate school. We had no connections up here but I figured that with 1 in 88 kids diagnosed with autism in the US, I'd be able to find some work. Little did I know that I was moving to the state with the highest autism rate in the country and that my apartment would be 15 minutes away from one of the oldest and most renowned clinics/schools in the world for people with autism.

Although I applied to dozens of clinics/schools months before our move, I moved up here unemployed. Chris' tuition bills were coming in quickly and my student loan debt was not going to pay itself, so I began applying for every nannying job on the Princeton job board, hoping to buy myself some time to make more connections in the autism world and begin my career. Unbelievably, the first family to call me back was a Christian family with 4-year-old triplets... two of the kiddos have autism and both go to Princeton Child Development Institute (PCDI), my ultimate dream job. Not only did I get to nanny for the family but I also was involved with the kids' home-programming and got training from their PCDI behavior analysts. 

In January a temporary position opened up at one of PCDI's group homes. The hours were a little weird, but I thought that perhaps I could get my foot in the door for a full-time position the following school year. So I applied to PCDI for the third time. This time I got an interview and got a job-- but not the temporary job that I originally interviewed for. Instead I was hired as a full-time behavior analyst/trainer in the adult life skills program at the school!! 

I love my job. Love PCDI. Love my coworkers. Love my clients. Love the top-notch training that I am receiving. I even love my cubicle. (I also love having a salary and benefits... it's way easier to pay off loans with one of those.)

I used to be worried that I would never figure out "what I wanted to be when I grew up," but God answered that question through an iced Cowboy Coffee and a final paper. I used to have no idea where to get the training I needed to work in behavior analysis, but God answered that question by beginning an ABA program literally in my backyard. I used to worry that I would fill my time during Chris' graduate school with "filler" jobs, delaying my career. Instead God brought us to the best place in the world for my career without me even knowing it. I used to worry that I'd never get the chance to work at PCDI and that I'd be stuck looking from the outside in, but instead my job position enables me to shadow and learn from one of the best behavior analysts in the country!! God is so faithful. 

I'm a super-planner, type A, control freak. I have always struggled giving up control and listening to God's direction. I am grateful that He continues to guide my path even when I'm looking the other way or am too busy "figuring it out" by myself to listen. I cannot wait to see what God has to come for me and all of my friends with autism.

-Brigid 








 

hello from jersey

A few years ago I spent three months in South Africa and kept a blog while I was there to report back to my friends and family in the states about life on the other side of the atlantic. About a month ago I made another big move. This time I didn't move across the atlantic but I got close. And although Princeton has wifi on every corner and making a phone call doesn't cost a dollar a minute, I thought that this blog might be a good way to stay connected with all of you who are more than a reasonable drive away. 

Six weeks ago I lived in Waco, Texas. I was sleeping on a friend's couch while I finished my last days as a Baylor student and scrambled to finish up the last few touches for my wedding. Since then I've graduated, finished my graduate assistantship, got married, honeymooned, drove across the whole united states (I wish that was an exaggeration), moved into my first home with my husband, found a new job and learned how to make a delicious curried coconut lentil soup... and it's not even October yet! 

The only august/september that might rival this one was in the fall of 1994 when I began first grade at Belmar Elementary. The list of changes was not nearly as impressive as the one above, but becoming a full-time student was change enough for me. I didn't get to watch Barney after coming home from half-day kindergarten; I had new fears (like the kid sitting next to me who puked all over my teacher on the first day of school) and to top it all off, I had to sit at a desk. My mom tells horrible stories of me screaming, kicking and fighting as she and my brother drug me into my classroom every morning for several weeks. 

Thankfully this transition was not nearly as traumatic.

Becoming a wife has been wonderful. I'm convinced that there is nothing better than being a newlywed (expect for the major increase in 'espn' time on our television). I tried to elaborate on my love for married life but it got gushy and embarrassing pretty fast. :)

Becoming a New Jersey resident has been strangely pleasant. I still don't understand why you can't turn left at most stop lights, why you must exit the highway on bizarre "jug-handles" rather than convenient underpasses, why the price of lentils (and all other groceries) is double or triple here and especially why no one has a disposal in their kitchen sink. Equally surprising is the ideal fall weather, the woods and running trail right behind our apartment, the abundance of local produce and farmers markets and the ease of making new friends.



Un-becoming a student has been liberating! Although I still find myself quizzing Chris on his Greek vocabulary and editing papers for his theology courses, I cannot describe how beautiful it is that I don't have to put in the hours and hours it takes to be a student. I come home from work, I do my house-wifey things (which I love) and I am continually shocked that I don't have a pile of research left to read or more data to graph each evening. 

A song we used to sing in South Africa went through many names for God-- all the "Jehova ones." The line that sticks with me is about Jehova Jireh which means the Lord, my provider. I have been praying for many months that God would provide good housing, jobs to make ends meet, a new church home and meaningful friendships. God has faithfully and lovingly answered our prayers.

-Brigid