It's Easter! We had so much fun in church this morning. The kids were all ADORABLE in their Easter outfits, and we sat right by our favorite baby to watch, Ava. She giggles and claps and shows her four teeth. Once, when she was in a waving phase, the pastor was preaching and she was enchanting the whole congregation by waving at every person she saw. The pastor finally made a joke about it and she turned and waved at him, and he waved back, and she waved with BOTH hands and started clapping and giggling. I think the pastor had felt a bit upstaged until he got his own special, four-toothed grin with two-hand wave. He melted and we all got a good laugh out of it. Anyway, Ava was wearing a pink dress and had a pink bow stuck on her head. We have other favorite kids to watch--Jeffrey had a blue striped suit on (with hiking boots, of course), and Timmy wore a sailor's outfit. So many people have such adorable kids, and it makes church fun! Also, we are finally to the point where people notice when we're not at church, and we have plenty of people to talk to in coffee hour. Church is probably the one hour of the week when I actually feel good about New England.
Today I am about to get to work on my thesis. I have to write the intro and conclusion and then start to clean it. I am supposed to turn it in tomorrow and it needs a lot of work! I had been on a total brain freeze for months. I'd write something, but it would be awful, so I would delete it. I actually ended up with less material than when I started, which was really frustrating. Then I got into some really good discussions about God with one of my closest friends this weekend, and it got my juices flowing. I realized that I have spent far too much time worrying about how the message would be taken (and thus dancing around my imaginary people's being offended) than actually saying the message that has been given to me to write. I started going back to Scripture and the words began to flow. I love, love, love the Bible! It turns out that my belief supplies words, even in the face of Harvard criticism. My criticism has been mixed--a lot of people are very, very against my tie to Christianity, but almost everyone who has read my work has said it moved them. Even my advisor, who isn't Christian, said that she was moved so much that she is re-examining her own spirituality and found herself drawn back to God through my work. She's a professor of theology, so this was really uplifting! I try to keep that in mind as I write instead of the harsh criticism that has also been thrown my way. I don't consider myself any kind of writer, but I do care very much about whether my work helps women deepen their faith.
Anyway, I'd probably better get to work.
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