Packing for Spring Break

I've known all week that we are pulling out first thing tomorrow morning for a 10-12 hour drive home to my parent's house in Pennsylvania.  The boys have been counting down every day for the past two weeks, so you would think the countdown would have motivated me to get my packing done early.  No chance of that.

Caleb is barefoot and has his sunglasses, clearly he's ready for a Spring Break roadtrip.

I've always been a bit of a procrastinator and that hasn't changed (yet). In random order, here is a list of the things that I've kept myself busy with this week and today instead of just packing the actual suitcases.

On Monday I bought a candy/deep fry thermometer because I've been failing at making toffee (I don't want to even admit how many batches I ruined).  I immediately used the thermometer to make a delicious batch of dark chocolate toffee with sea salt.

Then I thought to myself, "I have this thermometer now, I can finally make donuts."  So, Tuesday afternoon was spent making a double batch of the Pioneer Woman's recipe for donuts with Aaron.  The donuts were Ah-mazing.

I also decided that I should fill up my social calendar this week because who needs their days and nights free to pack?  I hosted a playdate, went out for a girls' night, had a date night with Jon and had some new friends over for coffee all in a three day time span.

Next I figured that in order to pack, I should have every, single item of clothing in the house clean so I don't have to worry if the right things are clean.  This meant about a thousand loads of laundry (okay, maybe just 10, but it felt like a thousand).  I'm still waiting for the last one to dry as I write this.

Then I figured its silly to pack a car if its dirty on the inside.  Yesterday I paid James fifty cents to pick up all the trash he could find and bring in all the random junk in the car (gloves, sunglasses, etc).  Today I spent a good hour vacuuming our car (moving the booster seats, folding our seats flat).  I was amazed and disgusted at the food bits that were in our car, but now its sparkly clean (well, as clean as my non-industrial vacuum can get it) and ready for a long car drive where I'm going to let four small children eat and drink in the car completely undoing my cleaning job.  I realize its sorta pointless, but I can't stop myself.

And if the inside of the car is clean, the outside should be too?  Right?!?  So, I found myself at the car wash after school pickup today.

In between all these essential tasks, I have managed to pack the kids suitcases and load the dining room table with random things we need to take (baby gear for my nephew, snacks for the car, the electronic must haves and chargers).  And I have a big pile of my clothes on my bed as I'm still deciding what to take.  Most likely at 11 tonight when the rest of the stuff is loaded up, I will just start haphazardly throwing clothes into my suitcase and hope for the best when I arrive in PA.

I need to wrap up this blog (my latest procrastination trick) so that I can get to the airport and pick up my dad.  On a side note, I have the best dad EVER.  He worked his normal friday and then got on an airplane and is flying to Chicago.  He lands at 7 pm tonight.  He is flying here for the sole purpose of helping me drive home to his house tomorrow with my boys since Jon can't come with us until later in the week.  Now that's love folks.  Most people would go running the opposite direction when asked to do a long roadtrip with four small children, but my dad will willingly fly out here to be a part of it.  

I'm thinking since he's helping us out so much we should probably stop for a long, leisurely dinner on our way home from the airport.  I mean, the packing can wait.  We aren't leaving for a good 15 hours.

Mourn with those who Mourn

As a young girl, I use to play house with my dolls.  During my childhood, I always imagined growing up, marrying someone and then having children.  About eight years ago, I found myself and many of my friends venturing into the world of becoming parents.  Those rosy-colored, picture perfect childhood dreams and thoughts of motherhood were becoming a reality.  It was a season of baby showers, excitement, and anticipation. 

During this season of becoming mothers for the first time, I also started to see and experience a kind of pain that I had never anticipated in my visions of motherhood.  The pain of infertility.  Some friends getting pregnant easily while others struggled for months and years.  The pain of an unexpected end to a pregnancy before the baby was ready to be born.  A baby being born still, the only cries in the room coming from the parents.  I had no framework for this pain.  No words to explain it or to provide comfort. 

I'd always known that childbirth would be painful, but the pain was worth it, you had a baby in your arms at the end.  What I was fully unprepared for was having to watch so many friends lose their baby before they even got to know if it was a son or a daughter.  I had heard the term "stillborn" but I had no idea how gut-wrenching it was to see a perfectly formed, full-term baby delivered into this world, but  never taking a breath here.

I knew life was miraculous and a gift from God, but I had no idea how deep the pain could be when you don't have that new life in your arms at the end of the pregnancy or when you cannot even become pregnant in the first place.  I didn't know just how many women experience this type of pain and I naively didn't realize that I would be added to that number.

At some point in my childhood, I did learn that my mom had miscarried her firstborn.  She talked to me about the physical and emotional pain of losing that baby, but I just didn't get it until I started to experience it first-hand in my own life and friendships.  It didn't really occur to me that I had a brother or a sister that I never got to know. 

Its hard to put all my thoughts about this into one blog post.  I do know that many people believe life starts at conception, yet they are unwilling or unable to talk about the loss of life during a pregnancy.  I don't understand that at all.  And to be honest, my feelings were deeply hurt by this when we lost our fourth baby a few years ago.

I know that each situation has different circumstances and that some may seem to be more difficult, but I don't understand comparing loss to try to make yourself or someone else feel better.  Statements like "its better to lose the baby now and not when you are further along" don't provide comfort.  A wise friend of mine, who has given birth to a baby who was still and later had a miscarriage, told me that she has made it a habit to never compare loss because each loss needs to be grieved.  Such true words.  Loss is loss.  All loss needs to be grieved.

Romans 12:15 says "Rejoice with those who rejoice; Mourn with those who mourn."  This is just one verse out of an entire chapter of love, but its an important one.  I feel like its easy to do the rejoicing part with our friends.  Its fun and it often involves parties, food, and laughter. 

The mourning part is a lot trickier.  It requires sitting alongside a friend in pain.  It involves long-distance phone calls.  It is awkward.  It involves apologies for misspoken words.  It involves being okay with silence.  It requires having the courage to ask questions.  And then being okay with it if the other person doesn't want to answer or if they talk for thirty minutes straight about how difficult it is to have lost.  Mourning involves having conversations where you are vulnerable yourself and are willing to just listen. 

In my experience, mourning has the capability to bring your friendship to a deeper level than rejoicing.  Its easy to be happy for someone else.  Its easy to run to Target and buy a present and put a sparkly bow on top.  Its much harder to sit in a quiet hospital room and fumble for words while your friend physically recovers from delivering her baby with empty arms.  There are no words to erase the pain for your friend who is standing next to a casket holding her baby boy.  Mourning is uncomfortable.  You might say something stupid.  You might make the other person cry.  You might cry yourself.

I have had the privilege of experiencing some friendships where the mourning was shared, both my own and theirs.  I'm sure there were awkward pauses of silence or fumbled words, but I don't remember those things with these friends.

What I do remember is the friend who welcomed me visiting her in the hospital the day after she delivered her baby boy into Jesus' arms.  I remember many words from the letter another friend wrote to her son and read to him at his funeral.  I remember the friend who was struggling with infertility showing up at my baby shower and celebrating with me that I was pregnant with twins while she was still not pregnant.  What I treasure is the friend who called me today, just hours after learning about her baby's heart no longer beating inside of her, to share her experience and to ask me about mine.  Those friends who had the courage to be vulnerable have taught me so much and blessed me more than they could know.  There is something scary about believing that God is good but admitting that you don't understand what he is doing or how painful life can be.  But there is also something beautiful and real about doing this, especially when you share it with others. 

I still don't understand why some people have to experience this type of pain.  I don't understand why we lost one of our children but were allowed to have the other four here with us (at least for now).  I don't know why babies like Matthew, Faith, Autumn and Desmond aren't here with us in this world and others are.  I don't know why a friend last week learned her baby had no amniotic fluid and wouldn't survive delivery.  And I don't know why another friend heard a strong heartbeat and saw the baby move last week, just to learn today that the heartbeat is gone. 

I've had this song on my mind a lot since they played it in church the other week and think its appropriate as an end to this post.

This Week

Its Sunday night here.  I finished about six loads of laundry and tidied up our kitchen, playroom and entryway as I gear up for a new week to start in the morning.  While doing this, I was thinking about the new milestones we entered with the boys this week.  For the most part, these are not traditional milestones, but they are all new experiences for us and/or the boys.

Caleb has added several new words to his vocabulary.  Very important ones like "Roll, Slide, Cup, Pa Pa (Grandpa), Lion, Treat and Poo."  He also figured out how to climb over our gates.  Yep, even our thirty foot superyard gate.  We've found him between the gate and the TV/entertainment center several times which shows that the gate is no longer working.  So sad.  We are going to have to figure out something else soon because he is convinced that he is old enough to put DVDs in and out of our player.  He is pretty good at taking them out, but then he throws them around the house. And heaven help us if one our Baby Genius Cds stops working as he is obsessed with those baby song dvds right now.  He has also mastered opening every door in our house and flushing the potty.  This means that I keep our front door locked at all times as he will walk outside barefoot in the snow if he can get the door open.  Also, if its even remotely quiet, I know to check every bathroom right away.  I caught him playing in 2 of our 3 toilets this afternoon while I was putting laundry away. 

Aaron got his "first" tie shoes, not that he can actually tie them on his own, but he's excited about them anyway.  I am most excited that hand-me down shoes from Andrew still count as "new" to Aaron. 

We recently switched cable providers and our new package with AT&T has tons of kid channels we've never had before.  Aaron has become obsessed with the Care Bears.  He has also been introduced to commercials for the first time which has been painful for us.  He pays very close attention.  In fact, yesterday at church he told me that you can make ice cream by shaking milk.  He was very serious about it.  He is convinced that we need these ice cream shakers.  He also asked if we'd buy these wrestling guys he saw advertised.  When we said no, there were tears (big surprise).  Clearly, we are going to have to limit his exposure to commercials for our sanity.

Our cute little mailboxes were part of a devious scheme this week.  One of the brothers signed a "mean" note to Aaron (I really think he meant it to be a joke).  The note was something along the lines of "Dear Aaron, I do nut like you, Love James."  When Aaron excitedly brought the note over to me to read it to him, I was not happy to see what it said.  I called James in and asked him to read it to me.  He pretended he couldn't read it.  I calmly explained that if he wrote it, he could read it.  While I was waiting for him to own up to it, Andrew came in and claimed ownership of writing the note.

On one hand, I was so proud of Andrew for coming in and confessing to it before we figured it out.  On the other hand, I was kinda upset that he "framed" James to take the blame for the mean note.  I'm pretty sure the whole scenario was a prank/joke gone bad as Andrew has been the one writing the most notes to everyone and very sweet ones.  I don't think he thought the whole thing through and realized that it would make Aaron sad.  And to be honest, it doesn't take much to get Aaron to cry these days.  Sometimes its just a matter of looking at him wrong, so when he heard the note, he did cry a little.  What baffles me even more is that James didn't recognize that it wasn't his handwriting or speak up saying that he didn't write the note when I asked him to read what he had written.

This incident totally flashed me back to my childhood when I would do something I thought was going to be clever or funny only to realize it hurt the other person's feelings or caused a problem.  I can't think of a specific example, but I remember those feelings of regret and shame like they were yesterday.  I could see it all over Andrew's face which I guess makes me happier than him having no emotional response to the natural consequences.

The whole incident was smoothed over relatively quickly and we have now carefully explained to everyone that you are only allowed to write notes that you sign with your own name. 

One last milestone that the big boys reached was learning about the all-american whoopie cushion toy.  They received one in their goodie bags at a birthday party today.  James came in all excited from the party saying that he had gotten a "poop pad." I had no idea what he was talking about until he took it out and showed it to me.  I guess he thinks that the name whoopie cushion makes no sense.  These fifty cent whoopie cushions entertained all 3 big boys for a good thirty minutes before dinner.  I'm sure this is just the beginning of the boy potty humor in our house.

Annette's Enchiladas

I'm going to continue with my posts about Shauna Niequist's books.  I think that one of the reasons I love her books is that she invites you so deeply into her story and when you are done reading her book, you feel like you just spent hours with a good friend.  Sometimes I have to remind myself that we aren't friends in "real life" because I follow her blog and I see her up on the stage at our church often. Does that make me sound like a complete stalker or what?

About two months ago, she asked for volunteers to read advance copies of her book and then blog about and post reviews of the book, Bread & Wine.  I could hardly believe what I was reading.  Get an advanced copy of a book?!? Are you kidding me? I've never been happier that I have my little blog. 

About two weeks ago, the book arrived on my doorstep.  To be precise, it arrived at 4:05 pm.  I basically ignored my four children for the next day.  "You want fruit snacks and candy for breakfast? Whatever.  Just let me read.  What kids?  You want to get the weapons bin down and beat each other up?  As long as it doesn't interrupt my reading by requiring a trip to the ER."  At 8 pm the following night, I had finished the book.  I devoured it.  It far exceeded my expectations as I wasn't sure how she could pull of a book of recipes along with her normal story-telling.  It worked and it worked really well.  I will be writing a little bit more about it in a few weeks when the book officially releases.

The first thing I did was start trying some of the recipes out, specifically the one for "Annette's Enchiladas."  You see, I have long had a special place in my heart for enchiladas.  It started in college.  I went to Wheaton college and on Sunday nights, the cafeteria was closed so you had to fend for yourself.  My roommate Hannah and I quickly discovered a little Mexican restaurant in downtown Wheaton called Front Street Cocina.  We were poor college students, so we couldn't afford to spend $20 on dinner, so we would split the chicken enchiladas with green chile sauce.  They were so good that we would walk the 20-30 minutes from our dorm room to the restaurant (freshman weren't allowed to have cars on campus) just for those enchiladas, even during Chicago winter.

Since then, I usually ordered the enchiladas at Mexican restaurants because they were something I didn't know how to make at home.  When I met my husband, I wormed myself into his group of friends which included Stacey.  Stacey taught me how to make enchiladas.  I'm not sure why I was so intimidated by them.  During our dating months (we were on the fast track to marriage, so it was months, not years), we did several double dates.  On a double date with Stacey and Kevin, she showed me how to make enchiladas by dipping each tortilla in sauce, stuffing it, rolling it and topping it with sauce and cheese.  I don't know if she even realized this, but she had just made enchiladas obtainable to me without having to go to Chevy's, so I am forever in her debt.

Soon after we got married, I decided I'd make Jon and I a big pan of enchiladas and I'd make them slightly spicy.  Slightly being the key word.  I opened a can of chipotle peppers in adobo sauce.  I put at least two peppers and sauce inside EACH of Jon's enchiladas.  I put one or half of a pepper inside of mine.  That night during dinner, I was immensely surprised at how hot my enchilada was.  After I drank several glasses of water and could finally talk, I asked Jon what he thought.  When I did, I looked at him and noticed that he was sweating profusely.  The poor newly-married guy didn't want to criticize my cooking, but in the meantime, he was going into a pepper-sweat.  I had put WAY too many peppers in his food.  We still laugh about that to this day.  Epic dinner fail. 

About two years ago, my sister-in-law Rachel and my friend Stacey were talking about the Pioneer woman left and right.  I tried her chicken enchilada recipe and it was delicious, but a bit time-consuming and a bit calorie-laden (gallon of half and half anyone?) not that any enchiladas are really low-calorie.

As soon as I saw that Shauna's book included a recipe for enchiladas that were in lasagna/casserole form, I knew I was destined to try it and sure to love it.  I was right.  They are easy but absolutely delicious.  I have a pan made up in the fridge right now so that we can eat them after our long run tomorrow.  One of the joys for training for a marathon is some guilt-less eating including enchiladas.

I first made his recipe last weekend before we went to church on Saturday night.  Our good friends Mark & Laura accepted a last minute dinner invitation to our house after church.  We were delighted to have dinner with them (you know they are good friends because we didn't even mind that there wouldn't be leftovers) and catch up since it had been a while since we'd been together in person.

In addition to having recipes, Shauna's book is all about how community occurs at the table and over sharing food.  One premise of her book is to throw open your doors and let your friends into the mess.  I'm pretty sure that she is talking about the "mess" of our lives like our struggles and pain.  I have plenty of this kind of mess to share with others.  However, she is also referring to the material "mess" of our homes.  The toys on the floor, the papers on the island, the clutter piles--all the things that are found in my home on a regular basis.  Last minute dinner invites mean that I didn't prepare my home, so I hadn't hidden my clutter piles in my bedroom and front closet.  It was about as real as you can get.  I'm sure they noticed the clutter, but they are gracious friends.  Instead of commenting on it, they walked in and immediately participated in our home in a natural way.  They noticed that our kids had new mailboxes and wrote notes to each of them to read the next morning when they woke up.  I love this kind of friendship.   


Mark and Laura may look at our house and see mess, but they also see us.  They are one of the friends who got us through a very difficult season in our lives four winters ago when we had 3 children under the age of 3 & in diapers, Jon on crutches after tearing his achilles tendon, and recovering from an unexpected pregnancy and subsequent miscarriage.  They met us at church each week and helped me check children into the childcare since Jon couldn't easily go down stairs.  They sat with us in the atrium since Jon was on crutches and wanted to put his leg up.  Many of those weeks, they also showed up with full meals that they had bought and prepared for us.  I cannot remember exactly what the meals were, but I remember how cared for we felt. 

We spent over three hours at the table last Saturday night.  We swapped stories about things going on in our lives right now.  We talked about hopes for the future.  We also reminisced about some funny times in the past.  We ate enchiladas, drank wine and we laughed hard.

It was a great night and a perfect example of what Shauna's book is about.  Food is a mundane and necessary part of life, but it is also a significant part of life.  Meals around the table are a conduit for relationship, community and spirituality. 

Things I Don't Do

One of my all-time favorite books is Bittersweet by Shauna Niequist.  I read this a few years ago after a season in my life where I'd had a miscarriage, walked alongside friends who delivered their babies into Jesus' arms, and had a difficult season in our marriage for many reasons.  This book spoke to me in a thousand ways.  It put into words so many things that I had thought but couldn't describe. 

I've gone back and re-read chapters.

One of my favorite chapters is titled "Things I Don't Do".  I LOVED this chapter and at one of the author's speaking events, she encouraged us to write our own lists.  If you know me, I am a list person, so I could get behind this homework assignment.

The entire point of the chapter is that there are a million things that we can be doing.  Its easy to make the choices between the good and the bad things. What is much harder is choosing which good things you will do because you don't have the time, ability or resources in your life to do them all.  You must choose.  You should choose based on what makes sense for you, what brings you joy, and what you are naturally wired to go. 

This is where things like pinterest and facebook can come in and sabotage you.  When you see a friend has sewn all these adorable curtains or costumes for her child, you think you are coming short if you don't do that too.  When you see browse pinterest for birthday party ideas, you will feel that you need to bake a magazine-worthy cake, sew homemade favors, build a pirate ship in your backyard and professionally photograph it all.  There can be jealousy and envy, not necessarily of what others have, but of the way they can accomplish so much and be so good at everything.  The images that your jealous of are false.  No one is doing everything perfectly.  There is no "Super Mom" or "Wonder Woman."  Hopefully you are seeing evidence of something that person enjoys doing and has on their "Things I do list."  What you aren't seeing is all the things that they choose NOT to do in order to be able to sew, craft, photograph, bake, cook, or write.

My pictures on facebook show that I do like to bake homemade birthday cakes.  What they don't show is how much clutter can be found around my house on any given day (the stairs, the tables, the computer desk, its everywhere).  My race results from running a half marathon show that I was able to finish a race.  What the race results don't show is that I stopped reading books for 3 months and instead used my time to go for runs or that I turned down a girls night invitation because I had a long training run the next morning. The bottom line is that you just cannot do everything, at least not at the same time.  The point is we need to stop trying and to stop making each other feel like we need to.

The exercise of writing down the things that you don't do (for whatever reason) is to free you to let them go.  For me, some of the things I don't do are because I'm terrible at them (like gardening) and it would require so much extra time and energy that it isn't a good use of my time in this season of my life.  Don't get me wrong, I love the idea of gardening.  I think there is nothing better than tomatoes fresh from the garden.  But I am not a natural at keeping things alive (other than tiny humans) so I will leave the gardening to my other friends and thankfully some of them are willing to share their home-grown jalapenos and tomatoes with me in the meantime.

Other things I don't do are because they drain me faster than leaving your car lights on overnight.  One of the author's examples was hanging around negative people.  This is so true for me.  I honestly will have a pit in my stomach after spending several hours with someone who spends the entire time tearing others down, complaining, or talking negatively.  I do my best not to hang around people like this, especially for hours on end because it drains me, its not life-giving.  Instead, I have sought the people in my life that are encouragers and I try to be the same for them, an encourager, life-giver, and true friend.

Some of the things on your list can be simple.  Some may be profound.  The list may change over time.  I wrote a list a few years ago and then I re-wrote it this last week.  Some things were different and many were the same.  I think its a great exercise. 

This quote from the book really resonated with me "And this is what Denise told me: She said its not hard to decide what you want your life to be about.  What's hard she said, is figuring out what you're willing to give up in order to do the things you really care about." 

So, here is a short list of "Things I Don't Do" right now and I'm done apologizing about it (to myself or others) and feeling guilty about it.

Garden (or keep plants of any kind of alive).  Seriously.  I killed Ivy (which is supposedly impossible) so for now, I will just focus on those four little guys who run around my house and not worry about having a garden.

Wear eyeliner or paint my nails.  This may seem silly but my mom didn't wear it and I never learned how (no big sister to show me).  I tried a few times, but its always awful, so I don't try anymore.  This is me...no eyeliner and its okay. 

Sew, crochet, or knit.  I have a sewing machine (the last time I used it, I broke the sewing machine needle 4 times trying to make a felt Peter Pan hat for each of the boys).  Someday I hope to have the time, patience, energy to pull it out and enjoy making something, but that's later, not now.

Make my bed.  I was raised to make my bed everyday, so please don't make this a bad reflection on my mother.  I think I use to make my bed a long time ago (before kids) and I still occasionally do, but honestly, it doesn't seem important.  No one sees our bedroom except Jon & I and neither of us cares.

I don't "craft".  I will do crafts with  my children, but crafting in general does not bring me joy.  Several years ago, the MOPS group I attended would have craft days and I secretly dreaded them.  If I wasn't carpooling with my friend Michelle, I might have skipped it all together.  It might be silly, but crafts make me indecisive and nervous.  I never know which ribbon to pick or what creative colors and sayings to put together on a wood photo frame.  I did participate, but only because it involved free childcare and 90 minutes to sit and talk to the other moms at the table.  I don't see myself crafting in the privacy of my home on my own anytime soon. 

Talk on the phone.  This might seem antisocial, but I am just NOT a phone talker.  I'd much rather write some emails or texts back and forth and then find a time to hang out in person.  I will talk on the phone if I need to and I do talk to my mom pretty regularly on the phone, but that's about it.  I don't call friends to just chit chat on the phone.  So, if you were wondering about that, its not that I don't like you, I'm just not a phone person. 

Cook without recipes.  I'm a recipe follower.  There are a few basic things I do without recipes like tacos, french toast, and sandwiches.  Other than that, I want a recipe and I want to follow it.  My husband is the total opposite.  He calls following recipes "cheating" and if I'm following a recipe, he is often suggesting ways to alter it.  After I've made a recipe once, I'm willing to make substitutions or changes, but I always want to do it the way it was intended the first time.  I'm not intuitive when it comes to spices, how to cook a certain cut of meat or making up new flavor combinations.  When I cook without looking at a recipe, its because I have it memorized.  I'm not creative when it comes to cooking.  I'm a follower and I'm okay with that.

Keep an immaculate house.  I have friends who have houses that are very organized and without clutter.  I'm often jealous because I have a daily battle with clutter and it seems to win in my house.  In fact, I'm often moving it around from here to there.  Every few weeks or months, I get fed up and I clean out our junk drawers, the top of our dining room table, or a closet.  I'd love it if my house had everything in its place on a regular basis, but it doesn't.  In this season, it just isn't going to happen.  I'm learning to be okay with this and letting other people see this.  Obviously I choose to be this way, but I get a little worried when other people are coming in and seeing it, especially those friends that do have clutter-free houses.

Wear super cute outfits and jewelry on a regular basis.  I love dressing up.  Right now I don't have the time, energy or motivation to pull this off on a daily basis.  Most days I wear jeans and a hoodie of some sort.  I rarely wear earrings anymore because I'm years into always having someone who wants to pull on them.  Right now, I don't have cutely tied scarves and funky jewelry to match my outfits that I found shopping in cute, artsy shops.  I have what they sell at Target because I can buy milk and diapers at the same time.  It is what it is.

Spend time with negative people (I explained this earlier).

I could probably come up with many more, but I think I might be boring everyone to death, so I'll stop here.  And I should say that some of the things on the list, I want to do, I just choose not too or can't do.  I have friends that are good at all of these things.  And I'm glad that I do.  I can go to them if I need something sewed or enjoy their recipe-free, intuitive cooking.  The point is not that we all have the same lists, the point is that they are different just like people are.

If you haven't read Bittersweet yet, you should.  And more importantly, Shauna Niequist has a new book coming out soon called Bread & Wine.  I'll be writing about that more in the coming weeks as I got my hands on an advanced copy.