What a delightful collection of comments! I love each one, anonymous and named. Thank you for encouragement in the greyest month of the year.

I have participated in almost every cringeworthy fashion you mentioned (except Farrah hair - I never had it, but I admired my sister’s). To those of you who are embarrassed that you imitated a particular celebrity: allow me to comfort you with two facts: first, I spent junior high dressed like Madonna on her first two albums - layered tank tops or muscle shirts, rubber bracelets up to the elbow, wadded rag tying back the hair, fishnets either torn or whole. It was something.

Second, from age 21 to about 26, I was so bewildered by what to do with my thick, curly hair that I kept it super short, opting for the comfort of a shaven neck rather than the hassle of a feminine cut. It was only after Az the devoted husband persuaded me to grow it out that I realized what celebrity haircut I had had all those years.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJQVlVHsFF8]

Suddenly Farrah hair doesn’t look so bad, does it? (Hat tip to Riley for first introducing me to this video.)

I loved hearing about your first crushes. Beck, Az the Skeptical refuses to believe that anyone ever had a crush on Bosley. “Never happened,” he said, shaking his head and narrowing his eyes. Please forgive his impugnment of your honesty. Obviously, if Larry King can get married six times, women are inscrutable mysteries in matters of the heart.

For months I have wanted an excuse to link to this video, and the anonymous Christopher Atkinson admirer has finally given me one. Thank you.

As for your questions:

B&P asked if we are going to try for a boy. We don’t particularly care what sex the babies are, but Az is convinced (with a little pride) that we make exclusively girl babies. I think he sees this as a strange confirmation of his masculinity; only a very manly man can remain a man surrounded by this much pink. It proves how secure he is.

Before we conceived this baby, we had planned on making some permanent birth control decisions after the third baby. We were talking about it again a few months ago, and it gradually dawned on us that we were both planning the Big Fix for the sake of the other, not because we actually wanted it. I thought Az was too anxious about providing for another baby to ask him for four children; Az knows how much I hate being pregnant, and did not want to ask me to go through another pregnancy.

We were both pretending we didn’t want a fourth, but we do. Our conversation ended in two wide-eyed, bashful smiles (rare after ten years of marriage) as we admitted to each other our secret thoughts. So we are going to try for one more baby immediately (well, not IMMEDIATELY, but you know what I mean) after this one is born.

Robbin asked me who my favorite villain was, because I asked her this same question a while back. When I first saw her question, I thought, “Oh crap. Now I have to answer it.”

I think the scariest villain of fiction is Frankenstein’s monster (in the book, not the many movies). The combination of pity for his misfortunes plus his unabashed malevolence gives me chills. The book disturbs me on many levels.

If I have a favorite villain it is probably Dr. Moriarty from the Sherlock Holmes stories. He is so brilliant and polite, and so devilishly selfish. When Az and I discussed what last name I would take when we married, he was against me taking Mitchell, but I wanted our whole family to have the same name. I suggested as a compromise that we both change our last names to something new and neutral. I voted for Moriarty, so that if we ever finish the PhDs, we could be known as “The Doctors Moriarty.” Wouldn’t that be cool?

He declined.

Meredith asks if my graduate degree has something to do with theology. Az gets a little uncomfortable with this question, but if you read my blog, you can probably already guess. My field is not exactly theology, but ancient history, especially as it applies to biblical studies. Hence this topic.

Thank you all again for taking the time to fill up my comments. It means a lot.

I am frequently a lurker on other blogs. I read and don’t comment, sometimes because I feel I’m butting in, sometimes because I enjoy my anonymity, and sometimes because I am a ginormous pregnant woman with low iron and I am tired.

I understand lurking. I don’t mind it. I’m happy you come here and read, even if you don’t say much.

But I am feeling a little grey, and wondering about all those anonymous folks who show up on my sitemeter, wondering why they come or leave or come back again. So how about it? De-lurk for the large, tired pregnant lady ( I am not above playing the pregnancy card whenever it suits me).

Tell me something about yourself that you don’t mind me knowing. Some suggestions:

1) Name of your first childhood crush ( I know I am not the only one who fell for Shaun Cassidy)
2) Favorite flavor of smoothie
3) A discredited fashion that you indulged in (I confess, with trembling, that when I was 12 I had a mullet. Never mention this again).

Robbin and Bub and Pie offered their commenters the enticement of answering any question. Hmm. I can give it a shot, as long as Az the Suspicious doesn’t have any scruples about it. Ask away.

Suitable for Lent, there is this video from Craig Ferguson’s Late Late Show on YouTube. It made me love the guy all over again. God bless him.

John Donne’s Hymn to God the Father

Wilt Thou forgive that sin where I begun,
Which was my sin, though it were done before?
Wilt Thou forgive that sin, through which I run,
And do run still, though still I do deplore?
When Thou hast done, Thou hast not done,
For I have more.

Wilt Thou forgive that sin by which I have won
Others to sin, and made my sin their door?
Wilt Thou forgive that sin which I did shun
A year or two, but wallowed in a score?
When Thou hast done, Thou hast not done.
For I have more.

I have a sin of fear, that when I have spun
My last thread, I shall perish on the shore;
But swear by Thyself, that at my death Thy Son
Shall shine as he shines now, and heretofore:
And, having done that, Thou hast done:
I fear no more.

Donne’s poem impacted me profoundly when I first read it. I discovered Donne through a slim, beat-up paperback in my parents’ basement, leftover from my Dad’s college days. It was just a collection of his Holy Sonnets, but it spoke to me in a way no other writer ever had.

My first year of graduate school, I used to visit a corner of my favorite bookstore where there was a hardbound copy of his complete poetry. The book was twenty-one dollars, an enormous sum for me back then. After months of returning to that corner to read the book, I finally bought it (I decided I could skimp on groceries for a few weeks).

In “Hymn to God the Father,” Donne writes of the sin that pollutes us and keeps us from God, but he ends recognizing a final sin: the fear that God will not forgive, that Donne’s sin will alienate him forever from God.

I have little respect for people who cannot recognize their own moral failings. In my mind, humbly acknowledging our own errors and flaws is the bedrock of good character. This characteristic, however, can become a twisted form of pride: I am better than everyone else because I think I am worse than everyone else. Unlike they, I face the truth about myself. I know what an awful person I am. This is part of the devastating logic of depression, the belief that I have some secret insight into the depth of my own failures that other people fail to notice.

The Christian gospel teaches us something different. We are not the arbiters of our own goodness or evil; God is. We can declare ourselves neither unforgivable nor above forgiveness. When God forgives, we are forgiven, and fears and doubts about such things only attempt to knock God off the throne and put ourselves in his place. We cannot undo God’s forgiveness.

The challenge of faith in the Gospel is to each day recognize we are not the masters of our own souls, making ourselves good and bad, but that we are the receivers of God’s grace, a grace that loves sinners, that stoops to our weakness, that breathes new life into the dead. I cannot make myself holy; I can only accept that God has done it for me through Jesus Christ.

Ash Wednesday focuses on the two foundational truths of the Christian faith: the reality and catastrophe of our sin and the overwhelming power of God’s love and forgiveness. The wisdom and humility of Christian spirituality is in holding both truths equally in our hearts at the same time.

I cannot make myself forgivable; I can only accept the free and expansive gift of God’s forgiveness, based not on my actions or character, but on his. The joy of Christianity is in accepting that we are not in control, but we are deeply loved and eagerly forgiven by the one who is.

And having done that, I fear no more.

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I am planning a series of posts for each of the Sundays in Lent, primarily on the spirituality of fasting and feasting. Stop by on Sundays, if you are interested. It would be great to see you.

JellyBean has been branching out in her verbal skills, no longer merely repeating books and movies, but creating whole dialogues and games by herself. Usually her conversations focus on babies, animals or Bible stories, but every now and then she comes up with something whose origins I cannot trace.

This weekend she repeated this conversation more than once.

JellyBean: (sweet and winsome, wide-eyed) Mommy, don’t be angry with me.

Me: (stricken) Sweetheart! I’m not angry with you! Why would I get angry with you?

JellyBean: You get angry at Daddy.

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(I told Az about this conversation and he grinned like a devilish schoolboy and said, “Excellent.” Then, after a moment: “I want that on your blog.”)