Confirming the Cross

My husband is preparing the Easter sermon for tomorrow (according to the Orthodox calendar) and I am collecting my own Easter thoughts.

I was thinking about the standard greeting and response and how I have heard it from childhood, though maybe in different forms and languages.

We used to gather with other families on Resurrection Day, and it was quite easy for the kids to learn the greeting: "He is Risen."  -" He is Risen Indeed!" Sometimes we repeated it while passing Communion around.

And one year, at the kids' table, the girls and I (we tended to stick together) came up with our own version. Though the greetings had already been exchanged, we began to pass different things around the table, proclaiming to each other, "Bread!" -"Bread indeed." "Butter!" -"Butter indeed."

It was very childish and quite funny to us, but as I was reminiscing, I realized that the rationale behind the joke was that we were merely confirming what we regarded as fact. The "elements" on the table were tangible, and to argue with our proclamations would have been illogical. But we also had no reason to doubt that the news of the Resurrection was anything other than fact. We listened and repeated it and came to know, in our hearts, that it was true.

Timing

I had an epiphany today about Russian bureaucracy...it's like having a cold! As the joke goes, if you treat a cold, it will only last about 7 days, but if you leave it alone, it will take a whole week!

The same goes with trying to get something done here. You could struggle through, taking a lot of wrong turns, using trial and error, and it will take you "x" amount of time. OR you could start way in advance, do your research, use what seems like the best method, and it will STILL take you "x" amount of time. And by "x" amount of time I mean you will finish it in the Eleventh Hour, just before the bank closes or your visa expires, or your plane takes off, or the office closes for the weekend, etc.....

And by "you," I'm talking about myself, of course.

Oh, and just like a shot of antibiotics sometimes gets the recovery moving faster, well, it helps to have some connections. There is always a back door or side door or trap door that will suddenly take you down the express route.

I KNOW that God operates outside of all these restrictions. But I also know that I'm not so bad at planning, and that these things really are all beyond my control. So I have to let go a little and not try to be in the driver's seat all the time.

It's a boy, but...

It's interesting how the gender scan and anatomy scan take place simultaneously (the ultrasound, that is), so just as the unborn baby starts to take on an imagined personality, you may get devastating news about his development. That's not meant to be a complaint, just an observation.

But I suppose it was always that way. Before ultrasounds, you found out your baby's gender and his overall condition on the day of his birth, not before. And there was always the mixture of feelings, but it was still a gift of life.

After finding out we were having a boy, the ultrasound technician went on to check all the major organs, each time mentioning what COULD go wrong, but then mentioning that ours was normal. Then at one point she noticed something.

"Hmmmm, there's a something something. Very interesting. Let's hope that's the only anomaly." Ummm, what?

Then the machine broke.

Andrei hastily grabbed a paper towel to cover me up as someone came in to look at the machine. Then he took the moment to ask the technician what she had seen.

"There's a cyst on the something something,"she said.

The machine started up again and then broke again, but she had gotten all the measurements and we were ready to go home, even without the freaky alien fancy advanced imagery.

I got home and looked up the word...an umbilical cord cyst (you can see a bubble in the pictures).

I did a tiny bit of research and decided there wasn't anything helpful online. The doctor never called to offer additional testing or anything, not that we would have done it anyway.

It's interesting how the baby makes his presence felt. In the first trimester you feel yucky, so you know something's going on, and in the second trimester you start showing and then you feel him kicking, so you know he's still in there.

After waiting a month and going to the next check-up, I asked the doctor about the cyst and she said they had recommended doing another ultrasound later on; that is, in May.

For now, we are both doing well!

Snowy Day

As you can see, we haven't gotten very much snow this year (yet). But it's been quite cold for the past few weeks.

This is the actual view from our kitchen window. The sign is neon at night, so if I wander into the kitchen after dark, I get to see a huge sign and pictures of giant food staring at me. Also, our entrance is technically in the courtyard, so I have to go all the way around the building to get to the grocery store. I've thought more than once about installing a slide or rope swing.

Meanwhile, if you look closely, you can see a guy selling balloons on the far left. At one point I looked out and he didn't even have gloves on. It's 15 degrees Fahrenheit outside!