Letter to our Family & Friends in Preparation for Baby Peringer

September, 2014

To our Nearest and Dearest-

The time for our little Sweet Pea’s arrival is quickly approaching. We have prayed/slept/not slept/cried/shopped/painted/built and celebrated much in anticipation of this day. We are excited to not only welcome in a new part of the Peringer family but also welcome a new member into our community here on our street. 

With that being said, Patrick and I must reiterate how incredibly blessed and cared for we have felt as we prepare for our little one. You all have truly acted as the hands and feet of Christ. thank you. 

A number of you have asked how to best serve us in the following weeks and I have some ideas. of course, because Patrick and I are new at this, there are some things that we are unsure of, so I want to iterate our commitment to be in communication with you all. If we had originally mentioned that xyz was just fine with us but now is not fitting into how we are doing life with baby, then our commitment is to let you know and not let things fester and brew to bitterness. its just unnecessary and no fun. we know y’all love us and you know we love you.

Nichole and Patrick

FOOD

Pragmatically, I’d say our biggest need, even right now, lies in the dinner department. this third trimester has been fraught with non-stop sinus infections/allergies and pregnancy exhaustion and it has left me sadly inept at many wifely duties. Patrick has been super gracious and patient despite, but i know how hard he works and i know that Ramen with an egg in it, is not the best substitute for a well balanced meal. 

A meal-train/ a sign up sheet for people to commit to bringing a meal for us for the first couple months would be incredible( A BIG THANK YOU to one of our Homegroup ladies for organizing this for us!) but I admit I could also use some help now. A sweet friend made a great recommendation on my Facebook wall the other day. While she was still pregnant, a few girlfriends and her got together and went grocery shopping. Tricia provided the recipes and the funds and the girls essentially made 10 freezer meals for her while she sat down and enjoyed their company-they prepped/chopped and packaged everything so that her freezer was already stocked even before the baby came. This would be a DREAM if we could make this happen. 

Here are some guidelines for the Meal Train list.

Dietary Concerns/Guidelines:

• Please package all meals in disposable trays for easy clean-up. 

• Please Non-Dairy, we both are allergic/intolerant. So sad about this. CHEESE/ICE CREAM ARE SO GOOD... :(

• Please no Barbecue sandwich type dishes- Sloppy Joes/pulled pork/ Manwich/ etc...  we enjoy Barbecue chicken/ribs but nothing of the shredded and put on a bun variety. 
• Please nothing too spicy, although mama loves it, papa sure doesn't and who knows what baby will feel like after I’ve had a few of my favorite jalapeños in my system. 

• Please no spaghetti. Enjoy any other type of pasta however.  

• YES Please to ethnic dishes.

• YES Please to breakfast for dinner- breakfast casseroles/french toast/mini quiches/ etc...

* YES Please to Gluten-Free/Sugar- Free/ etc...  Not a requirement however. 

Some of Nichole’s Favorites:

Butter Chicken & Naan- Anything Indian.

Hamburgers/Potato Salad(not sweet)/ Baked Beans

Rice and Beans

Chicken Pot Pie

Veggie Pizza w/out cheese.

Veggie Lasagna w/out cheese.

Chili- Meat or Veggie & Cornbread 

Anything with Sweet Potatoes. 

Any kind of comfort food.

Mr. Chopsticks/Cracker Barrel/Five Guys/ Taco Cabana/ Fuzzy’s Tacos/ VietBites

Some of Patrick’s Favorites: 

Shepherds Pie

Beef Stroganoff- No way around this but to make it with dairy. We will eat it anyway though. 

  Hard Shell Tacos

Salads. Salads. Salads.

Hungry Man- Fried Chicken TV Dinner... 

Oreos

Pepsi

Mr Chopsticks/Weinbergers/Arby’s/Taco Bell

CHORES + GUIDELINES 

Another question that some of y’all have asked is when to come over/how to interact with us. 

I will tell you that Patrick and I will have the first week covered- My mama will be in town after the baby is born. So for the first week do not worry about feeling the need to come over and do anything but say hello and love on baby Peringer.

For those of you who we normally welcome into our home to do laundry, if you could give us the first two weeks to adjust and free up the washer and dryer for my mama and papa, that would be amazing. 

As far as after that, here are some Please Do’s and Please Don’ts:

• Yes, please come over! I know myself and prolonged alone time is not good for me. It helps me be a better human being and doubtless will help me be a better mama to have people over to interact with.

• Please check in with me (nichole) or Patrick, via text, before coming over. More likely than not I will swing open the door wide in your welcome but there is just no way of knowing in the beginning how things are going to go. I make a promise to keep my phone close/on/nearby me at all times. :p

      * Yes, please wash your hands before holding baby.

• Yes, please bring us a meal AND check to see if we would be available to eat with y’all! I would love to not have all of our friends feel like they have to drop off something and run. Ask to spend time with us.

• Yes, please come over- to do the dishes/laundry/vacuum (if the baby is awake)/clean the bathroom/Tidy up/ run errands/ etc...

• Some important information about chores:
• The water is ridiculously hot, be careful not to scold yourself.
• Please dry whatever is washed and please put away. If you don’t know where something goes, you can place it on the kitchen table and we will get to it later.
• The Dish Strainer is under the sink.We normally just place the dishes on a clean towel.
• Clean Towels are in the dish cabinet- first drawer on the right. 
• We vacuum instead of sweep- we do not own a dust pan.
• I will put a note on the washer and dryer with instructions about washing our clothes/diapers. 
• All cleaning supplies are under kitchen sink.

• Yes, please come over for an hour or so while baby is sleeping in the evening so mama and papa can go out for a walk/get a soda/ feel human again.

• Yes, please write us notes of encouragement/bring us flowers/ or Oreos/pray for us when you see us. I’m sure we’re going to feel at times out of our minds. 

• Please do not avoid us because you think we ‘need space!’ We don’t have the plague, we have a baby. The only thing you might catch from coming over is baby fever, because our bebe is going to be ridiculously cute. ;)

• Please understand that when we seem inflexible to change times for an activity, it’s not because we are sticks in the mud but because we’re trying to place little, baby Peringer on a schedule. 

We love y’all so much. 

i do see Him

:: For in subjecting all things to Him, He left nothing that is not subject to Him. But now we do not yet see all the things subjected to Him but we do see Him...:: Hebrews 2:8b-9a

we do see Him...so much of this sentiment encapsulates the position of my heart right now.
So much of what's ahead is unknown. There are plenty of possibilities that go on living in my head but I have been made deeply aware to the vast unknowed-ness of the future.

possibilities are not truth...Fantasies, dreams and hopes, not a reality. All I know, is that God has the stunning ability to work sorrow and suffering and the dirty garments of this world into something miraculous and amazing. I always end up coming out of these times, Hinds Feet on High Places. My heart sprung open, colors and hymns and songs of praise spilling out to the Lord who has captured my gaze. My lover, my loving Shepherd.

i know not what is ahead, but I see Him.

i see Him. I see how He has deftly, as only God can, orchestrated my life. How many fingerprints, indentions made for remembrance are those scattered about the story of my life.

i know not what's ahead, but I do see Him. He is here, amongst the downy covers of my patio hide-a-way, in the sky to which I glance to so often now. The hazy blue a reminder that life is so much bigger than my current preoccupations and He is here, in me.

the warmth of His nearness, His nowness brings pain-filled tears to my eyes. The romancer lives and dwells within me.

i know not what is ahead but I do See Him. He has been all over this season since the very beginning...back in May when depression assailed me and my season of helplessness began....

trust. trust.trust. trust

trust me nichole, when you have no where to live, trust me when you have no source of income. Trust me when a man is brought into your life and when he is taken away. Trust me that your pain will soon give way to peace, strength, endurance and wisdom.

trust.

i have been granted a gift. My own eyes opened to my true state: A helpless, wretched babe, deeply, greatly in need of a Savior. A fearful seedling, not an oak as I so often have seen myself to be. I am weak. I have always been this way.

Now, as broken and raw and taken to the end of me, I realize this: I can do nothing apart from Christ. I have nothing apart from Christ. This is life, truly as it is: utter dependence on God.

more than simply knowing that... I am living it. I am experiencing it.

Perspective

Perspective.

So much depends on it.

I am quick to point out the absurdity of an elephant's fear of a mouse, less speedy to recognize the same lack of rational in myself.

I am quick to name my trials as such, to claim them as problematic, as tests. Rarer, to call them gifts, though gifts they are entirely.

A prayer of mine recently: "Though being made like you, Jesus, pains me, stay not your hand, stay not your hand."

The thought that the Lord would remove his refiners fire from my life, leaving me to my own depravity is terrifying. As acute as it is to be faced with the mirror image of my sin each day, much more profound is seeing Christ's face staring back at me.

.::...and we all with unveiled faces, beholding the glory of the Lord are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord the Spirit.::.

I am being made like Him.

Offering Up Your Isaac

Friends,

I come to you honestly; bearing my heart. This current season of my life has been one where the Lord has taken me to the very end of myself. It has been a season where He has proven Himself to be all I will ever need and shown me how I will never stop needing Him. I am being called to share what the Lord has been teaching me because I know I am not alone in this and I know the breath of life that is poured out when we bear one another's burdens.

As some of you know, since last April I had been struggling with depression. It has been the best thing that has ever happened to me and has served as a catalyst for growth and depth in the Lord. Since November, I have been walking victorious out of that miry pit but since being delivered I have been asked this question on a second my second basis: How much do you love me? Through unemployment, house-less-ness( I have been staying with dear friends till I find a place), and some other deep trials, He is testing and trying my heart. I pray He never stops. I am utterly broken and utterly joyful. He has taught me the joy found in suffering and it is this that I desire to share with you. I pray you hear my heart but more importantly, I pray you hear the Lord's.

To suffer.

This practice does not come easy to me. I am, at my core, a rebellious child flailing against the arms of my Father. Wanting my way, claiming my own knowledge as best and my desires as satisying. I believe I know better than God on a regular basis.

::Therefore, since Christ has suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves with the same purpose, because He who has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin. So as to live the rest of time in the flesh no longer for the lusts of men, but for the will of God...:: 1 Peter 4:1-2

What was Jesus' suffering? I had often heard that we were to partake in the suffering of the Lord. I had not quite understood that in it's entirety and to be sure, there is so much more weight to that then I can comprehend now, but for this moment in my life, where the tinge of suffering is near, I realize that Christ's suffering was more than the physical torture of crucifixion. The depth of His suffering was revealed there in the Garden, where He bowed his head and prayed " My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; yet not as I will, but as You will." Matt 26: 39. His suffering was submission to the will of God despite his own desires.

This has been my current portion: to submit to the will of God despite my cries that this cup be passed from me.

He has left me waiting for a job, waiting for a relationship, waiting for a house...waiting. This is has been my cup of suffering.

How much do you love me? He asks. Nichole, do you love like me? Laying down your life for others? Are you willing to walk in submission because of the JOY that is set before you? Is your first thought, " Father, let your will be done?"

Yes, Lord. I want you.

More and more the Lord is revealing to me that He is not about making things easy . He is about His power, His might, His weight being proclaimed through making a rebellious sinner like myself like Him: humble, submitted, believing, patient, willing. I think of Nehemiah's prayer in the face of a huge, approaching army. He prayed not that the struggle be taken away, not that the army would evaporate "But now, oh God, strengthen my hands."( Neh 6:9b) Is that my rection to trial and tribulation? Do I not rail against it more often than not, lamenting my condition and pleading that the Lord remove the hardship?

In truth, many of us, like myself until recently, know not the joy of surrender.

Many of us have never allowed ourselves to relinquish what God truly requires: our best.

How long I have operated under the lie that sacrifice means giving that which is bad for me. That surrender looks like giving up my desires for sugar, my addiction to facebook, my vanity...no. I have skimmed the surface of surrender. I have settled for superficial faith and shallow ground. No. Surrender is giving up Isaac. It is living with open hands. It looks like tears, and anguish and sorrow but it's aroma is that of joy and peace, perseverance and character.

::The fair petals must fall, and for no visible reason. No one seems enriched by the stripping. And the first step into the realm of giving is like surrender- not manward but Godward: an utter yielding of our best. So long as our idea of surrender is limited to the renouncing of unlawful things, we have never grasped its true meaning:that is not worthy of it's name for "no poluted thing can be offered.":: Lillias Trotter

I mourn for the fact that so many brothers and sisters do not smell of death( 2nd Cor 2:17-18) but of tight-fisted fear.

::For all things are for your sakes, that the grace which is spreading to more and more people may cause the giving of thanks to abound to the Glory of God. Therefore, we do not lose heart but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being revealed day by day. For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of Glory far beyond comparison.":: 2nd Cor 4:15-17

Yet we contend with our flesh. Pursuing the will of God is no easy thing. It looks not like blithe delight but of brokenness. it smells of death. The fact is my flesh is not soft and malleable but icy, stiff and hard as rock. It responds only to fire and crushing. This is that state of my soul and so He breaks it and takes it through fire.

:: The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and a contrite heart O God, thou wilt not despise.:: Psalm 51:7

:: Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs the kingdom of God:: Matt 5:3

What are you pursuing? Might I be honest? Might I be impassioned for one moment friends and say that I am burdened with how few men and women I see suffering for the will of the Lord? Who are we pursuing yet weary?( Judges 8:4) I see far more people with closed fists rather than open hands; whose first reaction is not to submit their first loves to the fire but to wrap them in blankets and hold them close to their hearts. I know, I was one of them. No. Sisters, Brothers. You are acting in fear. You are believing the lie that the Lord will give you a stone when you ask for bread. He is in love with you. If you being parents know how to give good things for your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give you?( Matt 7) Please, be quick to surrender. I say this not because of some legalistic desire to self-torture myself but because of my longing for others to know how much one receives when things are relinquished. I mourn that others will never know the all sufficiency found in Jesus, of the joy we find when we climb that mountain and offer up our Isaac.

I am walking through a valley of suffering, surrender, relinquishment and I have never felt more joy, satisfaction and peace in my life.

:: I realized that the deepest spiritual lessons are not learned by His letting us have our way in the end, but by His making us wait, bearing with us in love and patience until we are able honestly to pray what He taught His disciples to pray: Thy will be done.:: e.elliot

the discipline of silence

"...the things we feel most deeply we ought to learn to be silent about, at least until we have talked them over thoroughly with God..." e. elliot

So much to say and so much I cannot.

I dare say how thankful I am for journals and I must apologize before hand at how irritatingly vague this post may be. There is inside me a clamoring cry to share my current disposition; an almost insatiable call to verbalization. My journal would attest to this, as it is nearly finished; I write incessantly now. More so than usual. Why? For I simply cannot go anywhere else. I dare not speak some things into existence; they simply must remain written there. The words of my heart scribbled on pages and pages and pages.

Such an odd feeling. To have so much to say; to feel your insides being pulled this way and that and prudence prevents it's declaration. Do you ever feel like there is so much feeling in you that you'll burst? So many thoughts and emotions; Each, simultaneously, demanding a stage and an audience; all rushing the gates, all clogging up the drain, all attempting escape through a door ten times too small?

Now I find myself thanking the Lord for Himself. For if it weren't for Him and His listening ear I simply would die in misery. The trembling burden of silence set to crush me.

It is not a mournful thing. Though I feel something very close to sadness... it isn't sadness, is it really? It's more like, depth; weight; rawness and reality. I can't explain it. It's as though a deepness in me is being revealed. It makes me nauseous as much as it thrills me.

"The Lord will fight for you while you keep silent." Exodus 14:14

derelict grander

I'm supposed to be studying. To be dedicating myself to Pythagorus and analytical argument. Give me credit, I have duitully returned to GRE review many times today, yes, with dispirsed breaks in between but only to serve as a reward for previous mental exertion; and all whilst ignoring the clamoring call to write! Routinely, my yearnings for literary exploration consistently occur at the most inconvient of times. Desire, don't you know I have other things more pressing to attend to?

Todays thought? "Am I going crazy?"

"Crazy people don't think they're crazy." I remember hearing a character in a movie say this once. Up until now I thought the sentiment brilliant and quite comforting ; I have often questioned my mental status. But, in fact, that thought is quite illogical. Even now it appears trite and un-weighty! I'm sure that many crazy people are very much aware of their delirium. So maybe I AM crazy.

What brings this to mind you wonder? What has caused my preoccupation with mental instability? To be completely candid, since April I have been wading through the very muddled world of depression. I say "wading" because it very rarely feels like walking. More often than not, like shuffling, knee-deep through muck, and as I have journeyed through my current disposition I have also been experiencing an array of physical ailments that in conjunction with my depression make my day-to-day doings...exhausting. I'll spare you the details, as some are far from appetizing and, might I add, WebMD has been far from helpful. In fact, the only thing I'm sure of now, after months of independent research, is that it has produced innumerable hypochondriacs who believe they suffer from everything to Hypothyroidism to Rheumatoid Arthritis. Perhaps even a mutant disease derived from both! As this has been my experience.

A current thread of thought has interwoven itself into my psyche. That perhaps this despressive state has been of my own doing. My life, truly, hasn't been that horrible. I wasn't sold to a slave trader at twelve, my father didn't burn up in a house fire and my mother didn't leave me. My life, I have thought, has been quite devoid of the tragic, but then my grandfather died and suddenly I found myself crying all the time. Not just about my grandfather but about other things. Past things. Things I committed to forgetting long ago. The accepted occurrences of my past suddenly appeared unacceptable and all that is crazy, yes? Why should the things that have been okay with me for all these years suddenly become not okay? I must be crazy.

However, there is another thought. Perhaps I am not insane but simply, awakened. Awakened to every hurt and injury that I have repressed for so long. That all of me is moving through that pain. Even my bones are aching with the realization. In this option, there is no immediate relief to be found. No pill or prescription. Simply, a process. A process where I am being taken to the end of me, in all of my derelict grander.

So no. Perhaps I'm not crazy. Perhaps, I'm just like everybody else.

Website Launch!

Hello dearest friends and followers,

Today is quite the momentous day.

Today nicholeporrata.com launched!

As some of you may be aware of I am a singer/songwriter/Starbucks barista extraordinaire. The first two you might gather from my website the third I just felt like throwing in there as I do also very much enjoy making drinks for people. Most people. Most people that don't use Starbucks coffee as an identity of self. But anyways, I digress.

I finally have something to show for my summer of recording and photo-shooting and web designing. I'm still kinda bummed that my songs aren't up there yet but my web designer friend is off on retreat for a couple of months and communicating long distance has been very frustrating. Thus, things have gone a lot slower than I had desired. Patience is a virtue, or so I've heard and I've been forced to live within that virtue for the past three months.

As frustrating as this whole process has been I've been assured that this is whole slow-mo, turtl'es pace-ness is normal in this biz and not to worry about it and to be fair, I can't hold a grudge against a process that my own pursuit of excellence has impeded at times. I simply want to present to you all something that I can be proud of and something that you all will enjoy and want to share with your friends. I think that is respectable.

I met with my gal Jordan a couple weeks ago. She is currently working on my myspace music page and design for the album and I'm super stoked about it! The album artwork on the website is more like a formality till she's done putting the concept together. I'm very excited. She's extremely talented.

Hopefully, the album will be on itunes, the songs will be on my website, my myspace page will be finished and the design of the album complete in November. Here's hoping and here's to sooner than later.