Author Archive
Letting Your “No” be a “Yes”
Posted on: February 19, 2015
I got an astounding text from my 23 yo daughter the other day that read, “I think the universe just shifted. I actually like peas now!” To understand the gravity of this announcement, I must go back to her childhood. For most toddlers, peas are a favorite, not only because they apparently taste good, but because they are so easily picked up by that developing pincer grasp. Not Cherry. From the start, peas were a no-go. At our table, our kids were expected to learn to eat what was set before them, even were it only a bite or two. (OK, ok, to be honest, sometimes they were required to eat more than that if it was the main or only course. I hope they have since forgiven me.) But as she grew, Cherry was determined that the little green offenders would find no entrance; many is the time she sat at the dining table contemplating those tiny verdant orbs long after the rest of us had left. The most comical time we remember (and tease her about), was once when she was maybe kindergarten age. We had finished dinner, and to my surprise, Cherry’s plate was clean. “I ate my peas!” she told me. I praised her for it, of course, well pleased that the peas battle had been won with no bloodshed – for that round, at any rate. However, after doing dishes, I went and sat in the recliner in the living room, which has a direct view of the dining table. Glancing over, I noticed something odd under Cherry’s chair – and not just one. On closer examination, I found, you guessed it, a dozen peas! During the meal, she had been surreptitiously dropping those peas one by one under her chair when I wasn’t looking. In the manner of children, it never occurred to her that those peas would stay on the carpet as mute witnesses to her deception. She never pulled that trick again, though she found others, but once she left home for college, you could count on the fact that peas would never soil her plate, let alone cross her palate. When we found Sandra Boynton’s book/CD “Rhinoceros Tap” a few years ago, one song stood out: “O, Lonely Peas”, of which there is a comical performance you can find on YouTube.
One element of Lent is the practice of giving something up – fasting from something – for the Lenten period. I have known many for whom fasting in Lent is a form of self-abasement, a way to remind themselves of what awful, terrible, no-good, very bad people they are. Frankly, I don’t see that in Scripture. Paul identifies himself once as “chief of sinners”, but that is hardly his theme song, nor does he address the believers in the various churches as such. Numerous times we see variations on the Ephesians 5:8 passage, “Once you were darkness, but now you are light.” There’s a then, and there’s a now. Although there is a Lenten element of reflection on how our sin necessitated His sacrifice, I believe the purpose of the practice of Lent and its fasting should not be to focus on US and how far we fall short and what worthless maggots we are, but on HIM, His goodness, His grace to us, the depth of His love for us. In the light of His character and His grace to us, our response is to contemplate the ways in which our “work[ing] out our salvation” needs attention, areas where we are not as conformed to the likeness of His Son as we know we should be, asking His help to “will and to do”.
Rather than self-abasement, the self-denial of the Lenten fast is altogether different. In and of itself, self-denial usually feels like a negative action, but in Lent, that negative becomes a positive. Jesus said of anyone who would follow Him, “… let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow Me.” If we stop at the denying of self, so that our fasting is only saying “no” to whatever we’ve given up, we’ve missed the point. We fast from one thing in order that we may be freed to embrace something better. Fasting is an opportunity to focus one’s mind and heart on the things of God, beginning with the saying of “no”, but then moving on to a holy “Yes” – the self-reflection of what cross we have yet to take up, and the highest good of what it means to follow HIM.
For many years Cherry would quite willingly have given up peas for Lent, but if the object given up is no real sacrifice, there is no gain from giving it up, either. There are two things that I absolutely love, and that are both rather addictive for me – as in, once I have the first bite, I have trouble stopping: any form of bread or cracker, and sweets, especially chocolate. Because of the way last year went with caring for my mother and cousin being so intense and time-consuming, with all the stress attendant thereto, indulging in sweets and breads almost without limit became a daily practice. So, for my Lenten fast, I have chosen to give up all those things. Yes, even chocolate. It’s not that those things are evil. For me, however, they have assumed too much power; they have become a comfort that only God should be. Saying “no” to these foods is a very real sacrifice, from my mouth’s point of view, but it will enable me to say “yes” to the self-control that is the fruit of the Spirit, allowing God to reveal Himself as the One Who is Enough – not only when it comes to my gluttony, but to other areas of my walk with Him as well.
Last year I gave up iced tea, which I usually drink several glasses of a day. It isn’t a “problem” food, but because of how ever-present that glass of tea would normally be, its absence provided a frequent reminder to pray and seek God’s face. Some people give up Facebook so that they can spend in prayer and contemplation the time they would otherwise spend perusing cute kitten videos, memorable memes, and status updates. Some fast for certain meals and give the money saved to a compassionate cause, asking God to teach them His love for others. The possibilities are endless, but if you choose to fast for Lent, remember that it is not enough to just say “no” – go on to saying “Yes!”
Peas be with you!
Ash Wednesday 2015
Posted on: February 18, 2015
I love organizing. It’s one of my most useful vices. Normally through the course of the year I go through just about every cabinet and shelf and closet to sort out things that no longer need to be kept, and to optimize the organization of what is left. Last year being what it was, I didn’t get to do that, so since the start of January, I have been immersing myself in catching up on it. Several boxes have gone to Goodwill already. It gives me a sense of security and freedom to know just what I have and where it is, and to feel reasonably sure that I am not allowing my house to build up a weight of unnecessary belongings.
For most of the world, yesterday was a big day. Mardi Gras is one of the biggest parties of the year, an excuse for drunkenness, lewdness, and revelry – a celebration of debauchery. I doubt that the majority of the celebrants even know what Mardi Gras means. As far as the world goes, hey, any excuse for a party, right? As for Lent itself, the world, if it has any knowledge of it at all, sees it only as the spoilsport of Mardi Gras . Even among Christians, there are a lot of erroneous ideas about what Lent is, associating it only with having to “give something up” for Lent. In reality, Lent is a positive, deeply meaningful season.
From the early centuries of the Church, a traditional calendar grew up that marked certain milestones in the life of Christ and of His Church, not unlike the Jewish festivals which likewise follow the seasons and serve as reminders of important events in the Old Testament. Most Protestant churches have abandoned that liturgical calendar, which is a shame, for, just as the Jewish people would through the year relive key moments of their history, so, too, does the liturgical calendar call Christians to reflect on key moments in ours. The calendar begins with the season of Advent, a time of preparation for Christmas, calling for reflection on why Christ came and focusing on the foretelling of His birth and earthly life. Next comes the twelve days of Christmas, celebrating His birth. January 6th marks Epiphany, remembering the coming of the Magi. The season of Epiphany lasts until Lent, and the focus during this time is the life and ministry of our Lord, with the study of the Gospels. Lent is a time of preparation for Easter, and the Easter season itself lasts until Pentecost, when we celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit. From Pentecost until the final Sunday before Advent, the focus is on the Church and the non-Gospel books of the New Testament. The final Sunday before Advent is known as Christ the King Sunday, a celebration of Jesus’ second and final coming when He shall reign forever. While none of these seasons and celebrations are, of course, dictated by Scripture, their observance gives a beautiful rhythm to the year. As put by Archbishop J. Peter Sartrain, “The liturgical year continuously exposes us to every aspect of the mystery of Christ – not because we best understand His life, death, and resurrection in chronological order, but because by being continuously exposed to Christ, we allow Him to enter more deeply into our lives. The same lesson I learn this year can be deepened next year, both because I have had new experiences and because I have allowed Christ to help me understand them in His light.”
Last week a friend gave me two little devotion booklets for Lent. One of the booklets begins with the prayer used by the Roman Catholic Church for the first Sunday in Lent which I think is going to serve as a thoughtful starting place for me this season. “Grant, almighty God, through the yearly observance of holy Lent, that we may grow in understanding of the riches hidden in Christ and by worthy conduct pursue their effects.” For some, Lent is a season of focusing on their own sinfulness and unworthiness, and fasting from some certain food or activity is simply a form of self-mortification to emphasize the point. How very different an approach, then, to consider Lent not a time to look inward only, but as a time to immerse oneself in focusing on growing in understanding, not of ourselves and how horrible we are, but of HIM, and how great He is. From that starting place, we then consider our lives and how we are living them. It is a time of doing to my life what I am doing to my house: facing up to what’s there and deciding if it’s something I should keep or get rid of, or if there’s a better way I should be handling it.
We all have things in our lives that we need to get rid of or change; we all need to “clean house.” Let this Lenten season be our opportunity for asking our Father to shine His light into the all the corners, and then asking Him to help sort out what we need to get rid of.
Back – and forth!
Posted on: January 1, 2015
Well, folks, I’m back. 2014 – “the year that wasn’t”, as it shall always be to me – is over.
The 5+ months since I wrote my last post have been stressful and traumatic and blessed. Although I haven’t written on this blog, I was, in fact, writing. From sometime in August until the end of October, I was writing occasional updates to my mom’s CaringBridge site, and near-daily emails to a circle of family and closest friends detailing my mom’s deterioration physically and mentally as she lost the ability to care for herself, lost her ability to think clearly, and fell prey to delirium and paranoia brought on by the tumor in her brain. I simply couldn’t also deal with trying to do this blog.
I lived at Mama’s from early August until the Sunday after her death, except for two weeks she spent in a nursing home in September, and five days she spent later in the hospital. My sister, Sandy, shared in the duty two nights/days a week. For the last seven weeks, my sister-in-love, Patti, was here for 3 weeks on, 1 week home, with other my sister-in-love, Beth, here for Patti’s week off. Mama was finally released from the sufferings of Earth to the glories of Heaven in the earliest hour of Wednesday, October 29th. The two months after Mama’s death were as intense as the months that preceded it. I spent virtually all of November sick with a nasty respiratory bug that was difficult to defeat, on top of which there was: clearing out Mama’s condo; cleaning my own house from the disaster it had become in my absence; rearranging my stuff to fit in all the stuff I brought home from Mama’s; planning her memorial service, putting together a slide show of her life, figuring out arrangements for the 20 or so out-of-town relatives here for the weekend of the memorial service; and, oh, yeah, celebrating Thanksgiving and Christmas. I’ve hardly had time to think. When we pulled out the calendar last night to do our usual New Year’s Eve review of the year past, it seemed so odd to look at it because frankly the entire year was just one big blur to me!
“So,” everyone asks me, “how are you doing?” Good question. Mostly I’d say I’m doing fine. For Mama herself, I can feel nothing but gladness that now she is HOME – no more suffering, no more pain, even the memory of them wiped away. For me… having been through this with my dad, I know what an odd beast grief is, hitting you at the unlikeliest of times, and being a no-show entirely at times when you’d expect it to attend – so this time I’m prepared. I haven’t actually had any big moments of grief yet; they may come, they may not. There is healing still to take place to deal with the trauma of Mama’s last months and days and actual death itself; to survive emotionally, it was necessary to essentially dissociate from it all at the time, but now that it’s all over it has to be faced and processed. Thankful I am that just as with physical healing from injuries, most of the work of this healing isn’t something that I have to “do”, but something that is happening as a natural process. It is hard to break out of feeling always on edge “waiting for the other shoe to drop”, a constant pressure to hurry, hurry, hurry to get things done because who knows what’s going to happen how soon to pull me away. I guess I have something like “phantom limb pain” – I’m still trying to juggle “phantom balls”, having trouble getting used to the fact that they just aren’t there anymore. I struggle with requests to do things for other people, no matter how near and dear; however selfish it may sound to those who haven’t been through something like this, I’m flat-out tired of dealing with other people’s needs. My emotional energy battery is dead, dead, dead. I’d give much to be able to just go away somewhere, all by myself, to a place where I had nothing that I had to be responsible for and no one whose feelings I had to worry about or whose emotional needs I was expected to meet, where I could just take a break from all of life. But life doesn’t generally give you bereavement leave, or days off. (You may have noticed.) Somehow it just keeps coming at you, day after day. Unless you’re in the grip of a mental condition such as depression or bipolar, you either get “stuck” or you choose to somehow put one foot in front of the other and keep moving, however slowly.
There is so much that has happened this last year that has given me food for thought. I have written dozens and dozens of blog posts in my head; I hope that much of the gist of them will make it to publication here as I work through things. In one of my CaringBridge posts, I made a comment that God has promised to get us through – but He never promised that it would be pretty. He certainly was faithful to get us through this past year – but it wasn’t pretty. Like a chemist’s solution, my heart and mind are a confusing and sometimes conflicting mixture of many different feelings and thoughts. I don’t know that I’ll get them sorted into any kind of neat order, but it’s ok if I don’t. Having “answers” is highly overrated.
Now that I’m back to my own life, it’s time to sally forth and see what lies ahead in this next phase. As the Lord did for the Israelites, I know that He has passed ahead of me over the Jordan and has prepared the way ahead.
Tally ho!
Limited Time Offer
Posted on: July 7, 2014
One of the most enjoyable courses I ever did in homeschooling was in critical thinking. We used a book from Critical Thinking Press (marvelous source for all kinds of thinking-related materials.) The book first had a short course in logic (e.g. The statement “All dogs are mammals, and all mammals are animals, therefore all dogs are animals” is true, but the statement “All dogs are mammals and all cats are mammals therefore all dogs are cats” is NOT true.) The book then presented various blind spots, mind traps, and slick tricks that people use and/or fall prey to, dissecting each of them carefully by applying the principles discussed in the first part. Political speech and advertising, not surprisingly, provided that vast majority of fodder for the analysis.
One very successful sales ploy is the “limited time/amount” sale. The “Call now! Operators are standing by! This offer good until only midnight tonight!” TV ads. The “lowest price of the season” ads in the newspaper. (Ever notice just how many “seasons” some stores have??) The “Only 5,000 of these minted! Don’t miss out!” commemorative coin. The “I can only offer you this price today because the boss is on vacation” car deal. Marketers know that there is something deep in our psyche that reacts to the idea that there won’t be enough of something to go around.
The weeks since my last post have been the calmest I’ve had since Thanksgiving, with only one or two minor unexpected things cropping up, and a few major issues resolved. Although I know these days have had the precise number of minutes in them as any of the days preceding them, they’ve felt hours longer. I’ve gotten so much done! Last Thursday, I actually got my sewing machine out for the first time since mid-November. I had only just started a set of curtains before Thanksgiving was upon us, so I hastily got them done enough that I could at least hang them from the rod so our guests would have something nicer than an old sheet over the window. With Mama’s cancer diagnosis coming right after Thanksgiving, and all that has been since, I hadn’t touched those curtains again. I’ve now gotten them done, and not only the curtains, but two covers for throw pillows on the couch. Hurray!!!
Why didn’t I get them done before now? I just didn’t have the time. No time. No time. That’s been my mantra for the last 7 months: I don’t have time. I don’t have time. “No time” became a reason – or an excuse – for not doing all kinds of things. Exercise? No time. Eat right? No time. Keep in touch with friends? No time. Work on projects? No time.
I’m not denying that things have been quite hectic – they have been – but two things recently have helped me realize that it was my perception of how busy things were that had more to do with the problem that the actuality of what was going on.
The first thing was that I read an interesting article in Readers Digest a month ago about insights from a book called “Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much” (by Shafir and Mullainathan). The book’s authors are social scientists who have studied people in the context of a variety of contexts of scarcity – people who are financially poor, people who are extraordinarily busy, people who are dieting, people who lack social companionship – and what they have found is quite interesting. To quote the RD article,
“…whenever we perceive a lack of something – be it food, money, or… time – we become so absorbed by it that our thinking is altered. … ‘Scarcity captures the mind.’ the authors write. ‘The mind orients automatically, powerfully, toward unfulfilled needs.’ … in all kinds of circumstances, the psychological effect of scarcity was remarkably similar: a kind of tunnel vision that can help us focus on the immediate need … but that can also have negative long- term consequences, both in terms of ignoring other important areas of our lives and not making good decisions for the future. …. Fluid intelligence, cognitive capacity, and executive control all come under what Shafir and Mullainathan term mental ‘bandwidth,’ and even the slightest suggestion of scarcity taxes our ability to reason properly, control our impulses, and think clearly.” [emphasis added]
So, for example, the chronically poor may be great at squeezing 6 nickels out of a quarter, but they tend to be poor at making decisions that will lead to longer-term financial stability. People who are dieting may become so focused on what they are eating – or rather, on what they are NOT eating – that they can’t focus on their work. Looking back, not only on these last 7 months, but on other hectic times in my life, I can clearly see scarcity-mindset-induced tunnel vision, poor impulse control, and brain fog in my own life. Faced with a belief in the scarcity of some resource, we all fall prey to the same kinds of effects.
The other thing that happened that jolted my thinking about how much time I have was a conversation with my younger son. When he dies, his epitaph should be, “I was reading this article the other day….” You see, he is ALWAYS reading. He pulls up the most interesting facts and theories from all kinds of sources about all kinds of subjects. What amazes me is where he finds the time to fit it in! You see, at the time of the conversation I refer to, he was spending time every day working out to keep in top physical shape, as is expected for a physical trainer. And taking a class in Muy Thai kickboxing. And one in jujitsu. And learning how to kite board. He had a standing pool game night with friends once a week. Played in an ultimate Frisbee league every week. Went for frequent hikes with friends. Was working part-time 20 to 30 hours a week. And, oh, yeah, did I mention he was in his last quarter of his senior year getting his bachelor’s degree in kinesiology? I asked him if he actually did things like, you know, sleep. Eat. Relax. He responded, “Mom, there are 168 hours in every week. Even getting the 8 hours of sleep a night that I do still leaves 112. My various classes and work and hanging out take about 80 hours a week, which still leaves around 30 hours for other things. Besides, reading is as ‘relaxed’ as I get. My brain’s always moving!”
Hmmm…..
I have those same 168 hours in MY week. I added up how I typically use them and frankly, it’s too embarrassing to share! I wasted more time than I want to admit watching TV or catching up on facebook, or doing things that, while more-or-less useful didn’t advance the causes that really needed advancing. There’s a considerable amount of time that I simply can’t account for. I am not the ADHD Energizer bunny that my son is, so it’s not that I would expect to rival his level of activity, but I can see now that even in the busiest of my weeks, I actually HAD time that I could have used to get things that mattered done.
Instead, I had tunnel-vision, getting hung up on the idea of needing large blocks of time to do things, rather than breaking projects down into their component tasks that would take smaller blocks. Those curtains? It took four hours total to finish them. That’s only 8 half-hour sessions, or 12 of 20 minutes, or even 24 of just 10. There’s no way I couldn’t have found that much time in the last 7 months. Ditto with finishing the pillow covers or any of the other many sewing projects languishing on my sewing table, or the many computer projects waiting to be done, or who knows what all else! (Writing blog posts, unfortunately, isn’t something I can do in snatches. It would be like trying to swim laps in a wading pool!)
Going back to the “poor decision-making” aspect of the scarcity mindset, I can see how many times I did something that “saved” time for the short-term that actually COST time in the long run. For example, if I put something down “for now” where it doesn’t belong, I may forget where I put it, resulting in time spent looking for it, or the object will gather friends around it, resulting in taking a much longer time to put everything away than it would have taken to put them each away properly in the first place. Oftentimes I didn’t take time to plan things out thoroughly, resulting in backtracking, undoing, redoing, leaving things undone, and so on. Taking the time to plan things in the right order would have cost time in the short run, but saved time in the long run.
All this has gotten me thinking about how we fall into the same scarcity trap spiritually. When we worry about running out of any earthly resource, what we’re really worrying about is whether we are going to run out of God as well! We start acting as if we were on our own, having to fend for ourselves. We get the same tunnel vision, unable to see anything but our fear. We have the same poor impulse control, jumping at anything that looks like a solution. We lose our ability to reason, our minds “hamster wheeling” round and round on “what ifs.”
God promised that HE will always be sufficient. Always. If we don’t have time to do all that we need to do, HE will be sufficient to deal with the consequences of anything left undone. If we don’t have money enough to pay our bills, HE will be sufficient to help us deal with the consequences. If we never meet that “Mr./Miss Right”, then HE will be sufficient to help us live a life as full as the single life He lived. Whatever our shortage, His grace is sufficient. His strength is sufficient. His power is sufficient. HE is what we need, nothing less, nothing more. There’s no such thing as scarcity when it comes to God. He has never run out, and never will. If we focus on how much there is to have of Him, we’ll lose our fear of not having enough of anything else.
His is the Best Ever exclusive, limited time offer. It’s only good for His children, and only good for Eternity. Don’t wait! Call now!
Oh, I’m you. How are fine?
Posted on: June 8, 2014
Since sometime last Fall, my life has been crazy. If I didn’t have my phone calendar to keep track of what appointments are when, I’d be totally lost. I mean, I do try to make sure I transfer all appointments to the big wall calendar at home, but the wall calendar doesn’t have an alarm that goes off a half hour before the event to remind me, “Ahem. You ARE remembering that you have an appointment at A:BC o’clock, right?” For most of February, and all of March, April, and May I had at least one appointment or scheduled necessary activity, if not two, and sometimes three, either for me, or my mom, or my cousin, almost every single day of every single week. June was looking a lot better, but that got turned on its head as well. Let me elucidate….
My daughter: I didn’t mention in the previous blog that Bethy ended up on a week of modified bedrest that first week of February because of premature labor. I was so booked up that I was only able to come over to help for one morning, I think. (She had plenty of other help, for which we were both thankful! She has many othermothers, and a flock of friends.) Early in the morning of February 13, my newest granddaughter, Rosalie Julia, made her grand entrance. For the next month, I helped when I could, but with all the medical crises of my two caregivees, it wasn’t as much as I’d have wished. Rosie’s sisters adore her. Stay tuned for once she starts crawling; that tune may change! Rosie is a smiley, smiley baby, and a total people-person, very interactive and talkative. I can hardly believe she’s almost four months already.
My mom: Since the February 8 post, it was determined that the brain tumor hadn’t grown at all and was, in fact, slightly smaller, if anything. The severe nausea abated, though she continues to have problems with milder, occasional nausea even now. She had bad problems with gas for a couple more months, the only relief for which proved to be ginger ale. She was prescribed lidocaine patches for her back pain. These help a lot, but are impossible for her to put on by herself, so she had to have the services of a health care aid friend. We ended up changing doctors, and bless the day we did. The new doc discovered that she has two collapsed vertebrae since all this started. She did finally resume the cancer drug at its lowest dose at the end of March, and has been able to tolerate the mild side effects. By early May, she had regained a lot of energy, and was back to doing 10 or 15 minute walks around her community, doing housework and gardening in short stretches, dressing in her normal skirts and blouses instead of easy-to-put-on sweats. Then two weeks ago, she suddenly lost all energy and was huffing and puffing as badly as she had when she first was diagnosed, so weak she could barely walk, and was somewhat incoherent in her thinking. Blood work revealed an elevated white blood cell count and a CT, pneumonia. (Bright side, it showed the lung tumor has shrunk some.) So that night they started her on a quinine-related antibiotic, levoquin. Emotionally, these last months have been extremely difficult (no duh, huh?). It’s hard being jacked this way and that, it’s good, it’s bad, maybe you’ll live for years, maybe you’ll be dead within months. Even with a strong faith, KNOWING the suffering that all but certainly lies ahead is not a pleasant prospect – and is hard not to think about. So she had asked for medication to help deal with the anxiety/depression. As it happened, they started her on Zoloft the day after starting the levoquin. That night about 10, she called me to tell me that she’d been hearing and seeing things that weren’t there since sometime mid-day! Into the ER. They immediately replaced the levoquin with a cephalosporin drug IV, and took her off Zoloft. Her white blood cell count was even higher than the previous day’s had been. A head CT the next day didn’t show any obvious reason for the hallucinations, so they were put down to a reaction to one/both/combination of the drugs. She stopped seeing things by the end of that day, and hearing things by the next morning, and since her white blood cell count had come down significantly, too, she was allowed to go home. She is very slowly recovering from the pneumonia; it may take a month. However, the head CT showed that the low dose of the cancer drug is not being effective on the brain tumor; it has grown substantially. The CT also revealed a number of a type of small strokes called lacunar infarctions. (No, I’m not making that name up; my mom has brain farcts.) She is now on a 325 mg./day aspirin regimen to prevent more of them. There is nothing predictable about her situation, and that’s all there is to it.
My cousin: Longer time readers will recall that I am also caregiver for my husband’s cousin here in town, Marie. She is a brittle diabetic who has never taken care of herself as she should, and is now suffering all the consequences of it. Every system in her body is affected. She’s almost blind as a bat. She has virtually no feeling in her right foot, and only partial in her left. She has many vascular problems as the arterial system is both deteriorating due to the diabetes, and getting clogged from plaque due to poor diet and a near total lack of exercise because of severe arthritis in her hips, back, and neck. She has had some silent heart attacks. The vascular shutdown has led to her developing vascular dementia, the primary reason I had to take over her financial, legal and medical affairs. How she has pushed herself to do what she does to keep on going and to do things for herself, in spite of her extreme pain and near-constant exhaustion amazes me; I don’t think I could do it. She truly is a role model for me. Her son got out of a 20 year stretch in prison last year. She has spent the last 20 years living for this time, dreaming of what it was going to be like, but things have gone very badly. Her son has inherited not one of her traits of independence, of making do rather than asking for hand-outs, of being grateful for what you have, of integrity. She has seen all her dreams of the future blown to smithereens as she has realized that the son she has sacrificed for all these years is NOT the son she actually has.. Her health – physical, mental, and emotional – has deteriorated in the last 6 months in a nosedive, bringing extra visits to cardiologists, vascular surgeons, psychiatrists, physical therapists, CTs, MRIs, urgent care, as well as more frequent check-ups with her regular provider. She has had an incredibly hard life ALL her life – you’d never be willing to see a movie of it because it would be too intensely depressing! – and to now realize that the end of it is going to be just more of the same **** she’s dealt with for the entire memory of her existence…… it’s no wonder she is now dealing with severe anxiety and depression, in spite of her heart and soul love for Jesus. She is deeply appreciative of the love and care I and my family have shown her, but having never been loved before in all her life, she does not know how to receive it. Although WE consider her as part of our family, she always thinks of herself as an outsider.
Me: Trying to cross some rocks across a river last September, I took a fall. Didn’t go all the way down – caught myself on my hands going forward, but really did a twist. For most folks, it might have resulted in a few hours or a day or two of feeling a bit sore, but because of skeletal abnormalities I have, it really did a number on me. As usual, when I’ve had to stop because of an injury, when I did try to start again, it set off headaches, so I backed off and waited, then tried again, more headaches, waited , tried… and the wait between got longer and longer, and I couldn’t get past the headaches. Then the roller coaster ride of my mom’s and Marie’s situations started, and even attempting to exercise went out the window. My eating habits devolved to whatever was easiest to grab, because eating healthy takes time, energy and thought, none of which I had to spare. I had a lot of trouble sleeping, in spite of my meds. I felt like I was just a leaf in a river, going down rapids at that, with no control. But in March I finally started seeing a physical therapist, and though it’s very slow going because I’m not as faithful at doing my exercises as I should be, it IS improving. Last week I even did my treadmill three days. I’ve been doing a lot better at prepping veggies so they’re ready in my frig, so I’m eating better. I’ve even cooked actual meals a few times a week for the last month. My doctor figured out that the dose of thyroid I take had gotten too high for my body’s needs, and since we lowered it by a third, I am sleeping ever so much better.
The stress has certainly pushed my bipolar buttons and I have sometimes found myself close to the edge emotionally at home. But I always remember this: Once the appointments are done, I get to go home to my nice, normal life. Mama and Marie don’t. I’m not having to live with cancer like Mama. No matter what I may need to do for her, it will never be as hard as what she is going through, and what she has yet to go through, barring the unexpected gift of a sudden death from something else. Unlike Marie, I don’t have diabetes and arthritis and dementia and and and, so that all I have to look forward to is getting worse and worse and worse. None of my kids are breaking my heart. I don’t worry about any of them becoming homeless. I’m not lonely and isolated, unable to drive, with no hobbies and nothing to do but watch TV and hold my chinchillas. The same loving Father is with us all, and gives grace to us all, but I have to readily admit that I have the easier portion right now!
When people ask me what I’m up to these days, I often roll my eyes (and sometimes laugh) and tell them, “I don’t HAVE a life right now – I have other people’s lives.” To a great extent, it’s true – my life is taking care of THEIR lives. But in reality, my life isn’t my life anyway. The verse that keeps going through my head in the last months is from Psalm 31 “My times are in Your hands.”
Years ago, when my migraines and fibro were at their worst, and I felt terribly guilty about the weight my kids, especially Bethy, had to carry to make the household run, God made the point to me that what was happening in MY life was His will for THEIRS as well. (In the years since, He has shown me one impact my illnesses had on my kids: they all have a deeper level than usual of compassion and understanding for the hurting and the sick and the weak.) God’s purposes for events in our lives are never limited to just “us”; He has much broader things in mind. Much as my mom and Marie sometimes (ok, with Marie it’s ALL the time) feel guilty for the fact that they need my help, or for how much of my time their needs take, it’s not their choice – it’s God’s purpose for this time in their life, and His purpose for ME for this time in their life, too.
These times are sometimes stressful, sometimes exhausting, yes, but when I keep the perspective that my times are in HIS dayplanner, I know that I’ll get through – and be glad that I kept the appointment!
the susie solution 