Forgotten Stories

I’ve always had a knack for bringing random musings together in a blaze of clarity when I write, but I rarely sit down with a plan laid out before I start. I usually do have a general idea of what I’m going to write about before I start, but sometimes that ends up being far from what comes out. Today all I had was a title: Forgotten Stories. Writing would probably go faster if I did have a plan, but usually I just write about whatever is on my mind. Writing is therefore a kind of therapy for me because the thoughts and feelings that need to be resolved inside of my mind find a way of untangling in the process.

My dear friend, Mical, said to me last week that she thinks it’s miraculous that I’m fairly healthy despite all of the trauma and stress I’ve been through in the past 20 years, as she said many people who experience recurring stress and trauma develop major health issues as a result. Although it may just be that I’m not old enough yet and those are lurking in my future, I pray that I will remain healthy, and I attribute it not only to God’s mercy and protection, but to my ability along the way to deal with the trauma through prayer, therapy, writing, singing, serving others, and remembering that God has me and my life in the palm of His hand.

Mical and I are doing a weight loss/healthy living program together called Noom, and she asked me to tell her all of the major stressors and trauma I have experienced since I was last at my ideal weight (2003), because her theory is that weight creeps on as we deal with stress and trauma. Looking back, I realized that I have gained an average of 10-15 pounds per year since 2003, with the exception of 4 or 5 periods of time where I intentionally exercised and lost some of the weight. Overall, it has been like a gradual-incline escalator slowly ascending the scale. I currently weigh 90-100 pounds more than my ideal weight, but my weight peaked about 2 years ago at 145 pounds more than my ideal weight. Over the past 2 years, I have lost 45 pounds, so the escalator is slowly traveling back down. I’m trying to make healthy life changes through the Noom program and practicing other ways besides food to deal with stressors.

If I were to narrate the list of stress and trauma since 2003, this document might break the internet, so I’ll just list a few highlights. I don’t think I’ve ever shared with anyone besides my husband and Mical the whole list of events at once. There were, of course, other hard things that are too personal to add to this list, or they were not things that happened to me directly but were stressful to see happening to the people whom I love. Whenever I share about hard things, people’s eyes tend to glaze over after the first few, and they interrupt me or change the subject. I imagine that they think I’m making it up, or trying to get attention, or making things worse than they actually were.

STRESS/TRAUMA IN MY LIFE SINCE 2003:
2003: 1st blood clot/Factor V Leiden diagnosed/surgery (10 days in hospital); car accident with broken leg and brain injury (10 days in hospital)
2005: Appendectomy & blood clot #2 (5 days in hospital)
2006: Almost died in a near T-bone car accident on the highway; finished grad school classes; Aunt Nita died – she was like a mom to me
2007: Blood clot #3/surgery (7 days in hospital); Received a death threat letter while living alone in Minnesota for my music therapy internship
2008: Wedding (Good stress, but still stressful!); blood clot #4 on the way home from our honeymoon- I weighed 60 pounds more than my ideal weight when I was married
2009: Nephew Conner died; Kidney stones/surgery; Nathan’s back pain began
2011: Miscarried Elijah/emergency surgery due to blood loss; finished master’s degree/thesis; traumatic pregnancy issues with Adelaide/ER visits
2012: Nephew Barnabus died; Adelaide born after 28-hour Pitocin labor/seizures/1 week in NICU; job layoff-I weighed about 80 pounds more than my ideal weight.
2013: Nathan’s first back surgery; he had to quit his job – both of us jobless at the same time; Adelaide ear tubes
2014: Miscarried Peter at home; Pregnancy issues with Hannah/ER visits/fluids required; Job layoff; Hannah died from heart issues when she was 3 days old; c-section wound problems/2 more surgeries/wound care for 4-5 months as the wound healed
2015: Job layoff for Nathan (and God provided a job the next day!); pregnancy issues with Bethany/ER Visits/Pleurisy/blood clot #5 during pregnancy; marital issues; financial struggles; Nathan ENT surgery with seizure afterwards/taken to ER via ambulance
2016: Dad died unexpectedly; Bethany had low oxygen/very similar to Hannah’s birth and I thought she was going to die/3 days in NICU; c-section wound problems; my job replaced me while on maternity leave job was PRN and not FMLA-protected); financial struggles
2017: Move (Good stress, but still stressful!)/Our house was on the market & we lived with my mom for 7 months!; we lost $3,000 (i.e. had to bring $3k to sell our house-received $0 equity to buy our new house) on selling our old house because our neighborhood never recovered from 2008 housing market crash; Bethany ear tubes surgery #1
2018: Mom had some health issues begin
2019: Nathan had back surgeries #2 & #3 (May & October); I had a surgery for ovarian cysts because the doctor found elevated cancer blood test – thankfully it wasn’t cancer! Bethany had surgery #2 for ears.
2020: Covid/lost all of my income for almost 2 years; Nathan had spinal fusion surgery (#4) in December; Bethany had eye surgery to correct a muscle (peak of weight at 140 pounds above ideal)
2021: We struggled a lot financially as Nathan was off of work for almost 4 months and I was still not working because of Covid restrictions, but God provided for us in miraculous ways!
2022: Bethany had surgery #3 for ENT issues; stress of sustaining 5 part-time jobs at once

One good thing about going through so much is that most things which would debilitate many people with stress just roll off of me like no big deal now. After all, if God has seen me through all of this, He will certainly make a way for that car trouble issue or those headaches or the clutter in “that one room.” Some of my friends stress out when their kids don’t get straight A’s, but I don’t see that as a big deal because there are bigger problems than elementary school report cards. On the other hand, sometimes things that most people think aren’t a big deal are a really big deal to me because of the experiences I’ve had.

I shared this list not so that you would feel sorry for me, but rather that you would be amazed at God’s sustaining hand in my life (and maybe you’ll understand when I forget something the next second after you tell me – trauma brain is real!). As I thought about the list in succession, I realized that there were many parts of my story that I had forgotten about. I’m sure there are many things that gave me high levels of stress at the time that didn’t even cross my mind as I made this list. As I sat here at Starbucks writing (because I can’t get up and be distracted by cleaning my house, laundry, dishes, etc), I perused the free books that people bring in to share (because I always can find distractions) and someone with a penchant for World War II fictional novels had recently unloaded a collection. Many of the books were based on true stories that have been fictionalized, and almost every one of them was a highly acclaimed book according to the pinnacle of literary scrutiny: Amazon reviews.

One of the books was a collection of ethics essays by a variety of people. Some I had never heard of, and some were famous people like Aristotle, St. Augustine, and Jean-Paul Sartre. Although I know their names, I don’t know much else about them except that they were philosophers in their time and they wrote stuff and thought smart, creative thoughts. I leafed through the book and thought about how many people have lived on Earth since the beginning of time, and how many of their stories have long since been forgotten. When I am gone, a few people in my family or circle of close friends may remember my life for a time – perhaps 100 years, and that is thinking generously.

Apart from Jesus Christ, my life has no eternal meaning. Apart from Him, my life won’t even have meaning for 100 years (as some define meaning – the impact one’s life has on the lives of others through creativity/inventions, kindness/benevolent deeds, thoughts/writing, etc). The things that have added stress and trauma to my blip of life on Earth are but teardrops in the ocean of human existence. Even the horrendous trauma individuals, now nameless to most of the world, experienced during World War 2, are teardrops in the ocean. Similarly, even the brightest, most famous creative person on earth will only be a cheap stocking stuffer flashlight in the midst of a galaxy of stars. If we don’t have God, we might be tempted to cling to our past, and desperately seek to make meaning of our lives that will last longer than this lifetime. Or we might be tempted to view the enormity of existence and give up trying, thinking that nothing we do matters anyway.

And yet, thankfully, God gave us an alternative to the striving <—> apathy continuum. He gave up His Son’s life for yours so that your life can have eternal meaning through His. He gave us our own little corners of the world to impact by shining the light of His love to others. Our lives are only a split second in the eternal clock, but the decision we make about Jesus – whether to love Him in return or defiantly turn away from Him – determines whether we are forever forgotten or forever held in the palm of His hands, in the cleft of His wing, close to His heartbeat. Which do you choose today? How will you live your life so that your part of the story will never be forgotten?

Tangled Ball of String

This post is about more than a tangled ball of string. My daughter recently became interested in creating friendship bracelets using embroidery floss. After a fun trip to the craft store to pick out a few supplies, I advised her that it would be easier to manage the multitude of colors of string if we rewrapped them onto bobbins for storage. I did most of the wrapping, and after doing a few of the colors, I developed a system that I found worked smoothly and allowed for the least amount of tangles. After I spent a few hours (yes, hours!) doing this for her, she asked if she could help when she saw that I was frustrated that it was taking so long. I showed her the method I had found was the fastest, easiest, and prevented the tangles, and I left to do something else. I also told her that if she did get it tangled up, to not try to unwind it by herself but to come and ask for help. Within 10 minutes, she came up to me with a tangled ball of string and said, “Mom, it got tangled and I couldn’t get it undone.”

Apparently she had tried to untangle it herself, despite my instructions, and it was the biggest jumbled mess I had ever seen. I wish I had a picture to show just how extreme these tangles were. I couldn’t have gotten it that tangled even if I had tried. I decided to attempt to unwind it later that evening when I was sitting down to relax because I knew it was going to take awhile. Untangling that confused mess took me about half an hour, and I had to practice my deep breathing skills throughout the process, but eventually I got it all untangled and wrapped onto the bobbin. Several times throughout the process, I thought about giving up, but I felt God asking me to keep going as I would learn something through it.

“But God,” I argued, “I could just replace this color with a few cents at the store and be done with it. The value of the time I will spend undoing this and making it right again will far outmeasure the cost of replacing it.” However, I’ve learned that it’s always best to follow what God wants, even if it seems pointless or a waste of time.

He spoke to me as I worked: This tangled ball of string is like you. You could go out and buy another one, but I could never replace you. You are unique and irreplaceable, and therefore I lovingly and willingly laid down my life for you to free you from your sin, because I didn’t want to have to throw away my beautiful creation. I patiently untangled the mess of your life, and I want you to be patient as you untangle this mess, too.

This mess happened because your daughter tried to untangle it herself, despite your instructions that she should bring it to you first. The mess in your life happens when you try to fix things yourself instead of bringing them to me immediately to fix. It’s far quicker and easier for me to fix things at the beginning of the mess than after you have taken a turn at trying to fix things yourself, or worse yet, when you try to hide the mess from me and from yourself.

It takes patience to wait while I make things right again. Sometimes it seems like you will never get through it and everything will always just be a tangled mess. It’s better while I’m untangling things if you don’t struggle. The more you tense up or oppose my work to free you, the tighter the knotted mess will become, but if you can relax and wait on me to finish the work I have started in you, the faster things will smooth out. I will be faithful to complete the good work I started in you.

In the end, you will be free. I will use you to create beautiful artwork. When I combine your talents with those of others, it will create a beautiful tapestry that I can’t create with only one color. I can make anyone whole again, even the most complicated mess you could imagine. I am God and I can do anything I want to do. Submit yourself to me and I will do great things in you and through you. Go through life without me, and I will choose someone else to do those great things who is walking with me.

I started to see the project as a puzzle to be mastered rather than an endless, frustrating, pointless task to be accomplished, and it became fun rather than infuriating. God can use anything to teach us, even a tangled ball of string. It helps if we are listening for His voice and open to hearing Him speak in the mundane. Nothing and no one is tangled beyond repair when God is the one fixing things. We just have to bring our tangled mess to the repairman and submit it to His workshop.

Writing

After our daughter, Hannah, died in 2014, I felt compelled to write almost every day. It was my way of sorting out my grief when it was too difficult to speak about it. For well over a year, I wrote regularly on this blog. My mind would start out in a jumbled mess and then somehow as I wrote, things became clear and words came together in a post. I rarely had an objective when I sat down to write, except to get the thoughts and feelings out so I could rest. God used that time to say some pretty amazing things through my fingers to my heart, and I have heard from countless others that He used those words to comfort their hearts and strengthen their faith, too. A few times when I wrote, I was angry and/or made the mistake of writing about something controversial, and then I made some people mad. I noticed people started to unfriend me on Facebook. I got hurt; people can be so mean when you offend them or challenge them to live or think differently than they do. After one particular post that yielded some very hurtful comments from strangers and friends, I began to write less and less.

People took that to mean that I was “all better” in my grief journey, and I suppose it coincided with that point in my grief – about 15-18 months out – when the words no longer felt like they would choke me if I didn’t get them out. The urgency to write subsided, and no one really talked about it much except for the occasional person who would tell me they thought I had a true talent for writing. Life continued on and we had our daughter, Bethany, who is now 6. Busyness became my excuse to not write, but really it was no longer my priority because why would I spend so much time to pour out my heart and soul just to have it ripped out by heartless comments?

I love writing. I have always loved it ever since I can remember, but especially since 4th grade when my teacher had us compile a book throughout the year that was bound at our local printing company, Josten’s, at the end of the year. It was so amazing to see the words I had written on the 400+ pages become part of an actual book called Elizabeth’s Excellent Escapades. (I had a big thing for alliteration in 4th grade.) That book has moved with me to college, to my internship, and through 2 other moves since getting married, and I know exactly where it is on my shelf right now. I may not read it often, but it is one of my prized and irreplaceable possessions.

As time marched onward, leading me simultaneously farther away from holding Hannah in my arms and yet closer to the reality of eternity spent loving her in Heaven, I missed making writing a priority in my life like I had in those months following her death. Most days I didn’t know what I would write about, so I didn’t make time to sit down and do it. Now I have frequent days when I know exactly what I would write about, but I don’t have 2 or 3 hours to sit down and flesh it out, so it gets put in a “writing ideas” list on my phone with a few notes, and then eventually I forget the details so much that I can no longer write well about it.

I thought life would get easier, but it has just gotten busier and more diverse, not easier. Many days I feel alone, with that old familiar feeling that no one would notice if my words ceased altogether. Covid craziness made it worse, and I’m thankful that I had great mental health professionals that I found during my grief journey to help me during the Covid depression. Within a week in March of 2020, I went from having a decent income in a job I loved contracting with nursing homes and other facilities for music therapy services, to zero work and no opportunities to say goodbye to any of the clients I had come to love. It was very hard for me, as it was for many people. Even to this day, 2.5 years later, my work is still only about 1/5 to 1/4 of what it was before Covid, and the few facilities I do go to still have restrictions that make it difficult to sing and interact with people with dementia and other challenges. Instead of doing one job that I loved, I now have 5 jobs (not to mention parenting 2 girls and trying to keep my marriage strong!) that leave my brain feeling fragmented and exhausted on most days, and despite all of my running ragged, I am earning about half of what I earned before Covid.

I wish that I had the ability to make a living by utilizing the things I love most – writing prose and writing songs, and using music to help others. I wish that I could have one awesome full-time job like being a staff writer at a company I love and believe in. Instead I do music therapy at 3 locations, teach voice lessons to 1 student, teach ukulele and guitar lessons on zoom, clean houses for 6 clients, sell Norwex to my loyal customers when they need to replenish their supplies, and provide virtual administrative assistance to the director of Camps Farthest Out in North America. Most of my work is by myself, either cleaning someone’s home or sitting behind a computer screen, and I feel lonely most of the time. I have 2 or 3 faithful friends who actually initiate getting together with me sometimes and it’s more of a reciprocal friendship than those I had before, but I miss the friends I had before – back when I did most of the initiating getting together.

This post was supposed to be about writing, but it has turned into more of a snapshot of my life and how I wish writing could play a bigger role in that. I often joke that I just need an agent to do all of my marketing, bookings and scheduling for me, and I would be set. Maybe someday. For now, I must get to bed so that I have the energy to sing tomorrow and the brain bandwidth to remember my administrative assistant tasks. Thanks for reading to the few of you who faithfully have done so since the beginning. You are loved. ❤

Rainbows After the Storm

As I drove my girls to school this morning in the darkness of a heavy rainstorm, my youngest said, “Mommy? I really wish we could see a rainbow right now.” I replied, “I know, baby, but you don’t usually see the pretty rainbow until after the storm has passed by.” I thought about how that statement parallels life, and more specifically, grief. No one said anything for a few moments while I pondered, and then she broke the silence with her disappointment, “Oh man, this probably means we’ll have to have inside recess today!”

I have experienced my share of grief and hard times in the first 40 years of my life, from a life-threatening medical diagnosis to injuries from a serious car accident, to grieving the death of 3 of my 5 children, the death of my father, job loss, bullying, abuse, poverty, etc. Many people, including a therapist or two, have told me I have experienced more trauma than the average person (but I’ve also experienced a lot less trauma than many people on earth do). Each time God has been with me and helped me not give in to despair in the long-run. Each time I have learned something about life and love, God and faith, and remaining steadfast through the storm. Each time I have weathered the storm, but I haven’t always seen the rainbow afterwards. Contrary to that really annoying pop culture statement, there is NOT “always a rainbow after the storm.” You can’t always wrap life up with a pretty little condescending bow that negates all the pain by saying there is a rainbow after every storm (and don’t you dare say that phrase to someone who is hurting!). I haven’t always survived the storm without being pretty tattered, torn, and jaded, requiring much time to heal.

Sometimes there are rainbows that shine brightly to others who are outside the storm, looking in from a safe distance away, but those rainbows can’t usually be seen by the people directly underneath the storm clouds. Just because you can’t see the rainbows doesn’t mean they don’t exist. When everything is dark around you, there is still beauty somewhere on the horizon. The storm will eventually pass, and the sun will shine again. It may seem like forever that the dark storm clouds hide the beauty, but I promise that if you hang in there long enough to weather the storm, you will again see beauty someday. After awhile of experiencing the dark storms, you might even start to see some beauty in the heaviness at the time it is overhead.

The 1953 song by Frankie Laine called “I Believe” sort of accompanies these thoughts, and it’s in my head today after singing it recently for my music therapy clients, so go listen if you want to. 😉

I believe for every drop of rain that falls,
A flower grows,
I believe that somewhere in the darkest night,
A candle glows.
I believe for everyone who goes astray,
Someone will come to show the way.
I believe,
I believe.

I believe above the storm the smallest prayer,
Will still be heard.
I believe that someone in the great somewhere,
Hears every word.
Every time I hear a new born baby cry,
Or touch a leaf or see the sky.
Then I know why,
I believe.

Every time I hear a new born baby cry,
Or touch a leaf or see the sky.
Then I know why,
I believe. 

Gentleness

My husband told a group of people at a social gathering we attended this weekend that the quality he admires most about me is my gentleness, and I about spit out my drink and fell on the floor laughing. Thankfully I was able to hold it behind my gentle poker face, and I just smiled graciously (and gently 😉) as I touched his arm. I was surprised that he still sees me as gentle when he knows the inappropriate jokes I tell or the way I blow my fuse at him and our kids when I’m hangry, or the way I can get all ladylike and fart to light up a room when the food mood is right. 🤣 The truth is, I don’t think of myself as gentle. I think of myself as a wallflower, like no one would notice if I wasn’t there. Heck, gentleness is almost forgotten in the fruits of the spirit list in Galatians 5:22-23. I think it’s no coincidence that gentleness is listed second-to-last. If the fruits of the spirit were in a popularity contest, love would definitely win first place and gentleness would be the afterthought invited to the party.

Lately I have been feeling this way more and more-forgotten, tossed aside, and unimportant to most people. After several failed attempts at getting together with a couple of different friends this summer and fall, I finally decided that if they want to get together, they can contact me this time, and they haven’t. In fact, I would say I only have a couple of close friends and the rest wouldn’t even notice if I dropped off the face of the earth.

We organized a group date night at the axe throwing place in town about a month ago, and I realized how softspoken I really tend to be. Several times throughout the evening I would speak and then no one would hear me or respond. Then once I started speaking as if I were speaking to a room full of old people with hearing problems, they started being able to hear me. (And I realized that one of them probably does have a legitimate hearing problem.)

Tonight I attended a parent teacher fellowship social moms’ dinner for our girls’ school. As I arrived, there was another mom ahead of me weeping by the pool. I noticed her weeping and she left to wipe her tears away and then quickly left the event after that. I had seen her many different places, but never connected the dots until tonight that she is the friend who my good friend, Erin, asked me to pray for when her son drowned two years ago. When I realized she was weeping because she was experiencing one of those unexpected overwhelming grief moments triggered by seeing the pool, I wanted to run after her and hug her and pray with her and tell her I understood, but my wallflower side reminded me that she probably would have no idea who I was and would think that was weird. So instead I mustered the courage and sent her a message on Facebook, which she will probably still think is weird, but not as weird as if I had gone up to her in person in the moment.

I am thankful for the gentleness that has been forged in the fires of grief and pain, and thankful that my husband-the one who knows me best-sees me as gentle even if I can’t see it myself. I’m thankful that it makes me aware of other people, even if they are not aware of me, because I can pray for them in their times of need and I can remind them that they are seen and loved by our heavenly Father. I don’t need to be the spotlight flower, even though I really wish I were sometimes. The spotlight flowers get to have beautiful houses and host wonderful events and sing on big stages and run for offices and have social calendars that book out months in advance, but the wallflowers get to have modest houses and attend wonderful events put on by the spotlight flowers and sing on nursing home stages and have flexible social calendars that allow them to help other people when needed.

Even if no one else sees me or notices when I am sad, my God notices and my husband notices, and they are pleased with me.

Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Philippians 4:4-7

Failing doesn’t make you a failure.

Failing doesn’t make you a failure. Who you are in God’s eyes, not the world’s, is what defines your worth. In the world’s eyes you may be unemployed, sick, poor, back-stabbing, or forgetful and flakey – but in God’s eyes you are beloved, holy, pure, dearly loved, sensitive to His spirit, kind, and discerning. On the flip side, in the world’s eyes you may be rich, successful, and philanthropic, but God sees your heart and knows its desires and motivations and the ugly way your heart runs away from Him.

It’s easy to view ourselves the way that the world does rather than remembering what God says about those whose hearts are leaned into Him. It’s always easier to hear the screaming voices around us than the still, small voice that whispers, “I love you. I am enough. You are enough. Rest in my arms awhile.” It’s also easier to view other people the way the world defines them, rather than looking past the surface to their hearts. The people who are able to see a person’s true character are rare gems in this world, but they’re the ones I have been trying to lean into more in my own life.

Like the Hillsong praise chorus from the 1990’s says in paraphrasing Psalm 43, “Why so downcast, o my soul? Put your hope in God, and bless the Lord, o my soul! Bless the Lord, he’s the lifter of my countenance. Bless the Lord, he’s the lifter of my head. Bless the Lord, he’s the lifter of my countenance, and I will never be ashamed.” (https://youtu.be/npwLhA-O_E4)

Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord! O Lord, hear my voice! Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my pleas for mercy! If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness, that you may be feared. I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I hope; my soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen for the morning, more than watchmen for the morning. O Israel, hope in the Lord! For with the Lord there is steadfast love, and with him is plentiful redemption. And he will redeem Israel from all his iniquities. Psalm 130.

With God there is steadfast love, not love based on popular opinion or good deeds. With him there is plentiful redemption, and he will redeem you from all your iniquities. Hope in God today, o my soul!

I Choose Praise

A baby is born not breathing but is resuscitated and lives a fully healthy life, despite doctors’ concerns of brain damage due to lack of oxygen to the brain. Another baby is born breathing but dies from an inoperable condition. Both sets of parents believe in the healing power of God. Both have faith. Both have friends and family praying for healing, more than they’ve ever prayed before. Both families believe with their whole hearts that God will heal their child. Both wonder if their child will die. Neither know what the outcome will be. One child receives a miraculous earthly healing, while the other child receives a miraculous heavenly healing. One child brings a sense of completion to her family while the other one will always be physically missing, leaving a hole in the hearts of those who loved her.

We ask God, “Why?” but we won’t have our answer on this side of Heaven. Some will try to explain the answer with pernicious falsities like “God loved the first family more” or “the family whose child died had unconfessed sin” or “everything happens for a reason.” Some will hear of the earthly miracle and turn toward our good God. Others will hear of the heavenly miracle and turn away from our good God, wondering how a good God could ever let this happen.

The truth is, nothing is guaranteed in this life, and the timing of our deaths is in God’s hands, just like the stories of our lives. My sweet children might not wake up from their Mother’s Day naps. A car might run a stop sign and take you to Heaven in an instant when you just planned to run down the street to the grocery store for milk.

Many of us face trauma of varying degrees and etiologies, and the trauma can either harden hearts or make them more softened to God’s goodness and love. It might feel hopeless if you have faced trauma in your life, but you have a choice to make about whether your heart will end up hardened or softened to the things of God. You probably didn’t have a choice in your trauma, but you have a choice in how you live moving onward. You have an active part to play in your healing, and that is the choice to harbor bitterness or joy. Don’t get me wrong. I am not saying that lament and grief are the same thing as harboring bitterness. It is fully appropriate to lament for a season or seasons – however long it takes for your soul to be cleansed of the dark midnight. However, it is when we embrace the lament and adopt it as part of our permanent lives, or when we lament without God, that we are in danger of harboring bitterness.

If we choose to praise, no matter the circumstances, then from that choice to praise God comes joy. Do you choose to curse God because of your circumstances, or do you choose to praise Him despite the pain? Psalm 42 holds one of the dearest verses to me in the Bible, yet also one of the most difficult to embrace. Verse 11 says, “Why so downcast, o my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my savior and my God.” The psalmist speaks directly to his downcast soul and tells it to put hope its in God.

When we are walking through the valley of the shadow of death, sometimes that’s the hardest time to choose praise, yet we will be blessed beyond measure if we do choose praise. Even in the valley God is faithful. In all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose (Romans 8:28). We cannot be tormented by the enemy in our minds, if our minds are choosing to praise God. Where praise enters in, the enemy flees, because he can’t stand praise. So if you are struggling emotionally today, I encourage you to take 5 minutes right now and sing a song of praise to God, despite your circumstances, and despite whether you are angry with God. If you don’t know any praise songs, make one up. Or if you don’t feel comfortable doing that, almost everyone knows Amazing Grace because it has become so popular in our culture over hundreds of years. Choose to sing the first verse of Amazing Grace, even if you don’t feel like it. If you sing one verse and you still feel dreadful, sing the next verse, and the next. Then sing another song like “How Great Thou Art.” Keep singing until you feel lighter. I guarantee if you are feeling the effects of trauma or grief, struggling with suicidal thoughts, or facing something else that’s heavy, if you will make the choice to praise despite how you feel, you will start to feel better.

That’s the great thing about praising God. It isn’t something that benefits Him alone. Praise will always benefit the praiser, too. The most difficult part is making the choice to praise in the first place. One other thing I would like to say is that our souls need to praise God on a daily basis, like our bodies need exercise on a daily basis. Some people praise God as the result of a beautiful life event like a wedding, birth, job promotion, or other wonderful thing. They see praising God like getting on a treadmill after a humongous piece of cake, as if the cake necessitates the exercise, or the positive life event necessitates the praise. Their circumstances make it natural for praise to burst forth from their lips, in exultant celebration. However, God deserves praise because of who He is, not because of what occurs in our lives. Our bodies deserve exercise because they were designed to move. Those who exercise regularly despite overindulgence of diet, as well as those who praise regularly despite their feelings of being overjoyed or not, will yield the most healthy bodies and spirits. If we practice praise as an everyday occurrence, independent of our circumstances, it will become easier to weather the dark midnights of our souls when they do occur, because we will already have the practice of praise in our bag of life coping skills. We will be able to praise God no matter whether our baby (or spouse, best friend, job, marriage, etc) lives or dies. And we will be blessed in return for our choice to praise despite our circumstances.

My oldest daughter at age 3, moved to praise when she saw the mountains in Colorado for the first time.

The Hardest Decade

A lot can happen in 10 years. Ten years ago on this day, February 28, 2011, I was 30 years old and pregnant with our first child, Elijah. I went for my second sonogram at 10 weeks and was told that the baby’s heartbeat was no longer present. Thus began the hardest 10 years of my life. These ten years haven’t been hard because I miss Elijah and wonder what life would have been like if he had lived, although I definitely do. They have been hard because in those 10 years we went on to experience compounded stress. Somehow in the midst of my grief from losing my first child, I was able to finish my master’s degree and defend it in April 2011. I don’t really remember that time, but I just cranked out the thesis and “half-assed” the defense to get it done. [In fact, I HAD to get it done before May because I had already been in grad school since 2003, and I had to complete the degree within 7 years. Thankfully the school didn’t count the 7 years until I started my degree program, which I technically didn’t do until 2004. It took me so long because I had a severe car accident, 3 life-threatening blood clots, and I met and married my husband in those years.]

Our first-born daughter spent a week in the NICU with seizures in March 2012. She is thankfully healthy today almost 9 years later, but at the time we didn’t know what would happen with her brain development, or even her ability to live. After 3 years of back pain, in December 2013, my husband had his first back surgery. Three weeks later I miscarried our third child, whom we named Peter, at 13 weeks into the pregnancy. We became pregnant again 2 months later and I gave birth to our full-term fourth child, Hannah, in December of 2014. She died when she was 3 days old from an inoperable heart condition on December 13th, exactly one year after my husband’s back surgery. My c-section wound developed complications and I spent 4 months making daily trips to the wound care center to have my wound packed with medical supplies. My dad died in January of 2016. He had many health problems, but his actual death was unexpected. In March of 2016, our fifth child, Bethany, was born via c-section. Her oxygen was low initially so she also spent 2 or 3 days in the NICU. I again dealt with wound complications after delivery, and again spent several months visiting the wound center.

With all of my pregnancies I was high risk due to a blood clotting condition called Factor Five Leiden which makes my blood thicker and more prone to clotting, and clots can lead to heart attack, stroke, etc. I have had too many blood clots to count since it was discovered in 2003, so I had to be on a strong blood thinner called Lovenox during my pregnancies. Pregnancy elevates the clotting risk significantly. For all 3 full-term pregnancies I also dealt with urinary retention issues due to my backwards uterus, so I had frequent visits to the emergency room for about 2-3 months of each pregnancy until the baby grew big enough to not close off my bladder. After Bethany’s birth we decided (with much sadness in my heart) that we would be done having babies, and life settled down into a peaceful period, or as peaceful as life can be with a newborn and a new puppy. 😉

During the childbearing years, Nathan was also trying to finish his bachelor’s degree, but with the stress of our losses he decided to let that dream go. There were smaller stressful things that happened in the “post childbearing blissful time” that we experienced, like our house taking 5 months to sell, losing all the equity from the house due to our neighborhood never recovering from the housing market crash, actually OWEING $3,000 to get out of that neighborhood, and having to live with my mom for over 6 months that year. Any almost-40-year-old would feel badly about living with a parent, but when you add 2 little kids and 2 dogs to the equation, it is even harder on the psyche. In his perfect timing, God led us to the perfect house for us in a quiet neighborhood halfway between Nathan’s parents and my mom, within walking distance of each. It is a blessing for sure, and one of the best things that has happened to us in these 10 years besides our children.

In the past 10 years, both Nathan and I have experienced job losses and job changes, and although each loss for me was hard, God always led me to something better. He always took care of us. The year 2019 was once again hard because Nathan once again was dealing with back pain, having surgery in May and in October. He went back to light duty in November 2019, and then I stopped working in March 2020 because Covid-19 said I couldn’t go back into the nursing homes to do music therapy, and I haven’t worked since then. Thankfully his job with the water department was considered “essential” and he was allowed to continue to work, but our income was suddenly cut in half. Congress passed the CARES Act on March 27, 2020, allowing self-employed workers, who usually don’t qualify for unemployment, to apply for benefits, and I immediately applied. However, I didn’t see any benefits paid until the end of June, and even when I did start receiving benefits it was only about 1/4 of what I had been earning. God took care of us, like when our washing machine broke in April and an unknown-to-us benefactor paid for a NEW washer and dryer set to be delivered, or when a relative or friend would send us money right when we needed it. We were getting by financially, even though our income was still half of what we were used to.

The pandemic dragged on and 2020 seemed like it would never end, and then Nathan’s disc slipped a fourth time in September. He waited 3.5 grueling months until he could be scheduled for surgery. He is still not working almost 3 months later. This is the longest period of time that both of us have been simultaneously unemployed, but God is once again so good to us, providing for us through our church, family, and friends. I would normally be very stressed and anxious, except thanks to God’s provision, we will be ok. I am once again waiting weeks on end for the unemployment to come in (this time as I await the 11-week extension that congress approved back in late December), but it doesn’t feel as stressful as it would if God had not been providing for us so generously.

The pandemic still seems like it will never end, or even when it does, life will never be the same again, and that grieves me. I miss being able to smile at a stranger and have them wave back. I miss being able to give a friend a hug who I haven’t seen in a year. I miss being able to decide for my own body what is good and healthy, and have the world be ok with my choices rather than telling me what I should do, or judging me as “unloving” to others for my choices about my own body. I miss the days when strangers could become friends easily no matter their differences, rather than first feeling out whether they shared basic ideals and beliefs about personal autonomy and responsibility.

So yes, 10 years ago today was the hardest day of my life up to that point, but I have come through that and many more difficult experiences, with God’s help. I can’t imagine going through life without Jesus. I think without him I would have given up on this life long ago. It’s just too hard without Jesus to help you along the road.

ADH…;-)

I’ve been researching adult ADHD lately because there are several symptoms of it that have been bothering me lately with the increased stress of COVID and anticipating my husband’s surgery and 3-6 months of unemployment. First of all, I learned that the most recent changes to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for mental health conditions took away ADD (the non-hyperactive or inattentive form of attention deficit) as a separate diagnosis, and now all attention deficit diagnoses fall under one category of ADHD. The symptoms I’ve been struggling with include lack of focus, compromised short-term memory, irritability, disorganization, restlessness, difficulty sleeping, difficulty sustaining attention and following instructions, losing things necessary for activities, etc. However, these symptoms can also be the result of other things which apply to me, like trauma, PTSD, grief, and traumatic brain injury. So who knows what’s the actual cause of my frontal lobe mayhem, but it has definitely been worse lately.

The symptoms were so troubling to me that I asked my doctor if I could try a new drug I had heard about that can help people with TBI, ADHD, binge eating disorder, etc. The drug is called Vyvanse, and so far I can tell it’s making a huge difference for my ability to focus and get things done. On days when I had 2 hours to myself to get stuff done while my daughter was at preschool, I would spend half of it trying to decide what to do first, and then just give up and play a game on my phone. I was wasting a lot of time, and time is my most precious gift (other than my faith and my family, obviously) because I can’t ever get it back again. On the first day I took Vyvanse, I could tell a huge difference in my ability to make decisions and focus. It was like someone fired up the synapses and told them to stop fighting with each other. It was like they were suddenly put into a “getalong shirt.” 😉

I guess it doesn’t really matter if I have ADHD or not (if I do, it’s the inattentive type, not the hyper type), as long as the medicine is helpful. My research shows that for it to be a true ADHD diagnosis, it also has to have been present in childhood. I did well in school and never caused problems, so I was never on anyone’s “radar.” Looking back, the area where I notice my struggle was in reading. It was very difficult to pay attention to a book or anything that I read. (It still is!) If I got things wrong on math, it was because I didn’t read the instructions carefully enough. On standardized tests, all of my scores were always in the high 90’s percentile range, except for reading which was usually somewhere around 80%, and sometimes it was even lower. I always thought I was just a bad reader or stupid, but now I realize that I was having trouble sustaining attention while I was reading, especially if I was reading something super boring like those standardized tests tended to be. (ha!)

Vyvanse can also help people with binge eating disorder. While I’ve never been diagnosed with this, I definitely have the tendency toward it, especially when I’m feeling stressed. (And who hasn’t felt stressed during COVID? If you haven’t, please tell me your secrets!) I started realizing recently that my problem wasn’t really binging on food. I’m not (usually) a person who will eat an entire pizza or carton of ice cream, or go through the McDonald’s drive through and consume large quantities of food. My problem was FORGETTING that I had already had junk earlier in the day, and then mindlessly eating more junk at night when I was feeling bored or just wanted to relax. So I am trying really hard to cut out eating anything after dinnertime, and enter everything I eat into an app called My Fitness Pal. I’ve been brushing my teeth right after dinner, and that helps to remind me.

I hope the medicine helps me remember to be more consistent so I can develop new and healthier habits. My whole life I have struggled with being consistent with tasks. You could say I am consistently inconsistent. I will spend hours creating a new organization system for my paper files, only to throw it out the window when I forget what I was going to do. Consistency’s cousin is commitment, and I have also recently felt “convicted” of needing to be more committed to consistency in my life. I am committing to becoming healthier in body, mind, spirit, family, friendships, and home, and I’m putting this blog on the interwebs to prove it. Feel free to ask me how I’m doing with my healthy decisions. This is the year of change. Since Covid and my husband’s health issues have forced lots of change in my life, I am also choosing the change that I CAN control – my daily decisions.

I don’t expect health or consistency to be achieved overnight, but commitment is a moment’s decision, and I have made it. As Amy Grant said, “It takes a little time sometimes to turn the Titanic around.” Hopefully this medicine will make it a little easier to steer the ship in the right direction.

You can’t run away from your problems.

Lately on Fridays after I drop my daughter off at school and I’m alone in my car heading back home via I-70 West, I’ve been daydreaming of what would happen if I just kept going west to the mountains instead of taking I-470 back to my house. I would camp out in the mountains or on the beach by myself with no stress, no waking up in the middle of the night to groans or “I need to go potty” or “I had a bad dream.” No hauling a wheelchair in and out of our trunk or pushing my husband around in it. No dragging two kids to the store because Daddy needs to sleep off the pain meds. No bills coming in the mail every day that we can only pay a little bit at a time, and no phone to check social media and see what happy posts other people are choosing to post.

What if our problems were actual little trolls physically chasing us around every day? Have you ever thought about escaping your problems, physically? Like running away to a beach or the mountains for a … long time, or at least until Rona is over? (I call her Rona so the bots won’t censor my posts.) The problem with trying to escape our problems is that those little trolls are always with us. They find ways to hide in our trunk and then they pop out when we’re lying on the beach trying to relax, alone with our thoughts, just to remind us that they are there.

Maybe you’re not physically trying to escape your problems, but maybe you’re like one of the millions of Americans (including myself) who is trying to escape through distraction and entertainment. Maybe you’re binging Netflix or crafting for hours at a time. Or maybe you’re like some Americans who are turning to more destructive ways of avoiding stress. It’s ok to take breaks from our problems from time to time by developing healthy coping skills, but we have to be careful that we aren’t continually trying to avoid them. If we constantly ignore our problems, they will get louder and louder until we can no longer ignore them. And if we try to ignore them when they’re shouting at us, then they will start hitting us to get our attention (sort of like my 4-year-old, not that she’s a “problem” though). We have to face them head-on through Scripture, prayer, and sometimes a good therapist and a medication or two.

What is the purpose of our trials? The development of perseverance, maturation, and completion, to make us more like Jesus.

James 1:2-18 ~

² Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters,^[a] whenever you face trials of many kinds,³ because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. ⁴ Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. ⁵ If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you. ⁶ But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. ⁷ That person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord. ⁸ Such a person is double-minded and unstable in all they do.

⁹ Believers in humble circumstances ought to take pride in their high position. ¹⁰ But the rich should take pride in their humiliation—since they will pass away like a wild flower. ¹¹ For the sun rises with scorching heat and withers the plant; its blossom falls and its beauty is destroyed. In the same way, the rich will fade away even while they go about their business.

¹² Blessed is the one who perseveres under trial because, having stood the test, that person will receive the crown of life that the Lord has promised to those who love him.

¹³ When tempted, no one should say, “God is tempting me.” For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone; ¹⁴ but each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed. ¹⁵ Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.

¹⁶ Don’t be deceived, my dear brothers and sisters. ¹⁷ Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. ¹⁸ He chose to give us birth through the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of all he created.

I came to realize when I became an adult that if I just kept driving west, if I tried to escape my problems, they would still be with me, and in fact, running away would probably make them worse. The only way forward is working through them. There usually is no easy way around them, and they usually won’t go away unless we face them head-on. How are you facing your trials today? I chose to pray and write this for half an hour rather than play my Property Brothers game on my phone. [I’m on level 3,265, so that tells you how much I’ve been trying to avoid life lately. ;-)]

You’re gonna be ok. When the night is closing in, don’t give up and don’t give in. Jesus is here with you, and it will all be ok in the end. He promises you that if you’re a believer, you’ll be with Him in the end, and you can trust His promises.

Nathan’s Back is Back

Pardon the length of this post. I understand it’s probably too long/TLDR for some, but I wanted to make sure our friends across the globe know what we are facing ahead…

I am so tired of the struggle in life. Our family has been through so much I can’t even keep it all straight. Now as we face our latest struggle (skip to the end if you don’t have time to read how God has moved in our lives the last year), I look back on this post from a year ago with fatigue, but also faith. We have seen the powerful miracles God has done in our life in tandem with the struggles. 

Sometimes I hesitate to share the miracles God has done for us because I don’t want it to seem like I’m boasting in anything i have done, and I don’t want people to feel jealous of us. In the past, I have shared with individuals about how God has provided financially for us, only to have that person express jealousy and say something like, “I wish God would send US a thousand dollar check in the mail!” (like he did back in 2013) However, I’ve realized that it’s not my job to worry about what others will think or how they will react. That’s between them and God to take a look at their hearts and their faith or lack thereof. It’s my job to share what God has done, for His glory. The riches of His love for His people and His ability to use the body of Christ to meet needs are endless. Someday I hope I can write a book or CD and go around speaking to people about what God has done in my life, but for now, I will use facebook and this blog.

Last year, Nathan had two back surgeries in May and October. He spent at least 4 months of that year unemployed as a result. Just when we were struggling the most and putting almost everything on the credit card while quickly racking up debt, God prompted a friend to send us a $10,000 check that helped us pay off the cards and get back on our feet.

Nathan went back to work shortly after that and was relatively pain-free for the first time in almost a year. January and February were good, except I was sick all of January and half of February with something that was “just a virus” but kept me from working at full capacity for about 2 months. It was the sickest I have ever felt in my life, and it triggered my asthma so I literally felt like I was drowning with every breath. Thankfully, it got better after 6 weeks and I was able to go back to work in February…until you-know-what hit in March. I’ve been “unessential” and unemployed since March 5th. 

It seems that Nathan and I have traded off with our health struggles so that one can take care of the other. God spared him from any back troubles during the years when I was having our babies, c-sections, blood clots, etc, and he was able to care for me. Now I am relatively healthy and am able to care for him during his struggles. God has been good to us in that way.

In April as I was trying my best to help my daughter through her studies from home, and keep my sanity while explaining multiple times per day to our girls why they couldn’t have any playdates or go to any playgrounds, our washing machine quit. I prayed about it because I knew that there was no way we could afford to buy a new one with me unemployed and not receiving pandemic unemployment assistance yet (it didn’t start until the end of May!). A friend of a friend heard about our situation and bought us a brand new set! We even got to pick out exactly what we wanted! In July, I was praying how to earn $ from home while struggling so much with anxiety and life, and God answered with the friend of a friend also buying us a new desktop computer so that I can learn how to earn some $ from home. (My old computer was a laptop from 2013 and veeeeery slow.)

While I wish our lives were less stressful, I am thankful that we have so frequently been blessed to be recipients of and participants in the miracles of God and the love of His people. Trials of many kinds require us to trust God, and this practice of trusting increases our faith muscle. Our muscle has developed quite the definition in recent years. 😉 Lord, I believe, but help my unbelief. 

We KNOW that God will provide for us and take care of our family, even when we can’t. We KNOW that He is good and His purposes for us are good. We know that He will provide just what we need at the exact time we need it, just like he provided sufficient manna each day in the desert for the Israelites in exile. We know that He has already won the victory over sin and death, so even death cannot separate those who are in Christ. There is really nothing we have to fear because God is at the wheel, but yet we struggle with fear when the ride gets bumpy, and we have certainly been off-roading more than most families.

Here we are again, at a crossroads of faith. The same disc in Nathan’s back has slipped AGAIN (for the 4th time since 2013), and he will undergo spinal fusion surgery sometime in the next month or two. He is in extreme pain, but his job has made accommodations for him to work at a desk job, just as they did last year, so for now he is still able to work at the water department. We have an awesome doctor with awesome staff at Oasis Family Medicine who genuinely care for our well-being and have helped coordinate his care and get appointments made quickly and even pain med scripts written at the last minute on a Friday…

We are again facing an uncertain future with our finances and with Nathan’s health, but we know that God will again do miracles beyond our wildest imagination. Please pray for Nathan as he deals with pain, applies for disability, considers his future employment, and prepares to undergo a HUGE surgery with a 3-6 month recovery. Pray for our family as I remain unemployed and he will be unemployed for at least 3 months. Pray for peace, and continued trust in God. Pray for the protection of our marriage and that God will draw us closer together and protect us from the wedges Satan tries to drive between us. Pray for our children, and especially for our oldest who has started showing some signs of anxiety and negative self-talk, and is sorely missing regularly being around friends and family. She’s also not doing the best in school because Mommy and Daddy are a little preoccupied, but we figure she will still turn out to be an OK adult even if she fails her 3rd grade Greek mythology test. 

Finally, THANK YOU to those of you who have remained faithful friends over the years. We know there are some who have pulled away from us for whatever reason, but but we try not to focus on the hurt those relationships have caused. There are SO many of you who have been faithful to pray for us, send a card of encouragement, help us do yard work, bring us meals, contribute financially when God prompts you, etc. We literally could not have survived without the help of God’s people, so thank you for listening when God prompts you to help us. We love you and hope our story will be an encouragement to you as we enter our next chapter. 

Snowflake Beauty

I have been trying to discern what is wrong with my brain and why my short-term memory is SO bad of late. It’s probably just from the added stress of the big bad C, continued unemployment, and some other major stress going on in our family, but I’ve been trying to discern if there could be an underlying attention issue that a little pill could help me with. 🙂 I mean, I’ve always known that it was different from other people, but recently my thoughts have been a lot more disorganized and my short-term memory is struggling. Along with the poor memory has come increased anxiety. Today I forgot about a picnic that I had known about for over a month, and I had received at least 3 or 4 reminders (email, phone, text) from the hosts over the past week. Twenty minutes after we got the girls down for a nap, I suddenly remembered that it was today, and there was only 15 minutes of the picnic left. I felt so badly because I had RSVP’d for all 4 of us! I even had this in my phone calendar to remind me, but somehow I missed the notification. I think I was at Sam’s Club when it notified me, so that’s probably why I missed the reminder…I leave the app open to scan the items as I shop, so I probably stepped away from the phone and missed it. Still, I felt terrible.

Ever since I was a little girl, I have felt like the odd duck left out, like I was different from everyone else and didn’t fit in anywhere. I still feel that way, like no one really and truly would notice if I were gone, because I don’t and never have had a “tribe” of people who call me up to hang out. The more difficult things I have faced in my life, the more I feel like I don’t fit in. Who else has experienced bullying, childhood abuse, parents’ divorce, mental breakdowns, panic attacks, being laid off from 2 jobs, a major car accident, 4 blood clots due to a blood clotting disorder, 13 surgeries over 15 years, 2 miscarriages, 1 infant death, all 3 live birth babies in the NICU, 5 pregnancies with extreme puking the whole time, 4 stressful back surgeries for hubby, extreme debt and periods of unemployment, the big bad C (ok everyone HAS experienced this weird time), being deemed “non-essential” at your workplaces, and more? But also, who else has experienced the good things that I have? Who else has been blessed with the gifts of music, words, and the many other things that make me uniquely me? Who else has seen God provide in miraculous ways, over and over and over? Who else has seen the same exact blessings come from trials, like a big insurance settlement from the car accident that lasted for living expenses through grad school, or God’s life-sustaining hand bringing her out of every single surgery alive and well, or the Holy Spirit prompting people over and over to give the exact amount of money we needed to carry us through? Who else has prayed for a miraculous healing of their child and then watched as the child was taken to Heaven for the healing? Yes, even holding my child in my arms as she died was a sacred and miraculous experience.

I know every life is unique. Every life story is written by the Father up above, and no two stories are the same. No two snowflakes are the same, either, but they’re all still snowflakes and together they make beauty. I don’t know much about snowflakes, but I’m sure some of them have more intricate designs than others, and I try to console myself with the thought that my story is just more intricate than others. My story has a little different gleam of God’s miraculous grace woven into it, and my personality has a little more creativity than the average “flake.” 😉

Maybe we should all spend a little less time trying to keep up with the Joneses and a little more time exploring the uniqueness of our own stories. I bet the world would be a happier place. Do you have enough food for today? Do you have a roof over your head? Do you have clothing to put on your body? Don’t worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow has enough worries of its own.

~Matthew 6:25-34~
²⁵ “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? ²⁶ Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? ²⁷ Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life^[a]?
²⁸ “And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. ²⁹ Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these.³⁰ If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? ³¹ So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’³² For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. ³³ But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. ³⁴ Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

The Pandemic Cure

I’ve been the recipient of the sideways glances as people assume I am a viral threat to them. At the beginning of this COVID-19 pandemic, I will admit that I saw other people as viral threats as well. I was watching the news constantly, anxious by all the gravity of it, and fearful.

Then something in me changed. I started praying more, reading my Bible more, and listening to the news less. I realized that the news was fueling my anxiety in a big way. I stopped sideways glaring at people and started smiling at them instead. Do you know what? Most of their eyes smile back at me. Sometimes they stop to chat with me for a minute like the lady in Sam’s Club did last week who was looking for sausage and ended up telling me she was looking for sausage links because her family was all coming to town that weekend and they like sausage links and she was excited to surprise them with a home cooked breakfast. Then there are those who pretend they didn’t see me smile and wave at them. I pray for the ones who respond with rudeness or fear. They need comfort, reassurance, and hope. I pray for Jesus to meet them in their need.

There is something that’s way more virulent than COVID-19 or even the Bubonic Plague, and it kills everyone who comes in contact with it. One-hundred percent of the world’s population is infected with it, and usually it manifests as a silent killer to the unsuspecting people it victimizes. It strangles them and suffocates the goodness out of them, yet convinces them that they are perfectly fine, healthy, good people. This horrifying pandemic is called sin, and there used to be no cure. There is no vaccine that can prevent you from getting the sickness – there is only a cure that will heal you once you’ve got it.

People used to have to sacrifice animals, pay priests money to talk to God on their behalf, and cross their fingers that at the end of their lives their good deeds would outweigh the bad and they would be “good enough” to survive the sickness. They never knew for sure if they had done enough to beat it, until their lives were over.

Then God, in His rich mercy that we didn’t deserve, gave his only son as the perfect mitigation for our sin-sick souls. He donated his one perfect son to make the sick whole again. Like a cancer patient has the choice whether to accept chemo and radiation treatment, or not, He doesn’t force the cure on anyone, because he loves them and wants to make that their decision. He allows the patient to make an informed decision for his or her care. Do the treatment benefits outweigh the risks? It’s something each patient must decide for him or herself.

Many choose to forego the treatment of asking Jesus into their souls. They would rather continue to gamble with their soul-health and attempt to cure the illness on their own. That is their choice. For those patients who do choose to accept the free treatment, they will experience a new life that is whole, beloved, and blessed. They will still experience deleterious symptoms of the sin-sickness as long as they live in this world. After all, the illness has ravaged their entire being and they will never be completely perfect until they reach the next world. They will still have relapses into sin, but they will return to the Source of Life for renewed healing on a daily basis. It’s a treatment that must be taken every day for the rest of their lives, but it is such a worthy and wonderful treatment that they will look forward to the daily time spent in the treatment room, speaking with the Healer, and reading about His marvelous work with other patients.

Have you accepted the Cure for your soul’s sickness? If you haven’t, ask yourself what it would take to be convinced of the treatment’s efficacy and accept its goodness for your health. If you need help understanding how it could really help you, ask the Healer for understanding and for faith. He will assist you if you ask him with an honest, seeking heart. If you need to hear the research results from other patients, ask them to tell you how their lives have changed since they started the treatment. If you’re brave enough to truly look into the treatment with an open mind and heart, I promise you won’t be disappointed. You’ll be healed, made whole, and filled with hope for the future.

Hodgepodge of COVID-19 Thoughts

I haven’t said anything publicly about the COVID-19 situation because 1) I don’t think I have a lot to say that hasn’t been said, 2) I have intentionally not been watching the news or keeping up on the details to help my anxiety stay at a manageable level, 3) any opinions I hold about social distancing and stay-at-home extension orders will be vehemently opposed by about half of my friends and I don’t need to add that stress to my life right now. I’ve posted a few things that I found informative. Let’s just say that my opinion falls somewhere right in the middle between paranoid/paralyzing fear and cavalier disregard for expert opinions. And i think in my non-medical, non-economist opinion that the economic devastation from all of this is going to ruin and kill far more lives than this virus ever could have if it had been allowed to run its course.

Overall we have stayed home except for our once-a-week “essential” trip to Chick-Fil-A for free coffee Fridays (judge away, you judge-y judgers), and my weekly grocery store trips. I also went out to get the dog a shame collar so she’d stop biting her hurt paw. The Home Depot has seen my face a few times recently, as has Target. Target is like a grocery store with some “Mental breakdown prevention” items mixed in. Walmart hasn’t seen my face since about 2018, so that’s one place I have NOT been going.

I haven’t worked since March 5th since I work in nursing homes and they closed to outside visitors at the end of our spring break week. I totally understand why, nor would I want my beloved clients to get sick with this nasty virus. We aren’t hurting financially as much as we would otherwise be because 1) you can’t spend as much money when nothing is open and you’re supposed to stay in your home all the time, 2) Gas is only $1.69, plus we don’t have any reason to buy it, 3) our God is good and our friends (and even strangers!) are kind and generous.

I applied for unemployment benefits after the President signed the economic stimulus act allowing self-employed people to draw unemployment benefits during this time. So far I have applied twice and been rejected twice, but I continue to file weekly claims hoping that they will backdate my claims once they get their act together and realize that I qualify.

I’ve been schooling my older daughter at home and realizing that all teachers really are underpaid saints to handle a classroom of 15-20 “cherubs” and get any knowledge into their heads. I vacillate between loving the time I get to spend with my daughters, and having so much frustration from being interrupted/sassed/yelled at 5,356 times per day that I could launch a rocket. Naps help, when they actually take them, because this introvert mama usually gets an hour of PEACE AND QUIET to recharge! Unfortunately, that hour is also when our mailman usually comes and our dogs let the neighborhood know of the impending doom approaching all of the houses.

This morning I noticed it was awfully quiet and I hadn’t seen Bethany (4) for awhile during Adelaide’s school time. When I went to check on her, she hand scissors in her hand and was trying to give the dog and the carpet haircuts. Thankfully she had just begun her cosmetological attempts and hadn’t gotten very far successfully. This reminded me that I needed to schedule our family’s hair appointments for a decent amount of time away from now (beginning of June) after businesses will hopefully be allowed to open again, but before the Cousin It masses try to schedule their appointments, too. Meanwhile, my essential trip to Target today for my husband’s deodorant also yielded the purchase of the L’Oréal grey roots spray, which I’ve heard is amazing.

All of this social distancing and quarantining has got me thinking about the socially awkward people are being affected. I finally got to a point when I turned 40 last year where I felt fairly confident in my ability to hold non-weird conversations with people and enjoy meeting new people without feeling too anxious. It took me 40 years of social practicing to get to that point, so time will tell what 3-4 months or more of social distancing is going to do to my newfound skill set. It could cause me to regress quite a bit, I’m afraid. So if I grin at you weirdly (once we are allowed to exist without masks again) or ask you the same thing over and over again, just keep in mind that I’ve been away from people for quite some time. 😉

Well, this concludes my hodgepodge of thoughts during rest time. I hope that you are safe and healthy, and not going too stir crazy. But if you are going stir crazy, just make sure you’re stirring up something yummy in the end. 😉

Memories Light the Corners of My Mind

Memories light the corners of my mind, misty watercolor memories of the way we were. Scattered pictures of the smiles we left behind, smiles we gave to one another for the way we were. Can it be that it was all so simple then, or has time rewritten every line? If we had the chance to do it all again, tell me, would we? Could we? Memories are too beautiful, and yet what’s too painful to remember, we simply choose to forget. So it’s the laughter we will remember, whenever we remember the way we were.

In the corners of my mind exist the memories, misty watercolor memories beside harsh contrasts with jagged lines and dark shadows. The song that so many popular singers have recorded says that we choose to forget the memories that are too painful to remember, and we allow time to rewrite the complexities and harshness of realities into simple beauty. We don’t want to remember the fear, the anger, the sadness, the injustices, and the ugliness of this time of uncertainty into which we all have been thrust as we ride out the storm of the 2020 global pandemic that is COVID-19, the novel Coronavirus.

I find myself focusing on the beauty of this time with my family in order to avoid the dark cavern of hopelessness and fear. I remember the daily family walks in the beautiful sunshine with the breeze caressing our faces…the time and ability to look up educational videos with my daughter as I do my best to fill her 2nd grade teacher’s shoes…the slowing down of life that allows me to say YES every time my 3-year-old asks to snuggle with me…the improving of my cooking skills from repeated practice as I have the opportunity to make every meal healthy and fresh…slipping my little hand into the protection of my husband’s big hand as we walk around the block…putting my head on his shoulder as we embrace in the living room…

Underneath each blessing I am able to find lies a memory or a feeling that I would like to ignore or forget – we take our walks to avoid going stir-crazy from being inside all the time, like right before today’s walk when we were all yelling at each other at the same time…We look up videos about King Tut because I have no recollection (nor do I care) who he was except for an Egyptian pharaoh, and that’s who my daughter was supposed to learn about today for her history lesson…I say yes to snuggling with my daughter because I need the snuggles just as much as she does – I feel so uncertain in this time when half our income is suddenly slashed…Although I do make more meals than I used to, we’ve had frozen pizza twice in the last week and sandwiches 4 times, because those are the meals my husband can make when I’m feeling so overwhelmed that I just can’t executively function at mealtime…I slip my hand into my husband’s in my attempt to apologize to him for yelling at him before we left for our walk…I put my head on his shoulder with tears streaming down my face because his work is having him take off next week, but he said they will still pay him. I feel so afraid that we won’t be able to pay our bills after mid-April when my income will cease after I bill for the little bit of March that I was able to work.

I feel angry that life has suddenly shifted away from normal and there’s nothing that I can do about it. I feel afraid that we will lose our house or won’t be able to feed our children, but more so I am afraid that life could be like this for a really long time. I feel confused because I don’t know who to believe when I hear differing “expert opinions.” I feel anxious and trapped in my own house, and it has only been a week, so then that makes me fearful of what my emotions will be like 2 months from now. As I listen to the news, I realize that this is most definitely not going to “be over” by April 2nd as everyone seems to want to believe.

Many of the feelings I am experiencing that I would rather forget have reminded me of how I felt in the weeks and months after our daughter, Hannah, died: anger, fear, loneliness, confusion, anxiety, lack of control, uncertainty about how long life will be like this, yearning for life to go back to normal, struggling to embrace the “new normal,” rebelling against what people told me I “should” be doing, fear of what life will be like once things calm down, who will be missing from my life once they do…The difference is this time that we are pretty much all experiencing the same uncertainty together as a country, whereas when Hannah died, normal life went on for everyone else around me while mine came screeching to a halt. We would not have survived that time of grief and my inability to work without the generous gifts from our friends and family. This time our friends and family are all in the “uncertain financial boat” with us, so they won’t be able to help us. Also different this time is that I am physically healthy, whereas last time I was navigating all of those heavy emotions while also dealing with a c-section wound that stayed open for 4 months, bleeding complications, postpartum depression, and many other physical issues.

I am writing this blog for 2 reasons. First, I hope that finding the words for how I’m feeling will encourage someone else or help them find words for the conflict they’re feeling, too. Second, I am trying to express my emotions so that I can avoid eating all the things to stuff them down. Instead of choosing to forget the feelings that are too painful to acknowledge sometimes, I choose to get them out so that one day down the road I can look back and remember the laughter, the walks, holding hands, snuggling in the middle of the day, movie marathons with my family on a school night, and I will be able to see how God provided for us in the middle of the storm.

Jesus loves you, and he loves me. He is calling to us all in the middle of this storm. He is master of the ship and he is holding out his hand to us to stop paddling and trying to steer the boat from the water. He wants us to take his hand, join him on the boat, endure the storm, and find joy in the journey. Sometimes finding joy in the journey requires that we acknowledge the storm swirling around us and how helpless that makes us feel.

Give Abundantly

God gave me these words in the image above tonight as I pondered the subject of giving with abundance, abandon, Divine dependence, discernment to meet needs, and obedience to step into His will. I’ve learned so much about giving this year from the way we’ve seen our friends, family, and strangers give to us. Some friends gave nothing because they had no extra to give. Some gave nothing, not even a word, but we know they live extravagant lifestyles in homes richer than we could ever imagine. We don’t know why these two groups didn’t help us, the judgments they may or may not have made against us, what they were silently facing, and we do not hold it against them-well, in all honestly, after praying to Jesus for help in releasing those thoughts and feelings of being unloved or uncared for, we don’t. I focus on the many ways we HAVE been blessed.

Those who didn’t give, even a single word of encouragement or a prayer on our behalf, are like a hind shadow to me as I think about the many many people who have given so generously to us this year to help us survive. Wouldn’t you know that, combined, all the gifts amounted to almost the exact amount of income that both Nathan and I lost this year. That is the God we serve, who provides the exact amount we need, when we need it, like he provided manna from Heaven for the nomadic Israelites.

We saw some people give $10, and others give 100 times that and more. Some didn’t give money, but time, a listening ear, free childcare, rides home from school, work days at our house to help clean up our yard, meals, specific groceries that we needed, paying for a new fence gate so neither of us had to lift the heavy wooden gate to get to our backyard anymore…and so much more. We are so thankful for all the ways that people gave to help us, from the smallest to the greatest.

The most interesting areas that people gave to us were in the areas of clothing for our kids, and food for our table, but I am focusing on the clothing in this blog post. We received everything from bags and bags of clothing from strangers, much of it with stains and obviously someone’s “charity donation,” to one beautiful church friend of mine (who is a grandma) who gave us her beautiful best. The trash bags of clothing mentioned first, while appreciated, did not make me feel valued. In fact, it made me feel the exact opposite of valued. I honestly can’t remember who gave them to us, but I remember going through the bags and seeing 80% of it stained or ripped, and just chucking it in the trash as I went. I thought, “I know I should be grateful for whatever people give us, but why would you give clothing like this to someone in need? If it’s not good enough for your kids, then it’s not good enough for someone else’s kids either.” When we give from our excess because we feel badly throwing things away that should be thrown away, and we give items that we don’t want anymore because they’re broken or torn or stained, we communicate to the recipient that they were valuable enough for scraps, but not for beauty and dignity. Our society teaches us that “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure” and “Let someone else decide if it’s salvageable or not.” I admit that I have been guilty of this mindset in my giving most of my life…until now. At the very least I will do better at cleaning up my charitable donations to make them look pretty before I donate them. I read an article last week that places like Salvation Army, Goodwill and God’s Storehouse spend an unimaginable amount of money just in shipping trash away that they can’t put on their shelves. Some people define charitable giving like this: bring things that belong in the trash can to the charities, pat themselves on the back for doing a “good deed” and “just getting it out of the house,” gather their tax donation sheets for their monetary “reward” from Uncle Sam, and then the charities spend their resources sifting through the mountains of excess to pick out the things that are usable.

My friend, Aubree, who gave the girls clothing this fall must have spent $300 in brand new clothing for our girls, including a new winter coat for Adelaide that I picked out and held at Target for her to pay for. I felt badly asking for a $50 coat for A, and I prayed that she wouldn’t feel like I was trying to take advantage of her generous offer to buy clothes for our girls. I didn’t anticipate anything more than the coat, since it was so expensive, and I think I actually cried when she showed up in the days after Nathan’s surgery with bags and bags of brand new clothing with tags on it, in addition to the coat. She asked what our girls like in clothing (sparkles, rainbows, hearts, and unicorns, of course!), and it was all so beautiful! She even gave them each a little toy to open as well, because she as a grandma understood that the “FUN” of gifts for kids is never in the clothes, but in the toys.

Aubree and her husband showed up with beautifully coordinated and matching outfits, all beautifully gift wrapped. It wasn’t Christmas or birthday time, so our girls were confused about why they were receiving these beautiful gifts from this kind lady and her husband that didn’t know very well. Aubree told them it was a “just because” gift, and they were satisfied with that. The gift was given with such dignity that it made me feel not like a poor charity case, but valued like the beautiful child of God that I am. Her asking for our girls’ preferences showed that she cared about their dignity and truly sought to bless them with gifts that they not only needed, but also would desire. She taught me more about the heart of giving in those 20 minutes sitting on the floor of our living room than I have learned in my whole life. She gave from the abundance of her wallet, but also from the abundance of her heart, her time, and her love for Jesus and for us.

She taught me that it is ok to give to others “just because” you can. You don’t have to wait for the right time or the perfect method, or the next paycheck, or next month when you budget it in. You can give with whatever God places on your heart to give, at the time He prompts you. Even though you might be struggling financially like we were this fall, you can still give to others by learning to meet them in their need. You can listen to the prompting of the Holy Spirit that whispers in your ear to give what you can, as He did to me almost three weeks ago, “Ask her if she would like a hug right now as she stares out the window to the torrents of snow coming down, bracing herself to go out there alone. Tell her you are praying for her. Hold her while she sobs into your shoulder and lingers for an extra long hug. Ask her if she wants help cleaning off her car after church in this snowstorm because her husband died this fall and he used to be the one to do that for her. Ask your friend’s husband if he would be willing to go help her clean off her car. He’s kindhearted and he will say yes.”

We can give to others out of abundance and not fear, even when we have no money in our bank account. We do this by asking God to show us a need that we can meet, and then following His voice on what to do. There will usually be voices inside our heads that tell us why we shouldn’t give to others, saying things like, “Don’t ask her that. You don’t know her well enough to ask if she wants a hug. She’s trying not to cry in front of all these people. She can clean off her own car. Don’t insult her by asking if she needs help. Of course she can do it herself.” In the case of my friend, Aubree, she might have heard voices that said things like, “Don’t offer to buy her kids clothes. They have both sets of grandparents in town. I’m sure they will take care of buying them clothes when they need it. She posted asking about Door Dash during that storm the other day. If she can afford to even think about eating out to dinner, not to mention Door Dash, then she doesn’t need anything from me.” Those negative voices that try to convince us not to give what we can when we are prompted are the voices of the devil himself trying to thwart God’s good story in your life and in the lives of others. Don’t listen to them. Listen to that still, small voice that calls you to the precipice of something potentially frightening that would have the potential to leave you rejected. Listen to the voice that calls you OUT of the box in which you’ve been living and into the freedom of the unknown, nonjudgmental blessing of others by giving from the abundance of your heart.

Jesus’s famous Sermon on the Mount in Luke 6 came to mind as I was trying to wrap this up, so I will quote part of it here that pertains to this messsage. I hope you will read it and think about your own attitudes and habits toward giving, just as I am evaluating my own this evening.

“Give to everyone who begs from you, and from one who takes away your goods do not demand them back. And as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them. “If you love those who love you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who do good to you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. And if you lend to those from whom you expect to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to get back the same amount. But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil. Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful. “Judge not, and you will not be judged; condemn not, and you will not be condemned; forgive, and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you. Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap. For with the measure you use it will be measured back to you.”

‭‭Luke‬ ‭6:30-38‬ ‭ESV‬‬

Some Christmas Thoughts on Giving

As a parent, it gives me great joy to see my children open gifts that I’ve purchased for them. Some gifts are big hits; others are not. In addition to the obvious cost of spending money on a gift, it “costs” me a lot in time searching for gifts, finding the best deal, planning, unpackaging, assembling, wrapping, etc, but it doesn’t feel like a cost to me because I love them so much and know they’ll enjoy the gifts.

Christmas is not about giving gifts to each other, but the process of giving gifts can show us a lot about God’s love for us. Sometimes we give a gift out of obligation to a boss, coworker, or estranged family member. Other times we give a gift expecting to receive one in return. Sometimes a gift is withheld because we don’t trust the recipient to use it wisely, or we condemn the recipient with our preconceived judgment of how they might use it. Or we make a judgment about someone without having all the facts first.

In the true spirit of giving, however, the giver gives without expecting anything in return, because the giver loves the one receiving the gift so much that the love spills out and he can’t help but give. The giver trusts the recipient to use the gift wisely, both for his own needs and the needs of others. The giver trusts God to lead the recipient to use or spend the gift as God wants.

This year, as we have experienced great financial need with two back surgeries for Nathan and being out of work for 3 months of the year, we have received many gifts from family, friends, and complete strangers. These gifts included meals, childcare, monetary gifts, gift cards, groceries, paying bills on our behalf, encouraging notes, prayers, hugs, and so much more.

There was one gift that absolutely blew us away with its unexpected extravagance. It was valued at more than all the other gifts combined. We cried when we received it and couldn’t believe how many zeros we saw on the check, certain that the anonymous giver made a mistake when the check was written. The gift, we were told, was from God to us, and the person writing the check was simply the middleman. It was for the exact amount that I had secretly prayed for earlier this fall, but didn’t really expect that God would ever give to us because it was so extravagant, and it represented a large portion of our annual income. I asked for this amount because I knew it would pay off our Visa bill (which we had been using for everything while Nathan was not bringing in a pay check this fall after his surgery), and give us enough to get ahead on some other bills to ease our financial stress.

When I watched my children open their gifts this morning, their most frequent response was to squeal with glee and exclaim, “Oh thank you, Mommy! I love you so much! This is just what I wanted.” There was one gift that Bethany opened (and I think I caught it on video), and she rolled her eyes a little and shoved it aside without really acknowledging any appreciation for it. She was too busy thinking about her next gift to appreciate the one in front of her. Sometimes we do this to God. He gave us the greatest gift ever given when he sent Jesus to save us from our sin, and yet we shove him aside and put him out of our minds in order to follow our own interests.

Blinded by our sin, we don’t understand the mind-blowing extravagance that the gift of Jesus represents. He doesn’t come in the shocking form of zeroes on a check, but in the form of an unassuming, fragile baby in an animal trough on a quiet rural night. We don’t see our great need for a savior because we think we have everything under control by ourselves. We hold onto our desires, avoiding God due to fear, anger, doubt, or sadness.

God the Father gave the best, most extravagant gift ever given, with no strings attached. We are free to shove him aside and move on in search of something better, though in the end we find that there is nothing better and we have wasted our lives looking for it. We are also free to respond in love and return to him our love, appreciation, lives, and hearts. As it turns out, God, in his infinite love, wants to give us extravagant gifts that are just what our hearts have always desired. How will you run toward him today and receive the gift of Jesus?

When God Moves

God moved in a big way this morning for me. After I dropped Adelaide off at school this morning, I started thinking about our finances and how Nathan will be without a paycheck again for the next 4-6 weeks, depending on how many hours other people donated to him. I tried not to worry about the $10,000 hospital bill or the $1,200 for our full insurance premiums that we’ll have to pay for December, or the $2,000 credit card bill we have because the car got sick last week and the dog got sick last month.

Instead of worrying, I began to pray. I thanked God for taking care of us. We had already basically lived paycheck to paycheck before Nathan got sick this year. By the end of the year, he will have received only 3/4 of what he would have received if he hadn’t been sick, because he didn’t work for 3.5 months of the year. God has been so good to us and has helped us survive financially during this hard time. Thank you to those of you who have helped us in so many different ways this year!

I was in the middle of praying, “God, please help me not to worry. I know that you can do all things. All the money in the world is yours, and you can move people’s hearts to help us now when we need it again. You will take care of us.” As I prayed and drove home, the phone rang from a local number I didn’t recognize. Usually I only answer calls from numbers that I recognize, but I heard a voice telling me to answer this one. It was the mother of one of the girls at Adelaide’s school, calling to tell me that God had been placing our family on her heart recently and she has a small gift to give to us. I started crying, because just at that moment when I was praying, God answered through prompting his daughter to action.

This was not a coincidence; this was God moving. I have come to recognize His works, and I have almost come to expect Him to do amazing things in my life. I live with this expectation more easily when I am closer to Him through prayer and reading the Bible. The amount of this person’s gift, which I still don’t even know, is not the key to this story. The important thing is that she listened to the Holy Spirit, acted upon the prompting, and God timed everything perfectly for what I was praying about. I just love it when God reveals Himself to me, and I had to share with you.

There are no coincidences in life. If you’re angry with God or doubt He is there, ask Him to show Himself to you. Ask Him to make His presence known to you, and He will do it. If you stay away from God because you “don’t want God or anyone else telling you how to live your life,” consider that there is always someone telling you how to live your life: either God, or the devil. The devil, the master of disguise, shrouds his influence in our lives through our selfishness. He makes us think that our thoughts are our own, when they are really influenced by him. So who are you listening to today? I pray you’re listening to God’s voice. It’s that still, small voice that we often so easily ignore. Some call it our conscience. Some call it benevolence.

If you listen to God’s voice, He will tell you beautiful things, and He will show you more love and grace than you ever imagined. Trust Him. Ask Him to show you.

EDITED to add that Nathan came home from a meeting with his HR contact and she told him that we won’t have to pay the full amount (including the city’s portion) for our health insurance premiums after all, because he was on FMLA leave for part of November, and because he went back to work before December 1. He was cleared yesterday to go back to work on light duty starting on Monday. We both sighed a huge sigh of relief. Thank you for your provision, God!

Happy Monday!

Happy Monday! (Sarcasm) I woke up early and got some time in with God today. Thank goodness I did, because I would be feeling a lot more upset about the way my Monday started if I hadn’t. Actually, at the time (5:30am) I was grumbling about only getting 5 hours of sleep when my husband woke me up moaning in pain. Helped him get his meds and ice pack, and decided to get up for the day to read my Bible. Thank you, God, for giving me a nice warm bed to sleep in, heat in our house, a roof over our heads, the money to pay for pain medication and ice packs, and all the ways You provide for our family.

I was on schedule to get my daughter to school on time. Here i thought I was rocking it when we even left the house 5 minutes early! As we walked to the car, she exclaimed, “Mom, what is that stuff coming down? It’s not rain, but it’s not snow either.”

“Sleet, honey. That is sleet. But we have extra time in case the roads are bad, so we will be ok.”

We both saw it at the same time: The recycling bin had been blown over in the driveway by the strong north wind. I didn’t think to take a picture in my haste to get it cleaned up. Remember those 5 extra minutes? I spent them huffing and puffing around my yard trying to pick up some of the trash that was now strewn all over my yard and the neighborhood. Almost had an asthma attack, but decided to just leave the little bit of trash that I didn’t have the time to pick up in the street for now. Maybe it will have blown away later when I go back to get it anyway. 😀 After picking up as much as I could, I realized it was Veteran’s Day and there probably would be no trash service until tomorrow. Thank you, God, for allowing me to live in a place where trash service comes regularly. Thank you for giving us strong men and women to protect the freedom we have in the United States. Some people live in trash mountains and dig through the trash to find salvageable items and then sell them to have money to survive. We pay the city to take our trash away someplace where we never see it again.

I haven’t seen my wallet since Thursday, so I texted the activity director at the place I last remember having it. He hasn’t seen my wallet, but I have prayed about it and I am trusting that God will either help me find it, or protect it until I can locate it. Thank you, God, that you know where my wallet is and you will restore it to me soon.

I got my daughter to school and watched the kid in the car ahead of us slip and fall on the icy stairs. I warned her to be very careful getting out of the car and inside, as there were no helpers for the car line today. I drove to Starbucks to work on some work stuff and do some thinking. The only table left was right by the back door, and the wind kept blowing it open. Thank you, God, for the warm coat I found at Sam’s Club for $26 and the awesome infinity scarf that I bought for $6 at Hobby Lobby. The coat I had for the past 7 or 8 years had seen better days and the zipper no longer worked. Thank you for providing warm clothes at prices that I can afford.

There are people out there in this crazy weather who are huddling under a bridge to stay warm, and they only have the clothes on their backs. Please help them to stay warm today, Lord, and give them food for their bodies.

My Monday is going great. How is yours? Maintaining hope in your heart is all about perspective and how you look at life, and it starts with spending time with Jesus.


Gonna lay down my burdens down by the riverside, and I ain’t gonna study war no more. During Nathan’s surgery, which took an hour-and-a-half, I went to lunch at a little place by the river called The Levee. I had never heard of it before, but it had good online reviews, so I went there and enjoyed a good lunch. Across the street was the levee along the Kansas River, along with some walking paths, so i decided to go up on the levee to take a walk. I figured I could rush back to the hospital and wait and try not to be anxious, or I could take a walk on the levee in the beautiful sunshine and wait. Either way, I wasn’t in any more or less control of the situation and the outcome. I also reminded myself that my location doesn’t define my “good wifehood.” I still love him and want the best for him, even if I’m not nervously waiting in the lobby like the rest of the families. It’s funny because most of my time lately has been spent with little ones clamoring at my feet or a husband crying out in pain for help, and I wasn’t used to spending so much time alone.

All that was on my agenda was waiting, so I didn’t have to rush away from lunch to be somewhere. So often I miss the beauty God has for me at the top of the hill because I rush off in the other direction to my responsibilities, instead of taking the time and effort to ascend the hill, pause for prayer and deep breaths, and look around in the waiting.

I walked down the levee a short distance and spent some time observing. As I watched the water rush around the sides of the dam in the middle of the river to continue its downstream journey, I saw a bird getting a drink from the middle of the dam. Unaffected by the powerful current around her, she faithfully trusted the strength of the dam to protect her and keep her safe. I imagined myself as that bird, waiting in the middle of the current for sustenance and rejuvenation, trusting that everything was going to be ok.

Jennie Allen, when she came to speak at Fellowship Bible Church in Topeka last Friday, said that waiting is a myth because you are exactly where God wants you in every moment if you are walking with Him. You’re never alone, even when it feels like you are. As I walked along the levee, I remembered her saying that waiting is a myth, and I knew I was exactly where I should be in the waiting, taking big breaths, praying big prayers, and looking upon the mighty rushing water, waiting for a word from the Lord.

He spoke to my heart that everything will be ok. Nathan will be able to walk again with relatively little pain. Our finances will be ok, even though we will owe more than $10,000 for this surgery. When the night is closing in, don’t give up and don’t give in. You’re gonna be ok. This is a lyric from a beautiful song called “You’re Gonna Be OK” that I found on YouTube last spring.

After my walk, I came back to the hospital and almost immediately the surgeon spoke with me to tell me that the surgery had gone very well. There was a chunk of disc impinging the sciatic nerve, and he was able to get it all out without any “sticky” problems.

It’s now 10 days after his surgery and he’s getting around a lot better now than he was after the last one in May. Since he has Degenerative Disc Disease, it’s possible that he will continue to deal with severe pain the rest of his life, but it’s also possible that he will live relatively pain-free. I am praying for the latter, of course, but I know that God’s strength is sufficient if that’s not his path. Right now my biggest worry is the financial aspect with Nathan being off of work for the next month or two, and one more client of mine ceasing music therapy. Please pray for our finances, especially as Christmas approaches.

What is your biggest worry today? Is it a child who is very sick, a spouse who is abusing substances, a marriage that is falling apart, a permanent disabling condition that frustrates your daily life, stress at your workplace, social pressures of measuring up? My Jesus can take care of everything you need, if you let him. He is taking care of us, and He will take care of you, too. He loves you so much, beyond words or human comprehension.

Broken No More

Warning: If this post offends you, it might just apply to you. Being offended isn’t bad, despite what society believes. Sometimes it’s a way that the Holy Spirit can get your attention, if you’re willing to listen. When I say “you,” I’m talking to my own heart as well.

Positive thinker. Happy. Joyful. Gleeful. Excited. Amazed. Trusting. Peaceful. Confident. Successful. Hopeful. Inspired.

Angry. Lonely. Fearful. Anxious. Depressed. Sad. Heartbroken. Jealous. Enraged. Stressed. Disgusted. Shameful. Condemned. Judgmental. Hopeless. Failure. Sinful. Imperfect.

Which group of words do you like more? Which do you choose to focus on in your life? If you’re like most of society, the answer is the first group. No one likes to admit their brokenness, sin, failures, and negative emotions. We all want to appear put-together, successful, and at peace. Most people are very good at playing the part, and have most of the other people convinced of the homeostasis in their lives. Some Christians are particularly good at exuding peace.

Some people truly are peaceful, laid back, not anxious, and trusting most of the time. Some have had relatively little trauma or difficulty in their lives. I’m glad that there are people who haven’t had a lot of bad things happen in their lives. However, a lot of the people who claim to not have had anything bad happen are also really good at ignoring the second set of words above. They specialize in compartmentalizing their emotions and experiences. They like to sweep difficulty under the proverbial rug and leave it there to rot, rather than doing the hard work of dealing with it and getting it out of the house. Out of sight, out of mind is their life theme. There are problems with this approach to life and dealing with emotions.

It usually means you’re pretending to be someone you’re not. You’re an imposter. You’re a hypocrite. You know the gospel in your intellect, but you have never given Jesus your entire heart, truly. You’re trying to “act your way into a new way of thinking” instead of holding Jesus’s hand as you walk into a new way of being.

You expect others to be put together, so when you discover that they’re not, you freak out a bit and feel threatened in your own false sense of security. You avoid those people. You only talk about the weather or the sports teams. You ask “Hi-how-are-you-that’s-great” as you pass in the hall at church. You raise your hands in worship while inside your heart is sinking. You put on the pretty porcelain face to conceal the heart that is breaking in two.

You can’t really help others when you’re stuck in the surface orbit. You can’t go deep sea diving, down to repair the pain underneath the surface with those who are drowning, when you can’t even peek under the surface of the ocean to face your own pain. Therefore, you can’t bring the true healing of Jesus to the sinking world around you.

You don’t understand grace. As much knowledge as you have about God and the Bible, you can’t quite grasp that concept of grace in your heart of hearts. If someone asks you if you’re going to Heaven when you die, you might tell them, “Well I hope so. I’ve certainly tried to be a good person in my lifetime.” You live by the law of sin and death, and not by the freedom and forgiveness of Christ. You get your underpants in a knot when you think about abortion, gay marriage, women in the ministry, sex trafficking, vaccines (or lack thereof) and other hot topic subjects and sins in society. Sinners are guilty and need to be told as much, you think. Forget love, grace, and forgiveness.

“There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you. So then, brothers, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!” The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him. For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified. What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.” No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

‭‭Romans‬ ‭8:2-39‬ ‭ESV‬‬

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Anger. Loneliness. Fear. Anxiety. Depression. Sadness. Heartbreak. Jealousy. Rage. Stress. Disgust. Shame. Condemnation. Judgment. Hopelessness. Failure. Sin. Imperfection. All were nailed to the cross, not swept under the rug. All can be resolved when we go to the cross and ask Jesus for help and healing. Healing is a lifelong process of admitting our yuck and giving it to Jesus to carry for us. Out of our arms, out of our control, and into the hands of the Savior of the world. There is no better place to be. Are you sweeping your brokenness under the rug, or are you lifting it up to the arms of Jesus to carry?

Dolor Demons

Warning: This is a “venting” blog post. Don’t read it if you only read positive things, if you don’t care about me or my family, or if you’re a judgmental person. Also, don’t read it if you want a polished blog post, as this is not polished. I’m upset tonight and needed to get some of the jumbledness out before bed. 😉

People frequently tell me that I should write a book. I’m not sure why exactly. Maybe they tire of hearing about the drama, or maybe they want to hear about the drama all laid out in an organized format. Maybe that’s their way of saying, “Wow, you have a lot going on. I’m not sure what to say, so I’ll just tell you to write a book and try to make the mood lighter.” Or maybe it’s just their way of complimenting my writing skills. I choose to take it as a compliment, and I’ve toyed with writing a book, but I’m just not sure where I would ever find time in the midst of caring for 2 young daughters, 2 dogs, my husband with his back issues, trying to keep my music therapy business growing, church, meal planning/fixing, bill paying, house cleaning, laundry slaving, trying to keep some of my friendships fed, facilitating spiritual, academic, and social growth for my daughters…

My husband of 11 years, Nathan, had his second back surgery in May. His first surgery on the same disc was in 2013. He has degenerative disc disorder. The 2019 surgery didn’t work as “magically” as the 2013 surgery, and he has had a much slower recovery. He was off of work for 2.5 months, and we only survived because of the financial generosity and kindness of family and friends. Finally in July he headed back to work and was doing relatively fine until a week ago when he came home from work with severe sciatic pain. He took last Thursday off from work. He has pretty much been bed-bound when he’s at home, but he has muscled through working this week because he doesn’t have much vacation time built up, only has 2-3 weeks of FMLA job protection left, and we live pretty much paycheck to paycheck as it is. Last winter we survived on one car (the 2001 Buick LeSabre that a friend gave to us) for over 6 months until we bought a second car this spring. Sharing one car as a family was stressful, and we were only able to do it because of my mom’s generosity in helping cover the gaps, and because he had a coworker who was willing to drive him to work. I’m sad because if we didn’t have that car payment, we wouldn’t be living paycheck to paycheck.

It’s frustrating to have 2 young children begging to go places as a family, and always have to tell them no. They’ve stopped asking as much because they know the answer will be no. I’m therefore the meanest mom ever because I never let them do anything. I don’t let them have friends over much because I don’t want the friends to be exposed to his moaning, cursing, groaning, etc. And also it’s hard to keep an eye on an extra kid or two by myself while my husband lies in the bed. The kids we have over usually make an even bigger mess for me to clean up later, so I tend to say no to play dates as well. And also the house is a total mess because I’m doing everything myself now, even mowing the lawn and taking the trash and recycling out – though he did force himself to do that tonight because he knew I was “in a mood.”

I get “in a mood” periodically when things feel hopeless like this. When my husband is screaming on the floor of the shower because he can’t stand up, or crying in the bed with severe pain, and the meds don’t work, and the doctor won’t see him, and the calls I spend time making to doctors go unheeded, and the preschooler is crying that she needs her mommy, and the dogs are barking for their supper…I feel a sense of guilt for not being able to help everyone, and for not being able to help his pain. I’m his helpmate and I’m supposed to be able to help him, yet I can’t, and that feels frustrating, hopeless, and makes me very irritable. Sometimes I take it out on the family, but I try my best not to.

Tonight I got snippy when he started to take the trash out. I said, “I can do it. I have to do everything now. Go lie down. You shouldn’t be doing that because then you’ll be in more pain.” I immediately apologized and felt guilty for snapping at him. I’m not angry at HIM. I’m angry that life always hurts so much, and we can’t seem to get any reprieve. I’m angry that he doesn’t seem to take very good care of himself sometimes, especially when he’s depressed, and then that feels like my responsibility too. I’m angry that he has this illness that will probably be a lifelong struggle for him and get worse as he ages. I’m angry that being in such pain then makes him feel hopeless and just fuels his anger. I’m angry that we can’t just do normal things as a family like go to fall festivals or take our kids to the park. I’m angry that I have this social anxiety that makes me want to crawl into a hole without him by my side. I’m angry that I stress ate myself to 100 pounds over what I should be during the last few years. I’m angry that we have to switch insurance policies in October and will have 3 months of medical expenses, only to start over again in January with the deductible. I’m angry and anxious and then I pray, and God calms me down. But the cycle repeats.

A few years ago, before Nathan’s 2013 back surgery, the pastor at Topeka Bible Church did a sermon series on “invaders” we often face in our lives. The one that stood out to both of us was on the demon of pain named “Dolor.” Pain is definitely a demon sent to torment. It’s overwhelming, but our God is greater than any other. Our God is healer, and awesome in power. We hold onto the hope we have in Him, when everything else in our lives seems hopeless. Tonight my mother-in-law told me something like, “I don’t know how people survive without Jesus. He’s all we have to cling to.”

We trust Jesus to take care of us, and He is taking care of us, but it is still stressful and scary and overwhelming. We only have a few close friends, and most people offer to help when they can but it’s hard to find a friend who consistently has time and energy to help us when we really need it. Most people we used to call friends have faded, either because we didn’t have the energy to keep up the friendship, or because they got tired of the constant string of drama in our lives and our constant need for help, or because they didn’t know what to say, or because they were going through their own struggles, or because they only wanted positivity in their lives, or because they weren’t able to go deeper than surface-level relationships.

We hate always having to ask for help. The best is when someone just sees a need and offers to help with it. The worst is when someone offers to help and then bails at the last minute, or just stops responding, when we are counting on them for a meal or something of the like. This actually happened to us this summer. It’s hard to show grace to others when they fail us, but God will never fail us. We fail him all the time, and yet his grace is unending.

Grace, grace, God’s grace. Grace that will pardon and cleanse within. Grace, grace, God’s grace. Grace that is greater than all our sin.

How I Reconciled the Death of My Child With My Christian Faith

Little Jayden (whose name has been changed to protect my friend’s privacy) died from a heart condition on his one month birthday, when his big sister was almost 10. Their family was so glad when he was born, but like any big sister, she sometimes felt jealous of all the attention her little brother was getting. One day she screamed at her mother that she wished Jayden had never been born. And then when he died, she carried a false sense of responsibility and guilt for his death for the next 35 years. Her adult mind knew that it logically wasn’t her fault, and yet she couldn’t let go of her shame to forgive herself. Somewhere in her heart she still blames herself. Or if she doesn’t blame herself, then she blames God. She claims that she doesn’t believe in God because a good God wouldn’t allow so much suffering in the world. A good God wouldn’t take her little brother away before he even had the chance to live a good life.

My daughter, Hannah, also died from a heart condition; she was 3 days old. I wrestled a LOT with my Christian faith after Hannah died. I didn’t understand why God would let this happen. He could have healed her, and she wouldn’t have had to suffer so much! In the end, I reconciled my faith with the death of my child by remembering a few important things…

1. This world has death/pain/sadness/violence/sickness/etc in it as a result of original sin, not because of God.

2. God could have made things so that Adam & Eve didn’t have the choice to sin or not, but love isn’t really love without the freedom to choose NOT to love as well.

3. God is good, all the time, no matter what, despite pain and suffering in this world. He intends good for His people in the grand scheme of things. Life is like a symphony. Some players, like the harp, have to sit silently and count rests for most of the performance, and yet when they do play, their beauty adds immeasurable beauty to the symphony as a whole. Without the harp, the symphony would not sound the same. Jayden, Hannah, and so many other children who die so young are much like the harp in a symphony. Their existence was more brief, but no less beautiful.

4. The sovereignty of God is beyond my comprehension. Somehow He will work everything for good of those whose faith is in Him. Romans 8:28 is one of the verses I have come back to repeatedly in my grief. “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.”

5. I don’t understand why Jayden and Hannah suffered and died, or why any child has to. I don’t understand why God doesn’t send Jesus back again to end all the suffering and start the new age of perfection for all believers. I also don’t understand the mechanics of a car engine (AT ALL), but my lack of understanding doesn’t make it false or non-existent. It exists whether I understand the “how” or the “why” or not. The fact that I don’t understand all of God’s ways doesn’t negate His existence. It means I don’t see the whole picture, and the part of the picture that I CAN see sometimes doesn’t make sense in comparison to God’s goodness.

6. There is an enemy of God named Satan. He does his very best to turn people away from God. It makes me so sad that he succeeded for so many years with my friend’s heart. Satan is also the one that gives her that sense of false guilt. God would never do that to his child.

7. The whole earth sees the same sun that sets in the sky. There is only one sun, and yet the sunset can look very different depending on your surroundings. A sunset in Jamaica looks quite different than a sunset on the Sahara, which looks different from a sunset in a big city, and that is also different from the sunset over a trash mountain in Haiti. The sunset over a trash mountain might not look as pretty as over the water in Jamaica, but the sunset is still just as beautiful no matter our circumstantial surroundings. Similarly, God is who He says He is in the Bible, no matter what our individual circumstances are.

8. My children are not mine; they belong to God. He gets to choose the number of days they’re here. He loves them more than I ever could.

9. I think it takes more faith to NOT believe in Jesus than it does to believe in Him. If God does NOT exist and I am wrong by believing in Him…if this life is really all there is and death is the end, then I am not missing anything by believing in God now. I will simply have been wrong when I die. If, on the other hand, the Bible is true and eternal life in Heaven DOES exist, then I would DEFINITELY be missing out on Heaven by not believing in Jesus. Personally, I would much rather believe in God and be wrong than NOT believe in God and be wrong. There’s more at stake in the atheist scenario. Most “atheists” are not truly atheist (there is no god at all), but rather are agnostic (there is a god but I don’t believe in the God of the Bible) and have become angry with God after a trauma or loss.

10. If this world is all there is, then I want my money back. I’ve been through far too much pain in this life to make anything good of it on my own.

James and the Giant Impatience

As James drove home from work after a long shift, he became frustrated with all the cars going under the speed limit. James was 35 and had a history of road rage and had nearly caused accidents on several occasions by darting around people who were going too slow, or tailgating too closely. Every time his blood pressure started to rise, his frontal lobes were affected and he lost the ability to make rational decisions with his driving.  Most of the time, he didn’t even have anywhere to be; he was just tired of all the stupid drivers and how inconsiderate of other drivers they were.

Jenny helplessly watched her husband writhe in pain for hours as they waited for his turn in the busy emergency room. Eric had back surgery two days earlier, and no one seemed to care that his pain was 9/10. After 8 hours of being in the emergency room, they finally left with prescriptions for stronger pain medications to take at home. As they drove home, Eric cried out with every bump, every pothole, and every turn, so Jenny slowed down and tried to avoid all the potholes. The thought of her driving causing him more pain made her very sad. She took the corners very slowly to minimize the centrifugal force on Eric’s back. Other cars honked at her and swerved around, angrily giving her hand gestures.

One of those drivers was James. He couldn’t believe how stupid this lady was! He muttered, “If she doesn’t know how to drive, she shouldn’t be on the road! It’s like she’s intending to make me irate!” Patience was never James’s strength, but especially not while he was driving. He joked about his road rage with his friends, as this was a common theme among his friends. They made jokes about all the stupid drivers in their town, and how their superior driving skills were to be admired.

As James angrily swerved around Jenny and Eric, giving them a few choice words and hand gestures, he realized the man in the passenger seat was his boss at work. Eric hadn’t been there for a month or so because he took time off to have surgery. James immediately felt badly for his attitude and poor judgment. When a person makes false assumptions and judgments about other people’s intentions, it fuels anger rather than patience and compassion.

James thought back to the sermon from church on Sunday where the pastor read Micah 6:8 ~ “He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you, but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.” He realized that his heart was filled with some ugly things: pride, selfishness, anger, and many other things. He asked God to help him be more like Jesus, and to change his heart.

You never know what someone else is going through, or what is causing them to make “stupid” decisions. Before you judge in anger, take time to ask God for compassion and patience, to see what the other person may be going through. It just may happen that someday you will need that compassion and patience yourself, too.

Each Day Is Valentine’s Day

Recently, as I was preparing music for my music therapy sessions with older adults, I wanted to incorporate Valentine’s Day music.  The majority of my clients were born in the 1930’s and 40’s, and the research shows people generally relate the best to music from their teens and early 20s, even as they age. I’ve noticed as dementia progresses, people tend to relate better to songs from their childhood rather than their teens and 20s, so I usually incorporate a variety of songs from the 1920’s through the 1960’s, since there can be such a wide range of ages and cognitive statuses with my clients. When I think of classic Valentine’s music, two songs come immediately to mind: “My Funny Valentine” and “Let Me Call You Sweetheart.” Both are very familiar to most older adults.

Many recordings have been done of these songs, and one of my favorite is Ella Fitzgerald’s version of “My Funny Valentine.” I like this song because it talks about loving the person just as they are, for who they are, quirks and all, and it emphasizes the fact that “each day is Valentine’s Day.” When you love someone, you love them every day, not just one day per year. When I was growing up, Valentine’s Day was one of my favorite holidays because my mom made it so special for us. We always had a card, chocolates, and a little toy waiting for us when we woke up on Valentine’s Day, and she gave us lots of hugs and kisses and told us how much she loved us. We usually had a special dessert treat in our lunch boxes, too. The holiday usually fell in the middle of a dreary winter when we all were ready for spring. Today, I have tried to carry on this special tradition with my own children by giving them a small toy, candy, card, and lots of hugs and kisses.

Sadly for me, Adelaide’s class doesn’t do a Valentine’s party with parents, but I was able to take donuts to provide additional sugar for their day. 😉 Her teacher requested donuts, and as I dropped them off as school was starting, she looked at me with an exasperated sigh as she was trying to corral the already-hyper class into the classroom. I flashed her a smile and said, “The energy is only going to get better as the day goes on – just think of all that sugar they’re going to get today!” She laughed.

My husband unfortunately doesn’t share my love for Valentine’s Day. He thinks it’s a contrived holiday filled with too much marketing, and he says he doesn’t need a special day to show me his love. I need to stay off of Facebook today, though, because I started feeling the pangs of jealousy when I saw my friend got a massage certificate from her husband! I think 2015 was the last time I got a massage! 😉 While I agree that each day is Valentine’s Day, I still think Valentine’s Day is important to celebrate. I think he has gotten better about celebrating it over the past 11 years because he has come to realize how important it is to me. Last year he ran out and got me some flowers after he got off of work. One year he wrote me a poem. This year he hasn’t done anything yet but I think we are going to have a “Hulu date” night tonight after we get the girls to bed, and catch up on “our” shows – New Amsterdam and This Is Us. We both agreed that we didn’t want to fight the crowds at a restaurant like we have in past years (one year we waited 2 hours! – before kids, of course), we didn’t want to pay a babysitter, and we both have things going on at church this evening that we didn’t want to skip. I told him I bought myself the chocolate I wanted this year 🙂 so I’m not expecting anything big from him, although a note or poem would be wonderful. He has such a gift with words!  I just love spending time with him the most. He’s so cute and funny, even after all these years, and our love for each other has only grown deeper.

Above all, my heart is thankful today for the love of God, for without His love I wouldn’t have the first clue about love or how to celebrate it. Our “human nature” is not yielded toward loving others – it’s focused on loving ourselves – and Jesus showed us the most unselfish love on the cross. And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. God’s spirit of love lives in each of us, if we let Him. How will you invite His presence to reign in your heart today? I’m ending this blog now to go home and fix lunch for my husband, whose feet are hurting from walking all morning for his job. ❤

The Christian Perfectionist’s Guide to Peace

This is a very vulnerable post for me. I debated whether to post it or not, but I’m posting it with the hope that it will help other people, like me, who struggle with anxiety, perfectionism, making priorities and walking in peace. When you write a blog, you never know how other people will perceive what you’re saying, and there will always be people who judge you based on the content you put out there, but in the end I decided that it would be worth facing the judgment of others if these thoughts could help one person.

I’m not usually one to declare New Year’s resolutions publicly because it’s hard for me to follow through and achieve them. In the past I’ve made resolutions about losing weight, earning more income, reducing debt, traveling, writing, and other areas of my life. This year, however, I have one resolution: To increase the peace of Christ in my heart. I believe by doing this, peace will also spill over into my marriage, family, home, finances, and body, and it will be easier to achieve those “surface” goals I have like losing weight, reducing debt, etc.

My messy house parallels my health (physical, spiritual, financial, emotional).  When someone comes over for the first time, I clean up the main parts of the house and try to make it look spotless. I want to make a good first impression of our home, my family, and me. I want to seem peaceful and put together and on top of everything in my life. I try to hide the chaos. Usually I do a pretty good job because people who don’t know me very well say, “Oh your house looks fine. You think it’s messy but it always looks pretty good to me. It looks lived in!” Therefore, most people don’t realize how it looks most of the time – like a tornado (or a toddler) came through and only hit certain parts of the house (like the couch, the desk, the floor by the couch, the bookshelf, the top of our dresser, the bottom of the bedroom closet, the hall closet, the office, the junk drawer in the kitchen, the basement —oh Lord, the basement—and so forth).

I do this covering up in other areas of my life, too, and I know I’m not the only one who does – it’s just that few are willing to admit it. I put on makeup and dress nicely to impress people at work and church because I tell myself that it’s not professional to show the splotchy skin on my face. I sometimes argue with my spouse or bark orders at my children on the way to church and then smile at people and hold hands during the service as if everything is fine. I only post pictures of my children smiling and looking cute on social media, but leave out the 25 pictures it took to get them both to smile and look at the camera at the same time without my toddler sticking a finger up her nose or jumping up and down in a blur.

The chaos in my home reflects the chaos in my heart, and I’m tired of covering up the mess to appear peaceful; I want true peace. In attempting to cover the chaos, I am trying to hide behind guilt and shame. The only true safety is in the shelter of the Almighty God, for under His wings I find refuge and strength (Psalm 91). I think if people knew the real me, they would reject what they see.  Many have rejected her in the past, and the wounds lie deep.  She speaks Truth and many don’t want to hear it so they label her Judgmental, Misfit, Crazy, Ignorant, and other names.  The chaos in my heart not only spills into my household, but also into my body, finances, and my relationship with God and my family.  I have gained 35 pounds in the past 10 years, and I’ve gained about 10 in the past 2 months. Having good self-control is part of the battle, but if you’re not focused on Jesus and his love for you, self-control can easily become self-harm or legalism.

I have many excuses to defend myself, to explain away the mess and not deal with it. We have two little girls and two dogs to add to the chaos, and often my husband’s back and/or headaches hurt to the point of not being able to do anything to help around the house.  I had a traumatic brain injury in 2003 when I was in a car accident, and it does still affect my executive functioning – especially when I’m tired or stressed. We’ve recently gone through a period of 7 years of emotional trauma with the loss of 3 children, death of my father, husband’s back surgery, etc…We moved in the fall of 2017, and I also began working more at that time and my husband changed jobs.  So there you have my excuses. What are yours? Let’s kick them to the curb together and talk about some points of action. If the health of my home reflects the peace in my heart, then how do I increase peace in my heart?

The Christian Perfectionist’s Guide to Peace:

1. Read God’s word and pray daily. Remind myself of the way God sees me as His precious child, created for His glory. He is pleased with His creation. I am beautiful in His sight. Reading God’s word and prayer are like food and drink for the soul: “Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord. He is like a tree planted by water, that sends out its roots by the stream, and does not fear when heat comes, for its leaves remain green, and is not anxious in the year of drought, for it does not cease to bear fruit.” (Jeremiah 17:7-8)
2. Confess sin daily and turn from it to obey His commandments. My sin is ugly to Him, and He is so perfect He has to turn His face from it.  God’s rules are there for our safety, to protect us from darkness. God said to His people through the prophet, Isaiah, in Chapter 1, “When you spread out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you; even though you make many prayers, I will not listen; your hands are full of blood. Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your deeds from before my eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow’s cause. Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool. If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land; but if you refuse and rebel, you shall be eaten by the sword; for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.” Lord, please make my heart willing and obedient to your will. Obedience without a willing heart is legalism, and a willing heart without obedience is hypocrisy and lies. Lord, please help me have both.
3. Pray about what God wants you to do. Ask him to close doors and open others, and to make it clear what you should do. Sometimes we face many good things and it’s hard to know which are the best things for us.
4. Deal with underlying issues in your life. I can cover it up quickly and easily for those who only see the surface, but those who take the time to dig deeper always see it. You can’t hide chaos forever, so the answer is to deal with the underlying issues (e.g., reduce anxiety, become convinced of God’s love), rather than the surface issues (organizing the home, losing the weight, etc).
5. Write out God’s truth and put it where you will see it daily. You are loved no matter how your heart is doing. God made you and loves you, and has great purposes for you and your family on this earth. God is your strength and shield. He is your fortress and protector. He fights your battles for you. Memorize a Bible verse each week. Keep a journal of memorization verses to read while you’re in the pickup line at school, at the doctor’s office, in the bathroom, etc.
6. Have less stuff/activities. Less stuff yields more peace, which is the opposite of what our culture teaches. When organizing all the stuff is overwhelming and you can’t keep up with the busyness of life, the answer is to have less stuff and fewer activities. Do some “reverse nesting.” Some people have 5,000 friends on Facebook but no one to walk beside them or hug them when they cry. Choose a few gems among your friends and build into those relationships rather than trying to keep up with everyone.
7. Be ok with disappointing people, and be brave enough to say no. Some people say yes to everything and in the end say yes to nothing. I am guilty of doing this. I have so many differing interests, friends, ideas, and activities that it’s hard to choose the ones that are most important to me, and the ones that will bring me peace.
8. Prioritize the best, and get rid of the rest. Discern which things, activities, ideas, relationships, etc. are the most important to you. For those that don’t make “the cut,” someone else could benefit from having them in their life more than you. They are someone else’s best. It’s hard to prioritize and say no to good things. It’s hard to know which things are best for your heart, so that’s why it’s important to pray about what God wants you to focus on (see #3). (Also, I’m not saying to cut people out of your life, but to spend your energy and time on those who are at the top of the list.) 😉
9. Sometimes there is trash; throw it away. Sometimes trash gets overlooked, adding to the chaos. After awhile, you don’t even recognize it’s there. Maybe it served a purpose once upon a time but you no longer need it. Let it go.
10. Look at things with fresh eyes. Ask a mentor or trusted friend for help with discernment and prayer for what you should focus on in this season of life.
11. Remember your goal is peace, not perfection. It doesn’t have to be perfect, in your home or in your heart. Sometimes we perfectionists avoid doing anything at all for fear of doing it wrong or incompletely. Sometimes this can apply to our spiritual and physical behaviors as well. I have difficulty reading the Bible because I don’t know where to start, or I have difficulty going to the gym because I have so far to go to be where I want to be, so I do nothing. Rather, the road toward health is a slow journey. Usually if it’s a fast journey it won’t last forever, like the brevity of a roller coaster ride or the story of the tortoise and the hare. You won’t get there at all if you dig your heels in the mud, but you’ll get there eventually if you travel every day, even just one step. Do one thing today to move toward peace. For me, that was taking an hour to write this post.
12. Get your anxiety physically under control. Anxiety is a very difficult and complex mental illness. The battle for peace will always be a battle on a pendulum, swinging back and forth until you achieve adequate neurochemical balance. Talk to a counselor. Ask your doctor for anxiety medication. Learn about essential oils that can support your mental health. Don’t resist getting help because of your mental health stereotypes or shame. Satan wants to keep us in the darkness of shame, but God lends the light of His freedom and peace, and He has given us many tools toward this end such as doctors, medicines, and natural remedies.
13. Sing praises to God! He is good in all ways and in all circumstances, and He has good in mind for His people. If you think God isn’t good, then you’re either assigning him the blame erroneously for your circumstances, or the story isn’t over yet.

Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you must also forgive. And above all these, put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. Colossians 3:12-17

Even If You Don’t, My Hope Is You Alone

Matt Hammitt is a Christian musician who has written many songs that resonate with me. As I sit here trying to clarify and verbalize my mixed-up feelings on Hannah’s fourth birthday, I’m listening to “Holding You” and trying not to ugly cry in Starbucks. Then Mercy Me’s song, “Even If,” plays next on my Hannah playlist, and I have to try even harder.  Maybe I shouldn’t have come to a public place to write, but I spent the morning trying to think at home, and the only thing I accomplished was feeling overwhelmed and numb…Alas, I’ve decided to listen to only instrumental relaxation music while I wrote.

Four years old. Adelaide turned four years old the week before Bethany was born. Right now Bethany is 2 years and 9 months, which is the same age Adelaide was when Hannah was born, and it’s also the age I was when my little sister was born. I can’t articulate why all of this is hard for me, but it is. I wish Hannah hadn’t been born at Christmastime because it’s very hard for me to enjoy the Christmas season now. It seems like I go through the motions just to make pleasant memories for Adelaide and Bethany, but my heart isn’t in it this year, nor has it been for the past 4 years.

Dear God,

Please give Hannah a big hug for us today, and ease our throbbing broken hearts. You’ve been faithful, God, and you’ve been good, and you will remain good, ALL of my days. I may never understand the brevity of my daughter’s life, or the impact she had on people, but I know that you are still good and you love me. Even when life doesn’t make any sense, you hold all knowledge and wisdom in the palm of your hand. Even if I can’t muster more than a shower and drinking coffee today, you remain in control of my life. Thank you for the grace you give me on days, like today, when I struggle. Thank you for giving me the wisdom and job flexibility to make my own schedule and give myself these days off. Thank you even for the crabby middle-aged woman who flipped me off and yelled angry words at me in the Fairlawn Plaza parking lot for not using my turn signal (she didn’t use hers either and turned in front of me!), because it reminds me that so many people out there are hurting this holiday season. Help me to forgive her and all the people who are insensitive toward me, and help me to not be insensitive toward others.

Thank you for the many loved ones who have reached out to us to let us know they are thinking of us and praying for us. Thank you for sweet Kathy sending a card every year on Hannah’s birthday and calling her by name. Thank you for the care and concern of friends who read my words but don’t say a word because they don’t want to say the wrong thing to make the pain worse. Thank you for our friends, Caylyn and Chad, making time to come over from Olathe with their two adorable kids to spend the evening with us last night. Caylyn was the only non-family member who got to meet Hannah while she was alive.  Nathan and I spent some time last night after we got the girls to bed sitting on the couch together and looking at Hannah’s book.

“I know You’re able and I know You can save through the fire with Your mighty hand, but even if You don’t, my hope is You alone. I know the sorrow, and I know the hurt would all go away if You’d just say the word, but even if You don’t, my hope is You alone.” Thank you for giving me hope. I can’t imagine traveling down this lonely grief journey without having the hope of Heaven and seeing my babies again.

Love,
Elizabeth

Holding It Together

3/10/18

In the silence of the darkness,

I hear my heart crying.

In the darkness of the night,

I see the dreams that should have been.

When I stop to rest awhile,

my mind continues with imaginings of

the cries I never heard,

and the girl you would have been now.

Instead, you are 3 years gone

and I am silent with deep grief

too big for words to express.

I have a friend at church who has two daughters and two grandsons,

but she also has a son who died.

She doesn’t talk about him much,

but I know she must think about him every day, even years later.

I want to ask her what grief becomes after 25 years.

Does the gaping hole inside ever get smaller,

or do you just learn how to cover it up better so the average person doesn’t see it?

Do you learn how to carry yourself so you don’t cry

in the middle of the Walmart checkout line?

Does your grief become more holy,

reserved for those who are closest to you?

With 3 years under my grief belt,

you feel even more like a treasure to me

and I want to share you with the people who mean the most to me.

You existed, but you also changed hearts,

some in ways I may never realize.

When it’s time to arise and face the day,

my mind longs to remain with you in the dreams,

for it is there that I can still hold you.

In the brightness of the day, I miss you,

but I rise to face it with hope.

In the beauty of the brightness, I see you,

for you are shining in perfect heavenly light.

My sweet Hannah, you are loved.

I think about you every day

even though I rarely talk about you

with those who don’t understand.

The brokenness of your tiny heart

will forever remain in the brokenness of my own,

holding it together,

until we meet again in glory.

I sat down to write, and my girls came to mind.

Lately I’ve been feeling like I don’t have anything urgent to write about.  There are things that come up that I could write about, but by the time I have the time and motivation to write, I either forget or the event has already passed. I came to Starbucks today for the first time in a long time to do some writing, and then I got all set up and couldn’t think of anything to write about. I keep a list on my phone of writing ideas, but nothing really jumped out at me today.

I spend a lot of time doing my work as a music therapy contractor, and the rest of my time trying to keep my house looking decent and keep my 1-year-old from killing her 5-year-old sister with blunt objects. Her latest “fun” is to throw heavy toys at her sister’s head. Life with a toddler is exhausting, but it’s also one of my favorite stages. She loves to give hugs and try new things. She attempts new words and they come out sounding so cute. She has an adorable little waddle when she’s walking around the house being silly. Most of the time I know what she’s trying to say, but in the times when I have no idea, she gets frustrated and screams and hits. She will also come up and melt my heart as she hugs my knees and says, “Wuv oo, Mommy!”

Our older daughter is becoming more and more of a performer. Her latest obsession is cartwheels, handstands, backwards somersaults, and headstands. She also loves to make up songs on the spot and add dance moves to them, and play pretend games such as “Mommy spider chases (pretend) terrified screaming kid around the house.” She loves going to Awana and American Heritage Girls meetings. She loves reading, singing, creating songs, dancing, running, playing outside, talking to strangers, “instructing” other children, “reporting” things that her sister does that she’s not supposed to do, snuggling at bedtime, and so much more.

Both of our girls make us smile and want to pull all our hair out.  I think that’s the way most parents feel. We love them beyond words and enjoy spending time with them, but we also occasionally feel frustration and/or exhaustion more than anything else that pushes our buttons, and we just want to hide under the covers sometimes. Thankfully, for my husband and I, we feel the love more often than the frustration.

If you’ve got young children, we feel you. You’re doing a great job. Your children are precious gifts from God.  Keep going, and keep the coffee flowing!

When you were one day old…

Dear Hannah,

When you were almost 24 hours old, your Aunt Sarah walked into my hospital room while talking on the phone with your daddy. She had the strangest look on her face – a mixture of fear, sadness, urgency, and uncertainty – that I had never seen on her face before. She was quickly followed by the social worker and the obstetrician on call, Dr. Wiley. Dr. Wiley said they were going to discharge me right then so that I could go to Children’s Mercy and be with you. I was so happy! I got to go be with you! They had told me I wouldn’t be able to see you until Friday or Saturday at the earliest, and now they were letting me go on Thursday! I still held hope in my heart for your earthly healing, so it didn’t occur to me that they were letting me go to give me the most amount of time with you before you died. I was excited to get to see you that day. I hurriedly took a shower, threw all of my things in bags, picked up my pain medication from Walgreen’s, grabbed lunch, and we headed over. I think we arrived about 1:00, but I’m not sure exactly what the time was.

As soon as I arrived at Children’s Mercy, before they would even let me see you, they wheeled me into a tiny room with your daddy. The cardiologist, Dr. Lay, the palliative care chaplain, the hospital chaplain, the social worker, your daddy and I all crammed into a room about 6 feet by 8 feet. When they explained who they were and the palliative care chaplain spoke, I pretty much knew what Dr. Lay was going to say. After all, I’ve worked in hospice and palliative care for (at the time) 9 years. As it turns out, the big shot cardiologist doctor couldn’t spare the 10 minutes it took for me to get up to the floor, so he had already told your daddy the news, and your daddy had to pretend he hadn’t heard it already when the kind female doctor, Dr. Lay, spoke.

It was like a dramatic scene from a movie when you can’t hear what is being said because the music swells and the dialogue cuts out, but you can tell what’s being said by the reaction from the actors. I don’t remember much of what was said, but I do remember the raging screams that came from my throat. Your grandparents said they could hear someone screaming all the way down the hall, but they didn’t know it was me until later.

I wish they would have waited to tell us. I wish I could have seen you when I arrived there without knowing. I wish I could have held your hand and touched your peach fuzz hair while still hoping. I wish the only thing that they had told me was to warn me of your wide-open chest so I wouldn’t be scared to see you like that, but they also told me you wouldn’t survive. They took my hopeful haze from me before I could even see you again. So the first time I saw you there, instead of saying a proper hello, I began to say goodbye.

On the day after you were born, the hope of your health on earth died, and my faith in God almost died. SO MANY people all over the world had been praying for you over the past day and longer. Countless people – some we will never even know as well as so many who are close to our hearts – beseeched God for a miraculous healing, but God had other plans. I’d be lying if I said my faith was completely healed today, but it’s much more restored than it was for a long time.

You were never mine to hold, and neither are any of our children, for they belong to God, and as God’s, He can do with life as He sees fit. Doctors have great skill and technology, but God is the author, perfecter and finisher of our beating hearts. Also, I’ve learned deep in my core that Heaven is the greatest miracle of all time. The fact that a wretched sinner like me can go to Heaven to be in the presence of my holy God, all because of Jesus and his death on the cross – that dichotomy is the miracle, that death would produce life, that faith in one God-man would produce Heaven for all those who believe, that my sick little baby whose heart-hole was beyond repair would be made whole forever. So really, those hundreds or thousands of prayers that people were praying for healing? God DID answer them, just not in the way we had hoped by keeping you here in our arms.

Thank you for loving me, Hannah. I am your imperfect mother and you are now my perfect child. My heart misses you, sometimes more than I can bear, but I remind myself daily that I will get to see you again…someday…on the day I am born into Heaven…and that day it will be you who is there to open your arms to me. I imagine you’ll be running behind Jesus to be second in line for a hug.

Love,

Mommy

Happy 3rd Birthday

Dear Hannah,

On the day we met you, I didn’t get to hold you. I got to touch your arm for about 10 seconds for a quick picture as I lay on the operating table before they whisked you downstairs to the NICU. I was happy, but scared, hopeful, but concerned. About an hour after you were born, I convinced my nurse, who was my friend from Bible study, to let me go downstairs a little bit early from my recovery room. As I wheeled in, you were almost dying. Nurses and doctors were rushing to your room to save you. I watched from across the NICU bay, too far to do anything but pray. When they stabilized you, it was time for me to go back upstairs for a check and some medicine. I finally got to see you again about 3 hours after you were born, and you were all hooked up to machines that helped you breathe and remain stable. The nurse told me not to be loud or touch you too much and not to use any flashes in the pictures I took, because all of those things would make your pain worse. So we quietly sang Happy Birthday to you and wept and prayed and held each other beside your isolette. I touched your hand a couple of times even though the nurse had told me not to touch you very much. I couldn’t help it. You were so cute!

On the day you were born, my heart was still filled with hope and I KNEW you were going to be healed. I didn’t realize the severity of your health until the next morning. You almost died again as the Children’s Mercy transport team tried for almost 3 hours to get you stable enough to ride in the ambulance. You couldn’t fly in the helicopter because of the freezing precipitation in the upper atmosphere, they told us. Daddy and Grammy and Grampy followed you as you flew down the turnpike to the longest night of our lives. I’m so glad they could all go to be with you that night so you didn’t have to be without your family.

On the day you made me a mommy once again, your sister was so excited to meet you, but she would have to wait three whole days to hold your sweet little princess body in her toddler arms. She loved you so much, and she still does.

A song comes to my mind that I sing to people in the nursing home: Smile the while you kiss me sad adieu. When the clouds roll by, I’ll come to you. Then wait and pray each night for me, til we meet again. I didn’t know if I’d see you again on earth when they took you away in the night, but I do know that I will see you again in Heaven someday. And I know that you are smiling, laughing, playing, dancing, running, jumping, singing, praising, and doing all the other beautiful things that perfect children do in Heaven. The adieu remains only sad for us, but not for you. We remain in the darkness of this world, but you are enjoying the marvelous, warm perfection of God’s holy light.

I love you, and I’m so glad you’re not in pain anymore.

Happy Birthday,

Love,

Mommy

The Day Before Your Birth

Dear Hannah,

Every single day I think about you multiple times throughout the day. I wonder what you would be like if you were with us. You would be 3 years old tomorrow. You would think that you could do everything yourself. When Adelaide turned 3, you had been gone for 3 months. She ran or danced EVERYWHERE she went and talked to everyone.  She talked about you every day and had bad dreams at night, and repeatedly asked if we could go visit you in the hospital. When we told her no for the 500th time and explained why, she would ask if we could go to Heaven to play with you.  She still sometimes asks me that, even at almost 6 years old, but she doesn’t talk about you as much, and she doesn’t include you in pictures of her family. She says it’s because you’re not here with us, and the pictures are of her family here, which breaks my mama’s heart.  We will never have a photo of the 5 of us together, nor can she bring herself to draw you into the pictures.

Would you be outgoing or more quiet? When she was 3, Adelaide made messes and screamed when she didn’t get her way.  Would you do the same, or would you be more content with the limitations of your three-year-old-ness? She still took a two-hour nap in the afternoon.  Would you be a good sleeper, too, or would you be too busy to stop for a nap?  Would you and your sisters get along well together? Would you be a daddy’s girl like your big sister, or more of a mama’s girl like your little sister? Would you and Bethany fight a lot because you’re only 15 months older than her? Would your hair be brown, blonde, or somewhere in-between? Would your eyes be blue like your daddy and your two sisters, or hazel like mine?

Three years ago today was a Tuesday.  I had so much anxiety about my c-section that was scheduled for the following morning at 10:00. I felt like something was dreadfully wrong, that one or both of us would die during the operation, even though everyone I knew kept reassuring me that everything would be fine and it was just my anxiety in high gear.  Some people have tried to tell me that “what you focus on will come to be,” like if you have anxiety and worry about things all the time and are negative, those things will be the things that happen in your life.  And if you only focus on positive thinking, prosperity, and wealth, those will be the things that happen in your life.  Even Christian people have told me this. How deceived our generation is!  I have heard people say to others that they need to cut the negative people out of their lives and only surround themselves with positivity. I’ve had people cut me out of their lives because my anxiety, depression, and grief was too negative for them and they were only surrounding themselves with positive people. The people who believe this way are really cheating themselves out of blessings, relationships, opportunities to minister to others, and chances to grow and learn from others who are different from them. They also don’t realize how very hurtful this line of thinking is to people who have experienced trauma and/or grief, because it says to the hurting person that their pain is somehow their fault because they didn’t think positively enough or believe enough.

A mother’s intuition is hardly ever wrong, and I couldn’t shake the foreboding feeling that something very bad was going to happen. I tried to stay busy the entire day before your birth. I think I did some music therapy sessions that day, and I remember going to buy a small desk from someone on the Selling With Friends Facebook group who lived over by 27th and Indian Hills.  They lived next door to one of the pastors at Topeka Bible Church at the time, Hunter Ruch and his wife, Blaire. As the sun was just about to go down, I was running all over town getting last-minute errands run, including buying that little secretary-style desk for $10. It still sits in our living room and I think of you when I use it. As the woman selling the desk helped me load it into the trunk of our SUV, Blaire was outside and waved to me. I told her the next day was my scheduled c-section and I was nervous, and I’m sure she said something to reassure me, though I don’t remember what.  Other people responded to my fear by telling me, “It doesn’t matter how the baby gets here, as long as he or she is healthy. The doctors know what they’re doing. You’ll be in good hands,” etc.

As it turns out, the doctors didn’t know what they were doing with you that day. The best doctors couldn’t figure out what was wrong with you, so they sent you to Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City to figure it out. The doctors were blindsided by your sickness as much or more than we were, because at least I had “that feeling” beforehand. The NICU doctor, Dr. Heather Morgan, who attended your birth, was so perplexed that she used three different oxygen saturation monitors before conceding that something was wrong. The oxygen level kept reading in the 50s, and after the third one gave her the same reading, she knew something was really wrong. She said she wouldn’t believe it at first because you looked and acted like a perfectly normal, healthy newborn. You were crying and moving around, and your skin was pink. You passed your APGAR test with flying colors.  When I heard your APGAR score was 9, I thought you would be fine because Adelaide’s score was 2 when she was born, and she turned out to be fine.

I’m getting a little bit ahead of myself. I just wanted today’s letter to be about the day before your birthday.  Even though I was scared, I was so so SO excited to meet you at the same time! I had a feeling you were a girl, but we had waited to find out for sure until you were born, so I was excited to know for sure.  I was excited to become a family of 4, and for Adelaide to have a sibling. We wanted you so much, but even now I still need to be reminded that none of my children belong to me; they are entrusted to us as parents for a finite amount of time, but they are God’s, not ours.  For reasons I may never understand, God saw fit for the number of your earthly days to stop at 3. Your little life was complete in the 78 hours and 47 minutes you were with us. If I had been physically able to stay with you during all of those hours, I would have, but I had my own body with serious issues to tend to as well. I wish I could have held you the whole time, but your chest was cut open for ECMO, so they wouldn’t let me hold you until it was time to say goodbye.

My therapist reminded me of some truths last week. God is always good and his purposes for me are good. He uses everything together for my good, even the traumatic things, including your life and death, sweet baby girl. My children are not mine, but God’s. He determines the number of each of our days. And I may never know what God could have been saving you FROM if you had lived. When she said that, my mind immediately flashed to one of the doctors at Children’s Mercy who had told us that if you could have lived, you would have certainly had severe brain damage due to the lack of oxygen you had experienced before going on the ECMO machine. You would have had a very difficult life, and you wouldn’t have been a healthy person.  This was so painful to hear at the time, but remembering it now makes me so thankful that God spared you from a lengthy life of pain and instead gave you a life of perfection in Heaven. You are happy, healthy, whole, laughing, playing, running, breathing, praising, and living the life of light and love. You are way better off than we are here, in the very presence of Jesus.

[To those who may be reading this and thinking I am saying that people with disabilities are less valuable, I am not saying that at all.  People with disabilities are very valuable. In fact, they often add MORE value to our lives by teaching us how to be more compassionate, open-minded, considerate, loving people. I do believe, though, that people with disabilities often struggle with pain, difficult emotions, traumatic experiences, and so forth. I meant to say that I am thankful that God spared my Hannah from a long life filled with that pain.]

So my dear, as I think about the day before your birth, I know that God was with me that day.  He gave my heart warning of your departure. He helped my anxiety not become too much to bear. You’ll always be my baby, even though we are apart right now. The hope of Heaven that I have in Jesus will reunite us one day, and that gives my sorrowful heart encouragement.

With all my love,

Your Mommy

PS: Here’s a picture I edited of the very moment the angels escorted you Home. Their presence was palpable, and the light of Jesus was embracing our darkest moment.

The Spirit of the Heart

The distance into the future that I live without you is not leaving you behind,

But moving toward our heavenly reunion.

My life without you is like an upside-down bell curve.

The concave middle represents the sinking of my heart

When you’re not here.

Deeper and deeper my grief plunges

Until it can go no deeper.

Then it rebounds heavenward,

Climbing,

Curving upward,

Until I see you again.

The beginning

And the end of the curve are

Where I see you,

But you are there

In the depths

Of the

Middle,

Too.

You are the line

To which I aspire.

My love for you grows

With every step forward.

I miss you so much,

But the only way to see you again

Is to keep going, for your sake and the sake of my family,

And to try to spend the rest of my life helping as many people as I can.

Thank you for teaching me how to be a more loving person.

The presence of your absence inspires my heart to keep on singing, until our reunion.

Renewed Joy

There is a fierceness in God’s mercy,
In His strength, a quietness.
He’ll break through all my barriers
To bring me peace and rest.
There is a fortitude in the sacrifice,
Displayed for all to see.
He’ll melt the prison bars with love
To let me walk on, free.

Restore the years that locusts have eaten.
Restore to me the joy of my salvation.
Renew a clean spirit within me.
Cast me not away from Your presence.
Recapture my heart with Your song of love.
No other one could ever be truer to me than You.
Always present, never failing.
Forgiving when I deserved death.
My only response should be thankfulness,
But so often I turn away from You,
Replacing Your presence in my life
With things that don’t compare to You–
My husband, my children, my technology, my friends, my music, my writing, my business, my sleep–
All of these things are Yours, not mine.
If anything my life has taught me,
It is that nothing is mine.
Everything is under your benevolent control.
You can use all things for good and for Your glory,
But I’m sorry for giving them the place of honor in my heart
And mind that You deserve.
It should be reserved for You alone, O God.
Please forgive me once again.

Restore the years that the locusts have eaten.
Restore to me the joy of my salvation.
Renew a clean spirit within me.
Lead me in the path of life everlasting,
As You pour out Your spirit of renewed joy in my heart. 

Self-Care Thoughts

It has been almost 2 months since I last wrote a blog post, so on this day when both my children are otherwise occupied and I don’t have to work until the afternoon, I decided to pause. Usually I would take the opportunity of 3 uninterrupted hours to get caught up on things at home or run errands, but I’m choosing instead to do some “self-care.” When they think of self-care, most ladies think of getting a pedicure or a massage, taking a nap, coloring, going shopping, or getting together with a girlfriend, but I am not most ladies.  “Elizabeth self-care” consists of sitting alone in a coffee shop with my computer and trying to make sense of the ideas running through my head, or picking up my guitar to write a song. Usually it involves some form of self-expression.

Some major things have happened in my life in the past two months.  My elder child started kindergarten, we purchased and moved into our new home, I attended my 20th high school reunion, and our baby turned 18 months old. A personal event occurred that I’d rather not write about online, and it has been hard for me to deal with. I began a new weight loss program and am trying to remain consistent with it and maintain a positive attitude about how far I have to go. A large facility in our area approached me about doing a few hours of music therapy per week with their clientele. My husband quit his job as assistant director of security at the mall and started another job in a completely different field.  Our family has had a lot of major changes recently, and I haven’t taken the time to stop and think about them or process them, mostly because I’ve been so busy getting into the routine of having a child in school, more work than I’ve had before, and settling into our new house.

In the back of my head and the top of my heart, though, there remains a piece that is missing.  We should have five children with us, but we only have two.  I went to Target yesterday to return something.  It was around noon and my little girl was hangry and screeched as we waited our turn in line. She had one pigtail on the top of her head and she insisted on toddling all over the customer service area while we waited.  I decided that the snacks I had given her weren’t going to hold and that I shouldn’t stay and go shopping, so we went back to the van to go home and eat lunch.

As we got to our vehicle, I saw a VERY pregnant woman getting out of the car next to ours.  She smiled warmly at my toddler and I as did the “pregnancy waddle” to get a cart.  I thought how strikingly beautiful she was with her dark curly hair thrown up into a bun. I wondered if this was her first baby because I didn’t see any other children with her, and then as I was getting my child into her carseat, I watched as she opened her suburban and four children calmly got out. She put the two youngest in the cart and the older two walked with her into the store. I’m guessing they are a homeschooling family since the older two weren’t in school.  As I watched her walk away with her children, my mind immediately thought about how she is about to have her fifth child and I should have five children with me. Then I thought about how I couldn’t even handle my one screechy child in Target and she was about to execute a shopping trip with FOUR calm children while 8 or 9 months pregnant. Also, she had makeup on and was dressed nicely, so that was icing on my emotional cake as I got into the van with my yoga pants and unbrushed teeth (yesterday morning was rough).  It’s hard to see families with five children and not think about what life would have been like for ours. It’s also hard to see families with three children, especially three girls, since we should have three girls ages 5, 2, and 1.

I wish I could do one of those blogs that are funny and fun to read, instead of the dark and depressing subject of grief. Every time I take time to sit down and write, though, it’s for my self-care, and I usually need to process something heavy and/or serious that’s on my mind. One of these days I’ll blog about the adventures with having a puppy and a 3-month-old, or the funny things that people with dementia say or do (believe me, I’ve had a lot of fun experiences, many including spontaneous dancing and creatively kind ways to avoid a handshake from someone I’ve just seen put a hand down their pants the minute before).  Or maybe I’ll write about the “People of Starbucks” that I’ve seen, for there is such a gamut of types of people in Starbucks. It would be like the “people of Walmart” website, only more upscale. 😀

Self-care does not come naturally to me. I was born and raised to be a hard worker, and my idea of a quiet evening at home after the kids go to bed is getting projects or cleaning done (which is frustratingly the polar opposite of my husband’s idea of a nice quiet evening at home). This is the reason I have to go somewhere other than my house to write when I do choose to do some self-care – so that I don’t get distracted by all the projects at home that are calling my name. Even writing about “self-care” is hard for me, because I feel guilty taking time for it, and my husband often chastises me for it (probably because I spend $6 at Starbucks when I do it).  My mom and mother-in-law don’t like to watch the kids so that I can do some self-care, so then I don’t get much opportunity for it except the two times per month that my baby has childcare at church, or after the girls go to bed, but then I want to spend that time with my husband.

You don’t hear about self-care as much in Christian circles as you do in secular ones, so self-care seems to conflict with the Christian value of selflessness. Philippians 2:3-4 says, “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.” I think it’s possible to take care of yourself to avoid burnout, while at the same time still being humble and looking out for the interests of others.  On an airplane, the flight attendants tell you to secure your oxygen mask in the case of an emergency before assisting others.  This is because if you pass out from lack of oxygen, then you won’t be able to help others.  I see self-care like that analogy.  I need to take care of myself emotionally, physically, spiritually, socially, etc, so that I can be a good witness for Christ, a good wife to my husband, mother to my children, music therapist to my clients, and friend to those I love.

Are you running yourself ragged with no attention to recharging your spirit? If so, how can you improve in the area of self-care? What is one thing you can do today to rejuvenate? Your health is the most valuable thing you possess, so be sure to make its maintenance one of your top priorities! You can do this and still selflessly give to others. In fact, if you take care of your health, you’ll be able to help others even more effectively.

 

Joy Restored

I awoke early this morning at a hotel in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, where we had the privilege of attending the joyous celebration last night for my sister, Jane. She was ordained into the Presbyterian church and installed as associate pastor of a church in the Harrisburg area. I wanted to make good use of the pre-child hours of my day, so I decided to write a blog (after coffee, of course), but when I sat down to write, nothing came to mind. Then I remembered that I used to keep a note of writing ideas on my phone for when I couldn’t think of anything. As I was reading through my old notes, I came across some random thoughts I had on October 15, 2016, and I wanted to share them with you today. 

There is a fierceness in God’s mercy, in his strength a quietness. He’ll break through all my barriers to bring me peace and rest. There is a fortitude in the sacrifice, displayed for all to see. He’ll melt the prison bars with love to let me walk on, free. Nothing good happens in the darkness. Dark midnight houses pain and death, but Jesus is light. The angel of death came at night for Passover; the sky turned black when Jesus gave up His spirit. The struggle of grief is deepest in the darkness when insomnia relentlessly resides. Restore the years that the locusts have eaten. Restore to me the joy of my salvation. Renew a clean spirit within me. Cast me not away from Your presence. Recapture my heart with Your song of love. No other one could ever be truer to me than You. Always present, never failing God, You forgave when I deserved death. My only response should be thankfulness but so often I continue to turn away from You, replacing Your presence in my life with other things that don’t compare to You, like my husband, my children, my technology, my friends, my music, my writing, my business, my sleep…All of these things are Yours, not mine. If anything my life has taught me, it is that nothing is mine. Everything is under Your benevolent control. All things can be used for good and Your glory, but I’m sorry for giving them the place of honor in my heart and mind that You deserve. It should be reserved for You alone, God. Please forgive me, again. Restore the years that the locusts have eaten. Restore to me the joy of my salvation. Renew a clean spirit within me.

My sister has faced many dark times which are not my place to share here, but I am so proud of her for persevering through the darkness and toward the light. It was a joy to see her so happy last night as I celebrated with her and a packed sanctuary of members of the congregation and Presbytery. She will face difficult situations in this church, but she will also gain deep friendships and be blessed as she blesses others. 

If you are facing dark times right now, remember that God brings us THROUGH to the light, if we let Him walk by our side. I believe that He carries us during the difficult times, as the footprints poem suggests. Are you letting Him carry you through the difficulty, trusting His strength to uphold you, or are you kicking and screaming to get down and find your own way? Friends, it’s so much easier when you rest in His arms. I’d be happy to help you get there if you need help. ❤

Bittersweet Memories of What Could Have Been

Tonight our family went out to dinner for the first time in awhile, after we went to our daughter’s new school to meet her kindergarten teacher, since she will start on Monday :-(. In the past, my 5-year-old daughter has only said, “Mommy, tell me about Hannah” at bedtime when we are snuggling in her bed. She has never asked about Hannah in a public place before that I can remember. It caught me off guard that she was asking me about Hannah in a public place, but it was also kind of cool because she wasn’t just compartmentalizing Hannah to part of her bedtime routine.

I said, “Well, if Hannah was here with us, she would probably be sitting right there beside you. She might be throwing some food on the floor or making noise like Bethany is. Maybe she would be waving at the waitress or trying to grab your fork off of the table.” That seemed to satisfy Adelaide’s question and she moved on to other topics of conversation, but I kept thinking. Hannah would be 2 years and 8 months old (as of yesterday, the 10th) if she were here with us. Adelaide was 2 years and 8 months (4 days shy of 9 months – only 1 day shy of it when H died) when Hannah was born. So Hannah would be almost the same age now as Adelaide was when she was born. She would be old enough to talk and sing and legitimately help with some things, and able to independently interact with other people with minimal interpretation from Mommy.

Most of the time in my mind, she remains 3 days old like she was when she left us. She’s in my heart and my memory every day, but she’s not physically in my everyday life anymore. Therefore, at times like this when my mind stops to imagine what she might be like if she were here, it catches me by surprise to think about her as she would be now. The only thing I can think of to compare this feeling to is the shock of seeing my nephew for the first time in over a year. I think of him almost every day, but in my mind he is still the same as he was the last time I saw him, because that’s how he was when last we saw each other. It’s always a shock when I see him again and he is so much more grown-up, with new interests, skills, and vocabulary that he didn’t have the last time I saw him.

Hannah, you’ll always be my baby, but you’re growing up with Jesus, and sometimes I forget to remember you as you would have been NOW, probably because of how it twinges my heart to think that way, kind of like how it twinged my heart while meeting Adelaide’s kindergarten teacher to think of when I held her in my arms during her first day on earth.

Here’s a picture of Adelaide from when she was 2 years and 8 months old, about 3 weeks before Hannah was born. She was a creative goofball, had a definite sense of her independence, and was very insistent on exercising it.

Trolls Are Ugly

As I wrote about last time, in July I traveled to New York for a retreat with 30 other mamas of kids with CHD who have died. There I connected with wonderful ladies, including my friend, Amy Elzy, who maintains a Facebook group in honor of her daughter called Never Forget Lily Grace. She recently started a project called the Memorial Rock Project where people can paint rocks in honor and in memory of the children who have died, and leave them around town with #MemorialRockProject so people can look online to learn more.  In August, Amy committed to doing a video every day on her Never Forget Lily Grace page to honor her little girl, who was born and died in the month of August. Lily would have been going to kindergarten this year, as would our first child, Elijah. 

On one of her videos, Amy spoke about running into a person at the gym that day who was an employee at the children’s hospital when Lily Grace was there 5 years ago. The woman remembered Lily Grace’s name, and even the room number where she had died, and this blessed Amy so she spoke about it in the video. Her beautiful post was hijacked by an ugly personality who commented, “You’re sad because you talk about her all the time. You need to relax and just focus on the good memories of her instead of focusing on the sadness all the time.” Wow. If I could’ve reached through the screen and slapped that wench in the face, I would’ve. So instead I came to Amy’s defense with the following (paraphrased since the wench deleted her comment after I typed out my entry) response…

My response:

You said, “You’re sad because you continue to talk about it all the time. Just relax and focus on the good memories you had with your daughter.” JUST RELAX AND FOCUS ON THE GOOD MEMORIES?! When a parent says goodbye to a child who goes off to college and is sad because she has an empty nest, do people say, “Just relax and focus on the good memories instead of talking about your sadness all the time?” NO! OF COURSE NOT! Kindhearted people say things like, “I’m so sorry you’re going through this and it’s so hard for you. I’m here to listen if you want to talk with you. I’ll be glad to look through photo albums with you, or give you a hug. I haven’t had a child go to college yet, but I can imagine how hard it would be.” A kindhearted person would try to put herself in the shoes of the sad parent instead of telling her to just get over it, which is what you’re basically saying by telling Amy to relax and focus on the good memories. You’re telling her to stop talking about her daughter by saying she talks about her too much. Amy, you are brave to reveal so much of your heart in the presence of safe AND unsafe people. I hope that the unsafe people will watch your videos and learn something about kindness and compassion. 

___________________________________

The troll deleted her comments (and therefore mine, which was worded much more eloquently), but the gist of what I said is above.  The following day, Amy made another video and this person continued to make jerk comments and then delete them. Meanwhile, every other person on the page who is actually friends with Amy came to her defense.  Drama ensued. People stalked the FB profile of the troll, who clearly is not married, is young, and doesn’t have children but does have CATS. She’s a cat lady. She would probably be the person to say, “I know how you feel. My cat died and I was crushed.” 

My point in sharing all of this on my blog is that there are really insensitive people out there who will say mean things to hurt you. We live in a sinful, fallen world.  There are people who will intentionally try to get under your skin. These people are ugly and cruel. We allow them to have power over us and thwart the good that we want to do in sharing our stories with others. They mean nothing to us and yet their words hold power over us, making us feel that we have to justify our grief. It has been five years since my first baby died, and almost 3 years since my Hannah died. There are people out there who think I shouldn’t still be talking about my babies, that I should be “over it” by now.  They don’t realize that there will never be a day that goes by where I don’t think about ALL FIVE of my children. They are part of me. Just because a child goes off to college doesn’t mean they leave your memory or your heart. They will always be with you. 

When a baby elephant dies, the herd of elephants surrounds the parents, protecting them from danger while allowing them as much time as they need to grieve. It was a thing of beauty to see how the other ladies from the retreat and Amy’s other friends came to her defense, surrounding her with support and love, and chasing away the troll. 

If you ever have thoughts that a bereaved person needs to “move on” or “get over it,” please do yourself and everyone else a favor and never say those thoughts out loud. Even if it has been 30 years, the person has the right to travel the bereavement road at her own pace. I had a HOSPICE employee tell me two months after Hannah had died, that she thought I was “stuck” in my “complicated” grief and that I needed to seek professional help. Hospice people think they know everything about grief, even if they’ve never experienced it themselves! This person wasn’t married and had never had children, and yet she thought she was the expert in my grief when she should have just left her comments in her little brain. 

As a music therapist, I work with older adults, some with dementia. Sometimes a lady will hold a baby doll and just rock, and it makes me wonder what she has been through in her life. One in four women miscarry or have a stillborn baby, and that percentage is with MODERN medicine, so just imagine how many parents experienced the death of a child in the 1930s and 40s! And that was in the “olden days” when people were expected to “move on” and never talk about the baby again. 

I’m fortunate that in my family, we talked about the losses. My grandmother had a stillborn son, Gary, and she convinced my great aunt to let her hold the baby. Usually parents weren’t allowed to see the stillborn child or hold it, with the idea that they wouldn’t grieve as hard if they weren’t allowed to attach emotionally.  My dad always said that my aunt allowed my grandmother to hold the baby “if she promised not to cry and to give the baby right back.” Wow. I’m so glad we don’t live in that emotionally dead society, but in many ways we still do with the thoughts people still hold about how the bereaved should “get over it” and “move on.” 

How can you change your mindset to let in more grace for the bereaved, and kick judgmentalism to the curb? How are you judgmental without even realizing it? 

Healing of the Heart Retreat

I flew to New York by myself for the Healing of the Heart retreat hosted by Hayden’s Heart, which took place at Bailey Farms retreat center in Ossining, NY, July 13-16, 2017. Thirty-one “heart angel moms” attended, including myself and the seven ladies who worked so hard to organize and lead the retreat. Until now I haven’t taken the time to process the retreat and what I learned. It was such a life-changing experience that I have been at a loss for words (and those of you who know me, know this is rare), but mostly I’ve been too busy with life to take the necessary time to process. I like reading nice even blog posts with main points, and I think 10 is a good number for subtitles on a blog post, so here goes:

1.  WE ALLOW FEAR TO STOP US FROM MANY GOOD THINGS IN LIFE, BUT TRUST AND COURAGE ARE THE OPPOSITE OF FEAR, AND THEY PROPEL US TO ACTION.

I did not know a soul at the retreat beforehand. I had met my small group leader for lunch one time in May because she lives in Kansas City, but otherwise I didn’t know anyone.  And really, how well can you get to know someone in an hour at lunch? I knew her enough to know she was trustworthy, and she highly recommended that I go to the retreat when I expressed my fears and second thoughts about going. I’m glad I listened to Leslie.

2.  BLESSINGS RUSH IN WHEN WE OVERCOME THAT FEAR.

So many of the people I know allow fear to stop them from accomplishing great things, most of all myself. I almost allowed fear to stop me from completing my master’s degree. I allowed it to stop me from growing my business for 10 years. I’ve allowed it to stop me from many things during my nearly four decades on earth, and I’m so tired of it getting in the way. The problem is, when you overcome fear, you risk being hurt, but I figure if I can survive the grief of the death of my child, I can survive a little criticism and nasty people. After all, “hurt people hurt people,” which means that people who hurt others are hurting themselves, deep down. I feel compassion for them now rather than fear.

3.  WHEN SOMETHING OVERWHELMS YOU, FIRST PRAY, THEN BREATHE, AND THEN TAKE THE NEXT RIGHT STEP. 

Fear can be paralyzing if you let it.  It’s hard to know where to begin, so it’s easier to not begin at all, to lie in bed until noon or play on Facebook for hours rather than facing your fears.  When I completed my master’s thesis and pushed through to the end, it taught me that any huge task can be broken down into small tasks and accomplished a little at a time.  You become overwhelmed when you think of everything in the big picture, but it’s much easier to think of the next right step.  For me, when I’m truly overwhelmed, it helps to think of the next step that I should do, and sometimes that’s just going to the bathroom or taking a shower. Completing my thesis also taught me that success isn’t about intelligence or talent, it’s about overcoming fear and persevering to the goal. Tenacity doesn’t require intelligence or talent.

4.  PEOPLE WILL FAIL YOU, BUT THE ONES WHO LOVE YOU WOULD NEVER INTENTIONALLY HURT YOU. 

At the Healing of the Heart retreat, they handed out gift bags to all the ladies on the second day, filled with letters, mementos and other gifts that their support person had collected and sent ahead.  My support people either didn’t receive the email or didn’t understand the importance of their role in this task, and the result was that my bag was very empty compared to the others, which was really hard for me.  My support people have since made up for the hurt they caused, and I’ve definitely forgiven them. I include this story not to embarrass them, but to demonstrate how even the people closest to us will let us down sometimes.  It’s easy to become angry and bitter, assuming the worst about them and their intentions toward you.  Most people, especially those who love you, will not intentionally hurt you.  Those who would intentionally hurt you are probably emotionally wounded or never had the proper example of love, and it’s OK to keep those people at arm’s length as long as you don’t let unforgiveness make its home in your heart.

5.  WHEN GOD CALLS YOU TO DO SOMETHING GREAT, THERE WILL BE CRITICS AND NAYSAYERS. YOU CAN LOVE THEM WITHOUT LISTENING TO THEM.

There are some people in life who are just negative. I used to be one of them and still struggle with it, but I think I’ve come a long way in the last five years toward understanding and grace. Whenever anyone has done anything great, there have always been critics. You might be able to please some people some of the time, but you’ll never be able to please all people all of the time. If you’re a people pleaser and let others’ opinions of you dictate your actions, you’ll probably never accomplish anything life-changing because you’ll let that old fear of others’ opinions stall your progress.  I allowed my fear of receiving “No” as the answer to stop me from growing my music therapy business for TEN YEARS. I made excuses about how Topeka doesn’t value music therapy (which it doesn’t compared to some places) and hid behind those excuses, when really what was stopping me was my fear of rejection. I’ve faced several disappointments this year, but I’m proud to say that I’ve quadrupled my monthly income in the past 3 months, just by stepping past my fears and trying. What great thing will you accomplish in your life? What would you do if fear wasn’t stopping you, and if you weren’t hiding behind your excuses? What would you do if your fear of what others think or say about you wasn’t there?

I’m so proud of my friend, Ady Dorsett, who just launched her $3 million fundraising campaign last week for Hayden’s House of Healing.  She plans to complete the fundraising process within two years and she envisions a house on the east coast with 8 bedrooms (I think) and common meeting areas where bereaved families can come and experience healing.  There is a place on the west coast and my family had a beautiful time in August 2015 at Faith’s Lodge in Wisconsin, but there is no such place yet on the east coast.  I’m sure Ady will face criticism along the way. Three million dollars is a lot of money, and people with lots of money usually have strong opinions about how theirs should be used, but Ady is a strong and confident person, and I know she will accomplish this goal that God has put on her heart.  If you or your company want to help fund Hayden’s House of Healing, you can donate by clicking here.

6.  LOVING OTHERS IS MORE THAN LISTENING TO THEM; IT’S TRUSTING THEM ENOUGH TO SHARE YOUR OWN STRUGGLES.

On Monday, I went to visit my dear friend with stage 4 pancreatic cancer.  She has had 44 rounds of chemo over the past two years, and she’s now in a lot of pain and misery with her body, but her spirit and her faith are strong.  Since she can’t move around much now, she spends a lot of her time reading the Bible and praying for her family and friends. When I visited her, she first wanted to know what was going on with me since we last saw each other in May.  It’s been a busy summer for my family, so this was the first chance I’d had to visit her.  As I talked about my struggles, I felt like I had no right to be struggling, much less complaining to her about my struggles. I was there to support HER, not the other way around.  I felt guilty for sharing my struggles, and how they didn’t even compare to the ravages of cancer.

When you love someone, you trust them with your struggles.  By now you would think I would stop comparing my struggles to other people, but it’s still difficult for me to feel justified in my suffering when there is so much greater suffering in the world than mine. Each person’s pain is valid and is dependent on their previous life experiences.  For example, someone has a really bad fear of needles and it makes them throw up to think about giving themselves a shot of medicine, whereas that’s no big deal to a diabetic person who does so multiple times per day. Each person’s struggle is valid, even yours, and even mine.

7.  THE BEST WAY TO ENSURE PARTICIPATION IN SOMETHING SCARY IS TO HAVE PEOPLE PAY A SIGNIFICANT DEPOSIT AND THEN REFUND IT WHEN THEY ATTEND (OR APPLY IT TO THEIR PARTICIPATION COST).

Even though I received a scholarship to attend the retreat, I had to pay a $150 deposit to be registered. They gave that money back to me when I arrived.  They also required us to have our travel arrangements secured 10 weeks in advance.  I’m glad they had these policies in place, because otherwise I probably wouldn’t have attended the retreat due to fear of not knowing anyone.

8.  I AM A HEART MOM.

My baby, Hannah, lived for 3 days but we learned her fatal prognosis about 24 hours after she was born.  About 6 months after she died, I started searching on Facebook to see if there were any support groups for other moms of babies who had died from her condition.  There weren’t any for her particular condition (TAPVR) because most babies can be saved through surgery, but there was a group called Mommas of Heart Angels, through which I heard about the Healing of the Heart retreat.  I requested to join even though I didn’t feel like a “heart mom” since we never had the chance to fight for Hannah’s life.  We weren’t like so many heart families who ride the roller coaster of hope and emotions for months, waiting for a heart transplant or the next surgery, becoming experts on all heart-related definitions, advocating for the best care for their child, and getting to know the PICU nurses like family. We didn’t have that experience because she was only here for a short time, and then she was gone, so I never felt like a true heart mom before this retreat.  However, as God has a way of working, I was placed as roommates with another woman whose baby wasn’t diagnosed until she was 4 months old. They were told there was no surgical option to save her life, and they had to choose the time to say goodbye. She said she never felt validated as a heart mom before the retreat, either.

9.  EVEN WHEN YOU TRY TO KEEP OTHERS AT A SAFE EMOTIONAL DISTANCE, THE ONES WHO TRULY LOVE YOU WILL FIND A WAY INTO YOUR HEART.

If I know I’m never going to see someone again, I tend to distance myself from them. You see this happen a lot when a family announces that they will be moving across the country. You see it when someone gets cancer and many of their friends disappear. It’s a way of self-protection, and an attempt to avoid pain, but keeping others at bay just ends up increasing the pain in the long run because you end up alone and sad.  I’m glad that I kept trusting the ladies at the retreat, though I wish that I would have done even more to feel close to them. I’ve never felt like I truly belonged anywhere in my life, or that I had a “tribe,” but these ladies are the closest I’ve felt to having a tribe who really gets me.

10.  YOU’VE GOTTA TRY NEW THINGS CUZ THEY MIGHT BE GOOD. 

My daughter has had a fascination with Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood since she was 2 years old, and one of his songs is “You’ve Gotta Try New Foods Cuz They Might Taste Good.” The lesson that was reinforced for me at the retreat was that I need to try new things because they might be good for me. I’ve always made fun of yoga because I didn’t think I’d be physically able to do the poses, as I’m not flexible at all. I joked about wearing yoga pants but never having done yoga…until the retreat. We had three sessions of yoga, and although some of it was weird and I couldn’t do some things, overall it was a very positive and relaxing experience.  If all yoga is like that instead of downward dogs and human-pretzel-legs-behind-your-ears moves,  think I would like to experience more of it in the future. What new thing would you like to try that you’ve always been afraid of and hidden behind with humor? Would you go to a party and initiate conversation with new people? Would you volunteer at a hospice house with people who are dying? Would you set up a performance tour with songs you’ve written? Where will you go from here? If you can be brave and step beyond the fear, I guarantee you that you will grow and it will be good. And even if at first you don’t succeed, try again. 😉

Too Busy to Grieve

When my daughter died, my heart was torn and it felt like half of it went with her.  The outpouring of support we received helped us keep going, and we are so thankful for the love of our friends, family, and even total strangers.  I wrote a blog nearly every day after Hannah died.  The words wouldn’t stop, and my mind felt like it would explode until I could get them out through my fingers.  No words can really describe how I’ve been feeling lately.  I’ve been so busy that I haven’t even had time to process it myself, but subconsciously I’ve probably been keeping busy to avoid having to process the emotions, which are so much deeper now than they were in the beginning.

Recently, several of my friends who were “probably done” or “definitely done” having kids after two have made pregnancy announcements that they’re having a third child. On the one hand, I’m happy that they don’t have to deal with the pregnancy drama that I had. Whether they planned these babies or not, they love them and will make great parents to them.  I can’t quite articulate how I feel, except to say I feel left behind.

I feel like I should be part of the Three Kids club.  I AM part of the Three Kids club, but no one acknowledges my membership, or if they do, it’s with a sad face, eyes gazing down and a tone of apology.  Really I’m part of the Five Kids club, but I’m part of the Three Full-term Kids club, the Three Kids Who Lived Outside My Womb Club. No one nudges me and winks as they tease me about forgetting to take pictures of my baby each month. No one jokes that I might forget the third kid someplace, or that I need a vat of coffee every day to survive the chaos.  No one teases me that we need to learn how babies are made so we can stop at 3.  All the little things that drive parents of 3 (and more) kids crazy, I’m sure, are the things that should be driving me crazy, too, except no one treats me like a mother of 3.  No one treats me like a normal mother, because I’m a bereaved mother.

It’s not that I don’t want my friends to have any more kids, it’s that I wanted to have 3 living babies and I don’t. It’s not that I’m not happy for what they have, but that their happiness reminds me of my own sadness and the babies who are missing from our family.  I want each of my children to have two siblings they can grow up with, not one and a picture book of memories.  If I were younger and healthier, I would convince my husband to have another kid, but we are both scared and traumatized, both by the difficulty of my pregnancies and by the track record of results we’ve had, and we kind of want to end our “having babies journey” on a “win.”

I’m preparing to attend a retreat in July in New York for bereaved mothers of children with congenital heart defects. The person who started the retreat also started a foundation in memory of her son called Hayden’s Heart. If you want to help defray the travel costs for the retreat, please message me. I think it’s going to cost about $600-$700 to fly out there (between the flight itself, baggage fees, shuttle to and from the airport, and work that I’ll be missing that week), though thankfully I received a full scholarship for the retreat itself.

I’ve heard of many people who have started a foundation in memory of their children, to help other parents traveling on this journey of CHD and child loss, and to raise awareness and research funding for others with their children’s diagnoses. We received a wonderful gift basket from Little Light in Kansas City while we were at Children’s Mercy, and those things are still part of our box of Hannah’s treasured things.  Most of these foundations were begun within a year of the child’s death. I’ve been feeling like a failure as Hannah’s mother because I didn’t start a foundation, don’t do public speaking events about her (though I would like to, just no opportunities and I don’t exactly know how to “market” that), and I don’t even write about her very often anymore.  The only thing I can do for my baby now that I can’t hold her in my arms is keep her memory alive, and I’m not doing a very good job of that.

I attended a grief retreat recently where the speaker, Dr. Alan Wolfelt, said that the brain fog of grief is very normal, though it can tend to make people feel crazy.  I would like to know how anyone can have high enough executive functioning in the acute grief phase to be able to start a foundation. I barely have enough executive function now to write a blog once a month and keep all of life’s other details straight. Maybe this is my new normal – being so scatterbrained that I do nothing well and constantly feel stressed because I feel like I’m forgetting something. Maybe this heightened level of anxiety is just how life will be now, but I really don’t like it.

To end this blog post, and because several of you have been asking me what exactly is stressing me out, I’ll list all the stressors in my life. 🙂 Being a good wife and mother, living with my mother while we list our house (not stressful because of her, but because none of our stuff has a place and I’m constantly misplacing things/spending time looking for things/looking at the mess I’ve created in her house but feeling too overwhelmed to do anything about it), potty training a puppy (anyone want to take a foster puppy for a couple of months?!), getting help for our youngest daughter’s potential developmental delay, marketing music therapy to local nursing homes, music therapy sessions/billing, starting to pack our house, lowering the price on our house and figuring out what to do with it/why it’s not selling, keeping up with Norwex consulting/team leading and trying to share Juice Plus with others (both of which have been taking the “back seat” on the Stress Bus lately), Bible study (back seat), moms group (now done for the summer), documentation for music therapy recertification that’s due this year, taxes (now done, obviously), taking care of my sick daughters and husband while trying not to get sick myself, keeping an eye on my crawling baby in a non-babyproofed house, keeping an eye on my 5yo daughter who likes to give the baby small items to choke on, taking care of my 5yo’s wound from falling out of bed last week, keeping my 5yo from punching a screwdriver into her stuffed animals, extreme lack of sleep, trying to lose weight but not succeeding due to stress eating, trying to list things on social media that we’re selling to prepare for the move, debt/finances, church choir and solo performances, extensively researching an issue that’s on my mind a lot lately…I’m sure there are many other stressors but those are the ones that come to mind right now.

I don’t want anyone to read this and pity me or think they shouldn’t bother me with anything, because amid all of this activity, I haven’t made time for friendships or even my marriage, and I obviously haven’t made time to take care of myself. I would love it if my husband and I could go on a real date. I would love it if a friend would come and kidnap me to get a massage or my hair done, or take me to get coffee and do some coloring time. I would melt if a friend offered to take my kids for an entire day so I could spend some time writing (or catching up on the bajillion things on my plate).  Nathan and I haven’t had a real date for at least 2 months, and I haven’t had much time with girlfriends lately.  I’m sharing all of this so that you can understand why I’ve been a crappy friend/wife/daughter/mother/Norwex consultant and leader/correspondent/Juice Plus rep/church soloist, etc. (and to remind myself what all I need to be doing LOL). What am I forgetting? The constant feeling that I’m forgetting something is going to make me collapse. I don’t think anyone else can relate to this level of scatterbrainedness and task-to-brain-and-time ratio overload. If you can, text me. I probably won’t respond to any other communication methods because I’ll forget. 🙂

PS: This blog brought to you courtesy of me choosing to sit down to write while dinner baked, ignoring the total mess around me, sticking my 5yo on a movie, skipping watching the news, praying the baby kept sleeping, sticking the dogs in their kennels, and snapping at my husband when he got home from work and questioned why I was sitting on the couch at 6:30 when the dogs haven’t been fed, dinner isn’t ready, and I have to leave for church choir in 15 minutes…but at least I wrote it! 😉 This is exactly what I mean – if I take time for self-care, then everything else suffers for it. If I take time for music therapy marketing, then other things get neglected. How do people do everything well? I certainly haven’t figured it out yet.

Hope Restored

Lately when people ask me how I am, I’m not really sure how to respond (because I’m not sure how I really am), so I just say something like, “I’m doing well – just living life. It’s nice to not have anything traumatic happening right now in our lives.” I haven’t made the time in recent months to sit down and write, which is truly how I sort out my thoughts and feelings. Usually by the time I get the girls put to bed, I’m too tired to think and write at night, plus if it ends up being emotionally difficult, then I have trouble falling asleep. Finally last night I asked my husband if he could pick up our daughter from preschool today so that I could have two solid hours to write, and he agreed. Life has kept me busy with our almost-one-year-old baby, our almost-five–going-on-fifteen-year-old daughter, a new puppy (do not ever get a new puppy when you have a baby), my husband’s fluctuating job schedule and recent promotion to assistant director of security (yay!!!), my mother’s broken arm last fall, and trying to get my new Juice Plus business off the ground. Then we throw in preparing to put the house on the market this spring, trying to get taxes ready for two self-employment endeavors, preparing for a joint milestone birthday party for both girls, trying to keep my Norwex business going while trying to expand my music therapy business, all while attending an intensive weekly Bible study, moms group, monthly ladies’ small group, church choir section leader and soloist, trying to keep up with friends but doing a poor job…My priorities of being a good wife, mother, and daughter have not been doing as well. My husband says I’m stretching myself too thin, and when I write all that out, I realize that he is right, but I’m not sure what to cut out.  All these things are good, but I think I’m making myself busy to avoid having to feel sad anymore. I’m so tired of feeling sad all the time, and the busyness keeps me from having to think and feel the deep feelings because I’m too busy thinking about everyday details.

When an acquaintance asks if we plan to have any more children, I change the subject. When a stranger asks how we like having two children, I pause. When a friend gives an awkward side glance after I mention Hannah’s name, I feel remorseful. When a former friend sees me coming and walks the other way, I hurt. When someone is learning Adelaide and Bethany’s name and they ask if and when we’re going to have a “C,” I don’t know what to say.  Why can’t my story be happy-go-lucky? Why does it have to make other people feel awkward or avoid me? I’ve learned that true friends who love me unconditionally are very few, for true friendship and being a true friend are rare and precious gifts with which not everyone is blessed, even if they think they are. The endurance of a friendship is not known until it faces strong winds, and if it doesn’t drown in the deep waters, it usually will stand.

Hannah would’ve been two years old on December 10th, and I spent her birthday doing mundane things like dishes, laundry, watching TV, and Facebook stalking, instead of singing, cutting cake, and laughing. I felt guilty that I didn’t plan anything for her birthday this year, not even a balloon release like we did last year.  My baby has been gone for 2 years, but my savior has been gone for 2,000 years. Both of them are in the same Heaven, and yet my heart rejoices that Jesus is there, and it grieves that Hannah is there.  She is happy, healthy, healed and whole in Heaven, and yet my fallible arms still yearn for her. I think about what would have been. I would have had 3 children to chase around, the younger two separated by only 15 months.  I would’ve had to watch baby Bethany a lot more closely because Hannah would probably be trying to give her sister things she shouldn’t have, whereas Adelaide is old enough to know what is ok for Bethany to have (for the most part). I’d have 3 babies waking me up in the night instead of just 2.

This month is congenital heart defect awareness month, and I read something about the top causes of CHD in babies, and one of the things listed was maternal obesity.  We were part of a genetic research study last year that provided “inconclusive” results, so my latest form of self-torture is to think that my poor health and nutrition caused Hannah’s death. I don’t think I’ve told anyone that, but I guess it’s out there for the world to read now.

As with most of my blog posts, this one hasn’t been planned out, so I’ll just end by including some words that came to me back in October. I hope your day is blessed. God is good, no matter what you’re facing today – no matter what.

There is a fierceness in God’s mercy, in his strength, a quietness. He’ll break through all my barriers to bring me peace and rest. There is a fortitude in the sacrifice, displayed for all to see. He’ll melt the prison bars with love to let me walk on, free.

Dark midnight houses pain and death.  Restore the light in my heart, the hope in my spirit. Restore the years that the locusts have eaten. Restore to me the joy of my salvation. Renew a clean spirit within me. Cast me not away from Your presence, Lord. Recapture my heart with your song of love. No other love could ever be truer to me than You. Always present, never failing, forgiving when I deserved death.  My only response should be thankfulness, but so often I continue to turn away from You, replacing Your presence in my life with other things that don’t compare to You ~ my husband, my children, my technology, my friends, my music, my writing, my business, my sleep…All of these things are Yours, not mine. If there is anything my life has taught me, it is that nothing is mine. Everything is under Your benevolent control. All things can be used for good and Your glory, but I’m sorry for giving them the place of honor in my heart and mind that You deserve.  It should be reserved for You alone, God. Please forgive me, again.

Restore the years that the locusts have eaten. Restore to me the joy of my salvation. Renew a clean spirit within me. The light of Jesus always casts a shadow of hope in the darkness.

Note: I found this image from the following website – http://kingschurchiver.org/church-life/outreach-and-mission/ I wanted to use it for this blog post, as it ties the contents together nicely.

Essential Clean Health

I have a Facebook page called Essential Clean Health that I began the spring after Hannah died.  I felt God calling me to post articles that I came across that taught me something new, because maybe if the information was new to me, it would be new to others as well. Here is what I wrote on the page tonight explaining why I began it…

I don’t post many personal things on this page due to its public nature, but I wanted to explain something about the reason that I began it 2 years ago. My husband and I had a baby who died when she was 3 days old in December of 2014. Her name was Hannah, and she had a congenital heart condition, the cause of which neither doctors nor subsequent genetic tests could determine. Her death is still a mystery to all, but it’s no mystery how she captured the hearts of many with her tiny broken one. In the spring after she died, I was searching for the reason. Could it have been something I consumed while pregnant? Could it have been something I was exposed to? Was it a genetic factor?

 

I took a hard look at our lifestyle and discovered that many of the things my culture had taught me were OK, could actually be causing harm – things like bleach, chemical products, pharmaceuticals, pesticides, genetically modified food, etc. Previously, I had been very judgmental of those who led a natural lifestyle. I thought they were just paranoid, misled, and stupid. It turns out that it was I who was misled and stupid to be so closed-minded and self-righteous.

 

Coincidentally, the order of this site name, “Essential Clean Health,” ended up being the order in which I have journeyed. First I became a distributor for Young Living ESSENTIAL Oils in February 2015. I had been taking Xanax multiple times per day for my anxiety after Hannah’s death, and haven’t taken it since discovering Peace & Calming oil.

 

Next, in March 2015, I signed up as an independent consultant for Norwex, using it to supplement my family’s income for nearly the past two years. I went from Pine Sol and bleach and Lysol to water and a microfiber cloth. I went from locking all the lower cabinets in our house to only one where we keep the dish soap and old toothbrushes that I use to clean. Norwex products are great and I continue to love them and enjoy helping others discover a CLEANer way.

 

Recently, my husband and I have desired to become healthier. My dad died a year ago from a heart attack at age 74, and my husband’s parents are in their early 60s and struggle immensely with their health, and we want to take steps now to hopefully be able to enjoy our later years. My sweet, supportive husband has lost many days to migraines, and I miss out on our children’s childhood due to my weight and the difficulty of getting on the floor to play with them. Life should not look like this when we are in our mid-thirties! We know that we’ve done the best we could just to survive the unimaginable and come out stronger, but we both sense that now is the time for change and to move forward into HEALTH.

 

Last Wednesday, after more than a month of research, I decided to sign up as a Juice Plus independent representative. God introduced me to the third part of “Essential Clean Health.” My husband honored me by saying, “Honey, you are a smart woman and I trust your judgment. Let’s do this together.” I had heard of this company since my college days because my best friend and her family have taken JP for 20 years, but I had always discounted it due to my previous mindset. All it contains is dehydrated fruits, vegetables, and berries in a capsule. How could something that God put on His good earth for our sustenance be harmful? The answer, I have discovered after careful research (read: legitimate research, not just Google searches where I found many naysayers) into the integrity of the company and the products, is that it cannot be harmful.

 

The average American gets 1.5 servings of fruits and vegetables in their diet. That includes french fries and ketchup. We are supposed to get 9-13 servings per day, and double that for athletes. Even if you are the rare American who does include sufficient servings in his or her diet, the fruits and vegetables you buy at the store contain lower phytonutrients in them because they have to be picked weeks before they’re ripe in order to get to the store ready to eat. Think about it. Just as the brain of a premature baby misses out on SO MUCH developing in the last 2-3 weeks of pregnancy, so also our fruits and vegetables are missing out on their final stages of development. I used to wish as a kid that there could be fruits and veggies in pill format so that I wouldn’t have to always eat apples and bananas and kale and eggplant…And it turns out that there has been such a thing for the last 23 years with Juice Plus!

 

If you’re still reading this, it means that you either care about me personally, and/or you care about learning how to improve your health journey. Please let me know how I can help you on your journey. I’d be so happy to discuss with you further anything in this post or otherwise. I really want to help and teach others to know a better way than our culture teaches. We are not meant to survive; we are meant to thrive and bring glory to God, and our nutrition choices play a key aspect in our health. We are not meant to grow old and hunched over, taking 15-30 drugs per day in a nursing home! We are meant to embrace life to its fullest until God calls us home. Decline in health is natural as we age, but the extent to which our older adults experience it today is not natural. What will you do today to choose health for yourself and your family?

Have you stocked up for the storm?

As frantic food hoarders filled their shopping carts to the brim for the impending ice storm this weekend, I dragged my two children from store to store to do some other shopping and returns I had been needing to do. I went to the grocery store for one more gallon of milk and some more ice melt, but otherwise I had finished preparing for the storm when I went shopping on Wednesday and bought our groceries for the week. Today is Friday, and some places like the mall were practically empty, but Sam’s Club and Dillons were madhouses. The way some people were rushing around with frantic looks on their faces, you would think we were all going to die from being impaled with an icicle if we have to step out of our houses.

I noticed a marked difference between the crowds that were out on Wednesday versus the crowds that were out today.  The ones on Wednesday were calmly buying the things on their lists. I saw many more people with lists on Wednesday than I did today. The Wednesday shoppers looked purposeful, but the Friday shoppers looked harried.

There is a storm coming, and too many people wait until the last minute to be prepared. Not many people prepare ahead of time, due to busy lives, selfishness, or denial of reality. People live in the moment in today’s society, and the moment isn’t here until it arrives. How do we know the storm is coming if we haven’t seen it? No one can SEE a storm before it arrives.  We know a storm is coming because we watch the news and trust the meteorologists, the ones who warn us of what is to come so that we can be prepared. We know what awaits us, but yet we put off the preparations. There is no avoiding this storm; it’s coming. We can either be unprepared and suffer with cold and hunger if our power goes off with the half-inch of predicted ice, or we can be prepared and make memories with our families.

It struck me today that this scenario is much like our spiritual future. There is a storm coming. When Jesus returns, he will ride in on the clouds of Heaven. All the pictures I’ve seen depicting that day are beautiful fluffy white clouds with glorious light shining through them, but where does the Bible describe those clouds? I don’t recall any passages that say the clouds are reassuring and picturesque, so please correct me if I’m wrong.  What if they are dark and stormy clouds that elicit fear, fierce with a raging and powerful wind? Those who don’t believe that Day of Judgment is coming will be sorely awakened when it arrives. Those who have been preparing their hearts and their homes ahead of time will be safe; they will rejoice and be ready to go Home when He gathers His people.

Jesus said in Mark 13: 23-27, “So be on your guard; I have told you everything ahead of time. But in those days, following that distress, ‘the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from the sky, and the heavenly bodies will be shaken.’  At that time people will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory. And he will send his angels and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of the heavens.” I’m not sure about you, but peaceful, fluffy white clouds don’t really apply to this scene in my mental picture. Stars falling from the sky and the shaking of heavenly bodies will probably be pretty scary to those who don’t believe that day is coming and aren’t ready to face it.  Those who bury their heads in the proverbial sand of doubt, agnosticism, and “all paths lead to God” will be caught off guard when the judgment time comes. Every created being will have to stand before God one day and answer Him when He asks if they knew and loved His Son.

Jesus continues in Mark 13:32-37, “But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. Be on guard! Be alert! You do not know when that time will come. It’s like a man going away: He leaves his house and puts his servants in charge, each with their assigned task, and tells the one at the door to keep watch.  Therefore keep watch because you do not know when the owner of the house will come back—whether in the evening, or at midnight, or when the rooster crows, or at dawn. If he comes suddenly, do not let him find you sleeping. What I say to you, I say to everyone: ‘Watch!’”

Are you watching, or are you sleeping? Are you ready, or are you living in denial and disbelief? The judgment is scary for those who deny Christ, but for those who turn to Him there is love, acceptance, mercy, and grace – even those who wait until the very  last minute. Don’t wait to “stock up” until that day because it may be too late once He arrives on the clouds. The shelves may be empty. We don’t know when the day or the hour is coming – not even Jesus knows that info, but only God the Father – so why wait? Make sure your heart is stocked up today, and live on in the peace and confidence of your salvation!

Poems

December 14, 2014: This was written from my hospital bed at Truman. I couldn’t sleep that night, not only because my daughter had just died the previous evening, but also because of the thunderstorm outside and the evil bed that randomly deflated throughout the night. Since I couldn’t sleep or move around much, and I was alone with just my cell phone for company, I wrote this poem…

As the rain pours down outside my window pane while I lie in bed alone, the darkness crashes through the life I knew, but someday I’ll stumble home. Who holds my heart within my chest as it slowly groans and breaks? How much more of this life can I take? Sweet Jesus, hold me close. I cannot bear to look at You, but I also can’t bear to leave. So until I cross through Heaven’s gates, unto You I choose to cleave. To me there is no other choice except to run to you, despite the anger that I feel, I know you feel it, too. I forget sometimes that you cried, too, when Jesus was in agony. He suffered there with open arms. Thank you for letting him die for me. Because he did this out of love, I’ll be able to be with them and you, for all eternity.

December 13, 2016:

Two years gone and I miss you still the same.
Your spirit is with Jesus, but your memory remains.
In the darkness of the midnight, there’s an aching in my heart.
You should be in my arms, but instead we are apart.
The presence of your absence is as whelming as a flood
Raging over all my sadness like a crimson tide of blood.
I keep thinking time will heal me, but time only marches on
To bring me closer to your presence with Love’s eternal song.
So when you’re running through the flowers with your brothers by your side,
Remember Mommy loves you, but it wasn’t you who died.
You have gone to glory with your heart completely healed.
It’s our hearts who are broken and await the King revealed.

Thank you, God, for all your blessings!

Have you ever asked a Christian how they are, and they smile wistfully and say something like, “I am blessed; God is good.”?  In my experience, usually those people go on to tell about something great going on in their lives, like buying a new house or car, finding out they are pregnant, getting a great job, paying off all their debt, welcoming a new grandbaby to the family, etc. Rarely do they follow up “I am blessed” with statements like this:

• I need Jesus to help me get through this day.
• My father died today.
• Someone cut me off in traffic and I thanked God for the chance to pray for them.
• God showed me so many bits of wisdom today as I read my Bible.
• Today my doctor told me I have cancer, and all I could think about was how God was going to show his glory through my life and death.
• My daughter said she hated me and instead of getting angry, I was able to hug her and tell her how much I love her.
• A stranger spit in my face because he saw me thanking God for my meal.

Jesus says in Matthew 5:1-12 that people are blessed because they possess the kingdom of heaven, they will be comforted, they will inherit the earth, they will be satisfied, they will receive mercy, the will see God, they will be called sons of God, and they will have great reward in heaven. The blessings that Jesus talks about are spiritual blessings, not physical earthly blessings, and they belong to those who seek Jesus.  Christians possess the kingdom of heaven now, here on earth.  This means we don’t have to worry about the many things that cloud our perspective.  My husband and I don’t have to worry about how next month’s bills will be paid. God will provide. My friend with stage 4 cancer doesn’t have to fear missing chemo because she doesn’t have a ride; God will provide. My friend whose husband died last year doesn’t have to be alone this Christmas; God will surround her with family and friends who love her.  God uses material things to bless people, but the blessings that Jesus took the time to teach the people about were not materialistic at all, but spiritual in nature.

Sometimes, I have found in my life, God doesn’t provide until the very last minute.  I think this is so that he can show others his power.  If we have a $2,000 bill due on February 1^st and we will lose our house if it’s not paid on time, and God nudges someone to send us $2,000 in November, that is wonderful. But in another scenario, we have a $2,000 bill due February 1^st and God nudges someone to send us $2,000 on January 28^th.  We have kept faith that He will provide in his perfect timing and have been asking many people to pray for our situation, so God gets much glory and recognition when everyone hears how he provided in a way that only God could do.

I think that in our prosperous American culture, where the “American dream” and the “prosperity Gospel” have become synonymous, it is too easy for Christians to forget the true definition of God’s blessing.  Yes, God does provide and bless us with material things. He provides for every need. The United Nations estimates that 21,000 people per day die from starvation, and most are children.  Does God bless them and provide for their needs? If they are seeking Jesus, then yes.  Theirs IS the kingdom of heaven NOW.  Do you know what heaven is like? I don’t, but I have a hazy idea, and it is wonderful beyond my imagination.  When my earthly body is dead and all I have is my spirit, the only things I need will be found in heaven with Jesus.

We hear that 21,000 people per day die on earth due to starvation, and we feel overwhelmed with sorrow. The physical need is so great and is not being met. People are starving to death and other people are throwing away food that rots in their refrigerator. Even those like our family who are living below the “American poverty level” are rich compared to the rest of the world. We have two vehicles, own a safe home, eat 3 meals per day, own multiple pairs of shoes for each family member, have enough money to give gifts to family members at Christmas, and yes, we throw away food that rots in our refrigerator.

We are blessed, but not because of the material things we own, for that would mean that the 21,000 people who die each day are not blessed by God.  We are blessed because as Christians, we possess the kingdom of heaven NOW. We are comforted in our mourning. We will inherit the new earth when it comes down from heaven. We are satisfied with righteousness. We receive mercy when we deserve the punishment of death. We see God. We are called children of God. We have a great reward in heaven.  Let us remember our many blessings today, both physical and spiritual, and be thankful to God for giving them all. I’m thankful that God doesn’t withhold blessings from his people; he gives them to us now, and it’s our job to take possession of the blessings.

Matthew 5:2-12
And he opened his mouth and taught them, saying:|
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
“Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.
“Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.
“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.
“Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
“Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”

Life is a pendulum; God’s goodness the constant

Life has been for me a pendulum between pain and happiness.  Whenever I become contented with the peaceful times in my life, I can expect a time of pain to follow.  I’ve become scared of happy times because I never know what will follow. My therapist says this is the trauma response, and she encourages me to fill my mind with scripture about God’s promises. Standing on the promises I cannot fall, listening every moment to the Spirit’s call. Trusting in my Savior as my all in all, standing on the promises of God.

Jeremiah 29:10-14: ¹⁰ This is what the Lord says: “When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will come to you and fulfill my good promise to bring you back to this place. ¹¹ For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. ¹² Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. ¹³ You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. ¹⁴ I will be found by you,” declares the Lord, “and will bring you back from captivity.^[b] I will gather you from all the nations and places where I have banished you,” declares the Lord, “and will bring you back to the place from which I carried you into exile.”

[Side note to say that history has never been my strong subject, and particularly Old Testament history. My eyes glaze over when I read about dates and historical events. History was always my worst subject in school, and Old Testament class, along with World History, were my two worst grades at Wheaton College.  When I was researching this subject, about which I knew little, I probably missed several details, so hopefully my inferences are correct.]

God carried his people into exile, banishing them for years. If my math is right, they were gone for almost 100 years.  They left in “waves” by 3 or 4 deportations, and they returned in waves (not all at once).  I bet they didn’t understand why they were being taken into exile. They had to leave their homes to go to an unknown place, and they didn’t have all of the comforts of home. They faced fear, upheaval, and trusted God to provide for their needs. Maybe they questioned why they had to leave. He was protecting them from destruction by exiling them, but maybe they didn’t realize that at the time. He knew the plans that he had for them were good. He planned to prosper them and not harm them, to give them hope and a future. If they had remained comfortable in their homes, they would have been destroyed with the fall of Jerusalem. God removed his people in order to protect them from destruction. I’m hesitant to write on this subject because I’m definitely not a historical scholar, nor am I sure that I understand the details of this exile. What I do know is that God has good plans for his people. He plans to prosper us and not harm us. Any harm that comes to us is not from God, but from the one who tries to thwart God’s goodness in our lives.

What have you faced in your life that was uncomfortable? What experiences have been upheavals for you, or even gut-wrenching pain? How has God used those to bring you good? He works all things for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose (Romans 8:28). He is the ultimate miracle worker, and he can easily turn the worst times in our life to good, if we allow him to move in our lives. What are you allowing to hinder God’s movement of good things in your life? Are you allowing doubt, fear, gluttony, selfishness, pride, deceit, jealousy, and other sins to reign, or are you daily seeking God’s goodness?

Deep Conversations at Preschool Dropoff

My daughter told me on the way to preschool this morning that she had a scary dream last night. When I asked her what she dreamed about, she said, “Hannah,” and then I asked her what part of her dream made her scared. She said Hannah was able to talk and asked her if she would come to Heaven to play with her. Addie then started crying and said how much she misses her sister, and she wishes that she could play with her. We talked about how Hannah can’t come back here and play with her, because once you go to Heaven, you can’t come back. I told her we can look at pictures of Hannah and talk about her, but she can never come back to play with her. I didn’t reassure my daughter about not having to go to Heaven for a long time, because as humans we don’t know the day or the hour when we will be called home.  I could have driven through the intersection a minute later and we both could have been in Heaven.  You never know your time to die, and I don’t like to reassure her that she’s going to live a long life, because that’s not mine to promise.  However, I think that’s really what she was scared about, because she said that she was scared when Hannah asked her to go to Heaven and play with her.  As I drove on, I was so sad that I was even having this conversation with my four-year-old.  How many other parents have to have conversations like these on their way to preschool dropoff?

I came home and got my breakfast ready as the baby was still sleeping.  Since my husband has told me I have to reign in my Starbucks habit ;-), I poured my sub-par attempt at cold brew into my favorite mug, the one I ordered from Shutterfly last year. It has three pictures on it: Hannah’s newborn picture, the beautiful sunset picture with her name written in the sand, and a picture of Adelaide excitedly holding her sister, who had just died a few minutes before (picture below). People sometimes see the picture and think the red spot on Hannah’s cheek is the remnant of an over-zealous lipstick kiss, but really it was the beginning of necrosis setting in. This picture makes me feel happy and sad at the same time, but mostly sad. Adelaide was SO excited to be holding her baby sister, finally! She didn’t understand the permanence of that moment. Even almost 2 years later, sometimes she still asks if we can go to the hospital to play with Hannah.

My friend who I mentioned in this blog post miscarried her baby a couple of weeks ago. It took her body almost 2 weeks to miscarry. While she was still waiting, I asked her if I could pray for her aloud and she agreed, so I asked God if He would please allow her to see her baby and hold him or her, and that she could get some good pictures to remember the baby by.  God was faithful to answer, and she miscarried three days after we prayed. She didn’t want to have a D&C, and she really wanted to miscarry naturally at home.  I found that God answered this prayer for me with Peter. I somehow knew before it happened that I would miscarry on the day that I did, and I prayed that God would allow me to see and hold my baby, and to get good pictures because I didn’t get any of that with our first miscarriage (Elijah), and he answered both of those prayers. Whenever my heart has been breaking, God has been faithful to answer the “detail prayers” the way I wanted, even if He didn’t answer the “please let my baby live” prayers the way I wanted.

I had to go pick my daughter up from preschool this morning before I finished this blog, and now it’s time for bed soon, so I won’t try to wrap this one up nicely. I talked with my best girlfriend tonight when I was feeling lonesome. We’ve shared a lot these past 17 years of friendship, and I’m so thankful she’s still in my life. She’s a lifelong friend, for sure. I need someone like her who’s so laid back and forgiving, since I have plenty of times when I need to ask for her forgiveness. I’ve never known her to hold a grudge against anyone, which is a rare gift and something to which I aspire. I’ve definitely come a long way in recent years.

We Chose the Day She Died

How many of you can say that you chose the day your baby died? It’s a strange responsibility, and an even stranger task to have on your life’s “bucket” list. Now, obviously we didn’t decide how long Hannah would live after she was disconnected from the life support machine (she lived almost an hour on her own), but we did decide which day to have the team of 8 or so staff members who only worked with the ECMO machine come and disconnect it.  We based our decision on when the photographer was available, and when family members were available.

We weren’t able to hold her until after she had been disconnected from the machine (pictured above) since the tubes were too fragile and too easily disconnected while she was on it. The machine that kept her with us for 3 days made me feel conflicted. I was in awe of its power to sustain life, afraid of its objectivity and enormity, and angry with how it kept me from holding my baby, all at the same time. When I finally did get to hold her, my tiny girl struggled to breathe as she laid in my arms bravely making the journey to Jesus, and I prayed that she wasn’t suffering. My heart cried out for a miracle as I helplessly held on to hope. Maybe this would be one of those stories you hear about where doctors all said it was hopeless, and they disconnected the machine and she miraculously lived, healed. God can do anything, and I prayed that would be our story. I wanted so desperately to take her home with us and watch her grow, to see how much like her older sister she would look.

Life is a vapor and the brevity is a treasure. No matter if my babies live 3 weeks in the womb, 3 days on life support, 3 years as a healthy toddler, or whether they bury me, it is a treasure to carry them in my body and my heart. I need to remember this when my 4.5-year-old is trying my patience. And actually, no matter how impatient I get with her incessant talking/singing/shouting/crying/whining/dancing/jumping/etc during her waking hours, my patience (or lack thereof) is mutually exclusive from my love for her. I am thankful to have had the opportunity to carry all 5 of my children in my womb, and I’m so thankful to have the opportunity to continue to enjoy 2 of them every day.

I met with a friend the other day who is waiting for her body to miscarry her baby after 15 weeks of loving and hoping. They found out last week that there was no longer a heartbeat. This is the fourth baby she has carried to Heaven, and the fourth baby who has known only her warm, nurturing body as his or her home.  This was the fourth baby who never knew this cold, harsh world, but also never knew her kiss on his or her forehead, nor the satiation of nursing while she held her baby’s head gently in her hand. She told me that it gets harder and harder to keep her faith strong, the more losses she faces. “God could have stopped this, but he didn’t,” she said softly. I certainly understand that, and I didn’t have any answers as I sat there crying with her. She also said she keeps expecting God to do a miracle and make her baby’s heart beat again. I understand how deep the despair gets to make you hope in the impossible. My baby had no veins connecting her heart and her lungs. There was no way she was going to live. And yet I hoped for the impossible as she laid dying in my arms. Some may call this denial or shock. I call it love. I loved her so much that I just wanted to keep her in my arms forever. Now I am only able to keep her in my heart.

God could have stopped this, but he didn’t.  I have wrestled with this fact in my own life, trying to reconcile my painful experiences with my Christian faith. Is God not able, or does he not want to change my story? If he doesn’t want to, does he not love me enough to make my story full of blessings instead of pain? If he loves me, how can he let me suffer so? Does this mean I have done something wrong to merit all the pain? Is this God still loving, now that I’ve gone through the trenches? Is everything I’ve always learned about him true? If he is the man of all sorrows, will he really take mine? I still ask these questions, and all I ever get is the silence of God.  “Even followers get lost, because we all get lost sometimes,” Andrew Peterson writes in his song called “The Silence of God.” He continues, “When the questions dissolve into the silence of God, the aching may remain, but the breaking does not in the holy, lonesome echo of the silence of God.” This has been my experience with grief.  I’m not sure the aching ever goes away, or at least the aching in my heart is still there. The raw, excruciating pain of immediate grief that breaks you to the core, however, thankfully does go away.

I started a YouTube playlist when Hannah died, and every time I hear a song that speaks to me in my grief, I add it to the playlist. The playlist is quite long by now, and I listen to it whenever I’m feeling sad and missing my babies.  I used to listen to it multiple times per day, and now I listen to it about once a week or so. As I sit in Starbucks trying to concentrate today, I plugged in my earphones and am listening to it to get me in the mood for writing this blog. I’ve experienced some deep hurt from other people in recent months, and I’ve questioned how much of my heart I should really be sharing on a blog for all to see.  I’ve found that people were very gracious and forgiving right after Hannah died, but the more time that passes, it seems that people have forgotten that I’m still fragile, especially if I express a definitive opinion about anything other than my own experience. I don’t write about Hannah much anymore, but that doesn’t mean that I’m “all better.”  I still think about her multiple times every day. The raw stabbing pain when I remember her has mostly gone away, but the dull ache remains. You learn to live with the grief and with the absence of your loved one, but you never “get past” it.

Eventually I think I’ll get to the point where I will be comfortable with the goodness of God again, but for now I’m just trusting that what he tells me about himself is true, even when I don’t understand how it reflects my life experiences. I have to trust that God’s plans are still to prosper me. He is still good and loving. What the enemy meant for evil, God turns for our good…eventually. The process of that turning is sometimes tempestuous, but I do believe He will turn this hard life for my good and His glory. He has not forgotten me. He is with me in the fire and the flood. He is faithful forever, perfect in love, and sovereign over me.

How fitting that the song playing from Hannah’s playlist is this one as I end today’s writing:

Sovereign Over Us by Michael W. Smith

There is strength within the sorrow, There is beauty in our tears
You meet us in our mourning, With a love that casts out fear
You are working in our waiting, Sanctifying us
When beyond our understanding, You’re teaching us to trust

CHORUS
Your plans are still to prosper, You have not forgotten us
You’re with us in the fire and the flood
You’re faithful forever, Perfect in love
You are sovereign over us

You are wisdom unimagined, Who could understand your ways
Reigning high above the heavens, Reaching down in endless grace
Youʼre the Lifter of the lowly, Compassionate and kind
You surround and You uphold me, Your promises are my delight

Even what the enemy means for evil
You turn it for our good, You turn it for our good and for your glory
Even in the valley You are faithful
Youʼre working for our good, Youʼre working for our good and for your glory

Racism in America

This blog post concerns a controversial topic and will probably alienate me from some of my friends who think differently from me. Or maybe those people won’t even read this because they think they know the right view to hold, or they assume they know what I believe and refuse to even read what I have to say. Read at your own risk. Know that we can disagree and I will still love you, and I hope you will afford me the same grace. Also, keep in mind that I am not a journalist. I got the information for this blog post from the internet, and mainly from Wikipedia since those were the sites that popped up first on my Google searches. It is certainly possible that I have some of the information wrong, but I honestly didn’t have time to do hours of thorough research on each case mentioned. My intent is to provide a basic summary of each situation for the purposes of this blog, not a comprehensive or newsworthy summary.

“You’ve been terminated because you violated the social media policy by slandering the company. I wanted to call and clarify exactly why you were terminated yesterday. Another employee told me about your post,” she said. In yesterday’s phone conversation, she had made no mention of anything I had done wrong, and had stated that they had hired someone else during my maternity leave so that the patients could continue to receive music therapy during my absence, and the census was not big enough to support two music therapists. A wave of hot anger rushed over me, making me dizzy with the sudden blow.  How could I be so misunderstood, and lose my job over that misunderstanding? How could this be my fault?  How could my words be twisted so falsely? I’m not a slanderous person, nor do I seek to intentionally harm others.  Looking back over my facebook posts, I had made only one reference to my work on May 18th, and it was nowhere near slanderous. Not only did I not mention the specific company I worked for in that post or anywhere on my facebook page, but I also did not say anything more than asking my facebook friends to pray for me because I feared the company had hired someone else to replace me during my maternity leave.

“Excuse me?!  I did not slander the company, and I did not violate the social media policy,” I managed to reply calmly over the phone, despite the anger boiling inside.  The discussion continued and she held to her position that the termination was the result of my actions.  I spent some time that evening writing out exactly what had happened over the course of those two days, including summaries of phone conversations, voicemails, emails, and screenshots of my social media activity in question.  I emailed it to the director of human resources for the company, who called me back a few days later and stated that nothing would be mentioned in my file about any social media issues, and clarified that the reason I was terminated was due to not having enough patients on the census to support two music therapists.  She stated that I would be eligible for rehire and encouraged me to apply for unemployment and watch the website for any future positions in the company (although NWIH would I reapply there–I bet you can figure out what NWIH stands for if you think hard enough, or you can privately message me to ask what it means 😉 ). Still not pleased that they had replaced me during my maternity leave and this meant that our family would again be deeply struggling financially, I at least felt relieved that I had been heard, that I could now legitimately apply for unemployment, and that they were no longer pinning the blame on my actions.  I was no longer misunderstood, but I still felt disrespected and hurt in the aftermath. Since I didn’t know which coworker had misrepresented me, I blocked all coworkers and plan to never have coworkers as my Facebook friends again, unless they seem particularly trustworthy or we seem to truly connect.

Before I continue, let me say that in no way am I saying what I went through is comparable to what an entire group of people goes through every day with facing racism. There is no way I could understand as a white person, surrounded by white people, what it’s like to be misunderstood, disrespected and persecuted on a daily basis based solely on the predisposed and erroneous judgments other people hold about skin color.  To say that my experience with my job is like being on the receiving end of racism would be like telling a bereaved parent that you understand how they feel after the death of a child because you once had to put your cat to sleep.  The two don’t even come close to relating, and to pretend that they do is insulting and disrespectful to the ones who are already hurting so badly, and I fully recognize this as I write. It is not my intention to be disrespectful or insulting, so please forgive me if this blog comes across that way. With that in mind, I ask that you see my heart of trying to relate and understand what my brothers and sisters with different colored skin go through. I can’t understand, but I am trying to relate it to what I have experienced in order that I can try to understand, at least a little.

I am relating my job story to the current events in our country because I believe I have far too often ignored the existence of racism in the past. It didn’t directly affect me, so I told myself that people who spoke up about it were just overreacting. “Certainly it’s not as bad as they say,” I callously thought, “No one would be arrested or killed unless they had done something wrong to merit it.”  In our sinful, selfish nature, we often ignore the pain which doesn’t directly affect us, and this is wrong. This week I read the following quote from this article by J. Garrett Kell from Dallas Theological Seminary, “If my black brothers and sisters weep and lose sleep over something, God-glorifying love calls me to care about it. I may not understand why they are weeping, but if they hurt, God calls me to sympathize with them and to seek to understand. There is no room in the heart of a Christian for apathy or indifference toward other believers (1 Pet 4:8).”

While we humans don’t have the emotional capacity to constantly feel the pain of the world, we need to open our hearts more often and more widely, and work to get rid of the callouses on our hearts, especially those of us who are Christians. We get so caught up in our own little worlds that we forget to look around and pray for the needs of others, and do our part to be helpful to those in pain. Or at least I forget, especially as a mother of two young children, because it’s so easy to be consumed with my daily business of changing diapers, doing laundry and dishes, tripping over toys, and disciplining my sometimes-sassy 4-year-old.

Say what you will about the media coverage and its bias, but the fact remains that the death of far too many people has occurred in the past months and years. Even one death is too many, for all life is sacred and to be protected. In Orlando on June 12, 49 people were killed and 53 others were injured in a gay nightclub. Although the intentions of the gunman can’t fully be known since he is now dead, it can be assumed that he was targeting that particular nightclub because it entertained gay people and he hated that lifestyle choice. He assumed things about the people in the club based on his prejudice, and he decided that they all deserved to die.  Or maybe he just chose a random location, though, in my opinion, that is unlikely.  Alton Sterling died in Louisiana on July 5th of this year after two police officers shot and killed him when they thought he had a gun. They had responded to a call that he was selling CDs outside of a convenience store and had pointed a gun at someone. Philando Castile died in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on July 6th when he reached for his wallet to get his license during a minor traffic stop, and the officer thought he was reaching for a gun and shot him several times. They had been stopped for a minor traffic violation, but the real reason was because the officer thought they looked like the suspects from a recent robbery, due to his wide-set nose. Philando’s girlfriend’s four-year-old daughter was in the back seat of the car. He would have turned 33 years old on Saturday.  One year ago yesterday, on July 13, 2015, Sandra Bland was found hanging in a jail cell in Texas after a minor traffic violation stop which had escalated and led to her arrest. Her death was ruled a suicide via autopsy.

In Cleveland, Ohio, on November 22, 2014, three weeks before my own baby died in my arms, Samaria Rice’s 12-year-old son, Tamir, was shot by police who mistakenly thought his toy gun was real. Three differences were that she didn’t get the chance to say goodbye to her son before he died, his death could have easily been prevented, and I have read many comments from people who tried to blame his death on his mother for letting him have a gun that looked so real. I’ve read comments that blamed his possession of a toy gun on “gang activity” and “lack of a father figure,” when a white boy carrying a toy gun would be considered a “man’s man like his father.” People can be so heartless when they look upon the grief of another person from the outside, and even more heartless when racism colludes their opinions.

Eighteen-year-old Michael Brown was killed by a white officer in Ferguson, Missouri, on August 9, 2014, leading the the race riots in Ferguson that fall. In March 2015, the US Justice Department determined that the Ferguson Police Department had engaged in misconduct toward its citizens by applying racial stereotypes, and yet a separate report supported the officer who shot Brown, and his account of the events. Eyewitnesses stated that Brown had his hands up in surrender, but others said he was struggling with the officer to get his gun. Brown had stolen some cigarettes and shoved a convenience store worker, but he was unarmed and was shot 12 times. It was excessive force in the eyes of many, but justified force in the eyes of others. Further riots ensued.

Eric Garner died in New York City on July 17, 2014, after police put him in a choke hold and he went into cardiac arrest. The police had accused him of trying to sell individual cigarettes without a tax license, and then tried to arrest him but he resisted. Some people might ask if he was innocent, then why did he resist the police, and that his resistance indicated his guilt.  However, even if he was guilty of their accusations, his guilt didn’t merit his death. And if he was innocent, his reaction was only natural.

When someone accuses you of something you haven’t done, your first reaction is usually anger and trying to explain why they are wrong, like was my reaction with my job termination. If my boss had been there in person trying to tie my arms behind my back for the false accusations she was making against me, I would have resisted her actions angrily, too. I was given the opportunity to have my side of the story heard by a higher authority in the company, but none of these people were afforded the benefit of the doubt. They were assumed to be armed and intending to kill, and then they were shot and killed. They were not shot with the intent of disarming them. They were shot dead, often with multiple bullets, without any opportunity to present their side of the story. Regardless of any of these people’s guilty or innocent behavior, they all deserved to live, and they all deserved the opportunity to present their rebuttals to the accusations. They all deserved to be presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law, not assumed dangerous and worthy of death. I also realize that police officers need to protect the lives of the public and themselves, and they would say that they genuinely feared for their lives in those situations, but I would argue that, based on the information I have gathered from some of the cases, they often jumped emotionally to conclusions based on their assumptions, biases, misinformation, and prejudices, and unfortunately they had their hand on the trigger when they made that split-second jump.

On July 7, 2016, in response to the recent incidents discussed in this blog, a black man named Micah Johnson targeted police officers who were protecting the public during a Black Lives Matter rally in Dallas.  He killed five officers and injured nine others plus two civilians. He assumed all police officers, and particularly white officers, hated black people and therefore deserved to die. He thought that violence would be sufficient justice for violence. He was a racist, too, and acted wrongly on his beliefs. There are other examples of police officers being targeted because of their occupation and race. Racism knows no bounds. I even fear for my husband’s safety in his job as a mall security officer, because of the uniform he wears and the disrespectful people he encounters. I fear that someone will target the security officers as someone in authority who enforces the rules and makes some people angry.

Racism can be displayed among black people who consider themselves to be better than another black person because their skin pigmentation is darker or fairer than another person. It can be found among Native American people who believe that one tribe is better than another.  Prejudice can be found among white people who judge other white people based on their socioeconomic status, educational level or the color of their eyes and hair.

My sister married a man from Bolivia, and they have the most adorable children together. They speak Spanish and English in their home.  He has said that he never really experienced racism until he moved to America, and they experience it quite often as a family. People make assumptions about him based on the color of his skin, and yet he is one of the kindest and most loving people I know, and he is studying to become a Presbyterian minister. They talk down to him and assume he doesn’t understand them, or they think he’s stupid because he is still learning the nuances of the English language.  It makes me sad to think that a police officer could stop him for a broken taillight because his nose looks like a suspect’s nose. He could be reaching for his license and registration as instructed, and the officer could misinterpret his actions and shoot him dead in front of my niece and nephews. It could be the people I love.

“Do these people not have any responsibility for their actions,” you may think. A dear friend responded to this biased question brilliantly with the following words:

I’m not sure what you mean with that question. If by “responsibility” you are asking whether they deserved to be shot, no, I do not believe that. And if by “responsibility” you are asking whether they should have figured out a way to not be Black, then no, I don’t believe that either.  And if by “actions” you are suggesting that they deserved what they got, then no, I also don’t believe that. I don’t think this is the time or the place to be talking about “responsibility” of victims and their families who have been repeatedly oppressed by an incredibly unjust system that has power over them. If anyone has responsibility, it is us white people who don’t even realize how privileged we are.

I sit here struggling to know how to wrap up this blog post, maybe because racism itself is nowhere near resolved. It is woven into our culture like a vine wrapping its choke hold around a plant, and there is currently no beneficial conclusion to its pervasive presence in our lives.  I believe that Satan is the author of racism, and he enjoys pitting one group of people against another based on the color of their skin, which is such a petty, shallow characteristic to judge someone by. He doesn’t want to see the world united as one family of equal members, brothers and sisters, like God intended.  He wants us to blame the victims for the problems, from racial issues to poverty to rape. He wants us to take sides and be blind to the fact that you can love and support more than one person or group of people at a time. You can maintain that all life is sacred, from the womb to the nursing home, from the ghetto to Wall Street, from Bolivia to America to China to Russia to Africa…Just because I support that black people need to stop being killed by police doesn’t mean that I don’t also support police. I can think that injustice has been done in many of the cases mentioned here, but I can also think that injustice is done every day in abortion clinics, on death row, in gangs, in politics, against our police officers and military…I can think that there are some amazingly awesome police officers out there, white and black and Asian and Latino…I can think that we have a long way to go in society and especially in the church to show love to others who are different from us.  Life is not always “black and white” with clear cut definitions. Just when you assume a person has certain characteristics, you open your heart to them, get to know them closer, and realize how totally wrong you were. Those who think opinions and facts have to be one way and exclude the other are typically part of the problem that is currently displayed in our country’s race relations.

Bethany Kiana-Rose

Time flies when you’re sleep deprived, and I’m not sure where the past 6 weeks have gone. Our beautiful baby, Bethany Kiana-Rose Cochrane, was born March 22, 2016, at 10:55am. She was 8 pounds, 13 ounces, and 20 inches. On the Friday before her birth, we had our last sonogram with Dr. Evans, the maternal fetal medicine specialist that I saw due to my blood clotting disorder.  He told us that she was head down and everything looked good to try for a VBAC, though she was measuring almost 9 pounds and he was concerned that could potentially cause issues with the birth. I was a nervous wreck about giving birth either way, whether vaginally or via c-section, especially now that we learned how “big” she was, but I prayed that God would make the decision obvious about whether to try for VBAC or not. Sunday night I asked Nathan to pray with me about the birth, and he again prayed that we would know without a doubt what we should do.

Monday morning we had our final appointment with my OB, Dr. Blake, and a biophysical profile sonogram before the appointment. The first thing the tech said is, “Oh, she’s breech.” My heart began to pound. This was the answer. She had turned breech over the weekend, and I hadn’t felt a thing. How does an almost 9-pound baby turn around without me knowing it when I totally felt Hannah move into breech when she was probably only about 5 pounds at the time? I’m not sure, but Nathan and I looked at each other and knew that this was God’s answer. My heart sank because it wasn’t the answer I wanted. I knew that my recovery would probably be complicated again due to my blood thinners, and having a c-section again due to the baby being breech felt all too similar to Hannah’s birth. We scheduled it for the next day at 12:30, but the doctor’s office later called on Monday to let me know they were moving the schedule around a bit so that another doctor could attend the surgery, and the time they needed it to be was 10:30am, which was the time that Hannah’s surgery had been scheduled (she was born at 11:08am).

Our dear friend, Libby Rosen, was present with us for Bethany’s birth.  We had wanted her there for Hannah’s birth but she had a final for the class she was teaching. It was so helpful to have Libby there, because not only does she know all the staff members at Stormont since she’s an educator there, but also she knows the background of our losses since she leads our infant loss support group. She’s a nurse, too, so even though she wasn’t functioning as a nurse, she was able to give reassuring explanations of what the doctors were doing during the surgery. We also gave her our camera and she got some great pictures.

They let Nathan be in the room while they did the spinal anesthesia this time, so that was good because it was different from last time when he wasn’t allowed in. That was one of the scariest parts for me because it really hurts when they’re sticking the needle in, and I wasn’t able to sit still very well. Dr. Blake did a very good job of distracting me during that part, too, as she challenged me to create a new “swear” word that wasn’t a swear word but sounded like it could be one. I never did think of one. Well, I thought of Schnike, which has always been my own personal fake swear word, but she said that was too goody goody and it didn’t count.  Another thing was different this time was that they didn’t strap my arms down to the table, so that was helpful for my anxiety. They allowed us to have a music playlist. They would have allowed it last time, too, but we just didn’t think to have one last time. Bethany was born during the song that my college friends, Alison and Celesta, wrote called “Psalm 139.”

Dr. Blake said she had turned back to the head down position since the day before (little stinker), which I also hadn’t felt. When she was born, I heard her crying right away, so that made me happy because I didn’t hear Adelaide right away when she was born due to her low APGAR score, and Hannah’s cry was so faint.  Bethany had a very strong cry, but I did notice it sounded raspy and gurgly. They told us she had swallowed some fluid on her way out, and Dr. Cobb, who was the second doctor attending, said that is pretty normal during c-section births because the baby doesn’t get the “squeeze” of a vaginal birth. They took forever to bring her over, and they said her oxygen levels weren’t getting up as high as they wanted by a certain time post-birth, so Dr. Navarro wanted to take her to the NICU. Of course I freaked out. This was all so similar to Hannah’s birth, and I was so afraid Bethany was going to die, too. They let me hold her on my chest for a minute or two before they took her down, and the minute they put her there, all of my anxiety (I had had trouble breathing, which was probably a panic attack) went away in that moment until they took her away. She was so adorable, and I couldn’t believe she was here. Nathan went downstairs with her and Libby stayed with me until I was into recovery.

My nurse took me down to the NICU on a stretcher about an hour after surgery, just like they did when Hannah was born. I had held it together emotionally until they wheeled me across the nurse’s area in the NICU. I remembered how they had turned me to the left to go to Hannah’s room, and immediately after I arrived there were alarms going off and nurses came running and they wheeled me away.  This time they wheeled me to the right and I cried as I was so afraid something was about to happen with my baby. But I got in the room and she was ok. Nathan told me she was going to be OK, and that she just needed to be there for a little while. She had oxygen, a feeding tube, and an IV.

Eventually her oxygen was lowered until she was only on room air. This was when I questioned why she was still there and was told that once they’re in the NICU, they don’t discharge them until the mom is discharged. This made me so sad since that meant Adelaide wouldn’t get to meet her sister until we were both discharged from the hospital. It had always been my dream to room in with the baby. I only got that opportunity for the first 24 hours with Adelaide before she had to go to NICU, and obviously never got that at all with Hannah. I dreamed of having visitors and photos of us with our girls together on the hospital bed. We continued to go back and forth between the 4th floor and the 2nd floor to visit her as much as I could, pumping and getting hardly any sleep. I was hardly in bed at all for hours at a time. It was very stressful.

She was fine except for not being able to take as much milk as they said she “should.” In the NICU, they have requirements based on the baby’s weight that dictate how much milk they need to be taking in. For Bethany, it was 50mL every 3 hours, which is almost 2 ounces. Meanwhile, I was only pumping about 5-10mL of colostrum. Eventually as the sleep decreased and the stress of going back and forth increased, this went all the way down to nothing. There was about a day where I had absolutely no output from pumping. I was a mess emotionally, and I was just so tired of all the stress. Libby was in my room helping me hand express when my former pediatrician, Dr. Crouch, stopped by to say hi. He and Libby are friends, so Libby asked him if he would talk to Dr. Navarro about possibly helping Bethany get back up to the room with me since she really didn’t have anything keeping her down there besides the eating issue.

When we went downstairs and saw Dr. Navarro, she made a deal with me that if I continued to show up every 2-3 hours throughout the night to feed Bethany, and if her blood sugar levels remained steady from not getting “enough” to eat, she would let her come up to be with me. That night we got no sleep but we kept our end of the bargain, and Bethany’s blood test was fine the next morning, so she got to come upstairs with me on Friday. They decided to keep me one more day to make sure both of us were doing ok and that breastfeeding would go well. As soon as Bethany got up to the room with me, I pumped at got 20mL after at least a day of nothing. The ease of stress immediately helped.

The next day on Saturday, they were getting ready to discharge me about noon when the nurse went to check my wound. I had asked her about some bright red blood that I’d seen on my clothes. As she pressed around it, a stream of blood literally shot straight up in the air about 3 feet, almost hitting the nurse in the face.  Deb Gottschalk, the sweet lactation consultant who was in the room with me to help with feeding Bethany, saw it and her eyes got very wide. The other nurse who almost got hit in the face called her charge nurse and within a minute there were about 4 nurses in the room trying to decide what to do with me. They all looked very concerned, but I knew that what had happened last time with Hannah and the hematoma that developed after surgery had happened again. I knew I’d have to have a second surgery, and probably pack my wound for 4 months again. I was so mad that this was happening again, but that anger was definitely tempered by the fact that my healthy baby was safe in my arms. It was definitely all worth it for her. Last time I was robbed of my health and my baby. This time I didn’t much care what happened to me as long as she was OK.

Dr. Rempe did my second surgery and put in a wound vac, which for some reason still unknown to us was not available to me the last time. With the wound vac, I only had to have it on until 4 weeks postpartum. I’m now almost 6 weeks and my wound is ALMOST healed. There’s just a slight part that’s still open. I’m so glad it was only 6 weeks this time instead of 4 months!

Sweet Bethany is a cuddler. She likes to be held in our arms all the time. Most of the time I love this, though it is nice when she sleeps well on her own. I thank God every day for letting us have her in our arms. She is precious, and He is sovereign. I know that God gives life and takes it away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.

My friend from church (A) told me that her daughter-in-law just had a miscarriage at 12 or 13 weeks, and she told me what an encouragement it was to see me with my new baby because she knew that her son and DIL could one day choose to try again.  She said she admired Nathan and me for being so brave to try again, and that a lot of people just would have given up after the death of a child. I don’t know that I’m brave as much as I am stubborn, though having a repeat c-section was possibly the bravest thing I’ve had to do in life besides hold my baby while she took her last breath.

I know this blog post is pretty disjointed due to my exhaustion, but hopefully I’ve remembered most of the important details of Bethany’s birth. She is a miracle and I’m so thankful for her. Adelaide loves being a big sister, and she’s such a good one. She’s very sweet with Bethany and always wants to hold her. Thank you to all of you who have prayed for us. We are thankful that you let us borrow some of your faith when we had none. As with many other times, this reminds me of a song. This one’s by Bebo Norman and it’s called “Borrow Mine.” So many of you faithful friends have been our surrogate hope.

Oh, and you might be wondering why we chose the names that we did. One source said that Bethany meant life, and we also liked that it was kind of similar to Elizabeth. Awhile ago, we found that Kiana meant “living with grace,” and we wanted names that would mean life to our child. We also wanted Rose to be included because it’s the first part of my mother’s middle name. We wanted to honor her, and also liked the symbolism of the rose being a thing of beauty and fragrance. Our Bethany is definitely beautiful and brings a fresh fragrance to our souls.