It Becomes an Act of Faith

If you're not already familiar with my story, the long and short of it is a story of working toward goals that always end up just out of reach.  I know it's been used a lot, but the illustration of the mouse in a maze works perfectly here.  I trained to be a dancer, with all the blood, sweat, and tears that come with that aspiration.  I dreamed of being a drug- and tobacco-free dancer in the midst of an artists' world that can be very, very dark and full of abnormal ways to find comfort. I vowed that I would be the dancer that would bring the light of Christ into this darkness, and be a role model for the younger dancers at the same time.  But that was not what I was called to do.  A back injury incurred while waiting tables eventually landed me in a wheelchair, with no hope of my mangled spinal column being able to support my body's weight again.
So, my young husband joined the Marine Corps in an effort to take care of my medical needs, only to be sectioned-out on account of asthma.
I figured I’d go to school and become a therapist, to help other injured athletes.
"What do you mean we're moving to Montana?!  I thought we were going to Minneapolis!"
“I’m sorry, but unless you commit to a year's worth of hormone therapy, there's no chance you'll have any more children." 
Ok. So I’ll become a teacher and love everybody else's children…
It's been like this for nearly all of our 22 years of marriage. Every good intention, best-laid plan, and desperate execution of plan "B" has run into walls, and each time we have merely picked ourselves up and gone a different direction.  It took me a long time to learn that if I simply spend my time looking for another way to make my plan work, I miss the journey.  I don't mean just stop-and-smell-the-roses kind of missing the journey.  I mean missing the lessons that unfold along the way; about who God really is, and what it means to look for His way.  It becomes an act of faith to rest in the belief that God knows where you’re going.  When you realize that all those moments, even the moments on the way to where you’re going, can be full of growth, and that just because we aren’t where we want to be doesn’t mean we can’t be content.  That’s the place I’d rather be, because every other path leads to frustration.

God's Own Fool

Just an FYI...in case you may have wondered why I have taken this title, here's the song by Amy Shreve      that made me adopt it:


•Seems I’ve imagined Him all of my life as the wisest of all of mankind
•But if God’s Holy wisdom is foolish to men
•He must have seemed out of His mind

•For even His family said he was mad
•And the priests said a demon’s to blame
•For God in the form of this angry young man
•Could not have seemed perfectly sane

•For we in our foolishness thought we were wise
•He played the fool and he opened our eyes
•We in our weakness believed we were strong
•He became helpless to show we were wrong

•So we follow God’s own fool
•For only the foolish can tell
•Believe the unbelievable
•Come be a fool as well                   
  Amy Shreve: Harp and Willow ; WIX Group 1995

Teaching Your Children Well

Haven't posted anything in a while.  For one thing, I have been consumed with becoming a speaker, and finishing my book, and secondly, I haven't had a bee in my bonnet about anything.  But...tonight I was considering the road I've been on as a parent.  I am one of those Mama's who is serious about mothering...and although I'm sad about not being able to mother more children, I am glad not to be doing this process over.

Parenting teaches each of us a lot about ourselves if we're willing to take the time to reflect.  (Sometimes what we see in that reflection isn't pretty!)  When they're little, you are so busy trying to find time to sleep that time for reflection is lost between the time it takes to put the baby down and when your sleep-deprive-induced snoring begins.  But, as they get a little more autonomic, you have time to pay closer attention to the faces they make (that look like an aunt) or the way they play (fodder for psychologists sometimes), and how they interact with you.  I did a lot of that with my daughter early on, because there were so many peculiar behaviors, and like most new parents I worried.  Add to that, my mother-in-law moved from our hometown to our "new town" to "help"...and she worried more than I did.  Problem was, we worried about different things.  She was distraught over sneezes, running noses, and coughs... or any sign that our daughter would be in any discomfort.  I, on the other hand, was concerned about how she reacted to light and temperature changes, her abrupt night awakenings, and her fearsome fits.  Oh, she smiled a lot, and she had the sweetest way of waking us with humming in the morning, but there were so many times that I researched and waited, watched and wondered.

Like other parents before me, I have learned how much we are responsible for their behavior, but how little control we have over their decisions, and that my dear reader is what has broken my heart.  The gene pool has only so much influence on a child's personality.  The rest is a complicated recipe.  You can hope like crazy that your child will have the best looks, a good heart, success in all they do, wisdom, and our Father's Eyes, but hoping doesn't make it so.  When any of those things are missing in your child's make-up, it makes you wonder what went wrong.

I can go over the pregnancy (which was  during a time of famine, friction, and tumult), the hit and run accident by a drunk driver during my 26th week, and the birth (which must have been so incredibly rude to her!) where her shoulders could not be delivered so she had to be pushed back inside and brought out, elbow first.  Rude, indeed!

I wondered if any of those reasons were to blame for all we'd been through. Is this why she has so many headaches, had the struggles in school, the neurological issues, and the anxiety? And this is just the tip of the iceberg.  She was an exceedingly willful little person, demanding, and busy; but all the same, charming, winning, and beautiful.  She's always been prone to singing, even to the annoyance of one of her elementary teachers, but won't sing for an audience.  She drove her teachers crazy!  And if you ever need a leader for any reason, my daughter is your gal.  But, buyer beware:  If she doesn't agree with you, there is absolutely no way to change her mind.  I mean it. (I'll be there for you, future husband, when she makes you want to pull out your hair!  I'll be in the kitchen, hiding out with my chocolate.) So, are you a parent who wants to be pro-active about their child's future?  Or are you like me, in the ring, up against rebellion far too often (and tired of being in the ropes)?

Then please read the advice I have for you in the following:

If I did get a do-over, I would pray a lot more.  I would have looked for people to help me teach my daughter how much my faith is intertwined in everything I am and the reason behind everything I do.  See, I thought if I led by example she would watch and follow.  Not so with and independent-thinking, strong-willed child.  She has always behaved like she believes she is the exception to every rule.  It doesn't matter if it's a school topic or a faith-based discussion.  For example, if I suggested she take a raincoat with her to school, she would assure me that it wouldn't rain that day.  Sigh.

I have also been way too quiet about my relationship with Christ.  It should have been regular input in my daughter's life...before she was big enough to get Disney-indoctrinated. Plead with  believers in your family to help show your child how much a Christ-centered life is as natural as breathing, so that when they get to school and meet other kids without Christ-centered homes, it will not rock yours. If you don't believe me, let me tell you sometime about the storm brought to us from Germany in the form of an atheist exchange student.

I would have had more regular conversations with my husband about how important it was to be a unified front, and to always, always talk about the other parent respectfully (even if they aren't in the room with you two).  If the two of you are not on the same wave-length about your faith, you'd better pray even harder, because if your child sees that, you've got a bumpy ride ahead of you! And when there are disagreements about parenting style, moral issues, or worldly influences never, ever discuss these differences in front of your child!  I can guarantee that if you want to plant the seed of doubt in a parent's competence, have disagreements about these subjects in front of your child, often.

Heartbreak can come in many forms, but if I have learned anything, I have learned that the worst heartbreak comes from a lack of obedience.  So often God's Word gives us what we need to the job, whether it be parenting, being married, working, or whatever.  If you really want to fortify your household then do what we're told to do in Deuteronomy (11:18-21), "So commit yourselves wholeheartedly to these words of Mine.  Tie them on your hands and wear them on your forehead as a reminder.  Teach them to your children.  Talk about them when you are at home and when you are on the road, when you are going to bed, and when you are getting up.  Write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates, so that as long as the sky is above the earth, you and your children shall flourish...."

We just have to obey.

Because heartache stinks, and disobedience brings sin, and sin brings death....and that death can be the death of the dreams you had for your children, images of what could have been, but worst of all, the risk it puts on the soul.  Like death, you cannot simply explain this kind of loss. But you can do your part to prevent it. Go teach your children well!

Are You Crazy?!?

Are You Crazy?!?

To those who know me well, they know that I have spent most of my adult years battling depression. As I work toward my goal to becoming a speaker, I have been doing hours of research and “e-learning” thanks to Tina Hollenbeck (http://tinahollenbeck.blogspot.com) and Sheila Wray Gregoire (http://www.sheilawraygregoire.com).  Today, some of my research led me to speaker Joanne Goodwin (http://www.joannegoodwin.ca/home.html) who speaks on depression, and how many Christian women are affected by it.   I love that someone can share so well, a topic that is so painful for so many of us.  I say painful, because unlike those who take medicine for high blood pressure, diabetes, or migraine headaches, if you take medicine for depression, you get scolded by some for being less than spiritually sound.  Believe me when I tell you that I would be the first one to admit that there are definitely spiritual reasons for depression, but there are also clearly physiological ones as well.

As a matter of fact, I had to write my final paper for an Anatomy and Physiology course in Massage School, on the “Anatomy of Depression,” and I don’t think a lot of people know how it works.  I can testify to having run on empty for so many years that I drove myself into depression.  What I didn’t know is that you can die from it. Now I’m not trying to be dramatic. What I mean is that, you can run on “exhausted” for long enough to cause the body to shut itself down, in order to protect the nervous system and its organs.

I’ll put this as simply as possible and leave you, dear reader, to research further if you like. 

The body has a natural “fight or flight” response to anything that the brain might feel is dangerous.  Even in circumstances when the body cannot flee a situation the mind feels is harmful, the body emits adrenaline anyway. In our current world, that environment may be the workplace, home, on the highway, or anywhere we feel “danger” most often.  If you don’t use said adrenaline to “flee,” the body stores it because the body has no way to be burn it off.  If the body is under stress for long enough (i.e. new baby, stressful job, tough marriage, abusive relationships….) and the body continues to build the adrenaline, this causes the chemicals in the liver to get off-kilter, which in turn sends a message to the brain saying this human needs to go “on vacation” with or without a boarding pass.  The human then shows signs that others may or may not notice, or they may simply dismiss the symptoms as attention-getters for the sufferer. 

There’s so much more to it than that, but for those of you who have known someone in clinical depression, you’ve seen that they may have no appetite, may move slowly (or not at all), they may cry a lot (or just stare into space), and they have a difficult time making decisions.  The list is long, and if you are also “blessed” enough to have the oft-accompanying anxiety to go with it, you may have symptoms of unexplained fear, an inability to eat (even if you have the desire to), and the simplest question may put the depressed over the edge.

I suffered my first bout of clinical depression at age 11, after the death of my mom’s best friend, and later after back surgery (a common occurrence in brain and spine surgery patients).  Then, a very close friend of mine went through a horrible time in her life, which required an army of women, from two different churches, to help out.  When the dust settled, the armies had pulled out, there were just three of us standing.  We were exhausted, our families were lonely, and our relationships were frayed.  At the time I was in college full-time, raising my own family, and had a household to run, even when my husband had to be out of town.  Add an asthma attack, requiring steroidal treatment, and the recipe for a nervous breakdown was written.  My heart raced to a point where the doctors feared I would go into tachycardia.  I couldn’t sleep, stop crying, or eat a bite of food.  I also developed an inability to breathe without hunching myself out over my knees. It took so much effort to breathe, that even when I regained my appetite, it was too tiring to eat much.  My five-foot-ten-inch frame plummeted to 128 lbs., a weight I was not able to attain even in the laxative years of ballet dancing.

It’s been nine years since then, even more years than the doctors had originally said my recovery would take, because stressors don’t take a day off, and life happens… If it were not for medical intervention, I might not be here today, but I have learned that depression is an illness, whether it’s spiritually or chemically rooted (or both).  I also know happiness is a choice, and because I am a child of God, I can smile, laugh, and do life, in His power.  It’s just another way we as Christians can defy the world’s view of normal, and glorify His name in the process.