Monthly Archives: January 2020

Not My GPS

23 Thursday Jan 2020

Posted by in Recovery journey, Relationships

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control – noun – the power to influence or direct people’s behavior or the course of events.

control – verb – determine the behavior or supervise the running of.

Yes, please.

Who wouldn’t want to be in control? I know this has been one of the biggest things I’ve struggled with practically my whole life. And it wasn’t until just a couple of years ago I was told that specifically my issue is safety-seeking control.

“safety behaviors (also known as safety-seeking behaviors) are coping behaviors used to reduce anxiety and fear when the user feels threatened. “

Thank you wikipedia, you’ve summed it up well.

From the outside maybe you wouldn’t be able to tell it, but I have spent my whole life running through scenarios of all the bad things I think could ever happen and figuring out how I would respond in those situations.

Up until just the past few years, I would have told you I like to be prepared for anything that might happen so that I have a game plan to put into action when the time comes.

Only the time never really came.

One of the big things my time with my mentor taught me was that I actually do have anxieties and fears. In itself that was a huge thing for me to own.

Another was that of all the numberless tragedies I’ve imagined happening in my lifetime almost none of them ever came true.

And those that did played out in a much different way than the stories in my head.

Even though I have learned many lessons about myself and the futility of living in anticipation of the next emergency, that doesn’t mean that I’ve totally conquered it. In fact, how could me controlling giving up my controlling behaviors show my ability to give up control?

I actually read Catch-22 many years ago, and this is one of those situations. I can’t make myself give up control once and for all and be done with it. If I could, then I would be totally in control of my lack of control. And my head is already spinning just thinking about it.

So how does a control freak stop?

In my case I can honestly say it hasn’t been because I decided I would give up running one thing after another and then followed a plan and checked things off a list.

In fact, I’m much more likely to discover that I only thought I’ve stopped trying to influence or direct someone’s behavior, or that I stepped back from trying to run the whole world.

What I’m less likely to take notice of are the times when I have no argument, nothing to add, no advice to give. But they are happening more and more.

In the past couple of months our family has been digesting Dad’s health issues. We honestly never knew he had so many! And as he puts it, “It is what it is.”

But…

Okay, I can’t argue with that. But I want to. Because in all my “choose your own ending” stories I never came up with the specific set of circumstances we find ourselves in.

And I can’t do anything to change what is.

So many things we don’t get until we look at it from where it ends up. And we’ve only begun this path, so we don’t know where it’s going to lead. But I can say with great relief that I’m so glad God has had me on the journey I’ve been on through my recovery from all kinds of things, because though I always said I trusted him with my life, I’ve been learning how to actually do it.

It’s like an experience we had last weekend. We took an impromptu trip down to see Middle Son and Third Daughter (Dad’s new name for our son’s girlfriend). Our plan was to not have a plan. We had agreed on a couple places for dinners, and we already have a favorite breakfast hang-out, so little planning was necessary. Just games, talk, relaxing, physically being in each other’s presence was what we needed.

At dinner time one day we headed out to find the restaurant. My Australian Siri-man called out the twists and turns getting us from point A to point B. And in the hilly, circuitous roads surrounding the college town, it seems he doesn’t take us the same way twice.

We found the directions telling us to take an uphill switchback on a narrow road headed into a forest. It was twilight and raining. Third Daughter remembered her GPS once taking her this route, so she told us what to expect.

The road was still climbing when we saw our first herd of deer. Slow and easy we drove by them, careful to look for more crossing from the other side.

Then a couple of young, skittish yearlings that made me, the driver, slow even more. In our hometown there are lots of deer/car meet-ups that don’t have good results for either one, so I was taking no chances.

Everyone but me was counting, and they estimated about 20 deer were in a very short stretch of road. All I knew was that I was NOT going to follow that same route back in pitch blackness after we ate!

Then we came to a 90 degree turn in the road, onto a one-lane covered bridge. Truly covered, painted red, taking us over what I assume was a creek. I couldn’t see it through the bridge walls. But the bridge itself was beautiful.

Eventually we got back out to a main road that took us to our destination.

In my life I have been able to look back at a lot of hard things I’ve gone through. Sometimes the only thing I can think about are the losses, the hurts, the unfairness. At least I used to think more about the tragic circumstances.

As we travel this current road, I want to be looking for the unexpected deer, the beautiful covered bridge on a path few people ever travel. I don’t want to miss the sweetness of just being together, savoring our life and our family, even with who knows what looming in the future.

In my intricate plan of how I thought life would go, I want God to be the one to call out the twists and turns for me.

Because there are things he wants me to see that I would never know if everything went my way.

Enough is Enough

16 Thursday Jan 2020

Posted by in Christmas, Parenting, Relationships

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The cat is the most honest creature in our house.

Our whole Christmas season had the looming knowledge of a still-to-come hip surgery for my husband, but we all wore brave faces and soldiered on.

The plan was once the out-of-town kids went back to their homes, he would have the procedure, which is basically out-patient if all goes well, and have several weeks of recuperation during which the kids could all call or visit or help out at home. There would be long days for him watching movies or finding projects for Dad to work on in the house, and all would be well.

The house itself was not cooperating with the plan.

Right before Oldest Son came home, our ongoing problems with water came flowing back. The new water softener was leaking in the garage, and the kitchen sink handle was not holding firm enough to shut off the water.

So Christmas shopping had to wait on the plumber, followed by finally being able to thoroughly wash the dishes again. I felt like I could never get everything done that needed doing, so I scaled way back on my expectations.

And then the excitement of opening presents and eating traditional foods, taking naps and eating some more. Spending lots of time with the people I love the most.

Once I am past it I’m fine with everything not getting done the way I wanted. There will always be more opportunities to give the perfect gift or try some new food to fix or start a new tradition.

The being together is always the sweetest part.

I guess if I could have one thing be different about the season just past, it would be that I wish we had all been able to talk more openly and honestly about the love we have for each other.

Because hard days will always come, even after surgeries and still-unconfirmed medical diagnoses are in the past. The days when you savor the memories of words spoken in love and deep affection.

There were great moments, don’t get me wrong. Several one-on-one talks with different kids, or just a couple of them at a time, where we were able to get real about how we felt about Dad’s impending surgery. Discussing possible outcomes and what he might not be able to do, things we could do to make the house safer for his rehabilitation weeks.

Those times were sweet, to hear my kids express their love and concern for their dad.

And while they all did express their concern to his face, I wish there had been more ease in talking about it. Because once you get past the fear, you can more easily express the love that huddles behind its fortress walls of protectiveness and anxiety.

The cat is much more transparent than the kids.

From back in October when the workmen started waltzing in and out on a pretty regular basis, leaving doors open, making noise with their electric tools, the cat has been on edge.

Her home has been invaded and plundered, and she had no say in it.

Strange bodies and voices in and out for day after day. Then a quick weekend trip before Thanksgiving when she had to fend for herself, eating her way through a massive bowl of only dry food. And T-day itself with too many legs to count sending her running to the farthest corner of the house.

Middle Son and his girlfriend home from college, then Oldest Son and his girlfriend, and her litter box was brand new and in a different part of the reconfigured laundry room, and there was paper carpeting the floor and then we took it away before she could play with it all.

Enough is enough.

She took to peeing other places than in her litter box.

She developed colitis from having to change her canned food (the old kind was discontinued), and once that was treated we thought she’d get back to normal.

But she didn’t.

Her world had been messed with one too many times, and our Sadie was not having it. Even the vet thinks it might be stress related, and advised us to get yet another new litter box after going through a course of antibiotics to treat what we all hope is a UTI and not spiteful behavior.

But you know what, sometimes a tantrum can relieve some of the stress. And I must say that the cat is not timid in letting us know when she is not happy with the way things feel in the house.

I can’t imagine how much stress she’s been picking up from us, but I know we’ve all been feeding on each other’s, and enough is enough.

I personally would like to be able to go somewhere and just throw things and break them. And not have to clean them up! Just yell or cry and get my frustrations out on some inanimate object that doesn’t care if I break it to bits. I’m sure there are more productive ways of dealing with stress, but for a few minutes I’d just like to be a confused and slightly vindictive cat.

If only we could all just have one big acting out day where we would all just nod and cheer each other on in our release of fear and anger and worry, and then we’d all move on feeling much better.

And then I come back to the real world, where in the last week we’ve had another leak from the new water softener. They think it’s fixed this time.

And during a really hard rainstorm the other night, our fireplace started leaking.

More water. Leaking, dripping, puddling. Just like all the others.

Like my tears, cried mostly in private, but the truly healing ones with friends and family who love me. Who see that I’m not handling this stress much better than the cat, and are willing to help me clean up the mess I feel I become sometimes.

I know this will all pass. I know God is in control. And I know I want to be able to talk about this all openly, and encourage my kids to express their thoughts and feelings as well, so we don’t all end up taking it out on each other.

And meanwhile, the cat is enjoying lapping water out of the container we used to catch the drip from the fireplace.

Gathered to My People

09 Thursday Jan 2020

Posted by in Death of a child, Death of a parent, Parenting, Recovery journey, Relationships, Tragedies

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We’ve had a challenging week in our family.

I’m still debating, as I write, if I even want to get into this yet. It’s so fresh.

Someone out there needs to hear that it is possible to have impractical, unbelievable peace in the middle of emotional chaos.

Because I’m feeling it.

And at the same time, I’ve had bone-crushing uncertainty and stress.

A couple of weeks ago I thought this blog would be about my husband’s hip replacement surgery.

It was scheduled for yesterday.

We planned it more than a month ahead. We made changes in our house and prepared to possibly be without income for a few weeks, getting the kids used to the idea and spreading the word to friends and family.

The surgeon’s office was less thorough, so we found ourselves at a pre-op visit to the hospital the day after Christmas, as well as an impromptu stop at the surgeon’s to communicate some of our concerns.

And quite unexpectedly there was another visit last Friday to the primary care office to be released for surgery.

The call my husband got at the end of a long work day led to a weekend of contemplating his mortality. Surgery was put on hold because of high white blood cell counts, and after more tests early Friday, a couple types of cancer were mentioned.

Just enough to make your imagination go round the bend.

So of course we both did what we know to never do.

We googled the ugly words.

After thirty-four years of marriage with this man, I was not surprised by his “it is what it is” attitude. Or the silent funeral planning behind his brooding eyes. Questions followed about life insurance and his desire that all our kids be able to have college paid for out of it.

Covering all the bases.

Having all that time to think could have been devastating if it weren’t for this.

Jesus. And hope.

At first I didn’t want to tell anyone.

I was headed to Celebrate Recovery an hour after we heard the news. In the safety and support of my open share small group, I began processing my own thoughts and feelings before telling any of the kids.

My CR women freely put aside their own hard things to hug and love on and support me that night. And I found clarity that comes from seeing what really matters.

Over the next day all of our children heard personally about this new development, and we counted down the hours to Monday morning when we could make more appointments.

Our care group met Saturday so my husband and I both were surrounded by men and women who love and care deeply for us.

Our kids each took in the information in their own ways, and I’m sure are going through many different stages of understanding and processing. Those first couple of days were hard for all of us. They will ease up in time.

Uncertainty stinks.

By Sunday my husband and I had thought all the thoughts we could stand. And talked about many of them with each other. And each of us had expressed that we were okay with wherever God takes us in this, whatever lies ahead.

Because we know where we’re headed.

Even knowing, I still cried a lot of tears and held even more back. Who can understand God’s plans?

But in all fairness, do we ever question why we have good times, when everything is going right? Do we ever wonder why God thinks we deserve easy?

We’ve learned in our life together, this man and I, that God is in control. And that it is always better to obey and follow him, no matter how hard the path looks to us.

So we went to church and answered questions about the surgery and why was it canceled and what does this mean.

We heard about friends with those same scary conditions and how unlifechanging they actually are.

And we breathed a little easier by day’s end.

But not before I had an unexpected moment.

It was during the final song. I was choked up. So I just bowed my head and said the only words I could put together.

“Jesus, help!”

And immediately an image came into my mind. That even if … it’s all good.

Fourteen years ago our pastor was killed in a car accident. In the hours and days and now years since I’ve seen God provide for his wife and young daughters in intimate, personal, miraculous ways. It was hard. But there was hope.

I thought a lot about that time over the weekend, the strength that was given to my friend as she navigated the unthinkable task of telling her girls that their daddy was with Jesus in heaven.

She didn’t get that strength until the moment she needed it.

And as I cried out to Jesus to ease my own fears for my husband, standing next to him in our church, a picture came into my mind.

Even if my husband were to leave this life way sooner than any of us would want, there would be a beautiful result.

He would meet our baby first in heaven.

Monday came and God quite directly provided an appointment with the hematologist/oncologist for that same day – a sudden cancelation that was no big deal for God to arrange. And oodles of blood tests and orders for an ultrasound.

And the very positive opinion of the doctor that after all our worrying, this wasn’t going to be a big deal. Even the hip surgery will get rescheduled after a solid diagnosis and some monitoring of his blood counts.

Numb from the whole thing I decided to go to Monday night Bible study, and I read words that have always been a comfort to me.

“He was gathered to his people.”

An Old Testament saying I had always loved to read, as it gave even my little girl imagination a picture of people I knew had died greeting someone else at the time of their death, gathering them in to a family, welcoming them home.

I had always pictured grandmas and grandpas in the mix, but now I added babies.

I have no fear of death. For me or my husband.

I want it to be a long way off, when our children are all grown and settled into their own families, raising our grandchildren and teaching them the things that matter.

Because when they go through scary, uncertain times like the one we are navigating right now, I want them to know the bottom line.

That God is not just a nice thought, but a real and powerful being. That he created us because the idea of eternity with us pleased him. That when we choose to follow him we will have bad things happen, but we have the absolute certainty that when they do he is bigger and stronger than anything that comes against us.

And he WILL work EVERYTHING for our good.

So as we live the next day and week and month with no guarantees, we can know many things for certain.

God is real. His love is unstoppable. His peace is unexplainable. He has made a people for himself from all of us who believe.

And no matter when any of us who follow this amazing God die in this body, we will be gathered in to our people.

And living life with so many of them now is just a bonus.

Out with the old (or rights, wrongs, and lefts)

02 Thursday Jan 2020

Posted by in faceliftbook journey, Recovery journey

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This past year I have grown by leaps and bounds as a person.

I’m going to spend a few minutes letting you in on some of my reflections of where I began 2019 and the much different place I find myself at its end.

As a homeschooling mom, I’ve always enjoyed watching my kids grow into who they are becoming. They don’t stay the same, just like I don’t, and we were happy to see another one focusing on their future just before 2019 began.

Middle Son waited after high school until he was ready to pursue a higher education, and as he showed more interest in a particular college we encouraged it, even though the costs were projected to be higher than we thought we could afford.

My husband and I were beginning to discuss the feasibility of helping this child with college expenses like we had with the older ones. We knew this was going to be a bigger investment, so we did first what we have learned by hard experience to do: we took it to God and waited for his answer.

I was very thankful I had started meeting with a Christian mentor, another woman who helped pull me back down to earth week after week. I had written down what my biggest concerns were, what I struggled with and where I thought I needed the most help.

Even in the couple of weeks between filling out the form and our first mentoring session I forgot one of my main issues. I recorded it in a journal as “not being able to give up control”. That WAS a big issue with me, but it wasn’t what I had written down. At our 3-month review my mentor reminded me what my issue REALLY was: admitting when I do something wrong.

So I was headed into the new year actively asking God to help me see when I do something wrong so that I can correct it and make amends right away. And I was also digging in and asking him to show me why I have struggled so much with this my whole life.

Just before the end of 2018 I wanted to learn how to set better goals, so I started doing Boundaries by Cloud and Townsend, and I was finding that I didn’t really have a clue about my own personal limits, much less how to set any meaningful boundaries.

I was just beginning to get a grasp on the concept that I can’t change the past and I can’t change any other person. These are obvious, and I knew them in my head, but I hadn’t taken them into my heart.

I was learning, finally, that my responsibilities, needs, condition of my heart, health of my emotions, and God-led decision-making are the things I needed to focus on.

So, how did I do over this past year?

My husband and I, after praying and both getting a clear green light, have trusted God to provide the funds needed to help our son realize his goal of going to college at a school we all love, where he feels called to be.

And God has come through exceedingly, abundantly beyond all we asked or imagined!

He received more than half his costs in scholarships, and we were able to make both his first and second semester payments in full! God is faithful, and we are in awe at how eager he is to bless us.

As I plunged into my mentoring sessions, I often talked about my safety-seeking control issues. It has plagued me all my life, this need to keep everyone around me safe. I have done many things that secluded or separated my family and me from the world around us thinking that if I had knowledge and the ability to get in between evil and my kids I could single-handedly keep everyone safe.

I’ve spent a lot of time and prayer this year wrestling this out with God, and I’ve found that every time I set myself up as being in control, I kicked God out of his rightful place. I’ve had to give up my right to control any part of my life so that I can experience truly following God. I’m glad to say I’m controlling less, though it may take the rest of my life to get where I’d like to be!

And my other issue of admitting when I’m wrong? I figured out why I have so much trouble with that. In my mind, the people who abused me as a child were deserving of punishment. They were wrong. They did bad things.

And I never wanted to be compared to them: to hurt anyone else, be responsible for causing harm to anyone.

So I could never be wrong.

I’m a work in progress on this one. Baby Girl patiently tells me when I overstep while lecturing a sales rep over the phone, or speak abruptly to a cashier at the grocery store. Out of all my children, this youngest daughter is in tune with my moods and is helping me see when I let my frustrations get in front of my better intentions.

And now I can stop and admit I blew it.

And my world doesn’t fall apart when I do.

Working my way slowly but surely through Boundaries has been a tremendous help in all of my issues this year, many more than I’m talking about here.

I began by finding that I never learned what good boundaries were as a child. God revealed to me many truths about how my parents didn’t either. So it’s like I’ve had revelation after revelation poured over me by God about what Mom and Dad’s lives were like as kids, why they struggled to set and keep boundaries with their kids, and how I’ve carried that forward into my life.

And I’ve been able to forgive.

That’s probably the most remarkable thing that has ever happened to me, this release from the need to see justice done, no more desire to have someone else suffer for what they’ve done to me or others.

As I write this I am seeing that there’s another side to the command Jesus gives us to forgive others as we have been forgiven.

I’m finally starting to FEEL forgiven. Because I’m finally able to give forgiveness to others.

Because no matter how far I’ve come in the past year, I’m not done, there’s more left to face and dig deep into and give back over to God.

And as a new year begins, I feel like God really does have a reason why he forgave me.

Because this is just the beginning.