Category Archives: Childhood

The Master Stroke

13 Thursday Feb 2020

Posted by in Childhood, faceliftbook journey

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The women’s bible study at church is working through I Corinthians, and this week, once again, there was a phrase that sang out to me in The Message paraphrase that I’m using right now. It came after Paul reminds the people of Corinth that they’ve been cleaned up by Jesus, and that they have gifts and benefits given straight from God.

How often I lose sight of that. I mean, I am very sure of my salvation. I believe that God’s promises are true. But I don’t always act like I recognize his gifts and benefits to me.

For me it starts with knowing him. It’s a work in progress. One step at a time.

You might think that would be a simple thing. Just pray for God to reveal himself to me.

But I think it would be absolutely devastating to see God fully, all at once. I like his way better, giving me one glimpse at a time of new facets of who he is.

What gets me, once I “get” something I never could make sense of before, is how obvious it seems now that I recognize it. Why couldn’t I see what was right in front of me?

The Bible also says that the reality of God can’t be denied, that he is revealed in his creation all around us.

But that doesn’t mean I realize how it points right to God as the creator of it all. Sometimes I refuse to recognize the obvious.

When I was a girl there was a wildly creative and artistically talented woman in our church, Sister Dorothy. (Every adult was Sister or Brother to me.) If Pinterest had been around then she would have been the queen. In my eyes she could do anything you could imagine.

I loved going to her house and seeing peeled apples drying to become the faces of old men and women. At Halloween she would dress up as a witch and sit on our front porch in a rocking chair, totally still. Until someone walked up and she’d creak the chair.

I still have some of the Barbie doll dresses she made for us girls, with rickrack and sequins and rich feeling fabrics.

But my favorite thing Sister Dorothy ever did was what we called a “chalk talk” at church.

My dad was the pastor, and occasionally he’d ask her to do a chalk talk during his sermon. She would set up her easel on the organ side, and as he came up to preach she would pick up her chalk pastels.

I paid more attention to those sermons than any others. No surprise when I finally figured out I’m a very visual learner. I was engaged in listening because I was always trying to figure out what the drawing would be. She usually tied it in somehow to the topic of his teaching, and I wanted to be able to guess before anyone else.

She didn’t make it easy. It wasn’t obvious as she got started. Just nebulous blobs of color, never starting at one side and moving to another, but some here, some there, with no rhyme or reason I could see.

After the first layer of color, Sister Dorothy would build them up, one on top of another. I would suspect a sunset maybe, or a forest, but it was all still undefined, no recognizable shapes emerging.

As the sermon progressed, she would add shading to show light and darkness, maybe a hint of whether it was morning or night, indoors or outside.

And still I waited eagerly to find out what it all meant, what it was going to be.

But the thing is, it already was, before she put it down on paper. She had thought it out, knew how she wanted to draw it, had an order she followed, and could see the finished product before she ever touched chalk to paper.

At the end of I Corinthians chapter 1 Paul tells us that for those of us personally called by God himself that Christ is God’s ultimate miracle and wisdom all wrapped up in one.

He thought this up, from start to finish, how that sin would enter the world because people make wrong choices, but even so God wanted us to be with him forever. So he made it possible for my sin to become invisible to him when he sees me through the blood of Jesus – a miracle. And then he lets me have a close and very personal, intimate relationship with Jesus, who leads me and teaches me every day to take hold of the wisdom he offers.

But looking at it with my little girl eyes I never could have grasped all he had done, all the things that already were and that I could have for the asking.

It has taken me all these years to be willing to ask and ask again, what else do you want me to see? Where am I looking and not recognizing your hand, God, in everyone and everything around me? What am I missing?

The scripture that blew me away always sounded a little corny to me, until God brought Sister Dorothy to mind as I read through it last week.

I Corinthians 2:1 – You’ll remember, friends, that when I first came to you to let you in on God’s master stroke, I didn’t try to impress you with polished speeches and the latest philosophy.

What does that even mean?

I’ll tell you the picture that I saw in my head.

Sister Dorothy would have all this color, the different shades and values meeting and blending and flowing on the pad of paper, and I could almost begin to see it. But it wasn’t until the last few minutes that it all came together.

It was the master stroke.

She would pick up a black pastel and suddenly make a line, usually long and curving or circuitous, and I could see it! A stream, or a house, or a barn. A boat. A man. A tree.

A few more well-placed lines and the whole scene came together, and you could hear people all over the church catch their breath when they saw it. It had been there the whole time. We couldn’t see it without her master strokes at the end.

It hit me that God is like that. Laid out right in front of me, everything that is necessary. I just need to look for the master stroke, the detail that suddenly defines so clearly what God has been speaking to me in subtler ways for so long.

Or maybe I’m listening to the polished speeches and latest philosophies when I need to lift my face and look at the person God places in front of me today.

So I ask again. Where do I need to look today, God, to see your master stroke?

Celebrating the Day

26 Thursday Dec 2019

Posted by in Childhood, Christmas, Redemption

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Blame it on Thanksgiving being late, or having too many major home repairs, or the flu knocking everyone off their feet for a week, but Christmas has come and gone way too quickly this year.

We didn’t beat last years record of six hours to unwrap our presents. We only took four. Although today we’ll finish up with Oldest Son and his girlfriend and we may come close.

Life moves too fast. The first semester of Middle Son’s college career, the holiday season, the clock ticking until Husband has a hip replacement next month.

Where can I find time and space for Christmas?

It’s not an easy thing. The world doesn’t value slow.

Yet I find I need quiet and stillness to receive the information I’m wanting, I’m needing to know exists. Because if I can’t get out of the rush that has been this Christmas season I may totally miss it.

I’m one of those odd birds that doesn’t like Christmas music, so listening to the radio has gotten tedious and irritating. The rare surprise is a handful of songs that DO stop me in my tracks and make me think about why we celebrate Jesus’ birth every year.

One in particular, and a poem that starts running through my head in the odd moment of quiet and calm.

This year it came together for me as I sat in the packed service of the church where I attend Celebrate Recovery. On Christmas Eve.

I’m a visual person. There was a powerful light and sound show depicting the incongruity of God, in his immeasurable pervasiveness, making himself so small as to zoom in to our universe, our solar system, this earth, and become a human like me.

If you can fully grasp that, try to explain the logic of it to me, because I cannot.

In the 2000+ years since that event happened, the world has written myths and folk tales of gods and superhuman heroes that we idolize. Just look at the top-grossing movies in recent years.

Heroes in stories have had humble beginnings only to at some point step into their places as the true leaders they were meant to be.

Jesus was born in a stable, laid in a feed trough, and died on a cross meant for the worst of criminals.

It’s hard to wrap my head around this. I mean, I’ve studied the Bible and I get the need for Jesus to die for the sin of the world. What I shake my head about is the means. The actual meanness of the place he was born.

The lack of a super power making clear he was Messiah, Emmanuel, King of Kings and Lord of Lords to everyone he met.

I have to ask myself, why did God allow his son to be born like this, among farm animals?

As a girl a farmer who raised sheep would use space in our big barn during lambing season. There are smells and sounds, a density to the air made up of animal body humidity and dust, muddy floors, fresh hay and buckets of formula with long nipples attached to feed the rejected lambs, layers of straw for bedding hiding the slickness of urine and manure.

This was the stable of my youth. What was that one like?

More importantly, what purpose did this serve, for Jesus to be born in this place, in this way?

How unlike a hero story the birth of Jesus was. He didn’t swoop down and single-handedly wipe out the evil forces threatening to destroy our world.

Or did he?

Because when I read the Bible I find that the goal isn’t to save the world. It’s to save you. And me. To make us impervious to the evil in this world.

Out of the stable of our lives where we nose around like sheep for a bite of something that appeals to us, choosing to ignore the filth we allow to fall around us, seeping into the ground or drying in the warmth of the day until we’re so used to our sin we forget how badly we need to be made clean.

And yet Jesus took us on. Took on our lowest, meanest places, literally at his birth. And in a more real and eternal way than I can imagine when he offers to come and live inside me, inside my heart, in this filthy, inadequate stable he calls the temple of the Holy Spirit.

So I read the poem “Let the Stable Still Astonish” by Lesley Leyland Fields, and I hope you will read it, too.

Slowly. Word by word. Sinking in deep.

“Let the stable still astonish
Straw — dirt floor, dull eyes
Dusty flanks of donkeys, oxen;
Crumbling, crooked walls;
No bed to carry that pain
And then, the child,
Rag-wrapped, laid to cry
In a trough
Who would have chosen this?

Who would have said ‘Yes,’
‘Let the God of all the heavens
And earth
Be born here, in this place’?
Who but the same God
Who stands in the darker, fouler rooms
of our hearts
and says ‘Yes,’
‘Let the God of Heaven and Earth
be born here –
in this place.’

Let this sink in – this truth, this injustice, undeserved mercy, pure love looking straight at MY darker, fouler rooms and stepping in before I realized how much making me clean had cost him.

Even though I know Jesus conquered death, I tend to accept it as if I somehow deserve it.

So here’s the song, the one that always breaks me to tears.

As you click I pray you, too, will slow, taking a quiet moment to listen until you see it.

See the reason.

“I Celebrate The Day” by Relient K (written by Matt Thiesen)

And with this Christmas wish is missed
The point I could convey
If only I could find the words to say to let You know how much You’ve touched my life
Because here is where You’re finding me, in the exact same place as New Years Eve
And from the lack of my persistancy
We’re less than half as close as I want to be

And the first time
That You opened Your eyes did You realize that You would be my Savior
And the first breath that left Your lips
Did You know that it would change this world forever

And so this Christmas I’ll compare the things I felt in prior years
To what this midnight made so clear
That You have come to meet me here

And the first time
That You opened Your eyes did You realize that You would be my Savior
And the first breath that left Your lips
Did You know that it would change this world forever

To look back and think that
This baby would one day save me
In the hope that what You did
That You were born so I might live
To look back and think that
This baby would one day save me

And I, I celebrate the day
That You were born to die
So I could one day pray for You to save my life

All I want for Christmas

19 Thursday Dec 2019

Posted by in Childhood, Christmas

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We’re less than a week away from Christmas, and I feel like I haven’t had a minute to just sit and think about it.

Yes, there have been hours spent searching for a relatively few number of items online compared to most years, but that’s been about the gifts I want to give, not the reason why I love to give them.

And if you read last year’s Christmas post I’ll give you a little spoiler: our time spent opening presents won’t be as crazy long this year, because we are skint and need to pare down on the buying.

But will we still be celebrating Christmas? And what is it that we are looking for in the boxes and wrapping paper? Whether giving or receiving, there’s an internal motivation that drives us to take time away from careers and schedules and gather with family and friends.

I cannot speak for you. I can only speak for me.

Because at its heart, Christmas is a deeply personal celebration.

As a child the cold weather always came first, the short days. Visits to Santa at some shopping center, and eventually Christmas Eve when we would open one present each: handmade pajamas from one of our grandmas.

Then all the rituals of Christmas morning. Sitting on the landing of the stairs while Mom and Dad started making coffee and prepping the turkey.

We would gradually scoot down one stair at a time, but we knew we were supposed to stop before the open railing to the living room. As we got older we took turns as to who got to go all the way down and run across the floor without looking too hard and plug in the tree lights.

And then we would crowd together on one stair and see what we could make out by the light of those big, colorful bulbs.

The tree would be set up by the front windows near the fireplace. It took a day to put it up every year. When it was new the individual branches were color coded, but over the years it took longer to see the specks of paint left on the hard wire stem ends. It often became a guessing game, stacking up like-sized pieces, hoping they would fit into the holes on the tube in the center.

We’d start at the top, poking each branch into the “trunk”, adjusting the angles as we went down to avoid large gaps that let you see through to the metal frame. There were extra rings of greenery to put on between groups of branches, and then we’d load on everything we could find in the attic boxes to fill it out.

And last would be the tinsel, my personal favorite, flung willy-nilly all over the branches and ornaments, many of which were handmade as school projects. I loved my styrofoam egg carved out to hold a tiny nativity scene with a background painted in art class.

When we were teenagers we would go get a cut tree instead of the fake one. Some years Mom and Dad would head down to North Carolina and bring back a Frasier fir tied on the top of the car.

That’s the version I’ve always preferred in my own home.

Our Christmas morning growing up would continue with Dad lighting the laid wood in the fireplace. And once they had hot mugs in hand and a crackling fire going, we took our places around the room to open presents.

I know some years were lean, some were more generous in the amount of gifts we got. Funny thing is I don’t distinguish between them in my mind. I liked getting new things, but even better I liked having Dad home all day, watching him help prepare food.

Up until just the last couple years I would have my time with Dad in my head as I made his cornbread for my dressing and chopped the onions and celery like he always did at the kitchen table. All on Christmas morning.

And I liked having people over our house. We almost never had anyone over. I felt like people saw the preacher’s family as untouchable, off limits for the normal interactions I saw them having with everyone else.

So sitting around the dining room table there would be a few true friends to our family that I loved and feared and felt honored to spend this day with every year.

We’d eat at 2, and play games and try on new clothes or try out new things, and add wood to the fire, and drink hot chocolate and eat dessert or leftovers or both.

I don’t remember the t.v. ever being turned on unless we knew for sure there was a special show we wanted to watch together, and then only in the evening. Our time was spent interacting and cooperating with each other in games, and cooking and cleaning up in groups. I’d sneak off for solitary times to avoid overload by reading a book or writing for a while.

If I had to boil those growing up days down to a few words they wouldn’t focus on things. Togetherness, relaxation, feasting, companionship.

It was a magical day, when we might complain about the tasks we were asked to do, but we did it eventually because there was plenty of work to go around and the day wouldn’t be as much fun if we were waiting for chores to get done before we could play pinochle.

So as I prepare myself for our several Christmas celebrations over the next week or so, I’ll be running around trying to get my gifts bought, but I always reach a point where I look at my lists of what I’ve gotten and say that’s enough. I could always get more things, but we could also be just as happy with less.

I get to a point where I have to look inside and ask what I’m really hoping to get for Christmas. And while things are nice, I really want what I got in my childhood home of modest means and hard-working parents,

I want to gather together with people I love.

I want to not think about the constant stresses of life, and instead consciously let go of the hold they can have on me.

I want to cook and eat food that satisfies my heart and my stomach.

And I want to be with people who are on this journey of life alongside me, recharging and refreshing each other as we look ahead to the new year to come.

And I hope you can take time to celebrate in a way that leaves you better for all the hard work and planning.

Because Jesus didn’t come to make a lot of work for us once a year. He came to give us life. Abundant life.

And I’m ready to enjoy that abundance.

I got the music in me…

21 Thursday Nov 2019

Posted by in Childhood, Gratefulness journal

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One thing I’m continually thankful for is being raised in a musical family.

Dad was a preacher who promoted Southern gospel groups. He also sang, but I couldn’t tell you what part. Mom was a piano player and sang alto.

One of my first memories is of being a baby wrapped in a blanket lying on a pew in our church, and my parents on the platform practicing with their quartet.

In my early life I spent countless evenings at similar practices and then it was my turn to step up to the microphone singing a chorus as a preschooler, joining in the choir, or being part of a youth singing group.

I wondered if my dad wanted to be a professional singer. He was so supportive of the groups he scheduled for “gospel sings” in our area. Some big name groups came through, but there were many more lesser known performers he promoted by getting people to hear them live.

Those events were always exciting for me. I was shy, but still thrilled at being allowed backstage with Dad. I soon got up the courage to talk to the bands, and became a roadie of sorts, taking on the job of dismantling and carrying out the microphone stands. It was the only equipment they would trust to a scrawny kid.

One of my fondest memories of those concerts was standing onstage during a break and singing with my family. We did it at various places, but my favorite was the high school auditorium in our home town.

I have an 8×10 of the whole gang, and looking at it takes me back to manning the ticket booth by the doors, hanging out in the practice room where the bands warmed up, the smell of the curtains as I’d stand behind them watching the bands and the audience both.

I didn’t listen closely to the music then because there were so many other things to experience. But somehow it still got down inside me, and I knew that music would always be an important part of my life.

I often wondered if Dad didn’t wish he could play an instrument. Then one day I discovered a guitar case in my parents’ closet. I pieced together that it probably belonged to my Papaw, who played guitar in the honky-tonks when he was drinking.

So I think Dad could play, but he chose not to.

And that’s a shame. Because if his dad had a talent for it, I bet he would have been a good player.

And I would have loved to hear my daddy play the guitar.

My mom was a good piano player. And I have had about eight long, full, endless, mostly boring years of piano lessons in my life.

I did not inherit her skill.

Mom learned to play shape notes. Some of you may have grandmothers who can explain that to you! Apparently each note had a shape. The lines and spaces weren’t enough of a clue. But maybe that was her secret.

Because I could never make much sense of the lines and spaces and the ovals drawn upon them. Yes, every good boy deserves fudge or whatever makes him say, “Ahh!”, but theory and I never connected.

Mom could play almost anything. And transpose in a couple minutes time to suit the voice of the singer. And sing harmony with anyone.

In our little family singing group my older sister sang lead and I got harmony. Which was fine with me, because I was fascinated with my mom’s voice and how she found the right notes.

In my piano lessons I heard words like chords and keys, and I even knew that usually the second note from the top was the alto. But without a pencil to write down the letters I could not tell you what I was supposed to sing.

There are Facebook laments about how churches should go back to hymn books so people can see what they are supposed to be singing. But I know that after eight years of studying it, and my whole life singing out of a hymn book, I was no closer to knowing what I was singing.

Mom taught me that while some people are gifted with understanding theory, others are gifted with understanding the feel of music.

Guess which one I am?

I’ve often heard it said, of piano players especially, that they play by ear. In my understanding that usually means that they can’t, or don’t want to learn, to read music.

What I have also found is that those who play by ear are driven by the music, not by the notes on the page and the written instructions of how to play it.

They play with passion and feeling, and that flows through the music.

While music played exactly as written can be quite beautiful, I’d rather hear music played from the heart, full of meaning that goes beyond notes on a page.

And so I sing by ear.

I used to labor to figure out what it meant to sing specific notes. I’ve had piano players go over and over parts, and in some settings it’s necessary to toe the line and sing exactly the way every other alto sings.

But what I love most is the way learning and singing music comes to me.

It starts with lots of listening – I always say I have to hear a song 50 times before I “get” it.

The important thing for me is to feel the music inside me, to know where it is going, to feel the excitement of where I hope it goes next, to be carried along by the story it tells me before I ever take in the words.

Once I truly have the music in me, then I can add the lyrics, trying to hear them clearly on the radio before ever seeing them on paper. And layering on the meaning, the story, the message. Whatever they need to tell me.

To find my voice, I have to let the song tell me where to go.

Singing lead is great, and I love it. But there is something so satisfying about trailing a little under, giving a base, an anchor for the melody to soar above.

Depth and power and feeling.

I’m told that what I do is hear the chords and pick one of the lower notes to sing. That could be the technical explanation, but mainly what I love is to feel the music and let it bring out a response from my heart.

The same kind of response I felt as a girl, standing in the folds of a heavy curtain, hearing the same song I bet 50 times, and knowing that it was speaking to me.

And opening my mouth, and letting the music back out.

The Perfect Leather Jacket

14 Thursday Nov 2019

Posted by in Childhood, Parenting, Relationships

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Over the last year I’ve been slowly working my way through a book, Boundaries by Dr. Henry Cloud and Dr. John Townsend. I say slowly because I’m only halfway through it!

I got the book and the accompanying workbook out of the library and dug in deep. (I’m too cheap to buy them!) I found I had a lot to learn about boundaries, but I have felt God gently showing me a lot about myself and the way I was raised, and also about my parents.

There were some things I held against them over the years, things that became my own battle cry to “never be like my parents”, until (shock) I heard their words come out of my mouth.

I can’t explain it any other way than that God supernaturally brought understanding to my mind, helping me see the way life had molded my parents based on all I know about their childhoods.

I’ve had a lot of light bulb moments in the past year. I’ve learned to see the reasons behind their inability to set good boundaries for me, to teach me how to set them for myself. And as I remember the way my world was as I grew up, I’ve had a lot of questions answered by diving into this book.

I’ve also rejoiced when answering questions showing the good sides of my parents. Though it’s necessary to examine the negative, the book really does balance it with applauding the good things I’ve learned and the people who have helped me.

This week I’ve journaled about how my parents taught me to make good decisions, and to learn the value of delayed gratification.

And it all comes down to the perfect leather jacket.

I was about 17 years old, working my first job, driving a car a family friend had donated to the preacher’s kids (my older sister and myself). It was made the year I was born.

I have to clarify. This was my first job working for a business that gave me a weekly paycheck.

Because one thing my parents excelled at was living within their means. Which meant that they didn’t splurge on lots of extras for us four kids.

I never really thought about it until I was grown and married, but we were probably poor. The thing is, it never felt that way. We had a home and food and clothes and love, and I never lacked for anything I truly needed.

And there’s the secret.

Of course when I was little I didn’t know the difference between a want and a need. But that was one of the first and best lessons I ever learned. As we got older, Dad especially impressed on us that they were taking care of our needs, but our wants were up to us to supply.

He helped out by taking us strawberry picking at a friend’s patch once school was out in June, and we set up shop in the front of our big barn. He made signs painted to show our hours, what we sold, and if we were open or closed.

We kids sat out in the barn, sold the baskets of berries, restocked the table, collected the money, and cleaned up when we sold out.

This led to getting more produce already picked later in the summer: tomatoes, squash, green beans, peppers, cucumbers, watermelon, cantaloupe, and the season ender, corn.

In this home produce stand was where I found my love of numbers and counting, handling money, calculating and distributing the profits that were left after we repaid Dad for the produce costs.

I excelled at this. I don’t remember what my siblings loved most about the stand, but next to talking to the customers and adding up their purchases, the hands-on economics class was a thrill for me.

I would keep track of how much time each person spent working the stand. Down to the minute. And once we had paid Dad, we took 10% off the top and put that in what we called the “family fund”, which was to be used for whatever we all agreed on. Maybe a trip to Cedar Point or extras during our annual trip home to North Carolina.

The rest was divided between us kids based on how many hours had been worked and what percentage of the time was spent doing the work.

We each then tithed off our profits, and the rest we could spend on whatever we wanted! My favorite was to get tart ‘n tinies, which were miniature Sweetarts in the shape of little pellets once in a while, play a few games at Cedar Point, and save the rest.

I was probably 9 or 10 when we started working the stand, and it lasted past when I started that “real” job. It was no wonder that within a year I was asked to do the weekly inventory and cash reconciliations, once they learned how good I was at handling those details of the restaurant where I worked.

And so finally, after years of socking most of my money away in a savings account, I found myself at the local mall in a trendy clothing store, smelling the rich warmth of that brown leather jacket.

It fit me perfectly! Not too baggy across the shoulders, but with enough room to move my arms. I remember the feel of the silky lining as they slipped into it the first time I tried it on. Cool and smooth and luxurious.

As my hands warmed the leather the fragrance of it teased my senses. It was similar to the musky cologne I liked.

I had to have it.

So I did what people did in the 70’s. I put it on layaway. I put a small deposit down, and then I would need to come and pay a minimum amount every week until I paid it off.

Only then could I take it home.

That first week I described it to my family and friends. I couldn’t wait to go “visit” it the first time and make my payment, trying it on again to be sure it fit as good as I remembered.

Meanwhile life was moving on, and I was looking at going to college. And starting to figure the cost, because my parents couldn’t help much.

And I had to make one more trip. To say goodbye.

Lots of “if only’s” came to mind for several months after I got my money back. The thoughts of how I would have looked walking into school or church, the envy or congratulations from my peers.

That perfect leather jacket wasn’t the only thing I’ve wanted and not gotten. But it was the first. And the lessons it has taught me have carried me safely past potentially bad financial decisions.

Because, like I eventually had to say that last time in the store, I can still hear my Dad saying, “Is this something you really need, or is it something you only want to have?”

And those are words I don’t mind hearing come out of my own mouth.

Thanks, Dad. You taught me well.

Not Finished with Me Yet

03 Thursday Oct 2019

Posted by in Asthma, Childhood, Recovery journey, Tragedies

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Last Thursday I almost died.

Literally.

I’m still gathering all the pieces of why I didn’t, and I want to capture for you my perspective on what I hope is a one-time occurrence.

(For some background you could check out my post “Inspiration” from August 8, 2019.)

I’m really big on gaining knowledge and understanding. So when my asthma and allergies (still unnamed) started ramping up and causing attacks, I went into research mode. I made an appointment with a pulmonologist, but it was almost two months away. So I responded to a Facebook post about an asthma clinical trial, and found my asthma and allergy doctors instead.

Since then I’ve participated in two clinical trials designed to test generics of an effective asthma drug that makes it more affordable to do what should come naturally.

Breathe.

So in a two week time I had already had two serious asthma attacks: one after visiting a very musty used-book store, another that woke me up coughing and choking in the wee hours of the morning.

That second one got me thinking that I needed a better strategy of how to communicate that I was having trouble. I was alone in the family room to use my nebulizer for an albuterol treatment at 4am, taking my phone in case the distress didn’t let up. But my husband’s phone charges overnight in that room, so it would be down to my teenagers or 911 if I couldn’t walk and breathe at the same time to get help.

I freely admit I have control issues. Four and a half years of Celebrate Recovery have gotten me to the point where I can clearly see my problems, but I still don’t want to admit that I need help.

I don’t want to be powerless.

Seriously, I have been in places where I had no control over what was being done to me, and as a girl I decided I would do my best to control everything I could to make sure nothing bad happened to me again.

Yet Thursday night I had almost no control over what was happening to me.

Just the day before my third attack in two weeks, I met with my mentor, who I hadn’t seen for a month, and we talked about my need to have a written and easily communicated way to let my family know what I needed. So while working Thursday, my mind was on doing this, making a list from the most drastic to least invasive things to do for me or ask me about.

In my controlling mind I never wanted to entertain the idea of needing to call 911. That was for people who couldn’t analyze their own situation and be proactive about doing for themselves all they could.

Joke’s on me.

My niece, a firefighter and EMT, will give me a look next time I see her, but on my list was to ask her what to expect if I ever needed to call for emergency help. Because I like to work it out in my head before it ever happens.

Someone else was doing the working out, way better than I ever could.

Simple things like me feeling inspired to clean the garage. Okay, boss the teenagers around to get the garage cleaned. This happened a few weeks ago after moving Middle Son into college, when I was feeling the need to clear out the staging area in the house, and do the every-ten-year garage purging. It wasn’t completely cleared, but in organized piles at least.

I just want to park inside it this winter.

And getting stocked up on my regular asthma meds for when the current trial ended, something I would normally wait to spend the money on.

Way farther back, two and half years ago, Baby Girl had taken the classes and gotten certified for adult and infant CPR training. Though she had never had occasion to use it, she wanted the knowledge and confidence it gave her to work with young children in many areas of her life.

Let’s go farther, to 8-year old me, who was learning to use a riding mower and wanted to hear herself sing over the noise. And who was almost drowned by a neighbor boy in our pool, so I decided to learn to breathe deeply and be able to hold my breath for long periods calmly. Who loved to be onstage and belt out lines or songs, no cheating with microphones. Who toughed out labor every time with no help from drugs.

Just breathing deeply.

So when very suddenly Thursday evening I went from laughing over pictures of a cake I’d had delivered to Middle Son at school, to not feeling right, to labored breathing, sweating, feeling a little nauseated, all the pieces (much more than I could ever list) from my whole life’s story came together in some of the hardest words I’ve ever said.

I need help. Call an ambulance.

I guess I’m not shocked this didn’t register. After all, I’m the one who handles these kinds of things. Because nobody else can (Ha! My deluded mind talking again.)

But as I stumbled back into the chair by my nebulizer and with shaking hands broke open a vial and poured it in, I heard my husband making the call.

My ears quit working. I couldn’t make out all the words. I could see my younger daughter trying to catch my eye, saying something I couldn’t understand. I barked out a few one-word orders on the exhales, but I couldn’t stand not having the little push of air helping with my feeble inspirations.

I was hardly breathing. In only a couple of minutes.

And several more passing while the ambulance rushed from five miles straight up the road.

There was no white light at the end of a tunnel. My whole life didn’t “flash before my eyes”. I don’t think I was that close to death. But then again, what do I know? Why do I try to minimize the seriousness of those moments?

The reality is, if the EMT’s hadn’t gotten there quickly, I probably wouldn’t be writing this.

There was a lot of activity going on around me. Kids rushing out to make sure the garage was wide open and shoving those piles farther out of the way. Moving one of the cars so vehicles could pull close to the house. Clearing laundry baskets and shoes out of the floor and away from the door so there was clear access.

Me begging wordlessly for another vial of albuterol, frustrated at how long it took me to communicate what I needed. (Should have gotten that plan down in writing.)

And the overriding need to breathe.

Out is possible. It’s a relaxing, a release, as little as it may be it didn’t take much effort.

But inspiration…

I didn’t fully understand what I was talking about until Thursday night, when every thought, every bit of my will was focused on moving that magnificent muscle, my well-developed diaphragm, and feeling a pitifully small whiff of air making it’s way into my wheezing, mucus-filled, inflamed, closed-up lungs.

There were suddenly strangers, one kneeling beside my chair talking in my ear, others carrying things, holding things up, putting things on my face and in my veins, asking questions I couldn’t answer.

The voice by my ear telling me to hold just a quick second before breathing out, to get the medicine in.

I’m just as sure as I can be that it’s like Luke described it: “Suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God…”

Not the people, don’t misunderstand me. There was a battle going on in that room that was far beyond the working of my labored lungs. There was an eternal question that was being answered:

Who is in control here?

It wasn’t me.

In fact, I fought some of the things they wanted to do. I couldn’t stand the mask (they said it was like a CPAP, so that’s out for me in the future), but I wanted the oxygen and aerosol drugs it was providing so they let me hold it as close as I could. When they couldn’t get a clear oxygen reading, I heard something like 84%, they talked about intubating, and I motioned the kids to leave the room for a bit. Thankfully they didn’t need to do that.

The hardest part was hearing them ask questions I knew the answers to, but couldn’t speak.

Yet within an hour and a half of getting to the hospital I was talking to everyone and walking out on my own two feet.

Two days later Baby Girl (who is 16 and my hero right now) shared what she had been trying to tell me. She had her CPR manual out and was preparing herself mentally to be able to break her mother’s ribs if I went unconscious before the ambulance arrived and she needed to keep my heart beating. Because she is the only one in the house trained to do that.

And in the emergency room I learned that the EMT who took charge of me is also a nurse at the hospital we wanted to go to. He knew exactly what they would do, and did all he could ahead to avoid any delays in my care.

My family rushed madly to gather things I might need if I were admitted, let our grown kids know the situation, reached out to our church, got there quickly to be with me, though I was pretty unaware of my surroundings for a while.

The next day I canceled work and appointments, let myself be chauffeured to get more meds and run necessary errands, and was able to go to Celebrate Recovery.

I got there late because I’d run off without my phone and had to turn back. Got caught by a train, and after arriving during worship had three people I needed to talk to before I paid attention to the song.

And then I looked up to the screen and I got my answer.

“From life’s first cry, til final breath, Jesus commands my destiny.”

Thank you, Jesus, that you have not yet let me reach my final breath!

Getting Justice

26 Thursday Sep 2019

Posted by in Childhood, Recovery journey, Redemption, Relationships

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I’m a person who really likes justice.

Seeing someone who has been wronged restored, and the person responsible held accountable for their harmful actions.

Someone working hard all their life and finally receiving recognition and gratitude for their efforts.

I like it when good triumphs over evil.

Especially when I’m the one receiving justice.

It was a sweet day a few months ago when Words with Friends started giving recognition for all kinds of achievements. Milestones based on numbers of times doing all kinds of things.

All of a sudden the 7 years of otherwise wasted time I had invested in playing Words with Friends were vindicated by my sudden designation as “achievement level 8” with more obscure statistics racked up than a baseball player!

Who knew someone was keeping records?

All those little victories were being counted up, kept track of, and finally revealed for the whole world to see. Well, ok, probably just the handful of people I play. If they had absolutely nothing better to do with their time than look up my achievements.

I guess if I want to someday look through them all…then at least one person will know how great I am at spelling words.

Back to justice.

Statistics are impersonal. They count quantity, but don’t define quality.

Before I got into recovery I wanted certain people to pay for what they had done to me. I wanted to help identify them as abusers, lead the investigation into who else they may have victimized, round them up and let us all have our day in court to testify or defend, and let the facts be heard and acknowledged and above all else, let justice be done.

For little girl me who didn’t have a voice or words to tell.

Because wouldn’t me getting justice make up for all those years of denial and shame and guilt and self-protection?

I considered becoming a lawyer for several years so that I could bring about justice for others. And in doing so I know I would have been trying to somehow bring restitution to myself.

But do I apply that same zeal to the people I have wronged? When I realize I’ve done something that hurt someone else in some way, am I eager to apologize and make amends as quickly as possible?

And what about those long ago sins against others that I would rather forget, but that maybe they have never been able to? How could I ever bring the same justice to each of them?

Do I want the same brand of justice that I would measure out to others applied to me?

Because if you were to number the things I’ve done wrong, keep the statistics of the nasty attitudes, the condescension, the biting words, betrayals and lies and manipulations, that would be a list I wouldn’t want anyone to ever see.

But the thing is, God knows all of it. All of me. The tiny bit of good that makes it through the selfish and evil parts. And amongst the good he knows the secret delight of the occasional selfless, loving act.

Mercy undoes me. When I started to face my own guilt, truly deserved guilt, and saw the mercy God has shown me, it changed me.

One of the hardest things I’ve ever done was to forgive my abusers.

And there is no way I could have fully done that on my own. Because in my mind, I would never get the justice I deserved if I gave them forgiveness they never admitted they needed.

There’s a verse that undoes me every time I really take it in.

Romans 5:8: 8 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Where is the justice in that? That even when I had no clue that I needed to be rescued, that I needed forgiveness, Jesus paid for my sin.

If God pursues me like this, if he forgives me and decides that because of Jesus’ death on the cross, I don’t have to make restitution, I don’t have to pay for my crimes, then what does that mean for me?

How can I demand justice from other people?

Because when I look only at the cold hard facts, my abusers may deserve to suffer the consequences of their sins against me. But when I turn it around on myself, I would want mercy.

I came to a place a year or so into recovery where not only had I been able to forgive them, God gave me the desire to pray for their healing and salvation.

It had been impossible for me to take that step on my own. I had genuinely forgiven, which to me meant that I no longer wanted to see them suffer for what they had done to me. But was I willing for them to ever feel the same joy and peace I have in my relationship with Jesus?

Could I really, truly, let them off the hook?

Not long after that I had occasion to see several of my abusers all together. They were, each and every one of them, broken, depressed, anxious, hopeless.

And I realized that was the justice I had dreamed of for all those years.

I no longer felt the need to pursue it. Not for me. Because of how much they seemed to have paid for it throughout their lives.

I was so thankful God had replaced my heart of stone with a heart of flesh that could feel compassion for these people.

Just the other day a dear friend, a brother to me truly, gave me the gift of a few minutes conversation, just catching up. Warm hugs, true love felt and expressed.

The thing is, he knew me when. When I was not interested in God’s plans for my life. When I was living for my own pleasure and plans, selfishly pursuing what I wanted.

And he’s known me ever since. And he still loves me.

If a friend can choose to forget and move beyond the bad they know we are capable of, how much more gracious is God when he throws our sins as far as the east is from the west?

So I do love justice. But not my kind. God’s kind.

Someday in heaven I may meet my abusers.

Because God doesn’t want anyone to perish. He’d rather everyone came to repentance.

And that’s the justice I pray for them now.

Willow Summer

19 Thursday Sep 2019

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I’ve been hibernating inside air conditioned buildings for most of this summer, because I’ve found the heat and humidity are triggers for my asthma. Even walking from car to building can put me in distress.

Sitting out on our deck has not been possible on very many days, and in just a few more, summer will officially be over, another year we never got the tiki torches lit so we could laze into the night relatively bug free.

As a girl there was a birch tree in our yard that I loved to climb, mainly because it was the only one I could, and I spent hours wedged against the trunk, peeling the bark and watching the bugs busily doing whatever bugs do all day.

In the evenings we would catch lightning bugs, and yes, put them in jars to make our own night lights. We had no qualms about squishing their lit ends around our wrists and fingers to make glowing bracelets and rings. Our own primitive version of glow sticks.

We had lots of trees in our yards, and I had learned how to mow using a push mower for trimming and the riding mower for the biggest part of the lawn. We had front, back, middle and barn yards, and odds and ends of patches that connected them all to maintain every week. They each had their own feel, their distinct character, and I’m sure we all had our favorites to mow over the years.

Mine was the middle yard. It was the only one with no building to work around, although there were lots of trees, bushes around the bottom of our U-shaped driveway, and peonies lining the edge of the paved half.

I had claimed the birch tree as my own, but secretly my desire was to someday climb the huge weeping willow and sit inside its hairlike strings of leaves.

I don’t know much about willow trees, but ours was always getting struck by lightning. It was located close to the road, lower than the pavement that was reach up a steep ditch bank. The poles for the power lines were spaced out across our property parallel to the road, and the branches of some of the trees had grown up among the dipping lengths of wire.

I didn’t know much about electricity, but I knew it was a big deal the weekend my dad and most of the men in our neighborhood decided it was time to cut down the huge willow before it fell in a storm and took out the power lines that supplied the whole neighborhood. Lightning had left long scars from top to bottom, killing some limbs, knocking others to the ground over the years.

So armed with coils of rope, ladders, a few helmets, heavy gloves and work boots, they divided the tasks and went to work tying ropes to branches and then a whole gang pulling on the ropes as the saw bit through a branch, the wielder himself secured to the trunk.

We watched in excitement as one by one those huge branches were cut free of the trunk, and with loud and somewhat panicked yells the crew on the ground would lean into their ropes to pull the cracking, falling limbs free of the electric lines, warning all to look out and get out of the way.

The deconstruction of a tree that had probably been there for over a hundred years took only days. The big drama of the curtains of leaves dropping to ground they had just been shading happened within a few hours.

And then our fun began.

Because even though we could see there would be lots of work for us ahead, we knew we had days, maybe weeks, that those huge branches would lay in piles covering much of the middle yard.

I remember spending as much time as I could among those reclining limbs. I was a pioneer finding raw materials to make my own shelter, weaving lengths of willow leaves together to make baskets or clothes. I had all the sticks I could want to stand up in long fence lines, defining my territory. My siblings were sent out to play in the debris as well I’m sure, but I remember loving the times I spent alone letting my imagination take me back in time and across the world to places I’d only read about.

There were miniature quarries where the dirt was chunked out, sod and all, as a branch had dug into the ground when it hit. The blocks of clay-like soil became cups and bowls to use in my makeshift hut or teepee or cabin, depending upon what character I wanted to be that day.

I remember the smell of the newly cut willow. The closest I could come to describing it was that it reminded me of the smell of a watermelon rind. A clean, green smell that was very pleasing to me. I could sit for hours just smelling the dampness in the center of the branches, reading a book or writing a story about all the adventures I could see myself having.

It was probably weeks I had to be Robinson Crusoe, or more likely Swiss Family Robinson, and even the boy who lived on his own in My Side of the Mountain. I played out adventures to my heart’s content as summer calmed down into fall. I took bigger branches and rode them around like horses or motorcycles or airplanes.

I could never understand why everyone didn’t like sitting in the grass letting their mind take them to fantastic places.

The day came when Dad began to instruct us on where he wanted us to drag the smaller branches. He was taking another weekend to cut them apart a little, and we would need to drag them back to his chopping block to get cut into firewood. The leaves had finally died, the great bulk of their tangled strands reduced to crumbling whips.

Slowly my hidey holes were uncovered, one by one. The rooms in my many dwellings exposed as we pulled one long wall after another over by the chicken barn where the logs would be stored for coming winters.

And finally the tedious job we normally did after any windy or stormy day: picking up the sticks that would damage the mower blades. And I was brought back through time to the present, the reality that I didn’t want to mow over sticks taking over the storyline in my mind.

But in the winter evenings that followed, when I would go out to have my arms stacked high with split lengths of wood, I would bury my nose in them the whole way to the fireplace, getting a whiff of that clean summer watery smell, once again a pioneer intent on holding off the cold for one more night.

Finding nourishment

05 Thursday Sep 2019

Posted by in Childhood, Recovery journey, Redemption, Relationships

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Did you ever have a hero as a child?

A real person you aspired to be like?

I did.

I think about her often. In fact, I was just telling my younger daughter about her very recently, because hers is the standard to which I compare every female voice. Then this weekend, at family camp, the speaker mentioned my hero.

As a girl, singing or listening to music made chores easier. Like mowing the lawn.

I enjoyed this task, because I tried to sing louder than the trucks on our busy road to hear myself while riding the mower. I learned to project my voice and sing loudly by 10 or 11 years old. My favorite go-to songs were by Karen Carpenter.

In my family we all sang, both in church and at gospel “sings” in our area, where Dad brought in southern gospel quartets.

My older sister sang soprano, and I took the alto part. But I loved belting out the lead when I could, and I gravitated toward songs sung in a lower voice.

That’s where Karen Carpenter excelled.

If you have never listened to her voice, please do. She and her brother Richard were a duo, The Carpenters, and she was also the drummer.

Man! Another reason to admire her.

In fifth grade I was offered free drum lessons and a drum kit to practice on. I was excited to tell my parents about the offer, but they said no. Band concerts were on Wednesdays, and we couldn’t miss prayer meeting. So no. With no discussion.

I could have been just like Karen Carpenter – drumming and singing.

And when the lawn was covered with ice and snow, I slide around on the frozen “lake” in our middle yard, singing “Close to You” or “We’ve Only Just Begun” while imagining I was Peggy Fleming skating in the winter Olympics.

The thing I loved the most about Karen’s voice was how rich it sounded. It was low, like mine, and I could easily follow along. In fact, it helped me develop the lower parts of my vocal range because I wanted my voice to be as full and expressive as hers.

She could hold notes out with such feeling and purity. I wanted to sound just like her.

Because to me she was sure and confident. Her songs spoke of love and longing and fulfillment.

Of course I cannot know the whole truth about Karen’s story. She isn’t around to tell it. And there are different versions depending on the source.

But it is a fact that her life ended way too early. It was February 4, 1983 when her heart gave out after struggling for years with a disease that no one knew much about at that time.

Anorexia nervosa.

I remember learning of it when it happened. Outside of deaths of family members and friends, her passing probably affected me more than anyone else’s up to that time in my life.

I struggled to understand how it could have happened, how a woman who seemed so beautiful in all she did in her public career could have ever thought she was not good enough as she was.

And the hard part was that there was little known about eating disorders at that time. But it did prompt people to learn, and learn quickly, much more about it.

Soon after her death there was an attempt to educate the public about these new threats to the health of young people, anorexia and bulimia.

Except it isn’t always the young. Men as well as women are affected. And like many things that used to be hushed and covered over, it turns out there are way more people with eating disorders than I ever would have believed, living through those days of first learning it existed.

I’ve read things about Karen Carpenter since then, and while I can’t say with any certainty what led to her obsession with her body image, it seems there was something lacking in her life, something she was looking for. Some say she was seeking love and acceptance.

When she died in 1983, I was 21 years old and seeking love and acceptance myself. It was one of the worst periods of my life. A deep pit I had dug for myself, living a life I chose, making a mess of my friendships and family relationships, refusing to listen to guidance, existing only for my own pleasure and plans.

When I heard Karen Carpenter had died I was devastated.

Her songs gave me hope that the relationship I was in could someday be “it”, while my heart knew all along that it wasn’t. My musical tastes had become much more turbulent than her ballads, but I wanted to believe her fairy tale stories of true love.

At family camp last weekend, our speaker talked about Karen’s struggles right before he dove in to a part of scripture that tells us to devour God’s word, to consume it and be nourished by it and take it in and get everything you can out of it.

Just like food.

When Karen Carpenter died, she was 32 years old. She had developed heart problems that resulted from being severely malnourished.

She had lost the ability to take in and get nourishment from food.

I don’t pretend to understand what went through her mind. I’m reading a book right now that is helping me explore it, Overthrow by Jennene Eklund.

I can tell you that at the time she died, I was in a spiritual state similar to her physical state. I was unwilling and unable to take in anything nourishing from God during that dark time. I was not living the faith I had once claimed, in fact I had turned my back on much of it. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was at a crisis point of my own.

Over the next year or so, I knew of several young women who were struggling with anorexia or bulimia. And the boyfriend I thought might be “it” broke up with me. I was devastated.

And suddenly not eating seemed the way to become whatever it was he thought I was missing.

I went on a starvation diet and lost about 50 pounds in a few weeks time. I knew I was in trouble when I found myself retching up water outside of church one Sunday morning, because that was all I’d had for days, yet my stomach wouldn’t keep it down.

Thankfully my parents were able to coax me to start eating again, even though I would only agree to broiled fish with mustard since it had almost no calories, and an occasional poached egg cooked with no fat.

And in my spiritual life, as I got over the loss of the relationship, I saw that the “it” I really needed was a better love, a fuller acceptance than I could ever get from another person.

I needed the love of God.

I cried out to him, and he answered, right away, with no hesitation.

I wish, I so deeply hope, that Karen did the same, and that she was able to find the love of God that answers every plea for help.

Summer Memories

29 Thursday Aug 2019

Posted by in Childhood, Relationships

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It’s the night before I usually post and I haven’t written anything yet. And I’m tired. So no deep thoughts, just highlights from summer vacations through the years.

As a girl I could count on going to North Carolina for about a week every summer. All our extended family was centered there, and it was usually the only time we got to see them. We packed in visiting as many of them as possible, ate lots of good food, created our own versions of a southern accent, and played with our cousins from dawn til dusk.

Far fewer were the actual family vacations we ever took.

Just like in my childhood, we have taken the occasional special trip for a long weekend, but grander plans are few and far between.

I have jumbled memories as a child of going on three big family vacations. In no particular order, the first of the big three that I always think of was a trip to Mackinac Island. I had no idea until many years later how far from home we traveled – half the distance of going to North Carolina!

If I’m connecting the right memories with this trip, we started driving north and stopped for the night at one of those drive up to the door motor inns. There was an old metal swing set, like in our backyard, and a sandbox in the courtyard surrounded by the u-shaped drive. We played outside until dark, and then we went down the road to a drive-in theater and watched movies late into the night for the first time.

The next day we must have driven over the famous bridge, though I don’t remember that part. We took a ferry to Mackinac. There were no cars allowed. They had horses and buggies and bikes.

We walked all over the place, and rented bikes for a while. I remember my older sister going ahead of me down a long hill that ended at the water of the great lakes, and I thought for sure she was going so fast she was going to sail right off the dock into the cold waves.

I’m sure we ate at least one meal on the island, and got taffy and fudge, but I don’t remember if we slept there or took the ferry back at night. There would have been at least one more night on the road, no reservations, just stopping when Dad got tired and there was a flashing vacancy sign.

I’ve held onto the free feeling of that trip my whole life. For once there weren’t meetings or church services to plan around. We could go where we liked. Dad could smoke openly. We could be filthy dirty and not worry about being clean before we climbed into bed, our head full of the adventures of the day.

Even now I love the days we can be aimless like that. Countless times we’ve set off just to be together, the kids demanding to know what we had planned, and my answer: we’re going wherever the wind blows us.

They don’t seem to like it, to crave it like I do.

A second vacation we took to Myrtle Beach. This one had to be planned a little farther in advance to secure a room in a hotel on the beach. We stayed high up in a suite that seemed bigger than the downstairs of our house.

We swam and dove into the waves of the Atlantic, not even conscious of any danger other than the undertow. This was before “Jaws”. I loved collecting shells and pretty rocks, and I could spend hours in the sand and water. I couldn’t get enough of the waves knocking me around.

One of my favorite parts was the outdoor shower at the top of the beach. I’d rinse off as much of the ocean and beach as I could, then go through a gate to the pool for more water time. I was always the first in and the last to get drug back up to the room.

I don’t remember how old I was, but I was young enough to not be embarrassed carrying my shell collection around the hotel in a personal hygiene bag from the bathroom.

There was some sort of carnival going on, maybe it was seasonal for the summer, and we walked around it at night when we couldn’t be on the beach, swooping up and over the ferris wheel, glimpsing the lights reflecting off the waves beyond the buildings.

We ate seafood and lazed around the room at night, everyone reading books or watching tv, feeling like millionaires at the top of the world.

That trip didn’t create my love for the sound of water, the feel of moving in it, salt or fresh, but it cemented it as one of my favorite things to do.

The third adventure was when I was a teenager, and the highlight was visiting Williamsburg, VA. There we really enjoyed the seafood! We toured some restored settlements, and since I loved history and stories, my imagination was filled with the sights and sounds.

Historic Williamsburg made me wonder where exactly my ancestors landed, and whether I had any native American blood in me as I always suspected. In the role playing that went on all around us, I could imagine myself as many of the characters, and I felt I would have loved living in those long ago days.

To this day I still want a fireplace I could stand in, with swinging arms to move huge cast iron pots over and off of the wood fire, cooking gallons of stew for whoever the wind blows in through the hand hewn door of the cabin.

It occurs to me that each of these vacations were to places people thought were worth visiting. But I can’t give you many facts about them.

I’d much rather remember the feelings of sharing the experience with the people I loved most.