Category Archives: Relationships

Minding My Own Business

29 Thursday Oct 2020

Posted by in "This is Us", Pandemic, Racial tensions, Recovery journey, Relationships, Tragedies

≈ Leave a comment

Watching the “This is Us” season premiere this week I finally saw some of my own thoughts and feelings mirrored by some of the characters.

And it wasn’t a comfortable thing.

Talking about the hard issues that we’ve been facing over the last few months has not been easy. Racial injustice, police policies, political differences, COVID responses, there’s a fight ready to break out all over. There is the way we discuss in our homes, with people who know us well. Then there is the way people address things on their Facebook pages or tweets or snapchats or whatever form of social media they’re using today. And then the way the media portrays the world, one sensation at a time.

I have to say that I’ve been searching for a better way to even begin a conversation. I made a little stab a few months ago, talking about what the world and racial tensions was like in the 60’s and 70’s when I was a girl, from my point of view.

But I find it hard to sympathize with everyone out there pointing fingers and blaming this group or that, this ideology or that, this public figure or that law enforcement system, or … put in whatever ones you’ve been hearing.

I think that blame isn’t the place to start.

As I’ve watched and listened to various viewpoints it occurred to me that almost all of them approach the terrible things happening in our world by not only blaming, but proceeding to also explain the motives of whoever they are blaming.

As if one person can ever know the thoughts, values, intentions of another person.

I think a better place to begin to make a difference amongst all the oppression in the world is in our own hearts.

I’m not copping out here.

I think it’s important to have a moral compass, to have a value system on which to make sober judgments about what is good and bad about our world. And it is important to take a stand for what is right.

But I think before I charge off with half-formed ideas, joining up with the masses of people protesting, I should know where I stand.

How do I measure up against the standards I want to hold other people to?

Over the last five and a half years I’ve done a lot of facing up to my own issues. In Celebrate Recovery I’ve learned that in order to understand my own faults and failures, my own wrong attitudes and actions, I have had to do a lot of digging.

I’ve had to face the truth inside me.

That I’ve been hurt. By specific people, in specific ways. By the way the world worked when I was a girl, the way children were not believed and certainly weren’t protected like they should have been.

Those hurts led me to have what CR calls hang-ups. Because I had wrong ideas about relationships and love, I acted in ways that made sense in my warped viewpoint, but which weren’t right.

And so as I let my hang-ups have more influence over me than truth did, I sank into habits that helped me cope with life, ways I would behave to not have to face things I wasn’t ready to acknowledge.

It was a very self-defensive way to live. I know the effects of the way I learned to deal with realities I didn’t want to face have gone on to affect my family. And it may take the rest of my life to convince them I’m not the same person anymore.

As I started facing my past hurts, I found that I was eager to dig in, dig up, clear out a space where I could rebuild my life with better materials.

In order to do that, I needed to take the time to examine where I’ve been, what happened to me, what I did as a result, and how it has affected me and others.

It’s a very humbling process.

One thing I was miserably short on 5+ years ago was mercy. I felt that if I could live through and thrive in spite of childhood abuse, other people should be able to handle their much lighter (in my viewpoint) problems without whining about it.

I had little patience for people who couldn’t get their act together.

Until I realized that pretty much everyone has times when their smooth looking life is really just an act.

And the last thing I needed was to continue pretending I was in control.

So in this process of dredging up my issues, sifting through all the muck, I’ve been finding wisdom and strength coming through. It’s been hard work, but it’s been worth it to find the good that God has worked out of all of this for me.

And in this continuing journey of recovery I’ve learned that I don’t know what anyone else’s story is, where they are in their journey.

And I am not their judge and jury.

I have learned to feel and show mercy.

So what does “This is Us” have to do with this? Well, I’m not going to spoil anything, but I think the season premiere did a really good job of showing that even the people we know well, that we are closest to, have had experiences and felt things we would never have imagined.

And even those people we know best, we don’t really know as much about as we thought.

Then there are people we don’t know at all, the ones we look at and make assumptions about, assign motives to, trivialize for not reacting the way we would, for holding a different viewpoint, or dismiss because they aren’t in our normal frame of reference.

And we may never know just how wrong the assumptions we’ve based our lives on can be.

So I don’t have any revolutionary answers to the conflicts we’re dealing with in society. But I do know that I can’t read your mind, and vice versa. And as valid as I feel my feelings and thoughts are to me, yours are equally valid to you.

And whether we reach out to each other or not, I know there is great value in doing the work of figuring out what I feel and why I feel it. Because in the light, some of the ways I’ve dealt with life in the past proved to be so pointless.

Laying out my past convoluted attempts to control my life, and looking at them through the lens of truth I find in my relationship with God, in his word and his Spirit in me have shown me many ways I wasted opportunities to grow. Times when fear of not knowing the next step kept me from ever taking it.

And now I think our world is ready for us to take some new steps, because what we’ve been doing hasn’t worked out that well.

I’d like to start by not assuming anything about you. I’d rather you tell me about you. What you’ve seen in your life. How it made you feel. Why you believe the way you do.

And I’ll tell you about me. And maybe in one person-to-person exchange after another we can see the wisdom and strength we’ve both learned in life, the good that has happened because of the bad.

Then maybe there would be less diatribes, less rants about whatever other-than-them group people think are causing the world’s problems.

Actions have consequences.

And I thank God every day that mine are bearable because of his mercy on me.

I’d like to think that with a lot more mercy and a lot less blame, I can take a new step and move past the injustices of the past, starting in my own heart, and reaching out to yours.

In My Humble Opinion

15 Thursday Oct 2020

Posted by in Death of a parent, faceliftbook journey, Recovery journey, Relationships

≈ Leave a comment

Someday that will be my go to response when asked what I think about topics near and dear to my heart.

I’m not there yet, but I’m aimed in that direction.

It’s taken me 59 years to get to this point. So I think I can endure another few weeks of the current political climate without my head exploding.

I am weary. Between news, social media, and the opinions of the adamant minorities I do a lot of mental “la la la-ing”.

Let me explain that.

Back in the day Dear Husband and I were both very passionate about a lot of causes, and very vocal when we had the chance. There was no social media. There were occasions when people gathered, phone calls, letters to the editor, and responses to other passionate people stating their views.

We both did more than our share of sharing our opinions. Mine were often more vocal and immediate, his more mulled over and written down.

And after years of involvement in and advocating for those causes, we came up with a philosophy about causes in general that I still think applies. That is that with any given cause there are maybe 10% of people who feel strongly for it, and another 10% that are strongly opposed, and the other 80% who listen politely but can’t wait to be away from both extremes.

I was one of the 10%.

If you knew me very well at all, you probably knew where I stood on certain issues, and were not about to ask me for my opinion on anything.

I was, to many people I’m sure, like the adults in a Charlie Brown special. What they heard when I got on my soapbox was, “Wah, wah, wah.”

Now I’m the one hearing nonsense.

It’s not that I don’t care deeply about certain issues. In fact, they are probably still the ones I used to try to convince others of, with even more added.

It’s that I’ve finally come to agree with Dear Husband’s view that while 10% are for and 10% are against a cause, neither extreme is going to convince the other extreme to come over to their side. And the 80% in the middle aren’t interested enough to became fanatics.

And I can admit that as one of the 10% I really wanted to convert a hard-core, opposite-minded person to see the light of my position.

In my blog I share thoughts, feelings, and experiences that are very personal. And those of you who read always have the choice of skipping any post that you don’t like or agree with. I’m not out so much to persuade you to agree with me, as to just illustrate how I see the world and how God is changing me to see it more through his eyes.

This is one of those things. Even just a few years ago I would have thought nothing of taking any opportunity to share every thought I had with someone I was talking to, especially if I knew they were in the opposite camp on an issue.

As I look back on it I can see that this came out of my belief that I was right. And beyond that, that I was telling you the truth.

Now, after five and a half years of recovery, I will freely tell you that I’m not right about everything anymore. And while I want and try to speak truth, I’m trying to let God show me how to do it in love.

Because the way I used to be was not very loving at all.

I did not beat around the bush. I called it like I saw it. And I would often make outrageous assumptions, as if just because someone was on the other side of an issue I could say with confidence what their motives were, what their values were, what their intentions were. And none of them were good.

Maybe it’s aging. Maybe it’s weariness. But I’m not interested in heated debates where neither side listens to the other, where each just wants to be louder and more insistent and more smug in their own rightness.

Been there.

So ashamed that I’ve done that.

Four years ago I was finding my rhythm in recovery when my mom died, and I went through a time of what I call situational depression. I didn’t care. About anything.

I quit reading the paper or watching the news. I didn’t want to go anywhere or talk to anyone.

I made myself take advantage of free counseling offered by hospice. I only went once.

But I did go to a women’s Bible study at my church, and I faithfully attended Celebrate Recovery, making myself stay connected to other people I could trust and open up to about my numbness.

During that time a friend made a statement that has had a profound effect on me.

“I don’t have to have an opinion about everything.”

What?!

I had never considered it an option to not have strong thoughts about everything. But it was an intriguing idea.

Turns out that was the seed that has led me into a deeper relationship with God, a desire to learn about boundaries and what is truly mine to have a say over and what isn’t, and a new way of looking at other people.

Sitting here thinking about that phrase “in my humble opinion”, I can only think of a handful of people I’ve known in my life who truly held an humble opinion.

Of themselves, and of the world around them.

They would be people who didn’t think they really knew enough to state their take on an issue. Or that their thoughts were not as important as other people’s. And they certainly wouldn’t have posted their positions on social media for the world to see and comment on and engage in battle over.

But they would be the few people in this world that I would turn to when I really needed to find some clarity, to figure out how I felt or maybe should feel about something I was struggling with.

And therein lies the key.

Right now tempers are hot, righteous indignation is spewing all over from every side, and I have no interest in what people who are just like I used to be have to say.

Because I know how self-focused my stances sometimes were back in the day.

I cannot know everyone’s motives and values and intentions, and I’m not saying that they are all bad in the current world condition.

I’m honestly just sick and tired of everyone’s opinions.

If I really want to know yours, if you’re one of that little handful of people whose thoughts I value, I’ll ask.

And I’ll try not to tell you mine unless you really want to know.

Dump and Run

18 Friday Sep 2020

Posted by in Jesus, Prayer, Recovery journey, Relationships

≈ Leave a comment

My whole life I have been a perfectionist.

I know this because very little ever happens that is exactly the way I want it. You see, in my mind I can see the end result the exact way I want it to be. But in order for that result to come about there are any number of steps that have to be taken, in order, for things to work the way they should.

For way too many years I factored into my complicated chain of events the actions of others. And when they couldn’t read my mind and do their part, I gave myself permission to stop working toward that goal.

Why bother? It was never going to be the way I pictured it.

If only everyone else would just do their part, I could get mine done and everything would be…perfect.

In recent years I’ve learned a lot about boundaries. A basic thing I’ve found in working through Boundaries https://www.boundariesbooks.com/, by Cloud and Townsend, is I need to figure out where I stop and others begin.

The result has been that instead of factoring in other people’s parts in the way I’d like things to be, I’m more frequently taking things on with the idea that I may need to do it all myself.

But not BY myself.

In my faith journey I’ve always known that the goal is to have a personal relationship with Jesus. And in my head I’ve known that I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength.

HIS strength.

And though I’ve known this, it has been a lifelong search to figure out how to have that personal relationship.

I’ve been talking recently about prayer. Specifically about interceding for other people by praying for them, asking God to show me how to pray for them.

But praying for others is pointless if I don’t have my own close, personal friendship with Jesus.

Remember that image I talked about, learned from a Beth Moore study? That interceding is like someone who is intimately involved with another taking that person’s face in their hands, turning them to face themselves, and speaking up to defend and seek help for another.

It only does any good if the person’s face you’re holding has the power to act and bring real help to the one you are interceding for.

That would be Jesus. And he certainly has the power!

So I need to be intimately involved with Jesus before I can plead the cause of another.

In our lives we experience all kinds of intimacy. With our mothers when we were very young, our fathers and siblings as we grew up. More and more, working our way outward from family to friends to spouses, and then the closeness we have with our own children and grandchildren.

I have to ask myself, honestly I do this quite often, how intimate am I with Jesus?

How much of my life do I share with him? How much time do I spend with him? How closely do I listen for him to respond to me? How honestly do I tell him how I’m feeling and where I’m struggling?

I don’t want the kind of relationship where I’m so busy handling my life on my own, that I roll along gathering up problems I need help with. When I get such a heavy load that I feel like I’m going to break, THEN I take a quick minute to go unload it in a hurried prayer, and then I’m off handling everything on my own again.

Dump and run.

Any of you that are parents have probably experienced this with your kids.

You can tell there’s something bugging them. You try to get them to talk about it, but they aren’t ready, they’re embarrassed, or they think they don’t need any help dealing with anything. They can handle their own lives.

So the tension builds up until they can’t take it anymore, and out of nowhere there’s some kind of explosive response to the simplest request.

It’s messy, it seems to make no sense, and it can take a long time to figure out what the deeper issue is.

I’ve spent a lot of years dumping my troubles at the foot of Christ, then running away before I have to look him in the face.

Because I’m afraid of what he might tell me I have to do to make it work out right.

I was reading a short piece by A.W. Pink the other day that helps me picture the way I SHOULD approach God. He writes,

“He would have you make Him your Friend: not only your Counselor, but your Confidant – the One into whose ear you are to pour the very secrets of your heart. He would have you be quite artless and natural, just like a little child coming to its mother, pouring into her ear its every little woe, trouble, and disappointment.”

I remember those days, long before the defiant rants came on, when every one of my children would climb up in my lap and lay their head down and tell me their troubles.

That’s what Jesus wants us to do.

If you’ve never tried approaching him this way, what is stopping you?

For me there were many years when I felt I had no right. But that’s a lie. Jesus is supposed to be a friend who is closer than a brother.

A dear pastor and friend always told me that Jesus is a gentleman. He will never force himself on you. And that is absolutely true.

He leaves it up to us to accept his invitation to enter into a never-ending friendship with him.

And he gives us the right to approach him, any time we want, to talk about anything on our minds.

Or just to sit and be.

Even when I dump and run, he knows what my real issue is.

But like any close, loving friend, Jesus wants me to come and spend some time with him, feeling the relief of being with someone who fully knows everything about me, who I can be real with.

And as I start to open up about the things that are weighing me down, I find something remarkable happens.

He doesn’t give me a to-do list that will make everything work out right.

He asks me to leave it in his hands, to let him do the heavy lifting. He tells me I don’t have to handle this on my own.

And I no longer feel any hurry to run away.

So How Do I Do This?

27 Thursday Aug 2020

Posted by in Pandemic, Relationships

≈ Leave a comment

How can I pray for you?

I don’t ask this because I’m some super prayer warrior. I’m not.

This past Sunday our pastor spoke about prayer, and I know I fell into the category of people who have good intentions but know they don’t take the time to pray as regularly as they should.

Praying without ceasing is a hard order to fill.

If you read this blog a couple of months ago you may recall my thoughts about Jesus interceding for us with the Father, A New Life to Live and Intercessor and Friend.

But something I never thought much about until the last couple of years is how often God tells us in the Bible to intercede for each other. To pray for, with and over each other. To lift each other up, to bear each other’s burdens.

Isolation makes it a little hard to stay involved in each other’s lives.

And the thing is, when I talk to friends and family, I find that lots of us are really struggling.

I “attended” the annual Celebrate Recovery Summit, held online this year at the end of July. There were some statistics given about how alcohol use is up 40% since the start of COVID quarantines, drug use is up but can’t be measured accurately, pornography is being accessed 25% more.

So while each of us is doing what we need to do to survive, to provide for and protect our families, the whole world is struggling.

Which means I am. And so are you.

Because I can’t assume that everyone I know is peachy keen.

I would not be surprised to learn that people I know and love are turning to things they think will distract them at the least, and numb them at the most, to the realities of these unsure times.

We’re all human. And sometimes we don’t have a clue how to deal with our fears, our anger, our frustrations, our grief.

Speaking for myself, I could really use some prayer.

I’m thankful I have family and friends, a church family, a forever family in Celebrate Recovery that I feel comfortable asking for prayer when I’m sick or having trouble dealing with life.

I’m also thankful I had praying grandmas and parents who interceded for me from before I was born. They rarely asked me what my particular daily issues were, but I know they prayed for me. And since God is not bound by time, I believe the prayers prayed for me decades ago are still being heard by God right now.

I don’t know much about intercessory prayer by one person for another, but I know it’s important. And I’ve been trying to wrap my head around how it’s done.

My mind keeps going back to that definition I mentioned in another post, how that it’s like someone takes another’s face in their hands, looks them in the eye, and says, “You know my friend? They really need help. Will you do what you can for them?”

I know sometimes I have a problem when I pray of asking for things that really aren’t important. They may seem necessary to me at the time, whether I’m asking for me or someone else. We all would like an easy, happy life.

The movie “What about Bob?” is one of our family favorites. It’s about a man who follows his new psychiatrist on vacation, seeking help for all the things he thinks are wrong with himself.

Sometimes my prayers feel like that. I can be as inward-focused as the character Bob. One of my favorite lines comes early in the movie when he first meets his new psychiatrist and is asked to talk about his insecurities and phobias.

Bob pleads, “I want, I want, I want! I need, I need!”

Yeah, I sound a lot like that.

So sometimes when someone asks me how they can pray for me, I have to think through the things that come to my mind. Are they things I really need to be a better person, to know God more, to love others better? Or are they only things I want to make my life easier or happier?

As I explore this duty and privilege of praying for others, I wonder how much of what people request as topics of prayer are as selfish as some of mine. How do I know the difference between other people’s wants and their real needs? And will they even go deep enough to tell me what they really need?

I am blessed to have people in my care group, in my Celebrate Recovery open share group, in Bible studies, in my family, who will let me see beneath the surface of how they’d like to be seen.

Because we all have things that trouble us, that we carry deep inside, that we need to be able to share.

How else can we bear each other’s burdens if we don’t know what those burdens are?

I’ve been reading from several different sources lately the passages about how God tells us that things that are done, words that are spoken, in the dark, WILL be brought out into the light.

When I get the same scripture popping up in several ways over a short period of time, I know God is getting my attention.

So in these times when, even though I see and feel a little letting up of restrictions on staying at home and getting out to do the things we need to do, we are still basically sheltering at home. It’s been really hard for us to reach out to each other, even harder to open up those things we are holding deep in the darkness of looking like we’re okay.

Fortunately, in order to pray for each other, we don’t need to have a lot of details. God knows them all.

In fact, I think some of the most effective prayers are those where we ask God to show us how to pray for each other. Because he loves when we care enough about each other to ask. And he will bring out into the light some of those deep needs.

So I want you to know, whoever and wherever you are, that I have been coming before God when I remember to, and I’ve been asking him to answer that question:

How can I pray for you?

Who will speak?

11 Thursday Jun 2020

Posted by in Childhood, Racial tensions, Relationships

≈ Leave a comment

After months of COVID-19 all day every day, the murder of George Floyd has eclipsed my thoughts about where I should wear a mask or when I think I’ll feel comfortable going back to work with underlying health conditions.

The masks have come off, figuratively at least, as voices are being heard all over, too many for me to keep straight, yet with urgent tones, calling for change.

And it’s time. Finally. But I have no pat answers of how that change will happen.

The causes are easier. As an old song by The Waiting says, “It’s just as simple as sin.” And the blame falls on all of us.

Who will speak?

I don’t mean which local or national celebrity, which expert on race relations.

I mean you and me.

And when we speak, who will listen?

Listening takes time, and often only comes after earning the trust of the one speaking. Because we don’t often speak from the depths.

I want to speak of some of the impressions and experiences I have had living in the US, in and near a medium-sized city in the North, raised by parents from the South.

My first memories of people whose skin looked different from mine came as a very young child visiting Cherokee, NC. It was close to the town where almost all my relatives lived and we visited every summer.

I loved going to Cherokee, and I was fascinated by the touristy stuff. Giant wooden statues, feathered headpieces, jewelry. I still have moccasins I got there as a young teen.

My dad and both of his parents had darker skin than I did, especially in the summer when they were all deeply tanned, and I always felt that somewhere in our background there was Cherokee blood in us.

I was thrilled with this idea. I had no negative feelings about the possibility.

It sparked in me a desire to get to know more about them.

But at that time, in the 1960’s, when I would ask my Mamaw if she was part Cherokee, she would say no. And have a distasteful look on her face.

She also held some racist views that I could never understand. I remember as a teen having a discussion one summer where she matter-of-factly stated the Bible said black people were meant to be inferior to white people.

I’ve read and studied the Bible from cover to cover many times, and I haven’t yet found this in there. And believe me, I had more respect for my Mamaw than about any other person on earth.

So her words troubled me. And while I didn’t see the same message she did, they did make me wonder how she could be such a godly woman and believe what I felt was a lie.

Back at home, when we lived in the city, I walked seven blocks each way to school. Our neighborhood was a long football bounded by our busy street, the school, train tracks behind everything, and a street that ran under the viaduct and crossed our street.

It wasn’t until summers in the late 60’s that I realized there was another neighborhood on the other side of the tracks. Because there were curfews set in place to discourage race riots.

Our city was segregated by neighborhoods. So even though there was a black neighborhood on the other side of the tracks, my school didn’t have much variety in our skintones.

I remember the race riots. I was walking on the sidewalk with my dad in the evening, and he said we needed to get inside as there was a curfew. When I asked why he said there might be people from “back over there” causing trouble, and he pointed in the direction of the tracks.

My dad definitely had strong opinions about people of color. I’ve never liked the different terms society has found acceptable, and also the purposely derogatory ones said with hatred and disgust.

I heard some of those terms in my house growing up.

Though my dad definitely had some strong prejudices, he also was changed by the one on one interactions he had with black preachers and people he counseled with.

I can remember going to church with him at a black church where he was speaking, and I loved it! For the first time I realized what it felt like to be greatly in the minority, but I also was able to drink in the differences between this skinny little white girl and these new and fascinating faces of all shades of brown.

I don’t like the terms black and white. Shades of brown from dark to light is how I see us all.

I also don’t like the word race. We are all people, all the same inside with different coverings. As DC Talk’s song “Colored People” says, “This thing of beauty is the passion of an artist’s heart. By God’s design we are a skin kaleidoscope…”

But my dad wasn’t as appreciative as I was of the similarities I saw between me and all those darker skinned worshipers.

On another outing he went to counsel a young couple who wanted him to marry them. She was white, he was black. It was probably the early 70’s by then. And they were determined to get married. He got back in the car with me and I think more to himself said, “They can do this, but it’s going to be a very hard road for them.”

If there was a song that has the feel of what it was like for me to live in a definitely segregated neighborhood of a city in the 1960’s it would be “All Along the Watchtower” by Jimi Hendrix, written by Bob Dylan.

In fact, every time I see the movie “Forest Gump” I feel like I’m reliving the pivotal times in my own life through all the songs.

During the race riots and curfews of the late 60’s my dad tried to explain to me how people were angry about lots of things, about civil rights and people getting killed. There was a feeling in the air that “Watchtower” brings right back to me. Tension and vigilance and fear of what might happen.

We moved to the country in the summer of ’68, though we were in the city several times a week at church.

And the atmosphere was so different.

The fear was missing.

I have never forgotten those days, the sense that lots of people were talking, but not many were listening.

Because it’s hard to listen when you know what you want to believe about someone else before they ever get a chance to speak.

So I want to change that. And I can’t decide that for anyone else, but for me, I’m still the same little girl who looks with wonder at people, whatever shade of brown they are, and tries to see in them the same hopes and dreams and passions I hold deep inside myself.

I want to earn the right to listen to their stories.

So we can all speak for ourselves.

Lifelines

21 Thursday May 2020

Posted by in Pandemic, Recovery journey, Relationships

≈ Leave a comment

I don’t think I’m alone in feeling adrift while sheltering at home. I look at my phone to see the date, my calendar to be sure of where I am in the week. And since my out of the home job has dried up for now, I have nowhere pressing to go.

When we were first urged to stay home, so many things changed at once. Jobs let us know everything would be on hold indefinitely. Stores were chaotic and shopping trips had to be opportunistic, basing what we would eat on what was left on the shelves. Kids were sent home from college.

Our church suspended all activities and services, and it took a couple of weeks before they came up with a game plan to post recorded services online. Celebrate Recovery meetings at a different church were also put on hold, though they were able to get a Friday live broadcast up the first week.

Suddenly all my normal activities, all the people I’m used to spending certain days and lengths of time with, stopped.

My biggest outings have become driving across town to get samples of the new asthma inhaler I need every couple of weeks combined with a stop at a bakery we like for bread.

Exciting stuff here.

And then there’s the shopping days. We spend a couple hours making up the list.

Before this pandemic I was in our local store probably five days a week, picking up fresh meat and produce as we needed it and stocking up on staples as they were on sale.

Now we try to go at least two weeks between trips, and it’s exhausting to my blowing-in-the-wind personality to have to plot out meals and make sure I’m putting all the ingredients on the list.

Baby Girl has been doing the bulk of the shopping so far, with me running a cart full at a time home to put away, while she fills another cart.

It takes two to three hours, and we are worn out when we get home.

All my normal lifelines have disappeared.

That’s how it seemed in the beginning. All those people that I would stand and chat with throughout the store, or at the bank, or in the library. My friends at church and in our care group, the hugs and smiles and quick conversations, or the deeper ones at Bible studies and group meetings. My every Friday night Celebrate Recovery times of fellowship, teaching, and sharing.

These connections were suddenly inaccessible.

When I got over the initial shock, I realized that if I didn’t do something purposeful I would drown in all this uncertainty and change around me.

So I finally got back into something I hadn’t done for a couple of years. I started doing a Bible study with my Celebrate Recovery Bible that will have me reading the whole Bible in a year, along with slowly going back through the 12 steps and 8 principles of recovery.

I cannot tell you how much this has meant to me. When everything in the world seems like it’s spinning off into space, God’s word grounds me in his love. It has been my strongest lifeline, the thing that has given me strength to at least look like I’m unfazed by all the changes. And I’m getting insight into how I can take one day at a time and handle whatever we are faced with.

For several weeks before the pandemic I had missed my CR meetings because of other commitments, including Dear Husband’s hip replacement and my bout with pneumonia. So March 13 was going to be my first Friday back. Instead I tried to watch a live broadcast put out by the church on my laptop, but without headphones I couldn’t hear it over the other noises in the house.

So I didn’t attempt to tune in, even when they announced the broadcasts would be more organized, and they were setting up Zoom meetings for our open share groups to follow the broadcasts.

Then our little local computer store opened back up, my “b” key went haywire, and I needed to break down and buy a new laptop. And it didn’t occur to me until a week later that I could just buy myself headphones so I could “go” to CR!

We had already been watching our pastor’s sermons and designing our own worship sets with YouTube videos, but that we did as a family on the tv. For CR I really need to be able to keep the other participants safe and anonymous, and be in a room alone.

When you first stop doing something you are used to doing, you miss it at first but it can soon become easier and easier to sit it out. I was shocked to see, once I got out my calendar, that I had missed 13 weeks, a full 3 months of CR! No wonder I was getting pithy!

For those who have never been to Celebrate Recovery it’s hard to describe the benefits. But I’m going to try.

I think when I tell people that it’s a place where you can talk about whatever issues you are dealing with, there is a stereotypical idea of what that means. It includes complaining or whining, maybe looking for sympathy and wanting others to tell you how justified you are to feel the way you do.

Maybe people think it’s a place to reinvent yourself, to convince others that you really have it together, you can control your life, you just need to vent a little.

Let me tell you what it’s really like.

We all have things that bother us, things we don’t really like to take out and examine in our day-to-day lives. Things we know we need to name, examine, and figure out how to deal with them.

I have found that the sooner I can turn those things over to God, the sooner he helps me work through them. And that’s the only way he can heal me of my hurts, hang-ups and habits.

So the process of speaking out loud about those deep hurts and what they’ve led us to do to protect and defend ourselves and those we love is an important step. Saying out loud what we are struggling with takes away the power they’ve had over us, the control they’ve wielded.

It isn’t about boosting our egos, or making ourselves look good. It’s 3-5 minutes at a time to share whatever we need to speak out loud, and begin the battle to vanquish it from our lives.

And it’s a solitary thing done in the company of people who promise to keep our struggles private, to encourage us as we allow them, and to cheer us on as we meet week after week and watch each other grow stronger and more confident in our ability to let God be Lord over everything.

I’m so glad I’ve reconnected with another lifeline.

If you are struggling to get through these days, I would encourage you to seek out a Celebrate Recovery group near you by going to celebraterecovery.com. You can look for a group and call the contact to find out if they are doing online meetings. And every night of the week at 9pm(E) Celebrate Recovery national leaders are doing a half-hour live Facebook session I would encourage you to catch.

Because we all need something outside ourselves to help us get through this uncertain time. And I for one prefer to hang onto a lifeline I know will hold me safely through the storm.

Attitude Check

09 Thursday Apr 2020

Posted by in Pandemic, Relationships

≈ Leave a comment

Character doesn’t change in a crisis.

An old saying rings true these days: Character is how you behave when there’s no one around to see you.

While as individuals and families we are currently, for the most part, stuck in our houses, that means there are few people around to see how we behave with each other.

That’s a good thing most days.

Because there are certainly lots of situations where the worst qualities we have are being tempted to rear their ugly heads.

In our house when someone starts to get an attitude we are coming up with creative ways to describe it. Like …pithy. An old-fashioned word we often use to describe my mother-in-law, who died 20 years ago.

Dolores would get a look on her face, her lips pursed and nose wrinkled, and she’d say something…pithy. Meant to sting a little or cast a bit of a bad light on the subject of her comment.

She wasn’t a gossip, she didn’t egg other people on, but once in a great while she would let her feelings be known.

While we all can get a little edgy, I’m thankful that we are loving, concerned people, that we are looking out for each other, and that so far we don’t have any really obnoxious character flaws that could result in someone getting hurt.

At least up to today.

In our local area I’ve heard stories about a lot of people showing just how kind and other-centered they are. People making cloth masks to cover the official ones, groups assembling meals for health care workers, likewise for truckers and others who need to be on the road.

Food and supplies seem to be the main focus of those getting out to do some volunteering, taking care of people’s basic needs.

At least in the efforts they are putting forth, I think it shows their good character.

And then there are others.

I want to start by saying that I don’t open and follow and get sucked into all the so-called news items that I see scrolling on Facebook or that people send to me on my phone.

But I have heard about some of them.

And I’ve gotten phone calls that seemed opportunistic and were probably scams. I don’t engage with them either.

Because a person’s character really doesn’t change in a crisis, good or bad.

Actually, I think people tend to exercise their strongest traits when under pressure. People who would help any stranger they meet are frustrated at home, looking for ways to reach out and help. And people who are only out for number one will still find a way to advance their own welfare.

I bring this up because there is a lot of blame going around on social media and in many fake news types of posts (at least in the titles I see scrolling), and beyond being frustrating and … okay, I’m going to use what qualifies as a cuss word in our house … stupid! … it’s not doing anything to help anybody where they are currently living through this pandemic.

I wonder, as I’m sure many people do, where this novel coronavirus known as COVID-19 came from. Exactly how did it start. But I don’t want to know so I can point a finger and say, “Aha! You’re the culprit!”

I want to know that scientists are doing some real scientific investigation and figuring out why all of a sudden a virus that usually causes a cold or flu is sweeping around the globe leaving thousands of people dead and many more affected.

And I know that takes time, and isn’t glamorous.

I want to know that if this is like flus that tend to come back year after year, that some of those scientists are developing a vaccine to help us all fight it the next time around.

I want to see a list of symptoms that don’t change, sometimes daily. Perhaps there are official sites that have unchanging information, but what is being passed around anecdotally seems to have altered several times over the last few weeks.

I want to have an actual description from people who have had the virus and lived to tell about it as to what their personal symptoms were like, because as I hear from friends of friends about people who are sick with COVID-19, they seem to have symptoms different from what the media is telling us.

If those were the types of stories out for common consumption, I might bite and take a look at them.

But really people, is there any logic at all in saying that any country, government, or government official is to blame for the spread of this virus?

Because we just don’t have that kind of control over these things.

We can sit around with all this time on our hands and second guess each other. Or we could start studying to become epidemiologists so that we can then, and only then, say with any authority how COVID-19 got started and spread.

A virus cares nothing about any country, state or city’s public policy, nor will the amount of information shared about it and the timing of that information make a bit of difference in a pandemic running its course.

As I listen to and heed the measures our state of Ohio has been taking over the last weeks, I’m glad that there is at least a system in place that can communicate the current best practices to the general public.

But whether I choose to follow those guidelines or mandates comes back around to character.

I know it is frustrating for many Americans right now with the political season of presidential politics being disrupted by something too small to see. And it is very tempting to take out ones frustrations on people you don’t have any respect for, or who you feel have in some way adversely affected your life.

I would like to suggest that instead of spreading around these non-stories that only inflame one group against another, that we all look around us for someone whose life we can make a little bit more bearable until we can be out and about again.

After all the fake news people keep sending me, a newsy account of what’s been going on in your life and household, preferably on paper in your own handwriting, would be something I could spend all day reading over and over.

Even if you get a little pithy.

Not a Germophobe

26 Thursday Mar 2020

Posted by in Childhood, Pandemic, Relationships

≈ Leave a comment

I’m not sure if it puts me at a higher risk in these pandemic days, but I’m not a germophobe.

I confess, I haven’t gone over every surface in my house with something meant to kill anything living on them in the past couple of weeks.

I actually have cleaned more than usual for me, but mainly because my husband is now four weeks past his hip replacement and it wouldn’t be a good time for him to pick up an infection of any kind and need to go to the hospital.

There are many places I could lay the blame, if necessary, but the reality is that I just don’t care that much about cleaning things.

I grew up having the most fun playing in dirt piles or sand, fashioning “buildings” out of branches and leaves, stirring up mud puddles and mixing up different things just to see what could happen.

I still love spring, sticking my hands down in the dirt, squeezing the lumps out of to make a smooth path for the roots of the plants I’ll put in my barrels after the 15th of May has passed.

Or pulling out the weeds that I let go the year before as they emerge young and fragile for a few weeks before really digging themselves in. I can spend hours just working through the soil with my hands. It’s very satisfying to me.

And when I finally need to clean up, there is always a nail brush and a sturdy bar of soap to get the job done.

So for me, I don’t get too excited about cleaning things. When I can see the dirt, it’s time.

And I am puzzled by my friends who clean obsessively. Since this pandemic started I’ve seen lots of Facebook posts about how much/often/vigorously people are cleaning.

In my mind I don’t see the need. I’m not saying we shouldn’t wash our hands often and well. But our reality is that we are not out and among other people hardly at all. We have been staying home, and when we do venture out we wash up good when we return.

I will clarify by saying I do know how to clean. And when I do it I do it well. The two and a half years I spent as a maid at a hotel taught me a lot about deep cleaning, so it isn’t lack of knowledge. Just personal preference of how I’d rather spend my time.

I don’t like to clean, but I like making lists about cleaning. I could write lists for a living. I love breaking things down into the component parts. And I can see that in order to get from point A to point B in a project things 1, 2 and 3 probably need to happen. And I can include all those details that will get the job done well.

I actually have wide-eyed hopeful lists of cleaning chores I wrote when I was brand-new married. They are something to see! (Yes, I kept the notebook I wrote them in, it’s somewhere in a box in a closet.)

We had just built our house, it wasn’t quite finished on our wedding day, so everything was fresh and new. I had lists of daily, weekly, semi-weekly, monthly, quarterly, semi-annual, and annual cleaning chores to be done. Even a few five to ten year things like painting.

I sure had my work cut out for me.

It wasn’t until we’d been married ten years that my husband told me something I’d never ever known about myself.

He said I was a perfectionist.

Well. If that were the case, wouldn’t I have been able to complete all the tasks on all those lists?

But the reality was that I hadn’t.

And the context in which Dear Husband shared this truth with me was in talking about the household chores and how we split them up between us.

I thought about this new idea. Was I a perfectionist?

Well, I certainly knew in my mind exactly how I wanted things done. And I could see every step that needed to be taken to get the outcome I envisioned. But I had lived life with other people for so long that I had learned a basic fact.

If there is a way for things to stop your plans from being realized, it will happen. In my case someone else’s needs usually came in the middle of whatever I wanted to accomplish.

It wasn’t that their needs were more important than mine, just that they were important. They needed to be taken care of. So I learned to let the things go that really didn’t matter as much as I thought it did all those years ago when I made those starry-eyed lists.

So I don’t clean like I could, maybe even like I should. It’s more hit and miss than I’d like.

But in these times when things aren’t going the way they normally would, when grocery shopping has become an opportunistic hunt and work is slow coming in, when everyone is home and tempers flare and we all are more needy than normal, I’m okay with it.

I’m fine not being a germophobe. I have more important things on my mind.

Eye Contact

19 Thursday Mar 2020

Posted by in Pandemic, Relationships

≈ Leave a comment

A couple of weeks ago I had never heard of the idea of social distancing.

And give it time, a few years maybe, and we will probably have fading memories of the March when we needed to isolate ourselves from most social situations, put physical distance between us and other people.

For all of our protection.

On the latest trek to the grocery store Baby Girl and I saw it in action.

Per the advice given, we had a list and a plan. Start at the pharmacy end, zip straight across to the produce/fresh meat/bakery, then around the edges for staples and down a quick couple of aisles for things we were out of.

As soon as we started across the main aisle we noticed neon-bright tape X’s at intervals down the floor. One at the aisle end of every checkout lane, one at the paypad end.

We soon saw a worker on his knees putting down the tape. I asked if the X’s were 6 feet apart – the distance recommended to stay away from others to avoid contact with anyone’s droplets – and he said yes.

I thanked him, and said I was glad the store was giving us a visual aid to help comply.

The X’s continued down the length of the far side of the aisle, so that when there are long lines like we ran into last week, people can stay a good distance apart while waiting.

Here in Ohio I hear we have a reputation for hoarding toilet paper. If the shelves in the store I usually shop are an indication, that’s the truth. I’m curious for someone to connect why that was the hot item in our state, though it is a convenience people don’t like to be without.

Also in Ohio we are gaining a reputation for a governor who has put forward some very cautious yet radical plans of action. Schools are closed, universities and colleges, day cares will soon follow. Restaurants are take-out only. Large gatherings are not allowed, though churches are deciding on their own. Most are complying and not holding in-person services.

Governor Dewine is being looked at as a template for other states from what I read, and I am glad if he is erring on the side of caution. I don’t mind being inconvenienced for a while to keep more people healthy and lessen the impact this pandemic will likely have on the health-care system.

And as far as social distancing, I’m afraid our modern age has taken care of that in many ways. We can sit in a crowded room and no one is talking to each other. Everyone is busy on their phones, as if there weren’t any real people sharing the space with them, only the games and apps and “social media” that lets everyone isolate while thinking they are still “connected” to their many friends and followers.

As my family is learning to navigate our new normal for each day, we are venturing out in very limited contact with anyone else. Trips to the store are the most exposure and infrequent compared to our previously normal daily stops.

Work has been the biggest adventure. We have a small family business that’s been around for 58 years, and as Dear Husband is healing from his hip replacement, he has been coaching our two youngest through some basic jobs they can handle.

The training had started long before the surgery, but it wasn’t until just a couple months before the date that they started planning this slow return to work for DH. So as the jobs come in, he picks and chooses the ones he thinks the kids are ready to handle.

The plan sounded great three weeks ago, the day of the surgery.

And then the world changed dramatically.

In the 34 years we’ve been married, we’ve seen a lot of change in the world. A lot of change in our business.

The one thing that has never changed is that God has always provided work for our hands, food for our table.

And no matter what is going on in the world, I have no reason to doubt his ability to get us through this pandemic, this game-changer that is reshaping the way we live our daily lives.

So on the days we have a job or two to take care of, I drive, the kids help their dad work in a garage or two, at the most they see one or two other people who stick their head out to check how it’s going, and pile back in the car to head home.

Way less contact with the outside world than they are used to having.

And I sit in the car and knit while they work, or run for supplies, or cancel appointments as they come to mind.

And I watch.

Workmen at a neighboring house, people walking their dogs, moms with kids on a bike or a stroller. Mail carriers, garbage men, homeowners checking for mail.

Almost all walking quickly, purposefully, eyes straight ahead or on the ground, that heartwrenching look of being on the edge of breaking on their faces.

So I’ve decided I’m fine with putting physical distance between me and everyone else. I can try to remember to stay six feet away.

But I will not distance myself emotionally from the fear and confusion I see on almost every face.

I tried it today, with the man picking up the garbage bags next to my car and the one backing the truck into the condo driveway. With the frowning man walking his dog. With everyone else I saw, mostly through the windshield of the car.

I made eye contact. Or tried to.

You see, I have hope. And I believe that I need to be ready to give a reason for the hope that I have. And I can’t begin to give you a reason if I am too scared to look you in the eye.

And I am not too scared.

I want you to see that Jesus is not a liar. When he says he will be with us always, he didn’t mean except for when the world is flying apart at the seams and we can’t make sense of anything.

I think he means that is EXACTLY when he will be most with us.

So if you see me across a store or parking lot, don’t be surprised if I attempt to catch your eye. I can’t touch your hand or hug your neck, but I can let you know that I see you, that you matter, that you are not alone.

It’s one way I WILL try to make human contact while we are encouraged to keep our distance from each other.

No Experience Necessary

27 Thursday Feb 2020

Posted by in Childhood, Relationships

≈ Leave a comment

It happened again. I missed writing my blog last week, but I have a good excuse.

A sewer pipe cracked in our crawl space.

So for our second night at a hotel I had quickly grabbed my laptop to give you a harrowing play-by-play of our saga of methane gas and uncooperative insurance adjusters.

Except I forgot my mouse. And I can’t turn the built-in pad back on without the mouse. I worked the next two days, so once again a week went by without a post.

It always could have been worse.

The pipe got replaced and the system is back up and running. Clean-up IS actually covered by our insurance, so at least that will be happening soon. And the smell is now mainly in the garage by the access to the crawl space.

Our minds have definitely been distracted from other more important things, like Dear Husband’s hip replacement surgery that’s happening tomorrow. (Not ready to talk about that yet, but I’m sure you’ll hear more soon.)

As I write this it’s almost the end of what would have been my dad’s 88th birthday. And all day I’ve been thinking about how he would have handled our little emergency.

If he was at all able physically he would probably have at the least spread some lime under our house like they used to do when the outhouses of his youth got too toxic. Or headed down with a shovel and bucket to start digging up the contaminated soil where dirty water had spread over about half our crawl space.

There were many projects Dad tackled that were far beyond his expertise, but that never stopped him. He was always willing to pitch in and work hard at any job that needed doing, in our home or for a neighbor or church member. If it could save someone some money he always felt it was worth a shot to try. No experience necessary.

Our current situation reminded me of two of the most distasteful jobs he ever tackled. Because of course when he started in on a project he expected us kids to help him. We worked cheap.

Like the house my family lives in, my childhood home had a septic tank and leach field. The house was built in the early 1900’s and the tiles in the leach field were made of clay. After many years the effects of tree roots and the pressure of many feet and lawn mowers and the occasional car or truck driving over that part of the yard had broken down tiles somewhere in the labyrinthine system.

If you’ve ever had a septic tank, you know that it is actually not hard to tell where the leach field is. It’s the lines of greener grass that snake back and forth across a yard. I do not remember him letting me in on his strategy, but I assume Dad looked for the green line to suddenly end because the waste water could no longer work its way through the pipes.

Or maybe not. Because it seemed like we dug all over the back yard!

Dad actually did most of the heavy shoveling, then us kids had to help him replace broken tiles and scoop gunk out of the rest. We filled buckets with thick, smelly sludge, and I think we then dumped it over the fence into the field behind our property.

Natural compost.

Along the same lines, I’ll never forget the day I got home from a two-week camping trip to Wyoming with the neighbors in 1976. I was done with being a wanderer and dying for a home-cooked meal that did not involve hot dogs or lukewarm lunch meat. I had presents for everyone, souvenirs from Yellowstone/Grand Teton or the Black Hills, the Badlands, and Buffalo Bill Cody’s ranch. I had rocks from every state we traveled through.

I had written a script in my mind that involved dramatic expressions of how much they had all missed me and how they couldn’t wait to pamper me.

So when I walked over from the neighbor’s driveway with my bags I was shocked to hear Dad’s voice coming from under the house. “Throw some old clothes on and help us here!”

Very sentimental.

They were inside the cistern, which is a concrete room under the house where the water from the downspouts collected. We used that water for things other than cooking and drinking. I’m really not sure how the pipes were connected, but I knew there were times we had the cistern “turned on” and other times the well was on.

After many years all the leaves and bugs and whatever else washed down in the rains had decomposed and settled into the bottom. I’m guessing it had built up high enough that it was impeding the flow of water out of the cistern through the pipes.

It was time to muck it out.

The only way a person could get in or out of the cistern was to take the small window out of the foundation. And crawl in.

Fortunately for me there were already enough people inside the underground room, shoveling the muck into buckets. They needed me to pull them up with a rope, then carry the buckets to the fence and dump them in the field.

Are you noticing a theme with Dad’s projects?

And I’m sure they were the same buckets.

In fact, I think I have a couple of those buckets in my garage or barn.

And I sure wish Dad was still around to laugh about this latest bump in the road in my life. He’d get a kick out of it. And I’d love telling him all the details.

It wouldn’t take him long to hunt down one of those buckets and a shovel.

And I would love nothing more than to tackle another filthy job, side by side with my daddy.