Very personal memories of God

God has graciously drawn me since I was very young.

I do not know why.

Why does He draw someone?  And why does someone else struggle so, to hear and to believe?

One of my first memories is of being a small baby, and being carried to my crib.  I did not want to be put into my crib, this I know.  I remember the feeling of dread, how I clung to the adult but was peeled off and placed in the barred crib despite my most passionate protests.  I remember remembering the horror of the ongoing routine of screaming and crying for someone to come back and get me, but nobody coming.  I remember the soft crunch of a plastic mattress liner under the sheet over the crib mattress, and the taste of the varnish on the wood of the crib.  I vividly remember the hot scratchiness of the screams that tore my throat, and the strain of clutching the crib rail, pulling myself up, striving, straining, flexing every muscle in panicked fury until I was in veritable pain.  And I remember a calm voice that spoke to me, although perhaps not in words, because I don't think I was verbal.  Maybe it was just an idea that washed over me from Someone outside of me.  "You don't have to fight," this Presence told me.  "It's okay.  You can just lie down.  It doesn't have to be like this."  I remember lying down, gently, almost as if an angel slipped me into a new position with comforting hands.  I clearly remember a comforting warmth that spread over me as I let go of my angst, my striving.  My tempest melted away in a blanket of warmth, and the next thing I knew, I was waking up to happy parents.

You may not believe it, but I remember this.  Somehow, I've always known it was God there that day, telling me, "You can just lie down.  It doesn't have to be like this."

I remember a day when, as a school-aged child, I sat cross-legged on the floor in the living room in front of the oak bookshelves that surrounded the descending staircase.  Green carpet, oak shelves, the World Book Encyclopedia volumes bound in black and white leather, the set of beloved Childcraft books.  I sat in that spot often, considering what to read next.  But that particular day, I felt the presence of God, and I wondered why I was so blessed.  Why did I have a nice, solid house and nice, clean clothes and good food to eat, when the world was full of suffering, starving people? Why did I get to go to church and learn about Jesus, when people all around the world had never heard of Him?  Why did I have a mom and dad who taught me about God?  Why did I have a bookshelf right in front of me with numerous Bibles in various translations at my fingertips?  Why indeed?  I thought of the maps inside the pages of the volumes of the encyclopedia, and I imagined all the distant places and people groups they represented, and I thought about the largeness of the world, even the Universe.  In those moments, the Spirit of God was doing something in me, opening my mind to a vastness beyond myself.  Not that I understood it, but I was aware of it.  I pondered the Universe, and how I was so small within it, and yet so inexplicably blessed.

I remember being a bit older, a young teenager, walking home from school with friends.  I was sharing about something that had happened, something I didn't like.  I don't remember the particulars, but it had to do with authority and punishment, and I was upset.  The others listened sympathetically.  They were kind to me.  Supportive.  "That isn't fair at all," they said.  "You don't have to accept that."  They admonished me to fight, to resist, to rebel.  It felt good.  I felt validated.  And then, suddenly, I realized the hollowness of it.  Although I do not remember the exact subject, the words, the details of the situation, I remember a sudden awareness that it was wrong.  I remember, accompanying the awareness, the curving slope of the green autumn grass down to the road (if you know Anoka, it was Green Street).  This part of the memory is as clear as the day it happened.  That Presence--the one that had been there since I was a baby--was suddenly in me again, and although the words of my friends had been soothing and affirming, I knew that I could not listen to them, that they were not right.  I had a fleeting thought about how it was a shame that I couldn't go on being validated, there on the green, grassy lawn.  The regret was followed by a chilling sensation as I understood how strong the temptation was to believe a lie.  I don't remember what happened afterwards, in my physical life, with the people.  I don't remember how the conversation may have closed.  All I know is that God was there, and He pointed me away from the alluring validation of my sin, from words and ideas that seemed so appealing, but were not true.  They simply were not true.

Those are three specific, memorable times when God communicated with me as a child.  To this day, I do not know why He did.

Why should I be blessed to be able to sense God's presence and respond to Him?  Why should I be blessed to love His Word, and through His Word, Him?  Oh, dear Lord, may others have this blessing.  Please open hearts, as I know you can, as only you can.

Grape juice and the stomach flu

There's a thing going around the internet right now: They tell you to drink grape juice to prevent the stomach flu.

Well.

Yes, grape juice is supposed to change the ph in your digestive system so the stomach flu germs can't grow there.  That is my ultra-scientific explanation and interpretation.

It must be 100% grape juice, no juice mixes or artificial flavors.  Welch's is often named (and may be behind the whole thing).

You have to drink your grape juice before you exhibit symptoms, if it is going to work.  Do not--I repeat do not--drink a bunch of grape juice after you have begun vomiting.  Dark purple is not a good vomit color.  For heaven's sake do not give 100% grape juice to a vomiting child, if you value your towels, bed linens and carpeting.

The first to fall will fall.  This preventative is a family thing: when the first person gets sick, as soon as the first person gets sick, everyone else should start drinking copious amounts of grape juice.  By copious amounts, I mean an 8 oz. glass with breakfast, lunch and supper.  That's a lot of sugar.  Cut out all other sources of sugar.

I actually tried this recently, and it seemed to work.  Hallelujah!

I love grape juice.  I love the way it looks, the way it smells and the way it tastes.  When I tried this preventative, it was actually a bit late for prevention.  Although I'd not vomited, I was definitely feeling very funky, and things were "off" to the point where I would not be able to claim the label "prior to symptoms."  However, when I poured up my first glass of grape juice, even the wafting scent seemed to calm my stomach a little bit.

A memory flooded my consciousness, a memory of childhood stomach flu.

When I was a child and I came down with the stomach flu, my Grandpa Rainbow always used to appear on the doorstep with a brown paper bag of presents to cheer me on my day home from school.  I remember this.  My bedroom had a window that looked back at the portico outside our front door, and I remember hearing the shuffle of someone walking up to the door as I listened listlessly on my bed.  I remember hearing the doorbell ring, and my mother conversing with the visitor in the front hall.  Then my mother would come into my room with the brown paper bag of gifts.

Usually there was a small craft or activity, something I could do quietly in bed while I was recovering.  Once there was a Laura Ingalls Wilder book, On the Banks of Plum Creek.  Always, there was a bottle of Welch's grape juice, just for me.  I assumed that this was simply because Grandma and Grandpa Rainbow knew how much I loved grape juice.  Now I'm wondering if they knew something special about grape juice.

My mother (who valued her towels, bed linens and carpets) would never let me have the grape juice right away.  "This is too strong for you," she would say.  "Does it even appeal to you?" she would ask.  Well, it did.  Still, I had to wait before she would let me have it.  I remember it as one of the first and best things I imbibed as I was getting better.  I remember the luxurious pleasure of a glass of grape juice and a soft boiled egg on white toast.  I had forgotten, but I recently remembered.

Oh, my dear old grandfather, with his floppy cap and the slight hunch of his shoulders.  He'd float up to the house in his big old boat of a green Chrysler, faithfully deliver the goods to the front door, and then go back to his car and float away.  What a blessing to have a grandfather and a grandmother who cared when I was sick and did what they could to cheer me up.

Dear Lord Jesus, thank you for Grandpa, who was so kind and faithful.  Thank you for Grandma, who probably had the inspiration to send him out on the mission in the first place.  And thank you for the grape juice, the fruit of the vine, that made me feel so much better.

Contentment

Before we can blink, November will be here.  Already, blustery days impel us to turn on our furnaces.

A puff of enveloping warmth greets us as we come in the door after a walk with the dog in the park.  Although I always grieve the end of summer--no more flowers, warm feet, birds feasting on the feeders in the backyard--still, there is a splendid coziness to autumn.

Today I have a lovely roast in the crockpot with vegetables, and I baked a country apple cake, chock full of buttery, delectable MacIntosh apple slices surrounded by walnuts, cinnamon and a tender, gluten-free batter.  The house smells divine.  Well, perhaps not divine.  The divine probably smells of fresh air, lilies, soapsuds and crushed ice.  My house smells homey: cinnamon, vanilla and apple with a light undercurrent of roasting meat and savory vegetables.  Warm, crusty brown scents, not fresh, airy white ones.

I sit here in my kitchen on a laptop--not my favorite computer, but a perfectly serviceable one--drinking decaf chai tea and listening to my furry brown dog growl low and menacing at the leaves blowing outside the front door.

I am content.

Sitting on the table next to me is a long list of things to do.  I will do some of them today, some another time, and perhaps there are some I will never tackle.  It's okay.  I am content.

They say that Socrates said, "He is richest who is content with the least, for content is the wealth of nature."

Raffi used to sing, "All I really need is a song in my heart, food in my belly, and love in my family."

When Shawn and I were on a trip back in the spring, we found the incredible comfort of a simple cup of hot tea with a small piece of chocolate.  These are things you can usually procure even when you are far from home.  The warmth of the tea and the sweet richness of the chocolate provide a comfortable sense of being at home, even when you are not, especially if you can find a a nice place to enjoy them, a hotel bed where you sit side-by-side, backs against the headboard, shoulders touching, feet tucked snug under the blankets.

One of my happiest memories from childhood is a strangely simple one.  We were out playing, the neighborhood kids.  I don't know what we were playing, or where the other kids had gone, exactly, but I was left in the row of pine trees between Reifenbergers and Pearsons, stirring mud soup in a plastic bucket.  It was dirt, rocks, water, pine cones and pine needles.  I stirred with a stick, something torn from one of the pine trees and oozing with sticky pine sap.  It was twilight, and the sun was fading, the air cooling as it so often does in Minnesota.  Usually, in the world of children, I was not the one who would get to have control of something as interesting as the stew pot in a game of make believe, so that twilight evening, I felt blessed beyond measure.  Little Timmy Reifenberger may have been bringing me pine cones and rare crushed weeds to thicken the soup, but most of the others had gone off to scale greater heights, climbing tall trees and strategizing battles.

Alone, I knelt over the bucket of mud soup, engrossed with the rhythm of stirring, the texture of the thick, sloppy mixture, the sharp scents of pine and wet dirt and crushed grass. I felt the light dimming around me, yet I continued pumping the branch through the solution, almost in a hypnotic trance, grateful, content, at peace.  Eventually, my arm tired and my fingers chilled, so I went home.  When I think of my childhood, growing up in Anoka, Minnesota, this is always the first memory that pops into my mind, so insignificant, yet so deeply etched.

Contentment.  Gratitude.

November is coming, when I aspire to complete the discipline of celebrating one simple thing for which I am thankful, each day.  November posts are usually short, which is another good discipline to practice:  thankfulness and brevity.

Chickenpox (part 3, the aftermath)

 * * * This story started here and continues here * * *

After the chickenpox, none of us had any immunities.  Clearly.  Throughout the ensuing months, we experienced frequent and relentless episodes of the stomach flu.

It's just a blur.  I remember that long winter as a dark but sleepless stretch of vomiting and scrubbing up vomit, the mingled odors of sickness and Lysol surrounding us as the washing machine churned out load after load and we bought gingerale and saltines every time we went to Wegman's.

I remember feeling extremely cross while getting ready for bed, angry about the futility of bothering to put on pajamas when I knew I wasn't going to get to sleep.  I remember Shannon, poor little Shannon who slept alone on the first floor.  On multiple occasions she vomited up the stairs into the berber carpet as she came trying to tell me that she wasn't feeling well.  I remember little David, barely more than a baby himself, vomiting down the hall on the first floor, and me sopping it up with an armful of clean towels I'd just folded, then desperately pouring out half a bottle of full strength Lysol directly onto the wood floor where the vomit had been.  I ended by pouring the same full strength Lysol over my hands and forearms in a Hail Mary attempt to eradicate the germs, but got sick a day later anyway.

It seemed as though we had the flu bi-weekly.  When I got it, I usually threw up about twenty times over the course of about five hours before it settled into slightly less violent manifestations.

Of course, I understood that Shawn had to go to work to make a living for us.  I understood that nobody could come and help us when we were all contagious with pernicious viruses.   However, understanding the truth of the situation didn't help me soldier up under my distress.  I cried a lot, probably every day.

Later, I read a book by Jean Fleming called A Mother's Heart (it's a fantastic book; everyone should read it).  She wrote about their family being sick with a stomach virus.  They had been missionaries to China, but this sickness struck when they were in the USA.  She wrote of gathering her children into bed with her and leading them in a prayer of thanks for plentiful ice, and clean drinking water, and beautiful, modern bathrooms with flush toilets. I confess, even at the time I first read it (long after we'd been through our trying winter), I struggled to admit that I'd had anything to be thankful for when we were sick.  Sometimes conviction dawns slowly.

Eventually, the bouts of flu began to hit less frequently.  We went a month, and then six weeks.  In April, around Easter, I got sick again.  I think I was the only one that time.  I remember because my back went into spasm before I started throwing up, and the only position that brought relief from the back pain was to lie flat on my back, but that was not an option with the upset stomach and nausea I was experiencing.  It was an uncharacteristic 80 degrees, and must have either been Saturday or a holiday, because Shawn put baby Laura into the backpack carrier and went out to do spring clean-up on the yard.  I writhed in bed, alone, inconsolably miserable, dehydrated from loss of bodily fluids and the unseasonable heat, my fingertips wrinkled up like raisins.

The sickness would have been easier to deal with had it not been for the depression.  I didn't know I was depressed, and I don't think Shawn had any idea what was going on or what to do.  Anyone who has been depressed would resonate to my description of feeling utterly hopeless, hurting so badly in my spirit that, literally, breathing was painful.  Each day, I awoke to three little people already overflowing with their childhood needs, and their demands shattered against my skull, the things I had to do, no matter how I felt, and I felt completely drained and unable.  I felt alone, unworthy, forgotten, abandoned, unloved, rejected and ugly.

Yet here again was the Lord's silent, unappreciated presence.  I had no gratitude to Him for the way He enabled me--unable as I was--to rise from bed and make oatmeal, spoon it into small mouths, wipe off sticky faces, change soggy diapers and wash dirty clothes.  I sat on the sofa, nursed the baby, read story books, picked up blocks, put socks back on little feet, cut skin off apples and crusts off peanut butter sandwiches.  It was the grace of God, but I had no idea.

Their cries hit me like an alarm clock.  I responded the way one responds to an alarm clock: a surge of adrenaline, a surge of despair, the labored heaving of a tired body in a necessary direction.  I had little compassion, stunted affection.  I only knew what I had to do, and by the mysterious grace of God, I did it.  In my conscious mind, I thought, "I have made a terrible mistake.  I thought I wanted to be a mother, but I am a terrible mother.  I am no good at this at all.  I need to sleep.  I need some rest.  I need a break.  I'm going to die if I don't get some rest."  But I didn't get rest, and I didn't die, I just got the flu again.  And again.

My children were gut-wrenchingly beautiful.  I knew that.  They were beautiful and funny and smart and amazing.  I was aware, aware enough to be frustrated that I couldn't properly appreciate it.  "I am the only one who even sees how amazing they are," I thought.  "It's just them and me.  Nobody else knows.  And I can't appreciate them because I am sick.  Oh the waste, waste, waste. Who will appreciate them?  I have made a terrible mistake.  I shouldn't be their mother.  I shouldn't be trusted with them.  I can't do this.  Who will love my children?"  I wanted to die, but not really.  I didn't want to go to hell, but even heaven sounded far too exhausting.  I wanted to die like a dog, and just be buried in the loamy earth where I could finally be at rest, feel nothing, hear nothing, know nothing.  I wanted nothingness, forever.

"I want to die," I told God.  "I can't do this anymore.  I can't do it, do you hear me?  I want to die, but I don't want to go to heaven.  I want to sleep, in the earth, and decompose and be nothing."

The Lord who (unbeknownst) had been holding me together all this time, patiently empowering me to care for my family, finally had enough.  In the moment when I expressed those thoughts consciously to Him, I was aware of a sensation not unlike what you would imagine a toddler might feel if you picked him up by the back straps of his Osh-Kosh overalls and then rotated him around to look you in the face.  The Lord got in my face, and He said (not audibly, but with words), "That is not death.  When you die, you will come face-to-face with Me, and I will require you to answer for yourself."  After an initial blow-to-the-gut speechless moment, I was tempted to whine back at Him, to say that wasn't the way I wanted it to be.  However, something about His palpable presence gave me an extra measure of self-control.  I'd been given a healthy, divine check, and it did me some good.

Over the summer, things leveled a bit, for which I am truly grateful.   However, when autumn arrived again, with maple leaves turning the same saturated oranges and golds which had surrounded Laura's birth, with the days shortening into dark evenings long before Shawn returned home from work, I had a relapse of the depression.  This is one of the ways I know now that it was depression.  I began to feel a dread that deepened into a panic and spilled over in tears and angry words and clenching anxiety.

Undiagnosed, untreated depression is a terrible thing.  The Lord brought me through mine, but it was a very lengthy process, difficult, and it left scars.  I have so many regrets.  Depression leads to sin, which leads to deeper depression.  It is a terrible cycle.  Thanks be to God for His infinite grace and constant abiding presence and patient healing over time.

At the risk of sounding like I am whining, or blame shifting, I would just like to say that it would be helpful if people could understand that a truly depressed person is not capable of fixing herself.  In fact, she is not even capable of figuring out what is wrong and what might be done about it, let alone implementing a solution.  It seems to me that obstetricians hand out leaflets about postpartum depression to new mothers.  Maybe it's different now, but that is a completely useless thing to do.  The depressed person, if she is truly depressed enough to need help, is almost never going to be able to ask for help, herself.  Somebody else needs to step up and help, advocate, support, seek treatment for the one in need.

I think it would be helpful if families and churches could be educated about how to watch for people who are undergoing difficult times of stress, and how to intervene to help before utter despair and depression set in.  Sometimes we actually should be responsible for others.  Sometimes it is right to get involved, take action, demonstrate sacrificial love.

Instead, I've noticed a trend among church people who seem to feel that it is a virtue to say no.  "I'm teaching myself to say no," they piously proclaim, as though they were actually guilty of always doing everything they were ever asked to do.  While it is certainly of value to weigh one's commitments and, with God's guidance, choose the highest priorities when setting one's schedule, I don't think telling a desperate person, "No, I can't help you," is very often a virtuous move.

The Lord worked in my life through physical illness, exhaustion and depression.  I learned that He could hold me together.  I first-hand experienced that He did not leave me nor forsake me.  He used His voice to speak truth into my mind when my mind was bending in wrong directions.  This was ultimately good for me.  However, I would be wrong to extrapolate from my experience that when another isolated young mother is having a difficult time, I ought to leave her to drown and thus discover God's grace as I did.  When Joseph's brothers sold him into slavery in Egypt, God used it for good to prepare provision for Israel many years later when famine came.  However, that does not justify the cruel acts of hatred perpetrated by Joseph's brothers.  Just because God works good out of sin, it doesn't make sin acceptable.  And just because God brings growth out of pain, it doesn't mean we should stand back and let pain run its course in the lives of people around us.

Joseph was the victim of sins committed knowingly and maliciously against him.  Sins of commission.  If I was the victim of any sin, it would have been sin of omission: people who maybe had an inkling that they could have stepped up to better support me, but found that their schedules and priorities prohibited it.  If such is the case, I have no choice but to forgive freely and eagerly, for I myself have committed more sins of omission than I could ever count.  I have failed to reach out, failed to support, failed to love.  I must not be bitter against those who have only neglected to do for me what I also have neglected to do for others.  Besides, whatever I may have suffered as a result of anyone's inaction, God ultimately used it to drive me deeper into Him, and there is no better place for me to be.

Yet, I must also use my experiences to teach me how to support others. I must allow my heart to be tender toward the hurting young mother, and others who are weak and in pain or despair.  I must guard against thinking, "She needs to toughen up.  She needs to pull herself up by her bootstraps.  She is being a big baby and she needs to gut it out and learn what she is made of."  Those are unrighteous thoughts, not humble, not compassionate, not loving, and certainly not Christ-like.

Trials are hard.  Loneliness can be brutal.  Depression is real, and comes in the aftermath of difficulties, when a person's confidence and security have been shattered.

God is real, powerful and present.  He works in mysterious ways.  He carries us through our most overwhelming floods.  He cares for us and comforts us so that we also can care for and comfort others.

Time moves slowly sometimes, and the hand of God is not always visible, although it is always here.  We, as God's people, can be His visible hands to those who are hurting, when they could not otherwise see His work in their situations.

May we embrace the grace of God as He pours it out on us, and may we recognize His good work in our lives.  May we share His grace with those around us, according to their need.  May we trust the Lord to give us all that we need to give to those in need, because His mercies are infinite.

May our hearts be filled with gratitude and love.

Chickenpox (part 2, the crest)

If you read my last post, we had arrived at the point where Shannon came down with the chickenpox.

Let me tell you, at that point I was really feeling sorry for myself.  However will I stop bleeding now? I wondered, supposing that I was at my wit's end.

Shannon had a fairly bad case of the chickenpox, with red spots spattered approximately every two to three inches apart, over all of her.  I treated her with Aveeno oatmeal baths for the itching and Tylenol for the fever, while doing my best to distract her from scratching and scarring herself.  This, while continuing to deal with thrush and bleed heavily, along with the regular care and feeding of a new baby and an eighteen-month-old.  I'm not solid on the dates, but it was shortly past Shannon's third birthday.  Perhaps it was right at Halloween time.  That would seem appropriate.

Shannon was always a trooper, and this was no exception.  Her chickenpox fever broke and the spots began to fade, just as the gentian violet began to do its good work on Laura's thrush.  I thought maybe things were looking up.  I took this picture for our 1992 Christmas card:

If you look closely, you can see that there are some faded spots on Shannon's face, 

and Laura's lips are purple from gentian violet.

Perhaps a day or two after I took that picture, I was in the shower.  I think it was a Saturday, and Shawn was at home, which would explain why I was able to enjoy a shower.  Leaning back into the hot water, I rubbed the bar of soap in my hands and then spread lather across my shoulders and upper chest.  Near my left shoulder bone, through the slippery soap, I felt a bump on my skin.  Rinsing and investigating, I saw a small red dot.  Leaning forward and looking through the steam, I scanned from left to right across my chest and found a whole crop of red spots.

I had the chickenpox.  And so did David and Laura.  I'd thought Shannon's pox had been a solid spread, but David, Laura and I had chickenpox on top of chickenpox on top of chickenpox.  They were on our eyelids, inside our noses and under our fingernails.  Can I just say, it is a nightmare to try to nurse a new baby when both of you are covered head to toe and in every intimate place with itching, oozing, crusting pox.  Oh, and Shawn had used up every vacation day and personal business day on his work calendar by then, so I was on my own to deal with it.

There is something called PPD, or postpartum depression.  I am not sure if that is exactly what I had, but I had something bad.  I am not sure how I survived the deep, flooding despair and hopelessness I felt in those days.  Something like hiccups, or sobbing, or desperate anger existed around the surface of my consciousness, and I felt--alongside the chills of the fever--like I was going to snap, except that I actually was snapping, bit by bit, a snap here and a snap there, and as I snapped, brittle and broken, I kept functioning.  The grace of God is astounding, and so is our frequent blindness to it.

I flapped, too.  I remember wearing loose clothing and flapping my shirt violently to keep from scratching.  I flapped, pulled my hair and ran up and down the stairs doing laundry because it gave me something to think about, something to do with my hands and body to overcome the urge to scratch.  I washed dishes, too.  Fed the kids.  Wiped off the kitchen table and counters.  Changed the diapers.  Adrenaline coursed through my body, and I shook, trembled, spilled tears, swallowed air and breathed panic, but I kept functioning.  By the grace of God, I took care of them.  The fear in my head said, "I can't do this.  I can not do this."  But I did do it.  By the grace of God, and nothing else, I did.  I don't know how, except that somehow He was silently holding me together.

I couldn't feel it at the time.  I didn't know He was there.  I felt completely and utterly abandoned.  I had no awareness that it was a miracle that I was able to get out of bed and take care of my children each day through that time.  I only knew what I wanted, and I was not getting what I wanted.  I wanted a kind, gracious, gentle, comforting woman to come into my home and take care of me.  I wanted her to speak kind words to me and confidently gather up my children in her arms and make them happy.  I wanted her to put me to bed and bring me tea and homemade soup.  I wanted her to care for my children and clean my home the way I wished I were able to do it, better than I could do it.  And while she was there, I wanted to fall into a long, deep, peaceful, restful sleep and wake up healed.  That is what I wanted, and that is what I did not get.  That is not real life, but I didn't understand.  I thought it was what I needed and that a person should get what she needs.  I didn't know that Jesus was enough, and He was there.  I couldn't see it until I looked back, and that is why I need to look back.

On two separate days, women from my church came over to help me.  One came one day and another came another day.  Bless their hearts, there was no way they could have lived up to my unrealistic hopes.  They didn't have deep relationships with me or my children.  They didn't know what my kids liked to eat, or how I folded the laundry a specific way so it would fit into the drawers, or that I was obsessive-compulsive about organizing the kids' sets of toys when picking up after a play session.  Bless their hearts, they tried.  They did their best.  They were kind, and they reached out, and to this day I remember them with fond gratitude mixed with shame over the way I was unable to accept their help, unable to rest or relax or trust while they were in my home.  The adrenaline continued to surge, screaming, "Hyper-alert!  Hyper-alert!"  I cried with anger after they left, because they were not the perfect lady in my imagination.  I don't know what you are supposed to do when you are so broken to bits that you have nothing, no self-awareness even, when you're no more than a shell of bitter despair.  It is incomprehensible grace the way Jesus holds onto us when we are unable to hold onto Him.

Chickenpox is a particularly humiliating thing to experience as an adult.  You feel so sick, so weak and feverish and drained.  Then you walk past a mirror and see the Swamp Monster that is you, and you can hardly grasp that you look even far worse than you feel.  Most people don't get the chickenpox when they are a 26-year-old-mother-of-three.  Do you know, when I called the pediatrician's office to ask what I should do for my eight-week-old baby with the chickenpox, they told me, "A baby that young cannot get chickenpox.  She will have immunities from you, from the breastmilk she is drinking."  But my breastmilk didn't have any immunities to pass on, because I didn't have any immunities myself.  And so my children suffered with me.

One night, after many sleepless nights, Shawn and I decided that he would sleep in our bed upstairs, and take care of David in the nursery across the hall, while I would take Laura down to the guest room and sleep on the futon with her.  I remember lying on the futon in the darkness after struggling through a poxy feeding, and realizing that my bleeding had finally, somehow, tapered off.  I thought, I should be thankful.  And anyway, I thought, itching is bad, but it isn't as bad as nausea.  I was nauseated for nine months while I was pregnant.  Now I just itch.  I should be thankful.  I fell asleep.  Ironically, I woke up a few hours later with my stomach stretched tight as a rubber band, so in the end, I found myself vomiting after all.

I understood why the people from our church needed to stay at arm's length.  I understood that if I were in their position, I would not myself go into someone's house that was rife with chickenpox germs and risk bringing chickenpox back to my own children (it was a small church of virtually all young families with little children).  I understood, and it made sense, and I didn't blame anyone.  Still, it hurt when they'd drop off a meal with a ding-dong-ditch punch at the doorbell, so all I'd find upon opening the door was a box of food on the step.  I was thankful for the food.  It's just that I wanted that perfect, nurturing woman to be there, to hug me and carry the box of food into the house, to tell me that I'd feel better soon.  "Just hang on," I wanted her to say. "You will be okay, and I'll be here for you until you're okay again." 

As Thanksgiving drew near, the church wanted to help, tried to reach out.  They called and asked if they could buy us a premade Thanksgiving dinner from Wegman's.  I said no.  I was so shattered, so messed up.  I was mad because I wasn't getting what I wanted.  I wanted love and support and community.  I wanted relief from feelings of loneliness, abandonment and isolation.  I did not want an impersonal, boxed Thanksgiving from a grocery store.  So I said no thank you.

Chickenpox hits like a mace, but it leaves gradually.  First the fever and chills abate, and then the itching slowly subsides.  After that, there is the long process of healing for the skin: gradually the spots fade from dark red to lighter red to pink to pale pink.  Some of the spots scab and scar, leaving memories that will linger indefinitely or virtually forever.

I'd like to say that the story ended shortly thereafter, that the spots faded away and life went on, improving day-by-day.  That's not quite what happened.  For one thing, PPD.  It's taken me years, perhaps decades, to work out that PPD was involved.  Maybe it wasn't exactly postpartum depression, but it was depression, and postpartum hormone swings were certainly involved.  For another thing, a bad case of chickenpox in the fall can wreck your immune system for winter.  I was warned about this by one of the women who had spent a day helping me.  She'd had chickenpox as an adult herself, and she knew.  I remember her telling me, "Be careful when you get through this.  Don't try to get back to full speed too fast.  Your immune system will be weakened."  I remember listening and nodding.

But I had no idea what she really meant.

--to be continued--

Chickenpox (part 1, the background)

Many of us have points in our lives that brought us to a crisis and a change.  Often it seems that the most widely circulated stories involve a spectacular crisis--a death, a cataclysmic accident, cancer--followed by relatively rapid and deeply productive healing of a soul.

In my story, the crisis is completely unromantic, and the healing took a very long, messy time.

I've shied away from writing this story, because it's rather an ugly one, and it doesn't flatter me from any angle.  It's about chicken pox, and how the pox marred my face for a season, my heart for many seasons.  Humble and common though it may be, the experience of chickenpox squashed me and then--eventually--caused me to learn and grow, in ways that continue to this day.

I've already pointed out that it wasn't death, or cancer, or war or a terrible automobile accident.  Many people have experienced far worse things than my bout with the chickenpox.  Yet, the experiences that affect us are significant because of the changes they precipitate.  Depending on circumstances, a child could be more deeply wounded by having his friend abandon him on a school playground than by losing his uncle to death.  The universal gravity of a situation, or the lack thereof, does not define its effect on an individual.

I will preface the story with a list of things I learned through it.  This goes against my instincts as a writer; I don't like to tell the ending first.  But I think it is important for you to realize that there is a happy ending, that I did not get stuck in the sloughs of despair forever and all eternity.

(1)  I learned that Jesus is enough, and that He wants me to know that He is enough, and sometimes He needs to take away a lot of things that I hold dear in order to prove to me that He is enough.

(2)  I learned that Jesus can hold me together when I am losing my sanity.  Miraculously.

(3)  I learned that what I think I need is not necessarily what I really need, and I must trust Jesus to make the judgment calls concerning my needs.

(4)  I learned that life goes in seasons, and some seasons are rough--now and then we have a really harsh winter, or a paralyzingly dry and famine-ridden summer (I am speaking metaphorically)--but seasons come and go.  No season lasts forever.  I learned that if I hang on through a difficult season, it will eventually end, and a new season will begin.  This is something I totally failed to grasp before the chickenpox, but it brought me great hope for the future when I realized this truth.  After I figured it out, I thought, "Why didn't anybody tell me this?"  And then I thought, "Who can I help by passing this on?"

That is why I'm taking a stab at this memoir today, because I believe that there are flashes of hope and sparks of victory buried in the tale, truth that might help someone else who happens to read it.

Here we go:

It actually started in the late winter of early 1992.  David was a fussy baby, and Shannon was a curious, energetic toddler.  I was overwhelmed.  I'd hit that point after pregnancy where my joints lost their pre-delivery looseness and started to spasm into the old back and neck problems that had plagued me since our car accident in 1988.  It's difficult to care for two very young children when blinding pain hits every time you lean down to pick one up.  Shawn was traveling a lot, family support was as distant and elusive as ever, and the dark, gray Syracuse winter dragged on with no sign of spring.

Then the nausea hit.  After it failed to abate over the course of time, I took a pregnancy test and yes.  Another pregnancy.  I tearfully considered my situation--my overwhelmedness, my utter exhaustion, my isolation--and I wept.  I simply had no idea how I was going to handle it, how I could possibly take care of the little lives that depended on me when I felt like I was, myself, dying.

The pregnancy was difficult.  It's just hard to be pregnant and nauseated while trying to care for a one-year-old and a two-year-old, with no family support and no breaks, ever.  It's particularly hard when your husband is a frequent business traveler.  The Lord heard a lot of complaining from me in those days, and I say this to my shame, but it is true.  Here are two good thoughts:  The Lord had grace for me, even while I despaired and watched the waves that crashed over the sides of my sinking boat instead of turning my face in trust to Jesus--the Lord had grace for me anyway.  Also, the pregnancy hormones made my joints loosen up, so the back pain was assuaged; at least the pain in my neck, if not the pain in my lower back.

The delivery was rough.  Laura was posterior with a facial presentation.  Afterwards, my midwife said, "That would have been a C-section if it had been anyone but tough old you."  I thought she was buttering me up, flattering me.  I did not think I was tough.  Granted, I almost bled to death, and yet I survived, so that demonstrates a certain toughness, I suppose.  I remember a geyser of black blood spurting up from between my legs on the delivery bed, and the midwife jamming her arm into me up to her elbow while screaming, "Methergine!  Somebody bring me methergine!"  Insanely, someone had swaddled Laura and tucked her into my arm at my side.  I was aware of a fear of dropping her but I couldn't move, couldn't speak.  There was the jamming pressure of a syringe of methergine being slammed into my thigh--I was so far beyond pain, nothing hurt anymore--and I thought, maybe they will listen to me now as I tried to speak, to tell them someone had to take my baby, keep my baby safe, don't let my baby fall.  Someone heard me and turned to Shawn who was huddled on a chair in the corner of the room with his head between his legs, unable to lend a hand.  I understood.  I thought, I need to sit down and put my head between my legs, too.  And then I realized that I was already lying flat on my back.  At that point I grayed out.

Later, I made a few scenes.  I was given a room to share with another new mom who had contracted an infection which kept her in the hospital for a few days.  Her mother was with her most of the time, but when her mother went home, around 11 p.m., she kept her TV on.  Around midnight, she still had it on.  I asked if she was planning to turn it off at some point.  "I will turn it down," she said.  But I could still hear it, and the screen flashed light into my eyes.  I'd been awake for over 40 hours at that point.  Frustrated, desperate, I left my bed and dragged myself to the nurses' station, limping and bedraggled, bloody, wrapped in the sheet from my bed.  I asked for a different room, tears running down my face.  "I have a one-year-old and a two-year-old at home," I told the nurse sitting behind the desk.  "I need to sleep now,  because once I go home I will never get to sleep again."  That nurse sneered at me, but her supervisor hissed, "Put this woman at the top of the list for a private room."  I went back to my room and tried to sleep, but the TV was relentless.  I ripped the sheets from my bed and carried them to a nurses' lounge I'd passed on my way to the nurses' station, earlier.  There, in the empty lounge, I nested myself among my wrinkled sheets on a cool vinyl sofa and turned out the light.  I fell into a blessed sleep in the quiet darkness.  A few hours later, a light woke me, and there was a stern-faced nurse with my tiny new baby, who needed feeding.  Dull fear surged in my stomach as I prepared to be reprimanded.  However, she was kind, a kindness that moved me to more tears.  Isn't it odd, how kindness sometimes makes you cry, when cruelty would not?

At home, I continued to hemorrhage, and the hemorrhaging was generally worst on Tuesdays.  So much blood.  I didn't know you could lose so much blood and keep going.

At the same time, Laura had thrush.  Neither Shannon nor David ever contracted thrush.  It was a new thing.  It required treatment for Laura, and treatment for me.  For me, after every time I fed the baby, I had to wash my nipples with soap and water, and then spread them with a gritty, caustic, anti-fungal paste.  Then, right before the next time I fed her, I had to wash off the gritty paste, do the feeding, wash again after the feeding, then apply anti-fungal paste again.  In our little cape-cod house, the upstairs bathroom sink faucet was broken and only delivered cold water.  During the days I could use warm water in the downstairs bathroom, but during the nights I gutted it out with the cold water upstairs-- these were chilly October nights-- multiple cold water washings ending with the application of the caustic paste, which was in a foil tube.  One night, in the dark, after I washed the second time, I grabbed the tube and applied the ointment.  It went on smooth, soothing, comforting.  For an instant it felt marvelous, until I realized that I'd mistakenly grabbed the cortisone cream they'd given me in case of hemorrhoids. So I had to go back, wash in cold water yet again, and apply the caustic anti-fungal paste instead.

For Laura, there was a medication.  Nystatin.  The directions on the bottle from the pharmacy said, "Give one teaspoon twice daily."  It made poor baby Laura convulse, folding violently forward--and projectile vomit, splattering volumes of curdled breast-milk across the floor, like a full glass of milk, spilled.  Alarmed, I read the pamphlet that came in the box with the medicine, and it said not ever to swallow the medicine, only to swish it in one's mouth and spit it out.  Well, obviously a newborn can't swish and spit, so I called the doctor's office and asked if I should just put some of the medicine onto a piece of gauze and swipe it around in her mouth.  The nurse told me, and I quote, "If the directions say to give one teaspoon, then you give one teaspoon."  I gave one more teaspoon.  I watched my child convulsively projectile vomit one more time.  I threw the medicine away and found some gentian violet at the drug store, with which I proceeded to treat the thrush on my own.  My faith in doctors was eroding.

When I visited my own doctor regarding my profuse bleeding that was not stopping, he gave me some little red pills and apologized, "You will have to take these every four hours," he said, "even during the night.  I'm sorry."  I wanted to laugh, except that it wasn't funny, but really, it was no problem.  Night was not very different from day.  I was up.  Two to three times with Laura, two to three more times with David.  No harm in being up for a pill.  No extra harm, anyway.

"You have to stay off your feet," the medical people kept telling me.  "You have to rest, so you can stop bleeding."  But how do you rest when you have a brand new baby, and a one-year-old, and (now, a few weeks later) a barely-just-three-year-old, and no help?  "I'm not vacuuming," I told them.  "Somebody has to change the diapers and make lunch."

So.  All of this, and I felt that nobody had ever had such a difficult lot in life as I.  Then one Sunday after church, Shannon, who was wearing a cute little sweater dress outfit, began to writhe and complain. "I don't like all these 'squito bites!" she cried.  Thinking it was the knit fabric of her outfit making her itch, I slipped it off her, and there she stood, in her little bare skin, all covered with spotty red chicken pox.



--to be continued--

Playing in the garden

Today the heat index was predicted to be 100.

Since we planted some bedraggled clearance hydrangeas a couple of weeks ago, I figured some proactive watering might be in order.

It was already about 80 when I went out this morning, in basically the garb I had worn to bed the night before.

Back in the day, I always used to garden in the morning, in pajama-like garb.  I would feed Jonathan his breakfast, park him in front of Sesame Street, and go out to water, fertilize, weed and deadhead during the hour of Sesame Street.  Somehow, doing it before I was "dressed" for the day made gardening feel like play instead of work.  I remember working peacefully alone, feeling thankful and amazed that I had perennials and they were actually blooming.  I hummed as I toted the sprinkling can from bed to bed, front and back.  Around the time I figured Sesame Street was wrapping up, I'd head back in, and there would be Jon, usually rolling around on the floor in front of the sofa.

Then one day my neighbor, the one on the southeast side, nonchalantly mentioned to me, "Did you know that Jonathan comes over and rings my doorbell at about 8 every morning, and asks to come in for a snack?"  A lovely person, she said it kindly, perhaps with a twinkle in her eye.  "No," I replied, aghast.  "Really?"  She chuckled and said, "I didn't think you probably knew, since he usually only has his diaper on."

That put a bit of a damper on my gardening habits.

Here, in our "new" house, the gardens were rather unruly when we arrived.  We've worked on cultivating the front gardens, but over the three years we've been here, we haven't given much attention to the back, and this year they have progressed from "rather unruly" to "totally out of control."  So we started trying to tackle one bed at a time.  Our most recent project has been the upper terrace behind the garage, a shady spot with good access to a water spigot.

I'm on the lookout for a rhododendron.

In the meantime, we've put in hydrangeas, astilbe and columbine, as well as a bleeding heart.  I'm getting excited for next spring already!

But yes, right now the name of the game is to keep these little guys alive in the heat and dry weather we've been having.  They wilt in the noonday sun every day between 11 and 2.  Today I watered early, and I hope I watered well.

Besides putting in the plants, we've mulched and placed some stepping stones to help us get around in the garden and access everything.  I cannot tell you how much I love stepping stones.

This morning I cavorted from stepping stone to stepping stone, swinging a full sprinkling can, watching the water cascade in an arching spray, dazzling white sparkles of light caught in droplets dampening and refreshing my plants.  I felt like a ballerina.  I felt like a woodland fairy.  I felt like a child.  Barefoot, wearing pajama capris and a pink tee shirt, I immersed myself in water, dappled sunlight, fragrant cedar mulch and rich black dirt.

I get dreadfully dirty in the garden.

Of course I took a shower in the end.

Full heart, exceedingly full.

A lot has been going on.

Now and then I have an idea for a blog post, and then it evaporates.

I want to write a post about the Holy Spirit, but it probably belongs on Seeking Wisdom.

My health has been a bit pesky of late, but that belongs on To Sleep.

Today will be scattered, more of a diary entry than a blog post.  Messy.  Incoherent, perhaps.

Back when we went on our trip to Zion National Park for our 25th Anniversary,  I never finished writing about it.  I hope I can get at least one more decent post out of our trip to the redwoods, before the images and memories fade.  I need to write about the Best Hike in the World.  The exuberant man on top of his camper.  The white-faced, black-eyed teenagers near Patrick's point.  Our secret discovery of barking seals, spouting whales and swooping eagles.  Cooking Petrale sole at the Trinidad Inn.  The man in the elevator who asked us, "Sprechen Sie Deutsch?"  The midnight desk clerk at Embassy Suites Dallas Airport.  The British lady who needed some help with her walker, coming off the airplane in Chicago.

So many pictures in my mind.  So many stories.  So little time.  So little energy.

Lupus.  Bah.  And the bills that go with it.  Boo.  And the insurance companies that consistently deny claims the first time they are submitted.  Hissssssss.

In April, Shawn and I went to the beach, the Atlantic Ocean, and spent some time with David and Ashton.

In May, Jon and I went to Minnesota and saw Aunt Nunie as she was packing up to move out of 2715 Wingfield.  We said good-bye to Great-Grandma Herbold's historic house.

Also in May, Shawn and I went to San Francisco and the redwood forests of northern California.  Within two months, I touched the water in the oceans on both our east and west coasts.

This is not my life.  I am a run-of-the-mill housewife.  I do laundry, clean toilets, and shop at Aldi.  I am not a big traveler.

But wait.  There's more.

In June, Shawn and I went to Georgia.  (We also crossed through a corner of Alabama, adding two more states to my list of places I've been.)

We met Ashton's lovely family, and David asked Ashton to marry him, out in the pasture, under the spreading oaks.  She said yes!

It was a happy, happy time.

Oh, the plans He has for them.  The plans He has for us all.

Smiles all around.  We all smiled up a storm!

If the engagement was this joyful, we'd better hold onto our hats when the wedding day arrives!

Beach houses

This will be interesting only to my immediate family.

We first began going to the beach in about 2002, I think.  We had a pastor at that time who spoke often in his sermons about Ocean Isle Beach.  It sounded good, so we gave it a try.  I think Jon was six, Laura was nine, David was eleven and Shannon was twelve, or thereabout.  That seems right.  We stayed in an oceanfront home called Fisher's Wharf on the corner of Raeford.  We arrived as the sun was setting, to a magical sky full of amazing pastel colors.  The children ran around the decking to the front of the house and out the boardwalk to the ocean where they sank directly into the foaming ocean waves, in their clothes, and Shannon called out, "Mom!  How did you find this place?"  It was a very comfortable house; I slept to the roar of the ocean like I'd never slept on vacation before in my life.  We enjoyed the beach, which was very full of shells.  I'd bought a guidebook about North Carolina, and it spoke of Sunset Beach, 20 minutes to the southwest.  We drove over to check it out one afternoon, and loved the fine white sand and the quiet atmosphere.  We decided to try that island if we ever came again.  Our house on Ocean Isle had everything we needed except good knives.  After we got home, I bought a special knife for taking on beach vacations.  Mama gotta cook.

Our next beach vacation was in April of 2005, I'm pretty sure.  We went to a house on Sunset Beach called Amazing Grace.  It was on the extreme eastern end of the island (more extreme then than now, as that end has since been further developed).  It was a two-story turreted house, and the windows surrounding the sitting room off the master bedroom gave a circular view around the end of the island from ocean to channel to bay.  We were delighted to discover that pink sunrises awoke us each morning, with lovely views right from the bed!  That house also came with an impressive supply of toys for the kids to take to the beach.  It was a good week.

We went back again in August of that same year (2005).  Our house was called Southern Comfort, which I did not approve of.  It was a classic beach house floor plan with living/dining/kitchen down the middle and two bedrooms and a bathroom on either side.  I remember lots of white wicker and high, vaulted ceilings with ceiling fans.  It was a second row house, just across the street from the Fifth Street beach access.  It's been rebuilt, or at least renamed (renaming could only have been an improvement).  That was the year we bought an inflatable raft and the kids navigated the channel to visit Ocean Isle.  It was also the year when Shawn and I spent evenings walking along the shore under a full moon at high tide.

I think we went right back again in 2006.  That would have been the April when Shannon was a junior, David was in ninth grade, Laura was in eighth grade, and Jon was in fifth.  I think that is right?  That time we went in April and it was cold. We stayed in a lovely home on the back bay on the east end called Conch Out, and I think it may have been my favorite vacation.  David had his saxophone.  There was a crab trap and a floating dock to the bay where we could set the trap and catch crabs.  Jon made friends with the people next door.  Our friend TJ drove up from SC to visit us.

It seems like in those days we meant to go to the beach every other year, and then to Minnesota on the alternating years.  But then we started going to the beach in April and to Minnesota over the summer.  Maybe this is accurate?  We'd gone to Maine when Jonny was two (1997) and it was freezing.  Then we went to Cape Cod in about 2000.  That was even colder than Maine (it was one of those summerless years).  We flew all the way to California and explored the Pacific coast from Pasadena to San Diego in February of 2001, but that was cold too (at least we had a heated pool at our San Diego hotel).  Finally, we found the Brunswick Beaches of NC, which even when they are cold in April are not as cold as Maine in June.  In August the water is like a bath, and even I can walk straight in.

Anyway, that 2006 vacation in Conch Out was the last beach vacation we took as a whole family.  It was a good one, full of sweet azaleas and bitter sunscreen.  Little did I know that we wouldn't have the whole tribe together at the beach again.  Well, perhaps some day we will, but it hasn't happened yet.

April 2008 we went back, this time to the west end of the Sunset Beach, near Bird Island and the marsh.  We stayed in an amazing home called Tranquility Base.  It was on 40th Street and had double decks overlooking the marsh and the sunsets.  Everything about the house was fabulous, from the decorating, to the kitchen equipment, to the large soaking tub in the master bathroom, to the sunset views.  They even provided kayaks, although the marsh was low and we didn't have much luck using them. The only drawback (besides that it was cold) was that Shannon wasn't with us; she was in college, and her spring break was different from everyone else's.  David and Laura got sunburned studying for AP exams on one of the roof decks.  It was a fabulously beautiful house, and I remember Laura saying, "If their beach house is this nice, can you imagine what their regular house is like?"  This house is no longer available to renters.  I think one of the most memorable things about that vacation was the trip back up north to New York.  Spring was full blown in North Carolina, with spring green leaves spreading gentle shade over colorful bulb flowers everywhere.  As we headed north, the flowers disappeared and the leaves got smaller and smaller, until finally we reached the land of bare branches.  It began to snow, and we arrived home to a blizzard and a snow day school cancellation that Monday.

In the summer of 2009, we went to Texas to see Shawn's paternal grandmother, whom the children had never met.  We did the Riverwalk in San Antonio, visited the Alamo and swam in the gulf around Port Aransas.   This was our last family vacation, and it was one to remember forever.

August 2010 we went back to Sunset Beach.  That summer we stayed on Fifth Street, towards the east end of the island, farther back from the ocean than we'd ever stayed before.  We used the money we saved on the house rental to rent a vacation package that gave us a grill, a beach wagon, four beach chairs and an umbrella.

It turned out to be a fabulous way to do things.  The house was called Carpenters' Cottage, and it was really cute.  The background colors were neutral and light, the bedspreads were eye-poppingly bright and beachy, the furniture was comfortable and the kitchen was very nicely equipped.  We took David, Laura, Jon and a friend of Laura's, and much Boom-o was played.  It was a great vacation until Thursday, when Shawn received an email that threatened a ferocious lawsuit against the boss at his previous company.  This event put a major damper on our memories of an otherwise lovely vacation.

Nevertheless, we went back for another round in August 2011.  We tried the same strategy: rent a house farther from the beach, and spend the savings on a grill and beach gear.  The house in 2011 was called Three Sisters, which was ironic because we had three children, but only one sister: David, Laura and Jon.

Although we missed Shannon immensely, we had a magical, beautiful time together in this well maintained and equipped pink house.  It was not the fanciest house we've stayed in, but it was one of the most comfortable and livable houses; I loved it.  It was the first time we stayed in a pink house, and every time I came "home" to it, I had a little thrill that this pink house was mine for the week.  The kids got along well, Laura was happy because she had her own bathroom, and the waves were warm and wonderful.  I think this was the year Jon bought his first skim board and learned to use it.  Friday, as I was beginning to think about packing up to leave, I opened my computer and found a message from my niece Abby, saying that my father had suffered a heart attack, but that he was okay.  So that vacation had a less than ideal ending too, although it was a blessing that we did have immediate confirmation that all was well.  Shawn and Jon and I headed to Minnesota to see my parents after dropping Laura off at college, so we got an extra trip that summer.

August 2012, we set forth again.  This time, we took a houseful: our youth pastor, his wife and their two little children, and a friend of David's, as well as David and Jon (Laura had already gone back to college by the time we went).  That year, we got a house called Sand In My Shoes.  It actually had a sort of separate apartment upstairs, with a kitchenette and everything, so our youth pastor's family could have some semblance of privacy.  I'd always wanted to have the joy of watching little children discover the beach, and it was exciting and rewarding to practice up on some grandma skills.  That was a busy vacation because, besides having extra people along, I was trying to prepare for my job teaching English at a Christian school (the vacation had been planned long before the job offer came along), and this was totally overwhelming to me.  I don't have many clear memories of this vacation, but I had an impression of other people playing a lot of Settlers of Catan and watching Batman movies late at night.

The summer of 2013, we moved from New York to Illinois.  We did not have a vacation.  The summer of 2014, Laura got married and we did not have a vacation that year, either, unless you count the trip to Ohio for the wedding.

Last summer, 2015, we went to the beach for two whole weeks!  The house was called Beach Time.  It was, perhaps, the shabbiest house we had ever rented, although it provided everything we needed, even boogie boards.  The kitchen was decent except for the knives (and I had to go to Walmart and buy a pan to bake chicken in).  We didn't rent a beach package because the price had more than doubled, and being there two weeks made the cost ridiculously prohibitive, but they did furnish a charcoal grill with the property.  It was a super vacation, despite the shabbiness, and you can read about it in my August 2015 logs, if you wish.  We had Shannon and Jon for the first week, and then our friends Ann and Walter joined us when Shannon left, for the second week.

Most recently, we stayed oceanfront on Sunset Beach for the very first time, about a week ago (April 2016), in a house called Dune Our Thing.  This sounds fancier than it was.  It was a pet friendly oceanfront rental, and it was affordable, so that should give you some idea.  It may have been even shabbier than Beach Time from last summer; at any rate, the washer and dryer were rustier.  I quite enjoyed the "art" on the walls in this house, and I got used to the bright colors after a few days, and began to feel fondly about them.  We took Schubert, and spent some time just the two of us and our little brown dog (who was not much enamored of the beach).  We might have gotten lonely for family, but David and a friend of his joined us for a number of days, so that was a blessing.  Shawn had a blast setting up a ham radio and contacting many people in many places, from Uruguay to the United Arab Emirates to Russia and Ireland to Australia and back to Cary, NC!

So that is our history, to date, of beach vacation rentals.

To recap:

August 2002, Fisher's Wharf, OIB
April 2005, Amazing Grace, SB
August 2005, Southern Comfort, SB
April 2006, Conch Out, SB
April 2008, Tranquility Base, SB
August 2010, Carpenters' Cottage, SB
August 2011, Three Sisters, SB
August 2012, Sand in My Shoes, SB
August 2015, Beach Time, SB
April 2016, Dune our Thing, SB

Ten vacations, ten houses, ten sets of precious memories.

On being fine, but searching for purpose

So... I'm sick.  Ferocious sore throat, low grade fever, the beginnings of congestion, aches and pains.  Also I can sing bass this morning!  I just checked: I can hit the second F# below middle C!

I will not be going to work today.  I will be napping and drinking tea.

Shawn is in Boston.  He is sick too.  He may be the source of my illness, although he was hardly home long enough between Boston and Denver to share any germs.  Everyone else around here is sick too, so it could be from anywhere.

I woke up after a miserable night and thought how happy I was not to have parenting responsibilities today, and it put me in mind of a lovely memory.  Once back in New York, I woke up sick when Shawn was out of town, and it was piano lesson day.  I was overwhelmingly sick, and I realized there was no way I was going to be able to get my kids to piano lessons, so I called our piano teacher to let her know, and to apologize.

Somehow I got my kids off to school.

A couple of hours later, I was lying in bed in a disgusting mess of unshowered, virus-tainted filthiness, wrinkled pajamas and stringy hair, when the doorbell rang.  I quailed and tried to hide myself in a scruffy robe.

It was our piano teacher with a large container of homemade chicken soup.

I was, of course, mortified that she should see me in such a condition, but in retrospect I comforted myself with the thought that at least she knew I wasn't just making up excuses about being too sick to go out.

Our precious piano teacher bustled right into my kitchen and put the food away (there was more than soup, but the delicious soup is the part I remember vividly), waving away my apologies and explaining, "You sounded so absolutely miserably pitiful on the phone, I had to do something for you!"

That was a grace.  To this day, I tear up when I think of it.  Such a memory, and the kids were thrilled to eat their piano teacher's soup for dinner as well.  Such a memory.  Such a grace.

I have cans of gluten free chicken rice soup in my pantry now, stocked up for just such a time as this.  I have no chauffeuring duties.  I am fine.

The Lord has been near lately.  I'm hearing His voice.  Above all else, the sound of His voice is the difference between being fine and not being fine.

I've been reading The Grand Weaver, by Ravi Zacharias.  It is a tremendous comfort to me.  I'm in a chapter about how our wills work in synergy with God's design for our lives.  One thing that I read yesterday stood out to me:  "The bane of our lives is getting sidetracked into secondary pursuits. . . [E]ach of us must deliberately choose whom we will serve.  So write down your purpose.  Place it in a prominent spot so that you will continually be reminded of that purpose."

I prayed right then and there, "Lord, what is my purpose?"  And I got up this morning anxious to search the scriptures and find what my purpose is.

There are general purposes, true for all of us: we should love God, glorify Him and enjoy Him.  We should love our neighbors as ourselves.  We should be salt and light to a lost world.

However, within those parameters, is there a specific calling that the Lord has for me?

These are the verses that the Lord lead me to this morning:

Verse #1--

Psalm 145:14-16 (ESV) 

The Lord upholds all who are falling

     and raises all who are bowed down.

The eyes of all look to You,

     and You give them their food in due season.

You open Your hand;

     You satisfy the desire of every living thing.

Is it reasonable to say that my purpose is to look to God and find my provision and satisfaction in Him?  Could that be a purpose?

That same passage goes on to say that the Lord is kind in all His works, and near to all who call on Him.  Again, this doesn't seem to define my purpose, but it certainly is a comfort to my soul.  Could my purpose possibly be that of bearing testimony about the comfort of the Lord?  (That seems too much to hope for on one hand, and terrifying in its possible implications on the other.)

[Addendum:  After I had finished writing this post, God took me through a circuitous Bible study path culminating at 2 Corinthians 1:3-11.  How could I have forgotten?  Of course, it is the part about affliction that concerns me.]

Verse #2--

The next verse Jesus led me to was Psalm 146:8 (or thereabouts; ESV)

The Lord sets the prisoners free;

the Lord opens the eyes of the blind.

The Lord opens the eyes of the blind.  I am in agony over someone who is spiritually blind right now, enslaved to the lies of the enemy.  The Lord is the one who opens eyes and sets prisoners free.  This is, again, a comfort.  Yet, it still seems to miss pointing out my purpose.  It isn't my purpose if God does it, right?

At BSF yesterday, our teaching leader told us: "Your battle is not with people.  Your battle is with satan."

Between her comment, and Psalm 146:8, Jesus was leading me, prodding my mind to remember...

Verse #3--

Ephesians 6:12-13 (ESV)

For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood,

but against the rulers, against the authorities,

against the cosmic powers over this present darkness,

against the spiritual forces of evil

in the heavenly places.

Therefore take up the whole armor of God,

that you may be able

to withstand in the evil day;

and having done all, to stand firm.

Ephesians 6 has never been my favorite passage.  It has always terrified me.  It sounds frightening and exhausting all at the same time.  I actively avoid reading it, even though I love the rest of Ephesians.  I don't want to fight battles.  I do not see myself as a warrior.  I want the Lord to fight for me.  I like Exodus 14:14, Psalm 20:7 and Psalm 33:16-22.

But, perhaps the Lord Almighty, who does fight for me and deliver me, is calling me to
     take up the armor of God
     withstand evil
     and stand firm.

I remember what David said to Goliath as he approached the giant on the battlefield.  David had shed the armor Saul tried to loan him, and he walked forward against the powerfully armed Philistine, wearing only his shepherd's clothes, carrying only a slingshot and five smooth stones.  I get goosebumps every time I read this (and today I do again, and it's not just because I have a low grade fever) --

Then David said to the Philistine, 

"You come to me with a sword 

and with a spear 

and with a javelin, 

but I come to you in the name of the Lord of hosts, 

the God of the armies of Israel, 

whom you have defied.  

This day the Lord will deliver you into my hand, 

and I will strike you down and cut off your head . . . 

that all the earth may know 

that there is a God in Israel, 

and that all this assembly may know 

that the Lord saves not with sword and spear.  

For the battle is the Lord's . . ."

(from 1 Samuel 17:45-47. ESV, emph. mine)

I'm not sure I'm ready to hear what God is telling me here, especially if my enemy is supernatural and invisible.  I will need to remind myself continually that Jesus has triumphed over sin and death at the cross, and the victory is certain.
 
I was hoping I could just end with Micah 6:8 (ESV) --

He has told you, O man, what is good;

and what does the Lord require of you

but to do justice,

and to love kindness,

and to walk humbly with your God?

I guess it's there anyway, in the "do justice" part.  I think doing justice is related to undoing the effects of evil.  The thought of doing justice really frightens me.  I think I was hoping somebody else would do the justice.

Sunday afternoon again

It's Sunday afternoon again, and the time when I most feel at loose ends.

I remember Sunday afternoons in Anoka.  I remember my dad taking me to Grandma and Grandpa Rainbow's house, where there were always relatives, visiting, on Sunday afternoons.  Sometimes there were babies, which was my favorite.  Grandma taught me to appreciate babies, laying them out on blankets and drawing my attention to the sweetness of their bare toes, teaching me how to make them smile and laugh.

My cousins Willy and Molly were not babies; they were only slightly younger than I.  We had grand times playing in the basement, which was very clean for a basically basementy-basement.  There was shuffle board on the floor down there, and a washer and clotheslines, and all the fodder for imagination you could possibly want.  Along the side of the stairs down, shelves lined the wall, holding some cans of things, and in the autumn, decorative gourds drying.  Willy and Molly and I were famous for putting on plays, which the elder Rainbows always received with gracious delight, encouraging us and praising our creativity, thrilling our little souls and assuring us that we were special.

I've had many dreams of adventures in that basement, dreams of swinging from a rope like Tarzan, wearing a cape and saving the day.  As an adult, remembering, I can't separate the dreams from the reality, but it doesn't matter.

The Rainbows had a certain timbre in their voices, slightly raspy, and if I were a musician I could tell you the key, which was probably something like G sharp, a cut above the normal.  I can still hear it, vaguely, in my imagination when I cock my head and listen hard.

Uncle Doug and Tip, and their babies, Luke and Ben, were often there.  It seems to me that Doug and Tip and Luke and Ben, and Dad and I, were the standard fare.  Others came and went with less regularity, but it was always such fun to see who would turn up.  Now and then Bud and Joy came from Iowa, or Jack and Teda from California.  Grandma Rainbow seemed to be able to fill me in on who everyone was, and what was special about them, and why we were lucky that they were coming.  As a result, I was always excited to see them, and not nearly as shy as I would have been without her preparation and coaching.

Grandma kept a clear glass jar of jelly beans on the wooden shelf in her dining room.  They were the spicy flavored ones, because that's what Grandpa liked best.  White peppermint, yellow spearmint, green wintergreen, orange clove, red cinnamon and (Grandpa's favorite) black licorice.  I'd often eat a number of them throughout the afternoon, and the effect would be a terrible stomach ache during evening church later on.  One day I made the connection, stopped eating jelly beans, and felt much better throughout the evening.

I remember so many things about Grandma's house, not in chronological order.  I remember the way the front door opened and closed, and the texture of the braided carpet under my feet.  I remember the feel of the cabinet handles in the kitchen, and the smell of the refrigerator, which smelled different from our refrigerator at home, but still so very familiar, American cheese singles and jello and cranberries and (for some reason) the aroma of powdered milk.  I remember Grandpa in his chair in his den, and the TV broadcasting a game, and the faint smell of pipe tobacco.  I remember the blue bathroom with Browning's The Year's at the Spring framed over the bathtub.

And there was a big circle of uncles and aunts--or perhaps two circles: one in the den and one in the living room--visiting and laughing, happy.  It was a happy place, a place where you were welcome and loved.

I didn't know I could lose it all; I just took it in stride, took it for granted, the way a kid does.

The New York years were lonely, especially on Sunday afternoons.  I never completely got over feeling homesick on Sunday afternoons.  Sunday afternoon is when you should be with your extended family.  But sometimes this is not possible.

We had one baby, and then two, and by the time we had three, it was rare for our acquaintances to want any part of us anymore, so we duked it out alone, and it was rough a lot of the time.  However, as the years passed, a miracle occurred: the kids became people who could dress and potty themselves, tie their own shoes, fasten their own seatbelts, and eventually even share ideas and stories from their own lives with us.  We became a family of people who could support each other.  Unbelievably, instead of me running to Staples to buy posterboard for a project for one of the kids, one day it was one of the kids driving up to Wegmans to get me an ingredient I was missing for a recipe I was making. 

But Sunday afternoons.  We had the SSYO years.  SSYO was the Syracuse Symphony Youth Orchestra, and it consumed Sunday afternoons.  Having kids in SSYO meant that you couldn't have gone visiting of a Sunday afternoon even if you'd wanted to.  You had to rush out of church, drive to Manlius, and then figure out whether you were going to find something to do in Manlius for the duration of the rehearsal, or go all the way home to Liverpool and back out again.  We spent a good deal of time driving highway 481 during the SSYO years, the busy-ness filling the void of loneliness.

Then they all started leaving, and then we moved to Illinois, and they finished leaving.

Laura and Matthew came to visit this weekend, which was a blessing and a joy.  We didn't take a single picture, which is typical.  They left after lunch this Sunday afternoon, which is the way it is now.  Sunday afternoon seems always now to be a time of tearing apart, a time for saying good-bye.  But still I am thankful to be able to see them.  Good-byes stink, but not having any occasion to say good-bye stinks much worse.  So we watched their little car--a new blue Elantra they recently purchased and drove out to show us--watched it drive down our street, turn, drive up to the end of the neighborhood and turn again, onto the main road that would take them to the highway and away.  Blinking stinging eyes, I hiccuped as quietly as I could, giving a soft tug to little Piper on the end of his leash panting in the heavy humidity, stumbling with his age as we headed back into the house and the air-conditioning

Sometimes it feels like grief is a huge icicle pressing down on my sternum, and it's hard to suck breath.  I'm so tempted to say, "Why do I have to give up my kids, when other people have their children and grandchildren right down the street, there for every birthday and holiday, and even ordinary Sunday afternoons?  Why me?  Why do I have to lose my family? Why do I have to lose my family twice?"  More than tempted, I succumb.  And I want to feed my kids.  I want to wash their clothes and make their beds.  Also, I want to touch their hair, but I can't do that (except sometimes I do touch Jon's because he only complains a little bit, and also he is often here on a Sunday).  I want to iron for them, and I never even ironed in my life, hardly, except before a music audition or something, and even then, usually Shawn did it because he is a better ironer.

God doesn't want me to make family an idol.  I realize this.  I also realize that I am at risk of doing so, because I often allow myself to think that I cannot be happy if I don't have any family around.

I need to be content in the Lord.  I keep a bookmark in my Bible; it has a quote on it from someone named Jeremiah Burroughs who lived in 1648.  He wrote:

Christian contentment
is that sweet, inward, quiet, gracious frame of spirit,
which freely submits to
and delights in
God's wise and fatherly provision
in every condition.

Oh, how I wish I could attain that.
I am neither sweet nor quiet nor gracious.
I don't freely submit to what the Lord provides for me.
Certain family members have, on occasion, needed to remind me, "Think inside your head."  Thus, I suspect I do not have an "inward" frame of spirit, either.

I have so far to go.  Yet, I have hope.  Yes, I do.  I have hope.  I have hope that I will learn to be content and to delight in what the Lord provides for me.

And I also have hope that when I learn to delight properly in the Lord, and to cease my grumbling and fussing and complaining, then perhaps He will allow me to live in proximity to family again.

But maybe He won't, and I have to surrender to that, too, if it is the case.