Jillibee'sness

Epiphan-ME

I recently read a snippet somewhere (been reading lots of snippets all over the place lately) that said something like if women were at the manger they would have asked for directions, bought appropriate gifts instead  of what the wise men thought up, brought a casserole and helped with the baby so Mary could get a little rest and there would be peace on earth.  (It was much more clever the way they wrote it before I forgot it and paraphrased the only part I remembered).  However since I had nothing better to do but read snippets and get epiphanies, I got this huge epiphany (or epiphan-me) about some of my conflicts with the Christian faith.  I love the main characters and as I have blogged really like the 3 tenets (sort of like the 3 tenors but the tickets are more reasonably priced).  But I have a hard time signing up for the church bizarre.  I am not ashamed to admit what/whom I believe in, I just don't want to be in a line up of so many of the other people who aren't ashamed to admit it and do so in such an obnoxious and mean way.  I know I should not really be looking to imperfect people to identify with, and I do find solace in the Bible.   However, there are limits when I try to figure out which "type" of Christian I am.  Then it hit me.   I realize part of why I might have a hard time finding my identity as a Christian woman and feeling at home with Christianity.  I don't really find "ME" in there.  Let's just take that first Christmas.  Where were the girls?  I don't think there were girl shepherds.  I don't think any of the wise men were girls.  The only choices I have to identify with are a virgin or an angel. 

I am not a feminist (would require research and effort) but for a minute and a half I understood some of the objections feminists have with the Bible.  I could be a bad girl and lead a strong man astray or be turned into a pillar of stone.  Or I could be a Queen or a servant or a redeemed woman of loose morals.  I could be a victim or a gentle quiet support.  But I want to be a heroine.  I want to hit some big guy in the head with a rock or save the world from flood or deliver presents to all the good girls and boys in the world (oh wait, that's Santa). I want to wear the pants in the Bible.

Now, I am not about to go on a witch hunt and look for all the ways women are oppressed in the scriptures, nor am I going on an egg hunt to site all the ways that women are edified.  I do know that with a deep study and a little imagination I can feel great about all the terrific women in the Bible, especially since I don't have problems with personal pronouns in spiritual truths.  I can be a "mankind" without any trouble.  However, I do think it would just be easier if there were some more women I could identify with in the Bible.  I mean where is the one who is running late and forgetting her sandal and Jesus comes to push the stringy hair back away from her face and gently say, "My daughter, your keys are under your mat.  Now pick it up and walk on water to Starbucks and I will empower you to write the gospel of Jill".  Ok, maybe I am missing the point of the Bible, the Christian life, or life in general.  But I really want to be heroic and frankly I find picking up the socks on the floor and writing a telephone message to be a daunting task some days.  So to distract myself from this truth, I have decided to take on the Bible and the fact that there is no Zena warrior princess on a charging horse like John Wayne with the reins in his teeth through the mine field of bad guys.   I want to find lots of examples of women doing cool and courageous warrior things and not just being the supportive heroines that Bette Midler sings about (Wind Beneath my Wings).  I am sure this really has more to do with me and the ratio of testosterone/estrogen and the balance of power in my own marriage and the traditional role I have chosen to play as "wife and mother" in the award winning Jill Brehm Enders show (I'd like to thank all the little people for making this possible). 

I had this terrible moment this week while sitting with my toddler watching "Lord of the Beans" a Veggie Tale parody of "Lord of the Rings".  The message was all about how God gives us gifts and we can either use them to glorify ourselves and become rich and famous or to better the world and serve mankind. I am doing neither at the moment. As you may know, I have not felt very well.  At times like these when I am physically down, I like to add insult to injury and imagine how much time I am wasting and how much better my talents would have been put to use in someone more healthy and better organized.  (I would be a great un-motivational speaker). So there I was letting this fundamental message of responsibility and virtue bury me alive in guilt and remorse when it dawned on me that I was being lectured by a tomato.  A tomato!  Some little fruit starring in a show called "VEGGIE tales" was telling me how to live my life and I was buying it!!

Recently, I accidentally started reading this book called Abba's Child by Brennan Manning.  I think I highly recommend it (though I am only on chapter three).  Of all the Christian authors I have read this is as close to the kind of Christian I would not be ashamed of admitting I am.  (Madeleine L'engle and Anne Lamotte are two others).  I had planned on finding a great quote for you but I don't feel like it now.  Maybe later.  What I have taken from his writing and applied directly to my forehead is that we all want to hide and work to fix what is wrong with us and some how project onto God our perceptions of ourselves with these hideous defects (which gives us blind spots where we can't seem to want to draw near to God just when we need Him most, in times of "blech" such as I feel i am in).  We assume that He is cringing at the things in us that we are cringing at.  This author is arguing that unconditional love meant "unconditional".   And that we are loved warts and all and need to learn to get comfortable with our lovely warts so we can hang out with other people and their warts without being judgmental or scared.  (ok this summary is not even close to the writing style of Manning who uses words like "dyspepsia" so I really need to find some good quotes.  In the meantime, I suggest reading for yourself). 

What is exciting is that it resonates with something I think I know and gives me permission from the Deity to love the people I love and embrace the parts of me I don't love and to stop worrying that I have this spiritual hole in my pocket causing all my talents and potential to spill out all over the place (when someone else would have been more careful and shrewd).  I don't have to feel bad for not being more decisive and discerning when it comes to picking out the good guys from the bad guys.  OH, and he gives me permission to be annoyed with the kind of Christians that give me hives. And then reminds me that I can just sit there with my judgmental self (judging judgmental people is no better than judging anyone else) and not feel inclined to analyze this and try to eradicate it if I feel it is wrong.  I don't have to be right or even nice.  I can just be and trust God to make something worthwhile out of the messes I make while trying to do heroic and important things in a humble and gentle way.  So for now, I will try to make peace with my JilliBE-ness.

(Which is a good thing, because as I fear you may have noticed, "being" is about all I can do at the moment.  I have decided to take a break from pain but not a break from blogging.  I don't usually take pain killers so I really don't know if the lap top is included in the heavy machinery I should not be operating.)   

Moses Scissorhands

I like the Bible.  I used to believe it had EVERY answer to every question all the time.  I don't know if I don't believe that now or not or maybe I think it does have every answer to every question but we are not equipped to understand it all.  So I do still believe the Bible is valuable, but I don't wear it like a feedbag on my face blocking my view of life as it plays out in front of me.  I personally think that is a big improvement.  It is messier but that is where faith comes in.  Like in school, when you know all the answers you don't have to pray for inspiration.

I was taught that the Bible was the sword of the Spirit.  It has been very powerful and delicious in comforting or guiding me throughout my life.  I have this wonderful friend who always seems to have the nicest Bible verse to apply to a perplexing philosophical or emotional issue we are trying to wrestle to the mat.  I love that application of the Bible.

Then there are those other people.  I felt guilty when I realized that I don't like them.  I tune them out when they use the Bible to prove their point.  I recently read a book by an angry woman who used Bible verses out of context to bolster her position.  I felt guilty for reading her words and skimming over her scripture passages.  I mean if I were going to skim, should I REALLY skim the word of GOD?

Then it hit me.  Some people use the sword of the Spirit like Edward Scissorhands.  If you did not see it, this guy had scissors for fingers.  In one scene he raced to comfort a fallen child and just gashed the heck out of his cheek.  I think these people with their slicing and dicing of the Bible and scissor hands mean well just as Edward did.  But they slice you up in little pieces just the same, if you let them.  (Or at least they slice me up). 

Call me a sucker (there is one born every minute) but when someone says "GOD says this" I fall for it every time.  I have been lucky enough to "hear" from God and be guided by that still small voice and I believe in love and prayer and dreams and deep soul on soul talks and as I mentioned, the Bible.  So when someone says God gave them this insight, why should I doubt it?  I usually give it at least the benefit of a doubt until it slices off an ear.  For me that is progress.  I used to believe it even though it did slice off my ear and then said I was a sinner for not being able to hear better.

I've been in a somber mood for a few months.  To tell you the truth things are changing all around me and I don't like the change.  People who are my age are dying and I don't like death.  And then there is that whole thing about being chained to the wall on this computer instead of comfy wherever on my laptop.  By the time I'm sitting here ready to blog I've had to move heaven and earth to get the "me time" and that makes me a little cranky.  When people are in this reflective place it is absolute white noise to throw Bible verses at them.  It's like God is giving His own amazing lecture to me about the way life works and these bozos next to me are saying "YOU KNOW WHAT GOD SAYS?"

Scripture should be like Neosporin.  Applied topically, sparingly to prevent infection or numb pain.  The wound and the amazing power of healing and the Gift of God to make us able to withstand pain and fight off infection is the real miracle.   At least that's how I feel tonight.

Nice Girls don't blahg

I have not blahgged in a while. I suspect you noticed. Well, at least my mom did. (Hi Mom!) I have a lot of good reasons for this, mostly though, my lap top is broken so writing feels very much like I’ve been naughty and have to sit in the corner. In the old days, back before my lap top was broken, I could write anywhere I had a lap, which by the way, is becoming more visible with each passing dessert. (As in, I am passing on dessert).

I think lately, I’ve just been taking some time off to have a me. I’ve been a mom for 20 years (and counting). My oldest son just celebrated his 20^th and I was disappointed that there was no gold watch presented to me. There was hardly any mention of my years of faithful service. In fact, we had to chase him down and force him to celebrate himself with us between working on his car and working on a computer. He has 2 jobs and college night classes and private computer clients (I know what you’re thinking. No, I am not one of them. The cobbler’s mother has no shoes). He also volunteers at the church and maintains a girlfriend who lives 6 hours away at UCLA. In short – he has a life.

I feel betrayed. How dare he grow up and do exactly what I have been preparing him for! How dare he grow up and make something of himself! What about ME?

And that, my friends is precisely the question I have been answering the past couple of months. It is punctuated by my consternation over the passing of two very sweet and perfectly obedient women friends of mine. I know this is silly but since they were both my age, both wives, both mothers, I am sort of connecting dots that have no business connecting. I have all of the same symptoms.  I’m a wife, mother and in my 40’s! These women were so similar to each other in their sweetness, other-centeredness, gentle, Christian submission and both packed the huge room where they were celebrated for having been alive. (I guess that’s when people celebrate us, after we retire. I wonder if they got watches).

I seem to be connecting some other strange dots as you can see. Though their cause of death was not the same, I tend to think it was.  I know it's crazy, but I tend to think they both died of niceness. I am someone who has spent a whole life time learning how to be nicer and beating myself up for the parts that aren’t nice. If you know me well and don’t think I am nice, well, I guess that speaks to how I would be without the effort! In my world view nice is not optional.

So, now I am just exploring the alternatives to nice. I have done strange things like going to see Dream Girls by myself when I had lots of other offers and it would have been nice to accept them. I have excused myself from family functions to work out. I have been announcing my intentions to the family instead of asking permission. And I have been reading and writing with a pen and notebook instead of making these liquid whims into a solid statement by putting them out there in blahgville (in case they aren't very nice).

Oh and I went to Disneyland. My friend and hero got free tickets for the kids and me (my husband had to work). It was wonderful but on the way there, my 2 year old screamed and screamed for the hour it took to get to the park. No amount of describing what awaited him did a thing to calm him and create patience in the process. He had no frame of reference to compare except for the stuffed Pooh or the Mickey Mouse decal on the window.  They were not enough to help him endure the trials of the car seat or the boredom of his responsibility to just shut up and bear patiently the decisions others had made for him.  He just had to scream and we just had to do what we knew would be best for him rather than what he thought he wanted which was to stay home in pajamas. (Yes, Grandma, we made sure there were no other needs causing the screaming).  I hope you can connect this dot as I did and see the metaphor.  (Yes, I am the crying 2 year old in this metaphor).

And I guess that brings me full circle.  I have written before comparing heaven to Disneyland(read Yule Blog). None of us want to go there no matter what we say. Maybe you would argue otherwise, but I think we’d all like to stay put. Then again, I recently learned that when a baby is ready to be born they emit a chemical that starts the whole process. Amazing, those little invaders make the decisions even then! Also they wriggle their way out into life instead of just lying there being propelled passively like a…well, you know. So we probably just wriggle in and wriggle out of life according to some mystical chip planted in our soul.  Maybe when it is our time to wriggle we are ready to wriggle.

Or maybe death is more like life and we are all just wriggling and working our way to heaven even while we scream to stay put. Maybe this outrage I feel at these two nice women who are in “Disneyland” already, and my own wrestling with the mortal parts of me are all just evidence that I lack faith.  Maybe I need to dust off the stuffed Pooh and let my imagination take me to a place where the beautiful stuffed Pooh is a dime a dozen in the Gift Shop compared to the magic around it. In other words, this great stuff we cling to for comfort and meaning is just another item in the gift shop of heaven.

So you see, that is where my mind has been lately so that is why I have not felt much like sharing it. It’s not nice to talk about death. Then again, I’m not so sure nice is nice anymore. 

Ok, I promise, I’ll start blahgging more regularly again, and my next blahg won’t be so heavy or morbid. (Hey, does that make this entry morbidly obese?) Oh and no, I am not wearing all black and smoking long skinny cigarettes. I've been singing and teaching and friending and all the other important gerunds that qualify me as functional.  This is just the stuff between the lines I've been doing (oh dear god, that sentence sounds like I am snorting lines of heroin or something).  Said another way, this is just some of the stuff I've been thinking while doing the stuff I've been doing while waiting in line for "Disneyland".

Fine whine

I was whining too much last month.  I'm fine.  Really!   Been eating healthy and exercising more.  That feels fine.  Kids are fine.  Husband is fine.  Everything is fine.

BOY AM I BORED!!   

Who knew "so busy" could be so boring?

Even this blahg is boring.  I really don't have much I want to say.  I just hate to say nothing.  But that is what is going on right now...or so it seems.

With so much gray weather and black and white day to day agendas, I am finding what sparkles in the granite of my daily lists and errands and I am remembering to treasure the treasure of "nothing in particular". 

I have a friend who has been given 2 months to live.  I try to remember her and her precious kids when I don't feel lucky to be driving my kids to their whatever and scheduling a whatever in March.  I try to remember her when I am too worried about looking stupid to try something new or express something meaningful.  Who has the time to "get it right?"

I recently watched an under rehearsed concert at a hospice benefit.  My daughter was singing in it.  I also saw some under rehearsed senior women dancing with candles in the dark.  It was not completely dark and in the murky cloud I could see that one of the silver beauties was looking to everyone else to  make her move.  She was just a blue hair behind the beat with her candle.  My favorite moment was when, for whatever reason, she was certain she had the right move without any help and so she threw her head back and her arms outstretched crucifix style.   She gave up her spirit to the Lord of the dance...about 4 beats too early.  So there she was all exposed and out and open, while everyone was up in the air hands tightly clasping their candles together.  Her recovery was just as entertaining but this was by far, one of my favorite Christmas moments so far this season.

If I grow up to be an elderly liturgical candle dancer, I will undoubtedly be her.  I already am her in most cases.  I don't mean to be off beat but I am comforted to think that just as I adored her for her efforts and courage; maybe there really are points just for showing up.  I don't remember the other ladies in that dance and they did not make my Christmas Highlights list.   So there must be more to life than getting it right.

So far on the list with her, I have the little girl in the big choir concert who was swaying and swinging to a beat all her own and standing out from the herd for her unconstrained love of the music.   She was not getting it right but she was getting it.

I also have the image of my almost 2 year old completely naked holding a strand of colorful lights that my daughter and I had hoped would stay where we put them on the tree.  That was not the right thing for him to be doing, holding hot glass next to his delicate skin.   But the sight of his tiny naked body showered in festive colors and his "uh oh" smirk was so very right.

It beat the amazing house we saw covered in lights on every square inch (including the ground).  Though that was spectacular.

I was not in the Spirit this Christmonth.  I was in the blahs.  I was in myself (blah, blah, blah) I was in the injustice of Moms who die young and Dads who leave youngsters.  I was in the frustration of the limits of time and money.  I was in the futility of efforts that get thwarted or unrecognized.  I was in the insult of people who don't try to understand people who are different.  I was in the war and the politics and the fact that NOBODY knows the whole story but argue as though they do.

Then I went to YET ANOTHER church concert and heard a very bad soloist (not me, I don't get to be a bad soloist till Christmas Eve), sang old carols and heard a new thought regarding the star of Bethlehem. This thought was able to break through my cold judgment of the singing and melt my heart and awaken my imagination.   

It was brought to our attention that a star we can see has been dead for years and years.  SO the big Christmas star was on its way to earth long before people received it and celebrated it.  The symbol of hope was sent to people who were hoping long before they saw evidence of what they were hoping for.  This run of the mill dead star was timed to shine it's dead light on a weary world on the night that hope was born.  It's nice to know that the timing of this was not left to me or a Grandma candle dancer.

I have had a lot of friends of mine suffer and I have watched enough news to see that friends of other people are suffering.  And yet, we are in this season of "hope".  When we hope things will get better, what are we hoping in?  Whom are we hoping to?   Are we hoping in the thing?   What about situations where things won't get better, like my friend's prognosis?  If hope is miraculous enough for one of us (like I hope I lose weight) it has to be just as miraculous for all of us.  It would not be just if my friend who has no hope of regaining life has nothing left to hope for.   If hope is enough to sustain us and encourage us when we are too young to know better, it has to be enough to sustain and comfort us when we are too old to get better. 

What I concluded is that hope is not about the thing hoped for (or should not be).  There is a hope in something bigger than what we can see called for.  There is a hope in something on its way.  For these times that feel like nothing is happening fast enough, and I am not "getting it" quickly enough, there is a hope that what we bring to today is enough to be treasured and every day we get up to hope is treasure enough.  Whatever this "thing" is we all hope for or hope to, has to be big enough to be invisible, or perhaps just beyond our sight. 

The star the wise men saw was dead.  It was YESTERDAY's news in celestial terms.  I think that with all the tragedy in today's news; I am going to look for yesterday's news to put my hope in. It's the only thing big enough to penetrate the small minds and broken hearts of today's headlines.  And I happen to believe that this hope is for everyone; even those of us who march to their own little drummer boy.

Eulogy

I lost a childhood friend this week.  She died from a broken heart.  Ok, so maybe that was not how she officially died.  Those are not the facts, but this is the truth.  The rest is just “semantics”.  Just like it was true when I told my daughter that her guinea pig, “Baby”, died because it was too sad to live without her sister whom I had spent all night trying to save from an ingested plastic bag.  I try very hard not to lie to my kids.  It was not a lie. 

I did not tell her that it was probably a shared plastic bag and a heart attack when my 115 pound chow/shepherd mix had her in his mouth that actually caused her death.  My daughter would not have understood it. But even at three, she understood the truth of a broken heart.  Her heart was broken at that very moment.  Had I told her the facts, she would not have understood.  She would not have been able to forgive her dog for doing that to her “Baby”.  She would not have forgiven me for putting Baby outside for some sunshine and grass cause it looked as if it too had eaten plastic bag and was not doing so well.  She would not have forgiven her teenage brother for being too busy on the computer to keep his eye on the pen as instructed.  She would not have understood any of these facts.  She only understood dying from a broken heart.

The facts don’t give you understanding.  They only give you jagged edges of “what if?” to keep poking at you.  I was stunned to see the orange lifeless body of her guinea pig that day. After all I had done to save her sister pig I could not believe I had been so careless with this one.  True, I was exhausted from a sleepless night nursing my son’s pig with pain meds hoping against hope to save it. But I was furious with myself  (and my teenage son whom I seethed at in one of my more shameful parenting moments).  I felt guilty over the careless death of Baby and thought of how I might have prevented it by being more careful when I put her outside (or maybe even prevented both pigs’ needless deaths if I had not had the recycling so close to the cage).  I knew the facts and they were making me crazy.  The facts seldom breed comfort or understanding. They just breed voyeurs and lots of CSI episodes.

No matter how old you are, nobody understands any better than my 3 year old daughter did when death comes unexpectedly and takes a cherished loved one away.  Her tears were profuse.  Out of this suffering came the gem of one of my children (sorry but they are only a year apart so I often don’t remember who said the cute thing but it sounds like my son, so for the sake of this blog let’s say it was my son who was 4 at the time). While carrying a shoebox full of dead pig to be buried in a solemn procession, he said, “I’ll know when my pig has gone up to heaven cause the box will be lighter”. 

I am a person who sees signs in things.  I am a person who has a vivid imagination.  This is a dangerous combination.  I miss traffic signs because I am wondering what the meaning of some other sign that nobody else would see as a sign means.  I don’t “go there” as much as I might, but sometimes I do go there, especially when on pain meds like I was a few weeks ago for back pain. 

We have had lovely doves all summer making nests in our front porch and have seen more than 4 hatchlings fly free.  We recently had an odd sort of occurrence I still don’t understand scientifically.  As far as we can tell, one of the babies hung around and shared the nest with the mother long after the other babies flew away.  This teenage dove was skittish and we first noticed it cause it got scared when my husband opened the door and the poor thing flew itself silly bapping into walls and trees and roofs until he shut the door so she could calm down.  She did calm down and flew back, all scuffed up. 

So she shared a nest with her mother, “Lovey Dovey”.  We called her “Scruffy Dovey” cause she was a mess.   Last week or so, I wanted to get a closer look at what was happening up there cause they were taking shifts and sometimes it would be Scruffy and other times Lovey on the nest or sometimes both of them and frankly this was just odd and erratic behavior.  SO, with my digital camera on zoom and from what I felt was far enough away, I raised my arms to get a closer look. 

Big mistake.  Scruffy went nuts and flew herself into a wall etc…then never came back.  Two days later, flies appeared and a trip up a ladder confirmed my fear.  This scruffy mess left behind an innocent baby whom I had to bury.  I felt like crap all day, and even my 9 year old knew I was being ridiculous blaming myself.  My husband however,came home and said when I had told him the story, "yeah, you probably should not have done that. We knew she was skittish".  Nice words of wisdom Mr. Hindsight (or maybe "Hindend" would be better).

But that’s just one of the things we do when precious innocents die or babies are left behind because something or mother flew erratically into a wall for no good reason.  We look for understanding.  We usually find guilt and blame instead, wearing its clothes and wagging its sharp finger at us or someone else to make everything even more jagged in our broken heart.  That’s happening to my friend’s family I am sure.  When my friends and I first learned of her passing  but before we knew all the facts, we all wanted to know, “Why her, why now?”   

Like Princess Di, she was one of those gorgeous and delicate creatures that I always felt I could snap in half if I wanted to, but knew neither I nor anyone else ever would dream of such a thing.  It would be like setting a puppy on fire.  It was inconceivable when we learned that the puppy had set itself on fire. 

I don’t know all the details but I know that this precious mother of 5 was a delicate and gentle petal of a person and the insensitive or maybe even cruel handling of the world in general, and a deep betrayal in specific, caused her to fly into the wall, so to speak.  There is a lot of guilt and even anger when this happens.  I have heard some of my friends call this act selfish, some call it sick, and many (especially me) have asked, “what if we had only… would she have then?” 

All I have to say is that though I don’t see it written down somewhere that I can easily access, for whatever reason when someone eats a plastic bag or flies themselves into a wall and leaves the nest to the flies, it is not because they did not love their babies or anyone else to whom they were precious.  I don’t know what the Big Book on such things says, though I think this is an issue in her faith community. 

For me, I don’t care.  My daughter at 3, with her buckets of tears and my son at 4 already expressed everything I am feeling and believe in my heart.  Her soul is now in heaven and her box is lighter because of it.  It’s a crying shame she could not have asked us to help her carry it while she was here cause we all would have liked that opportunity and now we are left with buckets of tears.

It is impossible for me to fathom that she did not know how precious she was to all of us.  It is impossible for me to fathom how someone’s careless, curious, or selfish act caused her to lose it and fly herself against a wall.  It is impossible for me to feel anything but grief for her family and deep pity for the feelings of isolation/anger/loneliness/fear/desperation/emptiness she must have been feeling at the time of her desperate departure. 

I don’t know who reads these blogs anymore.  But whoever you are, please know what my friend finally knows now I hope, safely in the lap of God having seen her church overflowing with people who would have been eager to help her a mere 48 hours earlier if she had just asked. Something I sure wish she could have known somehow before “eating the bag” so to speak; you are far more precious than you will  ever know. 

Hope is always there somewhere, help is always somewhere, and if the flames are too hot to bear then just wait and remember the verse: “Weeping may endure for a night but hope comes with the dawn” (that one IS in the Book, somewhere).  I don’t know what her dawn would have looked like; or yours.  I just know that faith sometimes means lowering the bar.  If all you can do is breathe in and out long enough to find out what comes next, then you owe it to those who love you to do just that.

I think in trials I have endured that we are sometimes standing on rocks crossing a river.  Just about the time you are certain there are no more stones to step to and the water is up to your nose, another stone appears.  At least my experience has been like this.  At times (metaphorically) I am sure I have breathed my last breath; but sure enough another stone appears and gets me to a new and better place.  I believe when we are out of hope, we just have not turned over enough stones to find it or cried out enough to God or people to throw us a lifeline till that stone appears.  And we have no choice but to do that and to be that for each other and breathe in and out as long as you possibly can.   

I don’t know what I’m telling you this for.  You’re obviously breathing (maybe really deeply now cause I have lulled you to sleep).   I just wish I could have had a chance to tell my friend this. So I am making a point to tell everybody I know what I wish I could have told her.  When I notice someone being a jerk I ask them how their day is going instead of jerking back at them.  I don’t think any of us know who it is who has eaten a plastic bag, is in the jaws of the chow mix, or is ready to fly into a wall at any minute.  But I suddenly take my responsibility to make people laugh a whole lot more seriously.   

On Trial

We’ve been on trial lately.  Not in the Court T.V. version, more in the reality T.V. vein.  My back sucks.  It hurts a lot.  I got a cortisone epidural shot and it is a little better but I have had to take strong pain meds.  I hate drugs and what they do to me (if you can imagine me without inhibitions) so I quit them. Every day is a new experience in my body where I feel like someone gave me someone else’s leg and this other person's leg weighs 100 lbs and wants to go in a different direction from the rest of me.  This beats pain and makes my cold tingly big toe not near as noticeable, but frankly it sucks. 

As much as I like to whine about life, I try not to whine about my health.  I was raised by a father who attended the John Wayne School: SUCKITUP U!  I’m glad I went to that school it made me tough.  I was tough enough to have 4 kids, without so much as an aspirin for pain.  It made me tough enough to live with chronic pain since I was 16 (I had a VERY physically active child hood) and most of the people in my life didn’t even know it.  So, it means something significant that I am willing to tell you I hurt more than I ever hurt before in a body that is not doing things I recognize as reasonable for longer than I have patience to endure it without at least whining a little bit about it. 

Meanwhile, my husband is in a new job.  It’s described in a myriad of ways but mostly he says he drinks from a fire hose all day.  He gets up at 4:00 a.m. and comes home at 6:00 p.m. and tries to pick up my slack (or my slacks if they need washing) and give me a break from the baby or drive one of the kids to one of their places or in the case of this week, “duties” as assigned so I can be in the recording studio or at rehearsal every night.  He does all this and balances check books and collects recyclables and coupons until he tries to get to sleep a few hours later but is not allowed to really sleep until about 10:00 ish.  This is when things just get hopping around here so it’s tough on him.  It’s tough on all of us.

Don’t worry about my husband.  He’s an A student.  He sits in the front row, takes notes and does not talk out of turn.  He is on time, in his seat when the bell rings and graduated Summa cum Laude.  He’ll succeed at his job.  He was bred for it.

Don’t worry about me.  I’m a B+ student.  I sit where it’s comfortable, go to class when I feel like going, have lots of friends to give me their notes to copy from or remind me when things are due.  I talk out of turn if I have something needing said, (usually when someone has set up the perfect joke).  I was the class clown.  I’ll get through this pain.  I was bred for it.

The trouble is that when we are both in trouble I look over to him and say, “Storm’s a coming, better get that seltzer water and “ah-oooga” horn.  I’ll get the baggy pants, and unicycle. It’s gonna be a doozey!”   

He looks over to me and simultaneously says, “Oxygen is not a sure thing.  Life is going to be extremely hard to sustain and if we survive at all, it will be difficult to endure and not feel worth living most days.  I suggest we spend this brief time we have left doing something important and useful like watering plants or sorting the socks”.   

See the problem?

So, even though I like to blog about what bugs me and so my husband is often the bug I blog about.  Truth is, he’s great, as bugs go.  So am I, frankly.  But we DO bug each other a lot, especially in tough times.

That’s where God comes in.  One of the things I really like about God is that I can find Him everywhere, sometimes even the Bible which I have read entirely twice but since I over dosed in my 20’s (or my “fundys” as I refer to my fundamentalist period now) I feel like I have so much of it in my system I only take as needed for pain.

Randy on the other hand, has a system.  He takes it like a vitamin on scheduled and regimented times, first thing in the morning. Though born and raised in the church, it is a fairly new practice within the past few years.  I believe he is following a plan, which he almost never deviates from to get through the whole book a little at a time by a certain day in the distance.  That is how he does things, bit by bit by bit.  Where as I, bite off more than I can chew and move on.

He was raised in the church so he caught a lot of his virtue by punching his Jesus card every week (by the 12th week, you get a free Mason…or maybe a Free Baptist. I’m not clear on what you get free for having your Jesus card stamped 12 times. Maybe you’re just holier than thou). 

I was not raised in the church.  I found the Bible on my own so I discovered everything brand new and applied it to what God had been telling me about life already.  It was, as everything else in my life, I’m afraid, assumed that it was written just for me, just that morning in anticipation that I’d be reading it that night.  (I still think that’s true.  And it’s true for everyone regardless of when they read it, but that’s the subject of another blog).

So, why talk about a God at a time like this?  I’m mad at MY man for being too tired and busy for me.  He’s mad at me for being too stubborn and busy for me, let alone the rest of the family.  We’re both really mad at each other cause life sucks right now but we’re not even allowed to be mad cause he just got a great job and at least I’m not some woman in Lebanon who stepped on a landmine.  But I’m still mad at him cause he can’t make life better and he’s mad at me cause he can’t make me better.  I’m ruining the precious time we have together by nagging and complaining about how little time we have together.  He is threatening the only thing that helps me forget the pain by suggesting I not spend so much time out of the house working on music and instead lay around and wait for healing.

So I asked God about it this morning and this is what I found.  (In Isaiah 2:22 for those of you who like to follow along in your pew Bibles)  “Stop trusting in man who has but a breath in his nostrils.  Of what account is he?”  Or put in terms I might relate better to, “Don't expect so much from your husband.  What does he know? He’s just a snot.”

Then I remembered one more verse that I always love to remember.  “Come to me all you who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest.  Take my yoke upon you and learn from me.  I am gentle and humble in spirit.  My yoke is easy and my burden is light and you will find rest for your soul” (Matt 11:28).  Or put in terms my husband might better understand, “Lighten up, the yoke's on me!”

Everyone has something that gets him or her through a day, especially a tough day.  For me it’s sometimes Nutter Butters (and that is why I grew anutter BUTTer).  Lately the anticipation of an upcoming concert and recording a CD has kept me upbeat (even if I sound like Liza with a “Z” or Lucille Ball under the influence of Vita Veeta Vegiman).  For my husband it is checking things off of his “to do” list. 

Whatever works in trying times is worth trying a few times till it works.  These are trying times and we are trying as hard as we can, and also trying each other’s patience.  I am glad though, that there are recesses where I find these gems in the Book instead of having the book thrown at me; or surprise witnesses to happier times come in the mail (like spider paraphernalia from a spider loving friend of mine, sent to me today for no apparent reason but adored as if it were the Hope diamond...and it did give me hope for sparklier times) or even the guilty pleasure of a really bad food shared with a really good kid.  We’ll get through this trial. I have no doubts.  I suspect we’ll discover that the guilty verdict we had declared against each other will be thrown out from this mistrial.  Because that is what this is, a misstrial, because at the very core of this case, we are missing each other in this trial and that is such a crime.