Questions with No Answers

My husband is gone now traveling.  He's got visits to do and some work in another country he's overseeing.  To be honest, we enjoy him gone.  It's a breath of fresh air, a chance to recover, a time that laughter seeps back into our home and no one looks over their shoulder anymore.  We plan tomorrow to go explore a ravine hike nearby and spend time outside.  We'll stop by and visit some friends on the way home.  We'll smile, we'll laugh, and we'll take photos of us goofing off outside.

It's telling how relaxed the kids are, how peaceful.  Even my daughter who is so tense usually is calm.  She had a meltdown the day before he left, partly because he chose to get angry and not come home that last evening until very late.

(It was also my 40th birthday which he ruined by getting mad at me.  He also ruined it the day before by asking "So what do you want me to do for your birthday?  Do you want to go out?"  When I said no because we had visitors and we had meals planned already, he said, "good, so then I don't need to feel guilty for doing nothing for your birthday" and walked away.  No. He doesn't need to feel guilty.  In one sentence he made me feel as unloved as one could on that day.)

But my daughter had a meltdown that night, and I spent about an hour with a sobbing child on my lap in the hallway.  Sometimes you just sit down where the meltdown occurs.  She cried and talked for a long time, and then she said, "Mommy, will you all get old, you and brothers, and die before I do, and I will be alone?"  How to answer?  Very likely she will be the last living one of our immediate family, yes, but she shouldn't be alone.  I told her that we may die before her, but she'll be praying she gets a few minutes alone since she'll have a husband and somewhere around eight kids and 17 grandchildren and maybe a few great grandchildren not to mention dozens of nieces and nephews.... so alone will not exactly describe what she'll be.  She settled some and giggled and told me she might not have exactly eight children.  I told her that I also expect her to take care of me when I'm old and drooling on her table, so she'll probably be relieved when I am gone anyway.  She giggled again.  We had a long talk sitting in the hall.  She's been peaceful ever since.

I did take her with me when I went to the birth.  I pulled her out of school for three days and took her with me.  Some people are horrified that I would take my daughter out of school, but I just told the school that I gave birth to her, not them, so I will make the decisions.  I figure she learned more in three days with a woman in labor and a newborn than she would have in three days learning spelling and math.  (I did find a friend to keep her for the 8 hours of the active labor and delivery.)

We have a week of peace left before he returns.  He's writing some now.  He's tired and not sleeping.  I'm not saying anything, but I think "guilty conscience".  I'm really not sure what God is doing or will be doing or anything.  All I know is that I am done "catching" him and "fixing things".  Sometimes I think you have to fall hard before you get any sense knocked into you.  Perhaps this means he will crash and not be able to work as he is.  Perhaps not.  I don't know.  He is not my responsibility. 

My older two are disappointed that there is only a week left.  They had plans to do some things.  With me gone for three days with the birth, we didn't get the chance to do all they wanted.  I told them there is another trip planned in about a month, and they were happier.  "Maybe we can do it then."

It's telling that the kids plan for and look forward to when their father is gone.  That says a lot.  It makes me sad.  I worry about them.  My biggest worry is that my kids will have their view of God the Father clouded by what their father is like.  My next worry - that they will grow up to be like him.  If anything keeps me up at night, it is these worries.

If anything makes me sad, it is that I wanted to love and be loved.  I really wanted to have a good relationship with my husband, to be friends, to talk, laugh, and love.  There are brief moments when we laugh, but those are interspersed between the anger, the angry silences, and the simple too busy-ness of his life.  I am not loved, yet I am married.... so I am here.  I will not be loved in a relationship like I wanted.  And that is at times hard.  This is no little girl's dream.  No one says, "When I grow up, I want to marry a man who is angry at me or doesn't talk to me at least half of the time."  No one says that.  No one even imagines it.

And yet, he's such a wonderful person in public.  So much so that people say, "I can't imagine him angry."  "He's such a people person.  So sensitive to people's needs."

The struggle for me is that my husband is a extremely valuable person.  He has giftings and skills that few have. Missions leaders literally drool over him.  He has potential, and even I, with all my doubts about why God uses such a messed up creature, can see that he is doing stuff that few others could do.  To be honest, I really struggle with this concept.  It is one of the things I look up at God in hurt confusion the most about.  Do I matter?  Or is he so valuable that my pain is not worth hearing in the situation?  Am I the more expendable one?

They are tough questions.  Tough with no good answers.  The problem is that I am deeply committed to the people and country we work with. It is a place with little happening.  A place generations have worked and prayed for with little result.  And my husband, as awful as a husband as he is at home, seems to be a good missionary.

He's not the first, you know.  Good missionary, bad husband and father.  There have been many others.  Even some of the "heroes of the faith".  Even Abraham was a bit of a selfish, mean husband in twice letting someone take his wife before he would risk his own skin.

I discuss this with God often.  Wondering how He can build straight on a crooked foundation.  Wondering when He will step in for me, for my kids, and right our wrongs.  But the truth is that I will sacrifice for this country.  That is why we all left our countries and went out.  I just didn't expect the sacrifice to be here - in the home.  In another situation, I may have walked away from this marriage.  Not divorced perhaps, but walked away.  Not needing to live under anger.  But if I walk away, much of this work comes falling down, and people get hurt.  So I survive.  I ask God to act.  And I wait.  I ask God why He allows this to go on, and why He seems to continue to bless the fruit of one who is not a blessing in any stretch of the word to his family.

God is silent still.  If He answers, I'll let you know.  Now, He is silent.  Except to tell me that we are valuable to Him.  But sometimes, that is hard to hear when I am in meetings and everyone tells me how wonderful my husband is and how great a work he does.... I know all that... but I want God to step in and say, "enough.  You can't treat my daughter like that."

I wait.  I wait and I watch God, waiting for an answer, for strength, for the ability to continue to love.  I don't have a clue what He's up to, but He's the only thing that is stable, so I wait.

A Promise I'm Sure to Keep

I worked tonight in the old folks home.  One lady was exceptionally agitated.  She didn't want her shower because she had to put her jacket on and walk down the street to her parents.  She wanted to visit her dad in bed 325. We convinced her to shower first so she'd look nice.  As the other aide wheeled her away, she told me, "Promise you won't talk to my dad, ok?  I don't want him to know that I'm here yet."

I promised.  I had no problems with that one.  It's a promise I'm sure to keep!

A Stranger in a Strange Land

This birth I was just at was a friends.  They are immigrants here, but settled and with papers.  The worry behind them.

They have two other children.  As we worked through the preparations for this baby, I asked her to tell me about those births.  I thought I would have little teaching to do - after all, this is a third baby.

The first was in her first country she fled to out of her own country.  She grew up there, knew the language, and was comfortable.  But am immigrant still.  Her labor started and she was alone, the family gone to a wedding.  Girls are never given teaching, so she was hours into the labor and had no clue what was wrong.  Not until bleeding began did she wake her husband and ask to go to the doctor thinking she was dying.  First they had to go to neighbors and beg for a loan of money so they could be seen.  When they arrived at the hospital, the doctor yelled at her for waiting so long and told her the baby probably had died and it was all her fault.  Her husband was left outside and she went in alone.  Then they tied her down to the bed and pushed pitocin into her to rush the labor and two nurses pushed on her belly to "help" the contractions.  (I've seen it done, believe me.)  Her belly was bruised black and blue for two weeks after the birth.  The child was born, and taken straight out of the room.  She only saw it hours later.

( I also saw this happen once , and actually stopped the doctor and told her to show the baby to the mom.  I remember her look of confusion as she asked me, "Why?" and then took the baby to the relatives.  I followed, took the baby away from the aunts and uncles, and walked it right back in the room and showed the mom and let her kiss it before it was taken away again.  The baby belongs to the family in that culture, not the mom.)

 For hours, my friend didn't know if her baby was alive or dead.  After they returned the baby to her, no one helped her. She was sore after 23 hours of labor and asked a nurse to help her with a diaper change.  The nurse looked at her and said, "What?  Do you expect me to go home with you, too, and do this?  Get up and do it yourself, no one is going to do your work for you!"

The second birth was in a transient country.  But they were refugees with no papers.  Her labor started and they rushed to the hospital after dropping their child with a friend.  Again the husband was not allowed in the door.  She was put in a ward with twenty other women in labor, no curtains or anything between them.  A room full of yelling women all alone in pain.  She delivered there, and again they took the baby away.  After an hour, they brought the baby back, handed him to her and told her the baby was fine and she needed to leave.  She had no money, no papers; and she needed to get out.  She phoned her husband, but he was not home, so they handed her her bag and told her to go downstairs and call a taxi.  The elevator was broken, so one hour after she gave birth, she struggled down two flights of stairs carrying her baby and her bag.  Halfway down, she started to pass out and fall, so she grabbed the rail and yelled.  A helpful security guard came and half carried her down the rest of the way and called a taxi.

When she got home, the door was locked and her husband gone and she had no key.  She sat on the step and phoned him.  Now, forgive him - the man had never seen labor or delivery before nor been taught about it.  He was happy she was back and told her he'd been home in an hour or so, so why didn't she go get their daughter.  So carrying her bag and baby, she walked over to the friends and picked up her daughter and walked back.  Then she sat on the step and waiting for another hour before her husband got home.  Mind you, this was after a delivery that took 25 stitches to repair a tear.  It was a big baby.

I sat stunned.  Then I opened my books and began teaching at the beginning - this is what is happening in labor.  These are the stages.  This is what we will do in each one to help you out.  I reassured her about the hospital and the nurses.  Told her I would be with her every step of the way.

When we went in, I told her nurses about her other deliveries.  Their eyes went wide.  I told them that this birth, we were going to spoil her rotten.  Everything she wanted, she got.  She kept asking, "what do you want me to do?" and "Am I allowed to go to the toilet?" and "Am I allowed to walk?"  We just repeated, "don't ask permission.  You are the boss right now.  You can do anything you want."

When the baby was born, they put her immediately on her belly.  She looked down at her baby and began to cry.  Her husband was there, and he cried too - hugging his wife and crying.

Later she talked on and on about the baby's first minutes.  "She looked so funny."  "She looked at me"  "I never saw my babies when they were like that"  "I never knew they were even alive or not at first."

I stayed for two days.  I changed diapers.  I rocked the baby.  I helped her nurse.  I supported her to the toilet and taught her how to care for herself.  I helped her take a shower, wash her back, and dry her hair.  I stayed with the two other kids so the husband could have the first night alone with them.  The baby slept that first night.  The next night, the dad wanted to go home and sleep.  The baby cried all that second night.  She and I walked and walked so the mom could get a little sleep.

In the morning, we sat and ate breakfast and talked over the birth.  We laughed and laughed at what people had said.  She said she wanted to hit me if I told her to breathe one more time.  I laughed and said that is why I stayed behind her!  She wanted to hold her breath through the pain because making noise is not ok in her culture.  We held our sides and howled at my "translation" of what she was saying during transition.  She reverted to her mother tongue and was yelling.  The nurse looked at me several times and said, "What is she saying?"  I said, "um, nothing really... her back is sore."  I thought she hadn't heard me, but she did, and we giggled through our morning tea and bread.

It was special to see the love and care of her husband towards her.  All of a sudden, he had an understanding of what birthing takes, and with that a strong desire to do everything for his wife.  No more, "why don't you go pick up the kid?" but a "sit, and let me do that for you".

It was so good to be there.  To leave her with one birth where her memories are not of being alone in pain and treated with contempt.  To not be a "refugee" and given no care.  Her stories really made me think....  God chose to send His Son to be born of a refugee in a much less than ideal setting.  At least there was room in the hospital for my friend at least for the birth, even if she was kicked out one hour later...  Mary had no room at all.  Really made me think.

But it was good to be there.  To be able to love in the way I do best - by serving.  They were in tears when I left, so thankful to have had someone there.  To not be frightened, to not be alone.

Tonight, I soak my sore muscles in the tub and sleep.  But I'm happy.

I delivered my second baby, my daughter who had died, alone in a strange land.  You can't change the past, but you can change the future, and being able to change it for this special family was worth every aching muscle I own.

Blood, Sweat, and Tears

It's a phrase people use for hard work.  For settling a land.  For cutting a trail.  For starting a new work.

When I see that phrase, I think of birthing.  Blood, sweat, and tears.  Physical.  Bodies in close spaces.  Normal set aside.  Indecency a thing of yesterday.  Personal space something we left at the door.

I've been through five of my own births.  Each one its own story.  Every mom has her stories of her births - remembered, treasured, stored, told and re-told. 

I've been privileged to attend the births of about 20 others.  A few were just as an onlooker and occasional support in nursing school.  A few were friends.  I'm training officially as a doula now.  Getting a certification for what I have been doing for years - helping with birthing, helping with breast-feeding, infant care, sharing and supporting mothers.

(I work with old people and they dying too.  At times I joke that I can bring them in and take them out!  Birth and death are similar.... both intensely personal, intimate, and emotional.)

This last week, I labored with a woman.  A friend.  In a culture where men do not attend births, I convinced her husband to come.  He was nervous, as others have been.  But he agreed.  I knew what he would do - he loves his wife dearly, and he would step in.  He did.  How sweet to see this big man kneeling on the bathroom floor, arms around his wife holding her and telling her she was doing well.  She did not see his eyes behind her back flitting to mine nervous and seeking affirmation that all was well.  She only felt his arms.  The mom, the dad, and I working together, bodies tangled and sweaty, holding her weight when she collapsed on us, murmuring assurances, breathing in each other's faces, breaking every cultural norm there was.  We believe that as believers we are creating a new culture.  In this culture, men care for their wives.... and what a joy it has been to see it worked out in practical ways like this - a man with his arm around his wife supporting her through a contraction.

And then to see and step back when this new life came into the world, and for the first time be put on the mom's chest.  To see their faces as a couple as they welcomed their child.  The tears of joy, the tears of being together.  It is a privilege to be there, but every good doula knows when to step back and let it be a new threesome - mom, dad, and baby.  I'll be called in after a time - to help with latching on, to console and comfort for the stitching, to listen and tell her she did well.  To laugh at the apologies for the yelling during transition, to tell her that she was no where as loud as I was!  But this is their time, a couple welcoming their baby.

Blood, sweat, and tears - it's the stuff life is made of.

Oh, and sore muscles.  My whole side is sore today.  Four hours of contractions meant four hours of holding her up, letting my arm be squeezed, of bending around into odd shapes to push on her back to relieve pain.  As I helped her shower yesterday, she looked over my arms for bruises.  There are a few, but no one cares.

The baby is adorable.  Snuffly and sweet, puckering up her face to eat or loudly protest my attempts to dress her in pink.  No hospital whites for this baby!

Four Weeks

Four weeks almost to the day.

Several times, I thought it is a lot like dealing with a child.  When you have a toddler throwing a fit, sometimes you spank.  Sometimes you don't.  Sometimes, you put them somewhere and go on life without them until they stop.  Part of that mentality is to teach them that throwing fits will not get them what they want whether it be attention or control of a situation.  It always works.  Some tantrum throwing toddlers take longer than others, but they all learn.

It was a lot like dealing with a child throwing a fit.  And we just went on with our lives, calmly, without fear, without attention, without trying to placate.... nothing.  As if we were saying, "You're welcome to throw a fit if you want, but it will get you nowhere besides wearing yourself out."

It worked.

And in the meantime - four weeks is a long time.... but at least during those four weeks we had what we usually do not have - calmness and control.  We did not live in fear.  We had the energy to survive and the strength to support each other.  The kids and I survived without taking it out on each other or cracking under the stress of it.

It may have worked, and it did, but it is not without cost.  To be married to a man who will blow over really nothing and who will remain angry for four weeks of not talking except for snide comments is tough.  The repeated cycles of extreme irritation and sullen depression take a toll.  The cost is that we, the kids and I, have less to invest each time around when we get to the "good" part of the cycle.  We invest less of our lives and hearts.... we know that whatever we invest into this relationship will get damaged again on the next cycle 'round.

So I am quietly relieved that he is apologizing slightly and ready to move on, but I am not jumping for joy.  I'm relieved, but not ready to invest my heart deeply.  There is less and less of me available to give.

That is the cost of anger.  It's sad, but it is reality.

In the Shadow of a Coaster Ride

 I got the job!  YAY!  I absolutely absolutely love it!  I get to work with kids, get to work with someone with health problems (who won't live much beyond high school.... :(  so in some ways similar to nursing home care in that these are the last years, let's make'm good), get to work with people I like, get to be around my kids, and get paid for it!  I'm "taking" applied courses instead of academic, so I'm in classes with kids who need tutoring, and I've done tutoring, so there are a few classes where I get pulled in to help with that, and I love that, too.

Life on the home front is about the same. Well sort of.  I'm beginning to realize something important, I think.  I think I began to realize it awhile ago, but not applied here in this realm.  I think I began to realize that I am not responsible for my husband's choices awhile ago.  I'm not responsible if he chooses to be angry or depressed, or silent.  I think I got that.  The part that I don't think I got the last few times around the roller coaster is that I can chose. 

I'm choosing now.  I'm choosing to be me, to not be controlled by how he is.  No longer needing to check in with him before I can say I am ok or not ok.  No longer, he is angry, so we are cautious; he is depressed, so we are quiet; he is ________ so we are ________ .  I am who I am.  I choose to be happy, to live life, to be me, to be calm, to be confident, to go on.  To not allow him so much control over my life.

Interestingly, I felt guilty at first from distancing myself thinking it might not be a caring thing to do.  I found out, though, that it is more caring.  In distancing myself and refusing to ride the coaster through the ups and downs, I am limiting the emotional toll it takes on me.  I am limiting the wounding that I allow for my heart.  I'm beginning to think that by keeping myself whole, when he finishes his ride, he will step off to a whole wife who will be able to accept positive steps towards healing the relationship.  If you ride with him, you end up looking for the closest bucket to hurl into when you step off and are in no shape to assist in building wholeness in the relationship.

So I'm choosing to live.  To live with both feet on the ground.  To choose joy.  To choose to smile.  To choose to love - but with borders that keep me whole.  A whole person is more able to love wholly anyway.

I'm watching this coaster out of the corner of my eye while I enjoy life. I refuse to be miserable just because someone else is.  I am enjoying my life.  But watching it, I see signs that it might be on the last few loops.  We can hope.  Until then, I chose life and joy.

We can continue to hope and pray that his rides 'round will get fewer and fewer and less and less in intensity, and that perhaps some help in that might be accepted, but I have decided that the kids and I will not live in the shadow of a coaster ride.  We will not allow that that much control over our lives.  We will survive, grow, laugh, and be happy, and we will survive together.  Since that talk, they've been more relaxed, too.

In fact, I have two high school boys who are delighted to have their mom in their school and who beg me to come on class trips.  Yet they are not clingy and timid.  They are fine without me, but love to have me with them.  Some days when I see that, I smile.  We are going to be ok.  And we will survive.  Whether he stops riding the ups and downs of a roller coaster or not, the kids and I will stick together and thrive together.

An Old Ride and New News

I seem to live on a roller coaster.  True, this one's ups and down's are gentler than a few years ago, but the ups and downs have not stopped.  Some things make improvements and things go well for awhile, but there are inevitable slips back on to the cycle.

It is such a predictable cycle that I could write it out.  So predictable.  First this, and then this, and then this.  So predictable that we even begin to tense at the "happy stage".  We know it is coming.  We see him and know.  First happy, then not sleeping as much, then irritability, then the inevitable blow up at something trivial or just the deepening grouchiness, then settles into a silent withdrawenness for a few weeks.  Round and round we go.  Sometimes there is a season of normal that occurs to give us a break before we go back to the no-sleeping and irritability.  We enjoy life in that normal pause - but honestly, that pause is not normal; the roller coaster is.

I've begun to ask myself different questions.  Wondering perhaps if looking for a "solution" may not be even a possibility.  If instead, we ought to turn our attention on how to survive and be whole.  On how the kids and I will manage.  Things like order and routine may help lesson the roller coaster.  Managing and keeping stress away.  Teaching the kids to pause and bring conflict to me later to solve instead of their dad if he is in the irritability or withdrawn part of the coaster ride.  To let me carry their load when possible.  On how to take it less personally, get less emotionally involved, and learn to sit it out.  We do not all have to ride the coaster just because it exists.

The sort of good news of the week is that the planned travel plans have been delayed.  I am not sure why they are delayed or what is going on as we are now on the "silent" part of the coaster ride, but I have been told by others that they are delayed.  I'm thankful.  Dealing with that and all right at the beginning of school was not going to be fun.  I am thankful for the schools my kids are in and the support they get from there.  I had meetings with teachers, principals, and guidance counselors to be prepared for the inevitable stress the travel would cause.  We can push pause on those plans for awhile - maybe a month or two.  We will still need them, and I am thankful for the understanding we have at the schools.

Speaking of schools - I'm applying tomorrow for a small job there.  Being where we are, we just don't raise enough support to survive, so I work outside the home for one or two days a week.  I have been working in an old folk's home, which I love.  But it's rough work.  I was injured twice this last year by an male patient.  He slammed me into a wall and then body checked me.  My hip hit the corner of a bookshelf and bruised.  Now I have bursitis on the hip.  He also dislocated my wrist.  It is an old injury, so it popped back in again, but my wrist which had been stable for seven years is now weak again.  I'm seriously wondering about my ability to keep going at that place and allow healing.  Last week I heard about a position open at the school to assist with a student with serious medical issues.  There is another mother and I who both can not work full time due to our lives, but we can job-share.  We go for an interview tomorrow.  I'm hoping to get the job.  My husband had been telling me and telling me to get in the school and volunteer so we get to know people and are involved and know what is going on.  This may be better.  I'll be there one day a week, and I will get paid for it!  So I am hoping.  We'll see.  My son tells me that during class time, the nurse's aide simply sits and reads and is there if needed.  Hmm... with a small computer and internet, I could actually get work done while working.  Hmm.... prayer letters done, address changes made..... do I dare hope?

Then, if I can get work as a doula, too, perhaps I could quit at the old folks home, or at least take a few months off and allow my hip to heal.

I Hate Fall

Fall is always our busy season.  It is travel season, meeting season, and the start of a new school year all rolled into one.  Added in this year, is that I am training as a doula, and have two births I am assisting with in September, too.  (Not at all stressed about the births - I've been to over 20, but finally decided to get certified.  But they add in some busy-ness.)

I want to write more about the decency thoughts.  I have a story about an amazing MK from Columbia who lived a life of integrity in front of me in such a way that it caused me to think.  I have more to say, and hate to leave the topic here as it could look like I think decency is not important.  If you're new to my blog, just take my word that that's not true, and suspend judgement for a time.

But with busy season and travel season, there is talk on my horizon about travel that is a big step, and I feel like someone just hit the pause button on my world.  I'm not sure how I am responding or what I am thinking.  So it's been hard to blog.  It's hard to think about.  I'm not sure about this step.  No one told me it was coming.  No one told me or warned me it would be this soon.  I feel blindsided by people who knew it for a long time and chose not to tell me, and those same people are asking me to trust them that it will be ok.  I'm finding that hard.

And yet, I know I don't really have an option in it.  I can't really say no.

I'm not sure if I would have said no if I had been asked, either, but I feel betrayed that I wasn't asked about it a long time ago, back when it was only a thought.

I'm also struggling right now from another type of fear.  There is the fear that something could happen, but there is another fear.... during the last crisis, we were abandoned, uncared for.... by our team, by our mission, .... both during and after the crisis.  Even by people who had been our "support people" just weren't there.  Some had reasons that they couldn't be and others just failed miserably.  Now, these same people are asking me to walk through that possibility again.  Yeah.... and if something goes wrong, not only do I have to deal with the crisis, but with being abandoned in it.

I just don't really know if I can go through that again.

It's making me angry.  Grouchy.  I'm not so angry about the risk or the choice - this is the life we went into with our eyes open.  I'm angry because I feel pushed and half deceived by people who already failed my family in a crisis.  Grouchy because I feel so alone right now.  There is no one near me who gets what we are asked to do.  Part of the oddities of the type of cross-cultural marriage that I have is that we live with different scenarios than other workers, and I feel alone.  There is no one to talk to who understands.

I'm also deeply concerned about the effect this will have on my daughter who still has not completely recovered.  In the middle of our handling it, I am going to have to find a way to be extra strong for her.

So I live on pause right now.

One of the things I learned in my doula training is that when I have taken on the responsibility to support a mom for a birth, I need to be there.  If something comes up or some emergency in my family happens, or I am sick, so I can not fulfill my chosen responsibility, I am responsible for arranging a back up doula.  I think as I heard that, a light went on in my head.  This last crisis greatly changed some key relationships in my life.  There is an element of guardedness and disconnect that wasn't there.  I hold myself at a bit of a distance.  I can get close to people, but I don't stay close.  I distrust more.  I pull away faster.  I've tried arguing it my head that "ok, it was a crisis, people couldn't function in the normal way", but it didn't remove that niggling wariness.

They couldn't be there.... but they didn't arrange back up, either.

And telling me to "just get over it" doesn't work either.  One of them tried it recently, and it hurt.  However, another met me with a "I'm really sorry.  We really messed up.  Can you help us learn how to handle this to do better?"  That was a great response, and I felt comforted.... able to put down some pain and go on.

But then came this talk of travel again, and I'm jittery.  I don't like doing this.  I know I have to say yes, and I am saying yes in faith.... but I have faith in a God who sometimes protects us in this life and sometimes chooses to allow evil to happen while saving us in eternity.  I'm in no pollyanna bubble that assumes that only good will happen.  So I say yes because I have no other choice, but it is not a carefree yes.  I don't think God is any less happy with me because my yes knows what a yes can mean and is said in a whisper, not a smile.  And through the pain of knowing what it feels like to be abandoned in a crisis, I hang on to the truth that God did not leave me alone in it.  His people did.  And that hurt.  But He was there.  So while I may be isolating from people because I don't want them to hurt me again, I'm hanging on to God.  He's really all I feel comfortable with trusting at this point.

But that's all I have.  That's all the trust and all the faith I have.

So, if anyone is reading this anymore, hang in with me and remember my family.  It's going to be a rough month ahead, and I'm already feeling isolated.

The Things They Say.... It's in the Cup

We drove recently on a windy road since the highway was blocked.  We had recently been to McDonalds, and thankfully has saved money by buying one extra large drink to share.  At the road got more windy, I heard that ominous sound, "Mooommm, I feel sick!"

Great...  I looked down, and saw the empty cup (thank God for the large size!)  I passed it back to my daughter just in time, and being the neat little girl she is, she was able to um, empty her stomach contents into the cup. 

Now what?  There wasn't room to pull over right away, so I told her to put the lid back on the cup - cut the smell down some, I hoped.  She did.

As I looked for a place to pull over, I heard her quietly talking to herself, and what she said cracked me up.  She was looking down at the buttons on top of the cup that McDonalds uses to identify what type of a drink it is. 

And I heard a quiet, "I guess this would qualify as a diet drink."

Snort!

Moral Purity - Modesty is What We Wear, Right?

I read a blog recently about modesty.  I wasn't too surprised by this blog as I had seen these thoughts elsewhere, but I was surprised still.  Surprised that it is still out there and that women are still buying it hook, line, and sinker.  The blog post included a long checklist for dressing modestly.

I want to approach this carefully so that no one stops listening before they hear what I want to say.  This post will only have part of what I believe, so hang in there before you object.  I believe in modesty.  You may not believe I do by the end of this post, but let me assure you that I do.  But I think there is a lie hidden in posts like the one I read that is damaging to us women.  My husband firmly agrees with me - he's more adamant about it than I am.

The post talked about the typical things - hem length, skirt tightness, neck length, fabric choice, slits pinned shut, attention drawing colors, etc.  Near the end was a point to double check that your purse wasn't making you immodest by the strap lying across your chest and "accentuating your breasts".

Sigh.  I guess if I wore a purse with a strap, and it lies between my breasts and shows that indeed I have two breasts...instead....  instead of what?  An inner-tube wrapped around my chest?  I do have two breasts, as well as two ears, two kidneys, two arms, two eyes, two ovaries, two lungs.... basic biology 101.

I think women have swallowed the lie that they are responsible for the thoughts in men's minds.  With that comes a deep shame for our bodies.... because we believe that if men have a wrong thought, we (our bodies) caused that.... and we caused men to sin.

I used to believe that.  Wouldn't have put it in so many words.  Didn't completely know I believed that since I didn't think through it, but I did.

I've said before that I have lived all over the world in different cultures.  That has given me a unique ability to see different things.  Let me share some of that.

If you carry the "dress decently, and you won't cause men to sin" theology to its extreme, you will get something similar to a religion that completely covers women - so that only the eyes, or at times not even the eyes show.  I've lived in that.  I lived in it for years, and I dressed decently to their standards.  I acted decently, too - eyes down, no smiling, no contact or conversation with men.  You'd think in that situation, men's minds would be completely controlled - nothing causing them to sin.

(To all those working in those cultures, believe me, I can hear your snorts!)

I also lived in an almost opposite culture.  (My parents likely didn't know about this, so don't blame them.... ) but when my mother was sick in bed for several months, I was often cared for by the mother of my best friend in the village.  A wonderful family who took good care of me.  On bath days, she would take me to the river with her daughter.  Many families marched single file to the river.  My friend's mom stripped us down, scrubbed us with rough soap and then a rock to get all the dead skin cells off us, washed our hair and tied it in a knot on the top of our heads, smacked us playfully on our butts and told us to go play while she washed our clothes.  We played all morning in the beautiful sunshine and nothing else while our clothes dried, and then she brushed out our hair and redressed us for the trip home.  We weren't the only naked kids playing in the river.  Several families washed together, men gathered at one end of the river clearing and women at the other, neither troubled at all by the sight (from a slight distance) of naked people of the opposite gender washing.

I have both been wearing nothing but sunshine and been covered from head to toe with only my eyes peeping out.  I have been both only two short years apart (and no great change in body shape between to blame the difference on.)  If the "if we cover, we don't cause men to sin" train of thought was correct, men would have been struggling at the river bathing time and not one man would have taken a second look when I was covered to the eyeballs.

The opposite was true.  No one bothered us, no one stared, no one said anything at the river.  And I spend my whole "covered" life enduring the pinches, comments, and dirty stares of men whose thoughts were not the slightest bit controlled by what I was wearing. 

I felt more decent naked than I felt covered.

Ok, I'm not endorsing nudity, really.  :-)

But I am saying we need to stop and think what we believe.  Anytime we take responsibility for another human's thoughts, we are taking more weight than we were ever asked to carry.  And we ignore truth - that God created man - male and female - and blessed us and called us good.  I - yes, me, my body with two of many things - is good.  I've carried the shame of taking responsibility for men's thoughts long enough.  That is not my weight to carry.

What is mine to carry is my own thoughts.  They are enough to be responsible for.