Terribly wrong yet wonderfully right


I go to work 9 to 5 and the kids slam dunk me with hugs and kisses when I come in the door limp as a dish rag at the end of the day. I envisioned my first day as a professor in the front of a classroom looking out at the bright eyes of students, but instead it is my bright eyes looking out at instructors teaching us about technology, how to make students read their assignments, how to use the library and other campus resources.


I'm sitting in chairs instead of standing at lecterns and my legs swell up like watermelons, like elephant legs, with skin dripping off them in folds. Cankles, like I used to have when my babies swelled my belly like I'd eaten a whole watermelon for dinner.


Stress is a silent river, the undercurrent of change, and my heart doesn't like stress, bucks and kicks and doesn't pump right. Anxiety is the tree falls, hazards in the stress river, where you can get hung up and drown under the current. I walk into the familiar red brick building, and all the mistakes of college come rushing back, all the times I thought they were going to kick me out because I was handicapped by my heart condition, the one that made me faint 20 or 30 times a day and sometimes made me stop breathing. I walk into the skills lab, and I remember waking up on the floor with the florid over-lipsticked lips of a professor coming at me for another mouth-to-mouth respiration, the gawking eyes of my classmates watching me be resuscitated. How could I be a nurse if I needed to be resuscitated?

I go over the waterfall of the river of stress, dragging the treefall of anxiety over with me, and I stop breathing again in the ER, and my cardiologist says yes, it's stress again, along with all these other things wrong with my very wrong body. How am I to believe I am perfectly created when I am so wrongly made, so terribly made that I stop breathing because I am stressed out by change?


There is only one answer. I remember learning always be ready to give an answer to every man that asks you a reason for the hope that is in you with meekness and fear (I Peter 3:15b) and I mulled that over for years. How could I give an answer for hope when I was constantly facing death? How could I tell my patients to have hope when they were facing death, if I couldn't give an answer for why I had hope myself?

Sometime in my 21st year, while reading Philip Yancey's Where Is God When It Hurts? I found an answer. An answer for how I could be made terribly wrongly and beautifully rightly. An answer for hope in a dying body. An answer for being willing to put my life on the line to serve the dying while I myself might be dying any day.
"The God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast." (1 Peter 5:10)
That is my answer. In my weakness, His glory is all the more evident. In my sacrifice, His sacrifice shines through brilliantly. In my submission to the trial He has placed in front of me, His Grace is on the pedestal it deserves to be on, exalted for all to see. And all that is required of me is a small, minute measure of faith. “Faith means believing in advance what will only make sense in reverse.” (Yancey)
He will keep in perfect peace all those who trust in Him, whose thoughts turn often to the Lord! Trust in the Lord always, for in the Lord, Jehovah, is your everlasting strength. (Isaiah 26:3-4)


Written on Lisa-Jo's prompt, "Change"

What time I am afraid

Today I quit breathing several times while unconscious in the ER. "It is appointed unto man once to die..."

My children heard quite by accident that I wasn't breathing, and ripples of fear awakened in their young souls so long stilled as my cancer had gone silent. And so, there in the waiting room with grandparents, aunts, uncles, friends, they joined a grown-up huddle of tense prayer and staunched tears.

the children laying on hands when I lost my hair back in October 2011
Oh, to take back words, hours, fears. We begged to go home, and, by some small miracle of medical kindness, the doctor granted our wish. We huddled in bed, a human chain of gratitude and grief, and fell asleep, the children sprawled across our bedroom floor on piles of quilts, rotating through the slot between Aaron and I for extra cuddles. The tears poured off and on during the night as they woke from nightmares of Mama blue and still and gone.

I don't know what is wrong with my heart right now. Stress? A new cardiac med recently increased in dosage? Insomnia that's been dogging me? Whatever it is, it has once again brought me to the precipice between life and death. Once again, God chose life for me. And all I can do is stand in awe and thankfulness. That I am here to quell the fears of these little people.




It's the little things that make or break us - Life:UNMASKED

There are times when you carry on. And times when you don't. All through my doctoral studies, it was a mixture of this...a push/pull of carrying on and giving in, as I struggled through cancer, adjusted to life with a child with significant special needs, and attempted to keep up with my studies all the while. Then there was that moment, May 18, 2012, in the humid South Carolina air, when two esteemed professors lifted the velvet and satin hood up and over my shoulders and pronounced me "doctor". It took longer than expected, but I still got to that crowning moment, despite the many times when I couldn't carry on at all.


One would think my trials were over. After all, I hit cancer remission in February, and I, foolishly, thought this would mean smooth sailing in the health department. Ummm, not so much! Radiation and the damage of cancer itself still lingers in the body past that arbitrary date when the doctor tells you there is no longer evidence of the tumor itself, and I found myself battling bouts of pneumonia throughout the spring and summer.

The lowest of low came on my eldest daughter's ninth birthday. I felt as though I earned the "Worst Mom of the Year Award" as I told her, with tears streaming down my cheeks, that she would either have to celebrate her birthday party without me present, or we would have to cancel and reschedule the whole thing. We had planned a big bash at the local minor league baseball game, and she was to throw out the hallowed first pitch of the game. But there wasn't a moment of hesitation between my tearful explanation and her emphatic answer: if it couldn't be celebrated with me present, she wanted to postpone it. So, instead of celebrating at the ballpark on the sunny August afternoon, she snuggled in bed with me all day, me wheezing and coughing from pneumonia, taking inhalers and praying for rest between bouts of coughing fits, and she perfectly content to spend the day just how she spent her very first birthday - cuddling close to Mama, no matter how "unlovable" I felt at the moment.


Now the day approaches for her "make-up" birthday party, and once again, I am under the weather. I had an unexpected root canal yesterday, and for reasons unknown to my dentist, they are never able to successfully anesthetize my lower jaw, so I underwent the procedure without Novacaine. Who would think that a procedure on a TOOTH would nearly incapacitate me with pain, even the next day? I am skeptical about tomorrow as well - the day of the much lauded party!

As I rub the sore jaw and take pain meds, mulling this over and planning how to go about baking cupcakes and preparing party favors in between my work hours today and tomorrow, I am comforted by a much-loved passage of Scripture that reminds me that even my tiny TEETH have a function and are part of a smoothly functioning whole. I am reminded that they are numbered and counted precious by my Maker, and that He cares that I am in pain today. And here, on the precipice where life feels utterly unmanageable, He is ready to shoulder the load of my cares, and to walk with me under this Cross, however silly a Cross it may seem.
The eye cannot say to the hand, “I don’t need you!” And the head cannot say to the feet, “I don’t need you!” On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor. And the parts that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty, while our presentable parts need no special treatment. But God has put the body together, giving greater honor to the parts that lacked it, so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it. Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it. (I Corinthians 12:21-27)



Hosting Life: UNMASKED for Joy in This Journey today. Joy is in Sri Lanka with World Vision; be sure to visit her blog to see all the posts from the blogging team and keep up with their amazing trip!

Did you write a Life:Unmasked post this week (if you’re not sure what that is, go here to read more)? Link your post below (direct links to Life:Unmasked posts only – all others will be deleted). Please include the link back to this post in your post, http://ow.ly/di8oR and invite others to join in. The more the merrier!  Feel free to copy the button code below to add the Life: UNMASKED image to the bottom of your post. When you’ve linked up, try to visit at least two of the other posts linked below and leave a comment. I will do the same!

NAME OF YOUR BLOG




The next stage

It's a memory so close to my reality I can feel it in my bones: a baby attached to me at all times in a sling; raw nipples from breastfeeding; four different tubes of diaper rash ointment in my purse at all times; troubleshooting how to empty a stinky pail of cloth diapers into a front-loading washing machine; onesies so tiny they would have fit the dolls of my childhood. Nights and days spent in a rocky chair, t-shirts smelling of that goat-cheesy spit-up, grinding baby food fresh in my hand crank grinder before dinner, Orajel, pre-treating poop stains, and feeding cod liver oil to sick toddlers.


Four babies flitted through our home in four short years. Four babies breastfed, four babies diapered, four babies loved and sniffed constantly, four babies whose every squack was answered with cuddles from a mama almost drunk with exhaustion. Years and years of co-sleeping and trying to find ways to have silent sex in a bedroom filled with toddlers. Years and years of wondering if we were doing anything right at all. Years of unsolicited advice, some of which was very valuable, and actually worked. Years of strollers and diaper bags and never leaving home unarmed with burp cloths, wipes, and extra clothes for everyone - even the adults.

He says that He has set eternity in the hearts of men (Ecclesiastes 3:11b NIV). Perhaps that is why, in the tunnel vision of exhaustion of young motherhood, I felt these years would last forever - that this insane and inane type of life with babies and toddlers was, indeed, eternity - and so often forgot to savor the little moments, the smiles, the giggles, the warm, fetid smells, the sweaty curl naps together, the army crawling babes, the joyful belly laugh of a babe who has just accomplished something VERY BIG in their universe, such as standing up on the back of a chair?

I've had a good look at what God has given us to do—busywork, mostly. True, God made everything beautiful in itself and in its time—but he's left us in the dark, so we can never know what God is up to, whether he's coming or going. I've decided that there's nothing better to do than go ahead and have a good time and get the most we can out of life. That's it—eat, drink, and make the most of your job. It's God's gift. I've also concluded that whatever God does, that's the way it's going to be, always. No addition, no subtraction. God's done it and that's it. That's so we'll quit asking questions and simply worship in holy fear. Whatever was, is. Whatever will be, is. That's how it always is with God. (Ecclesiastes 3:9-15 The Message)

I close my eyes for a long minute while I am rocking my littlest, my son, and when I open them, I have traveled through a worm hole, and he is four and a half, a strapping boy seeming on the verge of manhood, and Grandpa took the training wheels off this weekend and he is careening around on two wheels as if he's been doing it all his life. Every time he hops on his Spiderman bike, he calls to me, asking the same question, "Hey, Mama, wanna watch me? I can ride on two wheels now! I'm super good at it!"



All wrapped up in four and half bravado is fear and the desperate need still for Mama's assurance that life is safe and everything is okay. Two days ago we went to the splash pad on a rare 90 degree August day, an impromptu trip without swimsuits, just our clothes, and the kids went in fully dressed, except for Caleb. He asked, over and over - would the other kids mind if he was in his undies? Of course not, I reassured him. But he stood there, hovering, butt cheeks squeezed tight in trepidation. Not sure if undies made the cut. Not sure if undies were man enough for splash pads.


We've come now to these days when we can paint without smocks and full covering of the island with waxed paper. A day when scissors and glue are used without supervision. When kids use the computer without asking permission, and the oldest has email and her own little blog, and she writes a newsletter for their neighborhood club. Gone are diapers and burp cloths. It is a new season.


And so we go from babyhood to some amorphous childhood - I think they call this "tweens" or something, the cool parents that is, who have catch phrases for phases. We worry less about pottying and now it is zits and bras and picking on each other and hilarious, giggling talks about sex and boyfriends, texting and online predators, body parts and bodily functions, swear words and bullying and work ethic, charity and world problems and politics and transparency and the rules for bike riding all alone to Grandma's. house.



Some days, they are still just peeking out of a tent grown too small for for bodies much too big for kiddie pup tents. They are still just children, playing childhood games, dress-up, "family", "Jungle Kids", making mud pies and playing in the sand box.

The eldest is 130 pounds, an inch shy of 5 feet, wearing size 8 women's shoes. She doesn't know it yet, but she is in a young woman's body. Her mind is still in the throes of the Magic Tree House book series and the perfection of her various accents - British, Irish, Italian, French, and Russian, so far.

This phase is a slower one, less busy, less demanding in the moment - no COME NOW I JUST POOPED MY PANTS AND SOON THERE WILL BE POOP EVERYWHERE type of emergencies. It's a time for savoring what is, reflecting on the beauty of what is unfolding in these days, weeks, months years. A time for planning and looking forward to the day when this house is full of four teens. This time, I am trying to squeeze tighter to Scripture, to live in THIS moment, yet also see that this moment is not eternal, not the everlasting. That this phase will evolve slowly into the next, and we will slowly but surely grow as a family into a new season - that next there will be teens, then college years, then marriages and careers and grandbabies and homes and finances and all those adulthood decisions to walk side by side with them through. Oh, this glorious life, this parenting thing that blooms like a flower right in front of your very eyes!

But man postpones or remembers; he does not live in the present, but with reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that surround him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future. He cannot be happy and strong until he too lives with nature in the present, above time. (Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1941)