He Fell and He Couldn't Get Up

Earlier this week I got a call from my son.  He had become light headed in the bathroom that morning and unfortunately fell in such a way that his muscle cramped up.  I guess he was stuck lying on the bathroom for the whole morning before he could get up and call me. 

After a visit to the doctor that afternoon followed by a blood test, he seemed to be fine.  And that made me feel fine, until I heard the message from the doctors office the next day requesting we come back in to review the results.  

My mild anxiety slowly increased as we drove to the doctors office and by the time we got there I was a wreck.  During the drive across the city I was trying to keep calm, as to not upset my son while simultaneously I was annoyed at his lacksidasical attitude towards the whole thing.  

You'd think after 15 years of parenting in which my son has: ingested a poisonous substance, broken his arm while on vacation and needed surgery to have a pin put in, and who required a week stay in the hospital due to renal failure, that I would be able to handle these kinds of things with ease.  I have spent over half my lifetime watching my fathers' muscles destroyed by muscular dystrophy and  yet I don't always realize that I have a complete and utter lack of control in these situations.  

The return visit to the doctor turn out to be better news than I expected.  It turns out my son is simply low on iron.  This can be easily addressed by iron supplements, and eating iron-rich foods.  I'm sure my son will be happy to be served more red meat!

Looking back, I'm left with these three thoughts:

Worrying gives me a divided mind  (and a whole lot of stress!)

I've never been good at getting rid of stress and anxiety.  On the way home I could feel all my stress and anxiety dwelling in my body like lactic acid buildup after an intense workout.  I reacted in irritability to my sons choice in the radio station and again when he made trumpet sounds with his lips at me.  Had I been truly in the present I would have been relieved that he was back to his old self again instead of reacting in annoyance.  


Where my mind wanders will ultimately determine my reaction 

As soon as my son phoned me at work I spent my time trying to find out from him what had happened .  I tried to think of all the possible causes, like a recent medication change, or perhaps a repeat of his renal failure had occurred.  My default reaction is to fix and control everything myself and as a result I ended up a twitchy, irritable mom who then went home and made and ate a ham and turkey melt and coke zero to make me feel all better.  If I had just taken a moment at the very beginning to pray I wonder if I would have approached this situation with more peace and calmness.  


My worry must be replaced with something else

During the drive to the doctors office I kept mentally chiding myself to not be anxious.  But once I am worried, it is next to impossible for me to stop.  Instead of worrying I need to bring it to God who is sovereign and who wants me to come to him with my worries.

Phillipians 4:6 (NLT)

Don't worry about anything; instead pray about everything.  Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. 

~b~

What Your Kids Have Taught Me

I am so blessed to have so many friends with children who have included me in their lives.  It's fun to goof off with kids when I play with them, especially because I don't have to worry about naps or dirty clothes, or sugar crashes.   I don't know what it is about kids, but I tend to be a little less filtered when I'm hanging out with them.  I don't worry about how loud I am, what I am laughing at, and especially what I look like.

Over the past few weeks as I have hung out with different children, I realized that for some reason they have "chosen" me to be their friend:

• The other weekend I got an invite to a hot dog roast, because my favourite 3 year old told her parents she wanted to invite me over to have hot dogs that night.

• I got to play soccer with the two-year old who recently learned my name and can now yell my name until I play soccer with him.  He likes to kick "hard" or "high".

• I connected with my friends niece at a dance recital the other week and now she likes to sit on my lap, hug me good-bye, and even ask me to blow her nose (oh lucky me!).

• On Saturday I ask my friends son to write out our names (I helped him spell mine) and he ended up adamantly denying that he had drawn a heart around our names (it was clearly a heart).

It's funny how special I feel when a child "chooses" me, because I don't think I've done anything special to warrant their extra attention.  And all my flaws and insecurities don't seem to matter to them.

What I have learned from your children is that giving love and attention first and unconditionally is the key to connection.

Connection seems so simple with children, they wear their heart on their sleeve, they give themselves first and seem to expect that their attention and love will be reciprocated.  Children act without worrying about getting rejected.  As an adult, I tend to protect myself- I want to know how someone feels about me first, before I respond.  But in that safety, I think I'm missing out on living a deeper, fuller life.

So I guess the question I have is:

Can I step out from playing life safe and into the uncertainty of vulnerability?


~b~

I hesitate

I hesitate to write this post, but my blog posts pile up in my head like a queue and if I want to blog about my awesome trip to Rockridge Canyon and my hilariously terrifying adventure down a zip line I'd better get this one posted.

On Sickness

For the past month and a half I have been sick with the worst sinus infection ever (it must be true, just look at the italics).  This means constant headaches, constant fevers and no energy.  After multiple trips to the doctor's offices and three different antibiotics, my head felt like it was going to explode at work, and my ear infection was so bad I couldn't fall asleep because my ears were ringing so loudly.  I am so thankful that my headache finally stopped before my trip to B.C. last week.  Since I got home from B.C I've been experiencing some pain that seems to get worse every day (to the point where I need to take T3's to get through the day).  It sucks to realize that I will probably be sick for a while, and to not know why I am in so much pain, or why my immune system is so crappy.

I've never been direct about my faith on my blog before, but I can't imaging going through this past year without it and I can't seem to get this post out of my head.  So if God or faith makes you squeemy, you might want to skip the next paragraph or two.

Last year about this time I shared with my community at Journeys things I was learning.  One of the verses I shared was Habukuk 3:17-19, which I admitted I really didn't understand.  But I can say now I get it.  Here is the lowdown on the passage:  Everything sucks.  There is nothing and no hope for a future and yet Habbi (as I like to call him) looks outside his circumstances and rejoices and is joyful in God.  Habbi says that God gives him strength, he's like a deer, he's able to go up high mountains.  (This whole rejoices and joyful in God seemed so ridiculous to me).

After a year full of panic attacks, surgery, depression, and lots of sickness, I can definitely say that the only thing that can get me through the darkest nights of my soul is God.  Looking at the wrong things, like my immediate circumstances only brought fear and despair.  I thought I was just being melodramatic, but fear and despair is simply the product of looking to myself for control over my immediate circumstances.  But when I look outside my circumstances to God I see he is in absolute control and I believe he has a plan for me.  Seeing my situation in this way brings me such peace and comfort and all I want to do is praise and glorify God.  And I don't think that I could write that last sentence truthfully, until I had experienced all the muck and yuck in this past year.

I wish I could wrap this post up nicely by saying how peppy and energetic I felt, but that'd be a lie.  So for Round 2, I am simply going to Be Still, which is probably the hardest thing to do as I am such a doer and achiever.  To me, this means living in the moment in each day.  It means trusting that I will have the strength to get through each day and not worry about getting through tomorrow, or the next day, or next week.  It means instead of feeling stuck, I just need to see what I can do with the energy and opportunities I have on a daily basis.

And so this is how I choose to respond while I wait to get my health back:

• Adjust my plan.  I still have things I want to achieve, and there's no reason why I should give up and do nothing, I just need to adjust my approach into teeny weeny little steps, until I am strong enough to run in leaps and bounds.  

• Steward wisely.  I think it is easier sometimes to live with "less" (money/time/energy), because you are forced to be responsible and being wasteful could be disastrous.  There is little room for error.  I don't have the luxury of wasting my time or energy, I need to be spending my energy on the most important things.  I'm just happy if I can work a full day and come home and be a good mom.

It is inevitable that sometime in our life we will go through some really hard struggles, but if there is anything I learnt from my dad it is that I can have ongoing health problems in my life and still laugh, love, and enjoy life

~b~

On Fear and Avoidance

Last night I started reading Woman Food and God (Geneen Roth).  She brings up the point that eating can be a way of bolting from ourselves, how we distance ourselves when reality isn't matching up to our expectations.

Bolting.  Avoidance.

This is something that I have just realized is my main coping mechanism.  It is one of those unhealthy coping mechanisms that worked for me when I was a child, but when I use it in adulthood it probably does more damage to myself than prevents hurt or pain.

There are so many ways that I try to avoid pain, or even the possibility of pain that it seems ingrained in my daily actions.  I use my phone to surf the web or text with a friend when I'm out in public, so that I can avoid feeling socially awkward, or even have to talk to the people around me.  I have no problem changing my route if I don't feel like talking to someone I see up ahead.  I develop my relationships only to a depth where I still feel safe and in control.  I spend more time daydreaming or reading than actually doing.

Geneen Roth explains how if we as adults believe the pain will kill us we are seeing through the eyes of our fragile self.  I believe that my actions ultimately stem out of my beliefs, but I also think that my actions affirm the beliefs I have about myself.  Running away gives strength to fear.  It affirms the belief that I can't handle things.  It gives power to the idea that I am too fragile or weak to handle the pain, hurt, or embarrassments of life.  It is affirming to myself an identity of weakness, fragility, and insecurity.

In Donald Millar's blog post today, he talks about experiencing pain because it allows for growth.  For what seems like too long, I have felt stuck and unable to move forward.  But I wonder now, if I need to leave behind the me that operates out of fear and avoidance.  Before I can begin the next chapter in life, I need to leave in this chapter the part of me that continually tells my self I am too weak to handle the hard stuff of life.


~b~

Thankful

This past year I have gained a deep appreciation and gratitude for life, health and freedom.


About a year ago I started getting sick on a regular basis.  I started to become sick so frequently that I was convinced I had some horrible condition: Lyme disease, West Nile, a brain tumor, cancer, Menairs disease.  (I definitely recommend that if you are going to self diagnos your self using the internet to remember Occam's razor: the simplest explanation is most likely the correct one).  I don't even know what Menairs disease is. 


Some times I would be so sick that the hours would feel like days and the days would feel like weeks as I lay in bed fighting a fever, nausea or vertigo.  Some days I would be well enough to to sit up and watch tv or read a book.  I'm glad that I had accumulated so many days of sick leave at work, because in the past year I have taken seven weeks of sick leave. 


During the times when I was sick I felt so isolated.  I was confined to my house, and often to my bed in my room and sometimes to my mind.  It was frustrating to think and plan, but not be able to carry out my thoughts, ideas or plans.  I felt horrible for not even having the energy to make my son supper or do the laundry.  


Thankfully, I have a doctor who is quick to sent me for tests and to specialists and I soon found out I had an ovarian cyst.  By December I was in so much pain I couldn't sit or stand comfortably.  With every step I took I was well aware of the mass growing inside me that could have been malignant or benign.  I couldn't sleep properly and I started have trouble eating.  At the beginning of January I had surgery to removed the cyst and spent a few weeks at home recovering.  This past year I have been working on getting my health and strength back.


Had my health and connection to others not been taken away for a bit, I would have never appreciated or been thankful for a day like yesterday.

• Yesterday I had the energy to do a bunch of boring chores: laundry, dishes, errands.

• Yesterday I let my son sleep in and then woke him up to eat the breakfast I had made for him.

• Yesterday I went on an epic bike ride that involved a stop at Homesteads (try the British '99).  We biked for 18 kilometers.

• Yesterday the wind pushed me to pedal harder, it left a layer of dirt on my hot sticky skin, it gently blew the smell of the water to me, and brought with it that beautiful sound of rushing water to my ears.

• Yesterday I had the best shower ever.

• Yesterday I had the energy to work on the "its not a bulletin" information handout for my church, Journeys .

• Yesterday I got to "encourage" my son into coming for a bike ride and managed to stay positive, despite his grumbly, mumbly, rude teenage self.  

• Yesterday I got to hang out with friends who love me enough to speak truth into my life and not let me keep pushing things below the surface.  

• Yesterday I let my son stay out way late, before picking him up.

• Yesterday I fell asleep exhausted, happy and thankful to have the health to live life.

~b~

ps.  "encouraging" is just a nice way of saying I bribed my son to come hang out with us by telling him to meet us at Homesteads and then telling him he couldn't hang out with his friend unless he biked back with us.  

Monday Musings

This past Saturday I attended a workshop that was put on by a local church and Food for the Hungry Canada.  It was a time that gave you the permission to dream by brainstorming how to bring hope to people through ideas and actions.

The biggest thing I took away from that session was the impact of simply acting on one small idea.  Here are some other thoughts that I came away with:

When you look at the overall picture, at the end goal, whether it is running a marathon, implementing a budget, or trying to change your lifestyle, it can seem overwhelming to the point where it can hinder you to start at all.  However, everything starts with one small idea that is then turned into an action.  FH was founded in 1971 and now works in over 26 countries that work towards sustainable community development through a holistic approach of addressing physical, spiritual, social, and educational needs.  It started, however, with one man buying one very hungry child a bowl of soup in the streets of Saigon.

Passion.  It struck me that this organization was a product of someone's passion.  Passion is something I lack, and it is something I definitely notice when it is present in others.  It made me wonder if getting to that place of having a passion starts simply with an urge or desire to do something, or change something and then simply taking that first step of action.  It is through this process of acting, that passion grows into something that is noticeable to those around you.

While I am a planner by nature, and like to see the big picture and end goal, sometimes I just need to start by taking one first step and then being open to looking for further direction from there.


~b~