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~

What I've Been Reading Lately

I just starting reading The Emperor of all Maladies.  

Ever since reading the Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks my interested has been piqued in health related books.  As I've been reading this book, I've found so many different things fascinating.   Learning of how historical care practices from doctors, who with the best of intentions, but lack of knowledge was really horrific and macabre for the patients.  There really is a fine line between human trials and human experiments that was probably crossed with the best intentions.  

I have to confess, I really know nothing about cancer, with so many different types of cancer, I really didn't know what cancer really was.  I'm so ignorant, I didn't even know that oncology was until I started reading this book.  And I guess that makes be lucky  but I'm retiscent to talk about all the things I've been reading, because I've seen how hard it is for families when I family member has cancer.  So I will leave you with one thing I found interesting.

One interesting thing

When the humoral theory was proposed, with the different fluids of the body (black bile, phlegm, yellow bile, and blood), the only disease that was attributed to black bile was cancer and depression.  I wonder if its because the symptoms of either manifest in a variety of different ways, or that people often look fine on the outside, but are well aware of their "condition" on the inside.  Or that those closest to a person with depression and cancer are also affected by the disease.  

 I'm also reading an interesting article that explores the correlation between your gut microbiota and your metabolism.  This kind of article is a little outside my field of knowledge, but its still pretty interesting, and so far I can grasp what it's saying without googling any of the big words.  

The article is talking about how the gut microbial community has more microorganisms that in the body by "two orders of magnitude".  In my mind I have a tiny universe of microorganisms living inside my gut helping my body with biochemical and metabolic stuff.  Kinda like the locker in Men In Black that holds an entire universe:

 

~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~

Thoughts on Life - On being irreplaceable.

During Joel's funeral service at the beginning of June, I remember sitting there surrounded by sadness and realizing the unavoidable finality of death.  I sat there questioning the point of life and why we are given this time, this life.

And so this summer I have been thinking a lot.  Thoughts about living my life, knowing that someday I too will end my time on this side of eternity.

Here is one thought that have been thinking.

Where are you irreplaceable?

In certain relationships you are completely irreplaceable.  To your friends, your family and especially your children you are completely irreplaceable.  Invest in these relationships because it is where you will make the greatest impact.  Be intentional in what type of impact you will make.  Give them your time, your attention, and your best energy.  It is in these relationships that you will leave the biggest void when you are gone.

Prioritize these relationships above your career.  You are completely replaceable in your job.  There will always be somebody else to fill your position.  Even if you should accomplish something great in your career, it will eventually be forgotten, become obsolete, or overshadowed by the next best thing.  Besides, your coworkers will remember you for how you treated them and the memories you've shared, rather than the job that you did.  And your friends and family don't care about your job title or the salary you make.

For me, prioritizing my closest relationships over my career has meant saying no to potential job opportunities that don't fit well with raising my son.  It means setting limits on the amount of time and effort I spent in developing my own skills and knowledge.  It means that I make sure I am well rested,
and that I don't fill my days with so many tasks that I become stressed out.  I want to give to others all my good energy and patience, not my crabby, stressed out self.  It means me remembering that my actions influence those closest to me more than what I say or strive to be and that these actions are a result of where my focus is.  

I want the people closest to me to know that they are more important that the accomplishments I achieve.  I want to strive to become a person who lives out my values and beliefs, so that perhaps, these values will be imparted to those around me.  I want to be be remembered for my love of life, not the love of my work.



~b~