life – Roasted Peanuts

Forever Basically Hopeful

I wonder at what latitude this dread begins for others but for me at 39.627 degrees north, January begins approximately 12 weeks of clinging desperately to the hope of potential warmth in March and consists of a mental countdown and coping strategies not used at any other point in the calendar.

“It’s January 7th, so January is basically over and then comes February but that’s a short month and we get a few holidays in those months, then March comes and the light shines even brighter at the end of this cold, dark, depressing tunnel, so really if I can make it through this week everything will be fine.” And then I repeat that hopeful outlook until March comes. And sometimes that works. But sometimes it doesn’t.

Sometimes March is like, you thought January and February were bad…hold my beer, lady, and proceeds to swing wildly between frigid unseasonably cold days fraught with snow storms alternated between sunny warm traps of false hope that lead into rain. Then more rain. And suddenly I haven’t had a good hair day in months and I’m hanging by my fingernails to the edge of a cliff closing my eyes in defeat and waiting quietly for May.

And oh the joy of late spring and early summer. Nothing tastes sweeter – even a bad day can’t be that bad. The birds are singing, all the baby animals are adorable, and the hope that never actually died but seriously almost did a few times comes bouncing back and gives new meaning to my life as I approach the days with gladness I don’t even have to fake. Until August.

At this point the sun has been out for months; long enough for my fleshly spirit to take it for granted, and it’s hot now. My hair is sticking to my neck and my face in sweaty curls that are unbecoming at best. Ironically it is during this consistent yearly heat wave that I choose to have my summer camp – 10 days of reminding children to hydrate while we willingly hike for miles like sadists. There are times in the winter that I can re-wear an article of clothing. Doing that at this point in the year would be a crime against humanity.

Then just like in Winnie the Pooh on Christopher Robin’s first day of school, a cool wind comes and blows in some relief, reigniting my will to live and allowing me to wear my hair down once again. But only for a minute. Just like March, September and October have multiple personalities and some of them are real jerks.

Once fall settles in, which is truly my favorite season despite my name, the bittersweet love begins around Halloween, (maybe earlier depending on whether Niña or Niño is winning), as I oscillate between being in the moment and soaking up the temperate climate and dreading the impending post-Christmas reality.

Which is where I am now – in that reality, repeating old and creating new coping strategies to gaslight myself into hanging in there with a smile on my face as I write, learn to sew, go to the gym, try new recipes and love on my horse that isn’t really mine but kind of is. Oh and dress my porch goose I got for Christmas that won’t be going on the porch but sits on a table waiting for me to learn how to sew so I can make her beautiful dresses to go with her wigs. She’s truly fabulous.

Regerts

“Oops!”

“Crap, sorry. I wasn’t paying attention.”

“I can’t do two things at once.”

“It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“I’m too socially awkward to avoid this decision.”

Have you ever looked back and thought, “What was I thinking?” Not about major life decisions – those are regrets, and we can’t camp there; we can only learn from them and do better next time. No, I’m talking about the stuff we do that we wish we hadn’t done but didn’t have major consequences.

A regret I have is passing on the offer to be a residential assistant at WVU my sophomore year. I got in quite a lot of trouble my freshman year, but the dorm director saw something in me that I didn’t see in myself and asked me to be an RA the following year, which would have saved me thousands of dollars in student loans. This is something that had long-term consequences, and while, again, I am not camping there, for purposes of illustration, I’ll dig up those bones for a minute.

A regert I have around that same time period, on the other hand, is the time my roommate and I drove to Key West for Spring Break and I was putting sunscreen on my arms and shoulders, then used that hand to wipe sweat from my forehead. A few hours later, distinct outlines of my fingers glared on my forehead in stark contrast to the redness of the rest of my face. Embarrassing? Yea, absolutely. Life altering? Not so much.

One day when Ayden was an infant, Addison and I were hanging out playing with her sticker book. She thought it would be funny to put a sticker on my arm, so she did that a few times and then I thought it would be cute to put stickers on Ayden’s tiny face and arms and take a picture. We giggled while he sat clueless in his bouncy seat, oblivious that he was a human canvas. After I took the picture, I took off the stickers, but to my horror, they left red patches in the exact shape of the sticker in every spot I had placed them. I panicked, called the pediatrician who told me to give him a bath and wash off the glue. (I blamed Addison when I explained what happened. Dr. Damran, if you’re reading this, I’m sorry for lying.) He was as good as new and I learned never to put stickers on my babies.

Fast forward a few years and I decided I was going to roller blade like I used to when I was 20. “Here’s some knee and elbow pads,” my friend suggested, but I told her I didn’t need them and away I went as Addison, Ayden and Avery watched. At first everything was fine. I was having fun. But then I got cocky – I decided to go down the road and down a small but slightly steeper-than-it-looked hill. Let’s just say I still have scars on my knees and elbows.

A few years ago while visiting my family in Florida I decided to take my sister’s bike on a ride: 19 miles with zero issues. I was about a mile from her house when I missed the turn. The path was narrow, but instead of getting off the bike and turning it around like a reasonable person, I chose to try to make the turn. The tire caught the edge of the paved pathway and I started unintentionally heading toward the metal grated culvert, so I had to bail off. My sternum landed squarely on the middle of the handle bars, my right hand got trapped between the grip and the pavement and the spikes of the pedals embedded themselves in my leg. That last mile was long. I could feel the wetness of the blood under my hand as I rode to her house, handlebars crooked and blood dripping down my leg. I can only imagine what people thought as they passed me. The flight home was miserable. I ended up going to the ER to make sure I wasn’t broken. The doctor came in and said “I’ve got good news and bad news – the good news is, nothing is broken. The bad news is, you aren’t 20 anymore.”

Amnesia is real, though, because only last year I was on a horse and he went down on his knees, throwing me over the saddle on to his neck, clinging for dear life because I wasn’t paying attention. I had a death grip while I tried to figure out what to do. All of a sudden I could feel he was about ready to make the decision for me so I bailed and landed on the frozen ground squarely on my rib cage, but because there’s something deeply wrong with me, I rode 4 hours anyway. By the time I got back I thought I was going to die. This time I was legitimately broken, and before he could say a word, I told the doctor I was well aware I wasn’t 20 anymore. That regert made its presence known for a solid 4 months.

My car is riddled with regerts. One time I got stuck in the car wash, resulting in the passenger side gouge. That one upset me so much I couldn’t even talk about it for 3 days. Then a few weeks later a deer hit my STOPPED car. Why was I stopped, you ask? I was letting her family cross in front of me but she wasn’t paying attention and crashed directly into the driver’s side passenger door. But honestly, I couldn’t even be that mad at her because let’s face it: Same, deer, same.

A more recent regert happened at 7-11 a few weeks ago when I decided to splurge and try the once-upon-a-time-viral Dubai chocolate bar. It was on the counter staring at me one morning and I thought I would indulge both my sweet tooth and curiosity. I figured it would be about five dollars, which is plenty for a candy bar, but when the cashier rang me up it was closer to $25. Instead of just putting it back like a normal person, I froze and stared at her in shock as she waited for me to pay, which I did. I mean…it was good, but not $25 good.

The point is, we are all human. Humans do dumb stuff sometimes. The goal is to keep the dumb stuff to a minimum and do our very best not to cross from regert to regret. That is easier said than done and takes intentionality on our part. We will make mistakes, but it’s what we do after that matters more than anything. For instance, always double check dimensions when ordering office supplies online. Need a 5’x8′ dry erase board, anyone?

Empowering My Alien

Would you be interested in sending me $200 so I don’t have to go to work this week? Ummm, negative. In fact, I’d ask that you refrain from all further monetary requests.

Was this from a spam email? A Nigerian prince needs me to help him to the United States? No. No indeed. This was an actual request from the alien that used to take up residence in my uterus.

Is she objectively cute? Yes. Is she charming and kind? Also yes. But is she getting my money? No. At least not that time. Approximately two days later she informed me that she needed a bed frame when they move to their new apartment. I was like, “That sounds like a you problem, sister”. But then she reminded me that in a moment of parental supportiveness I did, in fact, promise her that I would supply the bed frame. You got me there, kid.

The process of separating from grown children is especially painful some days. Contrary to (her) popular belief, I do not delight in telling her no when she asks for money to do superfluous things. It requires a level of self control NOT to indulge some of the whims. But my fully developed prefrontal cortex understands that this is the safest time in life to learn the value of a dollar, and enabling bad money management is not an act of love.

Instead she (and all her siblings) can rest in the security that I will never allow her to go without basic needs (and let’s face it, plenty of wants), that wherever my home is she is always welcome, and that I am her biggest cheerleader as she grows into the woman God created her to be. One day we will sit and laugh over coffee about how we barely made it through puberty without bloodshed and then when the check comes, I will have conveniently forgotten my wallet and the circle of life will be complete.

Vintage

Death will not come a second before or after God ordained. (But statistically it’s getting closer.) Happy 50th Birthday

Wait, 50? That’s basically dead. “Happy”birthday.
-younger me

Congratulations. You are now older than 65% of the earth’s population. Happy 50th birthday.

50? Maybe cross becoming a professional ballet dancer off the list now. Happy Birthday.

You have your whole life ahead of you. There’s just less of it left now. Happy Birthday.

Half a century has passed since you were born. Read that again and then tell me you’re not old. Happy Birthday!

This is a sampling of my inappropriate “aging” greeting card line. My sister and I have developed several less than tactful but fully hilarious greeting cards for different occasions. We have a Hospice line that’s almost definitely offensive to everyone except us, but humor is how we’ve managed to survive some pretty intense storms.

Becoming older is not a curse, as our popular culture would have us believe. But it’s also fraught with some hardly ideal reality. Fortunately I have a great hairdresser and no one will ever see that cruel twist of gray fate.

To mark the beginning of my second half-century, let’s talk about some things I will never miss about being young (specifically regarding parenting):

I will not miss diaper blowouts-especially the ones that happen in a cloth car seat.

I will not miss being sharply awakened at 2am by vomiting episodes in small children.

I will not miss the last month of pregnancy.

I will also not miss the physical pain of the first month of postpartum. (But I definitely miss the tiny warm fuzzy human that created the pain)

I will not miss the constant struggle of finding childcare so I could work and the mom guilt associated with that whole ordeal.

I will not miss my van that had no heat or air conditioning for 18 months. Oh and no working driver side window.

I will not miss financial insecurity.

These are all things that I experienced when my skin was tight, my body bounced back and my hair was naturally brown, which are all things I have mourned the loss of as time marches on. But what I’ve traded in physically I have gained in every other category, most importantly my faith. He sees what’s inside, and He has walked me through some rugged terrain only to come out on the other side with perspective and wisdom that younger me was not able to discern. I’ll take it. And I look forward to gaining more and more of the attributes of my Creator. I am protected on all sides. I’m covered in the blood of Jesus, which is worth far more than any temporary vanity of this earth. (But also, thank you for the transformative power of hairstylists.)

Amy

Grief is such a strange thing. It’s like a thief waiting to ambush at the most unusual times. I could be having the most normal day and something completely off the wall will remind me of my mom and then my heart breaks all over again. I don’t enjoy that feeling, but it does put things in perspective for me. The big picture gets blurred sometimes as I hyper focus on one area of life, then when grief slips in uninvited it somehow helps me zoom out again and reset.

Many of the things I start to allow myself to be absorbed by are so trivial. Mom used to tell us that there was never a reason to be hateful to someone. Even if…fill in the blank…it didn’t matter. I’m grateful that her voice echoed the voice of my Father. I didn’t (and still don’t) always listen, but it guided me and helped me listen way more times than if it had not spoken.

I fight within me so often I don’t have the time or desire to fight with anyone else. You have an opinion that’s different from mine? Ok. We die on hills that are meaningless and silly. There’s no place for that kind of controversy in the life of a Christian (I’m lecturing myself, mostly). I’ve contributed to the idiocy quite enough. The battle is within and it urgently needs to be won. Sometimes we are what stands between someone walking toward Christ or walking away. I hate to think of the times I was so caught up in my anger that I misrepresented His name. Is the gravity I feel in this regard related to the wickedness of this current world? Is it a product of maturity? My guess is that it’s a little of both, mixed with the relative peace of life, which is in stark contrast to the chaos that has defined much of my adulthood.

One day many years ago my sister and I were on the phone; most cell phones had minutes and it was cheaper to talk after 9pm. Our combined 7 children were very young, and we were both in places of sustained crisis but we were growing in our faith as young adults. Both of us, surrounded by believers in our communities, were adamant that our children would make better choices than we had made. As we knew better we would do better, and we promised to be continuously improving so that our children would have us as role models.

If all you knew was part of the story then it may seem we were the most ridiculous excuses for role models there ever were. Sometimes I still walk back to that place, but these days I don’t pitch my tent and stay. I simply walk there, acknowledge the mistakes and then I turn around and come back. I will get to a point where I never return but until then I stand at that spot and remember the truth; I remember that God fights my battles for me and I point to my precious children. I may be slightly biased, but I do believe I have the cream of the crop as far as children go. God doesn’t think any of the negative things I can be guilty of thinking about myself. As I have grown closer to Him, the demeaning voice gets quieter and quieter. And it all started with my first step taken in obedience by a nudging of the Holy Spirit…and my mom.

My mom was as human as any of us, but her unwavering faith, misguided as it sometimes could be, was a legacy left by my grandma, who carried it forward from her mom, and so on. It created a space in me to see the truth, and experience how mightily God works through the most heinous situations. It gave me the strength to walk with Him, to offer up my children to Him and to understand I was a steward of those young people – they belong to Him, not to me.

The hours in prayer, the tears shed, the angry outbursts, the depression, the confusion, the agony, the denial, the acceptance and the joy – none of it was wasted. He has used every single circumstance for our good. Every single one.

When I look at it my life from the perspective of my Creator, I can be nothing less than grateful. The rest of my days will continue to be spent imperfectly loving, growing, serving and learning. If even one person falls in love with Jesus through my obedience, it will have been worth everything. Happy Mother’s Day, Mom. Thank you for introducing me to Him. I’ll see you at Home.

Extra Credit is Absurd

The older I get, the more I realize I understand much less than I thought I did. When I was 21, I had an answer for everything, but then I lived some life and I have realized that what I “knew” were idealistic conjectures, only relevant in a utopian society, if at all. All of my solutions to problems were seen through my lens and based on my personal (very limited) life experiences. I still have my own lens and life experiences, but what has evolved over time is my ability to accept that my way is not the only way.

For example, Aubrey and I have this conversation that keeps coming up because I keep not understanding no matter how many times she explains it to me. This started about 6 years ago when she told me she had 105% in one of her classes. I told her that was the stupidest thing I have ever heard. How can you have more than 100%? She less than calmly tried to explain it to me in terms I did not hear because they were ridiculous and made no sense so I walked away. Later, perhaps months or years, it came up again and this time she explained it in terms I could better understand: she told me that 100% was the pizza and the extra credit was the pepperoni. Ok, now I kind of get it.

At no point did it really matter if I understood this concept, but for some reason it still keeps coming up and I just can’t let it go. Now she’s in college and the other day we were talking and it came up again, but more like reminiscing about all the times she tried to teach me about extra credit and I didn’t understand, so she explained it yet again, but I still don’t follow the logic – there is ALL of something and then SOME of another thing but there can’t be more than ALL of one thing. Then she blocked me. (Not really. She asked me for ice cream money after she finished telling me how much of an adult she was, but I’ll save that for another blog.) So, obviously extra credit is a real concept and my inability to understand it doesn’t affect its validity.

I realize now that wisdom has less to do with knowledge and more to do with a posture of humility when it comes to life. I will never know everything. I am not always right. There is more than one way to solve a problem. If I had told my younger self these truths, she would have at the very least rolled her eyes, but older me knows that it’s ok not to have all the answers. What truly matters is having a relationship with the One who does.

Pointing others to Christ is the main purpose of believers. I have been guilty of acting in ways unbecoming of a daughter of the King, yet He still loves me. If this is true for me, it’s true for all of us. How many chances do we get to have our slate wiped clean? As many as it takes, and all we have to know is who Christ is and believe that His death paid the price we should have paid. He meets us where we are and transforms us to His image as we go. Perfection is unattainable for all of us. Instead we walk with our Creator as He makes us more and more like Him, inviting people to Him naturally as they witness the transforming power that could only be explained by the act of selfless obedience displayed on a cross thousands of years ago.