Thanksgiving Ham

Sometimes I just hate myself.  

Generally,  I don't have time to wade around in my insecurities.  I have three children, a dog and a congregation full of people to lead and care for.  I'm 55 years old and have had plenty of time for God to help me to get over myself.  I've come to accept that I am not a compilation of accomplishments, abilities and actions.  I'm a person who has been profoundly shaped and transformed by the grace that I have found through Jesus Christ.  

But then I have a day like today and I just have a jag of DESPISING my weaknesses, my peccadillos, the stupid things that I have a tendency to do.  Today is Thanksgiving and I feel like I had almost ruined it.  I have roasted at least 40-50 turkeys in my life. It's not a big deal.  I can totally do it; just pick a recipe and make it happen. 

The New York Times Cooking recipe said to roast the dry brined turkey for 30 minutes at the unusually high temperature of 450 degrees.  I'm guessing that the purpose of this is to do something like a sear to lock the juices in. Then I was instructed to turn the temperature to 350 degrees for the remainder of the time.  It really was an elegantly simple recipe, something that an experienced cook, such as myself, could do quite easily while managing teen aged sous chefs, a hungry special needs young adult who kept emerging from his room demanding food and various side dishes.  

The problem was that when I turned the temperature on my oven down to 350 degrees, I had forgotten to push START! What that meant was that, after having been cooked for 30 minutes, my turkey had been hanging out in a slowly cooling oven for the next two hours.  By the time I checked on it, an hour before we were supposed to eat, I opened the oven door to a very comfortably cool oven.  The turkey might as well have smiled and greeted me with a hello for how uncooked it was.

This catastrophe, combined with the realization that I had forgotten to pick up a splurged order of various breads and baked goods at a local bakery until it was too late, drove me to my room to lay on my bed with the door closed, taking deep breaths. I hate that I am a forgetter. . . and a non-detail oriented person.  

One time, I was in charge of travel to a family cruise in Florida and I scheduled our return flights to be for the day before the cruise returned to port.  In college, I would schedule things so that I needed to be in three places at the same time.  This lack of organization is the thing that I am most tempted to judge about myself. 

Granted, I've come far from those organizationally out of control young adult days.  The years of being a full time mom of an incredibly medically and developmentally complicated child certainly gave me organizational and detail management muscles that I never dreamed that I would have.  I am also a pastor of a church where, together with a multi-talented team of staff members, we function pretty well as an intergenerational, multiethnic community of around 300 people who need to turn a middle school into a place of worship every Sunday.

But every once in a while, I still make mistakes out of my lack of detail orientation and organization especially when I am tired.  No matter how much I've grown and matured, I can't seem to escape this part of my personality.

Two things helped me to pull out of the vortex of self-chastisement.  The first is my amazing husband who did not share my hypercritical attitude.  He just told me that he loved me and drove to KFC and to the bakery to see if he could help save our dinner.  (KFC was out of chicken and the bakery was all closed up.).  Just as he came home, I realized that I had also purchased a small ham to serve at a later gathering.  I threw that into the oven to heat and serve with our stuffing, potatoes and veggies.  Fortunately, Thanksgiving dinner this year was just my nuclear family and my mother so it wasn't a huge deal.  The ham was barely warmed and rather boring but it was fine. 

In fact, the second thing that served to give me perspective and stop being so disappointed with myself was how much Josh loved the ham.  My son LOVED the ham.  He asked for more over and over again.  In fact, at one point, while I got up to get more from the kitchen, he grabbed a slice right off of his grandmother's plate.  My mom reflexes are still pretty fast so I grabbed it right off his plate before he could eat it and made him wait for his own piece acquired in a proper manner.  

At the end of this day, I am choosing to think not about what I did wrong or what didn't go well but about the things that I am grateful for.  The six of us were able to sit together for a nice meal.  We enjoyed the food, especially Josh.  My 83 year old mother was able to spend quality time with us.  We played a little game which had us ask each other interesting questions.  We laughed together about funny stories from our pasts. 

As much as I am a foodie, I have to remember that the food is not the point.  The most important part of any feast is the spirit, the love, the people and what or who you are celebrating.  I hope that I am able to keep this on the forefront of my brain as we enter into another season of food and celebrating.  

Two Words: Retainer and Toilet

"Mommmmmm.  Where's my . . ."  I hear it a thousand times a day.  It's uttered at the beginning, middle, and sometimes near the end of searches for lost items.  Wallets, homework, permission slips, hairbrushes, special rocks which I never knew that they had, they all have a way of hiding themselves in the corners and crevices of our house.  Tonight, it was her retainer.  Somehow, it was assumed that I would know where it was.  I did not.

"Oh . . . my . . . gosh.  Mommmmmmm!  Josh threw it into the toilet!!"

Josh sat at the dining table eating his toast with neither guilt nor amusement.

"Josh, did you throw your sister's retainer in the toilet?"

"Yes"

"What do you need to say?"

"Thank you."

"No Josh.  Sorry."

"Sorry."

What do you think?  Is he innocent?  Does he know what he is doing or no?  

In the face of something that Josh has done wrong, it is never clear whether he is aware of his transgression or not.  Usually, I am too preoccupied by my own (often triggered, distracting, unhelpful) response to really be able to assess whether Josh is experiencing remorse, guilt, or defensiveness.  What I am wondering these days is this:  Does Josh understand that he does things that are wrong?  Does he know that he is a sinner? Or is he "an innocent"?  In biblical language, does he not have the "knowledge of good and evil"?  

As a parent, I am aware that part of how children grow in their conscience is that parent teach them and reinforce that reality by giving them consequences for their actions.  But how does one punish a kid who responds like this?  I can't remember now if I gave him a consequence in this situation.  We were too busy freaking out and trying to figure out if we could save the retainer.  

Miraculously, my daughter was frustrated but not angry.

"Why aren't you angry, Hope?"

"I don't know if Josh knows what he's doing or not.  Maybe he does.  I don't know."  She laid on my bed writhing with tension, amusement, aggravation and a drop of love.

A Fable about a Table

**Friends, this post is longer than my average post.  Please give yourself a few extra minutes to read.  To help you, I've put in more than the average number of photos.  Thanks for engaging with my life and my thoughts!  


My husband tells me that his parents bought this table as a part of a big home redecorating project in the 70's.  That would explain how ugly the table was.  The legs to this table always made me think of furniture that might be in King Arthur's court; heavy, ornate and . . . medieval.  But it was also sturdy and free so we've had it in our dining room ever since Alex's dad passed away.  It is the only dining table that my kids had ever known.

Despite all of the effort that we put into rearranging so that they could have desks in their rooms, my girls do their homework almost exclusively on the dining table.  As soon as I come into the house I plop my computer bag and my purse onto a chair at the table.  Groceries are sorted at this table.  Almost all of our meals have been eaten at this table.  Many guests have been hosted.  Conflicts have been resolved.  Serious conversations have been had.  Many prayers have been prayed at this table.  Our dining table is, in many ways, the heart or the hearth of our family home.

Alex has always taken care of this table as a precious artifact from his family history.  When we have to move the table, it must be done with two people so that it can be lifted not dragged.  Expanding the table by adding additional leaves to it must be done with great care and attention lest it be jostled too much and things get out of joint.  I never knew if this was because the table was so important to him or because he's just a really meticulous dude.  It might be both.

For a long time we had these custom made cushiony cover thingies on the table at all times.  I don't know why.  They came with the table so we kept them on.  And because they were ugly, we always had a table cloth on the table.  And because we had kids, the table cloth was always getting disgustingly gross so we washed the tablecloths almost every day.

Two years ago I asked myself why we were putting so much effort into protecting a table that was almost 50 years old and far from my ideal table.  I made a big change to our lifestyle and decided that we would let our table be naked, come what may.

Well, what came was that one day, while his mom was watering plants in the backyard, Josh took a ball point pen and carved a significant number of shower heads, hairdryers and fans into the table top where he sat to have an after school snack.   Here are some pictures of his "designs".

My first thought was that my husband was going to have a cow.  My second thought was that the table top was already pretty old and worn.  I posted some of these pictures on Facebook and a friend suggested that I simply refinish it.  Another friend even suggested a specific place nearby who might do a great job.  But given the busyness of my life and my tremendous hostility to taking on household projects, I knew that this would never happen.  I just internally prepared myself to live the rest of my life with a dining table with some artwork on it.  Maybe it would just be a conversation piece.  Or we just never let any non-family member sit where Josh usually sits.  I contemplated returning to table cloths.

Alex did have a cow, but just a little one.  He had a calf.  He was upset but quickly submitted to the chaotic power of Josh.  We have an autistic child.  Whaddya gonna do?  Fight to have a semblance of order in our lives?  I think not.

I'm not sure how it happened but somehow my husband and a good friend of his were chatting about what happened to the table.  The friend happened to be a designer and inventor who knew how to work with wood.  And he happened to have a power sander.  I kept coming home from work to see them working on the table with great gusto.  I think they were actually having fun.  Alex was really enjoying learning a new skill, something that he always wanted to know how to do but never had the time or bandwidth.

This is a picture of them and the table before the final varnish.  It was an amazing transformation and resurrection.  I couldn't believe it.  It was a gorgeous color of reddish brown; shiny, gleaming, almost radiating a loving warmth to our home.

Here is a pic of the final work.  Beautiful, isn't it?

How I wish the story ended there but, alas, it does not because two nights ago, the girls had left a permanent marker on the other end of the table from where Josh sits.  As I was preparing his pills, in a split second Josh took the black permanent marker and did this.

I turned around to see him holding the marker in his hand.

"Josh, what are you doing?!!!"  I yelled.

"Josh, what are you doing?"  he replied, calmly, eating a tomato.  If he sensed my emotion, he gave no indication.  It occurred to me that even our dog knows when he is in trouble.  Luther knows when to avert his eyes and get out of the way when I find that he's ripped up a stuffed animal or has peed on the carpet.  But my son acted like it was no big deal, like he was the one who knew some peaceful, deep wisdom that I could not yet fathom.  I just stood in the kitchen with my mouth open, silent, fuming and flummoxed.  Our beautiful, refinished table, was ruined once again.  After a few minutes of silence Josh said to me, "Want more toast".  Sigh.

Years ago, a wise mentor once taught us that we have to remember that the many things that we work to build in our lives are like sandcastles.  We work hard to build something and we want them to be beautiful, excellent, impactful, and lasting.  But in the end, like sand castles, the things we build are ultimately washed away.  Organizations, churches, ministries, institutions, programs, careers, wonderful as they may be, they all have their ends, often sooner than we expect.  Even expensive dining tables don't last forever.  None of the things in my house will last forever.  Even my house will not last forever.  From a Christian perspective, the only things that lasts forever are people and God (and maybe animals, I'm not sure about that one yet).

A few weeks ago while we were on vacation at the beach, we ran into a pair of brothers who were hard at work on a super-duper sand castle.  They had roped off a section of the beach and were building a replica of an actual European castle that they had researched.  Both were engineers who grew up at the beach making sand creations in their childhood. They spent quality  time together once a year by spending a whole day making something beautiful out of sand.  This project took them over 13 hours.  They arrived with their many tools and buckets before dawn and we helped them pack everything up using our flashlights on our phones.  As we chatted at the end of the day, I asked them why they did this and wasn't it a bummer that their creation would be washed away by the next morning?  Exhausted but happy, they said that it's all part of the process.  They did not expect it to last forever.  That was not the point.  Their wives let them take a whole Saturday away from their families not to build the sandcastle but to invest in their relationship as brothers.

I've been thinking about this sandcastle ever since that day.  The beautiful, valuable things in our lives are but a reflection of that which is ultimately lasting beauty.  We will enjoy our lives, our relationships and even our things better if we accept that and just give ourselves to the process of life in this temporal world.

Minor Miracles and Other Things that Keep You Going

Being fifteen has meant that Josh is sometimes aggressive.  When he wants something but can't have it, he might grab, scratch and even hit people around him.  One time when we were in our van on our way home from a family vacation trip to SeaWorld, he suddenly got really frustrated and pulled a big handful of hair from his sleeping sister who was in the row in front of him.   That was a huge bummer.  It broke a lot of trust with that sister and she, understandably, declared that she was going to take a break from helping Josh.  The other sister, also understandably, defended him, declaring that he couldn't help it because he gets frustrated just like all of us but he doesn't have the tools to manage and express his emotions. 

We've employed various strategies and behavior plans to deal with this unfortunate but somewhat expected pattern given Josh's age.  He's a teenager.  His brain is going through a normal adolescent growth process which includes hormonal and adrenaline surges.

One of the things that we do is to leave his presence and let him know that he doesn't get to be around us if he's being demanding or agitated.  Josh's wonderful respite provider, K, knew to do this the other day when Josh was becoming aggressively demanding. Apparently, Josh was yelling and grabbing K's arm.  K firmly told him that he was going to have to be in his room by himself for a while and that K was going to be in the living room.  K said that Josh yelled and made unhappy noises for a few minutes and then was quiet for about 15 minutes.

Josh came out to the living room and silently sat down next to K and then did something that shocked our experienced respite provider.  Josh said, "I'm sorry."

"It was a miracle!" K said as he recounted the experience to me later.  "You know, my colleagues and I talk about how we stay motivated for our work by the little miracles that we experience every once in a while.  This was one of them."

It's so true.  I know many adults who don't seem to know how to utter those words in the course of their lives.  How did Josh access those words and place them in a socially appropriate context?  Was he just repeating a phrase that he heard in a song or on the radio?  Maybe.  But it touched K's heart nevertheless.

As a Christian, I believe that being sorry and acknowledging one's faults/ shortcomings/ fallenness/ sins is a crucial part of opening one's heart to grace.  Yet I also know how difficult it is to speak those works of acknowledging wrong.  Sometimes my husband has to wait a good long time to receive an apology from me in a situation where we both know that I was wrong.

I know that apologizing not something that is modeled by many "adults" in this world but somehow, we all know that repentance is what makes healing and relationships possible.  Sometimes, an apology is a miracle; a sign of some amount of self-knowledge and a desire to heal.  It is a sign of grace and hope.  It is the touch of God.  What a beautiful thing to see that, in that moment with K, Josh had been given the gift of being able to say, "I'm sorry".

I wonder what our world would be like if people were able to say, "I'm sorry" just a little bit more each day.  I wonder how my life would be changed if I was just a little bit freer to say, "I'm sorry".

Swearing, Profanity, and Cursing

Today, as Josh was making himself some toast he dropped the butter knife onto the floor and immediately exclaimed, "Sh*t!"  I looked up with surprise in time to hear him say it again three times with vehemence, "Sh*t, sh*t, sh*t!"

After surprise, came amusement.  After amusement, came pride.  My son was using an interjection in a contextually appropriate way!  Way to go, buddy!

As you may know, if you have read any of my other blog posts, Josh is not someone who has a lot going on in the way of expressing language.  In fact, his spontaneous (non-prompted) language falls generally in two categories; echolalia (random echoing of things that he has heard before without appropriate meaning or contextualization) and expressing simple needs or desires ("I want toast").

To have Josh use profanity appropriately with some amount of affect was kind of awesome!  At the same time, I wondered where exactly Josh picked this up.  Was it from us?  From school? From kids on the bus?  I wish I could say that I knew for sure that he must have had this modeled for him outside of our home but, alas, I cannot.  

In our early parenting years, when blow out diapers, interrupted baby naps, and finding people spreading poop on walls were a regular part of our lives, I noticed that Josh was much more likely to echo swear words that came out of my mouth than anything else.  Perhaps this was because they were accompanied with clear and passionate emotion.  

We've been talking a lot about swearing with our (6th grade) girls recently.  We've wondered together why swearing is supposedly bad.  I hate it when people just tell you not to do something without having a reason so I've been thinking about it a bit myself;  Do you refrain from swearing just because it makes you a bad person?  Why do we have the sense that we should not swear?  True, the Bible says that we shouldn't swear but I think that means swearing as in "making oaths" or taking the Lord's name in vain.  Ok, so we don't say, "I swear to God..." or use Jesus' name in irreverent ways. But the specific question that we have sought to answer is "What exactly is wrong with using profanity?  

In her book,  Swearing Is Good For You: The Amazing Science of Bad Language, Emma Byrne writes that "Swearing, it turns out, is an incredibly useful part of our linguistic repertoire. Not only has some form of swearing existed since the earliest humans began to communicate, but it has been shown to reduce physical pain, help stroke victims recover their language, and encourage people to work together as a team."

Even the apostle Paul uses "coarse language" in Philippians 3: 8 when he says, "What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ."  That word which is here translated "garbage" is more accurately "the refuse of animals", "dung" or "poop".

All of these things may be true but my experience tells me that peppering one's language with profanity hurts relationships, especially if one is swearing at someone.  Swearing usually adds a jolt of emotion (usually negative) to a conversation or interaction that is draining, uncomfortable or painful to the listener in most situations.  There is a degrading and disrespecting quality to swearing at someone. In conflict, profanity usually amps things up rather than calming things down which is not conducive to making peace or bringing resolution.  Once you've said, "F--- you" to someone, you really can't ever unsay that.

Now that they are in middle school, my girls are discovering that there is plenty of negativity, anger and meanness in this world.  Using profanity just adds to it.  For Christians, Ephesians 4:29 advises,"Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up, as there is need, so that your words may give grace to those who hear."  Also, the practice of self control is important to the life of someone who is wanting to emulate the God of love.  According to James 1:26 "If you think you are being religious, but can't control your tongue, you are fooling yourself, and everything you do is useless".  Another reason all this matters is that the words we use say a lot about what is in our heads. Philippians 4:8 says, "Whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things". As we think about what's right and pure, cuss words are not helpful.

Words are a very powerful part of creating the reality in which we live as human beings.  In general, we ought to try to make our words be edifying, positive, and gracious, for our own sake and for the sake of people who are hearing our words.

But, at this point, if my son wants to express himself by swearing when he drops a knife, I'm still going to smile.  

What are your thoughts about swearing?  Swearing and parenting?  Swearing and being a parent of a child with special needs?  Swearing and the middle school experience?  Swearing in a household with kids?  

Clean, Dirty

Do you ever feel like the day can just turn on a dime?  One minute you are having a lovely, laughter-fulled time and the next minute things can go so very, very wrong so very, very quickly.

Today, Hope and I went to Pet Food Express to give a bath to Luna, a friend's golden retriever who is staying with us for the summer.  Since Hope was a toddler, we've been going into this place to watch dogs being bathed here at our neighborhood pet food store.  I could drink almost a half of a cup of coffee while I allowed Hope and her sister to stand around and watch as dog owners cleansed their canine family members in neat little stalls with all sorts of hoses and nozzles.  And because there were things that looked like shower heads there, Josh often enjoyed being there as well.  It was a fascinating look into the exotic world of dog ownership.  

Today was the first time for both of us that we got to do it for ourselves.  We gladly paid our money and got a shiny, golden token.  A very friendly staff person gave us an introduction to the marvelous dog shower system and then we invited our slightly smelly dog to go into the wash area.  

Luna was not thrilled but, because she is the world's most obedient golden retriever, she obliged.  You have no idea how good it feels to rub a dog's golden hair with almond scented dog shampoo-- really rubbing it in.  It's like a sensory meditation. We took turns giving her the free treats that they had at the store.  We had aprons on but we got wet anyways.  We were laughing.  It was awesome.  

Luna even sat very still as we dried her now lovely smelling fur.  Hope and I felt good about how well we had accomplished this task.  We sauntered out of the store refreshed and energized.  I paused on the sidewalk while Luna politely smelled a few butts of dogs who were headed into the stores.  Hope was considering purchasing a dog cookie for Luna.  I noticed what a beautiful day it was.  The day was sunny but not too hot.  I could smell the coffee from the Peets coffee shop a few stores down.  What a beautiful scent is coffee, that wonderful elixer.  The scent was smooth, nutty and surprisingly strong.  It was like the smell of an old friend.  I couldn't help but to smile.  

I clicked my key to open the side door to my van, which was parked directly in front of the pet food store in the disabled parking spot.  Josh had been unhappy in the store so I had brought him back to the car, rolled the windows down and left him there to occupy himself with a cup of ice.  As the door opened, I realized why the smell of coffee was so strong.  Coffee grounds had been sprinkled all over the back of my van.  It was in the cup holder, on the floor, on the ceiling and on the seat.  It was all over Josh and the bag had been tossed onto the floor below him.  

In that moment, I realized that Josh must have reached up to the front seat and had found the bag of ground coffee that I had purchased at Peets just before we went to bathe Luna.  It must have looked or felt like sand to him because he had poured it all over himself and my van.  My son loves to pour things.  At parks, Josh loves to watch sand pouring out of his hands.  He could do it for hours.  It appeared as if he had also attempted to dry-shampoo his hair with it. 

I took a deep breath and tried to not cry.  Why is it that you can turn a quick corner and then have chaos whack you across the face with no warning?  I guess because life is just like that, a diverse array of scenes and emotions that remind us that we have very little control. 

Ecclesiastes Chapter 3 says, "For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:

2 a time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
3 a time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up;
4 a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
5 a time to throw away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
6 a time to seek, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to throw away;
7 a time to tear, and a time to sew;
a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
8 a time to love, and a time to hate;
a time for war, and a time for peace.

Apparently, there are times to be clean and times to be dirty.  And the thing about these different times is that we usually don't get to determine them.  They come upon us and what we can do is to be in it and respond well. Sometimes these different types of times happen within the same hour.  Sometimes we wait for a long time for the season to keep silence to end and for the season to speak to start.  Time and the seasons are in God's hands.  We have very little power to determine these things.  

It was a small victory that I did not yell at anyone as I drove my van with a wet girl, a clean dog and a dirty boy home.  For the second time that afternoon, I stuck Josh in the bathtub and tried to explain to him that we do not pour coffee grounds on ourselves.  He simply said back to me echolalically, "We do not pour coffee grounds on ourselves" and went back to happily pouring water from a cup into the bathtub with utter delight.  

Dead Hummingbird

Tough morning. Daddy is out of town. Mom forgot to set the alarm. We woke up just as Josh's bus was about to pull up at our house.  I tried to keep my voice mellow and subdued but I think I ended up sounding serious and intense.  "Girls, Mommy made a mistake and forgot to set the alarm.  I really, really need your help right now!"

The girls picked up on Mom's stressed out tone of voice and scrambled out of bed.  They were very impressive in this mini crisis getting themselves (and even helping Josh) to get ready. Someone got Josh a glass of water.  The other one gave him a very crispy piece of toast. Teeth were not brushed thoroughly and we all had crazy hair but we were only 5 minutes late heading out the door with breakfast in our hands. It was a miracle of morning productivity yet it was clear that we were all adrenalinized and on the brink of snapping at each other any minute if anything were to go wrong.

Do you know what gave me the most energy in the midst of this flurry of activity?  It was the fact that Josh smiled through the whole thing.  My son's super power is that he does not pick up on other people's emotions.  Yes, that's often a downside in social interactions but in moments like these, when negative or stressful emotions are swirling around, it can be so helpful.  Josh woke up happy and was blissfully clueless that others were not.  He was glad to be awake and no one was going to take that away from him.

Unfortunately, we opened the front door and found a dead hummingbird at our doorstep.  I think one of the girls might have even stepped on it's little dead wing as she went out. Weeping ensued. It was like a little handful of cuteness and beauty had been crushed right in front of us.  They demanded that we give it a proper burial right then and there. We three females all felt the spike of sad, negative energy in the moment.  Aya.  What to do?

"Girls, girls, please.  I am begging you.  Can we deal with this later?"  I gently placed the hummingbird's corpse in what I called a "special resting place" under a purple bush in my front  yard.

By some miracle, the girls were both able to choose to be redirected.  Josh was already in the car, munching on an apple and smiling broadly for some unknown reason.  At this point in my life it is such a beautiful thing that at least one of my children is pleasantly resistant to being infected by the negative energy or emotions of others.  He does not get pulled into the panic or anger or sadness of the people around him.  He is just where he is at.  I find that sort of wonderful.  

I want to be someone who can smile and remain happy even when people around me are not.  What is the secret to not getting sucked into other people's stress or negative emotions?  Short of having autism, my guess is that the answer is to become a person who is deeply rooted in peace.  I don't even know what that would look like but I want it.  I want to have a spiritual and emotional force field to the destructive and dark vibes that swirl all around me in my day.  

Sometimes life hands you a dead hummingbird on your front door on a day when you are already running late.  Some days are just like that.  The next time I have one of those days, I am going to picture my happy, apple eating, emotionally unfettered son and try to remember that I do not have to sink into heaviness and despair.  It is possible to be free and happy even on chaotic, dead hummingbird days.  

Sand, Saltines and Consequences

The other day I walked into Josh's room to find that he had taken an entire sleeve of saltine crackers and had crumbled them up into fine, sand-like granules all over the floor of his room.  Playing with sand has always been a favorite activity for Josh.  Particularly, he loves to watch sand falling through his fingers.   He could sit for hours lifting a handful of sand up to eye level, watching it fall, then laughing like crazy. It must be wonderful and beautiful in a way that my non-autistic brain just can't understand.  I let him do it at playgrounds and at the beach because it makes him so happy and it keeps him busy while his sisters are running around.

While I'm glad for Josh's ingenuity in recreating this beach-like scenario in his own bedroom, I have to admit that I was livid when I found the cracker crumbs covering the floor in his bedroom and his bed.  The moment I walked into his room, Josh must have known that I would be upset.  Before I could say anything, he echoed something I have said in exasperation many times, "Ohhh, sweetie!" (except with a more loving, compassionate tone than what was about to come out of my mouth).

Now, usually, when I find a shocking mess in Josh's room (in the past it was poo on the walls or coffee poured into his desk drawers) I usually get him out of the way and use my massively pumping adrenaline to power me through a vicious, dragon-mama cleaning process.  Miraculously, this time I had the presence of mind to make my son deal with the consequences of what he had chosen to do.

I took a deep breath and said, "Josh, you need to clean this up."

"No" my almost-adolescent said to me.

"Yes, Josh.  You need to vacuum."

Josh sat there silently, not looking at me but clearly waiting to see if I would really make him face the consequences of his mess.  He has never used the vacuum before because he has had a strong negative reaction to the sound of the vacuum.  Along with lawn mowers, blenders and crying babies, vacuums have always been his auditory kryptonite.

I took his hand and walked him to the garage.  I pointed to the hand held mini-vac.  He knew exactly what this meant.

After he tried the mini-vac on his carpet (which didn't work) I made Josh go get the regular big vacuum.  I'm proud to say that we cleaned that room up without my ever touching an implement of cleaning.  I just gave verbal prompts or pointed and waited for him to figure it out.  It took a loooooooooong time but he did it!

Through this experience, I realized the following things:

1)     I still do way more FOR Josh than I need to.  I do things reactively, just to get them done when I should be letting/ making Josh do things for himself.  I need to curtail my motherly impulse to do things for my child and make him learn to do it by himself.

2)     All children (even kids with special needs) need to learn that there are consequences for the messes that they make.  If we don't give them some sort of immediate consequence that they understand, they will keep making those messes.  Since Josh is going to be living with me for a lot longer than when he turns 18, I am very motivated to train him to stop making messes like this.

3)     Josh can accomplish things that I often don't imagine him being able to do.  I had no idea until this day that he could handle the auditory challenge of the vacuum noise.  I wouldn't have guessed that he could wind the cord back up onto the back of our vacuum.  Josh can figure out how to get the vacuum back to the garage and he totally knows where it goes.  I could have gone a long time without realizing these things because I always do the vacuuming in our house.

So now, there is one more chore that I can get help with around our house.  A stumbling block has been turned into a stepping stone to something new!

Lipstick

How could I refuse?  The father of the kid who was hosting my girls for a play date offered to make me a fresh cappuccino on his shiny, new machine that appeared to do hundreds of beautiful things with coffee. They were all hanging out in their driveway with another family who was visiting them when I drove up to pick up my girls.  The father introduced me to his friends as "the mom of the family that we were just telling you about, some of our favorite people!" Dinner was already in the crock pot at home.  We had only one errand left and plenty of time to do it.

"Sure!  I'd love it!  Thank you."  I accepted his offer with gusto and gratefulness.

I looked back at my van at the bottom of their driveway.  I could see from the window that Josh was happily listening to music on headphones.  I left the side door open just in case he needed something or got unhappy.  My girls were elated to have a few more minutes to play with their friend.  The visiting family had just moved to my home town in Oregon so we had a lively conversation about favorite restaurants and pubs in the Portland metropolitan area.  It also turned out that this couple had gone to the college with my husband.  A few minutes turned into forty five with the assistance of a second coffee drink, the sharing of humorous anecdotes and happily occupied children.

Finally, I got my girls and my well-caffeinated, socially satiated self back into my van and headed to the library.  As I unloaded my three children, I realized that the contents of my purse were scattered all over the floor of the back half of my van.  As I picked everything up, I saw that one of my lipsticks had been opened and the contents almost completely missing.  Someone had eaten it like it was a soft, shimmery piece of candy.

I looked at my eldest child and saw that he had Estee Lauder #61 Pink Parfait all over his face and hands.

"Josh!  Did you eat my lipstick?"  I demanded, beginning to panic.

"Yes."  Josh responded, without shame or affect.

"Joshua.  We do not eat lipstick!  Mommy says, 'No eating lipstick!'  What is wrong with you?"  I began to rant at my child who had very little capacity to receive my lecture.

Josh must have been searching for gum or candy in my purse while he was waiting for us to finish our little bonus time in the driveway.  My lipstick was almost new so it looked like he had ingested quite a bit of it.  I had the faint memory of hearing something on the radio recently about how make up was actually toxic.  I was so frustrated with the thought that Josh's habit of eating non-food items was back.

And then I blurted words that should not come into a Mom's head much less out of her mouth.  "God, Joshua!  Why are you so weird?!"

The girls immediately jumped to Josh's defense.

"Well, you might look like you are eating it when you are putting it on, Mommy." said one of them.

"Mommy, that is not a very nice thing to say." said the other, perfectly embodying a corrective tone which I am sure that she picked up from me.  "We don't say things like that."

They were completely right but I wasn't ready to repent.  I was feeling too scared that Josh was going to die and too guilty that I had left him in the car for so long while I had indulged in spontaneous coffee and adult conversation.

I sent the girls ahead to go look for books in the library while I called poison control.  Of course, once I got through to poison control, they put me on hold for about a century.  I put on my headset, wiped off my son's face and scooted him into the library while I waited to talk to a real live person on the phone.  The girls had almost finished checking out a huge pile of books and DVDs each when the person came on the phone.  I explained our situation and asked him what I should expect.  The man told me that, although he doesn't recommend eating an entire lipstick in one sitting, Josh was not likely to have immediate dire consequences.

"The worst thing that you can probably expect is some diarrhea."

Just as the man from poison control was saying this, I looked over and saw that Josh had his hands on either side of a desk.  His back was bent forward ever so slightly and he appeared to be bearing down and pushing.

"Oh my God.  Girls!  Time to go!  Come on, Come on!  Josh, do you need to go to the bathroom?  Are you pooping?"

"No." He said, simply, with no understanding of why I was such a basket case.  He then calmly walked out and found his way to the car, sat down, and buckled himself in.

"Want music."  He said, as if to change the subject.

When the girls had landed in their seats, I took a deep breath and apologized to them about my inappropriate outburst and asked if we could just take a moment before we moved on.  They were already buried in their fresh books.  Josh was calm and happy with the radio on.

I held my head in my hands and poured out my fears, frustrations and guilt to God.  I desperately needed to come down off of the happenings of the past hour.  I asked if He would speak to me and give me some perspective on the situation.

Do you know what I felt like God said?

"Look at your purse."

"O-kay"

 I looked at my hot mess of a purse and this is what I saw:

-lots of Kleenex and napkins both old and new
-6 pens
-4 small toys
-many loose, crumbling M & Ms
-my wallet, bursting with random papers and receipts
-more random papers and receipts loosely floating around
-several small pieces of children's art work
-several plastic items of no discernible identity or origin
-12 lipsticks

Yes, I counted twelve lipsticks or lip glosses in my purse.  And I'm not even a person who wears much lipstick!  Why do I have so much lipstick and, for that matter, all the rest of the stuff?  Because I'm just someone who has an absolute inability to clean out my purse.  It's one of those random, weird things about me.  Try as I might to have an ordered life, you can pretty much be sure that my purse and my desk are going to be utterly chaotic at all times.

Driving home, I realized that the interpretation to the parable of my purse is that we are all weird in unique ways, big and small.  We all have parts of us, our personalities, our choices, things that we do which are inexplicable, idiosyncratic, useless and even counterproductive.  Oftentimes, we are blind to our own oddness.  But part of the meaning of family and friendship is that we love and accept one another despite our unique weirdness.

Why is my son so weird?  Today, that is not the right question.  The right question is "Am I going to love and accept him for who he is, weird behavior and all?"  What helps me to answer that question is another question.  "Do I realize that I am fully loved and accepted for who I am in all of my own weirdness?"

Yelling at Your Kids

Ok, you parents out there, are there any of you who never yell at their kids?  That was a rhetorical question.  If that's you, I don't want to know.

Actually, there was a time when I did wonder how mature, thoughtful, spiritual people could ever yell at their kids.  When Josh was about three years old, I remember talking to a fellow mom who was really struggling with yelling at her kids.  She was a little depressed and her husband travelled a lot.  She confided in me, assuming that all parents struggle with yelling at their kids, or losing their patience in their own way, now and then.  At that moment, I realized (but didn't say to my friend) that I had never yelled at Josh.  Sure, I cried, I despaired, I stressed, and I yelled at my husband but I never yelled at Josh.  It seemed impossible to yell at a severely intellectually disabled child.  Yes, he frustrated me plenty but he has such an aura of not being able to help himself that I found it easier to not let my frustration out on him.  And not having ever yelled at my only child, it was easy to think that I was just not "a yeller" and never would be.  After all I loved my child and was committed to compassionate, sensitive parenting in a safe, calm environment.

Then I had typically developing children.

My daughters are lovely people.  They are bright, charming and often delightful.  However, typically developing children have "normal" characteristics that Josh just never developed.  They try to manipulate situations.  They experiment with lying.  They speak disrespectfully.  They blame and compete with each other.  It turns out that these are things that take quite a bit of intellectual capacity to be able to do.

I've realized these are some of the things that really push my buttons and cause me to lose my cool when I am stressed. I am definitely no longer someone who has never yelled at their kids.  I don't think I'm a chronic, out-of-control yeller but I definitely could work on my tone just as much as my girls need to work on theirs.

Recently, I've been trying something that seems to be helping me.  I just respond to everything they say with "I'm not sure.  I'm going to have to think about that."  Or I just say, "I don't know."

"Mommy, you promised that we could watch TV!"

"I'm not sure."

"Moooommmm, Hope took my toy!  I want it back!"

"I don't know...."

Jim and Dr. Charles Fey, of the Love and Logic institute, call it "going brain dead" and it's one of the strategies that they suggest to help parents to stay calm in the midst of stressful situations.  They tell you to find a simple, neutral mantra like "that's so sad" and just say it over and over again, especially if your child is trying to draw you into arguing with them.

My girls don't love it when I respond that way but at least I am not adding my own emotional fuel to the fire.  It creates some space and some time for everyone (including me) to mellow out and not argue or yell.  Most times, coming up with a good argument only amps the situation more whereas a statement like "I don't know" slows things down in a helpful way.

I think that it's ironic that what I am finding useful in my parenting to me is to become a little bit like Josh and be intellectually impaired (or at least, disengaged) so that I might be emotionally wiser.  And the truth is, when things are heated, I often really don't know what to say or do.  But I do know that creating a brain break for all of us is a gift.

Persistence

This week I had a number of frustrating phone calls and interactions with service providers who are supposed to be providing services to Josh but do not or do not provide it well.  Rude or irritating comments made by various people that I talked with this week are still bouncing around in my head:

       "I'm sorry but you missed the deadline for that program.  I thought I told you about the deadline the last time we talked . . ."

       "I thought I already called you back about that."

       "This isn't the right department for that inquiry."

       "Ma'am, I'm just not allowed to tell you any more about that."

       "That program is no longer funded."

By the end of the week, I just wanted to scream from all of the pent up frustration from dealing with bureaucracy.  I mean, do they intentionally stack these organizations and governmental departments with unhelpful people on purpose to make already stressed out people like me feel even more stressed?

I consider myself a decently bright person with a lot of drive and persistence but sometimes I just want to give up when I face such tension producing interactions.  I  know that a lot of parents of kids with disabilities feel the same way.

As I've been battling the systems and paperwork that are involved in my job as a mom of a child with disabilities, somewhere in the back of my mind, I've been thinking about another woman in the Bible who was dealing with the many needs of her family and a more than frustrating system that was not serving her well. In Luke 18:1-8 Jesus talked about a widow who was desperate for justice.  She kept going to a judge, the face of the current governmental system that she had to work within, to seek to have her needs met.  According to the passage, this judge who "neither feared God nor had respect for people".  In other words, he didn't really care about doing the right thing or about helping people get their needs met. Yet, because of her persistence, he decided to grant her request, presumably because he was just sick of dealing with her.

Jesus tells this strange little story and then asks, "And yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?" Apparently, this persistent widow is an illustration of the kind of faith that He is hoping to find when it's time to really see who is a person of faith and who is not.

 Jesus affirms this kind of persistence.  In fact, He seems to equate it with "having faith".  I don't think that this means that Jesus wants to His followers to be annoyingly driven, demanding people.  But, there is an insistence on hoping for something and working toward that hopefulness that I do hear in Jesus' teaching about this woman.  Through this story, I hear Him saying, "Don't give up.  Keep asking."

These are a few thoughts about persistence as I consider this passage:

1)    Being persistent means sometimes skating on the edge of being annoying.  I think that sometimes, I avoid asking for things again and again because I don't want to be seen as demanding or out of touch or desperate.  But, you know what?  Sometimes you just have to not worry about how you appear and focus on doing what you need to do.

2)     Being persistent is risky.  It's easier to give up because, then, you don't have to face the pain of things not working out or the frustration of things not working out for a long time.  It's easier to not hope for something than to go on hoping and wanting something but not being confident that you'll get it.  Yet, despair is no real solution and the best option is to keep putting yourself out there.

3)     We should especially be persistent about asking for things from God.  At it's core, this story about the persistent widow is not a teaching about activism or a "how to" on navigating bureaucracy.  It's about prayer and being persistent in asking for what you need from God.  This is a good reminder to me that the state that I live in does not ultimately meet Joshua's many needs.  God does.  I have to work it out with God.

I want to be persistent like this widow.  I want to be determined to fight for what we need even in the face of an injustice, unkindness and lack of care.  I want to be that way the next time I talk to my insurance representative as well as our regional center service coordinator.  I want to be like this woman the next time I talk to Jesus about what I really need.