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.  

Adventures in COVID Testing

Headphones? Check.

Power Bars? Check.

Chocolates? Check.

I thought I was all set to take Josh to get a COVID test at a local community center.  We are planning to go to a cabin in the mountains over Thanksgiving with my sister's family and my mother so we all decided that we were going to test beforehand.  I talked to it about it the whole time we were driving there, promising him his beloved cheese quesadilla at Taco Bell afterwards.  The strategy was lots of communication, lots of bribing which usually works pretty well. He was in a very good mood and was echoing me eagerly.  

"After the nose test we're getting a quesadilla."

"After the nose test we're getting a quesadilla!"

I should have know that things were going to go south when we stood in line behind a set of nervous preschoolers.  They both started to cry as they moved toward the front of the line and saw the clinical set up inside the community center.  Children crying is kryptonite to my son so he started making anxious noises and putting his fingers in his ears.  

When we finally got up to the table where we were asked to show the QR code for our registration, I was greeted by two very tall, confident Asian men in their early 20s.  Through their PPE I could see that they both had haircuts and tattoos that communicated a high degree of hipness.  

I told them about Josh's autism and intellectual disability and they confidently had Josh sit down and came at his nose with a long swab.  Things went bad pretty quickly.  Josh was not at all interested in having something go up his nose and started screaming, "No! NO! NOOOOOO!" He started to flail his arms and kick with his feet.  The chair went flying.

The cool Asian men in PPE tried to hold him down enough to get 10 swirls of the swab in each nostril but it just got worse.  Josh screamed like he was being tortured.  For a second I thought about the faces of the people in line outside and wondered what they thought was going on and what might be in store for them when it was their turn to get tested.  It made me want to laugh except that I also wanted to cry.  

It was all going to hell in a hand basket when a short, older white woman came over and took charge, ordering the men to stop trying to hold him down.  She took a couple of deep breaths and we all followed suit.  We sat there breathing deeply together while everyone in a large auditorium were all probably very aware of us.  

Then the woman told Josh in a very calm but authoritative voice, "Josh, we need to put this in your nose.  I'm going to let you do it with me and we're going to count to ten."  She held out the swab and let Josh put his fingers around it while she also held onto it.  Then together, they stuck it up his nose and swirled it around.  He didn't like it but he did it.  And when she told him that we were done and that he had done a good job, he said, "Want chocolate."  I quickly gave him a piece of the leftover Halloween candy that I had in my purse.  The lady gave him the rest of the candy while I got my nose swabs.  Just as I was finishing, I saw that Josh was holding her hand and asking her for a quesadilla.  

As we drove from the community center to Taco Bell, I could literally feel the tension swirling around my body like someone had taken all of the stress from the past 7 months and and squished it into a tight bolus which I had swallowed.  Adrenaline pulsed down my arm like little arrows.  It's been a while since Josh has had a full scale melt down like that but, wow, he can still do 'em pretty impressively.

When we got back to the parking lot outside of his school,  I turned around to see my beloved son contentedly eating his prize from Taco Bell like the generally calm, happy person that he usually is. I love this kid so much it hurts.  I took a deep breath and said, "Ok Josh, let's go back to school."  He was quiet for a minute and then he said to me, "But first chocolate."  

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.  

The Blessing of a Meal Delivered

Sometimes I like to pick organic food from my winter front yard garden like onions, chard, kale, spinach, lettuce and herbs and prepare a healthy meal together with my three children.  The girls are much more likely to eat vegetables that they have helped to prepare. Even Josh gets into the kitchen activity by helping out with the washing and cutting.  I like how everything feels very warm and "hearthy" as we cook our dinner together.  We often end up singing together and I tell them stories of how my sister and I used to enjoy learning about the pleasure of cooking from my mom.

I'm just kidding.  The above paragraph is me falling into a fantasy of idyllic, unrealistic mommyhood.

Yes, there are days when I pick vegetables from my garden and whip up a salad.   Yes, sometimes I have a vision for dinner early in the morning, prep it all and pop it into the crock pot by ten in the morning.  Yes, the girls do sometimes help with dinner prep and they always set the table but it's rarely the happy, zappy picture that I imagine that it could/ should be.

But there are days, my friends, there are days when I feel like would rather stick knitting needles in my eyes than make dinner.

Do you ever approach 5pm and find yourself realizing that it would take every single ounce of motivation and energy that you have in your profoundly tired and spent body to cook dinner for your family?  Are you ever tempted to spend large amounts of money on cardboardy, unnutritous food YET AGAIN because you cannot bear the thought of pulling out that skillet to create something that comes from your own refrigerator?  Does the thought of doing dinner dishes fill your heart with heavy, gummy, sticky dread?

It was on a day such as this a few weeks ago that I experienced "The Blessing of a Meal Delivered." My husband had had a minor surgery on his knee and, therefore, had to ask for my help every time he needed a glass of water.  The girls were taking turns being sick.  Sleep was not good for anyone that week.  Joshua's home autism therapy was hitting some walls and needing much more of my attention.  It wasn't like my life was on fire but I was WORN DOWN.

A few friends from church rallied to deliver us a few meals.  Each meal was stupendously delicious because someone else made it and they infused it with love.  The picture at the top of this post captures one such beautiful meal.  Ironically, it was a vegan meal delivered by a family that is vegan.  I don't know if my kids even know what veganism is and they certainly have never had a whole vegan meal but we all devoured this dinner with deep appreciation.  German vinegary potato salad, super wholesome, nutty, chunky bread, well-spiced and tasty veggie burgers, it was all fantastic.  And it had been delivered by a smiling, empathetic person who cared about us. Truly, it was the grace of God made manifest in a real way to my somewhat mildly overwhelmed life.

If you know someone who is having a hard time, consider offering to bring them a meal.  Prepare something yummy and somewhat homemade.  My suggestion is that you bring it to them in either disposable or pretty serving dishes which they can return with no hurry.  Include something healthy and something chocolate.   And never, ever underestimate the blessing and power of a meal delivered.

School Pictures

Ok, you parents of kids with special needs out there, do you buy the school photos for your kids?  It's back-to-school time and I'm spending the evening doing paperwork that must to be turned into the school office by tomorrow.  Filling out the form for the school photo is giving me a moment of tension-filled pause.  I am finding myself wondering, "Do I really need to purchase school photos?"

The combination of autism, intellectual disability and visual impairment almost guarantees that my son's school photo will be seriously horrible.  School photo day is always a 9 out of 10 on the stress-o-meter experience for Josh.  The lines, the exhausted photographer, the bright lights, the demands to look in a certain direction; it's a recipe for disaster for a kid who has sensory issues and absolutely no motivation to smile.  I think that Josh's stress is only to be outdone by my level of stress when I get the photos back and I get to take a look at the snapshot that has been printed on the two 8 x 10's, eight 5 x 7's and 24 wallet sized photos that I had pre-ordered.  How can my incredibly handsome child look so . . .  special needs in every professionally taken school photo?

And yet, for the past 7 years that my son has been in public education, I have dutifully purchased the incredibly overpriced packages of school photos.  Did you know that this year "Package A" is $58?  If you combine that with an optional photo mouse pad, travel mug and "touch up" enhancement service, we're talking over a hundred bucks on a crap shoot of a photo.  Really?  In this age of digital cameras, do people really pay this much money for photo products which you have no option to preview before ordering?

Part of the problem is that the school photo order forms are sent home along with the back to school checklist and the emergency medicine form.  It's almost as if these are all absolute necessities for your child to be registered to go to school.  The assumption is that all good parents will collect and exchange school photos of their children throughout their years of schooling. And which elementary school parent in America wants to miss out on your child's class photo?  You feel like gotta have that unless you don't care about chronicling your child's childhood!

Well, my son is in middle school now.  There's no more class photos to be had.  I've spent all of the energy that I have for the evening writing this post and venting my frustration about the many years of uncute school photos of my extremely cute child.  I'm taking the plunge, people.  This year, I'm not going to order school photos.  I am relishing the prospect of writing one less check during this back to school season.  I'm trusting that the world will not end and that I will still be viewed as a competent, loving parent.  If you send me a school photo of your child this year, please know that I will not have one to give you.  But I am likely to be a happier, slightly less stressed person and so is my son.

What to Do When You are Anxious about Your Child

Recently, I went to a seminar on the topic of "The Future of Housing for Autistic Adults".  It was free and being held about five minutes from my house so I thought, why not?  This could be helpful information just to keep in mind as I think about my eleven year old son's long term future and I've got the mental bandwidth today.  Oh, how wrong I was.

As soon as I walked into the auditorium, I realized that I had made a mistake in coming with so little emotional preparation. The anxiety covered the room like a thick layer of peanut butter.  Parents of adult individuals with disabilities had that familiar look of exhaustion and desperation.  The few people that I tried to interact with at the refreshments table seemed to be carrying a thousand pound burden with them.  As the panel began to discuss, things went from bad to worse as the panel members (governmental leaders and activists) ping ponged in their presentation from defensiveness to bitter anger about the current housing situation for adults with developmental disabilities.

I tried to concentrate on the information that I was gleaning from the handouts about the history of housing for the developmentally disabled in our state and understanding the complex system of power and bureaucratic authority in this realm.  However, I couldn't block out the disturbing and disrespectful ways that the people on the stage were interacting with one another.  I found myself upset and, more than anything, anxious.  What does this mean about Josh's future when I can no longer take care of him?  Am I going to have to deal with a broken and dysfunctional governmental system that won't help me to meet his needs?  Am I going to be able to have any service providers that I can trust?  The anxious thoughts swirled around in my head until I finally decided that I needed to get the heck out of there, spilling coffee on my neighbor as I scurried out of my row.

In my almost 12 years of being a mom, I have observed that it is very natural to struggle with anxiety now and then about things having to do with our children.  After all, we have responsibility for these creatures and, whether your child has a disability or not, they all have complex needs and challenges.  The road ahead is fraught with danger and threats.  Our children have weaknesses in their bodies, minds and character.  We worry about what this might mean for them in their future.  To some degree, anxiety causes us to engage, to think ahead and to fuel us to solve problems.  Some might say that anxiety is a blessing.

Yet there are times when we see anxiety for what it is, a way that we say to ourselves, "This dark scenario that I have for the future is too scary,  too big, too bad for anyone to handle, including God."  At the root of anxiety is a belief that God's love for us will not be powerful enough to give us a good future and that we need to be in control.  Ultimately, unchecked anxiety will not be a useful tool but it will rule over us, crushing our peace, joy, and trust for God and other people.  Anxiety feeds on itself and on our anxious behaviors.  It will make  our minds unable to rest, our souls unable to worship freely and our bodies unable to function properly.

Therefore, as a veteran in the battle against anxiety, I would like to share with you some wisdom about how to not let anxiety rule your life.  When you realize that you are gripped by a dark scenario about your (or your child's) future that does not include the hope of God, I suggest the following:

1.     Talk to someone.  Tell someone exactly what is making you anxious.   Don't rehearse it over and over.  Don't chew on it like cud.  Just get it out of the warm, moist environment of your own head and let the antiseptic power of fresh air and sunlight start to do it's job on your anxiety.  If you don't have someone to talk to, journal it out.  Just get it out.

2.     Pray.  It doesn't have to be complicated.  I like Anne Lamott's suggested prayer, "Help!"  If you are too anxious to pray, ask someone else to pray for you.  At the root of prayer is the declaration that we need help and that we are not in control.  This is an excellent place to start.

3.     Give it over to God.  When I am feeling anxious, I often pray with my hands open as a sign that I am giving to God the heavy things that I am holding.  I also find it helpful to name the thing that is burdening me and praying out loud, "God, I give you my fear of ____" or "I want to trust you with ____".  It's helpful to renounce our perceived control over the uncontrollable things of life and to hand it over to God in a specific way.  Another word for this process is "repentance".  This word does not have to do with "burning in hell" as much as "letting go".

4.     Repeat.  Any significant spiritual and emotional process is usually not "one and done" but rather a process of continually relinquishing.  If the anxiety comes back, repeat steps 1-3.

5.    Remember, your child belongs to God.  Go.  Look at your child or a picture of your child.  This gorgeous person was made by God and is, right now, being parented by God.  His love for your child eclipses your own. Your job is to do your best to nurture and provide for this child but you will have limitations . . . big, fat limitations.  Your task is to do the best job that you can do while being a human being.  God gets this.

6.    Commit to living a non-anxious life as much as you can.  Take time to rest.  Take time out of the swirl of life to make simple plans for moving forward.  Feed the your soul with messages of God's love for you.  Today, I did this by cutting some roses from my garden and putting it on my desk just for me.

7.     Locate areas of avoidance and seek out help and accountability.  I find that avoidance and anxiety are dance partners.  For example, I have an ugly, mean ol' stack of papers on my desk right now that I am avoiding (out of the anxiety that I have about them) yet it's presence daily fuels my anxiety.  I have shared about this stack of papers with two friends who are praying for me and supporting me as I try to clean out patterns of avoidance in my life.  I'm taking one step at a time and it's working.

8.   If anxiety is having a long term, immobilizing grip on your life you may need to get help from a professional like your doctor, a therapist or a pastor/ leader of your spiritual community.  If you find that anxiety is affecting your sleep, eating, relationships over time please do not be afraid to address deeper needs of your life with more significant resources.

By the way, I am highly aware that battling anxiety about our children, our lives, our future, anything is not a simple eight step process. It is truly a battle.  But it's a worthy fight.  Don't give in to anxiety. It's a rabbit hole of darkness and you don't want to live there.  We were not meant created to walk in anxiety but in dependent trust in God.  He cares about you and He cares about your children. He has a good future for your life if you can trust in Him with it.

Finally, I would like to remind you that anxiety is not love.  One mom shared with me that after her child got very ill, she stopped sleeping for days embracing vigilance as a sign of her love for her child to the point where she sacrificed her own health.  God spoke to her that she does not need to prove her love for her child or to prove that she's a great mom by giving herself to hyper-vigilant worry.   I've known and prayed for many children who have been very adversely affected by the leakage of their parents' burdensome anxiety.  We don't love our children by being anxious. We love them by trying to walk in spiritual health and freedom.

How are you doing as you battle anxiety in your life?  What are you finding to be helpful?

Vacationing Without Josh

My husband and I were standing at the beach with our arms around each other watching dolphins frolic in the water.  Our girls were entertaining themselves for the seriously long time, playing nicely together as if they always behaved like sisters who are best friends.  There was just enough sun and breeze to make you feel alive and alert.  It was a marvelously beautiful day.

Alex let out a mournful, guilty sigh.

"What's wrong?" I asked him.

"I feel relaxed," he said sadly, looking like a big dog who had eaten the Sunday roast but knew enough to feel conflicted about it.

I knew what he meant.  It was the first time we had ever done a special family day trip without Josh and it was so nice.  One on one parenting is a heck of a lot easier than the zone defense that we have to use when we have Josh.  It's usually, "You take the girls.  I'll take Josh."  The girls are easier to herd together and Josh needs the full attention of one adult.  Talking to each other when we are anywhere with our three kids is almost always out of the question.

We were taking a day at the beach with just the girls because Josh had summer day camp that week but the girls did not.  Alex has Mondays off so we took a traffic-free drive to the beach, played at the beach for several hours, had a lovely lunch together then went strawberry u-picking.  There were hardly any ripe strawberries but it didn't matter because the girls had fun running up and down the fields while Alex and I took in the landscape and caught up about life.

How can having such a lovely, restful day make us feel so bad?

Because part of why we were able to relax was that Josh was not with us and this felt strange.

We were not constantly worried that a nearby child's cry would set our son off in a tantrum.  We were not watching to see if he ate sand or other non-food items.  We were not worried about him suddenly declaring that he had to go to the bathroom and us needing to find one OR ELSE.  We had come to this place not making any mental notes about where the nearest hospital was just in case he had a medical emergency.

No, we were just with two typically developing, fully toilet trained, children who could occupy themselves through imaginative play and reading books.  They were not guaranteed to be well behaved at all times but you could at least reason with them.  Typically developing children have a much wider array of things that you can threaten or bribe them with.  This is useful on vacations.

Being with just Hope and Anna felt so easy compared to being with all three of them.  Alex and I found ourselves surprised by our ability to wind down, even with our two exuberant, chatter-bunnies in tow.  At least they were joyful, self-entertained bunnies.

A few years ago I met with a woman who has an adult son with autism.  When I solicited her advice for long term family survival, she told me one thing:  take vacations without your child with special needs now and then.  I smiled, nodded politely and thought to myself, "No way am I ever going to do that."

The thought of going away and enjoying family time without the child who needs me the most was unfathomable.  How could I truly rest knowing else that someone else was watching Josh?  We do date nights without our kids and even overnights sometimes but it seemed so strange to have "family" time without Josh.  What would that be saying about his presence and role in our family?  That he wasn't welcome?  Or truly one of us? That he was too much work to be included?

Well, now that Josh is 11, I have reached the point of seeing where my friend was coming from.  This fall, the girls have asked that we go to Disneyland (for the first time) rather than having birthday parties.  Realizing that Disneyland would be an overstimulating hell for Josh (and that he'd be saying, "I want car" within the first expensive hour) we have decided that we are going to go without Josh.  I am going to embark on the gargantuan task of arranging childcare and training a number of different people in our community to be with Josh so that the rest of us can be gone for 4 days.

And what are we saying in making this choice?  I am saying that it is okay, even good, for us to have family time without Josh sometimes, especially if we are going to do something that he would not enjoy anyhow. Beyond that, I am realizing that doing well in the long marathon of raising Josh means taking respite times away from him, as in individual parent, as a couple, and as a family.  This is a tough and unexpected part of the journey but I feel that I'm being led forward by a sense of peace and conviction. I'll let you know how it goes.

Stories

Someone recently asked me about a sentence at the end of my intro paragraph on the front page of my blog.  I have written that "I believe that stories save us."  What do I mean by that?  In general, I mean that I have experienced that as the stomach craves food, and as our skin craves touch, our brains crave stories.  That's why reading is such a pleasure and that wise preachers illustrate their points with stories.  This is why we watch TV, go to movies and listen to news on the radio, there is something deep and powerful in us that seeks stories.   Stories give us encouragement, meaning, perspective, connection, relaxation, challenge and pause.  My girls are always begging me to tell them stories about things that I did when I was a kid (like the time I stole a bag of crackers from a store when I was four . . . but that's another story).

But I have another illustration about how stories save us.  This week has been a very difficult one for me and my kids.  Everyone is still adjusting to the new school year.  Afternoons in our home have been filled with tantrums, whining and general unhappiness.  We've had several occasions where a child (who shall not be named) has gone up to her brother and screamed in his face, causing him to scream and begin hitting his head (very unpleasant).  I have been battling a headache that could not be vanquished by neither copious amounts of ibuprophen nor desperate prayer.  I needed help.

In the midst of this grumpy week, I experienced a small but welcome miracle. We had recently checked out a "book on cd" from the library of Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder.  It's one of the beloved "Little House on the Prairie" books from my childhood and I was eager to share it with my girls.  I put it on and they were instantly calmed and mesmerized as the narrator told stories about farming, and family meals and animals and one room school houses.  My girls were able to let go of their complaints of each other as they laughed together about the antics of Almanzo, the main character, and his siblings.  I put some watercolor paints in front of them and they quietly painted pictures on recycled paper as they listened to the stories for almost two straight hours!  It was so tranquil and quiet under the stable leadership of the cd narrator that Josh even ventured out of the refuge of his room to ask for a snack.  

As parents (and as friends, as teachers, as ministers, and so many other things), it would do us well to remember the gift of story.  We ought to find ways to connect by sharing our stories.  We should work on the art of telling a good story.  We need to recognize how we are helped by the right kind of story and seek out quality stories to help us where are in our lives.  How might you be blessed by the power of a good story today?