Chock full o'memories

  

This week out of the year is always a busy time for us in our family.  It is our daughter's birthday.  School is in full swing. We have other family members' birthdays.  Plus, there are loved ones we have lost- both family and friends.  

So, it is bittersweet.  

9/11... Another sad memory.  We all remember where we were of course.  I am no exception: A young mom with a two-year-old and in the first trimester with my second child.  Still new at the whole "mom thing."  Couldn't reach my husband since all the cell phone lines were busy.  Ended up going to a friend's house to pray.  It was all we could do, and in retrospect, it was the best thing we could do.  

I remember the NYC skyline well, as I could see it from my room in college.  I took them for granted really.  Just part of the scenery.  But, I remember the first time I saw the towers up close- just years before everything came crashing down.  

And, I always loved, after my years of college, that I could see the skyline on one of my favorite brands of coffee.  But, the towers aren't even on the coffee canister anymore like they used to be.  They are gone along with so many people from our world: 

brave, heroic, frightened, young, old, friends, family... 

Some knew where they were headed for all eternity. 

Others didn't have a clue.  

This is the one thing that reminds me how important it is to continue to share my faith in God with others.  

We never know what tomorrow may bring.

  "Keep your eyes on Jesus, who both began and finished this race we’re in. Study how he did it. Because he never lost sight of where he was headed—that exhilarating finish in and with God—he could put up with anything along the way: Cross, shame, whatever." Hebrews 12:2, The Message Version.

Losing My Religion . . . or Hair; no, what I really mean is my hair

So, part of the reason I have been pretty quiet on the blog lately (besides summer craziness) is because I've been spending a lot of time with a crazy, needle-happy dermatologist lately.  You see, my hair has been falling out.  Not I-just-had-a-baby-and-look-at-this-craziness level.  No.  Way, way worse than that.  For months and months.

My mom went through radiation treatments to kill a brain tumor when I was kid.  Her hair never really grew back in.  The brain tumor disappeared, though, so I thought it was a pretty even trade.  When I was a kid.  And it was my mom.  You know - not me.  My mom died right after I graduated from college, in spite of the cancer cure, from the radiation damage done to her brain.  Since my 10yo just asked me what it was like to be alive before women were allowed to vote, you know that was a Long, Long Time Ago.  But then, this spring I saw my mom's face starting to show up in the mirror as I quickly walked past it, and I pretty much got hysterical.  You see, I've pretty much been counting on my hair to carry me through life.  And two weeks ago, the dermatologist gave me the results from a biopsy and there was no reason to calm down.  Scarring Alopecia.  Some people's immune systems start to attack their hair follicles and kill them.  So you can't grow any more hair.


You go bald.


Maybe a delightful little fringe around the edges.


Even if you are a woman.


They don't know why it starts.  Stress.  Allergies.  Some treatments might stop the hair loss, most don't.


But you can't grow any more hair.


Yes, I am not even a little bit ashamed to say that I could barely get out of bed for a few days after hearing this news, even if some of you right now are thinking "Well, at least it isn't cancer."  It's only hair, right?  But, I still have days that staying in bed is a big temptation.  There are so many things just swirling around in my head.
#1) I am not really a vain person.  At least, I didn't think I was.  God couldn't transfer this diagnosis to somebody who Needs to Learn a Lesson?
#2) I have never even really WANTED to be one of those women whose sweet and gentle spirit is shining beautifully out of her face and making everybody forget what she really looks like.  I never trust those people.  They are too nice.  Unsurprisingly, I don't think I'm close to being one of them, either.
#3) My husband has always been better looking than I am.  And nicer.  Yet he isn't going bald.  And he COULD go bald and would not elicit horror-stricken stares that I am sure are coming my way.  And he will probably now get sympathetic looks when he is w/ me.
#4) If I *am* going to end up looking like a freak show, it seems like I will have to start dressing more carefully.  That seems like an unfair amount of work for a homeschooling mom AND counter-productive to what God would want if he really wants me to be focusing on that inner beauty thing.  And I clearly have a lot of work to do on that front.
#5) Oh for crying out loud, it turns out I really am vain.  So, now I'm going bald and I find out I'm a great big sucky hypocrite and pretty much not living by the faith that I claim to have.

Deep breath.

OK, here's what else I'm thinking (thanks in part to hours of crying on the phone with my two amazing sisters).  I'm not sure I have the faith I need to get through this with God.  God and I have been through some tough things.  My mom had cancer.  She was healed miraculously (and I don't write that lightly), and then died anyway.  One of my closest friends got cancer and died.  My house caught on fire.  My marriage almost burned up along with it.  And somehow I could still say with confidence that I am trusting God's plan and following Him.  I still want to serve Him and glorify Him in whatever way I can.  I would have said that He is my Faith.  But now, . . . I just feel broken.  I'm not sure how to even pray in faith about this.  Do I pray for healing?  For God to "use this for His glory"?  (Perhaps you can tell by the quotation marks that I might have some less-than-faith-filled thoughts about that.)  So, maybe He has been my Religion.  Maybe He is somebody I've just been paying lip service to, while I go on about my daily busy-ness.

You know how sometimes you hear the same song over and over on the radio and you start to wonder if you're supposed to be hearing a Message or what???  Well, I can't even begin to tell you how many times over the past 2 weeks I have heard Amy Grant sing "We pour out our miseries, God just hears a melody.  How beautiful, the mess we are."  And guess what?  I AM a great big mess.  About as far from a beautiful mess as can be.  But perhaps I do have some things I can learn.  Perhaps God does see me as beautiful.  Perhaps this is the end of my Religion and the beginnings of Faith.  Maybe what I really thought was me being weak before was me finding ways to stand on my own and being proud of what I thought God had taught me and that I had learned so well.  See all of that self in there?  Perhaps I need to lose my hair to stop claiming credit for God's work in my life.  But you know what?  I would still rather have pretty hair.  So, this is obviously just the beginning of my journey.

~Stephanie

Thoughtlessness

My day was turned on its head by thoughtlessness.  It was an ordinary enough day - taking kids to breakfast, soccer camp, play dates.  A relatively good day.  Until one thoughtless act threw me into an emotional tailspin that I'm still struggling to come out of.  I'm not sure that blogging my messed-up thoughts and emotions is the best way to deal w/ them, but since 2 chocolate chip cookies and a Dr. Pepper didn't help, and logging 6 miles on my elliptical didn't help, I'm just going to go w/ some words.

On the surface - especially given that I live in NJ - this kind of thoughtlessness seems to happen every day.  A guy pulled out in front of me while I was driving.  Not such a big deal, right?  But I was traveling on a pretty fast local road; I was probably going 50mph.  And this guy was pulling out from a store parking lot, giving every indication that he was going to stop.  By the time I realized he wasn't stopping AND wasn't stomping on the gas to get out there ahead of the mini-van-summer-activity mom that so many people seem to dread getting behind, I could see that he was about 60, w/ a cell phone glued to his left ear, and he didn't even turn his head to the left to see if anybody was coming.  Mr. Black Audi, as I am going to call him, was leisurely pulling onto a road where there is routinely fast, heavy traffic, only 1 lane in either direction, and no shoulder to speak of.  Without stopping OR looking.  Right in front of me.  I had no chance of stopping in time.  I laid on my horn, slammed on my brakes anyway, and did my best to steer between the oncoming traffic and him.  I have no idea - none - how I made it through that narrow space w/o hitting anybody.

As I watched in my rear-view mirror, Mr. Black Audi, who had at least gone over onto the little bit of pavement at the side of the road, appeared to pull full speed into the traffic lane and continue his journey behind me pretty much unscathed by what he had almost done.  All I could think was "I CANNOT believe how THOUGHTLESS that guy was!  We could have been killed!"  Over and over again.  Thoughtless!!!

I'm not sure why or how this one act was so different that it set me off.  I'm a mom of 4 relatively young kids, so I'm surrounded by thoughtless acts every day.  From bathroom habits to fun fights w/ siblings, kids are just not thoughtful people, for the most part.  I do most of my driving in NJ, so I've had countless people pull out in front of me, cut in front of me, tailgate me - you name it, I've probably seen it.  The people here are not calm, sedate drivers.  I've even had a gun pointed at me from a neighboring car when I lived in Philadelphia - although maybe that wasn't thoughtless - w/ less of an adrenaline response.  Waitresses mess up my orders, doctors offices lose my records and bloodwork, people say they are going to call and don't - thoughtlessness is a fact of life.  And I've definitely had close calls on the road before.  Like I said, I live in NJ.  I travel Rt. 130 regularly.  Need I say more?  I usually consider these close calls as entertaining stories to see if I can get a bigger reaction from my husband than just raised eyebrows and move on.  No crying, no yelling.  Well, maybe a gasped "oh my WORD!"

I also have done more than my share of thoughtless acts.  I zipped through a pedestrian crosswalk w/ an elderly gentleman in it, for crying out loud.  I have glanced down at my phone to read a text while driving and drifted alarmingly close to a neighbor's travel lane.  I have changed lanes without fully exploring that enormous blind spot that comes w/ a mini-van and caused others to slam on their brakes.  And those are just some of the things I've done on the road.  I have been thoughtless to people I know and people I don't in many ways, and I look back now and can see only a small part of the pain I must have caused.  This is so humbling for me to think about.

I also don't usually struggle w/ offering mercy to others.  It is a true spiritual gift for me, sometimes to the detriment of my ability to stand up for what is right.  This can be a great thing when dealing w/ friends and acquaintances.   Even when I am driving, I often have a little voice in my head saying "I wonder if they are rushing to take a sick kid to the doctor right now."  Or "Maybe they are having one of those every-thing-I-do-is-just-making-me-later-and-later mornings."  I have been deeply hurt by friends (and not-friends) but can often see how they must be thinking and can usually forgive them and move on.  More days than not, I think about the woman kneeling at the feet of Jesus, waiting for the punishment that was her due, and I know that I am she.  I have deserved those stones.  Whether it is true sin or just thoughtlessness, I work not to cast stones at others.  But today -- well, I think part of the reason I am so unbelievably upset, hours later, is because today I got up from the feet of Jesus, turned "just thoughtless" into sinfulness, and I threw a stone.  Hard.

I do not really remember feeling angry, exactly.  And I certainly had no plans to confront Mr. Black Audi.  I thought we got separated at the next traffic light, and I was relieved.  But he showed up right behind me at the second traffic light, and I was suddenly overwhelmed by the urge to let him know that, more than anything else, he had been incredibly selfish and thoughtless.  So I put on my hazards, and got out of my car and ran up to his window.  I also didn't intend to yell at him.  But, suprisingly enough (hah!) he didn't roll down his window right away.  And so in order to make sure he could hear me, I found myself shouting at him "I AM THAT WOMAN THAT YOU ALMOST HIT BACK THERE!"  And as I shouted, even though he inched his window down a bit, I found myself gesturing wildly and getting incredibly, incredibly upset, and I could not stop shouting.  "DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU ALMOST DID?  YOU PULLED OUT WITHOUT EVEN LOOKING!  YOU SHOULD NOT BE ON A CELL PHONE!"  The meticulously-groomed woman next to him that appeared to be his wife was gasping dramatically and rather prissily (in my humble, non-judgemental opinion) so I included her: "AND YOU! YOU SHOULD NOT BE LETTING HIM USE A CELL PHONE WHILE HE IS DRIVING!"  By this time the man was looking at his steering wheel and mumbling "I'm sorry."  And that, that is what somehow made me searingly angry.  That is when I do remember just filling up w/ fury.  And it's making me cry just to write what I said next.  "I'M SORRY?!?!?!  I'M SORRY ISN'T GOOD ENOUGH!  WE ARE NORMAL PEOPLE AND WE COULD HAVE BEEN KILLED AND I'M SORRY WOULD NOT HAVE FIXED THAT.  YOU DON'T!! TALK!! ON A CELL PHONE!!!"  And by then I was crying and realizing that traffic was moving past us and people were staring at the raving lunatic, definitely-not-normal person, me, who was yelling at a nice guy in a black Audi.

Ugh.  So I got back into my car and maintained relative calm for the 15 minutes it took me to get to my friend's house.  Where I totally and completely fell apart, in small part because so often we are saved from our thoughtless, careless behaviour, but there are never any guarentees.  I have been saved from my own carelessness.  I once took my eyes off one of my boys for about 2 seconds when he was playing on a flotation device in water that was over his head before he could swim.  I looked back in time to see him in the water, struggling, and he went under briefly, but I got to him by the time he struggled back up.  He was and is fine.  I was making baby food for my daughter and without thinking put my finger into the blade of the hand-blender and pressed "on."  There was a lot of blood, but thanks to my fingernail, I didn't lose a finger.  Like I said, I have done more than my share of thoughtless things.  By God's grace, I have never caused the kind of damage that could have been done to us today.  And by God's grace, we were not harmed today.  But I don't have that guarentee, and neither does anybody else.  And some people don't know that.  How can they not know that?  How can they not at least TRY to be more careful?

Somehow I have started to live life more aware of how easy it is to be seriously wounded.  People die even when they are wearing seatbelts or motorcycle helmets.  People have insurance but still have to replace a crashed vehicle themselves or rebuild a house after a fire.  Those words you spew out in anger at your child sometimes aren't forgotten with an apology. 

But the other part of my heavy heart is what I did today.  I got up and threw that stone.  I completely lost it over a relatively common, thoughtless act.  Was it a slightly irrational speech that will make that man a more thoughtful and better driver?   Or was I, too, thoughtless, doing who-knows-what damage with my self-righteous stone?


~Stephanie