Living and Breathing

The world seems upside down and inside out! My mind, usually reliable for a bit of writing, feels dull witted. Wisdom is in short supply. I tilt and whirl through each day expecting one of the days to look familiar. I want to return to the days I remember years ago. What a ridiculous desire given my penchant for creating chaos and railing against society at every turn. But somehow those days now seem friendly and manageable. 

Spending time with friends of mine who are struggling to grasp the accelerated progression of dementia in their loved one is tough. Really tough! Listening as they make decisions that must be made creates an ache in my heart. No one wants these kinds of decisions to make. It is made more difficult by the cruel dementia symptom that causes their loved one to be cruel and paranoid and to transition to their "normal" self for a few hours. The decision making must be based on the darker side of the symptoms rather than the periods of clarity and that is what I call "mountain mean". No one is the winner. Moments of acceptance, moments of grief, moments of anger and frustration and moments of wanting desperately to escape the truth and pretend things will get better weave throughout the day. The stress creates mental and physical symptoms that threaten to overwhelm the family. I know. I have walked this path in my own life. Yet, here with my friends facing the horror of progressive dementia, my experience can only be shared as love and support. It is maddening to be so close and yet so far from helping. I want to rush in and slay this dragon of dementia and restore their former happy and fruitful lives. I will not get that opportunity. My contribution can be to walk beside them as they negotiate and make their decisions. Life is not fair. What is, is! I experience a flash of rage. I want to kill this awful dementia. I want to flame my anger and hurt into a vengeful sword that will destroy this hideous enemy. The flash passes and I surrender to the truth, the "what is" of this journey. I ask God to use me here in these moments. I ask Him to help me push pass this need I have to fix what I know I cannot fix. I ask Him to move through me and create in me the ability to simply love and comfort my friends. I ask to allow me to share some of their pain, to bear the heavy burden of this dreadful time. I ask Him to grant the peace that passes all understanding and then I feel the dark rage rise up in my throat. I take several sharp breaths. I surrender again and again and again. Loving God is often like showing up to get assignments that I know will break me down. If He is to use me at all I have to be broken. I have to surrender. My rage bows before Him and surrenders. Again and again and again! Please God pour out Your love through me and into the lives of my friends. And, Father, it hurts. It really, really hurts. I surrender! Again. So much surrender as I write tonight. My will does not want to bend the knee. His will, not mine, I pray!

Wow!

I just deleted an entire post that I wrote a few months ago. It was embarrassing. Wordy. Convoluted! Whatever thoughts I meant to convey were lost in the drivel I managed to write. 

I do not do well when I make an attempt to be wise and express myself with that in mind. My mind makes a mockery of the wisdom I attempt to convey. I sound more like a wino on speed. Granted that may be a comparison many people will fail to understand. I, through a stroke of incredible "luck" have personal experiences to draw on for that comparison. 

Tonight, I am free of the burden of believing I have wisdom to share. What a relief!

Childlike

 I am 70 years old. Yet, when I think of myself I envision a young person. Not a teen-ager. A young person who is timid and tries to hide behind things so as not to be seen. I am protective of that child. I avoid encouraging her to come forward and participate with life. She is timid from the ground up. I am, as an adult, tethered to her. I am unable to go on without her. 

(This is how my ptsd works) I left my bedroom door open and a breeze blew across my back and shoulders. It felt like heavy breath)  I immediately visualized a man coming up behind me with a knife and whipped around to see him. There is always relief as I realize there is no one lurking in the house waiting to hurt me. It is PTSD and, as such, can provoke short, intense moments that illicit real-time reactions. . Knowing these moments will come does, in no way, minimize the surprise.      

"Grandma, I need to know what kinds of mental health problems are inherited and are part of our family."  A brief conversation ensued between me and my 16 year old grandson about the various mental health challenges in his bloodline. "Is sleep paralysis inheritable?" Finally, the door opened into my world of mental health challenges but not in the way of inherited traits, though many exist in our family. My grandson's questions called me out! In many ways his challenges should mirror mine. Early childhood trauma, extreme and sustained lack of stability in daily life and ptsd cleverly disguised as bi-polar in some cases and, most certainly, as anxiety, chronic depression, alcoholism and drug addiction. I promised to make an account of family traits, specifically mental health traits.

His request and comments woke up the part of me that wants very much to use what I have learned about myself over many years of intense therapy sessions. I immediately drew up an inner woman.\Because of the pain and extreme emotions I experienced during many years of intense therapy, I called up an inner woman to alleviate the risk of recalling and attempting to manage the story I want my grandson to know. I pray what I have to share will encourage him to seek out professional help for his own depression and anxiety.                                                                                                                            

Not Today

Not today, I thought, not today! I thought of several things at once and none of them fit. My thinking challenges me with thoughts and actions I could take, maybe even should take, but the next thought is "Not today!" 

I have a good brain." Lots of potential", is what I have been told most of my life. You could have been this or that if you had chosen. Having lots of potential mentioned to me with silence following afterwards seems designed to draw me into a state of morbid thinking. Thinking of myself as a failure because I was born but predictably (heavy sigh) forfeited the golden ring of reaching my potential. Worse yet the silence lingering in the air leaves an undefined goal and I have missed it. What "it" is eludes me. The fact that it eludes me does not free me from a vague guilt and a hint of shame that I have somehow failed. Worse yet, the silence leaves a gaping maw of unspoken potentials, undefined yet seemingly important. 

What am I to do at that point? Shrug my shoulders in the face of potential lost? Should I convey a sense of disappointment in my own self? I could do that well with one eye on the accusers and one eye winking at the absurdity of the false pretense posture I assume.

My life is fraught with monumental mistakes in judgement. I admit it is as obvious as a wart on the end of my nose that I squandered my potential. The problem is that I do not grasp what was expected of me. Clearly it was unvoiced. What a delicious set-up! We will have a baby girl filled with potential. We agree never to mention what that means or even hint at it until that baby girl fails a few times. At some point we will approach her with disappointment in our voices as we tell her she had so much potential, but she failed to use it. Then as she forms a response of protest, we will assume the posture of resignation as we nod our heads and make little "Hmm" sounds dismissing her with impunity.

When I put it that way I see "them" as wicked little creatures bent on destroying me. Even that assumption puzzles me. I have questions. No one has answers. Evil arrives in quiet moments. Evil is a genius shape shifter. Puzzled and without a clue how to repent of the sin of not living up to my potential I hesitate. In that moment of hesitation, I see myself struggling under the burden of potential, but I don't care.

There I have said it! I don't care if I ever reach my potential. Better yet, if I should reach it, let me know. I can't imagine I will recognize it. Shocking! I am the girl who looked at her potential and shot it the bird! 

My peace has returned. My happiness flows out of me to others on this journey! When I see Jesus I am going to ask Him to explain "potential" to me. 

I Know A Man

I know a man who pushed the envelope, went to the limit, laughed in the face of possible death, had no fear when he committed to an insane thought and knew when he had gone too far and blown it out. He felt rather than knew the shifting and rearranging of brain cells brought on by years of neglect and lack of adequate nourishment. 
I know a man who faced, at a young and tender age, the abject desolation of abandonment and the carnage of a world imploding in the void that was left. Each day that passed another piece of the familiar tore loose flying off into the strength of the pull of the void. Pieces of who he was and who he could become flew side by side into the gaping darkness until the wound of being left alone closed up enough to shut off the void. The brain began a healing of sorts replacing the missing pieces with a little of this and a little of that in a random pattern.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         
I know a man who emerged from the cocoon spun of sorrows and broken dreams believing he could stave off the loneliness if he did not care at all. He did not know he left the cocoon ill prepared for loneliness and not caring at all would attract an absence of affection that, in the years to follow, would crush him.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      

What I Have Learned

I have learned that all the best intentions, all the best ideas, all the love anyone can have and all the true desire to make a change in someone's life, someone you love very much, does not mean things will work out,  I naively believed I could make the difference in my grandson's life I told him I would always have his back, that he was safe with me, that I would always be there for him. I meant it. I really meant it from the bottom of my heart. I was wrong. I was powerless to keep my many promises and had no authority or power to override anyone when it came to the decisions being made in my grandson's life. I stood and watched through the years knowing full well that the dramas playing all around him were robbing him of his joy and his ability to trust and his belief that things would turn out o.k. I tried to make a safe place for him but I could not make it safe enough to protect him from the insanity of influences that took him far beyond his ability to cope with their reality. I felt it. I screamed inside and schemed to find a way to draw him closer In the end I had to stand silently and watch as his stresses and challenges rose over his head, watch while the police were called in and he was forced to the point of snapping and I saw him look to me and I could not make a dent in the system or in the pain in his mind and body. I watch now as a fifteen year old young man moves out of my world to a place emotionally where I cannot seem to reach him. I hand my fear to God and pray for my grandson. I am so terribly sorry that I could not hold up my part of the bargain and the promises and that I still am powerless. My Father who is in heaven is not powerless. I pray asking for mercy and guidance and protection of my grandson. I know, all too well, the journey ahead of him if he is to overcome the forces that have pulled at him his entire life. I beg God to forgive us for the harm we bring to children in our own brokenness and through our own slavery to self-will. I pray God will restore, heal, bless and bring peace to my grandson's body, mind and spirit. In Jesus name! Amen!

Day After Christmas 2021

 2021 seems a blur of significant events enhanced by the suffering and life changing presence of COVID 19 and it's children named collectively as variants. Waiting for 2022 to show up fresh faced and full of innocent hope without a care in the universe. I see the face of the first day of January peeking around the corner and she is not smiling. Not even a hint of a smile. I can't decide if the look I see is filled with malice or a cringing, unspoken "oops"!

A Silent Sentinel

Evening fell pushing a full moon high up into the early evening sky. Three huge ducks flew through the twilight sky honking back and forth to one another. I found myself wondering what it must have been like when the sky was filled with homeward bound ducks honking and forming an aerial V shape formation. Now I wonder which direction was considered home. The journey south for the winter or the journey north for the remainder of the year. 
I watched a documentary tonight. It was about John Lennon and Yoko Ono. Before I turned the t.v. off Yoko Ono was talking about her childhood in Japan. Her family was prestigious and wealthy. She lived a charmed life. Japan was bombed and her world changed. Her next memories are of living in the country, foraging for food with nothing left of the lifestyle she knew before the bombing. She said she spent many years looking for the way back to a home that no longer existed. The moment I heard those words I realized they told my story. Years of looking for the way back to a home that no longer existed says everything about the illusion I held dear to myself and the dream I pursued despite all evidence to the contrary.
Silent Sentinel is an odd name to give a post that appears to be anything but silent. When I began this post, I had a vision of a watchman on a tower and I felt the dark, foreboding of approaching doom. But that vision has been ruined by Game of Thrones and many other movies with the towers, darkness and ominous unknowns lurking in the shadows. 
I considered renaming the post, caught a glimpse of my ego strutting back and forth as if the title on this post in this blog matters worth a tinker's damn.  The title stays. The ego can shuffle off to Buffalo for all I care at this moment.                                              

Seriously!

Watching Robert lose ground one tiny bit at a time is an excruciating watch. I feel as if I have been on the palace watchtower straining and searching for signs of an approaching enemy. When I catch sight of the first troops they are a wisp of dust stirred by their horse's hooves. As days pass and I look again and again I recognize the fierce advance of warriors still far, far away. Lately, I hear the faint sound of hooves as they strike the ground. I watch, knowing the fight that cannot be won is on the way. I watch as one who is prepared for the coming adversary yet cannot tear my eyes away from the horizon wishing I could, of my own fierce will, turn the adversary away and claim the victory. 
Robert is currently in a nursing home in a town about 34 miles from our home. He is under "rehab" status at this point. Soon I will need to make a decision about bringing him home or asking them to do the paperwork for him to become a resident. 
He has been losing ground for several months. I had no idea how desperately lonely and painful this time in our journey with FTD would become with each day that passes. 
I covet your prayers for wisdom, clarity, peace of mind for me and peace of mind and body for Robert. So many of you know this path intimately. We have so many friends, family, and professionals who are supportive and loving. A friend of mine reminded me that the path is ours to be walked and only we can walk it but we are not alone on this path. 
Of course, I have no idea how or when this journey with FTD will end. I pray God will grant me the humility to let His love reign in my times with Robert. If you know me at all you know I can be impatient and overbearing. I pray God will grant me freedom from those traits in the times I spend with Robert.   
Several of you have asked for an update on Robert and me. This is hot off the press. Much love!                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          

Fog

Brain dead yet conscious. Fully conscious yet brain dead. I find myself wandering on a path I do not recognize. I find myself wandering on a path I know inch by inch. I find myself wandering hither and yon. 

Traces of who I was ten years ago remain. I think.

Caregiver of a husband who is slowly, very slowly going away mentally and physically. This sentence is my resume. This sentence is my path of most resistance. This sentence leaves me without words to explain, without tears to cry, without....without....without.

Reading something I wrote several years ago and seeing the naive spirit of a neophyte caregiver shocked me. Have I aged that quickly? I pondered the distance from there to here. I wondered where that woman went and why it seems she ran away. I wondered how the changes will come in the future as I remain both she who ran and she who is present.
I am the caregiver of a husband who is slowly, very slowly going away mentally and physically. I stare through my own sorrow and find my husband on the other side of it. Nothing I can imagine fits his journey. The sorrow swirls around me in a perpetual fog. At times the fog is dense. I hear someone calling my name but I cannot see them nor find my way. When the fog lifts a bit I see my husband. I am the caregiver of a husband I love very much. I am the caregiver of a husband who exhausts me, frustrates me, claims every ounce of my endurance. I am the caregiver of a husband who can see me clearly on rare occasions. He is the husband of a wife who wanders and moves in and out of a shroud of sorrow.

We live our lives in the strength of an undefined love in an unfamiliar territory. We live our lives.

The Way I Love!

Slowly driving around my neighborhood at 12:45 a.m. or p.m., darned if I know which, but it is dark outside so figure it out for yourself. I digress for a moment. I know the answer to that question on many days or nights. It's true. But things that have the potential to be one or the other although they are the same when written or spoken do elude me from time to time. This is one of those times. Commend me. I could have taken the easy way out and used the current time of 1:14 a.m. There are other words that confound me when asked to explain why I chose one over the other. Dinner and Supper, for instance, mean lunch and the evening meal to a fair number of people and both mean the evening meal to a fair number of other people. I am in the latter group. Lunch does not equal dinner to me and certainly is not supper. I get long, tolerant sighs when the use of those two words is in question. There are many more, for instance, if I use a mouse for my computer, what do I say when I have more than one of them. Mice is the perfect word when referring to tiny rodents. Mice as a reference to more than one usb or wireless device used on my computer and referred to as a "mouse" strikes me as wrong no matter who tells me it is correct. 

Where I began...driving around the neighborhood in the middle of the night looking for my oldest and most raggedy black cat is the way I love. I would drive around looking for you and, let's face it, I probably don't know you nor would you need finding in the middle of the night, but, for argument's sake, if you needed finding in the middle of the night, I would look for you. It is the way I love.

I circled the park where we live and went down the street to another part of the park and returned home before I saw the black form of my escape kitty meandering to me from down the way, looking back over his shoulder as if pursued by a very slow foe who did not show himself. He made an obligatory (I love that word) attempt to avoid capture. I allowed the pretense then scooped him up and came inside. I fed him special food. It is the way I love. If I had found you I would have brought you inside and fed you a treat. A special treat for you. It is the way I love.

The subject of this short musing came to me as I was parking the car wondering if I would be up all night waiting for that junkyard cat to come home. Moments before I saw him I knew that I would be up all night. Many people would go to sleep and hope their cat showed up by morning. I just cannot do that when something or someone I love is missing or hurting or in need or, basically breathing. I have to stay up all night and check outside periodically, whistle a tune, walk around outside a bit and then return to my seat until the next urge calls me to repeat the cycle. Do I like it? No. Like has nothing to do with it. Love has everything to do with it. Waiting up all night for the possibility of a homecoming is natural to me. It is the way I love.

Love enough to go around is what I have and I have it in abundance. Money? Not so much. Common sense? Ah, duh! Love? Yes! Yes! I have that and I always have it. It is the way I love.

I like to love carelessly, recklessly and all those other words of extreme measures ending in "...ly". I could just as well be abundant in many other areas. But I'm not and I'm cool with it.

So, the cats of mine are seated quietly in their respective places. They know I am a sucker for love. They know they are safe and sound with me. I am a fierce, warrior lover. I am loved by a God who pours out grace and favor on me. In my case, He does not ask much. He asks for me to give freely of what I have in abundance. It is the way I love. 

A Little Rough Patch

I hit a little rough patch recently. Meaning I got twisted around an axle or I took a short ride on the crazy train or I could not get my act together. So many ways to say I lost it. Yep. I lost it and told everyone. Yep. Told everyone and resigned from a thing or two and talked with someone which is different from telling someone. Talking with someone means I actually listened to them talk back to me and I felt better so I have regained my balance, untwisted, jumped off the train and gotten my act together in so much as that can take place. Whew! Being colorful or a character or given to histrionics (my least favorite descriptive term for it) is exhausting. To be fair I have been and still am in an extremely stressful situation and was knocked off my game by the stress. I was, like the infamous weeble, wobbling but I did not fall down. ( Google it. Weebils wobble but they do not fall down.) So, this is short and sweet but meant as an encouragement to anyone reading it which is, admittedly, a short list of people. The encouragement is that most of us will live to fight another day, the sun will come out tomorrow and all that happy stuff. Problems may not fade or even dim. It seems that perception and attitude are the two component parts that, when plugged into faith, can affect a change in me and in you even if the problem remains the same. The lesson for me is that I am not bad or wrong for being knocked off my game. Nor is it wrong that the problem did not change. I am able to accept the opportunity for change and apply it. This, my friends, is no small grace of God. I seem incapable of lingering for long in the mire of misery even when many understand the misery given the circumstances. I make a lousy cynic and would fail completely at being a curmudgeon. In contrast to that statement, I enjoy the company of curmudgeons so much. They are funny and determined to keep a stiff upper lip. Underneath the crusty old so and so's sullen look lurks a heart of gold. Don't let on that you see it though. Bad form. Very bad form. If it is true that poets are born out of deep melancholy and depression I am destined to fail at rhyming. I may dash off a few lines while in one of my frequent pity pots but nothing more and what's the point? I can, however, conversate on almost any side of any argument with an equal passion. I am particularly good at this if I have very little knowledge of the topic. This would mean that I do have an advanced degree in slinging the bull. Americans are overrun with expressions in statements to indicate a state of mind or a character trait. Of course, I cannot literally sling a bull. Slinging the bull verbally? Yes. Yes, I can sling the bull verbally. Sling, slam dunk and over and out. I need to eat something. I am off on a tangent. Oops. Sorry. Another expression of statement to describe a mood. They are literally everywhere. 

Say, Lady, Can you spare...?

Throwing one arm up in the arm and calling across the street towards me the old, black woman pushing a walker with a built-in seat began crossing the busy street and calling me "Teresa". As she drew closer she realized I was not Teresa but she began declaring how much Teresa and I resembled each other. Seconds later she began her story of extreme woe and a time constraint of two hours. Could I give her a ride to Beaufort? She needed $37 in two hours to pay the remainder of her rent or she was going to be evicted. Lawd-a-mercy, she declared, life had been hard and she had a muscle removed from her right leg and was completely exhausted from the walk from her apartment to the Salvation Army where she saw me who she thought was Teresa but was not but I was obviously an angel meant to be in that exact place at that exact time. 
I never will know how many times I have been a sucker when responding to a plea for help. Once I commit I figure that is God's business. I am rarely approached when I am flush with cash. This day and this appeal came at a particularly challenging time, I looked out across the street, thought for a moment and, preferring to err on the side of grace, agreed to give this woman a ride using precious gas and time. The way I figured it if my life depended on 20 miles worth of gasoline I had no business hogging that resource. Share the little with someone less fortunate, I thought, and not with exhilaration but with an inward heavy sigh. Five minutes before or after and this meeting would not have taken place. 
I wondered if I was entertaining an angel and could see my crown in glory glitter a bit brighter. Shaking off that imagination I decided I was in the middle of a run of the mill response to a request for help, plain and simple. It did not help that my distraught passenger was extolling my angelic timing, my Christian willingness which she said was so in contrast to some of those lying so and so's in that church three blocks away, and I kept silent. Why subject her to the truth that most of the churches are loaded with one variety of so and so or the other?
My new friend sat in the passenger seat pointing out the open car window at the ground floor window of an apartment in what passes for the projects in our town.
"See", she said in a proud voice often employed when someone is proving what they have said to you."I told you I don't have any money." I said I believed her without the proof. I told her I was going through financial difficulties myself and she found that hard to believe and I knew proving my lack of finances by taking her to where I live would not cut the mustard. I do live in a trailer park but the trailer is paid for and the rent I pay for the lot ensures me a small yard, lovely trees, neighbors with two or three cars in their driveways. The projects were the winner. She was holding all aces while I was holding all twos. Later I would take her home and she would insist that I come inside and she showed me the inside of her refrigerator with precious little food inside. Again saying, "I told you the truth!" I told her mine looked the same way and I was not lying. I did know that I had been gifted with the means to put food in my refrigerator while she obviously had not been so fortunate. 
From the first time I pulled into her parking space to the second time I pulled into the parking space I had given her the $37.00 and half of the rice bowl from Bojangles I had in my car and she had bought herself two pieces of chicken and a Pepsi. She asked the drive-thru person for hot sauce and salt and something else and said she was taking that food home and "mess it up". She was hungry and exhausted from walking to the Salvation Army with her walker only to believe I was Teresa but I was not Teresa but an angel of some sort and our meeting was meant to be and somewhere in the conversation, she mentioned a size of clothing she had worn at one time. I said, "Oh, that is my size." On the visit to her apartment to see her refrigerator she grabbed up several blouses and a sweater in the size I wear and pushed them at me. She thanked me again and asked for my phone number.
Next morning she called and wanted me to pick her up and take her to church with me. Later she called and asked me if I use to work at the base and I told her yes and she put a guy on the phone who turned out to be a friend of mine from work. I have not seen him in years. Once more my new friend began talking of how God had put us together and how everything works out and she was going to skip church today but would go next week and we hung up.
Later I called her and begged off going to see her this afternoon.  Being an angel is work intensive and takes a lot out of a girl. ( just kidding!!)

Struggling

"You are so strong", a friend says to me with admiration in her voice.
"You do so much for so many." someone from church says when I seem to be on my last bit of sanity and question everything.
"You should write." I hear this all the time and I often wonder who it is that writes so well that so many people say I should write.
"Take time for yourself!" This has become a laughable suggestion. I can go five hundred miles from here but Robert will never be further away from me than the time it takes to have a thought.
"Mom! Your place is chaos. You never use to live like this...Mom?" I hear my son and I shrink inside. I don't remember when there was any other time than this one. If my home was neat and organized then I cannot imagine I kept it that way but my son says I didn't use to live this way. I cannot remember so I take his word for it and feel myself sinking deeper into a dark place. I seek a place to hide.
"We need to check your sugar!" I am gaining weight. I have been drinking coca-cola for a while now. Full sugar coke. I have recently begun to get more sleep. I am not exercising. I wonder what it is exactly I am doing and when did I start and how do I stop. I need to eat better and care about my weight. I do care about my weight. The idea of managing my food intake is overwhelming and I want to cry and ask an adult to help me. Oh, wait! I am an adult. I do not feel like an adult.
Decisions, questions, money issues, my own expectations and the expectations of people who have become accustomed to my presence, family, get a job, what is wrong with me, is it wrong to wish this was over?
Lately, I feel that I have stepped into quicksand. I cannot get myself out. At first, I wait and try again. I sink a bit deeper. I don't know what is happening to me. I am afraid and I do not know what to do next or if I want to do a "next". I wonder if people like me or if I am a difficult person. I see myself looking in at myself and I cannot see myself clearly. Who is this woman? Wake up! Wake up! Who is going to be the strong one? I am sinking further into the quicksand; I am drifting further from the shore. I hear my name. Someone is calling me. I wonder what they want, and I realize I have nothing to give. I am lost and sinking. I wonder if anyone knows. I don't remember telling anyone. Was I supposed to tell someone? I am ambivalent. I am void of feelings. I cannot feel myself. I wonder what is going to happen and I think of Robert, and I love him. I want to want to call for help.
I am struggling. I am full of tears I cannot cry. I am sad in all the cells of my body, and I think of Robert. Am I failing him? A very long time ago when I was so little someone told me I failed to protect someone. Who? Am I doomed to repeatedly fail to protect?
I wonder if I am o.k. I wonder how I will do tomorrow. How do I keep my sunny side up? How do I find the strength to get up and do the day? I have no idea. I have no idea at all. Have faith someone whispers. Who are you? Have faith someone whispers. I am angry and I want to slap the person telling me to have faith. I want to scream in their face. Have faith! Have faith! Have faith!
I pray it is true that Jesus suffers the little children to come unto Him. I am as a little child, and I am struggling, and I have lost my way.

Not Titled

A stream of consciousness. Nothing finished. A few things started. A stream of consciousness..what the heck does that even mean? My consciousness is streaming without interruption all day every day as far as I can surmise. Why is that process identified with brief and seemingly random observations? Like I bet very few people know that I am ocd about pictures hanging crooked on the wall. I am ocd about leaving my car and always have to count to three before walking away. if the count is sketchy i do it again. or that i can do multi-task thinking if need be and the need seems to always be. it takes more energy and thought to appear to be random. I, who am frequently random throughout any given day, become ordered and organized the minute i claim i will be random. it is a mystery to me. it is frustrating and like so many frustrating things it is impossible for me to keep the point of my frustration in focus leading to a mild, inexplicable discontent. all dressed up with nowhere to go comes to mind. i watched a little boy having a temper tantrum on youtube yesterday or the day before...the day is not pertinent to the telling...he was throwing down and using the word that rhymes with truck right at his dad. but his dad did not believe in spanking. i got nervous watching and felt my spanking trigger finger twitching on the handle of my short fused temper. oh lawd child, be glad that is your daddy. i know people came close to eating the likes of you back in the day when i was young, skinny and stoned. stoned in florida a fair amount of the time. a mellow jamaican kind of reefer and a bottle of cheap wine was enough to make the evening rest in peace. sitting on the porch watching not much of nothing when a squirrel ran by on one of the power lines. he became our mascot for a short time because that is all the time i gave to anything back in the day. i was always moving on and finding the sickest of the sick to hitch my star to back then. back to being stoned...i remember someone stopped by our house one day with seven ounces of reefer he said would mess up your mind and he did not want to be so messed up that he could not talk or think his own thoughts so he was gifting us with the reefer hoping we could ride it for the count or maybe beyond. but it stewed our brains immediately. no howdy ma'am or what's up? just took a few hits and then forgot what was going on around myself and i remember thinking if i could ever come down from that smoke i would not be doing it again and my partner agreed without reservation. about a day later the guy rides up on his motorcycle and asked how we like the reefer, and we giggle a lot, get serious, and the reefer that he could not handle becomes the reefer he is relieved to find out we still had and did not want. He tucked the seven ounces, short a tad, under his arm, pulled his leather motorcycle jacket on, put his helmet on his head, revved the engine and rode away and this is the truth. we never saw him again. he lived in an old school bus he had remodeled a bit and rode that motorcycle and did not appear to have a job so who knows. i don't remember his name...if I ever knew it. 
long as i am telling tales from the past i will tell this one which happened when i was still in florida, still in the same house and still with the same man. i have always met "interesting" people when left to my own devices. i met a man with long, flowing and very red hair. he was tall and had a full build on him. could easily have been a heck of a bouncer. he had a flaming red beard and he drove a bright yellow hearse. he possessed a vivid personality and when he showed up in our driveway, he freaked my boyfriend out. i received a look like who is this fellow and is he an undercover cop? paranoia always lurks in the heart of people who use drugs but i was naive and rarely thought to think of those things. in later years when i was no longer doing drugs, for a time, i did become exceptionally paranoid for very different reasons. but back to "big ed". He did not smoke pot or drink. He developed an unnerving way of bursting into our place saying, "wake up, hippies!" going through to the kitchen and fixing us a full breakfast. i have no idea who he really was to this day. i know he was in love with a woman who he was watching from afar, clandestine like stuff. she had a beau and this drove "big ed" insane. he said she was such a love and he wanted us to meet her and we did but i remember very little of it. the situation was so odd and out of place that i had no context to place this man, his hearse or his love for this woman so i just accepted him as best i knew how and he became part of our lives for a short while. always showed up unannounced. depressed at times. content at times. always talking of this woman and always lurking around her place. over the years i have decided that none of that story was true. i think he was some kind of an agent or dea but we were not on his radar. we did not know anyone who would be on his radar or, i should say, he never knew who we knew. one day he rode out of our lives, and we never saw him again. that was the theme of my life for many years. intense relationships of all sorts and then gone...poof! either i booked or they booked. it was the early 70's and nothing like today at all. 
i may talk about "crazy ed" one day but not today. he was a cat of another color for sure and i don't want to give him space in my head at the moment. 
streaming redirected. over and out!

I Am Grateful

I am visiting a dear friend of mine who lives in New Bern, N.C. I worked with her husband for many years. He and I were close friends and I became close friends with his wife who I will call Miss B in the remainder of this post. John, my friend, passed away several years ago after a long and agonizing decline brought on by symptoms related to having been a smoker. Miss B and I have remained great friends and I have a standing invitation to visit with her at any time. Her family has taken me in as one of their own. They are close knit and often eat their evening meals together. All of them are in their late seventies to mid-eighties. All of them have many stories to tell of the area we live in and around. Time with them puts me in mind of the years when folk would sit at the table or in the living room and talk to each other.
Miss B lives in the historic district of New Bern. New Bern is the second oldest town in North Carolina and, arguably, the home of Pepsi Cola. Miss B's home was built in 1904 and is basically a shotgun house. It is as solid as a rock and comforting. I believe the strength in this home comes from both the construction and the love that has permeated the fabric of the home. I stay here when my husband is in the local hospital or, as in this case, because it comforts me. Miss B spoils me. I have learned to let her spoil me.
I called her yesterday and asked could I come visit for a couple of nights. She said yes without hesitation and began making plans for our visit immediately.
There are people who have come and gone in my life who brought something into my life that sustained me and lifted me up and over difficult times. Miss B and her family are those kind of people. She and I love to reminisce about John. We talk of him often and tell the same stories over and over again. Miss B and I loved him so much and he loved us. He found a great deal of joy in our nagging him and threatening to tell on him. When he passed away I realized what a huge place he held in my heart. Like myself he was quirky and given to coloring outside the lines of convention. He was humble and, as I found out later, far deeper than I imagined.
Paintings hang in their living room that John painted. I am convinced he was a high functioning autistic. I knew him for years before I knew he painted. It took him two years to paint one picture because he did intense research to ensure he represented the subject matter accurately. One of his paintings has a forest with pine straw on the ground, grass pushing through the pine straw, trees full of leaves  and a variety of other plant life. Every blade of grass is individually painted, every leaf on the trees is individually painted. The effect is exquisite in detail. It defies imagination. He used an old pencil drawing he found in a book as the source of his painting. He changed the trees in the painting because the trees in the pencil drawing were not indigenous to the area portrayed in it.
I could go on and on and maybe I will one day. John was a man within a man within a man. I learned so much about him at his funeral. I learned things I would never have guessed. Wonderful things. Tender things. He never mentioned them. He was that humble in his response to his many amazing life choices outside of work.
And yet, he was a conspiracy theorist who would go off on a tangent in a skinny minute and talk it through for hours. He was naïve of the technical world. Like many men his age he never trusted computers or their output. He refused to learn beyond a certain point and taught himself what he felt he needed to do on a computer. This made him the subject of a number of jokes. I don't know if he ever caught on because he stayed on track about the stupid computers and why should he use them and how "they" could see "us" and hear "us" over the computer even if we were not using the it at the time. Yet he developed a detailed catalog of a large variety of aircraft parts, their names and assigned part numbers. He did this on  a computer along with small pictures for demonstration purposes. This was awesome but in no way meant that he planned to learn anything further about the computer and the systems we utilized.
So now I am sitting at the computer in the home he resided in since the 1960's and I am certain that he highly approves. Anything that made Miss B happy made him happy. He lived for her happiness.
Miss B and I have learned to live with his absence but we do not see the time when it will feel natural to us. We talk of him often. We laugh at stories of him and at times we believe he is nearby grinning and feeling happy that we are happy.
Tomorrow I will drive the 30 plus miles back home. I made a good choice when I called and asked could I visit. Love given freely and without reservation is deeply healing. I return home having been gifted a wee healing from my friend who loves me freely and without reservation. I am grateful.

Two Snows

It is a few minutes after 10 p.m. and my imaginings began the moment the support group chat ended.

I thought I heard a bird calling from a tree out along the treeline. (There is no treeline and it is the night which is how I knew these were my imaginings.) 

The sound of the bird drew me to a sense of joy and wonder. My grandfather, on my mother's side, could call up many different kinds of birds. He was a true outdoorsman having lived as a farmer for many years. He had a natural gift for mimicking and a love for storytelling. The sound of the bird out along the treeline was a form of a memory. I stood in the yard many an evening as he responded to a variety of birdcalls. It was magical. He would stop and wait for their response and cup his hands around his mouth or form his lips to make a different call.

The mockingbirds and the whippoorwills were the first to show up along the treeline. I don't remember any of them coming much closer. If I could be so bold as to consider the mind of a bird, I would say they were puzzled by their response to a call with no imaginable source. It seemed to come from that tall figure standing a short distance from the woods. But what could that mean and how crazy would they have to be to flit over on what could be a suicide mission. I am taking extreme liberties in imagining their thoughts. But it takes an imagination to watch your Papa whistle up birds and have them come to the treeline in response. My grandfather would tire of calling them and move to go to the house. If I was lucky he would take the time to recount a short story of other times he experienced with the birds. 

That set of memories evokes the distinct smell of pine trees, pine straw lying deep on the forest floor and a light wind blowing through causing the trees to sway a slow dance back and forth in rhythm with the wind. A sandy, narrow road ran from the main road to their house and continued further down splitting three different ways to access their old house and two tobacco barns. It continued on around the side of a large field used for tobacco, vegetables and, on schedule, to lay fallow for a year. Wow, "to lay fallow" what a great analogy for resting with purpose.    

The large field had long rows but a trick of perception, created by a slight rise midway in the rows, gave the illusion of shorter rows. For some reason, the illusion tricked me over and over again as I was growing up. I would help to sucker tobacco and get happy that the row was ending and another step forward would reveal that darn row running out ahead of me for quite a long ways to the bordering treeline. Why I was tricked yet again by that illusion is a mystery to me. 

I titled this post "Two Snows". I am going to leave the title as it is because I was going to write about two snows. It is incongruent but I can't imagine anyone cares.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  

A Love That Will Not Let Me Go

I am standing in a thick, black darkness. I am surrounded on all sides by this darkness. I begin to feel as if the darkness has substance. I move my hands to touch it. I imagine it feels like a rich velvet material. I sense I am facing towards something but the depth of the black darkness numbs my senses.  I begin to know the darkness is the dread in my heart. I am, for the moment, willfully blind to the what lies ahead of me. I sense a vast, unyielding space and I wish to back off from it, turn and run. I wish for the light and the innocence of a time I believe I remember yet the memory does not penetrate the darkness.
 A wind begins to gently blow tousling my hair as it swirls the darkness around me. A low, whistling of wind blowing over and under something comes to me on the flow of the wind. The darkness swirls yet does not part. The wind blows yet cannot change the depth or texture of the darkness surrounding me. There are no tiny openings for light. No reference points. The absence of a frame of reference alarms me. Part of me begins to believe I am descending into a dark madness. The whistling of the wind subsides. Silence! I strain to catch the sound of the wind. The remoteness envelopes me. As the wind blows harder and harder the darkness begins to lift. I strain to see yet wish not to see. Slowly the swirling darkness lifts up and over me. I am standing on the edge of an unbelievably beautiful chasm. Birds flit and fly through the clear, blue of the sky. The scent of flowers pouring out of every gap in the stones of the side of the chasm fill the air with a sweet aroma. The aroma is delicate. It whispers over and over of love and yet more love. A golden glow permeates every atom of the air, the flowers, the stones. I cannot tell the glow apart from the stone or the flower or the air or the birds. The air plays a melody apart from the wind, apart from everything I can see with my eyes. The air fills with a melody that permeates the golden light that permeates all that I can see. The wind, air, melody, golden light and magnificent aroma blend, twirling and twirling together forming a strand of all that I see and experience. The strand grows longer and fills with the essence of the lovely chasm. The wind drapes the strand of all that I have seen around my neck and seems to kiss me on the cheek. Everything around me fades into a mist into a dream. I wake up. Oh,  love that will not let me go! I call Your name and You answer. I cry out and You hear. I am forever changed. I am forever Yours. Forgive my fear!

Freedom

I'm thinking of what fear feels like and reaching back to find times in my life where fear grabbed me around the throat and choked off my joy or my chance to do something thrilling or fulfilling or anything that was on the other side of fear. I am thinking of this because I just had a discussion with someone very close to me about fear and I felt that fear slide up into my throat like a cunning viper snake and I remembered that I am not accepting fear at the moment. The door is shut and locked and I am not peeking out to look at the fear. One look can last for days and days and paralyze me with overwhelming imaginings of "what if" and I know that "what if" never happens. I am not talking about healthy fears here, just to stop that train of thought, cause I am not crazy or dumb. Healthy fear is good and I welcome it and there are times when I wish it would kick in for me.
I am talking about the fear of the other variety and I am going to try a few "remember when's" to express that fear of the other variety and what happened when I stepped through it. So here goes and welcome to the jungle.
I remember standing on the edge of a floating pier that was out in a lake and the water was over my head. I wanted to jump into that water and swim around and feel the coolness but the six inches from the platform into that water looked so far from the water to me and the darkness of the water seemed to swallow up any bravery I could summons. No one knew. I agonized many times from many edges over water that I wanted to jump into and enjoy. I did this for many years. No one knew. I pretended I did not know how to swim so I could be in the beginner class of swimming in my senior year of high school. The idea of jumping from a diving board petrified me. No one knew. I could not voice a fear that I knew was unfounded. I watched people dive into the water, fling themselves into the water, cannonball themselves into the water and they did not disappear into a netherworld or dissolve or die on impact. But I was frozen in that fear. I was in my forties when I met a swimming instructor with the gift of teaching people with a fear of the water. First I jumped from the six inches into the water. Oh, what joy! Then I did simple dives from six inches over the water. I saw myself going to the Olympics and being the oldest champion in swimming. But it did not stop there, friends, my most amazing story is that I became a certified lifeguard through the Red Cross. In my forties, I became a certified lifeguard. I passed the tests. I rescued the fake baby in the deep end of the pool. All of those years of fear that paralyzed me melted away. I looked back and I could see myself full of that fear and feel sad for that child, the teenager, the woman who simply could not make the next move. But then I did and fear showed itself to be a liar. Fear is a liar. The moment I made that first, short jump I knew the fear was a liar. As I type I can feel the freedom from the lie engulfing me again.
Fear of the unknown was huge for me. What was in the dark? Who was upstairs when I knew I was alone in a two-story house?  What lurked in the quiet woods near me when I was alone? Hours and hours of listening and waiting for that "something" to show up and...and what? I had no idea what would happen when and if "they" got me or the woods came alive and took me into their world. Lord only knows, my imagination was as big as this world and I used it to scare myself out of my mind when I could have been sleeping. Again, fear robbed me of the fun other people were having and the freedom they experienced coming and going in that "place" where I just knew something horrible held court. Lack of sleep watching shadows and listening to sounds and waiting for the shadows to move towards me and for the sound to show itself as an indescribable...indescribable what? I had no idea. Again, I became an adult with this fear as strong in me as it was when I was a child. But one day I found myself needing to confront that fear and move through it. The fear was in my way and what I needed was on the other side. I stepped through it. Joy! Nothing hurt me. No one did whatever it was that someone was going to do. Freedom. Precious freedom. Did I have moments later on when I had to walk through this fear again? Yes. Did I walk through it? Yes. Fear is a liar. Fear tells me in an anxious whisper that I better turn around and run. Fear lied to me. I did not run. I walk through it and today I can go where I want to go and stay where I want to stay and I do not have that liar named Fear calling the shots and the "what if's" evaporate and are replaced by the "Yes, I can!"Freedom!
Now I am in a new phase of my life and my husband is very sick. I have sprung a few leaks myself and we don't have a financially bright future and things are getting ready to change and the changes are going to hurt. They are going to hurt to the core. They are already hurting to the core. And the answers are elusive and the journey is fraught with the unknown and yet the known. Fear begins to creep in with the awful and ugly stench I know so well. But this time I have closed the door on fear. This time I have all the experiences of stepping through fear and I have a God who goes before me and, for today, I just slammed the door in fear's face. After all, fear is a liar and fear brings confusion and fear tells me I can't and I won't and things will never be o.k. and what if! Oh my goodness, what if? What if I keep that door closed and throw away the key? What if I dare to be fear-free? What if I choose to believe that I can, and I will, walk free and what if, when I remember the fearful times from my past, I just smile and keep on walking? 

Romans 8:31King James Version (KJV)

31 What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us?

Swimming in Unknown Waters

I pull into the parking lot of the nursing home and rehab facility. I feel tired and numb. A nagging cough has worn down my system allowing a fog to cover my thoughts and muffle my hearing. Robert is in room 105 of this facility. I push myself to open the door to the building, sign myself in and go to his room. He is not in his bed. A few doors down I find him in the physical therapy room. He is in no mood for a bright hello. I don't think there is any activity he despises more than physical therapy. Someone is telling him what to do and for how long and for how many times. It goes against his grain. He looks at me as if I have brought him into the castle of Atilla the Hun and I say something cheerful to the room including him. Robert struggles to conceal a snarl. He is out of his element in another and more powerful way. All of the therapists in the room are women. For Robert, feeling as vulnerable as he feels now, a group of women having a voice in his routine makes him want to bite nails!  
A week later: I thought Robert had given up on himself. He did not want to do the physical therapy or watch t.v. or open the door to the hallway. He wanted to sleep and be left to his own thoughts.
The medical staff discovered that Robert had a UTI and after a couple of days of antibiotics Robert was back, kinda sorta, agreeing to do p.t. and watching a little t.v. and strutting a bit of will to improve. 
Christmas is almost here and I have not done one Christmas thing. Whatever a Christmas thing looks like these days. No tree because the cats would find a tree particularly enticing. No gifts because of no money. No people over or to visit in their homes because Robert is in the nursing home and no one has put forth an invitation to their home. No sorrow about any of this because Christmas is more than just one day of the year. Putting it in perspective, which I can do at the age of 66, creates a peaceful place in me. I get melancholy when I imagine life as it was or how I have crafted it to have been long ago. Life always looks better in the rearview mirror. Oh dear, that sounds pessimistic and I don't feel pessimistic at all. I feel real and I feel free of the burdens of recreating something that was meant for a time in my life but not for all of my life. I could demonstrate a different approach to Christmas. I could decorate the deck and bake cookies and any number of other things to celebrate the season. I just don't want to do those things this year and have not wanted to for a number of years. I love the decorations of other people and how they have hung lights from every available space in their yards. I love the coordination of song and decor so popular these days. I love all of it. I don't want to do it here. I have learned that I end up with piles of lights and screws, nails, a hammer, some tape and a partially wrapped deck when the mood goes away and the decorating grinds to a halt. 
If children lived here with us I would take another approach. If donkeys could fly...you get my point. 
Meanwhile, back at the home place, I settle down for a long nap and a few motivational thoughts drift through my mind. I shoot them down with my imaginary motivational thoughts gun and settle myself in freedom from unrealistic expectations.