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.                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

Two Sides of One Coin

When you wear the weed of impatience in your heart instead of the flower Acceptance-with-Joy, you will always find your enemies get an advantage over you.” 

― Hannah Hurnard, Hinds' Feet on High Places


"Outwardly, I was a person of service, sacrifice, self-discipline, and apparent loyalty. But inwardly, I was filled with spiritual ambition
-- the earnest desire for some achievement and distinction and the willingness to strive to achieve it. I had an insatiable desire to be seen and counted among the mature and successful. This resulted in a deep inner struggle with competition, rivalry, and jealousy, and left me with an ever-pervading sense of restlessness--the feeling that there is something more that I have to do or put in order to feel valued, affirmed, accepted, or like I belong.

Jack Frost, Spiritual Slavery to Spiritual Sonship

Breathless

The little girl squatted near to the ground with her head bent over as she stared at the earth directly under her nose. She held her breath. She waited for one grain of sand to move near the entrance of a tiny hole in the sand.  Earlier she had stuck her small wood stick into the hole while singing the doodlebug song. Now she waited. It was the doodlebug's time to play the game and come up through the hole in the ground pushing a grain of sand to the side as it emerged. The emergence was the sole reason for the stick and the song. 
The little girl rocked back on her knees feeling a tingling and the beginning of discomfort from squatting. Her hope of seeing a doodlebug was fading when she noticed, a little to the side of the hole, a small ant carrying a tiny twig while moving at a fast clip up and over miniscule obstacles in the sand. At his size and with the weight of his cargo there were a great many obstacles. He zigged and zagged around first one and then the other piece of leaf, pebble and tiny trenches crossing his path. 
The journey of the ant fascinated the little girl. She forgot about the doodlebug. The tiny ant claimed all of her attention. 
As the little girl watched the ant she struggled with the temptation to interfere with his journey. She fought the urge to confuse him with larger objects or to move him off his path with a small twig. The ant, unaware that his plans were at the whimsy of a huge being squatted near his path, continued on with his cargo of a tiny twig firmly in his grasp. 
The child moved her body around relieving pressure from her legs without losing sight of the lone ant. 
She became fascinated at the determination and tenacity of the little soldier ant. He seemed to be on a solitary mission. Moments passed as he toiled away and she cheered him on finding delight in his conquests and anxiety as he worked through yet another barrier. Many moments passed this way until the little girl heard her mother calling for her. 
Mouthing silent encouragements to the ant she stood and turned to leave.
Seconds later the doodlebug pushed a grain of sand out of the small hole in the ground. He pulled himself up onto the flat ground. Strange, he thought to himself, he could have sworn he heard someone singing the doodlebug song accompanied by the swishing of a small stick in the entrance of his home. He sighed a little in frustration at the effort it took for him to answer the doodlebug call. Turning, he began the journey into the safety of the sand pulling a small grain of sand in behind him.
Meanwhile, the ant continued negotiating his way over and through a tangled mass of detritus. He did not think of the struggle. He thought no further than the challenge in front of him. Oblivious to anything outside of his mission he soldiered on with his tiny twig grasped tightly to himself. 

Quite A Dry Spell

My creativity dried up for quite awhile this time. All attempts, on my part, to kick-start my brain have failed. Happy Harry the Hippie Man has paid me several visits in the past month. He walks into my brain trailing a dramatic and colorful portfolio of ideas for me to consider. I have paid little attention to him, which is not the recommended way of responding to Happy Harry. He struts back and forth in my head, sits for a few moments, jumps up looking around as if someone may be coming and resumes strutting though less enthusiastically. At this juncture, Happy Harry suspects he may have seen the last of me. It is not true but Happy Harry has a fragile ego and a need for attention. 

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, our days are much the same, day after day. There are medical issues, daily life challenges and not much else. Caregiving is a crazy maker. Every day could be the day the other shoe drops or not. Interpreting symptoms and making decisions about medical care; go or no go feels like a responsibility better suited for someone, the mythical someone, who will just "know" what to do and when to do it. 

Our washing machine and the dryer are broken. The dryer is optional. The washing machine is a necessity. A friend of my mother is an appliance repairman. He told me one thing to check and how to fix it if it was broken. I followed his instructions and discovered the part is broken beyond repair. I went on youtube and searched for videos of people demonstrating how to make the repair and I think I can do it myself. I am going to do the repair. I have had a craving for a long,  time to be able to repair something in this house. It is not my strength and I have been timid about trying. After following the steps given by the repairman and watching the videos for the full repair, I feel confident that I can make this repair and that is so freaking cool to me. Yeah, baby!

Do you, my faithful reader, ever think about how you got to where you are today? When you were a teenager did you see yourself where you are today and doing what you are doing today? I did not have a clue.Years ago I partied at the beach I live eight miles from today. I never thought that I would be living here, a full-time caregiver and soon to be 66 years old. I had no plan for living this long which is probably how I, in a willy-nilly fashion, ended up here. At one time I believed I was missing out on something that "could have been". Believing that concept made me emotionally sick. Today I believe that I am in the right place. I believe I am doing the most important thing I could be doing with my life and 66 years of age is o.k. with me. 

Tonight I am at peace with who I am and with my daily life. I do have fear and concerns about my husband's illness and the daily grind of caregiving wears on me. That is why a character like Happy Harry the Hippie Man brings joy and diversity into my life. I don't think he knows how much I like him and his visits. He may believe he is far too complex to be a comfort to an older woman with an utterly boring life compared to his own life. 

I suppose we shall soon experience him again. I will give him his voice and he will give me himself. As a writer, I run the risk of manipulating a character such as Happy Harry by the use of my own words. So, I give him his voice and I get himself, in return. The reader experiences the character's essence and I dress him up. It is a dangerous alliance. If I did not respect Happy Harry I could dress him as a "dandy" and make him bald. Did you hear him scream just now? Just kidding, mate! Just kidding! 





















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On Being Used Up

On one or more of my most arrogant days I have been so bold as to say to someone or other, as the arrogance would be less important were I to keep it to myself, that I have asked God to use me up. I have asked to be burnt down to the nub in my service to Him. Writing this in the early a.m. I am appalled at the arrogance of my belief in my own depth of ability to hold out long enough to be used up on an eight hour a day job, much less used up in the service to the Almighty. Nonetheless, I will say that today, in so much as I am able to be used up, I have been used up.
There is no need for me to go into great detail or to prove my case. I feel it in every fiber of my body and mind. As a full-time caregiver there are days that pass without much effort. There are days that pass with one thing after the other and there are days that are packed from morning to morning with one task after the other springing up as if in a race to the finish. Today or whatever I am calling these endless days with little sleep, was a springing up day. From start to finish, stem to stern, stick a fork in me I'm done kind of day.
Mind you, I am capable of leaving an alarming number of tasks undone. If there were such a thing I could be said to be a multi-untasker. I move from task to task moving first one thing and then the other and back again. It is precisely that trait that allows me to say with all sincerity that I have been used up this day. All the undone tasks remain undone. Today I, in the role of caregiver, have been used up. Hour by hour, need by need no hour was left with a minute in it.  At 2:30 a.m. I sit here at my laptop, before I prepare to go to bed, and I can state with all honesty, that I have done a good day's work. I have done it well and I have done it willingly. I have learned that, for most of the caregivers I know, a day like today means a great deal to them. It means a great deal to me. It humbles me. What is far more amazing is that my husband and I have done it together. Not professionally or skilled but, in our own way, we muddled through this day. Two of the most stubborn, self-willed adults you could hope to meet on the street worked together today. Not planned. Not rehearsed. Winging it all the way, following each other's cues and letting the less successful moments go without marring the next task. we, without discussing it, made it. Yes, he still has FTD and I am still not the poster child for patience. I am learning that less than perfect but done is just fine with me, just fine with my husband and I'm thinking much more to God's glory, than anything else, we could have done today.

Missing, Missed, Found

Friends seem surprised when I say I do not see myself as family oriented. I am 65 years old and 33 years sober and clean. This puts my mommy years smack in the middle of all the chaos of my drinking, drugging, awful lifestyle choices and all the associated trauma. I have judged myself, for years, based on those years The years when I loved my children more than I loved my own breath yet abandoned them, if not in body, from having a healthy, functioning mother. I have spent many years beating myself up and making the assumption that everything that could be said about my 65 years was said and done during "those" years. I could relate funny stories of how I believed I was not providing one thing or the other only to find out that I was providing that thing but was completely blind to what I needed to be providing. At best the love I had for my children confused me and them. I loved with all my heart and I protected with my broken part. What does this have to do with the topic of this writing?

For whatever reasons my life circumstances and those of my husband's have brought people into our lives on a more intimate level than I allowed in my "other" world. Though outgoing with a flair for the dramatic I am also an introvert who has kept most of my cards close to my chest and have made our home a veritable fortress. This means we do not invite people into our home. My husband does not go out. I go out to see friends and family and I love them all. I have many friends who love me and I love them. Until my husband began showing symptoms that were impossible to ignore of something we did not know we spent little time together. He fished constantly and after work, I spent time with friends, my folks, church family and family. There had been many, many indications that something was wrong on a number of levels. I kept these times to myself. They involved psych ward visits, multiple medications, disappearances from home for up to a week at a time, a period of respite and then another cycle. I cannot say that all of this related to the formal diagnosis of Frontal Temporal Degeneration. I have done in-depth reading of FTD and I believe part of the long slide to the loss of the use of his legs began at least several years before that loss. It is this turn of events that brought me out into the open along with my husband. Suddenly we were visible at the doctor's, at the emergency rooms, at the nursing homes with the rehabilitation teams and in our home as home health care and social services began to involve themselves in our lives.

In retrospect, the process of becoming visible happened in the shock and after-shock of the changes that were coming at us one after the other. My husband learned to hear himself discussed and poked and prodded by complete strangers. I learned to speak up and advocate for him, inform medical personnel, hear the tough news, sign papers one after the other and listen. In different ways we have come to trust and depend on people in our lives. People aware of us. People who care and want to be involved. People we will never meet who help me through chat rooms and organizations on the internet. Both of us, intensely private in our own ways, have become visible and in need of being visible. It is in this new part of our lives that I began having people identify me as an intensely family oriented woman. The first time I heard those words I looked around outside and inside myself and made no reply. This person clearly did not know me. I was a failure at being family oriented. Look at my history, I wanted to say, but I remained quiet. At first these were professionals who expressed admiration and encouragement to me as an intensely family oriented person. I heard the words and I wanted them to be true. I so wanted that to be about me but I knew I had failed and I knew they did not know I had failed. I allowed the words to be said without my input. The story was too long to tell and no one seemed to want to hear anything about me that had to do with how I had failed at anything, let alone being family oriented. And so, I lived in this world of caregiving my husband, interacting with strangers, asking God for strength and once in awhile I took a peek at the idea that there were people who saw me as an intensely family oriented person.
But, that is not the end of my story. Friends began to identify that trait in me. They were surprised that I did not know that about myself. With friends I could argue, point to the obvious shortcomings of my past and still they persisted. They would not allow me to change their perceptions of me and they would point out where I was wrong and how I needed to wake up and accept reality.

So what does this have to do with my topic?

We have four indoor cats. They are all adopted and we have had them for several years now. Each one has a distinct personality and there are times when I would love to drop kick each one of them out the door and into the street. In addition I feed and water two outside cats who found out there is free food on this corner and now they are family by proxy. My husband loves to grouse about all these cats and how did he let this happen and I stumble over them uttering words not meant for paper and I clean the litter and buy treats and one by one they each spend time with me for snuggles, peeling off with their claws (because I do not believe in declawing), leaving scratch marks that led one doctor to ask if I had started cutting myself. "Oh yes, doctor, I am 65 years old and have seen heaven and have seen hell, and now, now of all times, I have decided to start cutting myself!" I answered sarcastically. I explained the cats, got a roll of the eyes for my trouble and left carrying my battle scars with me.

My black and scrawny cat goes outside and comes home or I go and chase him down and bring him in when it is time to come back to the house. All of us know this game and all of us (my husband, myself and the cats) know the ending. But, about four days ago, the golden orange cat with the golden yellow eyes shot out the door, rounded the corner and ran off the deck. He has done this before and he has always come home in a day or so. I started to chase after him but threw a choice word at him as his fat, house-fed buttocks rounded the corner of the trailer and disappeared. He will come home soon is what I told my husband on the first day. On the second day my husband told me that he will find his way home when he is ready. By the third day I am wondering if he is lost or off in the field with the feral cats playing and forgetting his home. The two outside cats are not giving up any clues. My heart is sinking. I love that orange cat. The big, white and so un-siamese Siamese cat is walking around the house quietly, going into rooms he never visits, creeping along quietly and I realize he misses the orange cat. I miss the orange cat. My heart is starting to fill with sadness as I pick up the siamese and hold him tightly. He is not interested in me. He wants down. He misses our friend. He likes to wrestle with him and bite him and make him scream that awful cat howl. So, I say a prayer and I let it go and I check outside once in awhile and no orange cat. I want him home. I worry about him. He is a part of us.

Last night, just as it got dark outside, I stepped outside to see if that orange head would pop out from the trailer underpinning. Nope. An opossum ran out and the two outside cats ran towards me as I took the garbage out. I was pondering the oppossum trying to remember if I should be alarmed or not when up jumped the orange cat onto the opposite side of the deck. He gave me a look. He gave the two cats a look and turned as if to leave. He is easily frightened. I called his name. "Tigger! Tigger Come here, Tigger! He paused and I swooped down and grabbed him and hugged him and whispered happy stuff into his ears and opened the front door for him to jump inside.

He was disoriented. He clearly had not meant to be gone so long. The other cats began sniffing him to discern where he had been and catch the scent of adventure. The siamese cat approached him, backed off and later made overtures at him to engage him in a small battle. But the orange cat followed me around. He came into my room and mewed until I picked him up. I put him down. He mewed again. O.K., I thought, you want me to go into the living room and stay where you like to stay. You want to feel safe and you want me. I got up, stretched out on the sofa with my husband stretched out on the other sofa and four cats finding their individual spots. The orange cat stopped mewing. I slept.

In the morning my husband told me I was surrounded by three cats as I slept. The black cat is too cool to find himself in that number. I looked over later and I saw the orange cat gently reach out one paw and put it on the white cat. I watched him snuggle down a bit with that outstretched paw and I felt so happy, so happy deep inside. This afternoon I understood. This afternoon I believed. I am an intensely family-oriented woman. I love my family, I love my animals, I love my friends and I love loving them. I get it. I understand now. A deep sense of peace entered me as I saw it for myself and I claimed it. I am an intensely, family oriented woman.