More on DYT and a Mental Health Progress Report

A friend of mine blogged today about her own journey with Dressing Your Truth, how she found out about it and how it has impacted her at a level so much deeper than just dressing and feeling beautiful.

Check out Part 1 and Part 2!

Part One has a great overview of what Dressing Your Truth is, and Part Two goes into how understanding her nature and dressing accordingly has created some aha! moments for her.

This is one of my favorite sections:

I am not a "textbook" Type 1 - what I call bouncy balls and fireworks. Rather, I describe my energy as "a dreamer, head in the clouds" energy. It is still a very light, airy, full of ideas energy - but it also has a soft, gentle, graceful element to it. Think Belle in Disney's Beauty & the Beast. Thinking of it in that way allowed me to start to truly accept and embrace this part of my nature in a way I hadn't been able to before.

I love that!  The way she expresses her bright animated energy is influenced by a secondary soft subtle energy which makes it not quite as in your face as the Type One description sounds at first.  I didn't believe I could be a Type 1 because I didn't feel extroverted and loud and flashy enough.  But I'm my own kind of Type 1!  Although I loved the comparison to Belle, but my mind instantly went to another of my favorite fictional heroines, Anne of Green Gables!

I have to say since purging my closet of the black clothes and dark shaded/rich golden colors and bringing out and wearing my clothes with colors that pop, I've felt more me than I have in years.  The excitable bouncy clapping singing dancing joyful sublime silly whimsical me!  It may sound strange, but just changing the way I dress and accepting my bright animated nature has been deeply healing for me.  I don't have to censor myself and be more "grown up" or serious or somber than I am.  I don't have to beat myself up for not being someone else.

This is only one facet of my recovery from depression and anxiety.  Going public with my problem was one important step.  Deleting doomsday-type websites from my favorites and blogroll is another.  Meditating on Scripture and going through Celebrate Recovery to keep my focus on Christ as my source of hope and truth is the foundation of my recovery. 

All those intersected on Thursday.  One of my favorite verses is Zephaniah 3:17, and at a friend's suggestion I meditated on it Thursday night while singing "Revelation Song" at Celebrate Recovery.  God gave me a vision of me worshiping in the Throne Room and Him delighting in me living as who I was meant to be, and tears flowed and a burden of fear and anger lifted off my heart.

And, in the midst of it all, God is showing me a new path for me to embrace my passion for breastfeeding advocacy.  But that's another story for another blog post.

Hit by a Van, Part 2

C lay very still on the gurney. One doctor commented that he hadn’t seen her move her right arm.

To our relief, she did move it shortly thereafter.  One nurse put a neck brace on her and strapped her head, torso and legs to a board to keep her immobile, leaving only her arms free. Other nurses and a lab technician worked to draw blood and start an IV, which proved difficult and took several tries.  A social worker covered her legs with a pink blanket from Project Linus. I started to read the little poem attached to the blanket but it drew tears to the surface again so I put it aside.

She was given 1.0 mg of morphine for the pain. They wheeled in a portable X-ray machine, and asked me to leave the room. I asked if I could have a lead apron and stay with her.

“Are you pregnant?” the technician asked.

“No,” I answered, grateful that although we started trying to conceive in the past month that God in his wisdom had not allowed us to be successful.

“They’re going to take pictures of your bones,” I explained to C. She had fallen asleep.

DH finally arrived. I buried my head in his chest and let some tears come. A social worker and a chaplain both came in to reassure us and pray. The X-rays were inconclusive so they wanted to do a CT scan to check for other internal injuries. I held C' hand, still asleep, as they wheeled her through a maze of hallways.

“How are you doing, mom?” the chaplain asked as we walked.

Feeling guilty,” I admitted.

“Oh, no. No, no, no,” he said with a kind smile. He said other gentle words that I wish I could remember. All I know is that they felt like an absolution.

The CT scan took quite some time. My lead apron felt heavy and kept slipping off my shoulders. C woke up part way through, fear in her eyes though she did not cry or speak. The machine was very loud and moved her back and forth as it scanned her body. I tried to keep things light by playing peekaboo with her around the edge of the machine when it took her out of my reach.

As we walked back through the maze of hallways, the chaplain asked “How’s Grandpa doing?”

For the first time I noticed that Pake was not with us. Beppe said he was in the waiting room, said it would be too hard on him to see her. I remembered the tears streaming down his face as we loaded C into the van, and the panic in his voice as we drove to the hospital. I wished for him to receive the same comfort I had.

A doctor came and told us that the CT scan showed bilateral pulmonary contusions, and a fractured pelvis with a hematoma which may or may not have been pressing on her bladder.

“She’s very lucky,” he said. “It could have been much worse.”

Because they didn’t know if the hematoma was actively bleeding, which would require surgery, they arranged for her to be transferred to a hospital with a Level 1 trauma center in Fresno, about 45 miles away.

The chaplain and social worker came back and asked if they could pray with us for C. Then the chaplain asked if Pake had seen C yet. No. The chaplain went to the waiting room and urged Pake to come in and see her before we left for Fresno. Pake did finally come in, looking stricken.

One of the EMTs, Johnny, was very kind. He explained everything that would happen during the ride to Fresno and what we could expect when we arrived.

They transferred her to a smaller gurney and we followed them as they wheeled her to the ambulance bay. As they loaded the gurney, I hugged DH, Pake and Beppe in turn.

“She’s going to be okay,” DH whispered.

Pake apologized. I said it wasn’t his fault.

Beppe prolonged our hug and said a quick prayer.

I climbed into the jump seat of the ambulance and put my hand on C’s head. She looked at me and signed water. I told her I was sorry but she had to wait to drink.

Fifteen minutes into our trip, the ambulance broke down.

We waited by the side of the road for more than 30 minutes waiting for a replacement ambulance to come pick us up. I nervously eyed the monitors that reported C's oxygen levels, breathing and heart rate. She remained stable. Hope grew when she tried to push away the oxygen and pull off her IV, and asked several more times for water.

DH had driven 100 miles an hour to the hospital, only to find that we weren’t there yet.

While he was driving, DH called our friends and family in Southern California. He had misunderstood and thought that C definitely required surgery. I later found out that the prayer request was passed on through phone calls and Facebook to thousands of people. As with any game of telephone, misinformation was added to the message. Some people heard that her legs were broken too, some people heard that her bladder was damaged.

The EMT in the second ambulance driver wasn’t quite so kind and reassuring as Johnny, and since the ambulance was larger, I couldn’t quite reach C from the jump seat. She went in and out of sleep during the remainder of the ride. We arrived and I held C’s hand again as we walked through the halls. DH finally found us.

At this point, I had been asked about what happened by every doctor and nurse we met, and even a CHP officer. I had told the story of what we were doing in the driveway and how I happened to turn my back on her so many times I lost count. Before my discussion with the chaplain I told it with an expectation of being found out. “Aha! So it was YOUR fault!” After his forgiving words, that fear diminished somewhat. As we kept vigil at C’s bedsde, I listened to my husband on the phone describing what happened. I felt his tender touches on my arms and back. It sank in that he didn’t blame me either.

I hoped again that Pake felt the same balm of forgiveness. Everyone we met asked how Grandpa was doing. He had stayed in the waiting room again.

Beppe came back to join us, technically exceeding the visitor limit. DH's youth pastor who happened to be driving through the area on his way back from the coast stopped by to comfort and pray with us.

C’s blood glucose spiked to over 200, but we were told that was an expected reaction to trauma. Her oxygen levels remained good as long as she had the mask on or near her face. They decided to take her off the immobilization board, but keep on the neck brace.

She was in and out of sleep. Suddenly I noticed her choking. I helped her turn over, and she vomited a small amount of reddish brown fluid. I shook uncontrollably with adrenaline and fear. Was this a sign she was getting worse?

One doctor said it was nothing to worry about and that he was surprised it hadn’t already happened, but others were concerned that it could signal an underlying brain injury. She was so sleepy and relatively non-responsive because of the morphine, so it was hard to see if she was exhibiting any other symptoms.

C had had a BM after the accident, but hadn’t urinated. They didn’t know if it was just because she hadn’t had anything other than a little bit of breastmilk to eat or drink since breakfast, or if the hematoma was putting pressure on her plumbing and keeping her from going. They put an adhesive bag on her to see if they could monitor her output without using a catheter. After almost three hours, there was only a dribble in the bag, so they had to go ahead and put in a catheter. The bag filled rapidly once the catheter was in.

After they took more x-rays and evaluated the CT scan from Kaweah, the attending doctor came and spoke to us. He explained said they had decided to admit her for observation at least overnight. He was very reassuring that it was just a precaution.

“Babies are resilient,” he said. “She’ll make a full recovery.”

One sign that her brain was working was that C continued to sign for water. I asked a nurse if it was possible to give her some.

No, because they still didn’t know if she would need surgery. The nurse glanced down and saw on the chart that C had been breastfeeding when we arrived at Kaweah. She told me that I probably wouldn’t be able to nurse her again for at least 24 hours. Did I have a pump? No. The nurse made arrangements to get one from Labor & Delivery.

When they finally found a room for us it was after 4:00 p.m. We followed C as she was wheeled upstairs. It took extra time because they found a private room for us, and even arranged for a private waiting room nearby where DH could sleep. The room was in the Burn Center section of the ICU.

As we were getting settled in, we asked how long to expect to be there, and what they were looking for in terms of readiness to go home. The lead doctor in the Burn Center was a little less reassuring than the ER doctor as he described all the worst case scenarios. There may be internal bleeding we missed and her pelvis could fill with blood, requiring surgery. The fractures may be in her growth plates and might cause deformities. They still wanted to be sure that there weren’t any brain injuries they had missed.

The nurse said that most often with this type of trauma, the child needed an MRI to rule out hidden spinal cord injuries before they would remove the neck brace. I was concerned about another test, this one where I wouldn’t be able to be right with her. Worry was for nothing, because not an hour later, one of the ER doctors came up and took off the neck brace, explaining that they were confident her upper body wasn’t involved in the accident at all.

Pake and Beppe headed home with a list of items to bring back to us the next morning.

C slept for a few hours, and DH and I sat next to her bed and talked about what had happened. We looked at all the text messages we received from people praying for us and praising God along with us. I let myself cry again, releasing more fear and guilt, and absorbing more acceptance and understanding from my spouse.

At midnight, I pumped for the first time since the accident. We set up the pull out chair next to C’s crib. DH headed to the private waiting room. Not long after he left, C became extremely uncomfortable, waking every 30 minutes or so crying out in pain. Earlier that afternoon, they had reduced her morphine to 0.5 mg per dose so that she would be more alert and responsive to assessments for brain injury.

She also continued to urgently request water, even pointing frantically to the clear liquid in the IV bag. It was so heartbreaking to have to say no to such a simple human need.

Around 1:00 a.m., the night shift nurse said it was okay if I held C. I cradled her in my arms for the next two hours or so. She only asked to nurse once, the first time since we arrived at the hospital. I was relieved not to have to refuse her more often, and yet sad that she didn’t want to. Finally the nurse suggested we up her morphine to 1.0 mg again. I agreed, and C slept in the crib for the next few hours while I rested fitfully beside her.

That morning I was very grateful for the thoughtfulness of the nurse who had arranged for me to have a breast pump.

By mid-morning, Pake and Beppe returned with our requested items. C clung to the baby doll and requested to watch her favorite DVD whenever she was awake. DH and I took turns eating and getting cleaned up.

Beppe said my mom had called and told her about some of the times I was hospitalized or treated in the ER as a baby and toddler. I had an eventful babyhood, with suspected spinal meningitis, a bout of pneumonia, and a dog attack. I’d heard all those stories before, but now had a renewed appreciation for my mom’s tender care of me through that trauma as I experienced the other side myself.

As the morning went on, we noticed that C’s face looked increasingly red and she scratched it continually, rubbing the skin raw. A side effect of the morphine, we were told. Sometimes she would use the back of her hand with the IV, and as a result had two deep scratches on her nose. I asked a nurse if we could put something softer over the IV tubing and tape to prevent further injury to her face, and she found some cotton mesh to wrap it.

Late Sunday afternoon, C was cleared to eat and drink. I asked her if she wanted to nurse. It was such a joy and relief for both of us to be connected again in that way. Then they brought in a hamburger, jello and applesauce for her to eat. She lit up at the sight of the food. For the first time since the accident, she became animated and chattering.

I tore the hamburger patty into bite-sized pieces and offered to feed her. She pushed my hand away and reached with her right hand (the one with the IV) to try to pick them up. I told her she could either eat with her left hand or let mama feed her. She stopped, looked at me for a moment, then picked her left hand out of her lap and started to feed herself!

Then she pointed to the cotton wrapped around her IV. “Sock,” she said, and giggled at her joke.

“Oh my! What is a sock doing on your hand?” I asked. She pointed and giggled again.

Immediately after she finished eating, she fell asleep in my arms, exhausted.

While I held her through her nap, a cleaning lady came in. She asked what happened. I told the story once again, but this time the similarity of our story to the tragedy Steven Curtis Chapman and his family experienced recently struck me. The lyrics to his song “Cinderella,” played in my head, and I began to cry again at how we almost lost her and the miracle that she was still in my arms.

The nurse said they were reducing her number of blood draws from every 6 hours to every 12 hours, and that we likely would be able to go home on Monday assuming she continued to eat and drink well.

When C was cleared to eat on Sunday, they had switched her pain management from morphine to Tylenol with codeine (T3). She took it with her lunch and seemed to tolerate it well. We gave it to her again at bedtime, and she slept well, even getting a long unbroken stretch from 10:30 p.m. to 5:30 a.m., when she was awakened by another challenging blood draw. After 45 minutes of trying to get blood to come through her IV, they gave up and took it from her arm instead.

Afterwards I nursed C, and they removed the IV since she had been eating and drinking so well, and since the line seemed to be blocked anyway. She started acting uncomfortable so we administered more T3. Shortly after that she asked for water. I held up a cup and put the straw in her mouth. She appeared to choke on the water and spit it back out. She made the same choking/gagging motion she had the day before, and I realized she was vomiting. I helped her sit up and it turned into projectile. For the rest of the morning, she couldn’t keep anything down, and there was renewed talk of brain injury and of finding a new place to restart IV fluids.

Meanwhile, her catheter had stopped working, but she appeared to be peeing around it. The doctors ordered it to be removed.

They gave her an injection of Zofran in her thigh, which helped. We decided that the T3 on an empty stomach was the culprit. She was obviously in pain, so we gave her another dose of codeine with her lunch. Whether it was the Zofran or having the T3 with food, her stomach stayed calm the rest of the day and we remained on the course toward discharge.

After the doctors held their rounds for the day, they gave us the official word that we were going to take her home that afternoon. A social worker helped us arrange follow up care for her in Orange County.

When she was discharged, they had me sit in an oversized wheelchair with C on my lap and wheeled us down to the car. C is normally ambivalent toward her car seat. Some days she fights getting into it and others she is indifferent. But that day she seemed delighted to be in her seat, in our car, driving away from the hospital. She renewed the animated chatter, pointing at all the sights for the first few miles. Then she fell asleep.

I couldn’t take my eyes off her. I couldn’t stop smiling through tears at my precious miracle baby.

On Wednesday's follow up appointment with her pediatrician, we found out that her lungs are healing well. At Friday's appointment with an orthopedic specialist, we were given permission to let her bear weight on her legs. On Saturday she walked for the first time after the accident, slowly with a limp, holding our hands for balance. Sunday, she took many steps unassisted and her limp was noticeably less. We see a pediatric orthopedist tomorrow morning.

Please join me in praising God for his merciful protection, the blessing of rapid healing, and for His amazing grace on us all.

The end!

Hit by a Van, Part 1

May 1st, 2010. We were up visiting my in-laws so we could celebrate DH's nephew's birthday party.

C and I walked together in the front yard, waiting for everyone else to be ready.

My father-in-law, "Pake," went to pull the van out of the garage so we could load it up. I held C while the van was in motion. It came to a stop and I put her down so I could get the car seat from our back seat and install it in their van.

I heard a bump. C cried out.

I whirled around. Pake had pulled the van forward toward the house. C lay face down behind the right front tire. I ran to her and had her in my arms before I could even think about proper procedures or potential spinal cord injuries.

Pake scrambled out from the driver’s seat. “I thought you had her!” he cried.

I should have had her. It was my job to keep her safe and I put her down. How could I have let this happen? I should have known he wasn’t done moving the van.

Her cries were weak and anguished.

“We need to take her to the hospital,” Pake choked out.

My mind reeled, still not fully digesting what had happened. Hospital? Was it that bad? I didn’t see any blood. Maybe she was fine?

I tried to set her down in front of me so I could look her over. Her leg collapsed under her and she screamed in pain.

I snatched her back up and hugged her little body tighter to me. Her breath rattled in her chest. No, no, no. Something was wrong.

I found a bench to sit on. Arms wrapped tightly around her, tears falling into her soft halo of ringlets, praying that she wasn’t heavenbound. Not yet. Please, no.

Just last week DH had shared that the thing he most wanted me to change was to be more careful with our daughter. He’ll never forgive you for this, a cruel voice hissed in my mind.

DH's mom, "Beppe," came out to see what happened and we checked C from head to toe. An ugly red pattern traced a path up her left leg and across her lower back.

Tire marks. Oh, God! What chance did a twenty pound, twenty month old baby have against a more than two ton vehicle? What kind of mother was I to let this happen?

Beppe went inside the house to tell DH what had happened. DH had just gotten out of the shower and said we should leave without him.

Pake and I tried to get C into the van. My in-laws live out in the country, their house is set well back from the road and the nearest hospital had very limited services, so that an ambulance wasn’t a good option. She screamed when we tried to put her in the carseat.

“Just hold her,” Beppe said as she climbed in the front seat.

I cradled her in my arms and carefully fastened the seat belt around us. Tires screeched and we sped on our way to the Kaweah Delta Hospital.

I let C nurse for comfort during the ride. She would pull off to cry out in pain from time to time. Her eyelids fluttered and I saw the whites of her eyes. Was she going to sleep or losing consciousness?

Ahead a light was red. Pake slowed the van to a near stop as we approached the intersection. No one was coming.

“Just go,” Beppe urged. She turned to look at us. “She doesn’t look good.”

It was true. C’s cries had weakened further. She grunted with each breath. Her mouth had a bluish cast. I truly feared we were going to lose her.

Beppe called ahead to the hospital to let them know what happened and that we were on our way. She made other calls, asking friends and family for prayer, and making arrangements for someone else to pick up the food we were supposed to have delivered to my nephew’s birthday party.

One block from the hospital we hit another light. This time another car blocked us from breaking the law. I watched helplessly as the bluish cast around C's mouth spread.

When we arrived they ordered me to stop breastfeeding immediately. C began to cry weakly again. A nurse ushered us directly to a trauma room they had prepared.

We stripped off her clothes. Nurses weighed and measured her and attached electrodes and wires to measure her heart rate, pulse, oxygen level and respiratory rate. I heard someone say that her blood was only 87% saturated with oxygen.

They scrambled to find an oxygen mask that would fit her tiny little face. The white hospital gurney dwarfed her small body, now covered in tubes and wires.

Up to this point I had been crying uncontrollably, but suddenly I became aware that I needed to be strong for C. Tears dried and I gently stroked her hair and squeezed her hand. In a soft voice, I explained what was happening to her in the simplest and most reassuring terms I could muster.

Never Forget His Faithfulness

Just over a year ago, I almost lost my daughter in a vehicle vs. pedestrian accident in a driveway.

I shared some of the immediate raw emotion from that here.


Today, all eight of the two-week-old chicks I've been raising were killed by my dog. I sobbed uncontrollably when I found them and as I worked with my husband to clean up the scene.

Was my reaction way out of proportion to the cause? After all, they were just chickens.

I'm wondering if something more is going on. Could it be that in a way I'm processing leftover emotion from last year's trauma through this?

Whatever the case, this small tragedy is an excellent reminder to look back and praise God once again for preventing an unthinkable tragedy by saving C's little life last year.

What grace that I got to enjoy another twelve months watching her grow, hearing her learn to talk and sing, hear her say "I love you" and ask for hugs and kisses. Three hundred and sixty five more days of nursing her at my breast, cuddling her to sleep and waking up beside her every morning.

Praise the Lord whose lovingkindness endures forever!!

I think I will publish the story of her accident and recovery in this space in the coming days so others may know of what He did for us.

Encouragement through Discouraging Times

I have so much to be thankful for.  So much that is going well: my physical and emotional health are better since going gluten free.  I completed revisions of my novel and am getting great feedback from beta readers.  I have a beautiful daughter, terrific husband.  My garden is thriving, and the caring for the baby chicks I bought this week and planning for their housing has become a very fun family project. 

And yet, there are a few areas where I can tend to get discouraged.

Trying to conceive our second child, for instance.  Woke up this morning to the evidence that we will have to keep trying.

Another is my husband's efforts to build an insurance business.  He's working hard, talking to lots of people, but his efforts are slow to bear fruit. 

And, last but not least, the daily grind of the small tasks of household management and mothering provide plenty of fodder for discouragement.  The bed needs to be made ... again.  The toddler made a mess ... again.  My firm and kind response to a typical toddler behavior wasn't a miracle cure ... she's still a toddler and I need to provide that same kind and firm response the next time it happens, even if it's minutes later.

It's easy to lose focus and get tired and discouraged!

I love how God speaks through others to deliver a word to us right when we need to hear it. 

This morning's sermon drew from 1 Kings 19.  Elijah just finished the battle on Mount Carmel with the prophets of Baal.  God won, and for a brief moment it looked like the people's hearts and even Ahab's heart might be turning back toward God.  Then, Jezebel puts out a death warrant for Elijah and he runs for his life. 

From the highest high he goes to the lowest low, a fugitive alone out in the wilderness, praying to God that his life would end now. 

As James says, I'm of like nature or like passion with Elijah.  How many times have I been in the same place, sitting under my figurative broom tree, having a pity party because things didn't turn out like I planned, feeling alone in my efforts.   My lament is similar to his:  "I've had it!" "I give up!"  "I'm the only one doing XYZ!  Doesn't anyone help out around here?" "Is this really what you want Lord if there's no fruit?"
   
That kind of discouragement comes when I focus on my own efforts and my own expectations of what results those efforts should yield.  It comes when I despise the small things and think I'm ready to move on to bigger things. 

God's response is to Elijah is so tender, so gentle.  He sends the angel of the Lord to touch, feed, and minister to Elijah.  He graciously shows Elijah that indeed he is not alone in serving Him. 

God has called me to be faithful with the small things he's given me.  To love my husband body and soul and accept whatever children He blesses us with in His time.  To pray for, encourage and support my husband as he builds his business and make it possible for him to focus on that by how I manage my share of the household work.  To do my part and trust God to do His part.

That truly encouraged me this morning, and I share it here to solidify it in my own heart and in the hope it may encourage someone else.

Parenting to Sleep: a Spiritual Discipline

James 1:2-4 says:

“Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.”

Anyone who has parented a baby or toddler to sleep knows there are naps and nights when it can rightly be categorized as a trial!

Yet, it is a trial I have chosen and continue to choose to submit to and endure because of the belief that it is the right way to honor God’s command to love my neighbor as myself and treat the least of these as if they were Jesus.

From the first day I met my precious daughter, God gave me a mama heart that told me to respond to her cries and soothe her to sleep rather than leave her to cry alone and give up when she realizes no one is coming to help her.

She may not have explicit memory of these years, but my loving and (mostly) consistent response will build for her a foundation of trust all the same.

God saw fit to bless me with a daughter that has trouble falling asleep and staying asleep.  She fits the definition of a “spirited” or “high-needs” baby. 

Dr. Sears offers 31 tips for nighttime parenting.  He also explains why high-need children sleep differently than others.  In the article, he suggests waiting for the "limp limb sign" before putting baby down and sneaking away.

Don't hurry. Trying to hurry your baby off to sleep is doomed to fail because babies go to sleep differently than adults. In the early months, in order to reach a state of deep sleep, babies need to go through a 20 to 30 minute stage of lighter sleep. If you try to put babies down and sneak away during this light sleep stage, many will wake up. You need to continue your ritual until you are certain baby is in a deep sleep. Here's how to tell: Watch baby's face and limbs. If baby's mouth is still grimacing or showing "sleep grins," his eyelids are fluttering, and his arms are flexed with hands in fists, baby is still in the state of light sleep. Once baby's face is expressionless, eyes and mouth are still, limbs dangle and hands are wide open (we call this the limp-limb sign), chances are baby has entered deep sleep, and you can put baby down on his back and quietly creep away. This is just one of the many facets of baby-care that teaches parents patience.

Did you catch that last sentence? "This is just one of the many facets of baby-care that teaches parents patience."  Boy does it ever! 

Over the past 2.5 years of parenting my little C to sleep, I've been humbled over and over again as I realize just how impatient and selfish I am.  C is so sensitive, that if I am at all eager to "escape" and relax with my husband or go accomplish one of the many things on my to-do list (even if it's just to catch up on Gentle Christian Mothers!), she can feel the tension in my body and will go on alert too.  It is not until I am fully present with her, relaxed in the moment, submitting myself to the discipline of stillness, patience and self-sacrifice that she too will relax and allow herself to fall asleep. 

There are a few times in particular when I find it difficult to be patient and fully relax. 

One is when I'm facing a deadline for my work-at-home job recording textbooks for visually disabled students.  To avoid undue background noise, I can only do my recording while C is asleep or not in the house.  The times when it goes well and I can fully relax are the times when I pray something like this, "God, you know how much work I have to get done, but I am a parent first.  I trust that you will make time for me to meet my other commitments if I am faithful in helping this precious girl you've given me get the sleep she needs."   And you know what?  He always comes through for me.

The times when I fail the most are the times when I am feeling irritable, tired and entitled to some space and time to myself.  Those are the times when God opens my eyes to how much I am like the snake that Roy Hession describes in his book, The Calvary Road.

Those who have been in tropical lands tell us that there is a big difference between a snake and a worm, when you attempt to strike at them. The snake rears itself up and hisses and tries to strike back – a true picture of self. But a worm offers no resistance, it allows you to do what you like with it, kick it or squash it under your heel – a picture of true brokenness.  

Lately, nap times in particular have been more and more of a struggle.  C is perhaps approaching the time when she will give up naps.  She at least would like to skip it and stay awake as not to miss a minute of all the fun and interesting things the world holds for a toddler.  But I know based on her behavior when she does not have one how much she really does need to sleep or at least to rest for a few hours each day. 

In the past few months, I have become more and more controlling in my efforts to help her sleep.  I wanted to rush her through the process by forbidding any wiggles, or anything that I perceived as her fighting sleep and thereby daring to keep me away from what I wanted to be doing instead.  My work-at-home job is done for the season, so these were purely selfish pursuits I was being denied.

So I started doing some things I'm not proud of.  I've told her if she couldn't stop herself from moving her body so sleep could come find her, I'd help her, and I held her in a gentle but firm bear hug while she screamed and struggled to get away.  While this can be a gentle technique, I was using it punitively and her reaction told me it was scary for her and yet I persisted.  When I let her go, she was compliant and ready to sleep, but it was far from the peaceful transition to sleep that I want for her to have.  Another time I got so angry with her that I had to leave the room to stop myself from physically hurting her.  While I calmed myself down, she screamed hysterically behind the door.  When I calmed down enough to return, again she was exhausted and ready to sleep.  Regrettably, I started falling back on these techniques to get her to sleep.  Not exactly consciously, but it seemed to happen more and more often that she'd either be screaming because I was holding her down or screaming because I had left the room to control my anger. 

One of those times happened while my husband was home last weekend.  C prefers to have both parents there while she transitions to sleep if we are both available, so he was in her room with us.  She flopped around the bed, asked for water, asked to go potty, kicked the rail of her bed, asked for covers, kicked off covers, asked to be held, climbed out of my lap, asked me to lay down with her, refused to lay down herself ad nauseum.  All while yawning and rubbing her eyes.  She needed sleep, and I told myself she was fighting sleep on purpose.  I thought, "I'm not putting up with this anymore," and "She can't get away with this," and got locked into forcing her to hold still and stop talking.  I only succeeded in riling her up.  Seeing C's distress and my rising temper, my husband insisted that I leave the room. 

While I was gone, the Holy Spirit impressed on my heart how wrong I was and had been to be so controlling and angry.  I did not like how I was treating my child and it needed to stop. 

Stopping this unkind behavior and selfish thoughts has not been easy and I still have failures.  C is still having a particularly rough time transitioning to sleep.  Daily I must face the struggle to choose to be the worm instead of the snake.  To choose to trust God to fulfill my desires to be elsewhere in His timing.  To choose to submit to the task at hand and be fully present in the moment.  To choose to stop the self-talk that agitates and embitters me against my daughter, and instead choose new thoughts and attitudes that enjoy the moment for what it is: precious time with a girl that is growing so fast. 

The rewards of faithfulness have been great:

On one succesful night, we went through our bedtime routine and got to the point where we were in C's room and all that was left was for her to go to sleep.  I sat in the chair by her bed where we nurse.  She climbed off her bed and into my lap, and started talking and asking questions.  Rather than insisting she stay on her bed, or shushing her and saying it was time for sleep, I engaged in a low key conversation with lots of snuggles and kisses.  She got down out of my lap and turned the nightlight off and then on again, and came right back.  She climbed up, nuzzled her head to my chest and fell fast asleep.  I held her for a moment, then gently put her down on her bed and left the room.

Another night, I sat on her bed with her while my husband sat on the chair.  After a few minutes of snuggling and quiet talking, she moved to her dad.  In the past I would have insisted she stay on the bed and gotten into a physical struggle to keep her there.  Instead I watched to see what she would do.  She gave her daddy a hug and kiss, then snuggled down into his arms and fell asleep.  It was a precious moment to witness, and one I would have missed had I tried to over-control the situation instead of trusting my God and the instincts and abilities He gave my daughter.


And yet, the struggle still continues, and I could use your prayers, dear reader. 

Last night, it took 90 minutes for her to finally drift off to sleep.  She was tired, even laying still, but just the sight of her open eyes began to anger me, and I had to turn my face away and ask God to help me die to my self once more.  Today I felt I had to leave the room to control my anger again, but I came back more quickly than before.  I am so grateful that Grace is for mamas too.

God is using her struggles with sleep to draw out and show me the ugly places where my heart still needs work to be conformed to the likeness of Christ.  It is a daily opportunity to make the choice to take up my cross and follow Him who laid down his life for me.

Does God Sometimes Say No to Good Things? Yes!

Does God Sometimes Say No to Good Things? Yes!
This was Pastor John's sermon title at Calvary Chapel Tulare a few Sundays ago, and the same passage of scripture was the subject of this week's womens' Bible study at Tulare Community Church.  Do you think God is trying to tell us something?

The scripture in question is 2 Samuel 7, when David decides that it would be a good idea to build a temple for God.  After all, it doesn't seem right for David to have a spectacular cedar palace while the Ark of the Covenant representing God's presence in the midst of the people resides in a mere tent.  David had a vision and perhaps his heart ran ahead of his head in wanting to make it come true.

Sounds like a good plan.  Except that God had given specific instructions to keep the Ark in a tabernacle (which actually offers some beautiful symbolism, see below), and never requested anything different. 

David at least runs the plan by Nathan, God's prophet and David's advisor.  Nathan hears the plan and immediately says, "Sounds good to me, God has been with you so far so I don't see why he won't bless this too."

Note that Nathan doesn't actually check with God, just guesses what God's answer would be based on past experience of God blessing David.

God sets them straight right away, speaking to Nathan that very night.  "Go tell David I never asked for a temple.  One will be built, but it won't be built by you, that is not your purpose." 

So even though David had a vision to do something great for God, and the vision was clear and maybe even right, God said it wasn't his to complete.  Although he did get to participate in the preparation and gathering of supplies.

Tabernacling With Us
If all the pagan nations surrounding Israel built magnificent temples and shrines to reflect the majesty and power of gods they worshiped, why did God instruct Israel to house the Ark in a humble tent made of animal skins? 

First, there could never be an earthly structure magnificent enough to adequately reflect the glory of He who says that "Heaven is my throne and earth is my footstool." 

Second, I think God wanted to tell us something about who He is and His heart for us.  He doesn't want to be off, immovable, removed and isolated in a distant inaccesible temple.  The tabernacle was mobile, and was always set up in the midst of Israel as they traveled from place to place, reflecting God's desire to be with us, to dwell in our midst, and foreshadowing the incarnation of Christ and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in believers. 

Today, each believer is His "tabernacle", housing the presence of God in our mobile, mortal skin.  And even today, those with a heart for God sometimes jump the gun and let our hearts run ahead of our heads.  Wisdom calls for us to submit our plans to God and wait on the Lord for confirmation before rushing ahead. 

A Different, Greater Blessing
God doesn't just say no to David and stop there.  He tells David of the blessings in store. "No, you won't build a me a house, but I will build you a house.  I will give you rest from your enemies, your son will build the temple, and your kingdom will last forever."  David saw the first part of the prophecy come true in his lifetime, the second in Solomon's lifetime, and the third is fulfilled in Christ.

David responds with awe and grateful acceptance to God's no.  Not a hint of bitterness or demanding his own way.  Perhaps it was easier for him because God showed him he blessings he would receive instead.  But we too have promises from God that "he will work all things together for the good of those who love him and are called according to his purpose." 

Just like David had to take God's promises of different blessings on faith, and trust fully in God's sovereignty, so do we.  When God says no to one of our good ideas, He doesn't always spell out for us what we will be doing instead or where it will lead, but we know he has only the best in store for us.

Examples from My Life
A few years after DH and I got married, before C came along, we had a vision to commit ourselves to a year of volunteer ministry.  We researched all the options, but doors closed and it became clear that even though it was a noble idea, it wasn't God's plan for us at that point in our lives. 

Of late, the call is to add to our family.  Whether through a live birth or adoption or foster care, I don't know yet.  This is a good desire.  Children are blessing, and ministry to orphans is described by James as pure and faultless religion.

But just because it is good doesn't give me a right to it or mean it is God's plan for me.  The clear answer right now is to wait.  After our loss in October, we are still trying to conceive again.  I started researching adoption/foster care and found that to start the process we need a stable source of income.  Right now DH only has a temporary job and has otherwise been out of work for almost a year, and the insurance agency he is working to start is growing but too slowly to count as a source of income. 

We are waiting on God for the answer.

I know and trust that whatever it is, whether both doors eventually open, only one does, or they both stay firmly shut, he has a purpose for us, and the blessings to be found on the path he puts us on will be far beyond whatever I could imagine.

In the meantime, like David stockpiling supplies for the temple, I will do what I can to advocate for children and support ministry to orphans.

Grace in our Trauma

Pookaloo was hit by a van on Saturday, May 1st. There were scary moments when we didn't know how bad it was. She turned blue and couldn't keep her eyes open on the way to the hospital, and once we got there she was very still. X-rays and a CT scan showed pulmonary contusions and pelvic fractures.

PRAISE GOD that by some miracle she is ok. Her lungs are already healed, and she has begun to crawl and even walk again.



Trauma comes with so many emotions.

Fear. Guilt. Relief. Joy.


It happened so fast and now she's well on the road to recovery but our emotions are still raw, throbbing, bleeding and demanding care and attention. How odd that the ordinary rhythms of the world and daily march forward when I want to hit pause and rewind until I've processed it all.


Fear. We almost lost her. The line between alive and dead is so thin. We are so vulnerable and what we think is ours could be snatched away in a moment. A moment of inattention led to this result and I want to swear eternal vigilance, but I know that there will be more moments of inattention because I am only human. I'm not ultimately in control, I don't have the power over life or death.

Guilt. I was there and had just put her down and turned my back to do something I thought was important. What could be more important than keeping my precious daughter safe? Now in the aftermath, she needs so much from me and I am starting to feel drained and resentful and then I feel guilty about that.

Relief, Joy and Gratitude. She's alive! She's healing rapidly! She's thriving! I still get to be her mama! God saved her! God healed/is healing her! Every smile, every giggle, every cuddle overwhelms me with joy that leaks out of my eyes.


Pookaloo has to process the trauma too. How scared and confused she must have been. How frustrated she is now to be able to walk only slowly with a limp, when before this she was running, jumping, climbing.


God has continually extended grace to me in this situation. A warm chaplain who immediately offered absolution for the guilt I expressed. A handmade blanket made by an anonymous donor through Project Linus that comforted Pookaloo in the ER. A message of hope and forgiveness at Bible study. An encouraging word from a dear aunt who was in a similar situation many years ago.

Grace is abounding. I need only to continually receive God's grace for myself and extend it to Pookaloo as we both are extra fragile and healing.

My Writer's Biography

Growing up, I always wanted to be a writer. At five I had a dog-eared notebook in which I penned one page epics with titles like “Mystery Martian and the Lost Glove.” My story about how the catfish got its whiskers represented the 5th grade class in the school anthology.

Schoolwork was always very easy for me, and the only reason I didn’t keep a 4.0 GPA was that I often “forgot” to do the homework. Throughout high school, I fought off boredom by scribbling down whimsical children’s stories or illustrations during my least favorite classes (physics and government).

Then, as graduation approached, my school chum Robert Chang challenged me to live up to my potential.

“For most people, placing 7th in their class is an accomplishment, but for you it’s just sad,” he said, half joking. “We both know you could have been valedictorian if you wanted to, Margaret. Think what would happen if you really applied yourself? There’s no reason why you can’t get straight “A”s from now on.”

I took his challenge seriously, which to my all-or-nothing mind meant no more daydreaming. Once college started, I put the kibosh on scribbling down story ideas in class. Other than a prayer journal that I used intermittently to process the daily onslaughts to my faith from the secular humanism that surrounded me, the ink stopped flowing for two years.

In my third year of college, my creativity enjoyed a brief resurgence, sparked by the creative writing and journalism courses that were part of my English major. My work got rave reviews from the professors. I worked as a summer intern at the copy desk of the Youngstown Vindicator, and even had two play reviews published with my byline. My last year at Muskingum, I allowed creativity back into my life. Having completed most of my graduation requirements, I chose only “fun” classes for my last two semesters of college, courses such as The History of Film, Lyric Theater and Introduction to Drawing in addition to my English classes. I worked as the copy editor of the campus newspaper, the senior section editor of the campus yearbook, and the editor in chief of the campus literary magazine.

Yet this success was clouded as my faith went into a tailspin. I became involved in an intense relationship with a subtly controlling man. He proposed within six weeks of our first meeting, and a few months later, I willingly gave him my virginity. Satan turned the conviction of the Holy Spirit into tremendous condemnation, guilt and shame. I had always wanted to live to please God, but now he seemed distant and demanding. By contrast, the prevailing culture of “an ye harm none, do as you will” on campus felt safe, sane and reasonable. I now welcomed the slings and arrows of my relativistic culture, taking comfort in them as I tried to redefine God in my own image. I couldn’t quite bring myself to believe there wasn’t a God, but I also couldn’t live with the judgment of the one I had grown up believing in. Maybe if what I had always believed about God and His ways wasn’t true, maybe I wasn’t a wretched human being.

That year was bittersweet. The enjoyment I gained from my involvement in the world of the arts was always tainted by the painful separation from my Creator. Too, I harbored an irrational belief that this burst of creativity was my last hurrah. I equated creativity and the arts with play, and after graduation I would have to give up such frivolous pursuits and be serious.

Too, despite the encouragement of my writing and art professors to further develop my skills and explore my talent, I feared deep down that I wasn’t good enough to make a living at it. Reinforcing that belief and playing on my fears, the boyfriend suggested I was best suited to go into business. Having pushed God out of my life, I let the man I loved become god to me and swallowed every word he said.

So, choosing money and financial security over passion, I enrolled in an MBA program at the University of Miami. The coursework didn’t challenge me mentally, and I once again began to daydream, sketching my fellow classmates or writing short stories rather than listen to the lecture.

“What am I doing here when my heart is so obviously somewhere else?” I wondered in the margins of my notes. I toyed with the idea of quitting, but then the boyfriend broke off our engagement with cruel, devastating words that shattered the last vestiges of my self-confidence.
My well of creativity dried up as I told myself “I have nothing to say worth hearing.”

I felt stuck. I believed it was too late to change course. I had gone $30,000 into debt to foot the bill of the first year of the MBA program, and I wasn’t about to give up that much money without walking away with a degree, even if it did cost me another $20,000. Feeling lost and hopeless, I partied with my fellow MBA students as an escape, overindulging in alcohol which occasionally led to casual sex.

Somewhere in those months, I started to go to church again. Someone I met through AOL Personals invited me to a Bible study at his house, and I attended faithfully. Hungry for God and community, I didn’t stay away even if I had sinned the night before. Slowly but surely, God drew me back to his side, and my hedonistic lifestyle began to lose its appeal.

After graduation in 2001, I entered the working world. The dot-com bubble had just burst, followed swiftly by the tragedy of 9/11, and I took whatever job I could get in the shaky employment market. An internship researching apartment sales for a prosperous team of brokers turned into full-time work, and I ended up working for five years as a Marketing Specialist for various commercial apartment brokers. An unexpected extra blessing, the job required a lot of writing and even some graphic design skills. Still, something was missing.

During Lent of 2003, I went through the 40 Days of Purpose curriculum with my church. Rick Warren’s insistence that I had been made for a purpose struck a chord. As the program drew to a close, my purpose became clear: I was to use my creative talents for God’s glory.

I plotted out an ambitious three-volume roman-a-clef or biography that would show God’s work in my life, but when I sat down to work on it further, found myself unable to write a single sentence. Paralyzed by self-doubt and a life-long tendency to procrastinate, I put the idea for my life’s work aside. With the long hours required by my job, I didn’t have much time to work on it anyway.

God continued to show me His love in extravagant ways until I finally understood that it wasn’t a matter of earning his love with my good works or lack of sin. He loved me so much he gave me His righteousness so we could be reconciled. On Easter morning, I chose to be baptized to solidify that fact in my mind.

God began to move in a mighty way in my life from that moment. He opened a path for me to leave Miami and return to my hometown in Southern California, where I met a gentle yet strong man who loves the Lord as I do. A year later, we were married. Eventually, after much prayer, we decided together that I would leave my high-stress job as a Marketing Specialist and go to work as a corporate proposal writer.

More importantly, God gave me courage to seek counseling to heal the lingering hurts from my past relationships and bad choices. As a result, I found my voice. In 2007 I began to write, with the goal of completing a novel by my 30th birthday. I didn't quite get there, but by the end of 2007, I had 60,000 words written of that novel I plotted out in 2003.

As most first drafts are, it’s quite messy and I'm currently stuck on how to complete it. It's also frustrating to see how rusty my writing skills became from lack of use. But although I have put that particular project on the shelf, writing is still part of my life. I've completed a children's story based on the healing of my dog's broken back, and I've brainstormed ideas for and even plotted out several other projects.

Last September I had precious baby girl. She is sensitive and spirited to say the least and it has taken much of my creative energy to nurture her and figure out ways to juggle career, motherhood and housekeeping.

That brings us up to today. I'm about to embark on a new era. The season for the proposal writing job has come to an end, and I am about to transition to life as a Work at Home Mom. I want to increase the role of writing in my life. I'm writing this blog, and will continue to do so. But I need more. The sheer joy of creative writing is beckoning to me. I want to imagine deeply and see what worlds emerge from my pen. I still believe God has a purpose for my life, to use my story (and stories!) for His glory.

Prayer -- where I started from

In my family the only prayer ever modeled for us was the trite recitation of the old Lutheran favorite when we sat down together at meals. We’d holler and jostle around the table, but when my father said, “Let’s pray,” suddenly we’d settle down and say in a sing-song cadence:

Come Lord Jesus
Be our guest
And let thy gifts to us be
blest
Amen

And then we would dig in. The fact that we could talk to God was pretty much forgotten about until the next day when we would all sit down to dinner again. There were rules and exceptions though. If we ate out, no prayer. If my dad were out of town on a business trip and my mom just made us kids macaroni and cheese or pancakes for dinner because it was easier, well there might not be a prayer then either.

I might be exaggerating a little. It’s not like there weren’t other times when we prayed.

At church, toward the end of the service, the pastor would get up and face the altar and intone formal prayers that always began with lofty phrases such as “Almighty and everlasting God, since…” and when he got to the part when he said, “Lord in your mercy” we could respond with “hear our prayer.” Finally he would wrap up with the line, “as you taught us to pray” and we as a congregation would launch into a recitation of the Lord’s Prayer, always in the same sing-song voice as we said our Come Lord Jesus. When I started kindergarten at the Lutheran School, we also learned some short prayers written by Martin Luther that we would say during the weekly Wednesday chapel service or perhaps at the beginning of the school day.

And that was my whole understanding of what prayer was in a nutshell: formal words brought out and used at specific times, under the leadership of a parent, teacher or pastor. The concept of personal prayer was utterly foreign to me, and even today it is still difficult to discipline myself to do. Writing in my journal to God is the most natural way for me to pray.

Introduction to My Story

I asked Jesus into my heart when I was five years old, but it would take twenty years and an eviction notice before I let him back in as Lord of my life.

I’ve always been an idealist, a dreamer of dreams. Too often I’ve lived in a world of fantasy and story and tasted bitter disappointment when life inevitably fell short of the pictures conjured by imagination. In response, I shrank from the world’s slings and arrows, only to find myself trapped by the greater agony of alienation from God and man.

Like Siddhartha in Herman Hesse’s novel, I spent the majority of my three decades of life in a desperate search to get it right. Right beliefs, right actions, right feelings. I tried the way of ascetic discipline and religious deeds for twenty-two long years before I finally gave up, exhausted and defeated by my own wretchedness. Instead of following Paul’s example and crying out to the One who could save me from this body of death, I gave into despair. I could never be good enough, so why torture myself trying?

Shortly after my 21st birthday, I walked away from the repressed pharisaical life that never did anything more than whitewash the oozing blackness of my heart. Plunging heedlessly into a debauched hedonism, I turned my back to God in defiant anger. How dare He demand perfection from me when we both knew it to be impossible? I spat in His face with my willful rebellion.
Bereft without any spirituality, I studied the world’s religions, hoping to find a system that would assuage my pride and let me keep my heart away from the demanding, spiteful god I had constructed for myself. Nothing satisfied.

Through it all, the true Triune God persistently wooed me, administering His love to my hardened heart in doses small and large through kind strangers, concerned family and accepting friends. His relentless lovingkindness slowly but surely healed the rutted scars of repeated abuse - even though the abuse was almost entirely self-inflicted.

This isn’t a feel-good saccharine Sunday School story. My sins are offensive and ugly. There are some who don't want to be confronted with the real danger posed by the powers of darkness and the real capacity for evil in the human heart, and some might be repulsed by what I did and said.
Just as my story has too much sin for the self-righteous, it contains and too much Gospel for those who relish reading about life’s seamy underbelly. It centers on the most offensive topic of all – God’s exclusive plan of salvation through Jesus Christ. There are still many, even in churches, who stumble over the Chief Cornerstone.

I have confidence that comes from a calling. There is someone or perhaps many someones out there who need to read this story, and I’m the one to tell it. I will state the facts plainly, warts and all. I will leave no darkened corners, no secret passageways, but will shine the light of Christ over my life so that my Savior may get the full glory for the work He is still carrying out to completion in me.