It Comes Down to This

It has been a difficult couple of years.  I have fought a lot of self-pity.  "Woe is me.  My life didn't turn out the way I wanted.  This is hard work.  I don't like it."

From the outside, it may seem like the fact that my husband had a stroke should be "no big deal" by now.  "Hey, it's 2 1/2 years later.  Accept it and move on."  I accepted the stroke itself within the first six months...by repeating to myself over and over and over, "My husband had a stroke."  It was very unreal, so I said it to myself and out loud to everyone I met until I accepted it.  Then it was, "My husband is disabled."  To the cashier at Meijer.  To the guy at the greenhouse who helped me to load wood chips onto a cart.  To the people who came to my yard sales.

Then it was, "Will I have to work full-time for the rest of my life?"

Then, "We have to file for bankruptcy."

Then, "Our marriage will never be the same."

Then, "God....You let us down."

When I was young(er), my vision for my life was this:  Know, Love and Serve God.  Get married, have kids, raise a family of prayer warriors (a word God spoke to me when I was a missionary in the Philippines), and become Super Wife and Super Mom. Can you guess what didn't happen the way I wanted it to?

The time has come.  I am challenging myself, my children, my husband, and hopefully all who read this:  Accept God's will for your life.  I was reading Psalm 16, which I had dubbed as my "life Psalm" over 20 years ago. I wanted my heart to reflect what David said in the Psalm, "Lord, you have assigned me my portion and my cup; you have made my lot secure.  The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance."

But my attitude has been far from this in dealing with the aftermath of the stroke.  I accepted that it happened; obviously, I couldn't deny what in fact had happened.  But I have been crying, whining, and complaining that God didn't swoop in and fix it all right away.  Where was the miraculous healing?  Where was my husband's Academy-Award-winning rally?  Where was the new house and car that Ty Pennington should have given me?  Where were my lottery winnings?

I hope you realize that I am exaggerating just a little, but it certainly didn't get easier when I had to work full-time in a high-stress job for a year after the stroke.  It worked out peacefully for me to move to a part-time position, but that created more financial stress.  It didn't get easier to deal with the depression and anxiety with which I've battled for years; in fact, those things became exponentially worse.  My kids didn't magically transform into Spirit-led prayer warriors.  And I most certainly did NOT become Super Mom.

Now, I'm faced with this reality:  God has surely allowed my life to progress to the place where it is today; surely for His purposes, and ultimately for my salvation.  Either I can change my thinking from "God, when are you going to do something about this huge mess in my life?" to "God, show me how I can serve you in this mess" OR I will continue to be depressed, miserable, and deceived.

Can you guess what choice I'm going to make?

The Vine and the Branches

After a heat wave, even a short one like the one we had in Michigan a few weeks ago, it's not hard to find patches of dying grass or wilting blossoms on the summer flowers.

That's how I feel.  Like a crispy, dried branch on a vine that is otherwise healthy.  I was reading John 15, and I realized that I'm the branch on the vine that is at risk of being cut off by the Gardener.  I'm not exactly sure how to take that verse - John 15:2 says that God the Father will cut off every branch that does not bear fruit.  I understand the symbolism - that I had better be connected to Jesus or I'm wasting my life.  But will God really cut me off?  In the light of Jesus' mercy, I think the cutting will be God cutting off the junk that makes me unproductive.  That's probably why it hurts.  God is pruning me and cutting off the clutter that doesn't really matter in my life.

I don't know why I didn't inherit my mother's green thumb.  She loves to garden, and she works in her yard any chance she can get.  I just want something to look pretty outside my house with minimal human involvement, like a realistic sculpture of a plant.  My mom came to visit me one spring after we had just moved to a new house.  She wanted to help me re-create the existing gardens.  In her zeal, she accidentally  cut a rather healthy clematis all the way to the ground. She felt terrible.  But guess what?  The clematis came back that summer, and by the fall, it had grown up, not only wrapping itself around the trellis, but climbing all the way to the 2nd story roof on our house. 


I think this must a be a pruning period for me.  I have allowed a lot of junk to invade my life, to the point that it is suffocating my spiritual life.  In response to the real challenges of having a disabled husband and filing for bankruptcy and trying to raise 4 kids who aren't completely dysfunctional,  I have turned to junk to fill my needs instead of God.  I sleep a lot.  I eat too much.  I watch TV or play video games or surf the web endlessly.  Kind of useless junk, wouldn't you say?  Of course I need to let God trim that junk away so that I can get on with the business of knowing, loving and serving God.  Theoretically, it shouldn't hurt too much to have that stuff cut away.  It isn't really satisfying anyway, but for some reason, I keep chasing down the crap that doesn't fulfill.

Time to let God do His thing.  Please take out the trash, Lord; cut off the fruitless, dry branches, and help me to sprout and grow healthy and fruitful.

Everything Hurts

Everything. Hurts.

Everything.

Being awake hurts.  My husband is bereft of all hope.  Our marriage just "is" because we will never leave each other.  But it's not functioning much more than that. 

My children are constantly "bored" instead of being creative and being grateful for the beautiful summer break. And that means their relationships hurt when they attack each other physically and verbally.

Our finances hurt.  We are not yet destitute, but we soon will be.  Without health insurance and with very little money, we can no longer afford some of our basic prescriptions.  Which means that, within a month's time, I will be in physical pain because my main prescription is for depression, but it also has vicious physical withdrawal effects.  If I don't get insurance within a month's time, I will be emotionally and physically destitute.  And, if you've never gone through it, the process of applying for DHS assistance, aside from being humbling every time we do it, is also painfully tedious.  They continually ask for proofs of income, job, and assets - a few at a time instead of everything at once.  So, the process which "should" conceivably take a few weeks, ends up taking months.  But we don't really have months to spare.

Our stuff hurts.  Everything is breaking.  E-V-E-R-Y-T-H-I-N-G.  Both cars are in need of serious maintenance and repair.  The disposal keeps breaking and the dishwasher barely works.  The washer does about 1/2 a load of wash at a time, and we have to run the dryer twice for every load.  My computer keeps losing vital parts,  the kids keep breaking doors and random stuff, and the kitchen ceiling leaks regularly.  The front porch is peeling and falling apart, and our downspouts are falling off.  The lawnmower works when it feels like it and the kids' pool is dying.

My faith hurts.  I have prayed and mustered and worked and tried and prayed some more to have a positive attitude; an attitude of "God is enough" and "God will provide."  And I've prayed and tried and persuaded and cajoled and nagged and prayed some more to try to convince my husband and the kids that God is enough and that He will come through for us. But instead of lifting all of us up, I end up getting dragged down.

I'm becoming cynical.  And I know that's not good.  I'm getting kind of tired of seeing nice "feel-good" status updates on other people's Facebook accounts.  I want to yell, "That's not true!"  I repent of cynicism and self-pity on a regular basis.  I tell Jesus that I need Him about 100 times a day.  But that doesn't always make me feel better.

I want to relax and write and enjoy the summer.  But sometimes I can't let go of the junk that weighs me down. 

Don't worry.  I'll be OK.  Even though our life has never been so scary, I've been through challenging emotional times before, and I know that God really IS enough and He WILL see us through. 

Why Don't I Write More?

When you're going through something that involves the whole family, it becomes very tricky to talk about who's struggling through what without slandering someone.  This is why I don't write very often.  But I could definitely find something to say every. single. day.  And it would be easier when I write my book to just go back to my blog posts and glean information rather than try to sort out the giant junk drawer that is my brain.  I really do want to write a book some day, but that is ambitious considering the fact that I don't know if I'll make it through each day alive, let alone the number of days, months, and years it may take to "go through" whatever you would like the call the challenge we're having in these parts.

Let me sum up:
Financially:  Money is tight.  We filed for bankruptcy and have our final hearing on June 3 - yeah!  Now we have no credit (yeah?) and no source of emergency money - boo!  Also,  the kids and I will be dumped off of Al's insurance in July - boo.  I shouldn't say that in such a negative way.  His Long-Term Disability coverage through his company has been more than generous in covering our entire family for 2 1/2 years.  But it's still another financial unknown.

Therapy:  Not really happening.  The big guy is discouraged.  Or disillusioned.  Not sure which.  He is getting a new switch put into his electrostim sleeve, which will allow him to grasp an object at will, so that may be a helpful start.  It's still hard for him to look past the fact that he has to have a bionic arm to do the work for him.  Walking is still functional, but at a minimum in terms of stamina.  He came with us to the kids' science fair at school and had to sit down most of the time.  A week later, the girls and I went to the East Lansing Art Festival without the boys, and I felt nostalgic for the times when Al was able to join us on such family ventures.  I get a little choked up thinking, "He may never come sledding with us again," or "we may never go camping again." 

The good news is that Al is finally back in the driver's seat with the SOS stamp of approval, and with the additional help of a turn signal adaptor and spinner knob.  Turns out it's illegal for me to use the knob, so I'll just have to drive my own car.  Too bad, it looks like fun!

I am in the ever-present state  of feeling overwhelmed.  Too much to handle and not enough brain or time.  I work 2-3 days a week, do the laundry & dishes, get the groceries and gas, clean the house (on occasion, at least), try to be a parent to 4 - sometimes 5 - kids.  Not intending too much offense - I suspect that most married women would lump their husbands in with the kids on occasion, too! 

I'm trying to "help" Al with a new budget, too, but from the look on his face I have just bewildered him.  I just want to figure out how to live within a budget.  We always thought we did it before, but we really didn't.  We had X amount of money budgeted for groceries, for example.  I would buy the groceries.  And maybe a hanging plant or two. And some new sandals.  Oh and we needed a new trash can for the kitchen.  So when the grocery money was out, I would just ask for more, and my husband would make it appear.  Now, I am obsessively aware of where every last penny is going, and it's not fun yet.  I was hoping it would ease my anxiety about bankruptcy, but it hasn't.  I'm a control freak.  So when I budget something, I simply cannot tolerate a $350 fix on the shower that wasn't in my budget to begin with!  Al would have  handled it differently, but he is graciously letting me get involved so theoretically, if I see where the money all goes, I can have more peace about it.

Finally, I would say I've never experienced a time like this in our marriage before.  Marriage was always very easy for me.  I adored my husband (and I still do).  I found it easy to speak well of him, and I did that regularly, often to people's surprise, since so many women bad-mouth their boys.  I had fun with him, and I trusted him.  I'm writing all of these things in the past tense, not because they're not true any more, but just to try to demonstrate how easy marriage was for me.  Since the stroke, marriage has become difficult.  Exceedingly difficult.  Not difficult as in we're signing divorce papers or anything.  We continually reassure each other that we're committed to each other for life.  But our roles, responsibilities, and even our personalities have been changed, and we are learning how to love and be loved as new people.  I don't exactly know how to be a wife to a man who isn't the provider in the way he used to be and wants to be.  I don't know how much to push him to go beyond what he's comfortable doing - will he fall (literally or figuratively), or will he succeed and be thankful that I gave him that nudge?  How much do I force him to do, entrust him with?  And how much do I choose to do, not grudgingly, but because I want to serve my husband and family?

If you're still reading, thanks for being with me.  I don't have many people that I talk to in depth about these things, but it's good to get some catharsis from time to time.

Why I Wanted to Cancel Mother's Day

I wrote this letter to my children this morning:

The day before Mother's Day, I felt like there was nothing worth celebrating. All I could think about was how I had failed in countless ways as a mother. When you, my children, were very small, I remember a friend telling me that if I were a perfect mother, my children wouldn't need the Lord. OK, that made sense. It made me breathe a sigh of relief because I didn't have to be perfect.

However, sometimes I think I let that truth, and God's mercy, convince me to be lazy about mothering. I am ashamed at all the ways I have set a bad example. I have been lazy, crabby, mean, and selfish. I have set the example of hiding from my problems and shirking my responsibilities. I have complained instead of rejoicing; I have worried instead of praying; I have grumbled instead of giving thanks in all circumstances.

When I thought about Mother's Day, I thought about you giving me cards that said, “You're the best Mom in the world,” and it made me regret all the ways that I have been so much less than the “best” Mom in the world.

So, I thought I didn't really deserve Mother's Day.

But none of us deserves God's mercy. None of us deserves what Jesus did for us on the Cross. So, I have to face my failures and ask for forgiveness, from you and from the Lord.  Then, I am free to receive His mercy and love because.  And then, I have to resolve to “do better.” That doesn't mean “try harder,” because growing as a mother – like growing in any kind of holiness - doesn't come from my own sheer effort. It comes from my submission to Christ and His will for my life. If I want to be a better mother, a better example of gratitude, joy, and service, then I need Christ first. I need Him to give me the grace to say no to my desire to be lazy, my temptation to complain, and my habit of thinking of myself first.

I apologize for not putting Jesus first in my life every day. I'm sorry that I haven't worshipped and adored and glorified God the way He created me to. And I'm sorry that I haven't taught you to do so as well.  Forgive me for trying to be a mother on my own strength rather than through Christ who gives me strength.

Forgive me for all the ways I have failed you. I pray that God will help you to heal from the ways I've hurt you. I know that HE is enough when I am not. I pray mostly that I will be able to submit to His will to be able to be used by Him to be the mother HE created me to be.

So, on Mother's Day, instead of dwelling on my own insufficiency, I will rejoice that God is enough. I will rejoice that love covers a multitude of sins. I will rejoice that, even though I'm a “failure,” God brought us together as a family for a reason. Not because any of us is perfect, but because we're perfect for each other.

I love you!

Please Stand By

Hey, there, new and old blog friends:

I just wanted you to know that I will be taking a little break from my blog for a few weeks - probably  until Easter.  There's a lot going on in our family right now, and I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed and stressed. 

If you know me personally, or you have read this blog for a while, you know what kind of chaos we've gone through in the past 2 years.  Thank God His Almighty Power and Presence, the ability to begin anew every morning, and for my sense of humor.  If God hadn't given me a lighter side, I'd probably be dead by now!

Thanks for hangin' with me - I'll see you in a few weeks!

Why Didn't You TELL Me?

Much of our experience of stroke rehabilitation is this:  Expect the unexpected.  We focus so much on physical rehabilitation that we forget the profound mental, emotional and relational effects that Al's stroke has had on our family, and on him.

Since Al is home almost all of the time, I expect a lot from him.  In fact, at his appointment in December, Al's physiatrist, Dr. A, challenged him - sharply - to get up and do jobs around the house.  He told Al, and I quote, "Right now, you are useless.  You don't want to be useless, so don't be useless."  It wasn't the best bedside manner I've ever witnessed; in fact it was downright harsh, but it was also straightforward enough that we got the message:  Living your normal life, helping around the house, and helping your wife and helping with the kids IS THERAPY!
So, for the past 3 months, we've been working, together with Al's therapists, to create a routine where Al helps the kids with chores, and puts them to bed, among other things.  He does laundry and dishes while I'm gone to work, too!  (Yes - a wife's dream come true!)

Here's the thing:  from the way that our doctor "encouraged" Al to do as much as possible to resume "normalcy," I assumed that I could challenge him to do almost anything.  But during another appointment this past Friday, I was telling Dr. A about Al supervising the kids with chores.  The doctor asked how that was going, and Al wasn't really able to elaborate, so I said it was hard to follow through when the kids didn't do what they were asked.

Then Dr. A looked at me and asked, "Well, what do you expect???  He lost half his brain!  You can't expect him to think on his feet the way he used to."

OK, so I thought I knew that, but I also knew that the doctor wanted me to challenge him to do just about anything he could do with one hand and limited balance.  Now I've learned that I can't challenge him too much.  So, I'm still learning:  Encourage him, challenge him, praise his efforts, be his cheerleader....but don't expect too much at one time.  Don't load too much on him, or he will just shut down.

Every time I think we have something figured out, we have to make slight course-corrections.

And let me just add this in here as well:  Al's driver's license was suspended by the Secretary of State last week, until he takes a specialized driver's training course and assessment.  Dr. A had filled out a form for Al to take to the SOS, and he indicated he was confident in Al's ability to drive and pass the SOS test, but that's wasn't enough for the good old State of Michigan.  All of this also means that I am the sole chauffeur in the house for now, and that we have to dish out several hundred bucks to get Al through the specialized driving course.


I have a hard time praying when I'm confused and overwhelmed like this.  I go to the Lord and pretty much just sit there and say, "OK, Lord, tell me what to do.  So far, I haven't seen any specific Scriptures telling a mom with 4 kids and a disabled husband how to balance her life and to lead her family.  Throw me a bone, here, OK?"

Hebrews 4 keeps coming back to me during this Lenten season, and the very last line, vs. 16, says, "Let us then approach God's throne of grace wtih confidence, so that we may receive  mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need."

My greatest fault is that I forget that I need Jesus more than anything, and I need him for everything.  Even if there is no Scripture explicitly addressed to my needs, He has the answers.  When I try to figure things out on my own, I will just get more confused.  But if I approach the throne of grace and lay it all before the Lord, He will be the one to give me grace - including wisdom, insight, courage - to decide what I need to do and how I need to do it.

Again, God speaks to my absolute need for HIM to help me muddle my way through this in Matthew 6:33:  "But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well."