Category: Everything Else

 

J and I were supposed to go out tonight (Friday) to celebrate the closing of our Carmel house this week and to say things to each other like, HELLO. HOW ARE YOU?, but the babysitter was sick and canceled, so instead we spent the evening grabbing slices of pizza off the stove between feeding twins and cueing Friday movies and arguing about brushing teeth and everything you might imagine a Friday night to be with 3 kids 3-and-under… and in the end I am just sitting here with cold pizza, Prosecco, and a full 4-finger grease stain (hot dog?) on my pants. It’s too late for a movie because the twins wake up at 5 AM, and J is already snoring in the next room. I don’t really blog anymore, so how about a very long Insta/FB post, because I have zero margin in my life and this is how I’m left to process. WHO’S WITH ME? 

Just kidding. Insta cut me off, so here we are on this rusty old cobwebby blog space, which I might actually resurrect for a few when we go to Belize, because then instead of just a circus, we will be a *traveling* circus!

Insomnia club, I see you. Let’s call this meeting to order, yes? First on the agenda: we leave for Belize next month. NEXT MONTH. And my 3-year-old (who was previously pretty excited to go, although she has no idea what she’s talking about— a plane! Just like Papa and Mimi’s in FL!) just cried for an hour when she started to conceptualize that she’ll be leaving her school here for a while and going to a new school. Do you, oh Internet, remember when we moved to Madison from Chicago?? Her difficult adjustment totally blindsided us, because we didn’t prep her at all thinking a) she was only two years old at the time, and b) it was basically the same lifestyle. But she cried for months about her old class and her old room and her old friends, and only six months in started feeling comfortable in her own room 😕 .

We’re learning she is slow-to-warm in temperament and a little on the anxious side. So, *AS IF* regular logistics weren’t enough to keep me up at night (Housing! Packing! Electricity! Water! The exact number of instant oatmeal packets that will fit in our bag and not overweigh it!), now I’m worried about her distress over scary new things I hadn’t really considered from her perspective because Belize is so warm and comforting and familiar to J & me. 

We’re caught in this tricky in-between place— not short-term like in a vacation, but not long-term like moving there permanently, which are her only frames of reference. 

I did show her pics of Belize, our friends there, some of the schools I used to work in, Independence Day parades, piñata parties, La Ruta Maya canoe race, cute little monkeys, the zoo, etc. and she stopped crying at some of my snorkeling with sharks pics, which I obviously told her were dolphins, and then she perked up and wondered if there might also be mermaids, to which I was like, YES. THERE DEFINITELY MIGHT BE MERMAIDS, ARE YOU ALL BETTER NOW, CAN MERMAIDS FIX YOUR TENDER LITTLE HEART, PLS???

Anyway, how I am *just now* considering my sweet little baby in this major life change brings me to me next agenda item: the lack of margin in my life. 

You guys, I am a symbolic person who makes sense of life through writing and reflecting and finding insights and humor and ultimately peace through this process. But lately I have been keeping twin babies alive and running a counseling practice and teaching a course and responding to disruptive events (like, for example, a bank robbery at the Pick n Save, which was super convenient because I could grocery shop immediately after), and have been drowning in the event-emotion-processing backlog. It feels just like my laundry situation, actually. This week, I gave up folding or putting away sheets and stuffed them all into a cedar chest and literally whispered, “I’m sorry” to them as I closed the lid. 

This situation basically represents MY SOUL. 

As mentioned above, we sold our Indiana house this week— our first home together, the place I flooded when we first moved in, the place with twinkle lights on the deck to signal to friends on the trail to stop in for wine and/or pizza (Chuck Horn riding up with 2 beers in his bike cooler!), the place that held every single tear we cried through years of (at the time) hopeless and non-covered fertility treatments, where we nurtured all our May flower gardens into tiny, living, beautiful things, which felt so important at that time. It was the place we hosted all the Thanksgivings and niece and neph sleepovers, the place our life together was established, the place we dreamed all our best dreams for marriage and family— and it was only after Jeff left at 6am to drive 12 hours there and back with a quick signature and handing over of keys (which didn’t happen because WHERE ARE THE KEYS?) and after his mom came over to help me manage the kids for those 12 hours, that we realized the significance of this house sale and wished we’d gone together, and had scheduled time to honor everything we experienced there, all the life that came after 😭😭😭. 

And how about this? Because we are going to Belize, I bulldozed my way into my primary care just to get a referral to the Derm, and the Derm squeezed me in on a cancellation list with like 12 hours notice due to family melanoma history and my departure to the equator next month. She biopsied a couple of spots, which is, like, normal occurrence, and then she called last week to tell me it was malignant melanoma and that a surgeon would be contacting me shortly.

On that phone call, the babies were crying, and all I can remember is how I was doing my absolute best to reassure her that I was totally fine while she gave me bad news. She was super concerned, and I was like, YEAH NO I’M TOTALLY FINE, ALL GOOD HERE, I AM STRONG AND CAPABLE AND TOTALLY RELIABLE, EMOTIONALLY, SEE?

Whyyyyy do I need to convince a stranger that I can handle all the things? (It’s my strong 3 wing. This blog basically reveals that the 4 is stronger, though.)

I asked zero questions, just hung up and kept on with the babies. It wasn’t until my family and friends started asking me questions about staging and surgery and procedures that it occurred to me to call the Dr. back and gather more info. IN WHAT LIFE DOES A CARE PROVIDER CALL TO SAY YOU HAVE SKIN CANCER AND YOU ASK ZERO QUESTIONS? A life where 50 other things are on your mind, and you have like a 5-day delayed reaction, and you’re sidetracked by making it look like you are not losing your mind on a daily basis. (I did call back, it’s a tiny little tumor and probably just stage 1 but they won’t stage until after surgery on Thursday. My mom is coming because of course she is if you’ve seen any of my other postings on FB/Insta.) 

The funny thing is that I just taught this course (in Chicago, 3 days after I broke my ankle) on Compassion Stress Management and Compassion Fatigue, and during the training, we completed a stress-level assessment, where the results basically predicted, based on your score, your likelihood of having a major medical event within a matter of years. Prob should have taken my own assessment.

ANYWAY. The good news is that after I wrote this, the babysitter called back and sent J and me out the following night, so we talked and cheersed and dined and reflected. I typed all this out on my little phone in 30 minute increments over a span of 3 days, and I feel much better. SO. THANKS INTERNET. 

Follow along with us as we haul two babies and a three year old to Belize next month for a semester?? Prayers for everyone’s adjustment (and skin and ankles?)

Thanks, pals. 

February 8^th— the world’s most random day to reflect on 2018, and to cast visions and plans and thoughts for 2019. I usually do this on NYE, so I am only 39 days behind on life.

I’ve had so many past years-in-review and thoughtful letters to myself for the upcoming year, and years of selecting the perfect words to focus on before I even knew picking a word was a thing, but this January I’ve really been trying hard to do things like shower regularly and keep my toddler alive and stand up off the couch and live my life.

I saw this meme today:

That’s me.

In the last quarter of 2018 we found out we were having twins (8 days after renewing a lease on a 2br apartment—which we’d stretch to fit 4 of us since the first 3 ultrasounds showed only 1 baby, but definitely not 5 of us when that other baby popped into the picture at around 10 weeks. WHOOPS, DOCTOR WHO MISSED THIS THREE TIMES).

In the midst of figuring out the feasibility of raising 3 kids in the city in terms of square footage and childcare costs (spoiler alert: not feasible for us) and panicking about what we would do next, I couldn’t stop puking. So for the first 15 weeks, basically through the end of October, my sole focus was breathing, eating, sleeping and on occasion, fluids and meds from the ER.

The babies felt like foreign objects I couldn’t quite connect with yet because of the puking, the prospect of quick financial ruin was scary, and where would everybody sleep?! Wait, WOULD ANYBODY EVEN SLEEP? DO TWINS SLEEP?

So we reached out to friends and colleagues in our hometowns with the goal of moving closer to family, even at the cost of uprooting my very new growing practice that had really just begun to thrive, and Jeff’s near-ideal appointment at Northwestern, and within a matter of weeks, a door had opened and the ball was rolling on a move to Madison. From there, it was lightening speed. I think Jeff got the offer from UW sometime in the first week of December, and movers came on Dec 27^th.

We moved back into Jeff’s old bachelor pad in Madison (which, ironically, is also a 2br house), and after a ridiculous and probably poorly judged Midwest holiday tour, we had picked up back-to-back viruses we kept passing between us. I had to be back in Chicago 4 days after the move for a week-long training, and I have continued to drive back-and-forth on the weekends to close out my caseload and hand off my practice in prep for maternity leave—half of those weekends negotiating one of SIX winter storms that hit between Madison and Chicago.

Our formerly potty-trained kid was back in pull-ups, and she cried for her old house and her old school for weeks. She has only slept through the night maybe 4 times in these last 39 days since the move, and never in her own room alone.

I said to Jeff the other day that I feel like this winter has been inside my body.
Like, inside my soul.

I think in winter everything feels scarce: sunlight, warmth, daytime hours, the color green, hope that it’s ever going to end.  And I found myself in a parallel experience of scarcity mentality as I trudged through the end of 2018 and peeked into 2019.

I was scared there wouldn’t be enough—
Enough space
Enough sleep
Enough love
Enough help
Enough income
Enough gestation
Enough breast milk
Enough attention
Enough closet space
Enough paternity leave

At one point when my friends were all talking about what their 2019 words would be, I asked myself what I wished I could dive into and swim around in during 2019 if it could be anything on the planet.

My choice? Abundance.

I asked myself, What if the answer to all those questions could be YES. Yes, there will be enough. (I mean, except for the closet space, which is a hard NO.) What if what we have right now is our portion, and that, actually, what’s coming to us in March is a double portion, or, you know, an abundance?

I think I had to wait to write this until February, because, finally (FINALLY) the abundance mentality is moving in. I feel like I am finally turning the corner into spring inside. (Which always reminds me of NN’s seasons song) I could play it on repeat forever.

So, yes, 2018, you were a little but tough at the end, and 2019, you are scary. But I’m carrying around a double portion, and I think there will be enough. Enough skin to grow them, enough square feet to house all of us, enough hours to care for everyone, enough love for two new humans, enough attention for Havi and Jeff, enough money to get us through, enough energy to survive, enough help to feel supported.

We’ll have what we have when we need it, and it might even be abundant.
(The bows will be abundant.)

I love this artist Sleeping at Last, and he has a song called North about moving into a new home. I love the entire song, and I’ll post the lyrics below (and the link above if you click on the song name), but one section just keeps playing out in my mind as the prayer for all these quick, giant changes in our family, and for this pretty significant move to Madison:

“Let the years we’re here be kind, be kind.
let our hearts, like doors, open wide, open wide.
settle our bones like wood over time, over time.
give us bread, give us salt, give us wine.”

Bread, salt and wine— all we need, right?
Bread so our house never knows hunger, salt so life always has flavor, and wine to keep mom sane for joy and prosperity.

(Yes, I know, I know. It’s a Wonderful Life.)

North
We will call this place our home
the dirt in which our roots may grow.
though the storms will push and pull
we will call this place our home.

We’ll tell our stories on these walls.
every year, measure how tall.
and just like a work of art
we’ll tell our stories on these walls.

Let the years we’re here be kind, be kind.
let our hearts, like doors, open wide, open wide.
settle our bones like wood over time, over time.
give us bread, give us salt, give us wine.

A little broken, a little new.
we are the impact and the glue.
capable more than we know
to call this fixer upper home.

With each year, our color fades.
slowly, our paint chips away.
but we will find the strength
and the nerve it takes
to repaint and repaint and repaint every day.

Let the years we’re here be kind, be kind.
let our hearts, like doors, open wide, open wide.
settle our bones like wood over time, over time.
give us bread, give us salt, give us wine.

Smaller than dust on this map
lies the greatest thing we have:
the dirt in which our roots may grow
and the right to call it home.

I was off Facebook and most of the Internet yesterday. I am thinking of doing this every Sunday as a sacrament. A visible sign of divine grace.

You know, this lady wrote that my baby and I were filled with Satan the other day. To be fair, she was responding to two things: one was a reply to my Grandma explaining that I had not marched last Saturday for the right to kill my baby as she had posted above, but for several vulnerable populations (including women) who have been devalued by our president. The second was a picture of the 3-year-old refugee Aylan washed up on the shore of Turkey. I thought that was also a pretty sad picture, responding to my Grandma’s sentiments that her picture of the women’s march was so very sad.

I’m not sure if the lady was responding to me and the people I marched with (my husband and daughter), or the dead refugee baby, with whom I am in kinship, because the measure of our compassion towards others lies in our ability to see ourselves in kinship with them. To that end, in the face of that refugee baby, I saw my own child.

In the faces of me and the Syrian baby, this woman saw Satan. (I guess she hasn’t read Father Greg’s Tattoos on the Heart.)

I read this comment after I had walked into my bedroom at midnight and glanced down at my baby in the exact sleeping position as the baby refugee whose picture I had posted, and I prayed (as I sobbed and woke J and hyperventilated) that God would never let me see my child’s face without the face of these other lives. I prayed my heart would remain broken until we legislated refugees (who were ranked yesterday as below our own in their rights for safety), back in—Muslim, Christian or otherwise. In the language of my people, I prayed for vicarious trauma.

(Also, it *is* actually a Muslim ban if you’ve decided to maybe let some Christians in after all.)

I understand that some other people have this type of deep conviction for unborn babies. If that’s you, we overlap in our singular value for life. Please read this first and take Internet communion with me right now in this shared value, even as we disagree with how to live out our shared value.

Yesterday morning when I woke up, I thought: What would be the antithesis of the spirit of Satan in a person? I decided one good start might be to send out messages of love to others who are politically and theologically oceans away from me. And then to offer the Internet grace for 24 hours. I thought it might also include bringing peace lilies to the two mosques within a mile of my apartment. So the baby and I took peace lilies to my Muslim neighbors this morning. (Well. Except we couldn’t find the peace lilies, so we brought Tulips.)

 

In the spirit of Christ who compels me to love my neighbor as myself, I have decided I would want to feel loved and cherished and safe in my neighborhood, so I will love my Muslim neighbors unto that.

I am thinking my baby and I could do this for each population devalued by our president. We could go to World Relief. We could go to The Center on Halsted. We could go to Black Lives Matter Chicago via the Illinois Justice Foundation. This could be my weekly act of personal resistance. We could personify the word resist.

An old friend asked me yesterday to stop judging her. She thought because she wasn’t using her voice on Facebook but instead off Facebook “where it matters” I had assumed she wasn’t active. This actually broke my heart. I had not assumed that about her.

For the sake of clarity: No matter your political affiliation, if your voice has been on or off Facebook advocating for the rights of any vulnerable population, I am thanking you.

I do feel pretty sad that a specific subset of people I am baptized with in faith have remained silent in the face of multiple injustices. These are the ones who voted for Trump on the value of life but have not leveraged their voices for any other life at risk outside of the womb. If that is not you, don’t pick up this burden. It’s not yours.

If my sadness feels like judgment to you based on tone, we should probably both do a gut-check. In the words of my friend Kim, “I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but if in my anger and disgust I do, please forgive me. This isn’t about you. It’s about my deep conviction that [welcoming refugees/access to clean water/not assaulting women/AND SO ON] is at the fundamental core of my faith and patriotism.”

BUT! If you’ve been on Facebook advocating in the last 10 days since the inauguration, you have given me life. Your voice has mattered to me in this context, and I can’t tell you how mobilized and hopeful you’ve made me. You told me which terminal to go to at O’Hare. You gave me the phone numbers to the White House switchboards, and you told me when those were full, and then you gave me the next set of numbers. You gave me the twitter handles of my representatives. You invited me to a pasta dinner at your house to address postcards. You gave me Mary Oliver and Brennen Manning and Walter Brueggemann. And you sent me all those messages. You have shown me I’m not alone. My use of Facebook is honing in on its purpose these days.

If your feed is draining you, I’m so sorry.

It’s possible MY posts are draining you. I’ve been told I’m pretty angry lately. People are kind of irritated about my negativity. They tell me what they really miss are pictures of my 8-month old and trunks full of puppies.

I miss that too. It would be really awesome if injustice weren’t so negative, wouldn’t it? If it came in sweet baby faces and teacup Yorkies? I am so disheartened by the literal inauguration of injustice that I legit haven’t slept in 10 nights. I’m one of those people who can’t go to sleep if anything is unresolved.

Which is like, the entire state of the union.

Members of my family and a couple of frequent trollers have called me self-righteous and condescending. They send me verses about judgment and such.

Maybe. Their faces are not in my mind when I’m sharing info and begging for action and calling for integrity within the GOP party. I’m trying to balance rage with life-giving words. In my heart I don’t look down on anyone. I’m not judging you. I don’t even have time to judge you right now. In fact, if you’re a Republican voter who is leveraging your voice to fight for justice and integrity within the GOP, I am thanking God for you!

(I would like to point out that my youngest brother who doesn’t even align with me politically and who I haven’t talked to since Christmas saw my women’s march pictures and text me the next day to say he was proud of me for marching because he trusts who I am. Those words were a gift when the other lady called me Satan and when my grandma thought I marched because I wanted the right to kill my baby. These are the ways in which we reduce each other into black-and-white categories instead of nuanced living beings.)

But, yes, in my heart I am raging. I’m mad like my own child washed up on the shore of Turkey while fleeing ethnic cleansing. I’m mad like I’m losing my own health insurance coverage and I have bone cancer. I’m mad like my own land was stolen out from under me, and then the government was like, We’re sorry, here’s this land you can live on and then later decided to build oil pipeline that had to potential to poison my water. I’m mad like my president wants a registry of people in my own religion. I’m mad like my own civil rights are limited by my different sexual orientation. I’m mad because these rights are not religious rights given by the church, but civil rights given by the government, for example the right to visit my partner in the hospital or be named on a health insurance policy. I’m mad like the president of my country was talking about me or my daughter in that so-called locker room, which was really just his actual life. (Why didn’t I write a blog like this about Bill Clinton, 15 people will ask? Because I was 11 years old and playing with an imaginary family of mice in my closet, which doubled as a magic elevator at the time.)

I’m mad like there are too many other things to list. It’s an entire buffet of burdens to bear on a daily basis, and this was a direct order: carry each other’s burdens. There is no caveat that says, “until you are tired.” I am exhausted. And so on Sundays, I’ll offer myself grace, too.

The reality is that underneath all that fiery red madness is not superiority, but sadness for the people harmed by apathy. If you voted for Trump and I know you to be a person of faith, it might take me a minute, but I want to see you as my ally. I am not judging you. I have been counting on you to be who I know who you are within the GOP.

Senators McCain and Graham gave a great example yesterday of what integrity can look like in the GOP by placing country over party and humanity over country.

///

Brennan Manning said, “In every encounter we either give life or drain it; there is no neutral exchange.”

I feel like those of us who are compelled to advocate are in a constant battle between giving life to those for whom we speak (and to each other most days), and draining it from those who would like to be left out of the “negativity”. I guess the greater risk is in not speaking up. Nobody ever died of negativity.

My friend Nicole said, “We are not fading into darkness. Just shining lights. And maybe there’s something uncomfortable in that at first. You know, until people’s eyes fully adjust.”

///

I belong to a Christian Counselors Networking group, and last week we talked about how a good portion of the country (including ourselves and our clients) are functioning out of the amygdala, which houses all our gut emotional reactions, our fight-or-flight responses, and black and white thinking, forcing people into either all good or all bad categories. And we agreed we all needed to find our way and lead others back into the prefrontal cortex, where our reasoning and empathy and complexity and nuanced thinking lives.

I will be the first to admit I’ve been all up in my amygdala since November.

Resisters: we have to get out of our amygdalas and find our ways back to the prefrontal cortex. Don’t be the enemy. The enemy would love that.

To borrow a page from my friend Rebecca’s book, who borrowed if from the book of Micah:

I promise to do my dead-level best to love mercy, do justly, and walk humbly (JESUS TAKE THE WHEEL).

Every time someone says God Bless America, I promise to whisper, “God, have mercy” even as we have no mercy to offer the world right now.

I promise to offer the Internet grace on Sundays.

I promise to say thank you to each person every time I see them fighting for justice and integrity.

I promise to avoid black and white thinking, but to seek out overlapping shades of gray.

I promise you will not see pictures of my baby girl without active resistance because I don’t want a world for her that doesn’t include the things I’m advocating for.

And I promise every time I leave the material world for the electronic one, to take God with me.

 

 

Im holding out an olive branch here-

To the faith communities in my life who are marching in person or spirit in the March for Life: I’m with you in the value of all life from the time the heart starts beating until the moment the heart stops beating in natural death. I value that baby’s life.

I value that life while she’s right here inside of us, and I value that life equally the moment she takes her first breath in the world. I value it when she heads off to school and into a culture of “locker room” talk, and when she turns 26 and gets off your insurance and needs equal pay and decent healthcare, and I value her when she’s 75 and senile, stockpiling Christmas villages in her attic (I’M LOOKING AT YOU GRAMS) (JUST KIDDING) (but seriously on the snowman dish sets). 

[Non]Breaking News: I live in Chicago now.

Also, it’s 2015— but more on that later, because, actually, I was sick over NYE, so I am celebrating on January 31^st instead. Don’t tell me anything about 2015. I want to be surprised.

Back to the move. People have been asking for three months, in this exact voice: HOW’S CHICAGO!?!?!

And I’ve answered in my totally insecure and maladjusted sophisticated lowercase voice: the city is awesome. You can basically order anything you want from your bed and they deliver it to your door in under an hour. Groceries. Liquor. Indian food. Über rides. Kleenex. The entire Internet. And because we live in a high-rise, I have a lady who collects it all for me if I happen to be out and allows me to pick it up at my convenience with (mostly) no judging, even though the Amazon Prime guy asked her why I get so many packages. BECAUSE IT’S FREE SHIPPING, AMAZON GUY, and bulk toilet paper is too hard to carry home from the grocery. Continue reading We’re Fine and Chicago Will Have Us