Taking another stab at trapping a leprechaun and maybe some luck

And sooooooooooooooooo we move on......................

I remember last St. Patrick's Day. I made a Reuben sandwich thingy that the adults liked but the kids didn't. The washing machine had broken down because I had kept overloading it but we found a great repair guy to come out. We tried to catch a leprechaun in a homemade trap using Lucky Charms cereal as the bait. We didn't get him but he left us gold chocolate coins instead.
And now here we are a year later. Where we are is about as far from last year as Ireland is from Egypt. Years ago, maybe just before I found my Huggyband I was in a ladies bible study and the question arose about whether or not we truly wanted to know the future. The older ladies insisted that they were glad they hadn't known their destinations before they had started down some roads. But me? I insisted that I did want to know the future because all I wanted to know at the time was if I'd ever get married and have kids. As if just having or knowing that would make everything ok. Well............ having them doesn't make everything ok it's a whole new ball game. A year ago would I have wanted to know the truth about what was to come? Absolutely not. In the words of Jack Nicholson "you can't handle the truth." It's been a very, very, long year as if the leprechaun who visited brought us bad luck, cursed us even with the horrible, awful year. But here we are again, safe and sound for now, we're not in a worse place just a different place and the journey to get here was hard. Planning another leprechaun trap this time using duck tape. And once again I'm planning a corned beef meal that I'm sure nobody will eat. As I prepare that meal I sift through the memories of the last year; again trying not to waste the pain and see the lessons.

One of the lessons I've been thinking about is the difference between rescuing and protecting. Somebody told me a few months ago that he wasn't going to rescue me and that shame on me for always wanting to be rescued. I'm not so sure I see what's wrong with rescuing. If I force myself to see the other side then I see that maybe a small amount of struggle is allowable? unavoidable? That's where the lessons are learned? It doesn't excuse others from inaction though. If you're not going to or just can't RESCUE somebody then you must at least PROTECT them. In hospice training I learned to protect the dying. Some patients in hospice care have Do Not Resuscitate orders, which basically means just to let nature take it's course when the heart stops. For many, many reasons I won't do CPR; a skill I once used to teach. I can't rescue my patients from the dying process but I can protect them. Protect them from things like bed sores and minor infections and visits by nosy neighbors.

I think of how that applies to my own depression. Last summer when the suicidal pull was at its worst I couldn't be rescued. Nobody could make the decision to live for me; that push and pull was all my own; nobody else was responsible for it. But when my struggle with depression became public and others judged and said damaging stuff and then left I sure would have liked to have been protected. When your self loathing takes you to suicide then you need to be protected from yourself (yes I know I should have been hospitalized) but no one can do that for you. There does need to be people who will protect you from others.

When we were grieving the loss of our first son we needed to be protected; we needed somebody to run interference for us. Not to rescue us from the pain of grief but to protect us while we healed up a bit.

And then I think how that applies to how we treat others in general. What if we all just tried to protect each other? Look out for? Defend? Cover each others backs? Guard them from the rough things in life while they deal with their own stuff? Because in the end aren't we all dealing with stuff? Aren't we all just a little fragile, in danger of being hurt? And wouldn't we all benefit from people making sure that we don't feel any more pain than necessary?

Not such a golden moment

Something happened this weekend. Who am I kidding? A lot happened this weekend, especially on Sunday and especially in Vancouver. Hockey gold! It was a day to remember! Unfortunately for me living on the other side of the other country it was also a day to remember but for much different reasons. . Unfortunately I missed the game. Being the good Canadian that I am I skipped hockey to go on a peacekeeping mission. As sure as i was that Canada would win gold that night, I was equally sure that I would step out of a meeting victorious. Reconciled. Restored. It wasn't that I wanted to win and I wanted the other side to loose, I thought for sure we'd all win. I thought we'd talk, we'd hug, we'd move on.
　
Well it's a good thing Canada won or the night would have been a total waste. I took a risk. Those who love me warned me that it could go horribly wrong, that it could do more harm than good. They were right, I left more wounded than when I arrived. I left the meeting in darkness and despair with the chorus of Brad Paisley's "What if she's an angel?" running through my head.

What if she's an angel sent here from heaven
And she's making certain that you're doing your best
To take the time to help one another
Brother are you going to pass that test
You can go on with your day to day
Trying to forget what you saw in her face
Knowing deep down it could have been her saving grace
What if she's an angel

Do I think I'm an angel? GOOD GRIEF NO!!!!!!!!!!!!! Do I think that God used me Sunday night (and the 7 months before it) to show a certain group of people where they need to learn compassion? Absolutely.

It got me thinking about the angels in my life that have been brought to show me my weaknesses. Jesus said "whatever you do for the least of these you do for me." How have I responded to the least of these? Have they come to test compassion and love? Are they God with skin on? Waiting to see how I'll react and fill their needs? It's the other side of what we normally think of the people who help us being angels or Jesus with skin on........ I'm afraid if that's the case then I've failed a lot of tests. Good thing God has compassion on me....

One of the best pieces of advice I've ever been given is not to waste pain. There's a German saying about paying the teachers toll. The teachers toll is the pain or experience involved in learning a lesson. I sure hope that the size of the lesson is supposed to be relative to the toll paid because I paid a lot. Last night in a hospice training session we talked about not asking "why me?" But instead, "if it has to be me what can I learn?" So what have I learned from the past 7 months of pain? Too much to write about. One of the things is learning from others mistakes. I was just going to quote a line in the following poem but it's just waaaaaaaay too good not to share the whole thing:

The Women On My Journey
Rev. Melissa M. Bowers
To the women on my journey
Who showed me the ways to go and ways not to go,
Whose strength and compassion held up a torch of light
and beckoned me to follow,
Whose weakness and ignorance darkened the path and encouraged me
to turn another way.
To the women on my journey
Who showed me how to love and how not to live,
Whose grace, success and gratitude lifted me into the fullness
of surrender to God,
Whose bitterness, envy and wasted gifts warned me away
from the emptiness of self-will
To the women on my journey
Who showed me what I am and what I am not,
Whose love, encouragement and confidence held me tenderly
and nudged me gently,
Whose judgement, disappointment and lack of faith called me
to deeper levels of commitment and resolve.
To the women on my journey who taught me love
by means of both darkness and light.
To these women I say bless you and thank you from the
depths of my heart,for I have been healed and set free
through your joy and through your sacrifice.
　
I know never to say never. My friends and I joke that we did our best parenting BEFORE we became parents. It sounds harsh to say that I would never treat anybody the way I was treated. So let me put it in the form of a prayer.

Dear God, let me recognize the angels you send into my life. And to treat them as if they were in fact you. To understand that hurting people hurt people and that you came for them. Help me to see past the anger to the pain and know that you're big enough to handle it. Only the hands strong enough to be nailed to the cross are strong enough to handle the weight of the world. You are not scared or threatened by anger; you don't see it or the pain that causes it as sin. You came for the sick not the healthy, the sinner not the saved. You, and me as your servant came to meet people where they're at, in all the mud and the muck that isn't of their own making even if I think it is. Besides, you'll help them clean up and you'll love them until they are. Help me to remember that Jesus had friends in messy low places, and if I want to be more like him I'd better start relating more to those low places than to clean high churches. A ship is safe in the harbour but that's not what ships are for. As a former missionary I always took the command to go into the world to mean to go overseas. Today I understand that the world may be waiting for me at the home of a divorced friend.

God help me to do more sacred listening than compulsive fixing. There's healing in listening. In all situations you would be there listening, understanding, knowing. True pull up a chair and turn off your cell phone listening. There's healing in crying with someone. Nobody should cry alone, emotions are a gift from you and they are not to be feared or shamed away. Help me to preach the gospel at all times but use words when necessary. Sometimes people need a slice of pizza more than they need a quote from proverbs. God let the gospel I preach be that of unconditional love. Help me to remember that you love the sinner but hate the sin and that it's not always my job to point our the sin but it is always, always my job to love. Help me to remember the words of 1 Corinthians 13 that tell us what love is and not remember what love is not. Forgive me Lord of all the things that I have done in what I called love.

More later. For now I'm off to reconcile with some angels.

Diary of a snow day 7:30 AM

It's a snow day. I've said before that the whole concept is a little foreign to me because back home we would have gone to school in this but apparently it's a big storm since all the schools this side of the state are closed. And I'm mad!

First of all Little Miss Teen has the day off for an in service so she would have been home anyways. But we're not supposed to be home today.

My depression is having a pretty severe flair these days. Some days I don't want to get out of my pjs and leave the house. Other days I'm desperate to do go somewhere, anywhere! Can you guess what kind of day today is regardless of the weather?

We are supposed to travel to a city an hour away for a field trip to a police station. Please God let this be the only time I see my boys in the back of a police car. Then run some errands like getting Little Miss Teens bangs cut. It sounds like a small thing but when you have depression small things ARE big things! Besides I've been trying for weeks to get them done and haven't found the time. Don't suggest that I do them myself because I always cut them too short. And, I was supposed to have a lunch date with a friend. I've been trying to set up this lunch date for the past 6 weeks and I'm desperate for adult conversation so this just isn't good.

The house is half clean. Well...... maybe only a third. If I were in a glass half full mood I would say that being stuck at home today gives me more time to clean. Right now my thought is that having everyone at home means I'm going to have to work hard to make sure they don't mess up the clean areas. You want something to stay clean leave the house.

More guilt. I think if I was a good mom I'd do creative things with my kids on snow days or every day for that matter. I'd make cookies and pull out the art supplies. Honestly my goal for the day is to keep everyone from killing each other and the house standing. I'll employ whatever means necessary including let them have the TV all day (so what else is new) and early nap times. Popcorn is my go to snack on days like this.

The good news is that in anticipation of this storm Huggyband stopped and picked up diapers and a few things for lunch so I don't have to go out today. The other good news is that the church 5 minutes down the road is having family game night. It's a straight shot down the highway so I don't see why we couldn't make it. If they cancel I will cry because that's what I was planning on doing for dinner.

Stay tuned!

Walk

Think of summer, think of shoes and you think of flip flops (thongs as I used to call them) right? That's what I used to think too; I have a whole pile of flip flops in many different colors and styles. This past summer a different pair of shoes was thrust upon my feet. I wish that this Cinderella could say that they didn't fit but they did. They were (and still are) the shoes of severe depression. And so I walked in them. These shoes that I thought I'd never, ever wear. These shoes that I had judged others I had seen wearing. I had thought that the people who were wearing these shoes were doing it as a choice. I thought it was an excuse to be moody. I thought that people could just take them off. I. I had thought they were just being babyish or overly emotional. I had made so many wrong presumptions........I had never tried to imagine what it was like to be the people wearing these shoes with all of their fears and anxieties, pasts and prides. People in uncomfortable shoes who would sure as heck rather be wearing the shoes of love and peace and joy. Think of it as the difference between steel toed boots and flip flops.

I guess it's easy to feel for someone when they are going through the good stuff in life. Weddings, new babies......... We feel happy for and with the person because happiness is an easy and likable emotion to feel. But not the hard stuff. Grief, illness, depression; all bad emotions that we, as people who try to avoid pain, don't want to feel. Who wants to put on these shoes? Except for the days that we're forced to........

Some day I'll get up the courage to post a list I found on another site about what that particular person learned from having depression. How it made them better. For now, I'm just toying with the idea that it COULD make me better. It COULD give me more compassion; more understanding, more wisdom, make me less judging, more loving. Turns out that wearing these shoes takes a lot of learning. The mere act of waling or moving forward while battling depression is a learned skill. I've also learned from them. I learned what it was like to deal with depression and all that entails. What it feels like to be in the depths of despair. What self loathing feels like. What isolation feels like. What anxiety feels like. There are some things that you truly can't understand unless you've been there, until you've walked in these shoes.

Walk a mile in my shoes. Be me. Try to see things from my perspective. Try to understand what it's like to ------ It's not just an excuse it's a plea for understanding. It's a plea for compassion and unconditional love, for listening and sympathy. For space to make mistakes, for hugs and reassurance.
　
Until 5 minutes ago I didn't know that "Walk a Mile in my Shoes" was a song. (Maybe I did but not this version?) What a song it is! I like Elvis's version the best http://www.bing.com/videos/watch/video/elvis-presley-walk-a-mile-in-my-shoes-2-18-70/DED4B792DF7B7F103C4DDED4B792DF7B7F103C4D and Coldcuts version is also good:http://www.bing.com/videos/watch/video/coldcut-walk-a-mile-in-my-shoes/D43792783BC6CA069501D43792783BC6CA069501
　
I like the song so much I had to look up the lyrics
"Walk A Mile In My Shoes" (As recorded by Joe South) JOE SOUTH

If I could be you and you could be me for just one hour
If we could find a way to get inside each other's mind
If you could see me through your eyes instead of your ego
I believe you'd be surprised to see that you'd been blind.

Walk a mile in my shoes, walk a mile in my shoes
And before you abuse, criticize and accuse
Walk a mile in my shoes.

Now your whole world you see around you is just a reflection
And the law of common says you reap just what you sow
So unless you've lived a life of total perfection
You'd better be careful of every stone that you throw.

Walk a mile in my shoes, walk a mile in my shoes
And before you abuse, criticize and accuse
Walk a mile in my shoes.

And yet we spend the day throwing stones at one another
'Cause I don't think or wear my hair the same way you do
Well I may be common people but I'm your brother
And when you strike out and try to hurt me its a-hurtin' you.

Walk a mile in my shoes, walk a mile in my shoes
And before you abuse, criticize and accuse
Walk a mile in my shoes.

There are people on reservations and out in the ghettos
And brother there but for the grace of God go you and I
If I only had the wings of a little angel
Don't you know I'd fly to the top of the mountain, and then I'd cry.

Walk a mile in my shoes, walk a mile in my shoes
And before you abuse, criticize and accuse
Walk a mile in my shoes, shoes.
(c) Copyright 1969 by Lowery Music Co., Inc. - SONG HITS, Summer 1974.

This morning when I Googled "walk a mile in my shoes" I accidentally typed in "walk a mile in HER shoes." and came up with this result: http://walkamileinhershoes.org/ What you're looking at is a fund raiser/awareness campaign where men walk 1 mile in women's high heels to raise awareness of rape, sexual assault and gender violence. Why is that such a great find for me? Why do I think it's the coolest thing I've seen in a while? Because 11 years ago somebody I loved was killed by her husband. It ended a marriage filled with violence. In all of the stuff that I had to sort through in my head I struggled with the question of why she didn't leave him years earlier. I judged her quite severely for not getting out, getting safe and pressing charges against him. All so easy for me to say. Easy because I wasn't in her shoes.

So what if the lesson for me isn't that walking a mile in someones doesn't just pertain to depression or whatever I'm going through but ALL of life's circumstances? What if the lesson isn't just don't judge unless you've been there, but don't judge at all? There are days when we need to be very glad that some shoes don't fit us and sad that some shoes exist.