I know NUFFINK!!

“SCHULTZ!” echoed over the airwaves in the late 1960’s, as television sought to buffer the lingering war memories of veterans’, 15 years past. Werner Klemperer’s reluctant Nazi officer bellowed often to John Banner's bumbling Sgt. Schultz, while they corralled a group of WWII war prisoners who actually controlled the camp. Schultz’ rejoinder to Col. Klink’s insufferable questioning regarding the creative prisoner’s ability to stay one step ahead of the officers generally consisted of, “ I know nuffink!”

While the television show Hogan’s Heroes portrayed Nazis as bumbling fools, in reality they were anything but. They KNEW everything. The Nazi machine fostered exacting scientific studies of human nature, and their empire grew quickly after mass distribution of ‘knowledge’ and limited exposure to outside influences. Their great knowledge resulted in the demise of millions, to include a centuries-old faith-based society. 

We know nuffink. 

We may think we have gleaned inordinate amounts of important knowledge in our lifetimes, but all that we know we picked up from someone else –or somewhere else, and we’ve taken these gleanings and turned them into our own.

Newborn infants in every culture are born knowing every dialectal sound of every language. As they listen to the sounds around them, they pick up of repetition, and slowly discard the unnecessary inflections. Children under the age of ten retain the basal memory of all these language systems – and pick up second and third languages effortlessly.  After ten their concrete reasoning takes over their abstract thinking ability, and languages are more difficult to attain.

Subjects studied in junior high, high school and college are merely an expansion of what was learned in elementary school –  and it’s harder to pick up something that you had no exposure to as a child. 

As adults, we follow those who are influential to us, mimicking their speech, habits, and adopting some of their values which correlate -- or supplant -- our own. 

So it is with the way we worship – or choose not to – based on what we know.  Kids raised in a church denomination are indoctrinated with that denomination’s dogma. Hell or no hell; saints or no saints; grace by faith or grace by works; no drinking/dancing or party on; Halloween is the devil's day or All Souls' Eve; no birthdays or Christmas -- or lots of celebrations. 

More and more simply refuse to ascribe to an organized religion, and follow the ways of nature while navigating the world at large and relying on self-motivation to live a good life. So many schools of thought, on God. 

Huh.

Historically, the Catholic Church holds the honor of longevity and endurance. It rose from the early Church and attained power due to the KNOWLEDGE that the laity lacked -- the ability to read and write treatises on faith and the mysteries of faith and disseminate information. Protestantism broke off in protest against the Catholic Church, and heinous battles waged for centuries over who had divine rights and so forth. The Church exclusively held the seat of power before the Reformation – knowledge (and wealth gained from knowledge).

We’ve learned of terrible, terrible secrets within the walls – but there are no worse secrets among the Catholic family than anywhere else. More, perhaps, but simply due to volume.  

Consider the last twenty years within the evangelical circles. Scandals and betrayal and ‘ good upright church people’ who turned out to be sexual deviants, serial killers, rapists, and militant terrorists. Terrible secrets of what PEOPLE have done within the Church are the world’s way of distracting from what God has done within the Church – which is the continuous nurturing of pilgrims on a journey of faith, for over two thousand years.

We are all sinners – whether we believe in the communion of saints or the sprits among the trees.

Yet, believing in a Creator God who loves each one of us in spite of the fact that we are a flash of light in the vast expanse of time goes beyond any mortal amassing of knowledge. Believing in a Creator whose story includes every religion, every denomination, every theological theory goes beyond anything known.

Believing in a Creator God who lives as one of us grants a higher level of life --- eternal life beyond this finite one.

Belief, faith, worship – all require leaving what is known and felt to the studious and the sensitive.

Belief, faith, and worship involve turning your face to the Light, and training yourself as a vine which seeks a place to climb towards It, tendrils tightly clinging to what it senses underneath.

We know nuffink. Instead of clinging tightly to what we've been told, we can be like vines, seeking an open place in which to climb to the Light.

We simply need to Believe. 

Roses and Deadwood... not the Cable Show

10:00 a.m. Friday April 20
Just came in from pruning my climbing roses, which I noticed upon arriving home mid-morning, are about to burst forth in a pink frenzy of riotous blooms.

Without changing out of my flowered rayon skirt and leather boots, in my zest to prune for a few minutes, in a Donna Reed mode, I decided to cut away dead branches that were straddling the top of the vines to give them a lift. Ducking also under wet strands to clear out dead brush, the wind swirled around me and flung raindrops clinging to the leaves in my face, while the skies threated to give Seymour Road another spring shower.

I’d dressed in ‘work clothes’ earlier this morning to visit with a dear friend of mine about Catholicism, the renewal of the church after all of the scandal, and the mysteries of faith. ( The Catholic church sounds like a celebrity, doesn’t it? Fame, scandal, redemption. Repeat. At least they keep doggedly chasing reconciliation and renewal. ) But I digress.

For years now I have yearned to part of a band of believers who delve deeply into the mystery of faith, not simply staying content with the finite and glorious result of believing in the Risen Christ and gaining eternal life. That IS the crux of our faith,  and our hope, but not the day-to-day reality of it. The day to day requires work and involves pain and struggle as well as joy.  So many people today treat their faith journey like they do laundry – tackle it all on one day and put it away until it needs to be done again.

Faith isn’t a weekly chore. It’s a growing, living, tangled entity that requires delving into prickly branches. It's lifelong gardening of the soul. 

Pruning the thorny stems and freeing the bud-laden runners from a sodden a mass of deadwood, I reflected on our morning conversation. Mainline Protestant churches have devolved from revolution and reform and vigor for chasing after Christ’s footsteps to a slow shuffle of the same, albeit, multi-denominational dance pattern.

“ I’m saved, Jesus rose, I give to the poor, it’s all good,” steadily worn deep grooves worn into the floor of many mainline denominations. Grooves that young people and folks who yearn for the freshness of Jesus, stumble over while they try to dance to the music they hear in their hearts.

Pruning the roses is what I am doing in my soul, today.

 Cutting away the deadwood that has lain on my heart, in the decades-old patterns in which I have “danced” -- patterns that I have let others lay down for me. This spring holds new growth, new runners, thorns and all.

As my gloved hands carefully gathered cuttings to pitch into the waiting wheelbarrow, a thorn caught on my skirt, threatening to disturb the delicate weave. I put down the cuttings to detach it from the skirt-flowers with which it had engaged. As carefully as I picked them up again, though, through the leather gloves, those thorns pressed through -- and HURT!

The life that Jesus the Carpenter led was not ALL Easter Sunday and the empty cross. He got snagged by authorities as He wandered homeless, and was pierced by soldiers at the end of His human life. Those thorns placed on His head HURT – and He ached in agony for us, so that we would know we are not alone on The Journey to the Kingdom.

Why would I go prune roses in a rayon skirt and heels, on a scattered-shower spring day?

I wanted to give those new roses a chance to bloom fully -- without the deadwood sucking all the life out of the vine.

Why would God, the creator of the Universe, choose to become human? Same reason.

May you be blessed this spring and always…

Vandom Acts of Randall-ism. Big Sigh.

Monday, April 16, 2012
Today after Brett came home from school, he and his recuperating brother traded insults, as is their wont. And, as per their usual, Brett ended socking Rand in the leg. Rand shook it off and they both laughed. I said nothing. Nothing. About an hour ago, as I put together a batch of Alfredo sauce (with Jonathan contributing his genius culinary expertise via phone), I realized I'd said nothing.
   For the first time in fourteen years.
   I started to weep over the sauce while the sun set, and Jon murmured understandings to me.
   Since 1998, I have either had to run defense when idiots got out of hand, as happens among young men nearly every time they are in a group, or pray that the tussle wouldn't result in a hospital visit. or both. I sat on a couch with a dear friend in April 1998, and told him Randall was bruising a lot, I was worried about it. He seemed to recover, but it would only be temporary. Since then, I have been on edge.
   Since 1998.
   In that time frame I have lost my cool with an innumerable number of people. Some deserved it, because they are jerks, but most didn't. Most were victims of a terrified single mother who hasn't slept much since 1998.
   There was a period of about five years, between 2007 and now, that I chilled. A lot. Mostly because in the middle of it, I got CANCER and had to chill.
   I'd pretty much chilled out when Rand got sick around Valentine's Day.
   Randall's friends, my former friends, my friends and family have often uttered, " It's hard to be a parent /you just have to let go/ you don't need to be so high-strung." Okay.  I've had know-it-all teenagers, holy rollers, and other 'more knowledgeable' individuals, some parents -- but no one who ever had a kid with a chronic bleeding disorder -- tell me I gave in to way too much drama. Yep.  I guess when your kid gets a Make-A-Wish, reserved for terminally ill kids, you tend to have an underlying panic. You know what, my mind sure did.
     My heart and soul didn't. I gave Randall up to God a long long time ago, when I thought he had leukemia, at Community Hospital on a fall evening in 1998. I gave his life up to God to either heal and protect, or end and redeem. I did that in 1998, in 2001, in 2003, in 2012, and every time in between when he and his brothers would tussle -- and I had to wrestle with telling them to quit or letting them go, and possibly having one of them be responsible for contributing to his brother's death. Anybody ever had to think about that, every day, for fourteen years? By themselves?
   In the meantime, his brothers suffered along with him. They suffered under a panicky single mother who was terrified at some moment or other every single day of their lives. I did my best to be both mother and father. I married again, to yet another selfish person, and so I continued to be both mother and father to three boys, one very ill but all very brave. In between the Bad Days, we laughed and had fun growing up together, because every day might have been the last day to laugh.
   People who have never had a kid with a four-hour nosebleed have not one iota of the stress that we parents carry who do. Not one iota. We never get out of the infancy type of parenting, even subconsciously.
    I remember a Saturday, long, long ago after Randall was diagnosed that his dad let him go play tackle football, with a platelet count of only 10,000, but I was branded the hysterical one for pulling him out of the game. " Just let him have fun, you control freak," was flung at me.
   Randall has a mouth on him, just like his mamma, and every day of his freshman year of high school I worried that he would mouth off to the wrong football player, and get slammed into a locker for being a punk. I waited every day for the school to call me and summon me to the hospital.
   I alone have carried the burden of worrying/not worrying about Randall.
   I'm the one who got reported to CPS for TAKING him to the AFB Peds. clinic when his brothers got strep, so he wouldn't die. The chippie captain who knew everything had him Care-Flighted to Dallas because I hadn't taken him, in the last three months, to the doctor, even though I took him that day. That day.
    I alone have carried the worries about him dating and catching some deadly disease.
    I alone have felt badly that his brothers often had to take a back seat to their very sick big brother. I alone had to tell my son that I didn't know if he would live or die, and hold his hand. He's not married, he doesn't have a girlfriend like other 22 year-olds, because he has been sick.
   If I have created drama, I'm sorry. I am.
   And I'm sorry I don't have the grace that other women I know with chronically ill kids have. I also didn't have their support system. :-p
   I am also realizing how incredibly exhausted I have been for the last fourteen years, (including the two in the middle when I had cancer myself) trying to keep his spirits up, trying to make up to Craig and Brett for the moments that the Nefarious Blood Disorder stole from them, be both parents, and soothe them when other relatives were insensitive.
   I taught them how to throw a football, change a tire, replace a fan belt, bake a cake, sew a button, make coffee,  and be nice to people even if they'd been hurt by them. I also got after them for bad break-ups with girls, made them call their dad when they'd done something spectacular (which was often), and to always, always, try to see the positive in every situation. I told them to laugh like Tom Hanks when the bathtub crashes through the ceiling, shattering into a jillion pieces, because what else can you do?
    I have created way too much drama on way too many occasions, that's for sure. But I've also brought light and laughter into three boys' lives when there wasn't much to rejoice about. I didn't do THAT all by myself. That was the power of God -- when I chose to flip the switch.
    Maybe I can sleep tonight, since it has finally hit me that the 14 year odyssey has ended, and I don't have to worry about Rand any more, don't have to overdo to make up to Craig and Brett for other people's lack, and to remind them that they have the same fierce love that I have for their brother.
   This is the last Vandom Act of Randallism blog for a while. Maybe when he gets married I'll write another... God has brought about healing. Randall can write his own story from now on.
   Amen and hallelujah.
 

Death, Taxes, and Ubuntu.??

The train whistle wails, along the tracks beyond Barnett Road, as I sit down to tap this out on April 15, usually known as Tax Day. ( I can’t remember a time when I lived in Wichita Falls that I even remember hearing the train whistle, although I’m sure I have.  It reminds me of growing up on Pachappa Hill, where the train tracks curved around the hill, and we crossed them over a short bridge - which seemed the height of the Grand Canyon to 4^th graders - every day on the way to school. )

     Last night a storm raged across hundreds of miles spawning 113 tornadoes through Oklahoma,  Nebraska, and Kansas. This morning it’s so quiet I hear the train from four miles away. Nothing even makes sense this morning, although it’s fitting to remember today that two certainties in life are death and taxes.

      Even though Benjamin Franklin never ventured to Texas ( it hadn't been settled yet or he most certainly would have), where weather is ALWAYS uncertain, he wrote in The Works of Benjamin Franklin, 1817:"'In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes."

      That’s for sure. In the last five months topsy-turvy-uncertainty adequately describes my life. Tuesday marks five months since my ailing father passed, although I’d mourned him for thirty years, sometimes visibly, sometimes unconsciously. A month after Daddy died, I finally got move to a Real House in a Real Neighborhood after five years of struggling-single-motherhood Cottage Existence. Just after we moved, my oldest son succumbed to his Nefarious Blood Disorder of fourteen years, and the last six weeks have been an active battle to keep him on this planet. Recovering from cancer and healthier than ever, I feel a strange emptiness within me.

    I have carried way too many worries for one person, and within a matter of weeks, they have all been lifted.

     No longer do I deeply miss, nor feel guilty about not calling, Daddy, even though he had dementia and couldn’t converse. He has been freed from his earthly form, and I can’t call him. I can talk to him anytime now, and he hears me. God has supplanted the fractured family he left behind with a huge extended family, to include two wonderful men to call Dad. More on that, in a minute.

   Struggling single-motherhood has been altered to last-kid-in-school-graduating, releasing me from any and all dealings with a recalcitrant/physically abusive former spouse who sees his children as obligation/ holiday depression triggers, and it also releases me from a former in-law who still, to this very day, uses me as an excuse for over a dozen years of non-communication with HER grandchildren, even when they are deathly ill -- not to mention never having to write another note for anyone ever again. Ever.

   Struggling-single-hood has been supplanted with a joyful partnership with my Gemini-Jedi Jonathan, who is the calm to dry my tears, the laugh to ease my fears, the glass-clink to my Cheers. I am no longer alone.

    A week ago, two-hour surgery ended a fourteen-year odyssey with a Nefarious Blood Disorder plaguing my oldest son. I no longer have to worry about Randall bleeding to death from a simple bruising or bumping his head. So many people have said, “Why didn’t they ever do that before? Didn’t anybody think about that before??” Yes, it was considered before. Yes, we thought about it before. It happened when it was supposed to. Case closed – except for the enormous amount of energy I will have when I recover, without that ever-present worry.

   I no longer have to worry about being embraced by family. Without rancor, our immediate family has never been close. We are good people, but just not close-knit. We think too much, over-advise, and adore too little. It’s how we roll. And that’s okay, because I now have six half-siblings, six younglings ( Jonathan’s ), his parents, his brothers and their families, my CousinDadHoward ( my mother’s second cousin) and Craig’s Emily to flesh out my family unit.

    All of this is grace, grace to an undeserving outspoken rebellious un-lady-like me. The Baptists would say Satan has handed me the troubles I’ve had, because I haven’t been holy enough. The Methodists will tell you there is no hell, only absence from grace, but let me tell you that even in the grace of God, I have lived through some hell. The Bible speaks of principalities and powers that roam the earth that are not of God, and they have tried over and over again to drag this tired momma down into the depths – and on a few occasions, have briefly succeeded. I chose to cling to Love, even kicking and screaming at times.

   Knowing you are Loved, no matter what happens to you, keeps those powers and principalities at bay. Knowing you are Loved changes everything. Knowing you are Loved makes you grateful for the two boxes of macaroni-and-cheese in the cupboard instead of seeing the rest of the empty shelves. Knowing you are Loved, you feel prayers and petitions wrapping themselves around you in a storm.

    Knowing you are Loved gives you the ability to reach beyond your own desires and needs and seek the happiness of others. Across African cultures, this philosophy has many names, one being ‘ubuntu.’Archbishop Desmond Tutu offered a definition in a 1999 book: "A person with Ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good - based from a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed."

   That Love, for me, comes from Jesus, who personified Ubuntu. Our salvation and redemption were of the utmost importance to Him. “Greater love hath no man than He who lays down His life for a friend.” John 15:13 While death and taxes remain constant on earth, the Gift of Jesus remains timeless. The gift of ubuntu, the gift of Love beyond measure.

  In the past weeks, I’ve come to understand that in a way more deeply than I ever imagined. I have begun to practice Ubuntu as real Christian love that goes beyond surface good deeds. Real Christian love is welcoming those who despise you into your life and loving them. Not faking it either, but just letting God love them for you. In the days to come, I know I will experience it further. I pray that we all will, and bring about the Kingdom.

Be blessed.

Vandom Acts of Randall--ism, Mark-edly so....

Dear Mark,
    It's been a long spring in and out of the hospital, and I'm writing this blog because you have been there, with the rest of us, throughout this whole experience.
    Not simply because the hospital was where we last held your hands or saw you smile at us, although that has added to our emotional levels in a huge way -- but because you were the single greatest influence on Randall's life over the last few years.
    Remember when Randall was last hospitalized this long, when Andrew was a baby? I was in and out of the daycare that fall. Randall used to come up to the church with me, and sleep up on the 4th floor (where the MYF used to meet) during his recovery, and often he was there when you or Nancy came to pick up little AJ at the end of long days. You and Nancy looked after me, then, bringing me little cards and food and comforts for a weary momma. The whole time I had the privilee of caring for baby Andrew, you were the only daddy who stopped to stay and and visit. When Rand was there those weeks, you two talked of more than just your baby -- talk baseball and fishing and jab at each other's beloved teams and players.
    He had such joy when y'all came to church where we were, and you two developed a pretty strong bond. He loves your boys almost as much as you do, and the first thing he wants to do tonight is go to Aj's game if it doesn't rain. I'm fighting back the tears as I write this because after all this time, we still miss you so very much. I can still see you standing in my driveway on a December day, tears like these wetting your cheeks as you talked of bestowing Rand the best Christmas gift, ever.
    You were in the ICU with us when he first was admitted back in February. We tried not to relive the panic that set in when we realized how sick you were, but it was not easily dispatched.
    You were in the pre-op with Randall, and have been on the 3rd floor with us too, back and forth between the ICU and the old Bethania wing, and I wished so many times that you were there to tell Rand to be strong and keep his chin up and be positive.
    You were perhaps the only person besides Jon who has a calming effect on him. I did the best I could in your stead, man.
    Randall wanted so much to be a man like you, steady and strong and affable and kind and practical and adventurous all rolled into one. You showed him how a man can be independent and have a passion for his career and still be the loving head of a household; you showed him about responsibility and drive, working hard towards goals so that leisure time can fully be enjoyed in security. You showed him how to be a wonderful husband and father.  You taught him the finer points of microbrews. LOL You showed him how to be a man.
     After fourteen long years, Randall can fully model himself after you, and Jonathan, whom he loves as dearly as he did/does you, and get on with his life as a man. He wants to work hard, get married, and raise a family well, just like you. Rand doesn't need to worry anymore about someone sneezing on him and sending him to the ER. He can go on a date and not worry if kissing some cutie is literally going to kill him, play tackle football, go to the batting cages, work in a pharmacy, go to the firefighters academy, even get in a fender bender without fear of sudden and immediate catastrophe.
      He can simply live -- and live simply, as you did, relishing the wonders of life in small glimpses as you leaned back to see the whole picture that God has painted for all of us.
    We love you and miss you terribly...we know that you are always here with us... and we think of you every single time we hear the Apostles' Creed, " I believe in the communion of saints."
     Rain or not, tonight we'll raise a glass to you ( Rand won't drink it since he's on painkillers ) and toast to spring, baseball, health, and the love of good friends who feel like family.
     Thanks, Mark, for being the man of God that we all needed in our lives. Let the happy-memory- tears flow... and...
      Cheers.

Love,

Amy
   


 

Vandom Acts of Randall-ism, Part IV

   Yesterday morning I reminisced about Randall's toddlerhood with his friend Tawni, while Randall underwent surgery to remove a spleen that had been screening his platelets from his blood. Tawni has been friends with Randall for ten years, and so I caught her up on his early antics.

    I raised my boys to be Star Wars nerds just like me ( and Jonathan, who sat next to me at the opening of Star Wars in 1977). As a toddler, Randall used to roll down the hall on a little plastic Plaskool scooter, wearing his daddy's batting helmet and safety glasses, and stop at my bedroom door while I was on the phone/folding laundry, reaching around the ever expanding waistline, while a tiny Craig-to-be kicked me in the ribs.
   " Mommy, I'm Luke," he'd say seriously, in his little gravelly asthmatic toddler voice. Luke Skywalker dons a helmet and goggles in the last scene of Star Wars Episode IV for those of you non-nerds out there.
   " Where ya goin', Luke?" I'd answer.
   " Find Jawas/Tattoine/Darth Vader" -- any of the three.
   " Okay, Luke, stay in the galaxy." He'd roll on past into his room, and I'd stop and think of Jonathan, my long lost childhood pal, for a brief second, as I always did when Star Wars came up. Then it was back to gabbing with my girlfriends and housework and whatever the day held.
 
     In recounting this anecdote to Tawny, I added that that's what I told Rand yesterday, just before they wheeled him out of sight. " Stay in the galaxy, Rand. Love you." Then we waited.

    This morning, which seems like three days ago already, Randall got moved from the ICU where he'd been overnight to a regular room. After he got settled in a chair, I filled a basin with warm water and washed his face and his arms -- and his calves, where pressure cuffs had kept him damp and itchy since yesterday morning in pre-op.
   It's been about 20 years since I washed Randall's face.
   It's just shy of 23 years that my baby was released from the NICU at five days old. (We had a traumatic delivery with Rand, to say the very least).
   Fourteen years have passed since the first diagnosis of the Nefarious Blood Disorder that has kept  him on the sidelines from dating, driving, contact sports and careers that he's been interested (and would be excellent) in the health field or as a firefighter.
 
   It took me 29 hours of labor to have this kid, and  as I write this, it's been 29 hours since I kissed him good-bye and resigned myself to waiting for the outcome of his surgery. With his spleen out of the way, his blood counts are normal, for the very first time, without aid of steroids, infusion therapy, or any other drugs. With God's grace, he is beyond nosebleeds, beyond common colds causing havoc, beyond fear of bruising and bleeding anytime he gets a little bump.

  He's being reborn. Randall has a whole new life ahead of him. This is one of his favorite songs, by the band Skillet, perfect for him and this Easter weekend.

I lie here lifeless In this cocoon 
Shedding my skin cause I'm ready to 
I wanna break out I found a way out 
I don't believe that it's gotta be this way 
The worst is the waiting In this womb I'm suffocating 

[Bridge:]
Tell me when I'm gonna live again 
Tell me when I'm gonna breathe you in 
Tell me when I'm gonna feel inside 
Tell me when I'm gonna feel alive 


Rebirthing! now! 
I wanna live for love, wanna live for you and me 
Breathe for the first time now 
I come alive somehow 
Rebirthing! now! 
I wanna live my life, wanna give you everything 
Breathe for the first time now 
I come alive somehow 


Amen. Amen. Amen and amen. 

     

     

Distant cousins, same hearts

     I don't know my distant-cousin Dawnee. We've never met. She's a little older than I am, because she has kids in their 30's. Her pop is my grandpa's cousin, and much like him, though at about 25 years younger he's of the same life-era as my mother. Gets a a little convoluted, I know. Still, we are family. We've never met, and yet she and her husband and their whole family have been on my heart lately. 

    See, Dawnee's daughter Anna just recently passed away, in her early thirties. The whole family turned out for Anna Time, remembering and grieving together. Sometimes I think she would just rather crawl under the bed and stay there. I know how she feels, to a degree. 

     I haven't lost any of my kids, although Randall's skirmishes with the Nefarious Blood Disorder have been frightening, and still are. Today I though of Dawnee missing her daughter...

...and I started sobbing on the freeway. Big racking sobs. 

   We are the mommas! We want to be there for our children, to help them through, to give them what they need. We give up our figures, our nights, our weekends, our vehicles,to help them grow and flourish. Sometimes it's a band-aid, sometimes a cookie, sometimes a cheer from the sidelines, sometimes a deposit in a bank account. We are their backup from the time they emerge in the bright world blinking and squalling baby protests at being unceremoniously disturbed to the time they move into a dorm room or walk down the aisle and beyond. They are part of us. We are part of  them, even if they are of different gender and live their own lives. Mothers in tune with their kids understand them, respect them, find ways to support them without being intrusive or distant.

    Daddies are backup, but also coaches as well. They pick them up when they fall off the bike without training wheels, teach them to drive, pour a perfect beer, conduct business with dignity and integrity, and face failure with a 'better luck next time' resolve.' Not so mushy but just as vital. Some of us mommas have to be the coach, too, when the dad chooses to step aside, or when he has to be away as a soldier or in support of soldiers, but we never really pass muster. 

     I looked down at Randall's closed eyes yesterday and told the nurse, who remarked on his long lashes, that when he was a baby his eyes were the same size, big huge brown eyes -- and his lashes went down his cheeks like a doll when he slept.   

     We mommas never forget those baby faces, that baby grin, and we see traces of those in our adult children when they tip their heads a certain way, or make a familiar gesture that we've seen since toddlerhood. We know them better than anyone in the world.

    I'm guessing my cousin Dawnee wishes she could have fixed Anna. Guessing that she wishes she could go back about six months, or a year, or five, and reroute the days and nights of weeks that have led her to this place where she aches beyond feeling. We are the providers of meals and playtime and fresh laundry and fixers of shoelaces and toys and broken junior-high hearts and baseball gloves and prom dress hems and all the other crises that come about as our kids grow up. We ask God to fix our sick kids so we don't have to give them up, but rather keep them near and dear to us. 

     I don't know Dawnee. I don't know her faith or how she faces things or how she is coping. I do know she's hurting, and wishes she could make it better, somehow, and I'm guessing that even if she hears and knows and believes her baby girl is with Jesus in a world without pain, she wishes she could have seen her at her wedding, held her grandbabies, grown older with her daughter. 

   Dawnee, I feel your pain. I know your shared faith in a loving God who gave you your daughter and then took her Home to wait for you. And I know that your mother-heart has a crack in it that will heal over, but not ever feel the same.

   We are the mommas. Not mothers, who simply raise children and send them on their way, although that is part of us as well. We are the mommas. 

   

Vandom Acts of Randall-ism, part III

Randall and I have had some poignant talks this week in between trying to be brave for the other, alternately laughing, tearing up, and musing at the ludicrousness that his dad will be on vacation, again, while Randall's in the hospital. (Well, at least I won't have to call this time. He's in Mexico, out of cell phone range, having a vacation from not working for the last four years. But I digress. )

This morning's focus, at the church we attend, was not on Palm Sunday for whatever reason, but on the Crucifixion. At the recounting of the arrest in the Garden, we both mused on why the people who witnessed Jesus replacing the cut off ear of the Roman guard didn't back off in amazement. Maybe it was too dark. Maybe they didn't see in the crush of the crowds. Dunno. Rand said you'd think that would be pretty convincing, to see a guy pick up and ear that had been sliced off with a sword and reattach it.

Anyway, we talked about his upcoming surgery after church. He said he wasn't worried. I sighed a little, and remarked that I was. " I have to be real. I'm worried. I believe that God wants to release you from the stupid ITP blood disorder after all these years, but I would be lying to you and everyone if I claimed total peace." I told him if Jesus could have a moment of trepidation, and wonder if the cup could be taken from Him, then it was okay for us to be worried and concerned and a little anxious.


If it's okay for Jesus to say it, it's okay for us. He teared up too, and then we decided to laugh ourselves into hysteria because it was more fun than crying. 


Jesus worried. For a moment.  


" Do I really have to do this?" He didn't spout sing-song faith, he didn't act like He wasn't troubled. HE worried so much the drops of blood feel from His brow, way before the crown of thorns, in the cool of the Garden. He asked, out loud, "Can You take this cup from me?", even though He knew that wasn't in the design. That chapter always gets to my heart, since it's the burden of proof to me that Christ was one of us. Validation that it is perfectly acceptable to be perfectly human, and worry, and cry, and sweat.  


And then He trusted. On His way to an overnight imprisonment in a dank cistern under the High Priest's house, He picked up a lopped off ear and put it back where it belonged, telling Peter to put away his sword. 


For fourteen years I have prayed for Randall to be healed, to be whole, to be able to go to the batting cages and play tackle football and go skiing and all the other things he cannot do at present, or ever, with no platelets. 


I'm worried. I can't lie. Randall going into surgery with one-tenth of the platelets that they allow in emergencies is daunting, as his surgeon says. 


I know God is present, and I know He loves my son as much as He loves His. That's all I know, today. So I worry, and I trust, and allow the Plan to unfold. Just like Jesus in the Garden. 

Goin' riding in Kuwait :-)

   Jonathan and I have decided that I should come spend the month of July, and possibly beyond, in Kuwait with him. :-D Randall will be fully recovered, Brett will be off on Tour and camp and other things, and I can head back just before BrettBrett heads off to college.
   We've bandied the idea about since he got assigned -- his boss actually okayed for me to go when he got the contract -- but I didn't want to miss any of Brett's Senior Year, so I stayed put in Whiskey Flats. Good thing too, because Randall needed me here. God has good timing!
   I'll make the arrangements for my visa and spend the summer weeks by the sea, albeit the Persian gulf, not Laguna or Oceanside :-P. I can gather info on living there with him for the next year or so, and possibly teaching. After all that's what Daddy did when he moved to Israel all those years ago.
  Pray for us as we have me make the journey, and for my grown-ups kids as their momma literally and figuratively takes flight. :-) The Harley is also getting shipped, so we can tool around Kuwait City together in the summer sun.

Love you all!!

I'll go after Brett's birthday, which is three months from today, April 1.  ;-)  Can you believe it's already APRIL1!! :-D


As if I can even afford to drive across town. LOL April Fools'!!!