A Brighter Day

 One of the perks of being a one on the enneagram scale is that when I decide to do something, I plan it out and it gets done. Lists are my friends, spreadsheets my loyal companions. I have been called a lot of things in life, but the word that tends to come up a LOT is the very unromantic descriptor "responsible." In movies, my character tends to throw off all inhibitions by the end and do something reckless that manages to transform her life for the better, but that's just Hollywood's spin on learning how to be yourself. In real life, I am definitely learning spontaneity in ways I never would have imagined before I turned 40, but not at the expense of my good traits - as a complement to them. 

That said, I have had the song Brighter Day in my head for a few days now. If you don't know it, it's an old school Kirk Franklin song playing off an even older school Bill Withers song has a catchy refrain that goes "it's gonna be a brighter day, brighter day, brighter day, a bright-er day!" (Go ahead and take a little dance break if you need it, I'll love you even more for it.)

And as it's been tooling around in my head, I have been pondering just how insane the last six months have been. So much uncertainty. So many unknowns. So MUCH togetherness in the family home. So many days that do not feel any brighter than the one before. It's been truly difficult for so many of us, adults and kids alike, to have so little of life be familiar or plannable. And for those of us with kids who may now be planning to guide them through at-home virtual learning and IEP's and homeschooling, it's so easy to be focused on what we are doing to keep the family functioning, to help our kids' mental health as we transition into yet another unknown, and for many, uninspiring, reality. 

It is so very easy to feel like we are in the dark. To feel sad. To feel angry or hopeless. And it's so very easy to neglect ourselves when so many around us need so much to stay stable. 

I've mentioned before my struggle with PMDD. After a few years of trying more conventional methods to treat it, I stumbled upon a book by Dr. Jolene Brighten called Beyond the Pill. As the pill is the most commonly used way to treat it but as someone who does not enjoy its unhelpful side effects, I was eager to hear if there were alternatives. I read the book immediately (another thing us ones are good at), developed a plan of action and took it to my doctor. I refrained from boring her with a powerpoint presentation about why I should go off the pill and try it, but I was sorely tempted. Thankfully, she was on board with the protocol as it was rooted in nutrtion, exercise and rest (woohoo, science!) and the next day I was busy buying supplements and making schedules. 

Oh the sweet joys of a freshly minted calendar and plan! Within a week, I was happily ensconced in the challenges of lifestyle changes that I knew could make a significant impact on my health. 

One year later, I have seen amazing success when I have stuck to it. I have learned about my body in new and amazing ways. I have a deep and newfound respect for my adrenal gland in all it's glory and power. And as I sit on the cusp of all these changes for my family, I have been reminded anew that I need to get back on this protocol with a new focus. It fell to the wayside when all my kids ended up home from school in March. It was just too much to keep up with three super-energetic boys (one with significant challenges himself) AND the protocol. It was survival mode.

But I can't abide living in survival mode for too long. I want a brighter day. 

I know, it feels like the last thing most of us need, to add something to our life, our schedule. But I know for some of us, this has been such a hard time of sacrifice that we are in danger of losing ourselves, our health, our sanity, to this pandemic. Stress deeply affects us as women. Our hormones respond in ways that make us feel absolutely insane sometimes. 

So today, I picked the book back up while my littles swam at the pool. (and yes, I paused and issued a prayer of gratitude that at the ages of five and six, I can trust them to swim without me in the water, may God bless swim team and all the saints in heaven.) I turned to the chapter with the quiz that helps you isolate what's going on in your body. And lo and behold, my answers had changed after a year. What I had focused on over the past year was doing so well that it is time for me to move on to focus on a different area of health. Adrenal glands check, now we conquer the ovaries :) 

Am I oversharing? Quite likely. 

But I have learned as I hit my late 30's and now have moved into my 40's that we women need to talk about this stuff - hormones and sex drive and body image and reproductive health.That so much of how we grow up talking about these things and learning about them ends up steeped in shame and secrecy and that is NOT any way to be living our lives in connection to this beautiful vessel, our bodies, in which we travel through life. 

So, if you have STUFF going on with your parts. If you don't love the way you feel, if you are struggling with body image or health issues or PMDD or PCOS or menopause (can I get a witness on how MANY fans I now need on in my room at night?), I'd like to issue you a friendly challenge. 

THINK ABOUT YOU.

Seriously. Think. Do you want to feel better? Do you want to be a healthier version of the already beautiful you? Are you tired of people promising quick fixes and just want to make some lasting changes in your life that take a shot at it being a brighter day?

I may not be great at empathy or helping us figure out our emotions, but heck am I good at accountability and dreams! 

So in a moment of spontaneity, BEFORE I have made any lists or plans on what it would look like, I'm diving in.

I'm going to reboot my journey with Brighten because I know it worked for me and I know I need to concentrate on my health as I move into a new phase of helping my kids learn at home. I am not selling anything, nor am I an expert. If no one wants to join me, I'm doing it anyway, because I'm also a raging introvert and perfectly happy to do something alone. 

BUT, if this resonates with you at all, I'd love to invite and challenge you to join me. We can do it together. It's a plan written by a doctor and based on science that involves exercise, nutrition, rest, spiritual growth and joy. 

Adding community to it can certainly only help. 

Who is in? 

Facebook, Friendship and the Trials of Seventh Grade

Her text came through at a moment that I wasn't ready to read it.

"You are isolating yourself again," it read. I glanced at it, ignored it, and moved on with my day. It's a pandemic, for goodness' sake. EVERYONE is isolating him or herself. There's no problem here.

Except, there was. There IS, really.

About two weeks ago, I decided to get the heck off facebook, for the most part. I found that watching people call each other names, watching bullying, watching the extreme ways in which we are willing to be keyboard warriors that shout and rant from the privacy and seclusion of our homes was taking a huge toll on me. Particularly on top of all the uncertainties with the pandemic. It was affecting the way I parent, how I do my job, which thoughts and voices I let set up shop in my head during the day. It was sucking time from my day and energy from my soul. It was distracting, disheartening and, most of all, paralyzing. 

But why? 

As I have slowly detoxed from that world, God has brought something sharply into focus for me: Seventh grade is still a big part of how I do life.

Seventh grade was 30 years ago. I really only remember small details of that period in my life. A lot of what I know about it is what my mom has told me. Apparently I cried. A lot. Probably more in that year than I have total in the 30 years since. I dreaded school.  I isolated myself because the risk of friendship became too painful. I had very few friends and basically none at school.That was the only year of my life where that was true. I have mostly loved school, craved learning. I was mocked for being smart, left to sit alone at lunchtimes. In recent days, I've started to remember how closely I watched the clock on the wall in the cafeteria, begging for free time to finish. It's made me wonder if my inability to sit peacefully in the now, to practice mindfulness and presence, is rooted in that wish for time to hurry up and finish then. I started my struggle with insomnia, a struggle I deal with to this day. I started running to dissipate the anger and sadness, a practice that has served me well, but has also sometimes taken the place of the hard work of lament and healing. 

Mostly, though, in this past week, it has become clear to me that the way I view female friendships, the way I retreat and isolate and keep to myself, is largely a product of that time. I don't trust women. I don't trust that they aren't gossiping. That they don't have nasty things to say behind my back or, honestly, straight to my face. Have I had some truly amazing friendships with women since 7th grade? Absolutely. However, do I assume those women are rare and unusual? I do. Do I avoid all women's ministry events at church? 100%. 

As I think about how I feel after I spend time scrolling or commenting, I recognize that facebook doesn't bring out the best in me. Nor in many of us, if we are honest. It reinforces my assumptions. It tightens and defines the boxes I have built. It allows me to villify and "other" people and it drives me inward. Bottom line, it usually makes me worship and focus on what I can do or say or believe much more clearly than who God is or what He is doing or saying. 

And that's a dangerous place for me to linger. 

Seventh grade still has power. But I don't want it to. I have never really sat down and hashed it out. I've never truly asked God to heal me of those deep wounds. To show me the ways I have let the pain of that year drive my relationships for 30 years now. So while I am grateful to facebook for unearthing how clearly that period still has power, I also know that it's time for a real and true break so I can lot God do the deep work of healing that He is clearly in the business of doing.

If you have been a friend I have pushed away, I truly apologize. If you have been a friend I have othered or vilified, may God reveal that to me so I can ask for forgiveness. If you have been a woman who has pursued me and tried to love me and been met with rejection, please know that I am working on this. I truly am. Part of what God has been showing me during this pandemic is who I truly am, in all the areas that are good and beautiful but also all the areas that still need growth.   

In the meantime, I'm going to sit back and breathe. Journal. Paint. Run. Speak with humans face to face. Stay pretty much off of social media. Garden. Try to find my laughter and smile. Love and serve the heck out of humans on my ambulance. Pursue my husband. Use my punching bag. Pull out the guitar. Have amazing conversations about justice and shalom and grace because those things give me life. And just ask God to heal. To reveal. To redeem. And to infuse my soul with hope that this pandemic WILL one day end and that I will come out of it stronger, kinder and a better friend. 

When Persistence Pays

I am already 9.5 years into this whole mom thing and some days I still feel like I'm playing house. Dressing up little people, feeding them, pretending to impart some type of adult and lifelong wisdom they will no doubt quote when they are older as they remember me fondly as calm and collected all the time.

Ok, I barely got through the last half of that sentence, but still.

Am I the only one? I often wonder when I'll truly feel like an adult and with each milestone, I find myself wondering anew.

Except for this week. This week I knew I nailed this mom thing, this adult jam. Just for one brief, shining moment, I could almost hear the tournament music playing in the background as scenes of the last year and half with my toddler flashed across my mind.

This week, we got a diagnosis. After trips to therapists, meetings with the state agency, setting goals, sensory diets, parenting strategies, countless books, too many emails back and forth with the doctor to count, strict nutritional guidelines...after all these things, I still knew something wasn't right. That he wasn't responding the way he should to all we were doing if there were really no underlying causes. I knew it couldn't just be personality. No one is born miserable, right?

So I kept pushing. I kept looking. I asked questions. I found groups of people who had been through the same type of challenges who had found answers. I suggested possibilities to our amazing pediatrician who was more than willing to dig deep right beside us. I failed, I despaired, I hoped again, I tried again.

And, my friends, I performed the most disgusting ritual I have ever had to do, scooping poop from horrifying diapers into different vials, mixing and mashing them up with a scary little spoon with teeth and, I am not kidding you, putting the whole package in the mail to a distant lab. I am pretty sure the house smelled like a sewer for a solid 24 hours. Well, more than usual, anyway.

That sample was gone a whole month. Another month of inexplicable meltdowns, of anger and rage, of early rising and whining and a child who was clearly unhappy a lot of the time. There are few things harder than watching your child struggle and feeling helpless.

But this week, we got an answer. It may not be causing everything, but there is no doubt it is serious enough to mess with him pretty hard. I am pretty sure no matter what was going on in this little guy's body, he would still be off the charts energetic. I am sure we would still have tantrums and chaos more than I did with my first. He DOES have a "live life to the fullest" kind of personality and I love that about him. But maybe, just maybe, if we can heal up his little body, he can live life to the fullest with more smiles and fewer meltdowns. With more joy and less angst. With less thinking about how his body is uncomfortable and more diving into the fun around him. He is SO good at that.

This week, we won. This week, I felt like a real adult, a mom who fought for her son and succeeded.

Maybe you think it's cruel to rejoice in a diagnosis. But friends, when you have spent more than half your child's life searching for some way to help and someone tells you there IS a way to help now, you feel a tremendous sense of relief. It's not something incurable. It's not even uncomfortable to treat. He won't know the difference in his day until all of a sudden he will. He will feel good instead of crummy. The littlest things might no longer cause 45 minutes of screaming and throwing his body on the floor. Maybe our family will be able to go places. Maybe someday we can introduce some of the taboo foods back in and go to an actual restaurant occasionally or order in a pizza when I'm done with cooking.

We can hope so, at least.

And hope is something of a theme in my life. Through miscarriage, infertility, adoption and now the extreme challenges of a higher-needs child struggling through toddlerhood, God has continued to pour down hope. To give us just enough to try again. To explore, to fail and pick ourselves back up.

So, here's to the next phase of hope, one filled with treatments and, dare I say it, healing.

The Unhiding

6 years ago, I kept secrets.

I didn't cry.

I cringed when someone said it was my turn to "share" my feelings. What feelings, really?

On the outside, life looked perfect.

Newly moved into a lovely town and a beautiful house. Time off from a beloved job for a restful sabbatical. A beautiful preschool boy just starting out in school, learning to make friends and always down for a snuggle. A generous, intelligent husband in graduate school with big dreams ahead. New friends in the making.

Life looked perfect on the surface.

No one could look at me and see the baby we'd lost.

No one knew that when I was in the bathroom stall, I was injecting myself with fertility drugs.

No one knew that once a month, I would descend into despair when our dreams of another child were once again shattered.

I was good at keeping secrets.

So of all the feedback I ever receive about my blog, it is perhaps astounding that it most often revolves around my willingness to be honest, be vulnerable, be real, be truthful.

6 years ago, none of those things could have been said of me.

6 years ago, I was still in hiding.

From time to time, I look back and read something I wrote a long time ago. Something God was teaching me back when the secrets were drowning out God's voice of grace in my life. And I think about how far He has brought me.

The last six years have been one long journey of Unhiding.

Of saying out loud,

"I have lost a baby I will always love."

"I have been through infertility and it is lonely and fearful and silent."

"I know what it feels like to gear all your hopes up for that one moment of truth every month only to know that you have at least 30 days again until you might see a dream realized."

"I know what it is to wait and wait and wait on a dream. To doubt God, to rail at him. To be angry at your own body, your own limitations."

I have said it out loud. And while there was so much fear in the first saying, in every time I pushed "Publish" and waited to see how the honesty would go forth, with each saying and every push, it got easier. It gets easier.

The unhiding.

It's painful. It's not easy to go from a person good at keeping to herself to a person whose life is on display. It's never easy to change. Particularly to change into a person you used to fear becoming.

But every choice, every new life change all comes from this. This process of unhiding. Of baring the soul. Of being honest. Of answering questions. Of knowing that because of your honesty, maybe just one person that day has realized that someone else has been through the same thing.

About a week ago I stumbled on pictures from last fall. Pictures of me laughing and playing at the park with my (now) middle child. At the time, most of God's work of change in me had been on the inside, in the way he had been healing and bringing to light the ugly and redeeming it into something beautiful. And I remembered these pictures because, at the time, I was unwilling to post them. To share them with anyone. I looked haggard and exhausted and dried out and reddened. I felt like the pictures didn't represent who I felt I had become or who I was becoming. And I knew, by my unwillingness to post them, that I still had a long way to go in my unhiding. My struggle with my skin stole the joy from that evening.

So they sat in my files for a year. Forgotten.

Pics from September 2014 (with makeup)

And during this last year, I finally began to make peace with my need to see healing in my skin, to stop the hiding under makeup, to stop talking with my hands held in front of my chin because I was embarrassed at the acne at the age of 36.

For some who know me, the decision to share about my skin journey may have seemed shallow. Or out of character. The decision to then go into "skincare business", which for me is really just offering the same possibility of healing to others, may have seemed even more unlike me.

But for those who know me more deeply, who have followed this blog over the years, maybe it seems in keeping with what the Lord has done. To be able to finally post those old pictures and not care anymore but also to post pictures of a year later and see what God has done in healing my outward skin even as he has continued to heal my inner life. To be able to say that I am now "unhiding" my face. Not wearing makeup to cover it up. Not touching up pictures before I post them. Not finding my joy stolen because I am embarrassed over some pictures. Telling other people about it because I can't keep secrets anymore. I won't.

September 2015 (Makeup free)

October 2015 (Makeup free)

Just being me.

Is God finished with my unhiding?

Never.

This past year, for me, has been a surprise. I didn't see the unhiding going in this direction. But I am thankful over and over that it has. That even though most of you didn't see what I saw (because I was masterful at painting over it for 20 years), God knew that what I saw affected me in my deepest places. And had affected me for too long.

I am so glad I have a God who loves me enough to see the hidden places, to take the dark secrets and bring them to light, not just for my sake but for others who hide, too. And that I have a God who takes the business of healing very seriously.