Renewed Shenanigans

21
Feb

Since it’s a strange weathered-February, it seems right to finally do an update here. I haven’t been trying to maintain radio silence; I’ve been moving into an expanded role in a job that’s been developing on the side for a bit. It’s exciting and I’m now part owner of a small business, which shows you how little screening they do of these sorts of things.

That’s only part of it, and I could use your input with another part.

As you know, I’ve got a bee in my bonnet for creative experiences. Painting has been at the forefront for longer than I anticipated. My dad getting sick and then losing him made it virtually impossible to tap into the writing that I had identified with for so long. I’ve (mostly) accepted that.

[Shhh…I’ll tell you something extra true: there are moments when I wonder about lost-time or opportunities I might have missed. That’s my first impulse. Once I notice that impulse, I remind myself that’s coming from a place of scarcity and a place of worry that there are a finite number of opportunities available, a.k.a. if I don’t get one of these opportunities they’ll run out before my turn comes round again. I don’t have to accept that mentality, and I don’t. There’s more than enough to go around, for me and for you too.]

I’ve allowed myself to explore and develop other ways of expressing the roiling thoughts and feelings that have come in these years of wrestling. Paints, scribbling, ripping paper, smearing color – these have become a language without words.

Original mixed media art by TC Larson (that’s me!)

This is good; it’s good to have tools with which you approach the world. It gave me new ways to work through difficult situations and was useful then when, about six months after losing my dad, my daughter (I call her Princess Teacup here) was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes.

The diagnoses is permanent and it has impacted, well, everything. It’s not that you don’t get used to it – you do. It’s that by necessity, it changes so much of the rhythm of your life.

Okay back to you, Dear Reader. You can see that I’m a little all over the place. I could really use your input.

Painting, writing, creativity.
Type 1 Diabetes
Family, friends, silliness, and motherhood.
Encouragement, faith, spirituality, crabby wrestling with the Church.

These are all things that flow through my life. Does it make you crazy to hear about ALL of them? Do you wish this space was more focused? Do you wish you knew you could come here and get a daily pep talk? Do you get tired of hearing about grief and loss? Would you like to read snippets of stories I’m working on, now that I’m writing again?

This is when I turn to you, Dear Reader, and I’d really value what you have to say. Speak freely now, friends. I want to hear it. Your input can help shape the direction I go. I plan revamp things in order to better make this space reflect some of the shifts that have happened, and hearing from you would really help me.

Even though it’s been a while, I want you to know I appreciate you and the opportunity (there’s that word again) to share here with you.

Now get outside and enjoy this bizarre February heat wave. We’re all suspicious of it and are pretty sure it can’t last. Remember, the high school winter sports finals haven’t happened yet, and that’s when we here in Minnesota almost always get hit with a blizzard (click here for proof!). Don’t put away those snow shovels yet.

Since I’m already being “that person” and asking for things, I’m just gonna go for all the bananas and put this here: Donate and support us at the JDRF One Walk Fundraiser.

Incremental steps for Everyone

16
Aug

Why do we tend to think we need to change overnight? We do we insist on expecting ourselves to wake up and be a totally renewed person simply because we decided to become one as we went to bed the night before?

I discover a few exercises, think they look quick and manageable, and the next day I check to see how my pants fit and I haven’t even done any of the exercises I discovered.

That’s unrealistic, to say the least. But we do things similar when we expect ourselves to just snap into new ways of behaving or new outlooks. We consider our attempts as failures rather than what they are…

Incremental steps.

I’m thinking about this today because we A. bought school supplies for the kids and B. dropped off my daughter at day camp (don’t worry – we picked her up at the end of the day).

These incremental steps toward independence — this allowing of our children to be away from us for long periods of time — are often good for them. They are also often a real act of faith, especially if there are any health needs for the kids. It’s hard enough if your child is of an uncomplicated health scenario; it’s a whole different experience when there are significant risks to factor in.

For example, my daughter has Type 1 Diabetes. That means (among other things) she’s insulin dependent, and for every meal, snack, or treat she has to count out carbohydrates and administer insulin accordingly. Since my husband and I want to take that responsibility for as long as we can (she’ll handle it the rest of her life so we’ll do it when she’s a child), that means WE count the carbs and administer the insulin accordingly.

That also means that any time she’s away from us, someone else has to take on that responsibility.

This week, that’s the good folks at Camp Daypoint, a day camp specifically for kids with Type 1 Diabetes (T1D).

Remember how we were talking now about incremental steps? Yeah, those are hard.

After an entire year of carrying her bag of T1D “equipment” (and trust me, there’s plenty of equipment) to and from everything with us, including everything from bike rides to sledding, basketball to swimming, I left her at day camp without her bag.

She didn’t need it.

They provide everything she needs for managing her T1D.

They would take care of her.

It’s a good step torward greater independence both for her and for us as her parents.

It’s a pretty significant, and yet incremental, first step.

Photo taken by TC Larson

|||

I got to thinking that this is a lot like sending your kids off to school.

You can think this is a great idea, it’s the best thing for them, it’s a good step toward greater independence and self-actualization (psychobabble and all that child development mumbo-jumbo), but When the times comes to put that kindergartener on the bus, it seems like the worst planned out plan you ever heard of. Who sends these tiny human on an enormous metal death trap THAT HAS NO SEAT BELTS on a highway with a speed limit that’s just clearly meant to mimic the environment of NASCAR, to a place where they do not allow Nanny Cams/Go-Pros that will equip us to supervise their interactions? What if they don’t wash their hands? What if they use someone else’s comb? What if they climb UP the slide when clearly playground protocol is to only go DOWN the slide?

It’s unreasonable.

And now they want us to send these tiny humans there all day long, even as kindergarten tiny humans, children who were, let’s be honest, just moments away from their initial entry into the world? Infants, I tell you, infants!

We get through it. Maybe with tears and more wine than is advisable, but we do it. Why?

Because it is the significant incremental step we must take.

That doesn’t make it easy, that doesn’t mean we’re good at it. We just have to do the thing.

Maybe we’ll get better at it over time, maybe not. We just have to keep trying.

Good luck, all you parents of the world. We’ll get through this, and I’ve heard tales of people actually enjoying it. Maybe we’ll be those people someday.

|||

The point is, we could all use more grace as we travel through life. Grace toward others, grace torward ourselves. The older I get, the more I realize how much grace and long-suffering was extended to me without my knowledge. That makes me want to do the same for all those other know-it-alls who, like I did, think they’ve got a bead on the “right” way to think/act/speak etc.

I hope that as I take my own incremental steps, I’ll learn to be grace-filled toward my attempts, no matter how small.

Thankfulness in the midst of Diabetes

23
Nov

When your child has Type 1 Diabetes, it’s easy to feel like she got short-changed. What did she do to receive this life-sentence? How will this affect the way she moves through the world? How will it impede her? What a raw deal.

Instagram: @tclmn

It’s good to step back and find things to be thankful for, even in the midst of coming to terms with the implications of this serious diagnosis. And since Thanksgiving is this week, it seems appropriate to express that gratitude here.

I’m grateful that my husband had the presence of mind to raise the idea of diabetes before things got to an emergency state with our daughter.
In a complex tension of thankfulness, I suppose I’m thankful that she’s young as she receives this diagnosis and won’t really know anything different as she matures. It will be part of her every day life.
I’m thankful for her personality which is responsible, conscientious as well as being fun-loving and playful. She’s able to advocate for herself already, and express her needs and/or situation matter -of-factly, even to those who may be unfamiliar with T1D.
Our daughter is healthy and doesn’t struggle with other underlying health issues that could complicate this further. I’m grateful for that.
My husband is an equal partner in caring for our daughter’s T1D. For that I am profoundly grateful.
I also trust that God loves our daughter and will walk alongside her. There may not be a miraculous healing, but she’s not in it alone, even when we’re not around. It may be cold comfort at times, but it may also be a source she can turn to when we inevitably screw things up for her (we are her human parents, after all). This doesn’t mean that God and I have made peace over this, but we’re still duking it out, and I’m still in the ring.

That’s what I can come up with today. Maybe next year I’ll be able to find more gratitude for other things related to diabetes. I know there are more and I hope that as we become more familiar with our diagnosis, I can become more aware, zooming in to those things I’m skimming over.

I wish you all (all three of you wonderful readers) a happy Thanksgiving. May you cultivate ever deeper gratitude and joy in the year to come.

When fear threatens your Freedom

8
Sep

fear

control

the unknown

distrust and uncertainty

constrict your heart.

You lie awake in the night,

shutter your windows, bar the door and creep thru the house in darkness.

Fear throws threats around your head, wraps chains that trip and limit.

We are not made for this binding.

We are not made to be bound.

We are made for freedom.

|||

When the fear threatens to crush your heart and steal your joy,

Push back.

Drop your head,

Grit your teeth and barrel forward.

Charge ahead and refuse to be crushed by the weight of the “what-if’s” and doubts looming large.

Breath deep into your gut and let the air expand you — press out against the pressing in.

Close your eyes if you must.

Do it while your hands shake, but do it still.

Pretend you’re as confident as you wish you were, and soon you’ll forget you aren’t that confident. You’ll forget the racing thoughts, all that might happen, as you see the beauty of what does happen. Even when it doesn’t all go right, even when things are hard and the unknown remains unknown, or worse — your fears become reality. Even then, you are made for freedom.

Model it. Exemplify it. Pass it on to your children, your friends, your loves. Inspire it in others, this freedom of a person known and loved by the Author of knowledge and love.

You are known. You are loved. You can do this. Let’s say it to one another until we begin to believe it. We can do this.

Today was our first day of school, and this post came out of a lot of my nervousness about the start of school, which is complicated by health concerns for one of our kids. I have to really push back against operating out of fear. I hope we can help each other reject that fear and embrace the freedom we are meant for.

All of that to ask: how was your kids’ first day of school?

Sending the kids Alone

27
Aug

In the last few weeks of summer, we finally got to the peak of summer experiences: camp. We had already gone biking, played basketball, soccer, and foursquare, read books in the hammock, stargazed, gotten bites from mosquitos, gone to the zoo, spent time at the cabin, and pretty much worn out our swim suits. We had saved the pinnacle of summer for the last portion, and the build-up had reached a fevered pitch.

We sent out oldest to his first full week at overnight summer camp. For the first time we sent our youngest to spend each day at a day camp. And our middle child got to have a few special activities since he was put on a waiting list for overnight camp but didn’t get in, poor guy.

We had already expanded our “trust circle” this summer to include people caring for our kids all day one day since I took my first outside job in 10 years. That was challenging enough. But sending two out of three to be in the care of someone else (and one of them for night time to be in the care of someone we had not screened and who was probably someone with no children of his own! What does he know about looking out for our child?! What are his qualifications — that he tells a good campfire story or roasts a good marshmallow?!) required some serious trust work.

I didn’t intend to become a protective parent. There are probably some who think I’m not protective enough. I mean, I let the kids climb trees and hammer nails and walk the dog outside alone. My husband and I are very choosey about the kids’ media intake, and some of that was informed by the kids’ own sensitivities. Have you ever tried turning down the sound for intense parts of kids shows/movies? We couldn’t understand why the kids didn’t like certain kids shows when they were younger and it turned out that the music used to “heighten the scene” made the kids stressed out — shows are way less intense without the soundtrack.

As they get older, there are things they’re going to have to do alone. I get that, I truly do. And I trust them (mostly) to make good choices and think before they act (mostly).

Two of the three went away for at least a day at a time. It went smoothly and they had a great time. They were able to make new friendships and create memories that they’ll have into the future. They expanded their base of experience and see the world just a bit larger now than they did before. These are good things.

So as we prepare for school to start, why does it feel like I’m sending them out to battle giants with only plastic swords?

This is a post for Five Minute Friday, hosted by Kate Motaung, which I’m only getting to today. Five Minute Sunday? Doesn’t have the same ring to it. Search Five Minute Friday or go to Kate Motaung’s blog for the collection of everyone’s links, which are a variety of perspectives on the word “alone”. Thanks for reading today!

Parents who work away from home are tough as Nails (in case you’d forgotten)

18
May

The back door to somebody’s workplace.

For all the parents who made umpteen phone calls arranging childcare,

For all the hours spent searching online for reputable organizations and references,

For the extra batteries in the alarm clock, the lunches made the night before, the papers signed, the backpacks packed,

We salute you.

For all the pinch hitting,

For all the brief personal phone calls at work saved up and made in a flurry during a break,

For the favors called in when a child gets sick,

We humbly bow.

For every meeting missed,

For every boundary established,

For every “quick bite to eat with the team after work” sacrificed,

We hear your call.

For the way you prioritize projects at work,

For the art of delegation,

For every lunch taken at your desk,

For your ability to switch gears from employed person to parent of a young child,

We give you props.

We doff our caps to you, sir or ma’am, for you have earned this small gesture of respect.

You work hard at work and at home, and this is no simple task. It involves organization and planning, and

You go get ’em, ’cause you got this…
Like a boss.

A hole in my prayer life gave my child Diabetes (or ‘the way subtle thoughts undermine spiritual Health’)

18
Jan

[Read more…]

How to write about things that aren’t only Yours

15
Jan

This has been a LONG year. No, Smartie Pants, not 2015, but the whole of 2014 and particularly the time since this summer. Many of you know that my dad got sick and then got rapidly sicker, and then the worst happened in June. Or was it July. Or was it a million years ago. Or was it yesterday.

I have a bit of a problem with time.

That’s not the point.

The point is, when my dad was sick, my natural form of processing is writing. It became even more important that I write about it when possible, because it helped me release some of my terrible sadness. It didn’t diminish the amount of sadness, but it made it bearable.

|||

Ever since I began blogging, I’ve had a weird hang-up with privacy. I like it. I like being able to know WHO knows what about me and when. I don’t spill my personal bidness with everyone, and especially when it comes to my kids and my family, I’m extra-specially protective. I try to keep their names out of my writing, try to never write something that could embarrass them, and try to consider whether I’d feel comfortable with them reading what I wrote. It’s a little bit of the same checks-and-balances as deciding if sharing a story about someone is gossip. Would they tell the same story? Would the person be in on the joke if they walked up and joined me, mid-conversation? Would it reveal something about them that wasn’t flattering and they wouldn’t want shared?

When it comes to writing, this is something that is murky. One can’t help but have her life intersect the lives of others. Are all those intersections fair game? Should friends and family of mine need to worry that any of our interactions are fodder for various writing projects?

Add to this already foggy question the element of parent/child privilege, whether the person you want to write about is your parent OR your child, and you’ve got yourself a downright quandary.

Anne Lamott has a great quote about this. She wrote in her book, Bird by Bird, “You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.” To a large degree, I agree with her. Your story is your own. You own the rights to it. It’s not a matter of “your truth” as being somehow untrue to someone else; it’s a matter of perspective and what was revealed to us at a given time. Maybe there were extenuating circumstances that made someone behave a certain way during a certain period. That’s fine. But it doesn’t change the fact that they behaved that way towards you, and you were not given all the facts at that time. The facts don’t always excuse the behavior.

That’s all coming at this from a negative angle, presuming that the things being written about are potentially offensive because they portray someone in an unflattering light. However, what if the angle is something that’s NOT negative, but still could be seen as “oversharing” because they’re your Near and Dear?

|||

I must admit, I haven’t come to a clear answer. I know that I try to protect the privacy of the people around me, and try to never write something about them that I wouldn’t want them to read. (Okay, a couple years ago I MIGHT have tried to create a secret identity so I could blog in anonymity, but I’m just not good at keeping secrets, so it was short-lived.) I try to write the same way I try to live, with authenticity and honesty, both about the struggles and the beauty.

Maybe that’s the key to how to write about stories that aren’t fully your own: write with authenticity and honesty about the struggles AND the beauty.

How do you walk the line between disclosure and privacy, whether that’s in your writing or in your walking around interacting with others?

There’s something stinky in my Fridge

12
Dec

http://mrg.bz/y096dh

Every time I open my refrigerator, a nasty smell wafts out.

No, this isn’t some strange weight-loss psychological trick. There’s something wrong in there.

Problem is, I thought I had thrown out any old leftovers: the bowl of leftover oatmeal I was sure someone would want to eat later, the steak that was so good I was sure I’d find a dish that would only need the one piece we didn’t use for supper, some random individual serving containers of dipping sauces that came inside the Styrofoam takeout container. All gone.

So why does my fridge still pollute the kitchen any time someone uses it?

I have to look further inside.

I forgot to check the deli drawer, where there was some old cheese and some questionable lunchmeat. (Do other people’s kids only want peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in their lunches? Do they not get sick of that? Why won’t my kids eat this lunchmeat? I’m not talking about sending them a cold hot dog or some bologna. I mean nicer lunchmeat, fewer preservatives, fresh. I can rarely get them to eat the stuff. I wonder what they’d do if I DID send them a cold hot dog. Probably eat it. Gross.)

This smell problem has gone on for about a week. Two nights ago my husband texted me from home: “This fridge smells nasty!!!” It’s gotten to the point where it’s made me wonder about a dead mouse underneath it, or under a nearby floorboard. We’ve discovered a few likely culprits but not the direct source…

…until today.

|||

The thing about a deep-rooted stink is that it can sneak up on you. It’s possible for a smell to develop in strength and pungency if left unattended. If you’re around it long enough you can acclimate to it until the only time you notice it is when you’ve been away from it (ever notice the scent of someone else’s home as you arrive and wonder if other people think YOUR house has a smell that you can’t smell?).

How similar this is to our spiritual and interpersonal health.

We can have certain habits or ingrained ways of thinking which can be less than aromatic. This ain’t no sweet scent of incense, people, no offering of praise here. Interact with other people long enough and you’ll discover that, in ourselves and in others, there are some messed up ways of dealing with life. These unhealthy strategies are built up over time, and as they come more solidified, it can be harder to recognize them in ourselves without doing the often hard work of introspection.

Along the same lines, many of us have some unhealthy ways of relating to God. Sometimes we put onto God some of our own junk, or we have decided that He demands certain things from us because we demand them from ourselves or others. Sometimes we assume that our own motivations are also God’s motivations, or we take things from our experience base and use these to inform and determine our view of God.

It can end up being as gross and stinky as what I found way at the back of my refrigerator.

Gross disgusting-ness hidden deep in my fridge

Be glad you can’t smell whatever is featured in the photo above.

All of this makes me wonder if I’ve been coming at many things all wrong.

Maybe I can sit in sadness without having to look for a silver lining or something positive to come out of it.

Maybe I need to take a look at my short attention span and evaluate what areas of my life might benefit from a longer amount of time given for those areas to develop.

Maybe I should think about the things I communicate to my family about my acceptance of their personalities regardless of how similar or dissimilar they are to my own personality and way of relating to the world around me.

Noticing and being mindful of the different way someone else relates can also be useful since it might not occur to me to relate any other way.

Ultimately, in order to know, I have to take a look — take out the deli drawer, the veggie drawer, the fruit drawer, the shelves, the glass out of the shelves — I have to take things apart and inspect them. I might have to take a look at the habits I’ve formed, the opinions I hold, the knee-jerk reactions I have. I might have to evaluate how well those are serving me, if they need tidying up, if they might (in some circumstances) need to be tossed out.

|||

In the end, it took warm water, soap, a washcloth, lots of scrubbing, and scraping with a butter knife to get rid of the stinky, sticky ooze in my refrigerator. I never did identify exactly what it was. But in the process of getting down to the source of the smell, I cleaned out many other areas of my fridge (no, I did NOT wipe down every single inch of the fridge. Another of my tragic personality flaws, I’m afraid). I learned things about my fridge that I never knew before. And I learned things I should be mindful of in the future.

As I apply these same strategies into the realm of personal and spiritual development, my hope is that it will strengthen my relationships and ability to interact with the world around me. Maybe then I’ll smell of more of a fragrant offering and less of bad habits or unhelpful ways of thinking.

How about you? How do you smell these days — er — in other words, do you have areas of your life that could use some attending to or tidying up? How do you address things in your life that may be less than beneficial to you or the people around you?

They’re your best Friends

6
Dec

The whole time I was growing up, my parents had a mantra. I’m one of four kids, and my parents tried to convince us that we were best friends. It was a tough sell, especially since I’m the oldest by four years, and growing up my attitude was that my next closest sibling was a smart aleck boy, and the other two were big babies.

Ripped my painstakingly crafted paper flowers. “That’s your brother. You are best friends.”

Followed me around copying everything I did. “That’s your sister. You are best friends.”

Threw a temper tantrum and wouldn’t stop knocking into stuff in the basement family room. “That’s your brother. You are best friends.”

Their point was to instill in us an appreciation for each other. We weren’t going to get out of interacting with one another, and there was a long-range vision at work — they wanted us to see that we would be in each other’s lives for just that — our entire lives — and we should see one another for our fun individual personalities.

This may seem an obvious truth, but the idea of being friends rather than only siblings widens the scope of interactions. It creates an expectation of enjoyment and of knowing each other more than just an obligatory way (“We’ve got to see them at Thanksgiving…hrumph, huff, puff.”). You trust in friends, you rely on friends, you like your friends. And planting the idea that siblings can be friends as well as brother and sister, it communicates something about the kind of relationship my parents had with their siblings, as well as what they hoped for their own children.

Happily, they were right, and my brothers and my sister and I are friends. We do enjoy each other’s company and especially in this season of learning how to live without our Dad, we are the only ones who truly “get it” about how hard this is. They are dear to me.

Now that we all have children of our own, I wonder how that “you’re best friends” mantra will play out for them. Looks like I’ve got a way to go to help my own kids to appreciate one another…

Child 1 to Child 2: I love you.
Child 2 to Child 1: I sort of like you.

Today’s post is a link up with Five Minute Friday and Kate Motaung. Write for five minutes, no editing, no worrying, then link it up. You can read more posts at her site.

Question for you: do you get along with your siblings? Nobody’s perfect, of course, but if you desire a closer relationship with a sibling, is there one step you could take to foster that friendship? Can’t wait to hear from you in the comments!