Lamenting and Loss

17
Jun

When bad things happen in the world, terrible things like the shooting at Pulse nightclub in Orlando, people tend to say that the world is broken or that we as humans are broken. I think they’re trying to put their finger on the fact that it feels so wrong. We feel pain, and the pain is alien — something that doesn’t belong. The idea goes that if grief was the way that things are supposed to be, it wouldn’t feel so terrible and bother us so much. It’s like when Oscar the Grouch from Sesame Street is happy when it rains, loves the stink of his garbage can, and enjoys trash that’s rotten or worn out. All of these things repulse us. If grief and loss and pain were the way things were designed to be, then wouldn’t we reasonably revel in those things?

But we don’t revel in those things, do we? Not most of us. We push back and resist, we call these things tragedies. We organize calls to action and we bring meals and we hold one another and we try to remember that this is not the norm.

We rebuild, we sign petitions, we rally for change. Then we slowly let down our guard and think the worst has past.

Then something else happens and we are forced to do it all over again.

|||

The thing is, there comes a time when we will all be faced with tragedy. If you haven’t faced it yet, you won’t get to avoid it forever. As much as I’d like to deny it, pain and loss are a part of the way things are. Distract yourself, numb yourself, busy yourself as much as you want in an attempt to pretend it isn’t true, but at some point the truth of pain will descend upon you.

In that time, it’s hard to know how to handle it, what to say or do, especially if the loss is close to you. It can be big or small, but if it feels big, then it is big. Brene Brown has something to say about that.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the past decade, it’s that fear and scarcity immediately trigger comparison, and even pain and hurt are not immune to being assessed and ranked. My husband died and that grief is worse than your grief over a empty nest. I’m not allowed to feel disappointed about being passed over for promotion when my friend just found out that his wife has cancer. You’re feeling shame for forgetting your son school play? Please — that’s a first world problem; there are people dying of starvation every minute. The opposite of scarcity is not abundance; the opposite of scarcity is simply enough…When you practice empathy and compassion with someone, there is not less of these qualities to go around. There’s more. Love is the last thing we need to ration in this world…Hurt is hurt, and every time we honor our own struggle and the struggles of others by responding with empathy and compassion, the healing that results affects all of us.

– Brene Brown, Rising Strong

A time of grief is not a time to offer clichés, it’s not a time to try and find reasons why it’s going to turn out ok, it’s not a time to throw around Bible verses willy nilly. It’s a time to sit with your friend in the dust with ashes on your head, and weep alongside him/her. Lament is something we’ve nearly forgotten about in the American church, and in so doing, we’ve lost a way of accessing deep truths and emotions, which is one reason we have grown wary of them in our services or our decision-making. We don’t trust our emotions, in part because we’re unfamiliar with more of them than “happy” or “sad”. Lament allows us to acknowledge the burning injustices of the world, the seeming inactivity of God, and the pain that comes with grief.

This is what we can do with our friends (even if we don’t know them) who have experienced such loss last week in Orlando. We can do this when our friend’s mother discovers cancer in her lung. We can do it on the anniversary of someone’s death. We can do it upon the announcement of someone’s divorce. We can put our arms around them, be quiet until they’re ready to speak, lament with them, and offer love.

The surprising thing is that one day in the future (there’s no saying how far into the future; grief is a unpredictable and untamable, insisting on it’s own time table that circles back and forth with little warning), there will come a time when the beauty of the world catches your friend guard. The mist will roll in across the field, the moon will rise, and the fireflies will blink in random patterns just frequently enough to know they’re real. In that moment, something will shift inside and a changed version of an old feeling will return, something like wonder and blessing combined with a familiar lacing of sadness around the edges. And it will be just enough to know there is something else to be felt, that you’re still capable of something besides pain and numbness. It will be enough.

United in Loss

22
Apr

Prince passed away yesterday. My husband texted me and asked if I had heard the news.

His joke landed flat.

I told him to quit joking because it wasn’t funny.

Especially because it wasn’t a joke.

I grew up in the height of Prince’s celebrity, and followed his evolution as an artist. I lived in Minneapolis and in Chanhassen during his rise to stardom, so I’ve absorbed exposure to him through the air, through the water. A couple friends and I used to try and discover his Paisley Palace in the backwoods of Chanhassen, thinking we could catch a glimpse of the mysterious rock star.

You can’t live here, especially having been through the 80’s, and not feel some kind of hometown pride about him. He changed his name to a unpronouncable symbol as an act of defiance, people. You don’t just do that without earning props. His talent was legendary and his dedication to Minneapolis was undeniable.

These are my people y’all.

People come out to honor Prince with singing.

Death comes to us all, doesn’t it.

Too soon, too soon.

Ash Wednesday, Funerals, and Mortality

10
Feb

My church doesn’t mark Ash Wednesday. There was recently a brief mention of the season of Lent, but that was about it. It’s not too surprising — it wasn’t something we made much of back when I was a child, either.

I grew up associating Lent with Catholicism, and at that point Catholicism was most often portrayed as something our Protestant heritage had cast off, something we had rejected as a lesser form of faith, something that was all about ritual, obligation and accumulating points.

How arrogant.

|||

Did you ever see that movie “Wedding Crashers” with Owen Wilson and the big guy from Chicago Vince Vaugn?

OK I didn’t ever see that movie either — I heard it was really bawdy and that type of humor makes me uncomfortable. The clean gist of it is that those guys show up at weddings when they don’t even know the bride or the groom.

I feel little bit like I’d fit into a strange sequel to that premise because I just went to a funeral where I didn’t know the person who passed away. I can’t tell if that makes me a funeral crasher? It’s got to sound at least borderline crashed status.

I don’t even know the son of the woman who died.

Am I sounding creepy yet?

I went to the funeral because I know the daughter-in-law. We work together. I enjoyed her very much but I don’t know her all that well yet, not in an emotional way. She didn’t need me there. The son didn’t need me there. I asked myself more than once whether it was a good idea that I attend.

What I do know — or what I’m starting to know despite my resistance — is that funerals aren’t only about the person who passed away.

With any flex of the imagination we are shoved into picturing the conditions we will one day find ourselves, in one way or another depending on how far we want to run with the thought. It doesn’t take much to realize that this isn’t your last event of this kind. And once you’ve been the one to sit in that front row, trying to make sense of what’s happening around you in that moment, the sting of death is one you feel for a long time afterward.

The fact that the funeral took place the night before Ash Wednesday was not lost on me.

Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.

|||

In the bleak midwinter…

I held my own Ash Wednesday service today.

As I write that, I hear how wacky it sounds.

I read aloud (because I had the house to myself for a little while) from the Common Book of Prayer, knelt and prayed, and even played a couple songs on our piano, just because it seemed right.

Although I was alone, I knew I was also gathered with thousands of people across the world who were also acknowledging their mortality, their mistakes and shortcomings, and marking the beginning of the season of Lent and the coming of Easter. The solitude while joining a great tradition is what appealed to me, a great tradition going back through the ages. I want that history, that sense of heritage, even though I find myself wrestling with understanding the differing scholarly interpretations of what Jesus accomplished at Easter. And it’s probably time I expand my tradition base to include some practices that are unfamiliar to me.

One if those practices is the acknowledgement of our own mortality, something we often do a good job of ignoring. I think it’s important to put ourselves in the proper perspective sometimes, and Ash Wednesday is a good time for that.

Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.

Grit and Grace: Vulnerable stuff in the Phoenix Soul Magazine ‘Reborn’ Issue

15
Jan

You may not have noticed in my previous post, but I was really excited about something — think puppy-chasing-its-tail-in-a-dizzying-circle excited. I had to wait to tell you until now, but now I can share.

Wanna know what I was so excited about?

Do ya,

do ya,

do ya?

Okay, I’ll try to maintain my composure and be professional about this, but I don’t know how long I’ll be able to maintain that façade so I’ll make this quick:

I got to contribute something to The Phoenix Soul Magazine. It’s an indie e-magazine with essays, poetry, artwork and a beautiful layout. The whole vibe is honest and real, seeking beauty in the midst of mess and looking for shining moments in the middle a storm. The curator, Amanda, has a beautiful spirit and is creating a really unique community of readers.

In this issue the theme is “Reborn” and my little bit is a piece of poetry (I read that with a Winnie-the-Pooh voice in my head), an art journal page to go with it, and one or two other short paragraphs. You can Click here to get your copy — and I think you’ll really enjoy it. You can buy single issues, like this one, or you can subscribe in larger chunks and get three or more copies as they are released.

Thank you for sharing in my excitement over this!

If you do get a copy, would you come back here and tell me what you think? Or you could share your thoughts over at the Facebook page?

It would be great if we could get more people to discover The Phoenix Soul so tell your pals to go get a subscription, and tell Amanda, the editor, that we love what she’s putting together (she’s on Facebook and Instagram)! And seriously, thanks again, everyone. Mwah!

Investing in Yourself

8
Jan

This week I invested in myself…twice.

Before I tell you about it, help me remember to tell you about the exciting thing happening next week. I’ll loop back to that at the end. Don’t let me forget, okay? Alright, nevermind. I know I’ll forget so I’ll just tell you now. You’ll want to check back in here in about a week ’cause I submitted a scary, vulnerable something for a thing and now that thing is going to be available and I want so much for you all to see this because the thing this thing is in is SO COOL and I think people will really get into it and possibly discover a whole new resource for finding beauty in the mundane and other people who acknowledge the pain and rawness of life, so be sure to come back next week and I’ll have links to share and it will be great!

Whew!

Okay, back to investing.

The first was that I took myself to an exercise class I know I enjoy. It’s snowing here in Minnesota, I overslept and there was an expoential degree of hurry-scurry as the kids and I tried to get out the door. It would have been really easy (REALLY) to drop them off and return home.

But I didn’t.

I put it in high gear, threw clean clothes and stuff for a shower into a bag (the world would thank me if they saw how sweaty I’d be if I didn’t shower after this class), got the kids where they needed to be, and arrived at my class (a Latin hip-hop-cardio-get-yer-groove-on-type of class, if you must know) just as they were starting. And even though it was inconvenient to prepare to get there and also be able to do the other things necessary to keep things running semi-smoothly at home, it was worth it.

I am worth it.

Minnesota in January

The other thing I did that was an investment in myself was to take a step of bravery and small financial investment.

My church is hosting an art festival and has invited people to submit their art work. This is the second year, and I didn’t make it to the first year to see what types of things are a part of this. I imagine my stuff will be very…grungy by comparison. Also there the factor that they’re saying if a piece is not three dimensional, it needs to be framed. Like in a frame. To hang on a wall. In public view.

This sounds like a stupid idea.

However stupid, once I heard about it, it was something I could not get out of my head, so I’ve been working on something for a few weeks now. The only thing that remained was to frame it and bring it to church.

Did y’all know that frames aren’t sized true? And that canvases can warp and only be somewhat true to the size they claim to be?

Yeah, me neither.

I wanted to do this on the cheap, and I discovered that I could find my own frame and then have a store prepare my canvas in said frame and make sure it’s all ready to go. Easy, right?

The only problem was that my version of cheap meant trying to find a frame at a thrift store, and with thrift stores you never know what you’re going to find and in my case, it was NOT finding a frame the correct size.

Okay, plan B. I’d have the store frame it. after all, I have a coupon for like 60% off, so how bad could it be?

When your budget was a frame from Salvation Army, it turns out that it could be pretty bad.

The frames were gorgeous, of course, but the price was not.

No problem, Let’s go to Plan C…or D…or whatever we’re on by this point. After making multiple phone calls, and visiting two different stores — one of which had my co-workers wishing me travelling mercies and asking me to send postcards — I got the open frame I needed but the shop I got it from couldn’t do the finishing in time for me to get it turned in on time.

I was feeling really stymied. It seemed like maybe I was pushing against forces that were aligned against me, as if I was being held from going any further with this action. There have been times in the past when this has happened and it ended up being a protection of sorts. It’s sometimes hard to tell if you’re just in a busy and having a hard time getting everything done or if you’re being redirected by some force greater than yourself.

As I realized what was going on, and became aware of how frenzied it was making me feel, I felt something shift inside my heart, and I knew I could let it go.

I didn’t have to participate in the art festival in order for my canvases to be a worthwhile endeavor.

No one else had to see them at all, or affirm them or me.

They were worth my time and energy, if only for my own enrichment and process. Painting and art journaling are worth my time and energy because they have been good for me, so good.

When I talked to my husband about it, about trying to save this money by using a thrift store frame and squeezing the canvas in it even though it didn’t really fit, he stopped me. He told me I should just buy the frames new. He told me I should have the store finish them for me. He supported this attempt to put something out into the world (he didn’t say that part in as many words) because he knew it was important to me.

I was worth it.

I was able to get it to the shop where they’d prepare it. That part did end up being economical. The investment of time, gas for my almost-on-empty tank, and energy was…let’s just say it was less than economical. But it didn’t matter if I was saving time or money any more. Because the expense was going towards a worthwhile cause — me.

What about you, friend? How are you allowing yourself to invest in yourself in this new year? What ways can you mindfully allow yourself the freedom to do what replenishes your soul?

Don’t forget to stop by the Facebook page next week, or check in here, to find out about the fun news I’ll have. There are links up on the right that should zip you over there, or you can subscribe and have posts delivered to your inbox — so efficient!

Morning Walk

9
Dec

The thick air sits translucent blue on the ground.

The mud doesn’t know if it should thaw or freeze.

The gossip of the wind through the wings of migrating geese above metallic-covered lake,

Hundreds of rice patty cone hats strewn all over the grass, their little tufts punctuating the hillside,

The highway blows in the background, cautionary beeps warn of backing machinery.

Three white tailed deer sprint back into the trees, leaping, seeming to hang midair, though there is no fence here and no need to fly.

I pick up palm sized stones – three in my pocket so far – to remind me of something but I don’t yet know what.

I veer away from the naked bones of sumac and drag my fingers along the switchgrass that lines the path. When I round the bend my sleeve is wet.

A single-engine prop plane crosses overhead.

I stop to watch, waiting. Though I’m in the open field, the plane does not tip it’s wing at me,

So I know it isn’t you.

I hope when I get back and strip off my boots a pebble falls out of the left one to remind me of you.

Parents of Kids with T1D

30
Nov

When you have Type 1 Diabetes, you don’t get to take a day off. You can’t ignore it (safely) and slacking on being prepared can have dangerous consequences.

Since I’m not the one in our family who has diabetes, I can’t tell you what it’s like for our daughter to live with it. But I can tell you more of what it’s like for us as her parents.

It’s persistent, ever-present, demanding, and confounding. You can do everything according to the specific ratios that were effective the days before, and get a totally different result. Talk about crazy-making!

Early on in our diagnosis, I was trying to be so careful, accounting for every tiny gram of carbohydrate while being unfamiliar with the process. I wanted our daughter to have access to any food she wanted, regardless of carbs. We’ve wanted to keep food neutral, not giving foods the power to be “good” or “bad” simply because they do or do not require insulin. Therefore, when she asked to have chocolate milk, I said yes and calculated the carbs into her shot.

Then I completely forgot to give her the chocolate milk.

Because I had accounted for chocolate milk, I had given her enough insulin to process the carbs in the chocolate milk. That meant that without the carbs to process, the insulin made her blood sugar drop.

I sent my daughter low.

I felt terrible.

I felt so responsible for endangering her, so inadequate to the task that was before me, so ill-equipped to manage something so potentially dangerous.

She was given some carbs, and her blood sugar rebounded quickly. It was not at all a crisis, but so early on, it felt like one. I had no idea how many times it would feel that way, reality or not.

That has dissipated some with gained knowledge and experience. It has not, however, become something that’s quite “second nature” to me yet. I don’t know if it ever will.

If you’re the stressed out parent or care giver of a young one with T1D, someone who could feel the tightness in your shoulders if only you could get a moment to think about how your shoulders felt, I get it.

You’re amazing.

Seriously. When you consider the task given to you, even with occasional slipups or miscalculations, you’re handling an amazing amount of information and subtleties that can be hard to articulate.

Humor me for a minute. Take this moment to inhale deeply through your nose, and slowly exhale out your mouth. I’m not kidding. Sit up straight, lower your shoulders, and take another long breath. Sometimes we have to take whatever moments we can get to breathe, slow down our busy brains, and hear this:

You’re doing it right.

You’re doing it well.

It’s going to be okay.

You can pick up T1D again in a few minutes, but right now, know that you’re not in this alone, even though it can feel like nobody understands what this is like. They probably don’t, but that doesn’t mean you’re on your own. There are lots of us out there, counting out free snacks, checking carb labels, refilling prescriptions, doing the things necessary to make this work. And we wouldn’t dream of calling those things a burden, because our children aren’t burdens, ever.

That doesn’t make it easy.

Hang in there. Drink some cool water. Sit in a sunny patch where the light comes through your window. Listen to the wind in the trees. Hang in there. You’re doing great. Go easy on yourself, and remember all the things you’re doing right.

We can all get through this together, until the day comes when there’s a cure and nobody has to do this anymore.

We can dream. And we can do it.

Final NaNo Excerpt: A Long Distance Argument

26
Nov

I must concede NaNo this year. Yes, the same way I conceded last year. Don’t rub it in. There’s just no way for me to make up the difference in four days between where I am and 50,000. Not unless I totally cheat, which I’m trying not to do since it won’t really feel good to hit that 50k mark and know that it isn’t all new material generated during this month. Maybe I’m being a stickler but that’s how imma gonna do it. Then when I DO win, sometime in the future, I’ll know it was fair and square.

P.S. Why on earth do they organize this thing during the month of November? Why not a month with no national holidays, or some throw-away winter month when it’s way too awful outside to do anything so everyone’s holed up indoors? Maybe this is how they weed out the wanna-be’s from the truly committed. Well if I had made time to win, the rest of my life would have suffered so I had to let it go. It wasn’t easy, and there’s definitely a sense of losing rather than winning. But isn’t that a funny game I’m playing with myself? I don’t actually WIN something if I hit 50k. They don’t give out winning treasure boxes with trinkets inside, or anything more than a badge you can use on your website to say you “won.”

Even though I’m a loser (in the NaNo sense) I still want to put up a final excerpt from the WIP. This will be my last one for November, so I’m going to leave you with a scene between two characters who are trying to navigate a long distance friendship-with-potential…and finding it challenging. Have a wonderful evening, and as always, thanks for reading.

|||

Abby heard the phone ringing in her dorm room just as she stepped onto her floor. She ran down the hall, silently praying her roommate hadn’t been her normal vigilant self and locked the door again. She got into the room and snatched up the receiver on the clunky school-issued phone.

“Hello, hello?” she practically yelled.

“Whoa, hello to you too. That’s the angriest greeting I’ve ever heard. ”

She let her backpack slide to the floor and she pulled out the hard wooden chair from the desk. “Sorry, I just barely made it to answer the phone. I’m not mad.”

Jay chuckled on the other end of the line. “I know you’re not. Unless you are, but I think I’m starting to be able to pick up on that over the phone even. It’s easy to tell when we’re in person.”

“It is not.”

“Oh really? So you can see yourself when that vein puffs out on your forehead?”

“It does? I never knew that.”

“See? One more reason to keep me around: self discovery.”

Abby smiled into the phone. “Okay, I guess I’ll keep you. But I’m not even keeping you around ‘cause you’re never around.”

“This long distance thing is starting to get on my nerves, too,” he agreed. “Bur think of it as being the best of both worlds. You have a devoted admirer who is extremely understanding of your long study hours and the way you go out with your friends. If I was closer I might not be so easy to live with.”

“You do like to play more than I do. Well, not more,” she corrected herself, “But more than I’m able to play. This study load is heavy and I don’t even know exactly how well I’m doing.”

“You did great on your last test, didn’t you?”

“Sure but that was a pretty limited scope. I know how to study, but it’s different than knowing your overall grade.”

“You’re too picky. You think you should get 100% on all your tests, but Abby, nobody gets that.”

She picked up a pen and started doodling. “I know.”

“But you don’t really know. You still think you should be able to. Maybe you should talk to some of your professors and see what they say? Not about the grade on a test, but overall how you’re doing. They’ve got to be able to tell if someone’s cut out for nursing.”

She doodled a stethoscope and he waited.

“What would I do if I asked and they said I’m not cut out for it? I don’t know what I would do. It’s the only thing I’ve ever pictured myself doing. I don’t have a plan B.”

“You won’t need one. You’re the studyingest person I ever saw, and you’re definitely putting in the time. It was only a suggestion. You already know it’s what you want to do. If you talked to them, they’d probably just tell you to let up a little, go have some fun with that cute guy who keeps calling you.”

“Which one?” she quipped.

“Ouch.”

“I’m joking,” she said . “Youre the only cute one. The others are just muscle-y.”

“Not funny.”

“Although there was that one with the convertible. That was fun.”

“Okay, that’s it. I’m coming down there.”

She smiled. “You can’t come down here. You’ve got to do your thing and I’ve got to do mine. Remember? That’s what we decided. Don’t make this harder than it has to be. Don’t make this an issue, ‘cause things are good. We’re good. We’re friends, we date once in a while, that’s working for us, isn’t it?”

“Is it working for you?” Jay asked.

Abby paused, unsure how to — “I’m so busy, Jay. It’s so busy and there’s so much studying. It’s an unreal amount of studying. I don’t know how I’m gonna do it. And if you were here, it would just be another distraction. A good one,” she hurried to add, “But it would make me feel guilty and I hate feeling guilty.”

“Why would you feel guilty? I wouldn’t come if I didn’t want to.”

“I know, but I’d feel guilty that you’d come all this way only to be practically ignored. And you wouldn’t be happy here,” she continued. “You’d be wandering around waiting for me to get done with class, but when I get done with class, I go to the library or the lab or a study group. We wouldn’t see each other much more than we do now.”

“So we wait.”

“I think so,” she answered quietly.

There was a long pause on the line. Abby spoke up. “Jay?”

Pause.

“Yeah?”

“Thanks for wanting to be here.”

“Mm-hmm,” he said.

“Jay?”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks for being my friend.”

“I love being friends with you, Windy Gail. But you want to know something?”

“What?”

Jay steeled himself. “When the time is finally right, I don’t want us to be friends anymore.”

Abby felt the blood drain from her head. “What do you mean? You don’t want to be friends. There’s an expiration date on being friends?”

“Nope, that’s not what I mean.”

Even though she could barely hear the sound coming from the phone anymore, her ears were ringing so much, she had to ask. “What do you mean?”

“I think we’d be even better friends if we were more than friends.”

“Jay, I can’t even think about that right now…”

He stopped her. “I know. And like I said, I love being friends. That’s good enough for now. But that won’t always be good enough. I think we’re made for more than being just friends. And I’m willing to wait it out to see what that looks like.”

She felt her voice get stuck behind her teeth and couldn’t will it loose.

“Are you still there?” he asked after a long minute.

“Yeah. But Jay? Don’t take this the wrong way.”

“What?” he demanded.

“See? You’re already getting mad. Just listen for a second.”

“I’m listening.”

“It’s just that I don’t want you hanging on for something that may or may not happen.”

He asked slowly, “What do you mean?”

She hesitated. “I don’t know if I can be what you want me to be.”

“I don’t want you to be anything you’re not.”

“Maybe you do.”

Jay huffed into the phone. “Listen, I haven’t asked for anything from you. I don’t expect you to call me, which is good because you don’t. I don’t expect you to come home any more than you do to see your family, I don’t expect to get any extra time at Christmas. I haven’t asked for anything from you. How can you say that?”

“I feel it.”

“You feel it?” he virtually shouted into the phone. “You feel it? Since when did you become all feely? You’ve hardly ever said anything about how you feel before.”

“I’m trying something new,” she shot back.

“You could have tried it before we’re having this conversation.”

“What conversation is that? The one where you tell me what my life is going to look like, according to your plans for it? You don’t get to make sweeping edicts, Jay. You’re not the god of camp over here. People may follow you blindly over there, but that’s not real life. That’s not how we’re going to work. Ever.

|||

End of excerpt.

Whew, that was intense. I’m going to go decompress. You have a good night, and I hope to see you here in the future.

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.

NaNoWriMo Week Three

19
Nov

Grand plans are so fun to make, aren’t they? We dream about what our life will be like, we schedule events and make arrangements around our calendars. And then some monkey comes along with a basket of wrenches and starts chucking them at us, totally messing up all the work we did.

Thus is posting about Nano on a weekly basis.

I seem to be missing a week.

And the thing is only a month long, so missing one week pretty much assures me of a failing grade.

But here I am, a girl with a work in progress, standing in front of you, asking you to love what she wrote.

I will inform you that I have indeed been working on the novel, and have been making s l o w progress. Any progress still counts as progress. And we’ve learned more about our antagonist, though we still need to dig deeper there. I did promise an excerpt, so I’ll include that if you promise not to judge me too harshly for typos, run-on sentences or thoughts that trail off. Once in a while I type with the letters turned white, just for a short burst of 15 minutes or so and in those times it is revealed how many spelling mistakes (amongst other mistakes) I make on a regular basis.

I’m stalling now, aren’t I?

Okay, with no more preamble allowed, here’s this week’s excerpt, where we get to spend a little time with Daryl, our antagonist.

DeathtoStock_SlowDown4[1]

About four hours south on I-35, Darryl Johnson sipped a latte in his kitchen while he cooled off from his jog around Lake of the Isles. He had his laptop open on the marble countertop of the center island, and stretched his quads while he checked stocks. Next to his computer, there was a newspaper laid open to a center, full page advertisement. Advertisement wasn’t exactly right, but that’s who he’d worked with to get it in the Grand Rapid Gazette. He had thought about simply putting it in the smaller county paper, but that served about 10 townships and while it would certainly be read by the people he was targeting, it didn’t carry the same psychological punch he was going for.

One should always go for the psychological punch when there was one available. His many years in court had taught him that.

His wife entered the kitchen and gave him a glancing kiss as she headed to the refrigerator.

“Are you going into the office after you clean up?” she asked as she placed kale, rice milk, strawberries and chia seeds on the counter. “I’ll have time to get your shirts from the cleaners. I’ll be stopping at the dry cleaners if you have anything over there. But I won’t be coming back straight from there, so if you need them for something today, you’ll need to go over there. If you do, ask for my things as well, and let me know so I don’t waste a trip.”

She put the ingredients into a small processor and churned them up. Darryl waited to answer.

Once she had blended her smoothie she poured it into a tall glass and Darryl told her he wouldn’t need the shirts.

“I’m headed up north today, I think,” he mentioned.

She arched an eyebrow. “Oh really? Are you staying overnight? We have plans tomorrow night, you know.”

“No, I’m just going up for the day. I want to meet with a couple people on the homeowner’s association board. They’ll want to gloat over the ad and plan next steps. Then there’s the county to meet with as well. I’ve got a couple appointments with different people there. I probably won’t be back until late.”

“I have my yoga class after work and tonight’s my wine and book club. I think we’re pairing different white wine with a Jane Austen book, I don’t remember which. So I’ll be out anyway.”

She leaned over to the newspaper that lay open next to Darryl.

“What are you scheming now?” she asked mildly.

“It’s not scheming, Lisa. It’s just knowing what you want and seeing the steps it will take to accomplish that goal. Scheming sounds underhanded. This is actually noble. Save the earth and all that.”

“Mmm-hmm,” she answered, straw in her mouth as she sipped her smoothie.

Darryl returned to another quad stretch by bending his knee so he could grab his foot behind him and pulling it towards his back. He wasn’t very limber so this one always hurt a bit.

“Well, you go save the earth, if that’s what gets the job done. And don’t forget we were going to go car shopping soon. It’s time to get rid of that old Audi you call a vehicle. You can’t keep driving a car until it rusts out around you.”

“There’s no rust,” he grunted.

“No rust,” Lisa scoffed. “You just won’t see it. In your mind, that car looks exactly the same as it did when you got it in law school. Trust me, there’s rust. You don’t have to really get rid of it, but you need something that’s a little more suitable for the position you have, the position you’ve had, I should remind you, for a while now. It looks shoddy, and what do clients think when their big-shot lawyer shows up in that rust bucket?”

“Well, since you’re from California, you might not get this, but here in Minnesota, people would probably think I was a down-to-earth guy, someone who wasn’t ‘too big for my britches’, they’d think.”

“Ahh, I see. The whole “successful but grounded” idea? What is it with Midwesterners that they can’t allow themselves to enjoy success?”

Darryl held out his hand for the smoothie and she handed it to him. He stirred it with her straw and answered, “They think it’s arrogant, and probably think God’s going to punish them or something. There are a lot of church folks here, you know.”

“Oh I know. Give me back my smoothie.”

He finished his sip, pulled a face and handed it back to her. “How can you drink that sludge?”

“This, my dear, is the perfect blend of nutrients, gut healthy bacteria, and antioxidents. If I keep drinking this, I’ll never age another day.”

“Maybe, if you don’t keel over from the taste.”

“You get used to it,” she said. “Now I have to get going. You can finish what’s left in the blender, then throw it in the dishwasher would you? Thanks,” she called over her shoulder as she walked down the hall.

***

Not the most pivotal moment, but we get to hear a little about the antagonist and a couple things that inform his perspective. I think it’s good when there’s a part of an antagonist you can relate to. What do you like in a good villain?