Category Archives: grandma

pace car: the forced pause when leaders want to run

Posted on by October 5, 2023

The day ahead was packed, and I was nervous.

The facility was secured, and after weeks of untangling the schedules of seventeen leaders to bring everything into alignment, the lineup was finally set: Seven chapters and twenty-one slots, over three days, to finally film the remaining portions of a book study we’d been working on all year.

pace car: the forced pause when leaders want to run

And it all started that night. But first, a completely unrelated meeting. No biggie.

Kavanagh is seven months old now and outgrew his ability to sleep through these meetings weeks ago. So halfway through, I checked to see if there was an urgent text from Vince summoning me home to feed him.

There were no texts of that nature, but I’d just missed a call from my dad. It was an odd time of day for him to call. And he’d also left a voicemail.

I stepped out of the meeting to listen to it, and immediately called him back.

He said Grandma was in an ambulance on the way to the hospital. She’d collapsed while she was on the phone with the neighbor; the neighbor called my dad, who rushed over, used his key to get in the house, and found her. Called the paramedics. Called my uncle. Called me.

I wanted to rush to the hospital, too. Instead, I left the meeting and went the other way; I came home and nursed the baby. Tried to read the Bible but stared at the page without seeing words. I wanted to see her. Wanted to be there. Wanted to know what was happening. Wanted to know if this was anything like last time or if this was going to be the last time.

But I sat on the couch with Kavanagh and waited for him to fall asleep.

Once I was finally out the door and on the highway, the first few lights were in my favor and I caught up to the train running parallel, blaring its horn at every crossing. I got ahead of it for a minute and then stopped at a red light as it passed. Caught up to it again when the light turned green, then it got ahead again, leapfrog style, as I stopped at another intersection. Cars pulled up behind me while we waited for the light to change.

The light turned green and I hit the gas, and the train and I were even. But a white pickup had pulled onto the highway just ahead and was cruising at a cool 35 miles an hour when I wanted to go twice that. And maybe I could’ve gotten away with it. But maybe not.

It is your pace car, the Spirit said. Sometimes I put things in front of you to slow you down on purpose.

Getting there earlier wouldn’t have mattered. My dad and uncles were in the waiting room when I got there and they’d been there for a while. Grandma was sedated, getting a temporary pacemaker, and then she would be medivaced to Anchorage. And it wasn’t like the last time. This time we couldn’t be in the room with her.

So we waited. My uncle finished reading the paper and I took it from him and found the crossword puzzle. I started working on it as people came to the intake desk and talked way too loudly about intimate health issues for everyone in the waiting room to hear.

A young woman came in, hysterical and in pain. I tried to ignore her but she didn’t want to be ignored, and years of parenting flagged my extremely sensitive BS-o-meter. That, or I’m a terrible person (could be) but she didn’t sound genuine to me. And maybe I was wrong…but maybe not.

She sobbed and asked for a wheelchair. Asked the nurse to slow down as she wheeled her in front of my family. And then parked a few feet away and kept crying…loudly.

And I kept trying to ignore her. Tried to avoid looking in her direction. Just filled in all those little crossword boxes and tried not to hear her.

But I heard the Lord, and He said, Go pray for her.

And I said, You have got to be kidding me.

In a beautiful demonstration of His ways are not our ways, He did not take my iPhone, revoke my internet privileges, or strike me with lightning, which is what many of us parents wish we could do when our children talk back to us.

But no, He didn’t do any of those things. He just repeated Himself. Go pray for her.

And I said, She doesn’t need prayed for. She’s faking.

He said, She still needs prayed for.

And in a beautiful demonstration of petulant-but-resigned reluctance, I said, Fine. My uncles and cousin were across from me. My dad was next to me, helping with the crossword puzzle. And I asked, Can’t I just pray for her from here?

And He said, No. You go put your hands on her, and let Me touch her.

And I had nothing to argue to that. But in my heart I thought, Well, crap.

I let out one of those huffy, frustrated, scoffing breaths through my nose. Bad, bad Christian.

“Here,” I told Dad, throwing the pen down and pushing the crossword puzzle over to him. “I’m gonna go pray for this girl.” God help her.

I walked across the room and – set your mind at ease – I was a nice person. Truly. As soon as I decided to obey, ministry-mode kicked in and the Spirit took over.

I asked her if I could pray for her. She said yes (people usually do). I told her my name, asked her what hers was, and then I prayed for her healing. For her comfort. For her protection and wisdom. I said amen, and she said thank you. I asked if she wanted some water, and she said no. I said, “Well, I do,” and I left and got some.

Somewhere in there I missed the helicopter taking off. When I came back with my water, my uncle told me it left, and we all waited for the nurse to come out and tell us what we needed to know.

Grandma would get a real pacemaker that night. They would reassess in the morning. And as long as she responded well, she would probably stay in the ICU for a day or two, then come home.

And home is where I needed to be, too. Vin texted that Kavanagh was up and needing me, and a bazillion things still had to be done before the first night of filming.

I drove back up the highway and approached the biggest intersection in our little town as the light turned yellow. There was no time to get through it before it turned red, so I stopped. But a white pickup – probably not the same one as earlier – was in the lane next to me and blew right through it.

Cars pulled up behind me while we waited. And I heard the Lord say, Sometimes you lead by being the one who stops when it’s the right thing to do.

So, it’s like I already told you. I might be a terrible, awful, mean, unfeeling person…but maybe not.

time well spent

Posted on by October 5, 2023

I was up early – too hot, couldn’t sleep – so I finally got up to get a head start while everyone else was still in bed. I threw the office windows open and watched commuters pour down the highway from Houston, Big Lake, and Willow.

I’m never up this early, and I immediately questioned my judgment when the cats assumed my sole purpose in getting up was to feed them, howling for food loud enough to wake the neighbors. I hobbled downstairs, got their dishes, put old Gusser in the bathroom with his food and gave the other cats their food, went back upstairs, and turned on the computer.

time well spent

The summary of my productivity went like this: Open the document, change several sentences, consult the thesaurus for five different words, and say encouraging things to myself like, Wow, that’s a crappy segue.

Probably, I should’ve just stayed in bed.

It doesn’t help that I now have to wear house shoes, because I am fortier than I used to be. My arches started to fall during my pregnancy with Kavanagh, which aggravated a nerve injury in my foot and had me limping and occasionally losing balance. So now I clomp-clomp though the house in old, scrubbed tennis shoes and we call them my “house shoes” – a phrase I can’t even hear in my head without giving it a southern accent and picturing a polyester duster from the 70s.

You might know already that Alaskans don’t wear shoes in houses. Shoes are only worn in the house in those brief intervals of trying to run out the door, or having to deal with something urgent before even getting our shoes off when we get home. Or, as Iree pointed out, when we’re walking through glass and other debris from a 7.1 earthquake. So wearing shoes in the house feels inherently stressful, and I’m not used to it yet.

The week started rough, like we held time in a sieve and it poured out faster as the to-do list got longer. By the end of the day I was sucking wind and at six minutes after the hard-and-fast time we’d agreed upon for clocking out, I finally hit the shutdown button and closed the laptop.

It has to be enough, I thought. But it didn’t feel like it was. Does it ever?

On Tuesday I tried to make up for Monday. Here’s an example of how that went:

Go to Paypal to update account. Get error message with instructions to call Paypal.

Call Paypal, attempt to update over the phone’s automated system, which almost never works.

It doesn’t. Wait to speak to representative. Estimated wait time is 27-33 minutes. No problem, finding busywork for half an hour while listening to muzak is one of my very favorite things, like jury duty.

At 31 minutes of waiting, the call disconnects. YOU ARE KIDDING ME.

Call back. Estimated wait time is now only 17-22 minutes. This remarkable improvement is brought to us by a propensity to hang up on customers.

Someone picks up, hallelujah.

The representative’s ability to speak English is matched by her listening skills. I wish that was a compliment, but after interrupting me four times while asking what the problem is, it’s not.

Finally she reads from the same script I’ve heard from three other companies over the last month: “I have good news for you today, I can fix this for you.” But she can’t, because after putting me on hold two more times she informs me that my account is now under review and inaccessible by either of us. (Apparently Paypal’s security is so penetrative, it no longer recognizes you if you start wearing house shoes.)

“No worries,” she reassures me from her script. “You can access your account and try again in 48 hours.” Well, yippee. I have good news for you. I can fix this for you. No worries. I don’t think those things mean what she thinks those things mean.

“Can I help you with anything else?” she asks. Um, no thank you, I don’t think I can stand any more help today, I’m good, thankyouverymuch.

That was Tuesday.

Wednesday, five kids and I pile into the Stagecoach and drive over the river and through the Butte, to Grandma’s house we go. After the last two days it seemed like the wrong time to take the day off, but we’d already scheduled this and wouldn’t miss it for anything.

It was Kavanagh’s first trip there, probably his longest car ride so far. The wind was flying and whipping up waves of dirt and river silt in the intersections, and tiny tornadoes eddied along the road in front of us.

Two pictures of Grandpa sit on a shelf by her couch. One was taken a few years before he died; the other was black and white and faded, and he was young and handsome, six-foot-four, the guy Grandma fell in love with – sitting on a tree stump, filling his pipe, legs stretched out in front of him.

They’d known each other for about a week when it was taken. Grandma said he came by her mother’s store and she and all her younger siblings were there, probably driving her mother crazy. So they decided to take the kids all out for a walk to get them out of her hair. They went to a nearby pasture and he sat on that stump and filled his pipe, and she snapped his picture with the camera she took pretty much everywhere.

I asked her how old she was then. Now, she’s 87, though you wouldn’t know it from looking at her or hearing her voice. I grew up with her singing hymns around the house and leading worship at church, and her voice is usually still strong and beautiful – but it wasn’t when she answered my question.

“Twenty,” she said.

She was quiet for a minute, and then added, “I’d give anything to go back in time to that week.” Another pause. “Precious individual,” she said. “I miss him.”

They were married less than a year later, shortly before her twenty-first birthday. Had five boys: my uncle, my dad, and my other uncle within five years of each other, and thought they were done. But we’ve both had two surprises. We were both in our forties for the last one.

And Grandma wears house shoes, too.

splash on me: light-yoked truth for friends with special needs kids

Posted on by October 5, 2023

We walked down the driveway in sunshine to piano lessons a few doors down. I held Finn’s hand and we both wore flip flops (or frip fwops, as he says), and the dirt path was scattered with puddles left over from the rain that morning.

splash on me: light-yoked truth for friends with special needs kids

I told him not to jump in them so he wouldn’t splash me. But of course he jumped in them a little. Probably on accident, mostly, just couldn’t help himself. He is a magnet to muddy water; by proximity, I tend to get muddy sometimes, too.

Recently I was on the phone with Grandma, and she told about some friends of hers who just moved somewhere in our neighborhood. We haven’t met them yet because I’m antisocial it’s hard to meet people when you avoid things like introductions. And our family isn’t, you know, the typical suburban white-picket fence type.

But she assured me they’re great people. “They’re younger, maybe middle aged,” she said. “Well, I guess they’re in their early 30’s. About your age.”

“I’m 41, Grandma.”

“What?! Where did the last ten years go?”

“Heck if I know.” I often wonder the same thing. Where did the time go? How did this happen? Our baby, that mud-magnet, turned three last week.

But if I think about it, I know it where much of the time went: the long adoption process, thousands of hours spent researching special needs and looking for help, going to appointments, praying for answers and wisdom and healing, and learning to communicate to our kids and our community in a way that walks the line between brutal truth and compassionate grace.

I scrolled social media at the end of a rough day last week and immediately regretted it. Satan must’ve been running Instagram that night because it was full of memes like this:

“The true evidence of someone who knows they are loved is that they love well.”

…And…

“The child is largely what the home has made him.”

Those were just a couple of examples. But they were a stab in the gut that night, after a kid repeatedly lied to me even when caught red handed.

For those of us who have kids with special needs, mental health issues, and/or pasts out of our control, these quotes come with a swift, hissing attack of condemnation:

He shuns everyone and pushes us away, so he must not know he’s loved…what are we doing wrong?

 He has a zero trust level and continues to sneak and lie, but he is what the home has made him…wow, have we failed.

Looking back, I believe a lot of what we experienced as judgmentalism or simply indifference grew out of a profound misunderstanding of and lack of experience with mental illness. And sadly, this seems to persist despite the greater availability of information today.

– Sally Clarkson, Different

Those smug sayings might mean well, but they don’t encourage parents of children who compulsively make destructive choices due to trauma or mental illness.

They hold absolutely no inspiration or truth for parents who bleed themselves dry trying to show love to a child who returns those efforts with barbs and snarls.

And they do nothing to strengthen parents of children whose affection swings hot and cold, who hang on to the slightest offense and carry the heaviest of yokes, refusing to see goodness around them or to grow through personal responsibility, or who cannot admit moderation in their view of themselves and others instead of fluctuating between one extreme of believing certain people are infallible, to the other extreme of utter disdain when those same people make an honest mistake and fall off the pedestal they never asked to be put on.

Those parents don’t need to be told that the home is responsible for how their children behave. They’re already doing whatever it takes. Those parents need compassion, respect, and a night out.

Let’s try this saying instead: If your hands aren’t willing to get dirty, your mouth should hesitate to spout off advice or expertise.

Until you have had a child with a severe mental or emotional difference – OCD, autism, clinical depression, PTSD, or others – you just don’t know how constant the disruption can be every day, all the time. So it’s all too easy to assume that the attitudes and outbursts that characterize life with these mysterious children are just the result of a bad attitude, a lack of training, or poor parenting in general.

To complicate matters, children who are undisciplined, unloved, abused, or traumatized can exhibit some of the same attributes and behaviors, so diagnosing children’s issues is a complex pursuit. In my mind, that’s even more reason to extend grace wherever possible and strive for understanding instead of making assumptions.

– Sally Clarkson, Different

 So, parents of special needs kids, listen up: We have to remember – and sometimes remind each other – that our home, our families, our parenting, and our children do not fit the easy, over-simplified cookie cutter mold. This peace is for you. Not those other pieces of veiled criticism and condemnation. Those pieces are not for you.

Those inspirational graphics and pep talks might be a self-satisfied pat on the back for perfect families with perfect kids, but I don’t know any of those. I know hard working, tear-spilling, question-asking families who already wonder if they’re doing enough – or if they will ever be enough – for their children’s needs.

They are struggling through parenting children with learning disabilities, or walking through grief and loss. Some of them are navigating what to do with a child with mental illness or addiction. And others are pushing through major life transitions, like launching kids out of the home and into adulthood, and they are so aware of their own past mistakes that they’re grateful their children have come out alive and thriving at all. Not all of our friends have kids with special needs, but they do all have real kids with real stuff – fears, attitudes, struggles. None of them always have styled hair, impeccable manners, and collars buttoned to the chin.

None of our close friends are perfect parents with perfect children. If they were, we wouldn’t be friends; our life is too messy. We’ve splashed on each other over dinners and coffee, during hikes, in courthouses, in living room prayer, through late night texts and phone calls. We speak light-filled, light-yoked truth to each other without condemnation and offer perspective that we can’t always give to ourselves.

These are the ones we listen to at the end of the hard days. They, too, have dirt under their fingernails, and they aren’t afraid to come within arm’s reach or get splashed on a little. Those are our people.

____________

Need more encouragement on adoptive parenting? Here you go, a whole page of resources and posts.