Proverbs 3:6 tells us to follow and acknowledge God in all our ways and He will direct our steps.
We think about this verse a lot when we're trying to keep our day straight, This isn't unique to our slightly-abnormal family, but we have a lot going on. Wedding plans, three different job schedules, doctor appointments and more doctor appointments and more doctor appointments, school, sports, household chores, church and theater, social life, paying bills and doing taxes and calling insurance companies and other sundry administrative matters, juggling vehicles, aging parents, trips and hobbies and dates and whatnot. Also, Adored Wife, the primary household manager, has limited amounts of energy and "feeling wellness" and has to budget her time accordingly.
Frankly, there have been more than a few occasions when things have slipped through the cracks. And yet, the house is still standing and the cat's still alive and there's still food in the refrigerator, so it can't have been all that bad.
I probably ought to look this up, but some historical figure said that he had so much to do today he just had to spend extra time in prayer.
The theory goes like this: "I have time today to do everything God wants me to do. I don't necessarily have time today to do everything God wants me to do PLUS everything that I personally think ought to get done."
If we commit ourselves to following Him prayerfully and obediently then He will direct our use of managing time and resources, and everything will turn out for the best.
Hope all's well out there, friends, and God bless.
Thursday, April 27, 2017
Monday, April 24, 2017
Skipping a Concert
Apparently normal people go out to concerts and movies and restaurants and public social things on a pretty regular basis. At least, so we've heard.
It's a bit different for us. One, finances are just a little tight. We're very blessed, certainly--we eat regularly, we have a roof over our heads, and I don't have to worry this month about paying the light bill. There are lots of people who can't say these things; we're very fortunate. But if something major breaks on a car or something like that we'll have to shuffle some things around, and we kind of have to pick and choose the luxuries a little. No complaints, but "going out" is not something we can affored to do on a frequent basis.
Two, I don't much enjoy crowds. I'm almost pure introvert and, while I'm not at the level of neurotically avoiding social gatherings, they're not on my fun list. I hear people on the radio getting excited about going to big concerts and meeting celebrities and people at church talking about these things like they're something to look forward to, and it just doesn't light my fire. I get that extroverts are wired that way, but I have a hard time seeing things from their perspective. So, no, I don't tend to seek out concerts.
Three, Adored Wife deals with chronic pain, and she has a limited amount of "up time" before she has to go lie down. Otherwise, she probably WOULD enjoy concerts more.
So we don't do a lot of concerts. But we had tickets to go see one because we'd given some money to a local charity and they were putting on a benefit concert. We believe in the charity and consider it well worth supporting. But it wasn't a band we were all that excited about--nothing wrong with them, we just weren't particular fans. But we'd planned to go to the concert because, after all, we had tickets. And I could have chosen to enjoy myself; I'm good at finding fun where fun is to be had.
But AW brought up that she wasn't interested enough in the band to spend her limited "up time" on them, and I hadn't been enthusiastic about it in the first place. So we gave the tickets away to a local couple, and they enjoyed the concert. We also had a gift certificate to a nearby steakhouse, so we went there and had an excellent meal and then walked around the mall a little until AW had exhausted her up time, and then we went home, very satisfied with the evening.
A good time was had by all.
Hope all's well out there, friends, and God bless.
It's a bit different for us. One, finances are just a little tight. We're very blessed, certainly--we eat regularly, we have a roof over our heads, and I don't have to worry this month about paying the light bill. There are lots of people who can't say these things; we're very fortunate. But if something major breaks on a car or something like that we'll have to shuffle some things around, and we kind of have to pick and choose the luxuries a little. No complaints, but "going out" is not something we can affored to do on a frequent basis.
Two, I don't much enjoy crowds. I'm almost pure introvert and, while I'm not at the level of neurotically avoiding social gatherings, they're not on my fun list. I hear people on the radio getting excited about going to big concerts and meeting celebrities and people at church talking about these things like they're something to look forward to, and it just doesn't light my fire. I get that extroverts are wired that way, but I have a hard time seeing things from their perspective. So, no, I don't tend to seek out concerts.
Three, Adored Wife deals with chronic pain, and she has a limited amount of "up time" before she has to go lie down. Otherwise, she probably WOULD enjoy concerts more.
So we don't do a lot of concerts. But we had tickets to go see one because we'd given some money to a local charity and they were putting on a benefit concert. We believe in the charity and consider it well worth supporting. But it wasn't a band we were all that excited about--nothing wrong with them, we just weren't particular fans. But we'd planned to go to the concert because, after all, we had tickets. And I could have chosen to enjoy myself; I'm good at finding fun where fun is to be had.
But AW brought up that she wasn't interested enough in the band to spend her limited "up time" on them, and I hadn't been enthusiastic about it in the first place. So we gave the tickets away to a local couple, and they enjoyed the concert. We also had a gift certificate to a nearby steakhouse, so we went there and had an excellent meal and then walked around the mall a little until AW had exhausted her up time, and then we went home, very satisfied with the evening.
A good time was had by all.
Hope all's well out there, friends, and God bless.
Thursday, April 20, 2017
Easter With the Family
Happy week after Easter, friends, and hope this finds everybody well.
Nothing special today, just reporting that this past weekend was very full and more than a little tiring but it all went well.
Graphics Magician was still recovering from a three-day field trip to the Outer Banks of North Carolina with the eighth graders from his trip. They had a lot of fun and didn't really get much sleep. Saturday was the Easter Egg hunt at church and I spent most of the day either setting up for it or helping run it. Saturday was also Social Hurricane's birthday, and we had a little get-together that evening for some family and friends. (Graphics Magician, with permission, went to his room with his pizza. There wasn't anybody else at the party his age and he was still exhausted.)
Easter Sunday, sunrise service, breakfast at the church, Sunday School and celebration, then Adored Wife's parents and a young man who's a family friend joined us mid-afternoon and stayed through a pretty substantial supper. AW was pretty well worn out by the end of it, but triumphantly so.
Monday Basement Artist and I went to work, SH was off work and GM was off school, and AW slept in a little then got back onto the wedding planning and chores.
A joyously packed weekend.
Christ the Lord is risen, He is risen indeed.
Hope all's well out there, friends, and God bless.
Nothing special today, just reporting that this past weekend was very full and more than a little tiring but it all went well.
Graphics Magician was still recovering from a three-day field trip to the Outer Banks of North Carolina with the eighth graders from his trip. They had a lot of fun and didn't really get much sleep. Saturday was the Easter Egg hunt at church and I spent most of the day either setting up for it or helping run it. Saturday was also Social Hurricane's birthday, and we had a little get-together that evening for some family and friends. (Graphics Magician, with permission, went to his room with his pizza. There wasn't anybody else at the party his age and he was still exhausted.)
Easter Sunday, sunrise service, breakfast at the church, Sunday School and celebration, then Adored Wife's parents and a young man who's a family friend joined us mid-afternoon and stayed through a pretty substantial supper. AW was pretty well worn out by the end of it, but triumphantly so.
Monday Basement Artist and I went to work, SH was off work and GM was off school, and AW slept in a little then got back onto the wedding planning and chores.
A joyously packed weekend.
Christ the Lord is risen, He is risen indeed.
Hope all's well out there, friends, and God bless.
Monday, April 17, 2017
Graphics Magician Picks Up the Bruises
The girls were ten and eight when Graphics Magician was born. We've always said that ten years' of experience as the parents of daughters wasn't the SLIGHTEST preparation for having a son.
It's still true. And, if anything, getting even truer.
It's not that the girls weren't challenging as adolescents. We had drama, we had mood swings, we had romantic issues and angst and emotional issues.
But, man, we didn't have anywhere nearly this much sheer self-destructive dumb stuff.
Inflamed growth plate in the heel. Sprained lower back. Bump on the head. Bruises and contusions and scrapes and scratches. Pretty much all from sheer full-speed-aheadedness. Tussling with friends turns rough, continuing to sprint when your foot already hurts, trying to acrobatically maneuver through the house without looking where you're going. Leaping and jumping and flipping and moving, moving, moving.
I approve, actually, and I'm glad he's a boy doing boyish things. Of course, none of his injuries bother him much when he wants to play with his friends, but when it's time to get out of bed in the morning to go to school he's all of a sudden in too much pain to move.
It'd be nice to have one day, just for a change of pace, when he didn't manage to carelessly wreak mayhem on himself.
Hope all's well out there, friends, and God bless.
It's still true. And, if anything, getting even truer.
It's not that the girls weren't challenging as adolescents. We had drama, we had mood swings, we had romantic issues and angst and emotional issues.
But, man, we didn't have anywhere nearly this much sheer self-destructive dumb stuff.
Inflamed growth plate in the heel. Sprained lower back. Bump on the head. Bruises and contusions and scrapes and scratches. Pretty much all from sheer full-speed-aheadedness. Tussling with friends turns rough, continuing to sprint when your foot already hurts, trying to acrobatically maneuver through the house without looking where you're going. Leaping and jumping and flipping and moving, moving, moving.
I approve, actually, and I'm glad he's a boy doing boyish things. Of course, none of his injuries bother him much when he wants to play with his friends, but when it's time to get out of bed in the morning to go to school he's all of a sudden in too much pain to move.
It'd be nice to have one day, just for a change of pace, when he didn't manage to carelessly wreak mayhem on himself.
Hope all's well out there, friends, and God bless.
Thursday, April 13, 2017
Living a Full Life
When you deal with chronic health issues, there are simply things you are never going to get to do.
That's okay. I heard a motivational speaker years ago, and I wish I remembered his name, who'd been in a devastating and crippling auto accident. He said something to the effect of, "before my accident I could do a thousand different things. Afterwards I could do five hundred things. I chose to focus on the five hundred things I could still do than to worry about the things I'd lost."
I love that attitude, and I'd like to salute Adored Wife who largely exemplifies it. She can't do any real lifting, she can't be on her feet or in a chair for long periods of time, she has to build any kind of activity around "will I be able to lie down for fifteen minutes every hour or so." She also has memory issues and has to structure her whole life around copious note-taking. She also has anomic aphasia and prosopagnosia (the inability to find the right word, and face-blindness) which give her some troubles interacting with people. Plus occasional tics and twitches. Plus anxiety and panic attacks. Few other odds and ends here and there.
As you might imagine, there are any number of activities that are simply not options for AW. There are things that, purely and simply, she's never going to be able to do.
And yet, she has a very full life. Photographer, highly involved mother, active on social media, great at planning and organizing events and activities, excellent cook, involved in church activities, directs, produces, and manages facilities at the local community theater, keeps up with family, interested and informed about politics, history, and world events, and participates in a few online communities.
She chooses to focus on the things she CAN do, and finds her life pretty full as a result of it.
Hope all's well out there, friends, and God bless.
That's okay. I heard a motivational speaker years ago, and I wish I remembered his name, who'd been in a devastating and crippling auto accident. He said something to the effect of, "before my accident I could do a thousand different things. Afterwards I could do five hundred things. I chose to focus on the five hundred things I could still do than to worry about the things I'd lost."
I love that attitude, and I'd like to salute Adored Wife who largely exemplifies it. She can't do any real lifting, she can't be on her feet or in a chair for long periods of time, she has to build any kind of activity around "will I be able to lie down for fifteen minutes every hour or so." She also has memory issues and has to structure her whole life around copious note-taking. She also has anomic aphasia and prosopagnosia (the inability to find the right word, and face-blindness) which give her some troubles interacting with people. Plus occasional tics and twitches. Plus anxiety and panic attacks. Few other odds and ends here and there.
As you might imagine, there are any number of activities that are simply not options for AW. There are things that, purely and simply, she's never going to be able to do.
And yet, she has a very full life. Photographer, highly involved mother, active on social media, great at planning and organizing events and activities, excellent cook, involved in church activities, directs, produces, and manages facilities at the local community theater, keeps up with family, interested and informed about politics, history, and world events, and participates in a few online communities.
She chooses to focus on the things she CAN do, and finds her life pretty full as a result of it.
Hope all's well out there, friends, and God bless.
Monday, April 10, 2017
Friends With MS
Happy Monday, friends, and hope this finds everybody well.
Regular readers of this blog will know that it's mostly about the trials and tribulations my immediate family (with our various physical, neurological, and emotional issues) deals with. But I wouldn't want you to think that we're unconcerned about the challenges other people face.
I'm thinking at the moment about multiple sclerosis. It's a terrible condition; you can find lots more information about it at this website.
It's not a common condition, but we know two ladies in our church who deal with it, both with humor, perseverance, and faith. One friend, who I'll call "Lots of Dogs Lady," has as a part of her every-morning routine an inventory of her physical state before she gets out of bed. "Can I talk this morning? Can my hands grip? Are my legs going to hold me up when I get out of bed?"
For LODL, fortunately the answer is usually "yes." But sometimes the answer is "no," and it's going to be a difficult day. And maybe it's going to be a difficult couple of days, or a difficult week, until the nervous system reboots itself and she'll be getting along on a walker and having a difficult time with simple chores and trouble carrying on a conversation and all sorts of fun things. Most of the time LODL is actually in pretty good shape, all things considered. But she can't take that capacity for granted. Any day could become a bad day, and she's had to build her life around that uncertainty.
The other lady, who I'll call "Montana Mom," has had a fairly mild case of MS for several years. She's had some scary vision issues from time to time, but physically she's been pretty fortunate. A few weeks ago she had a flare-up, and it's not easing up so far. Muscle weakness, mumbling and slurred speech, balance problems, double vision.
And at this stage MM doesn't know if this is going to get better. Are things going to snap back to semi-normal next week? Or is this what the rest of her life is going to look like? She's keeping her spirits up, but it has to be terrifying.
You might pray for the both of these ladies, and for others dealing with similar circumstances.
Thanks, friends, Hope all's well, and God bless.
Regular readers of this blog will know that it's mostly about the trials and tribulations my immediate family (with our various physical, neurological, and emotional issues) deals with. But I wouldn't want you to think that we're unconcerned about the challenges other people face.
I'm thinking at the moment about multiple sclerosis. It's a terrible condition; you can find lots more information about it at this website.
It's not a common condition, but we know two ladies in our church who deal with it, both with humor, perseverance, and faith. One friend, who I'll call "Lots of Dogs Lady," has as a part of her every-morning routine an inventory of her physical state before she gets out of bed. "Can I talk this morning? Can my hands grip? Are my legs going to hold me up when I get out of bed?"
For LODL, fortunately the answer is usually "yes." But sometimes the answer is "no," and it's going to be a difficult day. And maybe it's going to be a difficult couple of days, or a difficult week, until the nervous system reboots itself and she'll be getting along on a walker and having a difficult time with simple chores and trouble carrying on a conversation and all sorts of fun things. Most of the time LODL is actually in pretty good shape, all things considered. But she can't take that capacity for granted. Any day could become a bad day, and she's had to build her life around that uncertainty.
The other lady, who I'll call "Montana Mom," has had a fairly mild case of MS for several years. She's had some scary vision issues from time to time, but physically she's been pretty fortunate. A few weeks ago she had a flare-up, and it's not easing up so far. Muscle weakness, mumbling and slurred speech, balance problems, double vision.
And at this stage MM doesn't know if this is going to get better. Are things going to snap back to semi-normal next week? Or is this what the rest of her life is going to look like? She's keeping her spirits up, but it has to be terrifying.
You might pray for the both of these ladies, and for others dealing with similar circumstances.
Thanks, friends, Hope all's well, and God bless.
Thursday, April 6, 2017
A Boy's Adolescence
Among Adored Wife's other challenges, she deals with anxiety and panic attacks.
She's going to have a very difficult time with Graphics Magician's adolescence.
There's a several-year gap between the daughters and the son, and we always joke that ten years of experience as the parents of girls wasn't the slightest preparation for having a son.
That's becoming more and more true as he's moving into his teenaged years.
It's not that we didn't have trying times with Basement Artist and Social Hurricane when they were younger. But they tended more toward the drama and the angst and the interpersonal troubles and the romantic issues. Emotionally difficult, but physically pretty safe.
But GM wants to go exploring with his friends, and blaze new trails, and flirt with girls and be left unsupervised to go and see what the world has to offer. Actually pretty normal boy things. He's already been shot with a BB gun, bitten by a dog, gotten lost a couple of times, picked up numerous lacerations and bruises, and nearly gotten caught when he accidentally set off some poor fellow's car alarm (it had a "for sale" on it and the guys were leaning on the windows trying to see what the interior looked like.) Innocent, well-intentioned, dumb stuff. You know, boys. Although I'm pretty sure he and his friends have on occasion made themselves a little obnoxious to various strangers.
And it's not that I haven't had a few chats with him about expectations and behavior, taking care to point out that what he and his friends consider "cute" the rest of the world might consider "rude" or "trouble." I don't intend to let him run wild. But I do intend to let him be a boy.
But AW is probably going to be a nervous wreck the next couple of years if she can't get the anxiety under control. If he's not right in her eyesight or under the supervision of some adult she knows and trusts, she's inclined to panic about what trouble he might be in. And she knows that she can't keep him in bubble wrap in the living room, and she's working on it.
But it's going to be a tough time for an anxiety-prone woman, being the mother of an adolescent boy.
Hope all's well out there, friends, and God bless.
She's going to have a very difficult time with Graphics Magician's adolescence.
There's a several-year gap between the daughters and the son, and we always joke that ten years of experience as the parents of girls wasn't the slightest preparation for having a son.
That's becoming more and more true as he's moving into his teenaged years.
It's not that we didn't have trying times with Basement Artist and Social Hurricane when they were younger. But they tended more toward the drama and the angst and the interpersonal troubles and the romantic issues. Emotionally difficult, but physically pretty safe.
But GM wants to go exploring with his friends, and blaze new trails, and flirt with girls and be left unsupervised to go and see what the world has to offer. Actually pretty normal boy things. He's already been shot with a BB gun, bitten by a dog, gotten lost a couple of times, picked up numerous lacerations and bruises, and nearly gotten caught when he accidentally set off some poor fellow's car alarm (it had a "for sale" on it and the guys were leaning on the windows trying to see what the interior looked like.) Innocent, well-intentioned, dumb stuff. You know, boys. Although I'm pretty sure he and his friends have on occasion made themselves a little obnoxious to various strangers.
And it's not that I haven't had a few chats with him about expectations and behavior, taking care to point out that what he and his friends consider "cute" the rest of the world might consider "rude" or "trouble." I don't intend to let him run wild. But I do intend to let him be a boy.
But AW is probably going to be a nervous wreck the next couple of years if she can't get the anxiety under control. If he's not right in her eyesight or under the supervision of some adult she knows and trusts, she's inclined to panic about what trouble he might be in. And she knows that she can't keep him in bubble wrap in the living room, and she's working on it.
But it's going to be a tough time for an anxiety-prone woman, being the mother of an adolescent boy.
Hope all's well out there, friends, and God bless.
Monday, April 3, 2017
We Blow It As Parents
Graphics Magician, our thirteen-year old son, doesn't read this blog, and neither do any of his friends. So unless any of you tell him about this post, he'll likely never know about it. So, you know, please don't.
But we're in for a very challenging adolescence with him. The girls were challenging in their own ways, but not like this. (We knew a large family in Richmond, and the mother said it was like having six "first children." What worked with one was completely inapplicable to another.)
We let him hang out with some friends at a local shopping area. GM said he thought one of the friend's moms was going to be there. She wasn't. Then he said he thought said mom was going to pick them up and bring them home after awhile. That "after awhile" turned out to be several unsupervised hours. THEN he wasn't answering his phone or texts because he'd shut his phone off because he was running low on battery power because he'd used it all up playing games and texting with friends.
Adored Wife and I had kind of a frantic hour there, because we had no idea who was supervising him or when he was coming home and we couldn't get in touch with him. I wound up going to get him.
This wasn't his fault, because he didn't tell us any untruths, and the phone thing did look logical from his point of view. He turned it on every hour or so to check for messages. And it certainly wasn't the fault of the friend's mom, who hadn't promised us anything. This was our fault, for giving him more freedom than he was ready to handle. They behaved, they survived, they didn't get in trouble (that we know of), but still.
We wish he'd handled it differently, and if he'd been more mature he would have. But the whole problem is that he wasn't mature enough to be given that kind of freedom.
Plain and simple, we blew it, and have no one but ourselves to blame.
He had fun, and he's a little bewildered at how freaked out we were. But he's not old enough to properly appreciate all the things that could have happened.
So, we're going to have to tighten up the boundaries, which won't be much fun. We shouldn't have let them get that loose in the first place. Our fault. We expect some resistance.
We crave prayers for wisdom, friends, This one's going to be challenging.
Thanks and God bless.
But we're in for a very challenging adolescence with him. The girls were challenging in their own ways, but not like this. (We knew a large family in Richmond, and the mother said it was like having six "first children." What worked with one was completely inapplicable to another.)
We let him hang out with some friends at a local shopping area. GM said he thought one of the friend's moms was going to be there. She wasn't. Then he said he thought said mom was going to pick them up and bring them home after awhile. That "after awhile" turned out to be several unsupervised hours. THEN he wasn't answering his phone or texts because he'd shut his phone off because he was running low on battery power because he'd used it all up playing games and texting with friends.
Adored Wife and I had kind of a frantic hour there, because we had no idea who was supervising him or when he was coming home and we couldn't get in touch with him. I wound up going to get him.
This wasn't his fault, because he didn't tell us any untruths, and the phone thing did look logical from his point of view. He turned it on every hour or so to check for messages. And it certainly wasn't the fault of the friend's mom, who hadn't promised us anything. This was our fault, for giving him more freedom than he was ready to handle. They behaved, they survived, they didn't get in trouble (that we know of), but still.
We wish he'd handled it differently, and if he'd been more mature he would have. But the whole problem is that he wasn't mature enough to be given that kind of freedom.
Plain and simple, we blew it, and have no one but ourselves to blame.
He had fun, and he's a little bewildered at how freaked out we were. But he's not old enough to properly appreciate all the things that could have happened.
So, we're going to have to tighten up the boundaries, which won't be much fun. We shouldn't have let them get that loose in the first place. Our fault. We expect some resistance.
We crave prayers for wisdom, friends, This one's going to be challenging.
Thanks and God bless.
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