Making Room

"And she brought forth her firstborn Son, and wrapped Him in swaddling cloths, and laid Him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn."  Luke 2:7

From the instant He was born, Jesus was identified with the lost souls of this earth.  He was born in an inappropriate place, because there was no room in the usual places.  He and His mother became "at risk", turning a filthy stable into a delivery room.  I assume they did not have a lot of material resources.  Material resources would have likely secured a more appropriate place and attendants.  Yet the owners of the inn gave what shelter they had to offer the poor young couple.  And the poor young couple wrapped their child in the cloths that they had, and made room for Him in the manger.

Making room is what makes or breaks us.  Someone in this world must make room for us, or we may be lost.  Someone must be willing to allocate times, spaces, and resources just for us and our use.  It does not matter if we are a day old or ninety years old.  Making room is the essence of true love.  

In our culture we are not about making room.  We believe that people need a minimum number of square feet, and dollars, and whatever.  We limit how much room we are willing to make, based upon the formulaic mandates of the American dream.

Making room is risky business.  What if that poor young couple sues me because their baby picks up some illness in my stable?  What if I make room and that person robs me?  What if I make room and I find myself impoverished, exhausted, infected?  What if making room leaves me brokenhearted?

Making room implies something that we often do not consider.  Making room requires sacrifice.  If I decide to make room, I must reallocate my resources.  I must give up some of my precious spaces... spaces I have filled with beauty, or usefulness, or things.  I must give up some of my material resources.  It costs to add a place to the table, a seat in the car, a bed under a roof.  Where must I trim my budget to make room for this person?  I must give up some of my time.  My day is already full.  The demands on my attention are daunting, and yet I must carve out the time.  A bed and meal is not enough.  Boarding houses do that.  Homeless shelters do that.  Prisons do that.  Families are different.  Families make room, and this is how they love.

Risky, messy, costly love.  The only kind of love that can save us. 

Are You Feeling Old?

I don't believe we give young people enough credit.  Our hearts and minds are moved powerfully when we are young and have very little power of our own.  When we are old and powerful, we find our hearts cold and dull.  It is not strange.  It is the way of the human race.  We must wake up each day and force our old bodies and tired minds to do the work we began when we were young.

We have not changed our minds, or given up, or failed.  We have not necessarily grown older and wiser.  We are exactly the same as we used to be, only now we have the power to do something about it.  

Back then no one took me seriously because I was so young.  Back then I had no money, no education, no experience.  Back then I was scattered and disorganized.  Back then I was selfish and easily discouraged.

What now?  My back hurts when I get up in the morning?

Still Here

I find it unbelievable that it has been over three months since I have posted here.  Even the format for posting has changed, so I shall have to overcome that as well.

Life is moving at a breakneck pace, and I am currently just hanging on for dear life, waiting for this ride to slow down enough to get my bearings.  Life is good, but very full, and very overwhelming.

We are never ready for what is coming at us, but we are as ready as anyone can be.  And then we just have to learn how to do it.  

After a time of doing, we realize we are not very good at it.  Then we get down to the business of disciplining ourselves to becoming a little better at it each day.  

A little better each day is better than wowing the crowd.  But it is tiring, and doesn't leave much time for luxurious activities like blogging.

I miss blogging, and I want to make time for it.  Maybe if I stop showering I can bang out two short posts a week?  No?  

We shall see how it goes.  But for now, the two of you who still check in will know I have not entirely abandoned this endeavor. 

The Pursuit of Happiness (Among Other things)

A friend recently posted a link to this article over on F*acebook, and I highly recommend taking the time to read it.  It's a bit long, and has a bit of language, but still well worth your time.  I'm posting about this article here today, because it's a topic I've been ruminating on for awhile.  I've read other blog posts and articles on the subject too, but this one really does a good job of tying up all the loose ends.

The quote that resonates with me days later is this: “Happiness as a byproduct of living your life is a great thing, but happiness as a goal is a recipe for disaster.” (Barry Schwartz, a professor of social theory at Swarthmore College)  I guess I had never thought of it in exactly that way before, but it's so true, and on so many levels.

Personally I can comment on the folly of making happiness my life goal.  But isn't it what every child of trauma does?  "When I grow up I'm going to do things differently.  Then I'll be happy.  How will I do things differently?  Well, I don't know, but I'm going to be happy.  You'll see."  Happy is like a sore tooth.  Every morning you wake up and thrust your tongue into the sore spot to see how much it hurts.  All day long you poke at it and suck on it, testing to see if it's better or worse.  Every morning you wake up and poke the holes in your life to see if they still hurt, and if they do, then you know you are still not happy.  This of course makes you even more unhappy.

As a parent I can also testify to the folly of making a happy family your idol.  Mainly because it just doesn't work.  You can't make everyone happy all the time, and you'll kill yourself trying.  Or you'll make your kids happy, and feel unhappy because you rather suspect you should have made them unhappy, at least for a little while.

Another line of thought this article brings to my mind, is how this commonly accepted method of child rearing flies in the face of parenting children of trauma...forget parenting children with full blown RAD.  And most of us fall into that trap.  We go to our adoption classes and we think, "Sure things will be crazy for a little while.  But once the kids adjust a bit, I can get down to the business of being the parent I always dreamed I would be."  Never mind that it apparently screws up emotionally healthy kids.

And then we feel like failures because it's never.going.to.happen.  And we get this new, big hole to probe every morning, to inform us that we definitely aren't happy.  

The paradox in my life, is that when I stopped chasing happiness, I got happier.  When I stopped trying to make my kids happy, or even worrying about whether they were happy...well, I can't speak for their internal emotional states, but they seem reasonably contented.  The less I poke at the sore spots, the more I realize how much time I used to spend poking, and prodding, and fretting.  It's not like I've gotten numb or apathetic.  Far from it.  It's just that I've come to expect the sore spots, and perceive them as part of normal.  Pain, fatigue, frustration, anxiety...there's nothing wrong with them.  You don't ignore them, because they have their own purposes, but you don't let them rule over your life.  I'm convinced that growing up healthy means that you learn this early in life.

I was a late bloomer, but still I am blessed to stumble over the truth in my old age.  I am an old, stubborn dog learning a new trick, and that my friends, makes me happy.

Baby News

I blogged here.

Fruit and Nuts

A few days ago I read my dear friend Christine's blog post about Mother's day, and as I read my head was bobbling up and down in agreement and complete empathy.  You should definitely go read it, if you haven't already, but I'll sum up.  She says that this Mother's Day was bittersweet for her.  That her children still have difficulty dealing with a day to honor someone else.  Sure, they can hold their stuff together, at least until the day after.  Maybe even completely.  But why?  Well, because they know what happens when they trash a special day.  There are consequences, and they have to make repairs.  They have stuff they want to do this week.  Restitution and repair aren't on their short list.  So though it is a victory of sorts, it still has little to do with loving and honoring Mom. 

I submit that it is.  Love your neighbor as yourself.  What does that even mean?

I think about emergencies, crises, chaotic times.  These are the times that love is most necessary, yet so often absent.  We kick it into overdrive.  We do what we have to do to get through.  Sometimes survival is all we can muster the energy for. 

So what happens when you live in survival mode from the day you are born.  Children are naturally self centered, even cherished, nourished children.  They have to be taught to look beyond themselves.  It takes time and patience, and when we see it happening, we know that our children are growing to maturity. 

My first reaction to my traumatized child's survival mode is to say they are completely self centered.  They look out for number one.  They make sure they get their share.  They fight for it if need be.  But this is a superficial understanding of the situation.  My child is not loving their self, because they battle against that same self, at the same time they battle everyone else. 

My child is trapped in a place where they can only fight for themself in this very moment.  It's an emergency, a crisis.  Adrenaline is flooding, fear is consuming.  There is no tomorrow, there was no yesterday.  They cannot even have empathy for their own future self.  They do not care if their actions in this moment will cost their self dearly.  They have no compassion for their own future tears or regrets.  They don't give a damn about the loss that child of tomorrow may suffer.  I have seen them weep for their own stupidity, and cry out how much they hate that child of an hour ago, that made such a mess for them to have to deal with.

Part of growing up, part of learning to love ourselves, is learning to discipline ourselves in the moment.  The child learns to predict an outcome.  They learn to empathize with their future self, understanding how they may feel with that outcome.  They make their choices based on that understanding and empathy. 

Their world begins to expand.  Love your neighbor as yourself.  Life is not an emergency.  I am not in crisis.  I can have compassion on myself.  How might it feel to have compassion on another?  I experience kindness.  Can I share it as well?  Reach inside and find that there is something there, other than fear and adrenaline.  The fruit of mature self discipline is sweet, and there is enough for myself, and plenty to share.

Learning to discipline our self for our self, is the budding of the virtue of self discipline.  Learning to discipline our self so that we may properly love others is the mature fruit.  And so while the immature, hard little fruits are still bitter in our mouths, they are there.  Given a full summer of sun and rain, I have hope that they will grow and ripen.

Of course Christine knows this as well as I do.  I am truly preaching to the choir here.  That's what we do.  We speak the truth of our situation, and our heads bobble up and down in agreement.  I know how you feel, I feel that way too.  Then we go our way, thinking about it, turning it over in our mind, probing it for more than our own emotional reaction, probing it for the truth.  My emotions tell me the fruit is a little bitter and hard yet.  I feel the urge to spit it out.  Wait a minute...what am I saying here?  That's fruit mama, that's FRUIT!

For The Working Mom

A sometimes free-form, sometimes rhyming poem by Boo, in honor of my birthday and Mother's Day.  A departure from her usual acrostic style birthday card, it was attached to a pan of rice custard pudding (one of my favorites), that she had labored over for hours, throwing away more than one failure before achieving success.  In the world of RAD, nothing is sweeter than rice custard pudding and a poem on lined notebook paper.

there are so many words i could use to describe
what you do, and how, and why 

now the what, that's most easy to explain
they are very practical things for which you need a rather large brain
cleaning, i would say, is the most heavily done
which you find can also be a lot of fun
(except for cleaning my unmentionables)
cooking you do, more often than not
and when we rave about your soups
your heart becomes softened
sewing, i would say, is your most meticulous job
which you prefer to do alone, away from your children-mob
(and sometimes even dad!)
life lessons you teach are also quite important
you've helped me out of many rough spots
and helped me get my life sorted
(dad is always there too!)

now the how
i think explaining it is a no-brainer
cleaning and cooking with your hands
i've seen nothing stranger
now, the sewing , i would say,
is done with use of your mind
and your hand-sewn jobs
as a result are one-of-a-kind
the life lessons are given with mind and mouth
which are the very same lessons
that you've gone through
with the very same how
(how, meaning solution)

now the why is much more complex
and time consuming
this definitely needs the most explaining
and the most reviewing
there are many reasons why you do what you do
but the first, and foremost
is just because you want to
from this i choose to expand very greatly
because the in-depth reason is actually very stately

the main reason you want to is simply this:
you care enough to want to
you care enough about your family
to want to keep our clothes clean
you care enough about your family
to want to give us the advice we need
and all because you choose to

and the fact that you do all this
with no complaining, whatsoever amiss
makes me carry a great respect
because of the fact that i am so thoroughly impressed
(and because i appreciate your work)

so for the working mom i have this message:
thank you
i hope you know just how much you are needed
and the simple knowledge
just how much you are wanted
for the working mom i say it again
thank you
and i hope you comprehend
the sincerity of this message.