Giving it to God, part 1

This week, I'm exploring how God has been teaching me to give up control of my health. Today's post is part 1 of 4 posts in this series. 

I can remember a conversation with my Mom when I was really young.  I knew that I had already had surgery for 3 hernias before I was 2.  And then I heard someone talk about hernias being caused by straining or lifting too much.  So I asked, "Mom, did I lift heavy things when I was a baby?"  She told me no and I asked if she was sure that I wasn't trying to carry chairs or something.  

When I was 4, I was diagnosed with scoliosis.  Again, I remember the early questions but I don't know if they were directed toward me or just overheard as someone asked my Mom.  "Is it from poor posture?"  Then later as a teen when I had to wear a Milwaukee brace and hated it desperately, one of my Mom's friends suggested that I should visualize my spine straight and refuse to see it, even in my mind, as curved and then it would straighten and I wouldn't have scoliosis anymore.  

As an adult, an acquaintance told me that she had been researching Marfan Syndrome and believed it was caused by low copper and if I would just buy the supplement she sold that I could probably eradicate my syndrome.  

In my Christian circles, lots of people brought faith in.  "You just need to have more faith."  "It's not going to happen if you don't believe that God can heal you...you DO believe God can heal you, right?"  "You're putting too much faith in medicine, that's why you're not being healed; you trust what your doctors say rather than just believing God."  And I think the most damaging were those who believe that all illness is tied to some sin.  A friend, and don't misunderstand me--this is a wonderful Christian woman who acted out of love and concern for me--gave me a book that she thought would help me.  It was a book that linked specific illnesses to specific un-confessed sins.  

So over and over, starting from a very early age, I swallowed this message that somehow my health challenges were my fault.  Somehow there was something that I was doing, or not doing, that was bringing these constant challenges into my life.  The nurse side of me didn't buy it.  Logically it didn't make sense based on what I knew about my syndrome.  And the friend of Christ side of me didn't really buy it either, it just didn't line up with John 9 where Jesus says that the man wasn't blind because of sin but so the works of God could be displayed in him.  But even as I didn't buy it there was this small voice in my head that whispered that it was my fault.  That if I could just figure out how to do the right things; the right diet, the right activity, the right faith, the right prayers, the right attitude...that somehow I could fix this and not struggle so much with my health.  I willingly embraced the responsibility for my health.  I owned it.  

Wait...who was the lucky one?

I was thinking the other day about something that people say to adoptive parents that I've never heard them say to parents who've given birth.  Maybe they do say it, but no one said it to me when I gave birth to our daughter and I've never heard it so I'm operating on the principle that no one says it to parents by birth.  But when our son was a baby I heard it often.  Someone would know our story and look at our beautiful baby boy and say "he sure is lucky that you guys adopted him."  Or they would see him do something adorable and comment, "what a lucky baby."  And I'm going to be honest, that phrase still makes me seethe.


It's not that I don't want my son to feel blessed that we're his parents.  I do.  Just like I want our daughter to feel blessed that we're her parents.  Just like every parent wants their children to feel thankful for the sacrifices parents make to give their children a good life.  But this phrase cuts me because it somehow implies that we did our son a favor.  It implies that he was a stray that we took in because we have such good hearts.  It goes back to an issue that so many adoptees struggle with--the feeling that they were castoff, that somehow there was something so wrong with them that their birthparents rejected them at birth.  I know it's not true.  I know the love that went into the sacrifice my son's birthparents made when they decided not to parent him themselves.  But the truth is that there is a loss at the heart of every adoption that needs to be dealt with.  And I don't like how our society turns that loss of the adoptee's first relationship into something that makes him "lucky" because now he's with us.  


The reality is that if we hadn't adopted our son, someone else would have.  We didn't save him from an orphanage or death.  It's even possible that he could have been adopted by a family with way more money than we have.  In 1995, the year of our son's birth, there were 100,000 women in the US who had applied to adopt.  According to the 1988 National Survey of Family Growth there are an estimated 3.3 adoption seekers for every actual adoption.  We truly didn't rescue him.  


Truth be told, we felt like the lucky ones.  The day his birthparents selected our profile out of all the waiting families  at our agency was better than winning the lottery.  But there's more to it.  We knew then and have had it confirmed over and over that God put our family together.  Our family felt incomplete until we had our second child.  We prayed and prayed for a baby, prayed for a child who would be ours and that's exactly what we got.  He is as much my child as the daughter who shares my genetics and grew in my body.  He continually reminds me of members of my family in both looks and personality.  He also is unique and brings in a richness that wouldn't exist in our family if he wasn't here.  Even 16 years later, I marvel that I've been blessed to have this child in my life.  


I guess my point is, if you know someone who is adopting or has adopted, share their joy.  Rejoice with them and marvel at one of the wonderful ways that families are made.  But keep the "lucky" comments inside.  Thanks.  

Blogger's Block

Okay, I'm going public and admitting that I'm pretty weird.  To the people who know me well, this isn't much of a revelation.  But I've had a horrible case of blogger's block.  My last blog post was on Valentines Day...so 6 months ago.  It's not that in the last 6 months I haven't had anything to say.  I'm a pretty opinionated person.  But every now and then I get hit with something close to shyness.  I feel like blogging will make me completely open and exposed and it feels like too much.  I worry that my opinions will be offensive (which they will be to someone, not everyone will always agree with me), or that people will think that what I'm writing about is stupid (which will also happen), or that my chosen topic wouldn't fit with the whole "learning to follow" theme.  But my husband keeps telling me I'm a gifted writer with a story to tell so I've decided to start blogging again.

But here's my disclaimer:

1. I may offend you.  Not because I want to be offensive, I actually want the opposite of that. But I can't always walk the middle line.  I have opinions and they're not always going to agree with your opinions and that's okay.  Part of what God is working on in me lately is being okay with disagreement as long as everyone is respectful.  One of my strengths is harmony and because I like harmony so much I will sometimes keep quiet just so there's harmony.  God doesn't want me to stay silent on the beliefs and opinions I hold, even if they create some conflict.  I just need to handle the conflict in love.  Pray for my husband as I grow in this because he'll be the one to hear me obsess when this is hard for me.

2.  Not everything I write about is going to be deep or significant.  I may write about the silly or the mundane because that is part of life.  Sometimes things will strike me funny and I may decide that writing is better than not writing even if it doesn't hold some deep eternal significance.  Part of this blogging process is helping me to find my voice or my personal writing style.  If you think what I'm writing about is ridiculous you have my permission to stop reading.

3.  I've decided that everything fits with the theme of my blog because all of life is useful in learning to follow closer to God.  I want to be a 24/7 Christian and so every experience I have is about walking out my faith in the here and now.

So that's my new resolve.  I plan to write more and I'm not entirely sure if anyone is around to read any of this anymore after 6 months of silence, but I'm going to write anyway.

Valentine's Day

I have to get this off my chest. My husband doesn't really like Valentine's Day. He thinks it's commercial and a money making scheme. Now when I tell this, a lot of women instantly feel sorry for me. I didn't get flowers, or dinner out, or jewelry, or or or...But don't feel sorry for me.

I have a husband who showers me with love every day of the year. To you, a dozen roses may speak of undying love. To me, it's the dozens of backrubs, it's the dozens of times he sits with me at doctor visits, it's the constant affection, or the look in his eyes when he sees me across a room. We don't have the same picture of romance as many couples but that is ok.

The bible says that love is laying down your life for another person's benefit.  It struck me this morning that scripture tells us over and over how to show love, but it doesn't spend much time on how to tell if someone else loves us.  Obviously God wants us to be loved and feel loved.  But I don't think he wants it to be our focus.  My focus needs to be on how I can best show those in my life how much I love them.  My focus needs to be on demonstrating Christ's love, not ensuring that I receive love from other people.  

So that's how I plan to spend my Valentine's day, well really how I plan to spend each day.  I need to find out how the people in my life feel love and then do those things without worrying about what I'm getting back.  I know that I won't do this well each day, but I do feel good about making this my goal.

Happy Valentine's Day.

Jealous?

I've been thinking about jealousy lately.  And I'm wondering if maybe jealousy has gotten a bad rap.  I can remember in the early years of my relationship with my husband any time I was jealous it was viewed as a bad thing.  And it's that bad rap that causes so many of us to be puzzled by the bible verse that says "Do not worship any other god, for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God." (Exodus 34:14)  Wait...God's name is jealous and he is jealous.  Then how can jealousy be bad?  I think it all has to do with the heart.  What is at the root of jealousy we feel?  Is it truly the jealousy mentioned in Exodus 34:14 or is it something else entirely?  


When my motives are my own selfishness, like if I'm jealous because my neighbor drives a nicer car than I do, or the friend with the new engagement ring just trumped my great weekend story, or my coworker got the promotion that I wanted then I can be sure that I'm not feeling the same thing that the bible talks about in the verse above.  


But there are also times when jealousy is the warning that things aren't as they should be.  And I think that this is when I'm more in line with what God means when he says that his name is jealous.  We were meant to have a certain order to our relationships.  No one, aside from God, should come before my spouse.  And so if the time and attention that is rightfully my spouse's is going to someone else, he would have the right to get jealous.  It would be a holy jealousy just like what is mentioned in Exodus.  


God can't be selfish, he can't be petty.  He is to be honored and loved and cherished above all else.  He knows when he's occupying a lower place in our lives and hearts and he is jealous.   He knows that the best thing for us is when we put him first, so when we don't he's jealous.  It's the outpouring of pure love, and that's the one time when jealousy can be a good thing.  

Learning to let go

The last four months have been so strange.  For the 19 1/2 years preceding these last 4 months, my daughter was a constant in my life.  From the minute she entered this world until 4 months ago, the longest we had been apart was 1 week.  She didn't go to daycare, she didn't go to preschool, she was homeschooled.  She did sleepovers and playdates and even a week here and there at camp, but most of the time we were together.  After she graduated she had college classes and work and her own life, but we were at least connecting each evening as she told me about her day and asked about mine.  So it's been strange to have her gone with only 1 weekend home in the last 4 months.

Naturally it's made me think about what it really means to let go.  I knew it wouldn't be easy but my goal has always been with both of my kids to grow them up and launch them into independence.  But I was unprepared for how un-ready my heart would feel.  I wasn't prepared for the feeling that life went way too fast.  That the season of being a close family unit of 4 is over way before I thought it would be.  When my kids were school age I would tell them that I wanted my babies back.  I didn't want another baby, but I wanted to hold my babies, while they were babies, one more time.  

During these 4 months that my daughter has been away, my son has been growing into manhood.  He's almost 16, almost the same height as me (I'm 6' 1/2") and desperately wants to be treated like an adult.  And so I struggle doubly with the sense that life has gone way too fast.  That the years that seemed to stretch out before me when they were little are almost over.  And it brings so much anxiety.  Did I teach them the right things?  Did they learn how precious they are in my eyes and especially in God's eyes.  What if I made mistakes? (I did)  What if they make mistakes? (they will)  

But when I sift it all out it comes down to one key truth.  I'm trying to control things that are out of my control.   God didn't ask me to grow the fruit, He only asked me to be obedient in planting and watering seeds in my kids' lives.  I can't take credit for the good that God has grown in them and I can't somehow make things grow faster or better than the speed that God is allowing it to grow at.  God asked me to set a foundation in their lives.  He knew I would make mistakes, He knew I wouldn't be perfect, but he blessed me with 2 beautiful people to raise and enjoy anyway.  

My goal is to learn to let go while cherishing the relationships as they exist right now.  I want to live each day thankful for what I have rather than longing for what once was or what could have been.  Only by staying connected to and submitted to God do I have a hope of succeeding at that.

I just finished reading the book, The Help by Kathryn Stockett.  I guess that I'm naive because I had no idea that things were that bad in the 60's.  I didn't know that people thought their black maids carried diseases and germs that whites didn't have immunity to.  I've never been able to understand prejudice.  I've never understood how someone can look at a physical characteristic and dislike a person because of it.  I grew up in a predominantly white school.  We had a handful of other races.  But it was just skin in my opinion.  I don't remember looking at a person and making a decision about them just because of how they looked.

My favorite baby doll as I was growing up was black.  It was in the 70's and I thought she was the prettiest doll at the store and it never even occurred to me that anyone might have an issue with her skin color.  Why would they?  She was beautiful.  I can remember taking her everywhere and one day when going to visit relatives I got  my first comment.  My older relative said "why did you bring that nigger baby with you?"  What???  I knew that was a word you didn't say.  And I was angry.  My doll was beautiful; her skin was an amazing chocolate color, her hair was dark dark brown.   I wanted to bring her with me everywhere.  And I can remember thinking (at 7 years old) "I'm going to grow up and marry a black man so that my babies look like this doll and I'll bring them where ever I want and you better not say anything about it."

It still puzzles and angers me when I hear racist statements.  I just don't get it.  Our DNA is the same.  And more than that, God created us with unique physical characteristics.  And He considers us all equally His children.  Our skin color, the shape of our eyes, our hair-- none of that matters.  God looks at our hearts, and so should we.

I love culture, I love the uniqueness and richness of the different cultures--I don't want a big melting pot where we don't have differences anymore.  But I do want a world where everyone is accepted and respected just as they are.