Don't Do It

I was driving in the rain to Kansas City this morning. The windshield wipers were working hard and I felt tense. Lots of shifting over three lanes for left-handed exits. I missed one turn. I ended up at the wrong clinic.

I had to call for directions at one point and the nice man didn't understand what I meant by a block looking "sketchy." I have been around teens for decades and so I explained to the aged gentlemen that it meant "not quite right and perhaps a bit dangerous."

We made it, though, and Mary Pat will soon have an "Augmentive Communication Device." She still can't speak well but her understanding of letters gives her the ability, in the experts' evaluation, to pick out some words and pictures on this tablet-like device.

On the drive home I listened to the radio. There was a "quick minute" with a theologian, a nun named Mother Angelica. She quoted the Bible: "Do not let your hearts be troubled..." She made the point that God didn't say that He would necessarily take the troubles away. Troubles will come. They happened to Christ so they'll certainly happen to us. But we should fight discouragement. There is always hope.

I imagined some recent troubles in my life. Did I trust God enough to handle them?

Yes. I decided I did. And in anxiety's place came peace.

When I got home I google-searched the verse: John 14:27

I might have to keep reminding myself to let God handle troubles. Truly, some situations are much harder than others. But I will claim his promise. I hope you'll read the verse, too.


I don't have time to add to Renata, but I'll share some recent photos from the farm. They are from yesterday morning: misty, crisp and Fall-like.

God bless you.

In The Moment

       It is good to live in the moment. We're not dwelling on the past, we're not wishing life away by focusing on the future--we are experiencing the present. But what if the present isn't so good? What if we are suffering?

       I think we grow up learning from society around us that suffering is something that "shouldn't be." Mistakes are not supposed to happen--on the road, at work, in the McDonald's drive-thru or at the hospital--and if they do...then sue. Three of my friends were told by their doctors to terminate their pregnancies because of bleeding and an inability to find a fetal heartbeat. All three women said no, and there are now three healthy boys running around our town. I am convinced that the doctors felt that they had to recommend termination, for if they had not and the woman had complications, they could have been sued. Sadly, mistakes happen.

       I think it's possible that a mistake was made on our farm and that may be why Mary Pat has deformities and developmental disabilities. I will never confront anyone about it. There is no real proof. But if it is true, then it caused suffering. I have written about Mary Pat; she is such a blessing. She always knows more people in the local supermarket than I do. It's like being with a celebrity. Children run up to her as I walk into school and hug her, or give her a high-five. Through our suffering, through her life, many people have been blessed in ways that could not have happened without Mary Pat's life.

       Living in the moment is hard at times, but it can also be blissful. Sitting on the beach with the waves crashing and soft breeze blowing. Hitting that run of moguls and the adrenaline surge of speed and skis pounding hard. Jumping a horse over a big fence. Embracing a loved one. A first kiss.

       But there are also illusions of a moment, aren't there? They can lead us to errors in judgement, to impulsive acts. The things that keep us from making these errors are formed in us well before that moment, in our interior lives, in our moral formation. I am told that developing virtues combats these errors in judgement. All the education in the world may not keep someone from committing a crime or a huge mistake, but virtue might.

       I came across a beautiful and tragic quote the other day:

       "Let Herodius now groan, she who is guilty of the impious murder,
        for it was neither love of God's law, nor life eternal that she loved,
        but the illusions of a moment."

       Shakespeare?
     

       No. It is a reading from the Byzantine liturgy regarding the death of John the Baptist. Herod kind of liked John, even though he didn't mince words about Herod's sinful lifestyle. Herod's wife, however, despised John the Baptist and finally devised a way to force Herod to kill him. Her daughter Salome (Herod's niece) danced such a beautiful dance one night that Herod told her to ask him for anything and he'd give it to her. Her mother whispered to her to ask for John the Baptist's head, and Herod, beside himself with conflict, gave in. Herodius got her revenge.

       Revenge sometimes feels good in the moment. So do big mistakes--like infidelity, sin, porn, getting drunk when we shouldn't. Later, we may regret it terribly. At the moment it felt and seemed good!

       Moments are indeed precious. Illusions of a moment assert that the moment is more important than wisdom and judgement, than right and good, than even the One who created moments.

       I believe that God wants the best for us. I want to be grateful for my moments, even in the suffering ones. Christ suffered. We learn that to follow him means taking up our cross. That does not mean a cross of gold and happily ever after fairy-tale living. There will hopefully be some great moments, but there is no promise that life will be without pain. Ann Voskamp wrote an inspired book about her life, about the suffering of her family and how all was turned around for her when she focused on gratitude.One Thousand Gifts  is a book which changes lives. I hope you'll read it.

       And I hope you'll live solidly and gratefully in the moment, that you'll be wise and perhaps take some more moments before deciding on a course that you might later regret. Sacrificing that illusory moment might be the most fully in-the-moment thing we ever do.

Hershey Chocolate, Screenplay, and Cupid

       And--they're back to school. Next year I will plan better for summer activities, and maybe even a distant camp or two. That was something I never had the opportunity to do as a kid. I'm not complaining, I think I had a great childhood. I remember my friend Bev went away to camp every summer. The boys' and girls' camps were owned by her mother's family: Green Cove and High Rocks. I visited with her when we were in high school; a lovely little southwest corner of North Carolina, in the mountains.

       That's a bit far from Kansas, but I think the older boys would like more activity. I'd had a busy school year and I kind of "veg'd" with them this summer. I learned that teaching a college course, tutoring, substitute clinical instructing, grad school, every other weekend doing community health nursing, and being Mom to six under twelve was...too much. The six needed more of me. So we veg'd. We did go to Hershey, PA. That's always fun. Chocolate. And I think Milton Hershey is my new hero.

       Later in the summer Mary Pat, Susanna and I flew to Milwaukee for a special wedding. Joe lived with us the summer of 2013 and during that time met Maria, who helped care for Mary Pat. Joe fell in love watching her sing to Mary Pat, and care for her so lovingly. They asked for Mary Pat to be their flower girl. It was a wonderful weekend. Maria says Mary Pat is like the paper airplane in "Paperman." She's a cute little cupid!

       I did one other big thing this summer. I wrote a full-length, motion picture screenplay. I'm sort of amazed I got it done. The idea had been mulling around in my head for a number of years, with notes here and there. I read in April that Meryl Streep was funding the New York Women in Film and Television (NYWIFT)writer's lab workshop in September. Eight scripts would be chosen, their writers flown to a lake in upstate New York to develop their screenplays. The writers had to be women over 40.

       I got the email on August 1st that 3500 screenplays had been submitted (!) and mine was not in the eight chosen. Truthfully, I knew it was a long shot, but I had to try. The workshop was the incentive I needed to get something really big done, that time had not previously allowed. I had a couple months between grad courses, I'd become a disciplined writer and I did it. I have some future plans for the screenplay, but we'll see. I thank my children for encouraging me to finish that first draft. It may never have been completed without their support.

       So, back to today. The two oldest boys said it was a great day in their new school. I'm proud of them. The others were equally enthusiastic. Mary Pat was ecstatic to go back to her school and almost raced from my hand to the bus!

     
       Summer 2015 was good.

       Here's to a great Fall for us all!

Saint Who?

    
     I never used to pay attention to why cities like St. Paul, San Francisco, St. Augustine and St. Joseph were named after saints.  I was raised Episcopalian and was used to the surname; I guess I realized these people were remembered for something. People of all Christian faiths acknowlege certain early Church Fathers such as Augustine of Hippo and early martyrs like Stephen. When Marie and Susanna were homeschooled we used a great history text that detailed the European settling of the New World, and the different styles of the Spanish and French and others. I had not studied in such detail in public school.

     We can all acknowledge documented historical events. Of course we may interpret them somewhat differently, but it is fascinating study. Sometimes I've felt that my own geneological research, while interesting, is moderately futile. Twenty generations back and we all have close to a million ancestors--so why would one thin line of them mean anything more than another? I lost my drive for geneology, but not for history in general. As I studied them, I realized what incredible, spiritually inspiring people the saints were.

      Each city named after a saint has a good reason for it. I do not understand how people deny the Christian foundations of our country. There was tragedy involved in some cases of "religious" settling. There was horror in the case of many Native American Tribes. Man is fallible. Good intentions may not always produce the results that I think God would have wanted. Man, throughout history,  is sadly inhumane to man. So instead of focusing on the evil, I find it better to focus on what was learned and most especially what was good. The lives of saints are such stuff. Recently up for sainthood is Mother Teresa. No one would deny that hers was a heroic life. Try Googling some lesser names like these: Maximilian Kolbe and Edith Stein, both of whom died in concentration camps in the Holocaust. Just incredible people.

     Four years ago on July 20th,  an obscure saint became known to me. Mary Pat was prep'd in the OR, ready to have a gastrostomy tube, or "GT" inserted at five months old. A GT enters directly into the stomach through a stoma created in the abdomen, and is used for feeding. Mary Pat could not nurse. She could not suck from a bottle. All those months since she was out of the NICU we'd been managing a Nasogastric tube or "NG". That's the feeding tube that goes up into the nose and curves down the back of the pharynx, through the throat and espophagus and into the stomach. The mucous membranes are very sensitive and tender, especially in the pharynx. Insertion is at best uncomfortable to a cognizant adult. Most people describe it as intensely irritating or painful. During insertion there is a good chance of putting the tube into the lungs, rather than the stomach. As a nurse I'd inserted NG tubes so I felt at an advantage. But those were adults. And this was my tiny baby struggling for life. I prayed so hard to God to let her suck from a bottle. I pumped for six months to provide her with the best nutrition possible. I ached to nurse her, but the chance of her taking a bottle would be a miracle to me. It wasn't to be. Every time she needed the NG reinserted she screamed and cried and turned blue. I prayed and tried to be so cool and clinical. Being an RN did not make it any easier.

      Mary Pat additionally needed a procedure to tighten the top of her stomach.  She had such bad gastric reflux that one day she stopped breathing and had to be life-flighted back to the hospital. She had an apnea monitor at night which I needed to attach to leads on her chest. False alarms in the middle of the night were not uncommon.  I prayed that Mary Pat would not need any of this, but the answer I wanted did not come. We checked into the hospital and dressed Mary Pat in her tiny gown. The nurse took her and I cried as I had before her other surgeries. Mary Pat had additional difficulty with each of her surgeries when intubated, because of her cleft palate, jaw surgery and anatomy.         Dr. St. Peter was her surgeon. He was very kind and comforting. He spoke with us before the surgery and was just the confident, calming presence that I needed. Bruce and I settled in for the wait. My reading led me to the "Saint of the Day." A Feast Day is usually celebrated on the date of death of the saint...the day they entered the hereafter with Christ. This day was the feast day of St. Apollinaris.

     St. Apollinaris was the first bishop of Ravenna in the first to second century. He was a great preacher and many came to know Christ because of him. He was brutally beaten and tortured more than once by the Roman officials but he kept evangelizing and was eventually martyred. St. Apollinaris had been ordained and sent to Ravenna by St. Peter himself. St. Peter! This fact may seem in no way to be connected to Mary Pat, but I knew that in God's great love, He knew about what would happen to Mary Pat, and when St. Peter did ordain St. Apollinaris He knew that centuries later it would give comfort to a frightened mother. Mary Pat was indeed in His hands.

     Dr. St. Peter came out after the surgery to tell us that it had gone well. As we began to breathe a sigh of relief, he informed us that he encountered something serious. Because of the need for that surgery, Dr. St. Peter found a life threatening condition called a diaphragmatic hernia and expertly fixed it. He also found that her large intestine was not where it should be. Part of it was basically unattached and could have led, undetected, to a fatal condition of twisting and strangulation of the bowel. He fixed it. If God had answered my prayer and allowed her to nurse, or even to be fed from the bottle--to be spared of the NG tube and later the G-tube--these conditions could very well have killed her. I learned the beauty in unanswered prayer.

     I have a thirst for wisdom, knowledge and history that will never be quenched in this lifetime. Though eternity may be incomprehensible, thinking about getting to know all those who have gone before us--is a taste of paradise to me...

...as is Mary Pat.


God bless you,

Suzy

The Abbey Farm