Caring for Carleigh Reading (Chapter 3)

Have you ever been at a loss for words when trying to comfort another? If you've endured a loss, in what ways have people shown you they cared? How have you shown others you care?

Oh yes, has it ever been hard for me to comfort someone. Even though I feel just awful for them, I sense their pain myself and cry myself, and I find it hard to know what to say. With the losses I’ve endured, I felt the most cared about when people listened to me and when they showed that they believed I was hurting. I try to show others that I care by just being there for them. When my friend hurt her back, I loved doing errands for her. When another friend of mine was hospitalized from complications of lupus, I went to visit her, brought her flowers, etc. I think just being available for people helps a lot.

What fears do you have that you feel you should give to God?

Well, I think most everyone knows I’m scared of not being needed, scared of being forgotten, scared of dying. This is so stupid but I’m hanging onto it because I think even God wouldn’t need me and even God would forget me. It’s just hard. I’m also afraid that my kids are going to grow up badly and that I will be blamed.

He surpasses my expectations

My husband likes to mimic Pat Robertson, Joel Osteen, etc., pretending to say that "Jesus will save you if you send us money." The place I volunteer at is having a banquet on 9/25. They gave me an invitation for my family. Well, the banquet is free but you can sponsor a table (so more people could come) for $44 or half a table for $22, but I was really afraid my husband would lump this in with Osteen, so I hid the invitation for a couple days and was praying he wouldn't be offended whenever I did get the courage to show it to him. My in-laws asked if I wanted to go with them to Hawaii, but I told them no because they'll be gone till 9/26 and I didn't want to miss the banquet. (I'm serious, it felt SO RIGHT in my heart when I said I'd rather go to the banquet .. than HAWAII!!!!) So Chris asked about the banquet and I showed him the brochure, expecting the worst. (Like, he might even tell me to stop volunteering for them.) Guess what he said? He said of course we can go to the banquet, and he said sponsoring one table is only half of what we'd pay if we actually went someplace nice for dinner as a family, so he told me "Let's sponsor two tables."

ZOIKS!

Wow, wow! I can hardly believe this! I don't know how to thank God for so much more than what I asked for. God keeps doing this! I prayed that I just didn't want my husband to throw a fit and instead he was genuinely happy to write a check. Wow, God, I'm amazed by you.

1 Cor. 1:31 As the Scriptures say, "The person who wishes to boast should boast only of what the Lord has done." (NLT)

On a kind of sad note, my "friend" (the one who keeps hurting me) emailed and told them that she didn't want to volunteer there anymore. I know she likes being the boss and leading things, so it probably was hard for her just being a servant there, stamping 100's of envelopes, etc. But I love it there.

Thief

I went to church this morning and the pastor is on vacation so the worship leader was the one giving the sermon. The first verse he read was John 10:10 The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full. (NIV). Wow, after what I went through yesterday, I needed to hear that. One of the comments I got yesterday mentioned that Jesus was all I needed. It's true! I know this! Then, what happened yesterday? What also spoke to me in that verse was the part about having life to the full. No matter how long you live or how long you're expected to live or even if people don't want you to live. I'm sorry, God, and I'm sorry to everyone who read my last blogpost. The enemy tried to steal my sunshine. (If that song doesn't put you in a good mood, watch how joyous this wedding is.)

What's the point

I'm having a really stupid hard time.

I woke up at 3:30 a.m. yesterday with an earache. I put a hot pack on it and took some Advil. Within two hours I was fine. My husband (who knows everything, you know) told me when he got up that I should go to the doctor. By then I was fine though so I said no. [Warning: The rest of this is morbid. I think my mind is in overdrive because my counselor is out next week and I don't have anyone to talk to.] So to try to force me to go, my husband decides to scare me by asking me before he left for work, "What do you want done with your body if you 'kick it'?" At first I was mad because it didn't sound like he was concerned, just controlling, so I played along to call his bluff and told him I wanted my body donated to science, and he (trying to call my bluff) told me to get him more information about it. So I looked up the University of New Mexico's policy on cadaver donation, etc., and basically they just want the skeleton. Well, my skeleton would be cool for them because my spine, left arm and right leg have deformities that never got surgically corrected. So I told my husband he'd just have to ship me there. Although I agree with my husband that the last time I "didn't want to go to the doctor," I waited too long and ended up having emergency major surgery. But this was just an earache.

So here's the thing, now I keep thinking about dying. I wonder who would really miss me if I didn't exist. I know most of my family has been waiting for years for me to not exist, doctors too! I would even go so far as to say those people would be happy when I stop existing. My family (and doctors) were happy when Claudia didn't exist anymore.

I'm going through my Friends list on Facebook. I have 64 "friends":

• 28 of them I have never met in my life (met through previous email groups, SuperPoke Pets or Mafia Wars)
  
• 9 are people in my husband's family (who I rarely see or talk to)
• 2 are my family (my daughter and my sister)
• 20 are people I knew back in Illinois (who I haven't seen or talked to since at least 1989)
• 5 are people from church
  

I think the only people who would even notice I quit existing would be the two in my family, the five friends in town and my husband's parents.

I guess I'm upset because I always thought my husband was on my side and thought they (the people waiting for me to die) were full of crap, but then he wanted me to tell him what I wanted done with my body, as if he too expected me to die.

I think having "Friends" on Facebook gives people a false sense of security or popularity. Who'd really miss me if I were gone? Who'd give me a ride if my car wouldn't start? Who'd bring soup over if I were sick?

Pop!

I doubt there are too many people waiting with baited breath to hear the outcome of my ear situation, but I haven't mentioned yet that, YES, my right ear did finally pop Saturday! God gets the glory because I didn't have to go to the doctor after all. I was eating lunch and poured myself a glass of Coke, and I decided I didn't want to share the rest of the bottle with my kids (I know, I'm evil) so I was drinking it real fast so I could pour the remainder in my glass. All of a sudden, my right ear hears this big POW (well, it was more like a CLICK) and I could hear out of it again.

Caring for Carleigh Reading (Chapter 2)

My comment about this chapter ... I need to start reading it when there's nobody home because I keep crying and everyone looks at me all weird. Again, the way she describes things makes me feel like I'm right there.

Do you have a funny experience to share? What are some of the silly or stupid things you did? My daughter didn’t like having her hair brushed when she was a toddler, so everyday before daycare I put her Rastafarian hair in a bun, thinking nobody could tell it was a rat’s nest.

Has there been a time in your life that you felt the world was falling apart? Yes, when my favorite grandmother passed away when I was 13, when my favorite brother moved to college when I was 14, and when my dog died when I was in the hospital in 2006. Those losses are still hard for me to talk about.

Has God ever worked a miracle in your life or in the life of someone you know? Yes, basically my whole life is a miracle because the doctors expected me to die before I was a year old. Instead of professing a miracle that I survived, my parents treated me like a burden when I was growing up. (And now I’m 42 so it feels really odd to me, like everyone's still waiting for me to die!) But just this past Sunday I listened to a man’s testimony at church where he was telling about suffering a stroke a few years ago because of a congenital heart defect and how he could suffer another more devastating (even fatal) one in the future. He summed it up by saying, “I’m alive, praising and serving God solely by His pleasure.” Me too!!! Instead of apologizing to the world that I’m still alive, I feel so special knowing God has a reason for keeping me here.

How has difficult times affected your marriage? My husband is a control freak, so as long as he thinks he can fix it, I just let him. It makes me feel like a failure to take a back seat but he won’t let me share the burden.

What fears have you struggled with? Fear of my children’s lives being ruined because I’m not a good mom. Fear that nobody likes me.

Do you feel that God has a plan for your life? Yes, even though I don’t know what it is. I feel like a failure most of the time. I guess even Hitler had a mom.

What has been the hardest moment of your life so far? Not being able to prevent my kids being hurt or rejected. It reminds me of my childhood all over again.

Seventy times seven (times two)

Here's an update on that situation. The Bible study group met Thursday for lunch at one of the member's homes, and the "leader" is the friend I was talking about who keeps hurting me and she was there. (She told me I could still go to this lunch even though I'm not interested in being in that study group anymore.) The mood was really somber, even the grace before the meal mentioned asking God to help everyone stay friends, and it just felt like (to me) that everyone was trying to make me feel guilty for quitting. Several months ago I told my friend something that I was really self-conscious about and then last month I was crying to her that not many people at church talk to me, and out of nowhere she scolded/lectured me that more people would talk to me if I didn't have that problem! I said how DARE you bring that up! (Her idea of apologizing was telling me she was only trying to help!) I cut ties with her, but I'm realizing (with horror) that I've been through three Bible studies with her so she has a plethora of "dirt" on me because I shared my heart. She now tells me that since I'm not sharing anything with her, she's not going to share anything with me. Well, whoopie-doo, she has never shared anything with me, her heart has always been guarded so she looks like the "strong" one of the bunch. (She has also told me to my face that she enjoys watching me struggle with life because it makes her feel strong.) I'm really nervous that she's going to scold me for my other faults that she knows about, at another inappropriate time, and I will be hurt again. At any rate, I have been praying that God will help me forgive her and that he will comfort me from being totally turned off by her. But it really takes the cake that she's making me out to be the bad guy.

This weekend

Just a hodgepodge of things to say today. First, I'm really happy that my friend Shelley had a great ultrasound yesterday and her babies are healthy. Funny how even if you don't "know" someone in person that your heart just goes out to them and worry about them so much and end up praying for them all day long. She has lost two other children, and I'm just amazed how awesome God is to give her twins this time (and she has no family history of twins and wasn't on fertility drugs). WOW!!! Yay, God!

Last weekend I (hopefully temporarily) lost the hearing in my right ear. I thought it had something to do with the fact my ears didn't pop when we landed at home from our vacation coupled with holding my mouth open so long at the dentist last Friday. But now I'm feeling stuffed up in my head so I bet I have a sinus infection and will end up going to the doctor soon.

Lou and Boogie (my two parakeets) are fighting. From what I read, this is normal, but it really hurts me to watch them. My husband had gotten them some treats. It's like a stick with birdseed stuck all over it. They LOVE it and now I hardly see them eating their regular bird food. He put one in yesterday and the stick is totally bare this morning. Maybe it's like bird "crack" and they are coming off of their high. In that case, I would be crabby and fighting too.

Music and changes

I added a playlist today. Most are songs that remind me of Claudia. I wanted something to remember her with instead of just guilt all the time. I put "You're not alone" on it because I had mentioned that song in another post, "Voice of Truth" because it speaks to me about my self image and shame, "Cry Holy" just because it's a good song, and "Love Liberty Disco" because that song gets me in a good mood anytime, anywhere LOL. Oh yeah, and I changed my profile picture. It shows me studying the little workbook from Bible Studies By Mail where I volunteer. I figured I had better do the studies myself if I was going to be grading them for other students. EDIT: Unfortunately, the "Love Liberty Disco" track was actually a different song, so I replaced it with "Stay Strong" still by Newsboys (good message but not as upbeat as LLD).

Caring for Carleigh Reading (Chapter 1)

If you are married, what was your marriage like in the beginning?

This is my 3^rd marriage and (ashamed to say) for the first seven years of this one I had an addiction that took my focus off my family. I worked full time at first. My husband and my son (from previous marriage) got along like peas in a pod till I had our daughter.

When did you first decide you wanted to have children? Was it planned or unplanned?

I wanted the “atonement” baby so bad after high school, I just was very "easy" for the next five years, never got pregnant. Then I married my first husband, and I got pregnant on our honeymoon. (How is that for irony.) I didn’t have kids with my 2^nd husband. I had a uterine polyp removed about 6 months after I married the third time, and I guess it scared us so bad thinking I might not be able to get pregnant that we really wanted to try. Our daughter was a pistol when she was a baby. When she was nine months old, we came back from a cruise and I was still “seasick” and ended up finding out I was pregnant with my son (so he was unplanned but he was SUCH a good baby, he made up for his sister 100-fold).

What feelings did you have for your child when you first found out you were pregnant?

With my first, I was SO HAPPY because I had wanted a baby for so long after not being allowed to carry the pregnancy I had in high school. With my second, I was relieved the polyps didn’t damage anything but that pregnancy wasn’t fun at all because I was sick almost the entire time but I was excited to have a sibling for my son. With my third, I was very scared that the baby would turn out difficult like my daughter (in a really bad moment we even thought of terminating), but my parents retired and moved to my town so they could help with the baby and screaming toddler so I felt much better about it, and even my husband got excited about the baby when we found out it was a boy.

At what point in your life did you start searching for God? I accepted Christ when I was 9 but nothing ever really clicked for me. I went to church faithfully for years even when I wasn’t leading a Christian lifestyle. When I moved out here in ’97, as I said, I became an addict until August 2005 and went to church here maybe three times in 10 years. The point when I really started searching was after I turned 40 two years ago. During the year before that, I was white-knuckling because I didn’t know what to do with my time, we had moved twice in four months, I had emergency major surgery (hysterectomy) that triggered a lot of grief, and while I was in the hospital my favorite dog died, so I went into a huge depression. My husband took me to NYC for my 40^th birthday and on the way home on the plane I told him I wanted to just die. He didn’t know how else to get me out of my depression so he suggested I talk to someone. My first appointment was August 14, 2007. My counselor turned out to be THE BEST. I had never met him before (or him, me) yet I could feel that he cared about me, and I couldn’t put my finger on why. He had me watch a video a former client had made about her counseling experience, and she said the counselor “was like Jesus” to her, and all of a sudden everything made sense – I realized I could feel the counselor that first day caring about me because it was showing me Jesus cared about me! And then Bible verses, Bible stories, songs, hymns, everything I’d heard since I was 9, just totally made sense to me. I know this is already very long, but I just want to say that when people say Christians are the light of the world, it’s because Jesus shines through them. I know it for a fact, because as you can see, I’ve felt it.

Has there been a time in your life that God provided?

Yes. A couple months after I had been addiction-free, my family was getting increasingly hard on me about being such a slacker wife/mom, so I wanted to leave. I got on monster.com and search for a transcriptionist job anywhere, just so I could get out of here, and I half-heartedly hopelessly prayed I would find something, anything, because I was really bored and discouraged. A banner ad for a transcription company came up along with the results of my search. The company in the banner was a work from home thing. I emailed my application in, and within a couple days they called and wanted me to do some tests! So God DID hear me, he answered my prayers because I got my DREAM JOB (I love to type) and I had something to do, and I felt so much better about myself and my surroundings that staying here wasn’t such a horrible thought anymore. When people ask how I got this job, I say it’s a true miracle. I have referred a couple other people to that company, but God got me this job.

Forty-two

Thursday was my birthday. My husband was being a jerk the night before. See, I keep forgetting the world revolves around him. I keep forgetting he knows everything. And my ESP wasn't working and apparently he wanted me to do something that I didn't do, so he said I was the densest person he knew. I already know I'm not the brightest star in the sky so it hurt to hear him say that, so here's me actually praying that I wouldn't wake up on my birthday! But I did. I got a couple cute cards from the kids, some beautiful flowers and some chocolate, and then later after we went to my birthday dinner at Wendy's (my choice), my husband bought me two parakeets. I named the blue one "Lou" (after Lou Gramm, the lead singer of Foreigner, who released a Christian album last month that I just love). The green and yellow one my daughter named "Boogie" because it likes to move around a lot.

Also my oldest son got me a heart shaped necklace with a silhouette of a mother and baby inside, and it had four pink stones on the heart. He was joking with me that the stones represent my four children (my actual three children and my chihuahua Hershey). But to myself I'm joyfully thinking the fourth one could be for Claudia, my child in heaven. I was reading someone else's blog this morning and their post was mentioning someone told her that her baby chose them to be his parents even though his life was very brief. So why would Claudia choose me knowing she wouldn't be born at all. At any rate, I think this necklace is so cool and I do feel joyous having all four children represented!

Caring for Carleigh reading (Intro/Prologue)

In the intro to "In Faithfulness, He Afflicted Me," Lynnette said she's grateful for her journey, and it just blows me away because when I look at my journey, I just think "I wish that never happened," "I wish I hadn't done that," "I wish so-and-so was still here," etc. When she described losing Anna in the Prologue, my heart beat so fast. I felt like I was there and I cried and cried. Wow, and the book hasn't even started.

Have there been times in your life that God has shown you that He cares or that He is near?

Yes. I love music and God knows this. There have been times in the past couple years where I have been hurt by someone or just feel sad about other things, and every single time a song will either come on the car radio, Youtube, embedded in webpages I'm surfing or videos on TV that directly relate to how I feel at that moment. An example, last summer a bunch of us went to a friend's house way out in the desert and I was panicking and upset about trying to remember the way home. One of my friends said I could follow her till the street she needed to turn at and I was pretty sure I would know the way from that point. So we get to that street, her car turned off the road and all of a sudden I felt very alone and scared. So I prayed in my car (well, actually yelled in my car because I felt like I was going to panic again) and told God how scared I was and how alone I felt. I had the Christian station from Sirius satellite on, and the next song I heard after I prayed was by Meredith Andrews "You're Not Alone." It was the first time I ever heard that song, and I was crying AND laughing because it felt like God was talking right to me! Here are the lyrics to the chorus:

You're not alone
For I am here
let me wipe away your every tear
My love I've never left your side
I have seen you through the darkest nights
And I'm the one that's loved you all your life
All your life

Wisconsin

I'm back from Wisconsin (was there all last week). It was beautiful up there, perfect weather and everything was all green. My husband took the kids to a water park called Noah's Ark, we went to Wisconsin Deer Park and got to pet and feed a lot of deer, we stayed in my husband's late grandpa's house in the woods, we went on boat tours of the upper and lower dells, and we went to a huge 4th of July family picnic. My parents also came up from Illinois. Thank you, God, that I was able to have conversations with them (esp. my dad) so my last memory of them will be good if I never see them again. Also, God, thank you that my husband and my father were speaking to each other this time.