Surprise!!

WE'RE HAVING A PARTY!!!  And SHHH!  It's a SURPRISE!!

In an effort to make up for lost time for almost a year and a half, we have instigated monthly "Cousin's Sleepovers".  They are great, great, great fun - especially if you are fond of having five little screaming banshees swirling around for a while.

And whew, when that door shuts as the last one leaves and the house is quiet again, I. sit. down.  Then have a few little tears because the house is suddenly quiet again.  Then Scott and I talk about our awesome offspring for a few days.

Non-stop.

Heaven help the folks in the grocery store that see us and ask us an innocent "What's happening in your world?"  And they hear about our awesome offspring that are the bestest, cutest, sweetest, orneriest kids ever.

And that's just to the sales help and cashiers that we don't know.

The ones we do know, you see them start to inch away towards the seafood section about 18 minutes into "story-time".

In February, the granddaughters and I planned a SURPISE!! birthday party for Popop, aka, Scott.  It was nothing short of hilarious watching the plans go down.  Obviously, the most fun part was the SECRET!

To get the whole shabang here, you kind of have to say that word with your hands to the side of your mouth, say it in a really loud whisper and make a sweet little lisp with the "S" sound.

Addy would call her Popop and say "we have a surprise!!"  Then she would say, "it's a secret about your birthday".  Finally, giggling and obviously holding her hand over her mouth she would say "I'm NOT supposed to tell you about your PARTY!!"

If you were to ask Addy to this day - she happily and confidently tells you she is really good at keeping secrets.

Chloe and Zoe were kind all 007 over it - they would run upstairs sliding secretly down the hallway to get different crayons to work on Popop's "surprise birthday party poster" - and they would say things such as "DON'T ask us what we are doing in the basement, Popop - it's a SURPRISE for you and you are not supposed to know".

Popop would torment them and pretend like he was going to go downstairs and they would yell "NO!" and slam the door so he wouldn't see their artwork until the proper time.

Even though they just left it lay there when it was time to go home.

It was a lot of fun.

So, for the first sleepover, I told the three older girls that we were going to have a surprise! party for Milliebeans birthday.  They were pretty good at keeping it quiet, but again a lot of giggling, a lot of planning, a lot of "what ifs".  Like, 'what if she doesn't show up?"

I told them all I would be driving her in my car, so I was pretty sure she would be there.

A month later, it's another one's birthday and so we have been furiously whispering, and planning how to yell SURPRISE! and wondering to each other just what the birthday girl might do at the moment of realization.

They just learned the term "pee myself", so that seems to be the growing speculation of what might happen with surprised birthday girls....

For the sleepover-turned-into-surprise-party planned for tomorrow night, it appears the cat is out of the bag.  You can't trust five-year-olds to keep too much under their hats.  Or in their mouths.

Actually, that's why we do it - it's so dang-gone fun to hear them plan and almost tell, plan and whisper and giggle, then plan and OOPS!  it slipped out.

Milliebeans just called me with her confession - "I was just whispering to mommy - and ADDY HEARD ME SAY IT!" she yelled into the phone.

Which is kind of remarkable, because Addy doesn't hear lower voices all that well.

Her mom said it was just like that, except for the "whispering" part......

We laughed and laughed.  Millie and me.  Addy and me.  Then her mommy and me.

Popop said "Milliebeans - you spilled the beans!"  

***

So I asked Addy what she was wanting for her birthday.  I had made her sister twin blankets to go with her Bitty Baby Twins.  I kept going and made two burp cloths.  Then a changing pad.

It turned out better than I expected after, oh, maybe a fifteen year siesta from sewing.  Not great or perfect by any means, but better than I thought it would.

When I asked Addy what she wanted for her doll, she replied immediately "A sleeping bag!!"

So, I started to make one.  Then made two.  And I thought and I thought what to add to them and suddenly my brain said "TENT!  Make a tent!"

Which in some stories is where they insert what they call "the beginning of the end".

I thought I could just whip it out in like two hours - how hard could a tent be - a couple of supports, some fabric stretched over it and Voila!  - you have a tent.

American Girl doll factory, eat your heart out.

I'm on my way to keeping $75 in my pocket.

I didn't have a pattern.  Why, why, would one spend money on a pattern and directions on something so simple??

The fool asks in her heart.

While starting to measure and cut and think and sew it all seemed to start to take shape nicely.

Then, the world tottered a little on its axis and my best laid plans crumpled on the dining room table.

I said the words "no, no, no, no, NO!" maybe 15,478 times.

I hit my head on the table a few times.  Just softly bumping it, but it fell hard sometimes when realizing the error of my way.

The mess just kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger.  I couldn't think of a way to remedy the flaps - simple tent flaps took well over three hours to simmer inside my brain, bubbling noisily, seeking solution.

I got out the seam ripper and ripped.  I got out the rolling cutter again and cut it down.

Then realized I didn't want it cut down.

I got out the second seam ripper because I couldn't find where I laid down the first one.

If you saw a picture of my dining room table full of tent fabric and cotton batting and cardboard that didn't work and plastic that didn't work and a tomato stake poll that didn't work - you would have also seen my kitchen scissors lying there in the midst of it all, because I mislaid two - TWO - pairs of sewing scissors.

My brain cannot remember where anything has been laid down.  I have systems worked out for car keys, makeup, kitchen knives, anything I want to find more than once.  But anything laid lazily, mindlessly, errantly aside, is gone forever in my brain these days.

And obviously gone from the home as well - I still haven't found either pair of sewing scissors.

Back to the tent flaps, I was almost in the throes of despair and desperation and very close to dialing the number on the website for the American Doll store, wondering with a sinking feeling just how much overnight shipping was going these days, when in walked Scott.

I was a pretty dismal sight.  I told him I had this spankin' idea, it all looked good in my head this morning, but it just wasn't going to work.

I asked him if he knew how much overnight shipping was now.

He surveyed the current work situation, and said decidedly: "we are going to Joann's".

Just the fact that Scott said that should raise a few eyebrows.  Scott has layers of beliefs:  God, family, country, history, baseball and the firm belief that Joann Fabrics is the seventh layer of hell laid out in Dante's Inferno.

So if you know Scott, you more than likely know his disdain for fabric stores, leaving you with the heavy knowledge that he definitely took a bullet for the team here and that I must have looked pretty dismal for those words to even fall out of his mouth.

*Decidedly*, fall out of his mouth.  

And he fixed it.  He and the sales lady found the foam board to use, along with insisting I buy enough velcro, because dangit, I. am. cheap. and velcro is expensive.  

I sat down this morning at the sewing machine and put five, ok six, more hours into a one hour job.

But it's completed, and we are decorated all up for a little party tomorrow night.

***

I was laying on the couch the other night as I have been mostly the last two weeks after 6pm, (and that's after my 3pm nap) and I told Scott I think I knew what was wrong with me the past couple of weeks.

He looked at me as only a husband can when wanting to listen to sports but knowing he needs to feign interest because his beloved wife is making a statement.

He paused the tv, looked at me, and I said:  "I think I'm allergic to radiation."

I have been wiped out the last couple of weeks.  There is the kind of 'wipe-out' when you are stressed and I know that kind and it just wasn't it.

It was very reminiscent of the kind of wipe-out you feel when your white blood cells have tanked and your red blood cells fall right down the black hole after them.  There just wasn't any energy reserve.  I didn't need to take sleep meds again.

Which has happened only twice in the last two decades of my life - the first being the six weeks I was in - feel my brain racing for connection here -- radiation - and the wipe-out period of the three months following.

So my brain is making some connections, and it connected this fatigue back to radiation.

I told him that when the scans start, I can smell the radiation.  My nose feels funny and the room feels different.  I can feel it's presence as it goes down my body.

Call me crazy, call me dense, but I know radiation, and it makes me almost sick when the machine starts to scan my body.

I continued with one more statement before he un-paused the tv.  I told him I didn't think I should have anymore scans.

He looked at me, smiled, then waited a bit.  He didn't say anything, just eventually turned back to sports.

He knows I'll go back for my follow-up scan.  I know I'll go back for my follow-up scan.  But we both know I hate the 'smack-downs' that seem to come afterwards.  

***

Someone sent me a video clip of a young pastor with brain cancer.  I watched five minutes of it, and then our electricity had to be cut because our son was working on our lights, and then Scott was home and I knew I shouldn't watch it in front of him, but I could not agree more with what the guy had to say in the first five minutes.

None of us know "our time".

None of us know the day, the hour, the place, the cause of our demise.

But if there's one thing that the last almost two years have taught me, it is the knowledge that I know I "need to number my days" and make them count, because there is a countdown going on, and sometimes, sometimes, you get a "heads-up" that it might be sooner than you thought.

It might not be, but then again it might.

We could walk outside one day and be struck by lightening.  We could be driving down 71 and be the one leaving in the ambulance, having your car towed away on top of a flatbed truck.  Anyone of us could have something, somewhere sometime go wrong with our bodies and not get home that night.

It's a fact of life.

What's difficult is knowing that you are closer to the end of that line than you thought.  It's difficult knowing this was your life and you spent it like a fool sometimes.  It's difficult realizing your loved ones just might not know how much you cared, because you just didn't have time.

It's difficult - but it impresses on you to change up some things.  Change up the fact that you need to connect more.  Change up the fact that relationships are more important than we ever imagined.  Change up the fact that what you do tomorrow will affect the future of someone - whether you do it or not, it will affect them.

So we are taking the time tomorrow to have a little party.  Our house will be trashed.  Their imaginations are astounding when it comes to using everyday objects to make outstanding, spectacular palaces.  Or messes, whichever side of six years old you land on.

But it's pretty glorious, and we love to watch them and play with them and talk with them and interact with them - they are pretty amazing.

We want them to know how much we cared.

Because now more than ever we know, you get just one life to live.

It's that time of year again.....

Like most Americans, I remember exactly where I was on September 11, 2011.  I was at the Bailey Lakes Veterinary Office taking calls until someone could come in and take over the phone, then I was on my way to another office.  I had the radio on while I was taking morning phone calls and went back to tell the veterinarian and assistant doing surgeries that "a plane had run into one of the twin towers".  That's kind of how the news was going the first ten minutes maybe - that some loony-toons idiot got off course and ran his little airplane into a skyscraper in New York city.

That was not that hard to believe.

What was hard to believe was what happened next.  It was hard to hear our president say the words "America is under attack".  It was hard to comprehend that someone could hi-jack an airliner  full of fuel and plow it into a building. It was hard to believe that America could be attacked, period.

That was hard to believe.

People leaving the second tower because they saw what had happened to the first tower were told "your building is secure, go back to work".  One man had started to leave the lobby of the south  tower, heard the intercom announcing 'safety', looked at his bosses in the elevator holding the door for him to go back up, decided it was safe, and went back up to his desk on the 81st floor.

We Americans hate to over-react.

We Americans could not believe there would be something worse still after the first plane hit.

I remember very clearly that day my feeling of dread growing in my belly.  I knew on a different level what this day meant.  I knew we could not suffer this attack without declaring war somewhere on some level.

I knew the attack meant that every soldier in the United States was immediately put on alert.  I knew it meant that every soldier was suddenly checking his gear.  I knew it meant every soldier set their eyes forward and readied themselves for a callup.

I needed to connect to the soldier in my life that morning.  I called my son and took a long go-around to stop in to see him and finally get a chance to watch the actual footage of what was happening.

We all knew as a family instantly what was happening as we watched the footage on tv that day with horror - there was going to be a war - and things were never going to be the same.  Ever.

***

Sitting at one of my son's Psyop graduation ceremonies a year earlier, we were told that the soldiers and their families seated in that auditorium should all prepare for deployment.  Not a deployment in ten years, not a deployment after years and years of training, but a rapidly approaching turn of world events was indicating a deployment soon.  It was going to happen so be prepared.  They didn't know where, they didn't know how, but it would be happening and they needed to be prepared.

I remember praying that it wouldn't happen.  I remember thinking this was a military base and they were just over-reacting to the recent events in the world, and even though I myself thought the times felt "pregnant" to produce mayhem, I prayed we were all wrong.

'Things' just didn't happen in America.  We were all safe here.  'Things' happened everywhere else, but not here.

But now with my son's involvement in the military, my family was tethered to the fact that a war would be felt intensely because someone we all loved would be one of the first responders to any threat or attack.

My family, dispersed all over, all watched the tv closely on 9/11 like every other American that day - with horror, and sharp intakes of breath, and prayers for all involved - but we also watched it maybe one level deeper as maybe all military families did that day as well - we knew it meant what the speaker at the ceremony had said a year before we should all be prepared for - we knew it meant war.

My husband, my daughters, myself all knew that the little five year old boy that had practiced throwing his GI Joe's out his bedroom window with paper towel parachutes, then himself believing he could do the jump as well - and he did with minimal damage - we all knew that little boy that mostly wore a too big camo shirt that he continued wearing for four more years making it become too small - we all knew that boy that we loved was going to be thrown into harm's way fast.

And a dread was implanted inside of us that would stay there solidly until we saw that grown boy-man walk back into his unit base four years later and hug his mother and father and sisters like he had been brought back from the dead.

It was a dread that most Americans not connected to the military did not understand nor know.

Even after 9/11.

***

The feeling of "sense of pregnant dread" growing within me has occurred several times in my life.  Most recently, fighting cancer has seen that deep "knowing-dread" return.

It's difficult for me to explain. We have known loss and sorrow.  We have known financial loss a couple times over.  We have lost our home and belongings in a house fire - driving away with half of a pick-up truck load of things retrieved.  We have suffered intense emotional grief at the hands of those that we thought we could trust that handed back suffering and heartache beyond words.

My daughter sent me a card one time that I have treasured, and it said "just the fact that you said our house fire was anti-climatic".....  And it was.  Losing everything in a fire was not as difficult as listening to a child tell you of horrors they experienced at the hands of people I thought cared and loved us.

There is a beat of a different drum with those that have suffered and tried to walk it out with God.  You can always tell the "fake traumatics" - I've listened to Christian radio a lot in my past and would literally cry out to God to make some of them just stop.

Just stop giving platitudes.  Just stop repeating paragraphs in someone's book telling you how to "handle it".  Just stop sounding like suffering is not what it is because God will teach you differently.

I have lived long enough to hear those same ones that "trotted" through suffering on a rainbow of sunshine and love in God's fake-front universe they created, hit the earth hard when faced with the fact that it was not so, and God was walking them not out of suffering, but directly into it's belly.

Suffering is difficult.  It is overwhelming at times.  It can wash you out to sea if you are not careful.
And suffering is where God can teach you some of the deepest things.  It's where you learn most about needing others and creating honest community with those around you.

***

Watching the news the past couple of weeks, you don't have to be a learned theologian to at least raise one eyebrow on the happenings in the world about us.

Especially if you read Revelations, Daniel, Isaiah.

No matter how you interpret those prophecies, or even if you believe they are prophecies, there is no denying that we are hurtling towards something of great dread again.

Someone was telling me a couple of weeks ago about a speaker they had heard, and relayed that he believed that we were in the "end times".  Right now.

He believed that soon we will see the "abomination of desolation" go up in Israel.  He believes it will happen close to Passover, and when we see that, we should "head to the wilderness".  He relates it to Exodus and says that during the last three and a half years of tribulation, we will have to leave our homes and basically live in the wilderness areas where God will guide us just as he did the Israelites when they left Egypt.  He thinks the 'second Exodus' will happen right after Passover, just like it did in Egypt.

He notes that "God will guide us".  And further, he commented that there will be a huge apostasy, where many will turn away from Christ because they thought they would not have to go through any of the tribulation period........and when (if) they find they do, they cannot handle it.

Lots of people believe lots of different things.  Some believe we will be "raptured" out and not see any suffering.  Some believe we will go "mid-trib" - meaning in the middle of the tribulation.  Some believe that it will not be until after the tribulation that the rapture will happen.

Some don't believe any of it and think that it was prophecy meant for another time, another generation.

Honestly, I don't get into those arguments.  After years and years of reading the Bible, collecting other's views on it, and turning it over and over in my mind, I always come to one ending - we are told to know the Word so that when things happen we say "Ahh!  That's what that meant!"

I'm afraid we spend way too much time pondering other's words, and not the Word of God.

At any rate, I have come to the conclusion that the above speaker's words are true in the fact that "many do not think they will go through tribulation" (my paraphrase).

Whether there will be a great tribulation or not, there is no reason to believe that America is immune to suffering, wars, attacks, and great loss of life.  Many people in Europe during WWII believed they were living in the "Great Tribulation" - but it wasn't.  And that was suffering at it's worst.

I wonder a lot how Americans would look in that situation.  I'm so afraid this generation, this time in the life of our country, we would maybe look a lot like the greedy, self-important Americans portrayed in any number of "reality shows".

I mean, really, what other "heroes" on tv are there for our youth to pattern themselves after?

Outwit, outlast, outplay.  That's kind of become our mantra.

***

Except for the past two years of my life.  God has opened a side journey to me that has been remarkable in how He has bestowed upon me the idea of community and just how really important that is.

We don't get by in life by outwitting, outlasting and outplaying our co-workers.  We are not allowed to let grief and sin and hurt and spite grow in our midst - superficially 'forgiving' but not correctly - and not have it affect the whole body of believers.

This time of year brings me once again to the beginning of my journey - Yom Kippur - The Day of Atonements.  The day that the Bible commands we keep.  The day that some believe that God's ear is closest to His creation.

The Jews have a saying or belief that "there are 70 faces to every Word of God".  Seventy levels of understanding on each scripture.

Today, I believe that.  Last year, Yom Kippur was all about regretting, and re-examing and re-trying all the hurts I had done to others - both intentional and unintentional.  Trust me, being in the midst of chemo, I had a lot of time to review, repair and truly repent and make right where it was needed.

This year, I have been listening to a Kaballah Rabbi and his whole take on Yom Kippur and Rosh Hoshannah is that it is the idea of "returning".

He tells the story of a prince whose father, the king, thought should get to know his subjects, his people.  The king sent him out to live amongst them, leaving his royal clothes behind, leaving his servants, his royal food, his royal carriages.  He was to learn the dialect of the common people and learn what made them happy, what grieved them, how hard it was to live under some royal laws and what made good royal laws.

Basically, he was to learn life to make him better for his future.

After several years of living in the midst of the people he one day sees the royal carriage go by in parade and says "Hey!  That's my father - the father I miss so much!"  and he runs to the castle only to be denied admittance.  The guards do not recognize him.

They won't allow him entrance.

He starts to cry bitterly and yells "Abba!"  "Father!"  "Daddy!"  "Let me in, please".  His father hears him through an open window and realizes his son has returned.

And that is what the Rabbi was teaching that these fall festivals the Bible talks about were to bring us to:  a returning.

Sometimes we are not overwhelmed with our grievous sins over the past year.  Sometimes, we just need to look up and see the royal carriage going by and realize we miss our Father so much.

We need to return.

***

As I watch the world news, and frown at the import of this time in our history and the history of the world, I feel we as a nation are far from a 'return'.

Before going into temple in the time of Jesus, Jews would do a mikvah.  It's kind of like a "bath" idea, but not meant to be an actual bodily cleansing bath, but rather a symbol of entering before God with purity and holiness.  They say "My heart, my hands, my feet, my head" - purifying their hearts, their works (hands), their feet (journeys), and head (thoughts) and sanctifying it all before God.

That's kind of an awesome idea.  To return, I visualize a mikvah and turn it all over to God.

The Jews have another idea correct - the idea of suffering and all that it entails.  It's not about being positive, dismissing any "negativity", getting out of the gutter, pulling oneself up by the bootstraps or any such phenomena.

To return to the above speaker, I am concerned about where our church is at when it comes to suffering - because - because - what if we have to suffer?????

We have hundreds of thousands of soldiers returning from a place in the world that was not safe, nor may never be and their senses have been alerted to a fact most of us pretend is not there:  America could be paralyzed on any given day.  They don't have the sense of safety that they left their military bases with long ago.  

We have hundreds of thousands of soldiers that have suffered severely, seen death and carnage, and cannot shake that.  They feel they walk on a different plane in this country.  They know things that most others don't.  They have seen things most others cannot comprehend happening.

They are aware there is great suffering in the world, and they fear it is knocking on our very door now.  They don't understand how others can be so incredibly blind.

Once I was pointed in the direction of PTSD for my own emotional health, I started to research it, of course, on the internet.

Almost all of PTSD searches end with soldiers returning home.

Returning is so difficult.

Returning to a people that don't want to hear, or don't want to acknowledge that there is hurt and suffering and that we so need the idea of community in our lives - returning to what looks like superficiality is most devastating.

Returning to a people that believe all we have to do is outwit, outlast, outplay our fellow humans without any complications or considerations or consequences is beyond their depth of perception.

They come home sometimes because someone else sacrificed themselves for them.  They come home sometimes with eyes that hurt every time they see a child alongside of the road.  They come home sometimes and cannot fit in, because they are told to "forget it".  "Live a little".  "Don't let it consume you".

They come home to a people they went to war for, that do not understand them, and they cannot tell anyone of the suffering they have seen because no one wants to hear it.

I relate to that.

And I relate to a rabbi telling a tale about a king in a kingdom far away that wants to hear all about the kingdom at it's worst and best, what happens at it's very core.  Because in hearing the bare facts, one can make a difference.  In understanding suffering, one can draw near to a King and whisper the hardship and suffering he observed and felt himself in His ear, allowing us to walk through it all and have us make a difference along the way.

But if we refuse to learn suffering now, how do we react to it when we need to know?

Most Amercians plan on the rapture happening before they suffer.  And it might.

But what if it doesn't?

Can we walk that journey, or have we spent too much time trying to not understand hardship and difficulty and suffering to believe that none of that can happen inside the kindgom of God?

Even when we have watched and read and seen with our very eyes that suffering is a lot of times what God walks us directly into?

Can we walk into that wilderness and trust God for each drink of water, each morsel of food?  Can we stand and watch others being slaughtered and still not have it shake our faith and still cling to the One that created life?

Can we be laid low with a disease that decimates us, and still belong to a God that is loving?

***

I am sick to my toes of listening to people "preach" about our welfare state, about food stamp abuse, about all the things they feel self-righteously-smug about, having never weathered anything close to any suffering to place them in those positions.

We all know there are abuses, but we all know there is great need.  I talk to patients every time I sit in a waiting room that have lost their jobs, lost their homes, lost everything to fight cancer.  They are suffering ten-fold.

Our streets are full of homeless veterans that cannot connect back to the lifestyle of the rich and carefree when stepping back onto their home-soil.

Our hard-heartedness has contributed to this need.

We need to be so careful to not be the one saying "Your building is secure.  Return to your places".

I close with this piece, a portion of a Berean's Online newsletter.  You may want to read it as maybe you will be sent walking the path of suffering one day....

...We are tempted to "exercise righteous judgment" when we observe others. What we may not understand, is that there is a difference between judging deeds, and judging faith. While it is true that faith and deeds are inseparable, when it comes to others we are never instructed to judge their faith.

But we do. A lot. Sometimes we do it in the most egregious ways. We even do it in response to people in pain. We hear questions like, "Why is G-d doing this to me?" and immediately launch into lectures about the consequences of sin, or HaShem trying to get their attention. Or worse, we smugly answer the question in our minds as we look down our noses at their lack of faith. But such questions are not lacking in faith. In fact, they are founded upon the deepest faith of all – the belief that HaShem is working in this world, and the one in pain not understanding how HaShem's plan is revealed in pain. The faithless do not ask such questions.

At other times, we listen to the people express their "faith" in unscriptural ways. They make theologies up out of whole cloth. Our response too often is to dismiss them and their misguided doctrine – considering them completely blind to G-d. Even though we do not see their hearts, and cannot know the questions and struggles that they face – and whether HaShem is watering seeds of faith that have yet to spring forth in visible fruit. We may have a list of "non-negotiable" doctrinal points (which may be correct), and use them to discount the power of the Almighty in the lives of others. In which case, who is the one lacking faith?

Should we judge our own deeds, and our neighbors? Yes, with HaShem’s righteous standard, the Torah. May we judge others "lack faith"? G-d forbid.

Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another? It is before his own master that he stands or falls. And he will be upheld, for the L-rd is able to make him stand.

Romans 14:4

And this for now, closes my thesis on suffering.  My day of atonement is close at hand, then we feast and celebrate and do indeed count our blessings.  For there are many even in the desert of suffering.