Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Where I'm From

I've been itching to do this since I saw it on Jennifer's blog last week - but time, it gets in the way.


There is a template to do this exercise and it is a mind-stretcher....


In doing this, I pulled up Google maps of my old neighborhood using street view.  And wow, did it put things in perspective for me.  I remembered being poor, but seeing the grounds I lived my first 14 years in, and remembering them having always been exactly that way - not merely run down by time as my husband suggested - really brought it home for me how vastly different my life is today.  Kelso, WA, particularly South Kelso, where I grew up, is very poor.


I am from overcast skies, from Weyerhaeuser paper and totem poles


I am from tired and worn streets with semis parked in front of dilapidated homes, from backyard slews whose banks were littered with treasures neighborhood hobos had left behind for The Boxcar Children


I am from the unruly wild blackberry brambles, ancient forests of the giant Douglas Firs with spongy trails to explore, and the scarred horizon St. Helens left behind


I am from friendship outweighing blood when it comes to who gets the title of Aunt, strong women drinking coffee and Kahlua (decades before the happy hour playdate ever made the Today Show), from Mamie  and Shearan Ann and Tara Melody


I am from the we fight because we love each others and pleas to rise above it all


From Daddy’s gone away and social services entangled in all aspects of life


I am from a hodgepodge of invitations to church with neighbors and friends. From the VBS’s held by kind, white-haired ladies at the clubhouse of the housing projects each year


I'm from the poverty of Arkansas jumping at the opportunity of the Northwest timber industry, from Scots and Irish who worked hard and drank harder, from sweet tea and Sunday night family suppers of pork and dumplings (Grandma detested chicken)


From the woman who worked three jobs to keep food on our table, teachers who gave more than a damn and actually changed lives, and the three best buds a girl could ask to play The Boxcar Children with


I am from a cardboard box in a cool basement storage room in NW Colorado, a thousand plus miles from where I started, in which baby books, recorded by a poor, teenage girl’s bubbly script, attempt to demonstrate the love she always struggled with showing as we got older.  Those words, may as well have been written in gold – for they show that she always intended to try her best; I know now that she did


********
Next, I'd like to write one for how I hope my children would fill theirs out....

Friday, June 17, 2011

Quotable...

Last night I was driving the kids back from the Boys and Girls Club and the topic of conversation was fixated on their impending sleepovers with friends.

We were talking transportation, and I told Middleton we'd pick up his friend, Birthday Buddy, after we got Screech and were heading home.  Special K pipes up, "But what about A?" (A is her friend who will also be staying over, and driving home with us).

At that moment I realize, indeed, as initially planned, we would have more children than seatbelts, and I said, "Well, we'd figure something out."

Special K then suggests, "You should drop me and A off, and then go get Birthday Buddy, because we're responsible.  For a minute or two, anyway."

I laughed and laughed at her candor and accuracy.

Saturday, June 11, 2011

I'm compelled to tell the kettle it's black

According to the old adage, that'd make me a pot, eh?  Guess that would also make me black (taking a wild stab here, but I'd assume this cliche was born in the era of cast iron).

A few weeks ago, when I started this blog, I thought I might convince myself [and you!] to quit wallowing in the sea of self-deprecation and dive on into the less familiar waters of self-acceptance.

Hah...I wrote this and a day later, while running!, heard a new[er] song by Jennifer Knapp [LOVE her!] that has a similar theme of water and self-acceptance - crazy. Check this out: 
I'm so tired of standing on the edge of myself.  You know I'm longing for it.  To dive in, dive in
Alas, I've been in a funk.

I've felt distant from God, due to my own reluctance to engage with Him or His Word.  It's not that I'm struggling with faith or have stopped believing...it's more just a hard time feeling His presence and thus not feeling up to doing the work to find Him again.

And with that, everything seems wrong....

My cluttered house is not at all like the neighbors' homes, which albeit just as small as ours, are well organized and decorated and always clean.

My friends who are going here and there to eat and to this show or that event are so lucky.  We've been home bound and while I like to cook, the kitchen seems like such a ball and chain when the budget is non-gourmet and time is slim.

 And vacation? What is that?  As Special K is fond of pointing out, we never go on vacation.  Save for an occasional weekend camping trip or visit to Craig, she's right.  

One of my personal favorites though, is how my children are the ones that make everyone else's look like angels when in the company of other parents/children.

The other old fave?  Body image.  Sigh.

A friend of mine invited us to her neighborhood pool the other day, and we gladly accepted the reprieve from 90 degree weather.  I normally don't have too much issue with swimsuits these days b/c usually the other mothers have comparable bodies to mine.  There is confidence in numbers of other women bearing the evidence of motherhood.  Not so [for me] in this neighborhood.  It is a more affluent area and it wasn't just that they were all so pretty in the face and thin with flat tummies, no, it was the 6-12 month old babies they each had on their laps with nary a stretch mark or bulge to show for it that got to me.  I felt the unevenness of my wayward unbraced teeth press against my lips in self-consciousness, and it seemed like each instance of cellulite on my wide thighs (many, no exaggeration) pushed outward like goosebumps.  Was I in Stepford? I began to wonder.

I'm up 12lbs from where I was 6 months ago and the clothes fit tighter.  This is largely due to the lack of running I've done over the winter/early spring.  Said lack of running was caused by a number of factors, namely the damnable winds we had.

I'm just trying to sufficiently set the stage for y'all to understand the pity party my mind has been of late.

I had a breakthrough this week though.

I was determined to start running regularly and be active again.

So I went Tuesday.  Ran 1.5 miles before I had to walk, and did intermittently walked and ran for a total of 4 miles.

Wednesday night we rode our bikes as a family to/from church (12 miles).  I had a mtg afterward for upcoming camp and the fam left 20ish minutes before me.  I caught them for the last 5 minutes of our ride home (with kids it's about 40 minutes) - I was booking it!

Thursday I ran and walked for 3.8 miles, averaging a 13:38/mile pace.

Yesterday, I ran a full 3.5 miles before caving to walking (albeit with a potty break at about 2.6 miles), and walked the remaining .5 of my loop.

All of this activity has been awesome and just this spark I've needed to recapture glimpses of God.  Soaking up His sunny days, singing along with my worship and praise music, and the awesome reminder of just how far physically He's brought me in the past two years, together, these things have revived my desire for Him and for serving my family, helped me get back on track, and given me an overall sense of zen that I've been lacking for quite awhile.

Guess that means it's true.

I'm a Christian runner.

When I'm not true to that, when I don't carve out time for my runs with God, everything else in life falls apart.

Friday, June 3, 2011

Scars

I've been in something of a quandary lately regarding just how open a person ought* to be in the age of Facebook and instant information being at the ready with a few clicks of a mouse.

*said level of openness gauged by the fact that colleagues, church members, old friends you really have no intention of being truly intimate with again, etc can know pretty much whatever you decide to put out there in 2.5 seconds flat thanks to Google and/or Facebook.

It's been said by many a blogger that blogging is a much cheaper alternative to therapy, and I'd count myself in that chorus.  I've rehashed old wounds, sought validation, and fixated on the scars left behind via this medium.  And I've loved it.

But Facebook came along, and in my attempts to pursue the commercial blogging route I posted my blogfeed on Facebook.  It garnered hits, for sure.  But suddenly, people reading were no longer random connections on the internet - no, there were my Sunday pewmates - many of whom I didn't go past the "Hi, how are you?" depth of conversation while face to face - and fellow do-gooders - many of whom could be potential references or employers - reading all about my sordid past, my marital issues, my inability to balance a checkbook, etc. and then two things would happen: 1.) These people, who I knew fairly superficially, would come up to me (face to face at church or via post/msg on blog/FB) and suddenly know all about me with me knowing little to nothing about them - and lopsided intimacy pretty much sucks, y'all; it tends to generate pity.  2.) Other people did NOT want to know these things and thus began to avoid me.  And that's not awkward at all, right?

So then I started to question myself.  Have I just shot myself in the foot with all of these confessional posts?  Have I become one of those people who is TOO open?

And cue the music...I begin to hear the Newsboys asking me:

Why you holdin' grudges in old jars /  Why you wanna show off all your scars? / What's it gonna take to lay a few burdens down?  / It's a beautiful sound....

Scars are a funny thing.  Most of the time, they go unnoticed, but every now and again, they might itch and beg for attention, drawing your mind to them.

They, like most things in life, can mean very different things with a shift in perspective; scars can signify victimization and burden us with baggage, or they can remind us of battles from which we emerged victorious, stronger, and bless us with gratitude.

I find that I cycle through these two perspectives, and that sometimes, the latter one can resemble the first when we get stuck on describing the battle.  A lot of my writing after I faced my own mortality two years ago fell in this category...

In the end, I decided to own my scars and to count them as mementos of triumph versus reliving all the bad.  But here's the thing....by pretending I don't have any scars, i.e. not acknowledging them, robs me of opportunity to witness just how far God has delivered me.  So I will continue to write - albeit more cautiously with respect to who my audience may be.

Sidenote - an appropos exchange with the kids re: scars:
Middleton: Mama, Special K says you have thousands of scars!  Do you?
Me: Well, I wouldn't say thousands...
Special K: Would you say hundreds?
Me: Hmmm...I'm not sure.
Middleton: well, which ones doe you have?
Me: Well, I have my scar from surgery, two scars from the chest tubes, two from the pic lines, one on my neck, the time I had stitches as a kid....
Then as my shirt rode up and I caught glimpse of my crepe paper belly with lines of silver all over it, I laughed.
Me: You might just be right, Special K.  I could have thousands of scars.  They're called stretch marks, and they all remind me of that special time when you were inside my belly!


Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Packing Up

It's time to move on from this place.

5 years is a long time, and I'm finding that I'm just not the same person I was when I started this blog.  I've moved on and started another - but am somewhat cautious about inviting everyone I know to it.  If you wish to follow, simply send me an email at hthrmyr (at) gmail (dot) com.

Blessings!

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