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Thursday, August 29, 2013

House Rules: Be honest, work hard, and trust God

I can honestly say that I look around most days and wonder why I've been so blessed to live this amazing life.  I have everything I've ever wanted, and so much more than I need.

If you glance from a distance, you may think it's all come easily, that I've just been lucky.  And in some ways, you'd be right.  I'm lucky that I got a scholarship for college and that my parents paid my living expenses.  But I worked hard to make the grades and test scores that got me that scholarship, and to earn my parent's trust to live away from home.  I'm lucky that I ran into my soul mate living right on my dorm floor freshman year of college.  But I had to work through whether he was the best man for me, overcome lots of obstacles along the way, and continue to work hard to keep the strong marriage I have.  I'm lucky that I got pregnant easily, when so many struggle, had a healthy pregnancy and full-term baby girl, when many do not.  But I nearly lost her once when she was only 2, and I will never forget that day.  And every day since, I can't help thinking how easy it would be for her or her little brother to be taken away from this life in an instant.

If I had to boil down the rules of our household into a single statement, it would be this:  Be honest, work hard, and trust God.

My children know that telling the truth is extremely important (although we've had a few discussions about not being brutally honest, etc.).  They will get in much worse trouble if they do something wrong and try to hide it than if they come forward with a confession, and they know that parents typically have ways of finding out, eventually.

I expect a lot of my kids.  I expect a lot of myself.  I push them to work hard and always do their best.  I'm much more proud of hard effort that pays off (or sometimes even doesn't) than I am of their natural abilities and things that come to them with ease.  I have two intelligent children.  But intelligence alone does not get you far in this life.  Being "book smart" is nice, but what does that really get you if you don't apply it to living and helping others?  I'm probably a difficult, hard to please parent.  I imagine that's one of the things my kids will complain about me when they are grown.  I expect a lot.  But kids often only live up to what is expected of them.  I'd rather set high standards for them than no standards at all.  I just hope they know how much I still love them even when they do fall short.

Then there's the toughest one, tough for me to teach since it's been so difficult for me to learn.  With a controlling personality (though typically in a passive-aggressive, under-the-surface kind of way), I don't easily place my trust in others.  I've always been independent, and it's important for me to know that I could take care of myself and my kids on my own even though I have depended on my husband for a long time, too.  I've always believed in God.  It's the letting Him be in control and trusting part I struggle with.  See, I even still put it in terms of "letting Him", as if one little human has some sort of control over God.  It just feels like a safer world when we feel like we have some control.  And I'm certainly still a work in progress.  I just hope it is still something my kids are learning.

Be honest, work hard, and trust God.  Is life really more complicated than that?

Thursday, August 22, 2013

Man's best friend can be a cat, too.

Cats are amazing little creatures.  Some are standoffish and don't really connect with your family the way dogs nearly always do, but others wrap themselves around your heart.  Darrell and I have always had at least one cat, but only two have really completely connected with us.  It seems almost fitting that the same organs gave out on both of them.

Callie was our first baby.  She was our "practice" for being parents before having kids.  She was always tiny, never weighing more than seven pounds.  We didn't give her a very original name, for a calico cat.  She was always very dainty, stepping carefully around the nick nacks I used to have out before we had kids.  She was the constant in our lives as we moved from Morgantown, WV to Plymouth, MI to Raleigh, NC to Clayton, NC to Greenville, NC to Plymouth, MI to Fairmont, WV.  We were worried about how she'd treat our daughter when she was born, but Callie seemed to understand that she'd better be kind to the new tiny human in the house. 

But when I was pregnant with our son, Callie got very sick.  Her kidneys were failing, one of them may have never worked right, which may have been why she was always so small.  I gave her fluids every day for months.  Sometimes she'd rally for a while, other times she seemed near death.  It gave us about four more months with her, and I'll never be sorry for that.

Chester came into our lives quite differently.  Rather than us going to pick out a cute little kitten, he was wandering our neighborhood in Fairmont, WV, already a few years old when we met.  Our neighbors took him in first, thought he was female, and called him Junebug.  But they already had three cats and asked if we could take him in.  We did, even though we were moving soon.  We quickly found out he was male, and changed his name to Chester.  He handled the move well, and quickly showed that he was not the scaredy-cat his little brother Bailey was.  He insisted on going outside to sun himself and to hunt, and quickly made friends with several other families on our new street in Firebrook.

We always joked that Chester might not move even if we did someday, because he had several other admirers on Fireside Circle.  At least three other families kept treats for him regularly, and let him inside their houses even.  He was just that kind of cat.  When our son was little, he could pick Chester up by the paws or even tail, and Chester would just put up with it.  He understood that you shouldn't hurt children.  Even neighborhood children could do stuff like that to him, and he wouldn't scratch or even complain.  If an adult did similar or played too rough, he would scratch though.  He was quite the hunter, bringing home mice and birds for us to admire.  I didn't like that so much, but admired his skill.

Last fall, he got glaucoma and went blind in one eye.  We've been treating him with eye drops daily since then, with regular, expensive visits to vet ophthalmologists as well.  I'd do all that and more for him for years and years if needed.  But last week, it seemed like something else was wrong.  He was losing weight again and not moving around as much.  Both had happened before when his eye was painful, but his eye was pretty stable now.  He's never been as active since the eye issue, so I think that all masked what was wrong longer.  And he's such a brave, strong kitty anyway.

If a person were in as much pain, I'm quite sure we wouldn't even get out of bed.  Chester doesn't complain.  He doesn't look quite normal when he walks, has lost a lot of weight, and can't make it to the litter box well.  But he still tries.  He tries to eat.  He goes down to the basement even if he can't make it to the litter box.  He enjoyed a long walk outside last weekend even if he did have to stop every so often to rest.  But the last few days, he's also added coughing/dry heave spells to his list of symptoms.  It looks so painful and his little paws splay out each time.

When is the right time to stop a dear friend's suffering?  I wish he could tell me when the pain is just too much, but since he can't, it's a decision we have to make for him.  The vet said last Saturday that it would be just a matter of days, not weeks or months.  I wish she weren't right.  He has a huge tumor in one kidney, and the other is all shriveled up.  We don't even know exactly how old Chester is, but we still thought we'd have longer than seven years with him.

I miss him already.  I think today's the day to end his pain, but it tears me up to make that decision.  He knows that he is loved.

Many people say that pets don't go to heaven, because they don't have souls and it isn't talked about in the Bible.  I can't imagine them not being there though.  I think heaven will be everything we want it to be and more, and I suspect that our beloved pets will be right there with us.  Until then, Chester, we will miss you.

Friday, August 9, 2013

Half my life ago...

Can you name something that you've spent half of your life on?  I doubt that many of us could name much.  I haven't yet been a mother half of my life, nor have I spent half of my life yet on my career. But, at 42, I've spent half of my life married.

I joke that I'm going to start saying that I got married at age 10, and that being from West Virginia, maybe folks will believe me. But in truth, I'm proud to have made it this far in marriage.  Darrell and I have been through everything except childhood together.  We're both far from perfect.  We've had our ups and downs.  There have been days, or maybe even months, when I wasn't sure we'd make it this far.  There are days when I fear again that our marriage will not make it until the end.  But, every day, I know that our marriage is worth fighting for, and I don't intend to ever give up.

I told a friend recently that God's timing amazes me.  It's certainly no secret that we recently moved, and that since the move was from the place our roots ran the deepest as adults, it was (still is) a major upheaval in our lives.  Darrell and I were going through one of those downturns in our marriage about a year ago.  It wasn't anything that would rip us apart, and really neither of us were doing anything you could call wrong.  But we weren't as connected or close as we usually are.  If he had suggested at that point that we move, I might very well have told him to go ahead and move on his own.  But that's not when it happened.  Luckily, or maybe by God's divine plan all along, the potential of a move didn't even come up until about six months later.  By that time, we were through the rough patch.  Was it still tough?  Of course, but we were back to being a strong, united team, and so it was much easier than it could have been otherwise.

Most days, I can't believe I'm old enough to be married 21 years in just a few days.  Most days, I wonder how I ever got to be twice that age anyway.  I remember walking down that aisle, being sure that I was marrying the right man.  I remember the times I've wanted to hold Darrell tight and never let him go, looking in his eyes sometimes being amazed that we have all that we do together.  I remember the times I've wanted to strangle him.  And yes, sometimes the two extremes can happen in the same day.

I hear of strong marriages breaking every day.  I don't want that to happen to us.  I hope we're doing all that we can to stay together.  And yet I still wonder if that's true.

It gives me hope to see my own parents holding hands more these days, to see them snuggle together on the couch.  I hope that's us in 21 more years.  I hope we can watch our grandchildren, together, someday.

I hope I'll be able to let you know how it turns out in another 21 years...