Double Vision

On this, the last day of 2014, I consider what matters.

At this moment, I am on a medicine called Triazolam because in about half an hour, I go to my dentist to end the year with not one, but two root canals. During one of those, he will remove a stainless steel cap that has been over my molar for over a decade, nearly two. There may not be a tooth under there. Who knows?

Teeth matter. I should stop abusing them with soda and sugar.

Triazolam matters. If I wasn't on this, I wouldn't be able to go through with dental appointments.

Vision matters. Without it, I wouldn't be able to function well in the world I live in. Right now I can't seem to focus on anything further than the computer screen. If I do venture a look at the tv, I find myself asking which one is the real tv.

Perspective matters. The way we view an object or person is essential to the way that we treat them. Lately I find that I have been treating most people, and some objects, with remarkable amounts of disdain.  

Disdain - feeling that someone is unworthy of your consideration or respect.

I've not often thought of myself as high amongst men, but I am guilty of thinking that others are the lowest among then. I am a Judgy McJudgerson. You should read the post I wrote on our way to MT. You will know in an instant the bitterness and hatred I feel in my heart.

Disdain matters. Because it's the exact opposite of what my God would teach me is correct.

God matters. In recent months I've allowed myself to fall into a passive relationship with Him. He's kind of like that brother I super love but don't often speak about. God has once again become a "Maybe you should stay over here and I'll just be doing my own thing" type of God.

God matters, because without Him, I am the ultimate dill weed.

Here's that thing I wrote on the way to MT for Chistmas:

I got off facebook a few weeks ago because I noticed myself being filled with rage at some of the things I was seeing. That isn't necessarily the problem of the poster, but the reader. So I deactivated for a bit. the reality is, though, that facebook is the easiest way for me to communicate to my east coast family. And so I signed on once more.

Not five minutes later, I saw a picture: It was a Christmas tree. It was presents. It was one particular present. And then I saw red.

Stories from the man's childhood are typically tragic and usually connected with an object of some kind. I don't think I need to speak again about the Legos. There was another story he told me, about a beloved stuffed animal, a favorite present: a giant dinosaur from The Land Before Time.

It was cherished. It was loved. And, for no particular reason, it was unceremoniously tossed for the sake of convenience without regard to the feeling of the owner, a young boy who'd already had to experience more tragedy in his few years on earth than some people experience at all. 

I'm no stranger to favorite childhood toys being pulled from your arms and thrown away or, in my case, tossed into a fire. I had a favorite Cabbage Patch doll. Her name was Esther Lyn. She was one of those "preemie" dolls with a bald head, and she smelled like baby powder. I remember one year for our churches Harvest Party, I dressed up as the biblical Esther, but I carried my doll with me and told everyone that I was "Esther Lyn."

That doll was with me when my parents split up, when we moved from Texas to Virginia, in a time when I, as a young girl, couldn't fully comprehend what was happening to my family. 

Then one day, a few years later, we joined a homeschool group that mistakenly believed that inanimate objects could be possessed by demons or have demonic influence. One night, we went to our friends house for a bonfire, where instead of wood for burning, it was Care Bears and My Little Ponies and rock and roll albums, and secular books. It was troll dolls, and board games and movies. It was cabbage patch dolls. 

It was Esther Lyn.

One of the many differences between the man and me - he acknowledges what happened and moves on. Not so for me. I am still standing at the bonfire, feeling the injustice done to innocent ones who don't understand. I feel it for myself and I feel it for him. It's a burden I have no right to carry and I should let it go. But I look at him, and imagine that he was the age of my own children when it happened and I was not much older as well. Letting it go becomes much harder with that perspective, especially when no one has any remorse or regret.  

There is a verse in the bible that says by showing kindness to your enemies, you will heap burning coals on their heads. Part of me wonders if I can find it in my heart to be kind to my enemies one day.

Because I want to watch them burn.

My word for the New Year is "Active." I want to be active in all areas of my life, but spiritually is the main one. Passive faith is not where it's at, obviously. It hasn't worked for me all year.

I want to actively be a better person than the one in italics, and the only way I know how to do that is to actively pursue the God who is Love and not just wait for a miracle change without actually working toward it.

Pray for me this New Year, and I shall do the same for you.

Happy 2015.

High Horse of Sign

This is all from my personal experience and it's my personal opinion, so if you disagree that's ok.

You'd be wrong, but that's ok. Pay attention. We are leaping right into it.

If your child is born deaf, learn sign language. If you want your deaf child to talk, learn sign language.

If you make the decision early on to get a cochlear implant for your deaf child, learn sign language.

If you ascribe to the idea that deafness is a disease that should be cured, get an attitude adjustment.

And then learn sign language. 

Here's a small way learning sign language will improve quality of life for you and your deaf child: You will be able to communicate with them from a ridiculously early age and you will be able to understand each other. 

Highlight and underline the above sentence. Underline it again. Add multiple exclamation points to the end. 

When we found out our daughter was deaf, we started learning sign immediately. I didn't think that was anything special, it merely seemed like the logical step for us. I'll admit there was also a bit of stereotyping - she's deaf and deaf people sign. I'll also admit that behind the drive to learn sign was an all encompassing fear that something would happen to my baby and she would have no way to communicate it to us unless we spoke what I consider to be her native language.

Pretend you have been dropped into Japan, and no one speaks your native language. They only speak Japanese. It would be pretty frustrating trying to accomplish anything. Now imagine you can't hear.

A deaf child needs a language foundation on which to build all other language. If you as a parent fail to provide that, you will only cause your child to work that much harder in order to try to keep up, or in truth catch up, with their hearing peers. This is a mans world, so the song says. Yes, and for the majority it's also a hearing world. Give your deaf child the best chance to thrive in it and give them the gift of sign language. There isn't a downside to doing so. Only good things can come from it.

Hello? Only good things can come from learning sign for, and teaching it to, your child. By contrast, not teaching your child sign can have some very real consequences. They will have to work extra hard to speak a language they can't hear, and then will also have to learn lip reading to get what you are saying. And yes, that is a learned skill. It's not some magic thing that just happens. People still to this day tell me, not ask me but tell me, "Oh, but since your daughter is deaf she can read lips." Uh, no. She can't. And how is relying on that even ok? For God's sake, stop trying to do everything else except learn sign, accept the fact that your kid is deaf, embrace the uniqueness and go with it.

I'm not saying it's easy. Ok, actually, when your child is young it is pretty easy. Learn the basics. The basics will take you pretty far. I'd be happy to teach you the basics myself. I know family signs, food signs, colors, shapes, numbers, articles of clothing, animals, occupations, weather, office supplies, and a litany of other signs I would be more than happy to show you. I'm not the best, but I did learn, and am still learning, from the best.

Just do it. You'll never regret it.

Trust me. I'm a doctor. 

So Your Kid Is Deaf...

She is my firstborn child.

When she was born, it was amazing. I just remember feeling joy, like nothing I'd ever felt before. A few weeks later, a nurse would say to me, "You don't know what love is until you have a baby." That was true for me.

During her very first physical by her pediatrician, 24 hours after she was born, the doctor noticed that her ear lobes didn't match. I had been doing nothing but staring at that sweet little bundle of joy so I was surprised I hadn't noticed.

"They don't match," the doctor said, "but don't worry - it doesn't mean she's deaf."

The minute she said that was the minute I knew. I felt it in my heart, an absolute. She was deaf.

Her subsequent failure of the newborn hearing screening, and the failure of the next five tries, was confirmation. I remember talking to my mother and being so upset with the nurse, who kept assuring me it was fluid in her ears and once it cleared out, she would pass the test and be fine. I was angry with her for having me come in every few days to test her hearing when I knew she would never pass that test.

My husband was in denial a little longer than me. A mother knows, they say. But a father must discover it for himself.

"Look. She startled at that. She heard you close the door," he would say, or "She heard you clap your hands." She was two weeks old and we were getting ready to see fireworks on the fourth of July. He was standing on the street corner outside our apartment, holding her, when a fire truck passed so close he could have reached out and touched it. The horn blew, and he jumped.

But she didn't. When he walked in the door, he looked at me, and I will never forget the look on his face. It was like a multitude of emotions passed over his normally stoic demeanor in flash. And he said, "I think she's deaf."

There is no history of genetic hearing loss on either side of our families, as far as we know. And when there isn't a clear reason, you don't know where to place the blame.

My mother blamed immunizations, particularly all the ones my husband and I received while we were in the military. Other blamed the fact that I had consumed alcohol before I found out I was pregnant (I found out at four weeks).

I'd been reading through the gospels at the time, and came across John 9:1-4. Jesus is passing by a man who was born blind and His disciples ask him, "Who sinned,  the man, his mother or his father, that he should be born blind?" Jesus answered, "Neither him nor his parents sinned, but that the work of God should be revealed in him."

She was born exactly as she should have been. She was born to bring Him glory.

Unlike the story, however, I did not expect miraculous "healing." She was deaf, but I didn't feel like there was anything wrong with her. When she was six weeks old, we took her to church for the first time. The pastor preached a sermon about bad things happening, but God being in control. Toward the end, he began to list the struggles that some of the congregation was going through. People struggling with broken bones, with surgeries, with cancer, with the death of loved ones. And in the middle of the list, and in front of everyone, he points at us.

"Their child was born deaf, but God is in control."

I'm glad God had come to me earlier with His own message before I heard that one. My daughter's lack of hearing was being lumped in with cancer and death. Afterward, people who had never spoken to us before came up to tell me how "sorry" they were. It was eye opening for me, because I'm pretty sure I had done that to my own friends who had kids with special needs, never realizing how that might make them feel. It certainly didn't make me feel good.

Having a deaf child isn't cancer, and it isn't death and it isn't even within the realm of "bad things." In fact, I feel incredibly blessed. A whole world has opened up to me that I probably would never have experienced otherwise. There is a whole subculture I get to be a part of. There is a whole language I have gotten to learn.

She is my firstborn child. My life didn't begin until hers did.

Temptress

When my husband and I were dating, his father's wife became very upset about the fact that he and I were spending time...alone. *gasp* So she called my mother one day and told her, "Your daughter is a temptress."

By definition, that word means "A sexually attractive woman who sets out to allure or seduce someone."

I was nineteen years old at the time. I hardly felt like a full grown woman, much less a sexually attractive one. Want to see what I looked like for the most part?

That. That is what I looked like. I was constantly wearing that hat (it was my favorite hat that I stole from my brother), and other than switching out the tee shirt for tank tops, what you see is pretty much all you'd get with me. 

In response to the temptress remark, my husband said at the time, "You must be the worst temptress in the world, cause it's not working."

Gee, I wonder why. Don't you want me, baby? 

I remember the very first picture I took when I was trying to be deliberately sexy. Want to see that one? Brace yourself. It's about to get naughty.

Oh my gosh, what a whore!

The sweetest part is that I sent this to him while he was in Iraq the first time, and he taped it to the back of his field journal and carried it around with him for seven months. He came home and married me, so maybe it worked after all and he really did succumb to my seductive powers.  

Right...

I've never forgotten that remark. You'd have been hard pressed to find a girl less sexy than me. For as worldly wise as I pretended to be in front of some of the people I hung out with, I was totally faking it. I knew almost nothing and even if I did have some knowledge of how these things worked, I never thought of myself as desirable in almost any way, much less physically desirable.

I don't know why I'm thinking of that right at this particular moment. Maybe because the anniversary of our first kiss (11 years ago) is today and I was thinking about how young and innocent we both were. I look back on those times and occasionally wish I had more working knowledge, but I'm happy I didn't have more experience. 

You know what I mean? 

How To Read a Romance

This is graphic. Reader discretion is advised.

A conversation between my sister and me this morning:

J: "Um, have you ever read a non-christian romance?"
Me: "Yes, yes I have. Why?"
J: "Um, because I just read my first ever 'mystery romance' and it had quite a few sex scenes and I was shocked. I'm wondering if they're all like that or did I pick up a porno?"

After inquiring what she had read and then reading an excerpt from the book, I regretfully had to inform her that all romance novels were written that way.

The leap from Christian romance to regular romance can be quite jarring. Thank the Lord she didn't pick up an "erotic novel." That stuff is whack.

I remember going to a seminar for our homeschool group when I was in my early teens and hearing about romance novels. They were a big "no-no" for two reasons: One, the obvious sexual content and two, that reading a romance novel will breed discontent in a relationship by causing you to expect things that won't necessarily happen.

Now, initially you could say the latter is a legitimate worry. But you will find that what happens in the book can happen in your relationship. You just need to know the language of romance.

Here's a few lines from a romance and what they actually mean.

"He felt weak and brutal all at the same time, desire pumping through him."

He's turned on and wants to procreate.

"He had to have her or die."

Ok, seriously, this guy is horny. And dramatic.

"Pulling her against him, he kissed her."

That one explains itself.

"She yielded completely, offering her body."

She gave up on trying to get any more sleep and just goes with it.

"She pulled him closer, as he took her with blunt, insistent pressure."

Might as well get it over with. He's already knocking at the door.

"He thrust into the luscious heat."

His penis has now entered her vagina.

"The rapture was severe, absolute. He made no effort to prolong it."

Two minutes in heaven is better than one minute in heaven.

You see? If you've ever had sex, you've enacted every naughty scene in a romance novel. If you haven't, well...doesn't it sound like fun written out in plain english?

Bonus: Anatomically correct terms are never used in classic romance. Instead you will read words like "member" "length" or "rigid length" "hardness" "instrument" "manhood" for a guy parts and words like "silk" "wetness" "heat" (with or without the words "luscious" "wet" "silk" "smooth" or "the" before it) "sex" "essence" for lady parts.

Hope that was helpful. You're welcome.

The Last Child

The newest one is so tiny to me, the smallest baby I've had. I call her Baby Gollum, because her limbs are so skinny and she is constantly spreading her hands out really wide. Also, she gives crazy eyes quite a bit.

The reference might seem mean, but it's actually appropriate considering I was thinking of The Hobbit the moment she was born.

I'm a huge fan of Lord of the Rings, the movies and the books. And I liked the first Hobbit movie. But while I was watching the second, The Desolation of Smaug, I couldn't help but think that Sauron's Eye looked like a giant, flaming vagina.

That image is what having a baby feels like.

Earlier I had posted that I wanted a natural childbirth, but knew I wouldn't be able to do so because I was being induced, and God knows the contractions created by pitocin are painful to the extreme, for me anyways. Well, as fate would have it, I got my natural childbirth regardless.

Never again.

Hear me: Never again.

Two and a half hours into my induction, I asked for an epidural. The contractions were coming one on top of the other with no break and I was actually crying from pain. Contrary to what the man thinks (his view is that I have the lowest pain tolerance on the planet because when my appendix burst I told him I felt like I was dying. Turns out it was septic and I was dying, but he still views me as overdramatic), it actually takes a lot for me to cry from pain. So at 0545 I asked for an epidural. At 0615, the anesthesiologist came in to give me one. First I had to endure the five minutes of questions, which I could barely comprehend at that point.

At 0620, he told me to sit up on the bed, hold onto a pillow and curl forward. He began prepping my back, and though I know it was in my imagination, I swear he was whistling a tune while he painted me with iodine, taking what I thought was his sweet old time about the whole process.

Suddenly, my water broke. For two glorious seconds, I felt absolutely no pain. And then...

There are no words for how I felt. Pain upon pain and sheer, bloody panic.

My sweet nurse gently reminded me, "You have to hold still, ok?" while I am the child from every horror movie, crawling up the walls like a human spider, with my head on backwards, yelling like a banshee, "I CAN'T! Must push NOW!!"

The anesthesiologist said, "Alright, sweetheart, just lie down." Sweet nurse said, "I'll go ahead and check you." There was no lying down, there was no sitting. There was only levitating on pain. My nurse did check me and actually sounded really surprised to find a baby's head.

"Oh!" she exclaimed, "You're at a ten and there's the head."

Shocker.

All the while I'm yelling over and over, "I have to push, I have to push, I have to push, I have to push!" They didn't even get the bed broken down. My doctor came in, told me to take a breath (seriously?) and then said, "I'm here, you can push." I did, and what flashed into my head in that haze of pain? There was no focus, there was no lamaze breathing, there was no guided meditation or rainbow relaxation or any of the hypno-birthing techniques I'd practiced religiously for the last three months.

There was only Sauron's Eye.

They say childbirth and babies are a miracle, and they are. But I think the real miracle is how one moment your body is splitting as wide as the Grand Canyon while something that feels like the size of Jupiter is trying to push itself out, but the next moment when that baby is finally out all that pain disappears the millisecond you see them.

So her birth was the most painful experience of my life, to date. But just like every woman says after she has a baby: Totally worth it. If there is a next time, though (don't count on it...), I'm going to numb the Shire before anything else comes out of the Hobbit hole.

Hopefully I didn't ruin Lord of the Rings for everyone.

It Might Be Ok

If all goes as planned, today is my last day of living here with the kids on my own. At some point tomorrow night, the man will arrive...and he won't be leaving.

This will be the first time in our entire relationship that there isn't a deadline for him to be gone. This will also be the first time in four years that we will be living in the same residence. To say there is going to be a much needed adjustment period is a gross understatement. We are going to have to learn to live with each other.

Literally.

All my emotions on this subject can be whittled down to equal parts happiness and pure terror. I've been living exclusively my way for almost our entire marriage because we've spent more time apart than we have together. And especially the last six years, since the oldest was born, I've been focused primarily on raising the children. Now I'm not going to be the only parent in the household. 

Weird.

Yesterday, I had an epiphany. I might have had this epiphany before, but it came to me again because obviously I forgot it at some point: I'm a linear thinker. Either it works out or it doesn't. There is no other option.

I realized this while pondering my upcoming delivery. I have had to accept the fact that this baby probably will not come on her own before my scheduled induction. This means I won't get the labor and delivery that I have been planning for (a natural, non-medicated birth). I know some women who are induced still manage to go the natural route. I am not one of those women, sadly. There was a world of difference between the natural contractions I had with my daughter, and the induced ones I had with my son. After seven hours of the latter, I had to ask for an epidural. 

Prior to yesterday, though, I was sitting here in a panic thinking that because it's not going to work out the way I want to, then it's not going to work out at all. Everything is despair. Earthquakes will tear apart the west coast. Stars will fall. The world will burn.

And then it hit me: It's going to be ok. Just because things aren't going the way I want them to doesn't mean that all is lost. It just means I'm not getting my way, and I have to deal with it.

This is a good perspective to start cultivating before the man comes home, so today will be spent with much introspection...that, and a lot of 24 (season 5) and coffee drinks.

The exclusive "my way" is about to become non-existant. And it's going to be ok.

I think.