Problems I Have Caused Myself by Carolyn

When troubles occur in our lives, as they inevitably must, we moan and cry and carry on, wondering why this (whatever it is) has happened to us. It has been my considered opinion for quite a while now that there are four sources of our troubles in this world.

One, which I think is responsible for only a small portion of the trouble in each of our lives, is that sometimes God places us in positions or sends us circumstances that He has purposely designed to refine and develop us in some way. I don't presume to understand the details of all that, but my Bible assures me that it does happen, and is the result of His fatherly love for us.

The second cause of our trials, in my humble opinion, is that we live in a world full of imperfect people. Not only are our own bodies and minds and souls imperfect, but so are those of every single human being with whom we inhabit the Earth. I believe that this imperfection is the cause of a lot of our troubles. Car wrecks, disease, robberies, hangnails, financial scams - everything from genocide to someone going through the express checkout with too many groceries can be attributed to the "fallen-ness" of the bodies we inhabit and the people we share our world with. I don't think it does much good at all to obsess about this kind of trouble. Worrying about things outside your control only gives you wrinkles, a headache, and a grouchy outlook on life.

Third, I would name the natural world as the source of some of our problems. It seems you can't go a day without hearing about a flood, tornado, tsunami, earthquake, wildfire, or other natural disaster. I'm not sure if these natural disasters are becoming more common, or if we just hear about them more often in this era of global communication, but it is impossible to deny that we humans are almost totally at the mercy of Mother Nature. We like to think we are mighty, powerful, indestructible; but we are clearly no match for the excesses of wind, rain, snow, heat (or whatever) that the natural forces of our planet can conjure up to throw at us (literally and figuratively).

Lastly, and the real subject of of my rambling thoughts, is the fourth cause of the problems we encounter in our daily lives. Ourselves. I have come to believe, albeit reluctantly, that I am the cause of most of my own trials and tribulations. I have been pondering this for quite a while (I was recently accused of pondering rather too much), but it was brought home forcibly to me while I was taking a road trip a few weekends ago. I had set my GPS to lead me to the home address of a friend from many years ago (I didn't want to say an "old" friend!), even though I knew in general how to get to the area in which she lived. It was really just the last few miles of the trip for which I needed directions. As I drove, the computer-generated (male with a British accent) GPS voice kept insisting that I should take a route that I didn't want to take. He believed that he knew better than I did which way would be the best. Mile after mile he droned on, "Make a U-turn when possible." I declined to follow his instructions. As the trip went on, I became more and more irritated with him. I am embarrassed to admit that I even began arguing with him. "I will not make a U-turn! I don't want to go that way!" Finally it dawned on me that this irritation could have been avoided if I had gone as far as I could without setting the GPS, and then turned it on only as I got close to my destination. Idiot! (Sadly, this is not the first time I have done exactly this same thing.)

So, as that realization hit me, I began thinking that perhaps there were other instances in my life where my problems or troubles or irritations were of my own creation. As I drove, I began naming those situations aloud (it kept me awake as I drove, at least). The list grew quite lengthy. Undoubtedly, I could have driven cross-country and not have run out of examples of this phenomenon in my own life. Here are a few of the ones that came to mind as I drove (in no particular order):

• having no air conditioning in my car (still)
• running out of my prescriptions without refills available
• having a house full of chewed-on furniture, pillows, baseboards, shoes, eyeglasses, etc.
• needing to rake the discarded leaves from 40 trees in my backyard
• wearing shoes which I have forgotten give me blisters
• often having less in the bank than I should
• running out of clean underwear
• having to squeeze past all the junk in my garage to get into my car

I could go on . . . and on . . . and on, but that would just be depressing. I am especially sorry to say that I am apparently incapable of learning from my previous mistakes - some of my self-initiated problems have occurred more than once.

I would like to promise that my propensity for causing myself trouble will end forthwith. I would like to believe that. I live in the constant hope that at some point in my life I will become a real grownup - one who is capable and thoughtful and thorough. Unfortunately, it is looking less and less likely as I continue to grow older without becoming noticeably wiser.

-Carolyn

Comrades in Mothering

Mother’s Day is coming up and I am missing my comadres.  I am talking about my three best friends who shared in the first eleven years of parenting with me.  The first one was Nicola.  She was a German girl who had come on vacation to Venezuela, met a Venezuelan doctor, married and stayed. I saw her first at my Lamaze class but kept running into her at different places around the small town where we both lived.  One day I went to pick up a friend who needed a ride to the grocery store.  She lived in a fourteen story high-rise where neither the elevator nor the call buttons worked regularly.  I honked my horn from the parking lot and when someone waved from the balcony of what seemed like the floor where my friend lived, I waved back.  But instead of my friend Helene, it was Nicola who came down.  Surprised, she asked how I knew where she lived.  I told her I didn’t.  It turned out that her apartment was one floor below Helene’s.  Soon we began taking our toddlers to swim lessons and spending time together as friends.

About the same time, the couple that owned the stationary store next to our computer business, who were expecting their first baby, started inviting us over for dinner.  When Margarita was born, our daughter Miranda became her first and best friend.  

For several years I maintained separate friendships with Nicola and Edi.  When Margarita was in preschool, she met a little girl whose family had just moved from Caracas.  Edi brought Estela over one day and we instantly connected with her.  She was funny and a free spirit.  The three girls loved playing together, although every once in a while one or the other would come crying that she was not given the right accessory in their dress-up game or was not allowed to be the right princess in the Disney story that was being acted out.  But all and all, they played well together and by now Edi had a little boy who became best friends with my son Safaa. 

Then came time to make that crucial, life-altering decision that every parent must face: Which school should I choose for my precious first born.  As the mother of the oldest child in the group the heavy responsibility was on my shoulders to find the best school in town and then recommend it to my friends.  A brand new, air-conditioned private school with a swimming pool opened right behind the building where I lived.  I enrolled Miranda in first grade.  The owner should have given me a commission.  Edi and Estela signed up their girls for kindergarten and Nicola, who by now had three boys, registered the older two as well.  And that’s how all four families became connected. 

We spent almost every weekend together.  We helped each other with transportation and baby-sitting. We were present at each birthday party and school performance.  The girls all did ballet. The boys learned to play instruments.  I became the official cake baker and costume sewer of the “family”.  

At some point we started celebrating Mother’s Day together.  Edi’s husband, Ziegler, took this picture of the four us. 

We all framed it and displayed it somewhere in our homes.  Visitors always asked if we were sisters.  And without any hesitation we would reply yes.  For me, who had always wanted a sister, they are the closest thing to one, even though I had to travel through two continents to find them.

Once a week us mothers would get together for coffee and bare our souls.  We would reassure one another that none of our children were permanently damaged by the mistakes we were making and that our husbands were perfectly human, despite their flaws. Estela and I became pregnant at the same time; third one for me, second for her.  Of all four of us, I was the only one who went on to have a fourth baby.  Edi and Estela stayed with two. 

Others would try to penetrate our little circle and we were a welcoming group, but there was something special about the four of us.  We were our true selves with each other.  Each one of us was unique in her own way.  We had different interests and different temperaments but like true sisters we loved each other despite these differences.  I think what united us was motherhood.  We were comrades in the trenches of child rearing.  We learned from each other, supported one another and comforted whoever was feeling doubt at the moment.  There is a kinship that is created among people who raise children together.  It transcends blood and familial relationships.  Young mothers need other young mothers to reassure them that really none of knows what she is doing.  We can’t really admit that to our mothers or mother in laws.  We walk this rocky path together and try to be as much help to each other as we can. 

The day I left Venezuela, everyone showed up at the airport.  As tearfully I said goodbye to Edi, Estela and Nicola I knew that my life would never be the same without them. 

And every Mother’s Day I am reminded of that. 
-Susan

Digital Courage by Andrea

cour-age (noun): the ability to do something that frightens one, especially in the face of opposition or adversity

Recently, I listened to a well-known radio host decrying what he calls “digital courage”- one’s ability to “say” things online that he or she would never say face- to -face or in polite company. There are many trolls  (as they are called) who camp out, waiting for opportunities to berate and belittle news reports, blogs and social media postings.  They look for any opportunity to pounce on someone’s pain or vulnerability.  And there are those who over-share, make unwise personal declarations or bully others because they feel “empowered” by the digital distance. 

As I listened, it hit me.  This is NOT courage.  Spewing hateful, condemning or personally offensive messages online anonymously or behind the veil of a ‘handle’ is the opposite of courage.  A more apt description, I think, is “digital cowardice.”

A digital coward is just like a 3D, walking-around coward: one who lacks the courage to do or endure unpleasant or difficult things.  The perceived digital wall makes people like this bolder.  Real-world cowards say nothing yet snicker and criticize behind one’s back. Virtual ones say as many hurtful things as possible for all to see.  But they do it from a hiding place.

The term digital courage belongs to all the brave out there vulnerably sharing their gifts, thoughts, and wonderings with all of us.  How many of us read blogs regularly (raise your hand… you’re reading one right now)?  I read them almost daily.  Blogs are a large part of the online, global community. We get to experience life with people we may never meet because of the prevalence of blogs today.  The same is true with social media sites as well.

Someone pressed ‘Post’ and decided to share some of their innermost thoughts, feelings and opinions all in an effort to make a connection, on some level, with readers.  The braves decide that it is important for the message, the art, the music, the innovation to be “out there” in spite of the fact that they may be opening themselves up to challenge and criticism.  This is true digital courage.  And we are better for it!

Courage does not mean the absence of fear.  It is pressing forward in spite of fear.  It is deciding that it would be far worse to keep one’s creation to self than to share it and endure the discomfort of negative critique and judgment.  And each time, courage presses ‘Post’, someone’s life is impacted.  Someone thinks.  Someone questions. Someone creates.

All art, especially writing, serves as either a window or a mirror for the observer.  Looking through the window, we get a glimpse of the heart and life of the one who shares. This enables us to relate to people, to connect rather than distance ourselves.  And when connection happens, empathy is conceived.  Then empathy gives birth to compassion.  Each time someone exercises digital courage, the viewer may get a clearer image of self, as with a mirror. We get to see ourselves in someone else’s story. And we learn to be kinder to ourselves or at times to push a little harder as not to give up.  Too many times to count, I have found my voice, the vocabulary to express myself, because of the words of someone courageous enough to press the button.  

This I know for sure: when we are courageous online, as well as off, we give someone else the courage to say “I will share my (fill in the blank), too.”  We are here to elevate- first ourselves, then each other. 

I vow never to use the screen as a hiding place, but as a place to encourage: to give active help or to raise confidence to the point where one dares to do what is difficult.

-Andrea

My Chaos, A Gift

Think, think, and think. …What to write about?…. It’s my turn to post, and I have nothing.  My writing successors and partners, have set the bar so high, I’m going to need some sort of winged transport to even get close to their quality of writing.  It doesn’t help that my mind is a black hole, and my words are getting sucked in with no hope of surviving.  My preverbal plate is full, which could have something to do with the fact that my brain is mush.  It’s been a rough week.  Running around to and fro with my kids, chauffeuring them from this activity to the next.  Feeling guilty for not planning ahead the healthy meal they should be eating, but instead having Burger King in their bellies. 

Excuse after excuse.  I tell my self tomorrow will be better.  I will wake up earlier. I will plan my meals on Sunday, and have everything precut and packaged in little baggies like the good moms do on Pinterest.  Problem is, in order to get up earlier; you need to go to bed early.  By the time we get home from soccer practice, its bath, read, bed, and many times I fall asleep without wanting to.  Which then of course leaves dirty dishes in my sink, and streaks on my tile floor.  And don’t even get me started on grocery shopping.  This particular chore to me is like getting a cavity filled.  But grocery shopping on a Sunday is like getting a cavity filled, plus wisdom teeth removed, and blood drawn all at the same time.  Painful right?  That’s exactly what I think about getting my much-needed ingredients for a healthy week of meals on a Sunday afternoon. 

I fail time and time again.  But…..I keep going.  I keep trying, and I keep failing at being perfect.  That’s ok with me. Because I am a mess.  I have come to terms with that.  My mind is a mess, my schedule is a whirlwind of activities, and to be honest, my house isn’t picture perfect, inside or out.  At the end of the day, however, it’s my life.  It’s my gift.  I’m lucky to have it every morning I wake up.  The cherry on top is having the privilege to have conversations with two very important people while chauffeuring them around to the weekly soccer practice or dance performance.  Sounds perfect to me. 

~Esmeralda

Young Love by Carolyn

I'm pretty sure this would be against the "rules" of our Writers' Group if we had ever discussed it, but we haven't, so I'm going to do it before the subject arises . . . I'm going to post something that I wrote long, long ago. Roughly 40 years ago, actually. While looking through a notebook I carried during high school, I found this poem I wrote when I was 14 or 15 and very obviously full of teenage angst:

With empty heart you found me
and tenderly loved me then,
to fill the deep, dark emptiness
that you had seen within.

And while we loved and laughed and cried,
the summer's cool green grass 
had withered, struggling, and slowly died
just as our precious moments passed.

And then you laughed, and then I cried,
and I am crying still,
because you left a deeper void
you'll never return to fill.

Painfully bad, I know. Fortunately, I no longer remember the passionate love affair that inspired this outpouring of pain. I can only hope that my poetry has improved a little since then!

-Carolyn

In Spite of me

When people ask me about raising children, my immediate answer is:  Prayer.

I have prayed that my children would grow up to be better human beings than me; I have prayed that they would be strong enough to withstand life’s inevitable disappointments; I have prayed that they would put God before all else.  And ultimately, I have prayed that they would turn out alright in spite of me.   I realized very quickly that no matter how hard I tried to be a good mother, there was no way to get it right all the time. Over the years, it has become easier to accept that I can never be a perfect mother because this job is as much about me growing as it is about helping them to grow. 

There are however, some things that are worth passing on:

A young mother once asked my twenty-year old son what kind of a parent I was.  He responded:  She took our questions seriously.  I have written about my children and their questions before.  But it is true that I was so terrified of their intelligence that I could not risk dismissing their questions with flippant answers. (In fact I am afraid of all children and their uncanny ability to sniff hypocrisy and dishonesty. ) For the same reason I never lied to them or gave them a made up answer because I was afraid they would never trust me once they found out the truth. 

Along with taking their questions seriously, came taking their interests seriously.  We did ballet, baseball, swimming, soccer, volleyball, karate and music lessons.  I bought jewelry making kits and calligraphy sets.  I drove back and forth to art classes.  We have a room full of musical instruments.  All because they showed an interest and wanted to try something new.  I was never good at making them practice or stick with anything if they lost interest.  At one point I was accused of exposing them to too many things and that’s why they couldn’t put their fingers on their passions.  But somehow they have found their passions and I have encouraged them to pursue them. 

There is a fine balance between advocating for your child and making excuses for them.  What I have hoped is that my children can take responsibility for their own actions and choices and at the same time stand up for themselves and their beliefs.  It is not easy but it gets better with practice and learning from mistakes, both theirs and mine.

I impressed on them from early on that I was not the example of Faith they should follow.  I am a work in progress, just like them.  I made sure they knew that their relationship with God had to be a personal one.  Don’t blame God for my shortcomings!  I take full responsibility for them.  And like I said. I pray that they will lead happy, healthy lives of service, in spite of me and my shortcomings. 
-Susan

What Things May Come by Andrea

Adversity comes. It is a part of the human condition. Adversity can make us or break us. It comes and it exposes us. Martin Luther King, Jr. is quoted as saying, "The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands in times of challenge and controversy."  Personally, I try with all my might to live with as little uncontrolled, unsolicited challenge as possible, and controversy is a pariah that I give much planning and effort to avoid. But, they both come without invitation or warning. It is at these times that who I am is not only revealed but can also be defined.

I have spent a great many days anxious and worried about circumstances over which I have zero control. What I have had to contend with, however, are the things I can control. More aptly, things that I have a responsibility to control. How I handle adversity will have an impact on my character for all time.

So what are my responsibilities when bad things happen?

My response: The number one way I should respond is in hope. This, however, is not always easy for doers like me.  Don't get me wrong, hope is not passive.  It requires active participation in the struggle. The action, though, is less about taking control and making change happen.  It's a wrestling match that takes place in the mind. I must wrestle with my thoughts to make them focused and faithful. I have to wrestle with my convictions and beliefs to get my bearings, to help me get centered.  My ideas of how life should go rather than how it is going must be subdued in order for hope to rise rather than fear and doubt. In hope, there is victory long before anything changes.  Paradoxically, victory comes from surrender, in not resisting the inevitable but embracing the challenge.  A hopeful response announces and embraces the notion that this too shall pass while still in the ring.

My attitude: An attitude colored by gratitude for the parts of life that are good and beautiful helps me to be better rather than bitter. Instead of kicking rocks because adversity has come knocking on my door, I must to choose to dig in and persevere. It is a daily decision. During times of woe, it seems I have to choose moment by moment to keep my eyes on the good, rather than the mountains of reasons to be anxious and overwhelmed, even by the daily-ness of life during a storm. Attitude really is everything.

Letting people in: I cannot overcome alone. I have had friends who literally patch up my heart and my faith. Inboxes overflowing with words of encouragement, scriptures, prayers and silly selfies to make me smile have been like water flowing over my parched soul during difficulty.  I have friends who call or show up at just the right time. They listen and share. They connect and empathize. They let me ugly cry and cry along. Vulnerability with the right people builds bridges that can offer support for the ages.

My faith: Faith is not a shield from desperate situations or desperate feelings and thoughts, but the nature of this walk requires a faithful response to trials and tests. I am assured that I will never walk alone as long as I walk with God. One of the many passages that gives me courage is:
     
        When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;
        When you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you.
        When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned;
         the flames will not set you ablaze. Isaiah 43:2, The Holy Bible

Disasters come in all forms. Some are physical and destroy swiftly such as storms or illnesses. Some disasters are emotional and seem as if they sweep over life all of a sudden with no signs of letting up. Some challenges are battles of the mind, and the struggle is to find the right perspective in order to effect a change of state if not a change of circumstance. Some tumult is completely outside of oneself and brought on as a consequence of living and loving within a community. I have faced all of these in some form throughout my four decades and am sure more will come.

This I know for sure: no matter what things may come, focusing on that which I am responsible for has helped me to endure adversity infinitely better than focusing on the struggle.  

-Andrea