The Canvas of Silence: A Lesson That Changed Everything

My favorite professor at Marshall University, Dr. Smith, taught me such a valuable lesson that I didn't realize would become so useful in life.  I've remembered this lesson so clearly so many times.  We always sat in a circle in her class and the assignment was to ask the class a question regarding our paper's theme. The discussion would give us more insight into our topic and hopefully open up new avenues of thought. I asked my question and as the seconds ticked by, my heart began to beat faster.  I took a little breathe and prepared to fill the silence with...something...when she stopped me.  She gave the class this lesson, heavily paraphrased now by me:

When you're presenting a question to the class, don't run away from the silence that follows. Don't answer your own question or fill the space with meaninglessness so that the silence doesn't feel awkward. Let the people think and prepare their minds. You want them to ponder and then speak. You need to sit back without pressure and let the silence work. 

Believe me, this takes practice; the more you do it, the more comfortable you become. It's also a lot easier if you decide to do it before you begin and you're aware of the purpose it serves. If you could only see their words forming on the canvas of silence, you would never be tempted to speak over the expectation of their thoughts. 

Don't be afraid of silence. 

Silence is where people gather their courage, 

and when people speak from a place of courage, 

the extraordinary happens. 
The conversation takes you by surprise. 

Don't try to fill that space to make yourself feel better, you'll ruin what's happening in the silence. I get how vulnerable it is to pose a question and risk no one answering it, but it's oh so worth it when right as you're about to give in and speak, you hear a small, "well, I was thinking..." from the corner of the room.  Sometimes silence and all of its expectations encourage people to speak up who ordinarily wouldn't open their mouths.  You see, in the silence of our minds, we can listen to ourselves; we can be our own audience.  We so often listen to others, but when do we really listen to ourselves and what God may be speaking into us?  This creates an environment in which we are forced to ponder and gather courage.  

Listen to and pray this song now. 
Speak To The Silence, United Pursuit 

College Degrees, Debt and Purpose

I was in Kroger and the woman in the next aisle was talking about how she told her soon to be graduating nephew, "if you want to be debt free and have a secure life and make some killer money you need to..."

Me, internally: don't say get a college degree, don't say get a college degree...

Auntie: "...GET a college DEGREE. If he works hard, everything will work out just fine for his future. I told him that, too."

I didn't want to be a parade rainer, so I just checked out with my English degree while I paid for diapers with $5 cash and $5 change and laughed and laughed and laughed as I walked away. Like this:

When will people understand that there are more things to a content life than a degree they think will lead to happiness? If you want a degree GET ONE.  Will you need one in order to get your foot in the door to live your passion?  Maybe. I'd love to begin teaching young people what is more important in my book, regardless of if you get a degree or not. Which is...

Love within your means, don't get into debt, don't think big, shiny things will make you a more fulfilled person. 

THAT kind of living will enable you to go live out your passion because you have more natural freedom when you aren't weighed down by debt and stuff.  Life hits us equally out of nowhere but how much better prepared will you be mentally and financially to handle it if you aren't buried under shiny stuff and debt? 

You're going to want to fight me on this. I can feel it. But just listen. Degrees and colleges are great and I'm proud of you for doing what is best for you. In fact, look at this excitement: 

But it's not where your worth lies and it doesn't promise an easy life with a steady paycheck, good insurance and money to retire on. Don't do it for someone else or because you think you have to do it. Love day to day within your means, serve others with the passion God gave you and be kind. It's what I want my kids to know. 

Hope Is Not A Vaccine

Last year I was having such a hard time with the concept of hope.  I would experience it so deeply only to feel like it was snatched away like a carrot on a stick. I imagined God swinging it just out of my reach, taunting me in order to get me to move where He wanted me to go--only to pull it away for his own amusement or in order to get His way. 

Shaking my head clear of that vision (because it sounded nothing like my God; it sounded like the tactics of the enemy), I came to the realization that hope is not self-sustaining.  You don't get it once, like it's a vaccine. It needs replenished.  God isn't holding it barely out of your grasp, He's standing there with hope in His open hands. You just have to go to Him to get it. 

I cannot replenish hope. Only God can. 

The God of hope. 

In order to be replenished (filled back up) with hope, 

I have to go back to the source.

 

So I had to decide what to do with this information. I asked myself,  what is hope supposed to be like? I'm still figuring it out but I've realized that hope shouldn't be such a daily fight. It isn't meant to be lassoed or wrangled into submission, day after day. Hope is not a fleeting thing that slips from your grasp, it is substantial. The Word of God says that hope is an anchor, so maybe I need to keep throwing it out.

anchor: something that serves to hold an object firmly

If I am the boat and hope is the anchor, it holds me steady in good times and bad. Firm and secure, not tossed to and fro by the waves of life. 

Hope isn't a vaccine, it isn't a carrot, it isn't a punishment tool, it isn't for amusement, it isn't manipulation, it isn't a disappointment. It's more like a magnet that draws me closer to Christ.  In the dance of life, hope is what spins me back around to face my dance partner. My Jesus. 

Artist: Yongsung Kim

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Duh Mr. Doctor

At Asher's first ever neurologist appointment (the one where he got diagnosed with epilepsy), he was first seen by a student who was with Dr. Shah that week.  He asked us about Asher's medical history (ha! poor guy) and at the end of the list, we told him that he has over 20 food allergies and a penicillin allergy. A bit later he asked about his diet, asking questions that I felt were obvious. 

Q1: Oh...he carries epinephrine?(me: short version, um yes)  Oh, I see, he's had to use it numerous times. Hmmm...unfortunate. 

Q2: Are any of the allergies serious or anaphylactic? (me: short version, yes, explains anaphylaxis episodes, hence the reason for carrying epinephrine) What in the world can he eat?!? (he politely chuckles)

Q3: Is his diet restricted in any way? (me: short version, duh, duh and DUH)

*Liz Lemon is my spirit animal*

Then it hit me. You may think people are asking obvious or repetitive questions about something that you live with everyday. You just forget...they DON'T live with it everyday.  They don't research or ask questions or rely on information to keep your child alive. 

At the end of the appt., the student doctor asked if I had any questions and I replied, "I don't even know which questions to ask." It hit me a little then. Be patient with people who don't live "it" everyday. I'm not talking only medical things, just whatever you face daily that people outside of that world with it's abbreviations and jargon and community aren't exposed to on a daily basis. Your normal may be foreign to other people.  

In the Woods

"In the Woods"

I'm standing here

Looking up at the towering trees 

It gets dark beneath this canopy

But I can see the evidence of the sun

Rays shooting down around me

He runs and plays and climbs the limbs

I stand below, ready to break his fall

But wanting him to feel what it's like to climb

Climb high little one

Oh! Not too high...

We make our camp here, where it is dark

I hear the people outside of the trees,

Where the sun hits their skin full on

And they all play together

They shout to us, 

"we're here, we're here for you"

But they are out of the woods

And we never are

So we set up camp

Call it home

Grief's Gift

 

Know what I was just thinking? Sometimes as human beings, we tend to idealize people after they've passed away.

I think our brains memorialize them by romanticizing them.

That's ok. Don't let people tell you that remembering their good traits and the good times you had isn't acceptable. It's how we survive and it's what grief does for us. Even if the person you're missing was wonderful, everyone has hard parts but you don't have to constantly speak about that in order to remember them "correctly."

And if your loved one died from an addiction, committed suicide, passed away after a long prison sentence, or something really hard...lean in and hear me...you are allowed to speak well of them and not bring the hard parts to the forefront in every single conversation.

YOU don't have to take on the guilt for their behavior or take on their pain in order to grieve for them. 

Did you hear that? Read it again. And again. Let that soak in.

You can just love and remember them. The truth is, most of us are somewhere in between perfectly amazing and hopelessly broken. None of us is better than our neighbor.

Don't ever let anyone tell you that you can't talk about the good. Life is so big and hard. One wrong decision can lead you to a life you'd never choose for yourself. And yet good, LOVED people end up there every day. Sons, daughters, mothers, fathers, pastors, teachers, grandparents, celebrities, ALL OF WHOM are loved by someone. ALL OF WHOM will have people who grieve for them.

If you don't feel like you have anyone to listen to you, to speak his/her name to, you can always come to me. 

Every human being's story matters.

Looking For Hope In The Wilderness: She Laughs

We went back to church on Sunday for the first time since Christmas Day.  We decided when Asher's side effects were so bad from switching epilepsy medications that we wouldn't make him go around other children for fear that they would point out the obvious differences that weren't yet obvious to Asher. I don't know if it was the right decision, but it's the one we made.  On Saturday I thought, if not now when?  If we don't go back this Sunday, we may as well never go back because this is our new normal. I told you all of that to set up what happened during worship. 

***

Starting out that day, I felt like I had spent year after year, hard experience after hard experience, looking for hope in the wilderness. I was resigned to it, but all of that seeking had me dying of thirst and all I wanted was water.

I would catch a glimpse of it in the distance and run as hard and fast as I could. There it is! I jumped, risked it all, and landed with a poof! of dust on the wilderness floor. There was never any water at all. A mirage. 

MIRAGE

something that appears real or possible but is not in fact so

Mirage after mirage. 

I began to let the thrill of the hope of hope be enough to sustain me in between terrible times and I began to think that true hope just wasn't possible for me. I didn't always realize that's what I believed, but my actions--my thoughts--proved differently. 

Then came Sunday's worship, during which I entered into a prayerful hug with a friend and I saw the glint of water on the horizon. I looked at it awhile, afraid to trust what my eyes were seeing. But this time, the vision of the water came when I wasn't seeking the evidence of hope--I was seeking God.  For someone else.  For the friend I was holding onto. I wasn't ever great at hoping for myself, but hoping for someone else came so easily.  

So God came to me within that hope.  He met me where I was. In an embrace. 

In my mind, suddenly I took off. The thrill wasn't in the running this time, it was in what I was running toward. Hope wasn't in healing or diagnosis, it was IN JESUS. This was different.  It's what all of my blogs, all of my writings, all of my experiences have been leading me to. Every revelation, every time I experienced God, every answered prayer, every prayer that God said no to, every single hard and glorious thing in my life. To this. 

As I got close to the edge of the cliff, I saw that it wasn't a puddle of water I was running toward...it was a ginormous oasis. 

OASIS 

something serving as a refuge, relief, or pleasant change from what is difficult; a haven; a shelter, serving as a place of safety or sanctuary; an area in the desert (or, ahem, wilderness) where there is water and trees can grow

A giggle erupted out of me. The closer I got to the edge of the cliff, the more aware I became of the heaviness all over me, so I dropped my baggage, pulled off my boots as I ran and stripped down to the bare minimum.

Light as a feather and without thinking,  I jumped right off of the cliff at the edge of the wilderness.  Leaving every mirage of hope behind, I gleefully cannonballed into an oasis of living water. A body of water that can never run dry. It consumed me in peace and contentment until I laughed out loud and whispered to Jen, "I'm not scared anymore." I realized in speaking it out loud, that I actually believed it. I felt it! 

I breathed out heaviness and I came back into myself. 

It wasn't depression or even blatant fear that was causing the heaviness, more like an overwhelming oppression that came from watching Asher suffer and be so different. Having to be on high-alert for seizures. Saving his life time after time. 

It really does something to you to watch your child retreat into himself and lose the ability to form words due to medications and seizures. Constant vigilance can breed a living awareness of what ifs. And in our life, what ifs become real. All of the bad stuff becomes real. 

That oppression left on the arc of my laughter. 

In that moment, I let it all go and just kind of felt...normal again. Or not normal, I hate that word. Just more like the Courtney I lost when we started the second medication and I watched Asher slowly fade away. I think I tried to retreat like Asher did so that I could find him and bring him back.  A mother's desperation doesn't always make sense. 

That heaviness was drowning me out and I was letting it because at least pain felt familiar. I could feel in my own body what it looked like Asher felt. I owned his pain and lost myself. 

I took it all in and thought, oh I'm back. I know this woman.  It's me! I came out of the hug a different woman than when I entered it. 

My first act as post-hug Courtney was giving my children back to the Lord--and I felt the weight of responsibility fall off of my shoulders.  I get to just be their mom. Making the "right" decisions and caring for them and administering life-saving medications and homeschooling and making appointments and figuring out how we're going to pay for it all and living the medically complex life suddenly wasn't at the forefront anymore. 

Jesus was. 

Behind him, Isaac.  

Standing tall next to Isaac, strong Zoe Moriah. 

With her head on her daddy's shoulder and arms around his neck, sweet Willow Gracen. 

Dancing around them all, doing his signature moves--the robot, the hip shimmy, and the worm--our hilarious, 90s hip-hop loving, Lego building, go with the flow, slightly naughty, "mommy, look at me!"exclaiming,

Asher Stephen. 

Everyone was smiling and looking like they'd been waiting on me to come home. 

God is at the head of my family. 

He holds onto and leads us all-no matter where we are.

Of this, I am sure. 

Come what may, we are safe in His embrace. 

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