Oh, the Habits We Gain When the Spouse is Away...

After a breathtaking year of change, loss and discovery, I find myself in an interesting situation. My husband, having lost his engineering job more than a year ago, embarked on a grinding schedule of overnight shifts mixed with haven't-been-to-sleep-yet daytime shifts to support two jobs. His sacrifice all those months was extraordinary, but now he's back to working a"day job" at last. Hurray!

The interesting part is facing the habits I've gained while essentially being a single woman. Staying awake for days at a time, wearing sweaty workout clothes far beyond what's socially acceptable, obsessing about writing projects instead of keeping a healthy perspective and eating, eating, eating. My beloved, after all, was at work or asleep most of the time, so our joint accountability structures flew out the window.

I'll cut myself just a little slack by saying that the loss of someone very dear to our hearts and the diagnosis of a chronic illness raised the depression factor enormously. But did all those months really fly away in a blur of insomnia, bad television and angry prayers?

So, here I am, overweight with a sadly depleted wardrobe, wondering how I'm going to fall asleep at ten p.m.! As I've commented to girlfriends this week, it's time to "step up my game." Get back on a schedule. Stop writing through the night. Eat actual meals instead of grazing. Relate to another adult regularly. Allow God to heal me instead of shaking my fist at Him.


Here are the lessons I hope will keep me standing when the next tsunami hits:

1) Sometimes I have to experience great pain to learn what's most important.
2) Taking my mate for granted isn't an option.
3) Getting lost in my circumstances isn't a permanent state.
4) Even when I think I'm beyond hope, God brings me back.
5) Alone isn't where I want to live.
6) I should have reached out to my friends much earlier.

Learn from my mistakes. Really. It's so much easier than fighting your way back.

Dancing On the Edge

It's been a long time since I've posted to this particular blog, but recent experiences have nudged me back into writing. Here's the question that's been worming around in my mind lately, "Are we dancing on the ledge most of the time and just don't realize it until our families suffer tragedy?" Or, "Does God's hand hold back danger every day, without our knowing?"

Dark thoughts, indeed, probably brought on by the recent loss of a beloved young man from our family. An "accident," one of those senseless things that's over in an instant, taking with it someone we love.

That's been enough to engender deep thoughts in the middle of the night, but it's what's happened since that's truly put my mind down this path. In the midst of healing from this great sadness, I've become keenly aware of the "near misses," those almost accidents that could have ended badly, but did not.

Two siblings involved in auto accidents but unharmed, a sister in Christ nearly, but not quite, sideswiped by a semi, a balcony breaking loose but not completely giving way as we stood on it, a husband losing a wheel only after he stopped his truck. What could have been tragic was, instead, only frightening. I attribute each of those people being spared to God's direct intervention.

So, in the wake of a fatal accident and a string of loved ones being spared, my theory is this: we have no idea of the obstacles in our paths each day, how closely we dance to the edge of the cliff. It is by God's great mercy that our families are spared injury and destruction, and I'm praising His name even as I mourn the one who is gone.

Psalm 32:7
You are my hiding place; you will protect me from trouble and surround me with songs of deliverance. Selah

Couldn't have said it better myself.

Good night all. Now go hug your families.

How to Teach Kids About Substance

There seems to be an epidemic sweeping through our culture--a round-eyed wonder for things that are very superficial. There's an inordinate amount of time being spent oohing and ahhing over people who look good and say pretty things, when there's little time being spent looking for substance. So, what's the cure? I have a couple of ideas for ways we can teach kids about substance in a world gone mad over fluff.

Consider the Lilies of the Field: One way to show children what really matters is to start with the basics. Take your young ones out to where they can see the stars and talk to them about the vast distances between planets. Show them how perfectly designed flowers are for their habitats. Talk to them about the cycle of the seasons and the timelessness of space. Now that's something to be impressed by. Somehow, Kate Gosselin's haircut begins to pale by comparison.

Take a Page from History: Biographies of great people are a wonderful way to show kids what matters. Whether a founding father, a football hero or an activist for civil rights, there are people who have lived their lives in ways you'd like your kids to emulate. Find their stories and share with your family what made that special person someone to admire.

Experience the Remarkable: There are breathtaking experiences to be shared through the arts and sciences. Think of the books that inspired you as a child. What kind of art do your children find fascinating? Visit museums, exhibitions or book-readings. Take them to see worthwhile movies. Experiences that stretch their minds and spirits can be building blocks for a life spent pursuing excellence, rather than appearance.

Share Family Stories: Draw the timeline of your family's history and share the stories that will teach your kids what makes families strong. Every family has black sheep sprinkled in; make sure your kids know about the people who perservered through hard times. Hearing about my father's large family and how they survived the Depression firmly planted important lessons in my mind.

Move Beyond the Physical: A sure cure for materialistic admiration is to open the door to the spiritual. If your faith makes you appreciate people rather than things, long-term commitment, love and generosity rather than appearances, why not share that with your children? Giving them a glimpse of the spiritual can open a whole new perspective on what's admirable.

Wouldn't it be nice if we had the time to filter everything children hear and see? We don't, but we are able to help them build a framework for filtering it themselves. Exposing your kids to ideas beyond popular culture is a great way to start. I'd love to hear what you're doing to short-circuit the silliness worship in your homes.

Your Mom Was Right About Sharing

Taking a quick break to advocate for something that's really helped our family. Here in the Heartland, we're blessed to have PrairieLand Food, a food buying cooperative available to stretch our grocery budgets.

PrairieLand is a 501(c)3 non-profit made up of folks who give our time to help the community in a zillion different ways. In return, we're able to order food shares at a reduced price. Here's the cool thing...it's open to anyone who volunteers, no membership is required and there are no income guidelines.

This particular food co-op is available to folks in Kansas, Nebraska and Oklahoma, but I urge you to look for a cooperative food buying club in your area, too.

Here's how our food buying cooperative works:

• Members pre-order shares that are announced each month by the co-op managers. PrairieLand Food shares are made up of five meat items and five or six veggie or fruit items for $24. Is that incredible or what? Examples of recent meat items are pre-cooked frozen turkey breast strips perfect for making fajitas, two big packages of frozen chicken fried rice or shrink-wrapped deli sliced turkey and ham. The more shares sold, the more food we're each given.


• We're also able to order Monthly Specials at amazing prices - everything from four steaks and two lbs of jumbo shrimp for $20 to a Christmas baking box that contains everything you need to get started with your Christmas cookies.


• On a specified pick-up date, food shares are delivered by truck, divided into individual share boxes by volunteers and picked up by members who pre-ordered. Here in our town, there are about a dozen distribution sites, usually churches or union headquarters.


• When picking up their shares, members turn in their volunteer hours for the month. All it takes is a couple of hours a month doing anything that helps someone else--mowing your neighbor's lawn, tutoring, or any other kind of kind act performed for free.

What could be easier? I priced the items in my share from last month and found it was actually $44 if purchased at local grocers. I don't know about you, but my family definitely needs that kind of savings right now. It's also an amazing way to gift families in need...we've ordered extra shares for people on hard times; all it takes is $23 more and another couple of hours of volunteering.

So, if you're in the Plains States, why not check out PrairieLand Food? If you live elsewhere, investigate local food buying clubs or co-ops or start your own. Buying power is buying power, right? If you had enough people buying the same food at the same time, I'm willing to bet you could negotiate discounts with food manufacturers and distributors in your area. Here's a cool article I found about setting up a food co-op from scratch.

I hope I hear from some of you about how cooperative food buying has helped your families. Building strong, sustainable families is, after all, what this blog is all about.

Why Our Government Isn't Family Friendly...

I'm asking my readers to suspend their search for helpful information for a single blog post so that I can get something off my chest. Deal?

Okay, here's my big rant for the week, courtesy of not one, but two, government agencies. Mind you, I'm not particularly in love with the federal government right now anyway, but until today I hadn't realized the (dare I say it?) conspiracy behind the bureaucracy.

Before you close the blog with mutterings about conspiracy theorists, let me assure you that I have facts to back up my suspicion that our beloved bureaucrats really don't want to serve the average citizen. What I've decided they want, instead, is to perpetuate an on-going structure that includes jobs for themselves.

So in the spirit of our legal tradition, may I present the People's Exhibit Number One: the unemployment compensation process. Six weeks ago, my husband was laid off in the aerospace industry. Since that time, we have received zip, zero, nada in unemployment compensation, thanks to an incredibly arcane system of gobbledygook one must navigate in order to file.

Here's the short version--somehow, in the bowels of the government halls of disinformation, it had been falsely recorded that my perfectly fit hubby was actually on full disability. Because someone, with perfect bureaucratic logic, decided not to maintain an unemployment office in the largest city in our state (one in which thousands of people are currently unemployed, by the way) it is impossible to speak face-to-face with a live person to clear up such a misconception.

Actually, he did speak with a live person by telephone, but only after calling daily for two weeks only to be told each time that "the system is currently receiving too many calls, please call at another time". Brilliant customer service.

He finally learned from a real human being that it is not possible to clear up such a misunderstanding by phone or over the Internet, even though it is possible to file for unemployment, turn in weekly claims and close your file by such methods. He was told he would be required to fill out a form which they would mail by the blindingly quick US Postal Service (see more about them later), mail it back by the same method and wait for a decision to be made whether or not he deserved unemployment compensation.

You guessed it...in the unfailingly failing bureaucratic tradition, no form was ever received, but they did manage to get the letter to us telling him that "because the applicant failed to provide the information required, he is no longer eligible for unemployment compensation."

Deep breath. Is it any wonder that many of us are a wee bit skeptical of having the government involved even further in our healthcare? If you think dealing with an insurance company is maddening, hold onto your bedpans, folks.

I did promise to give two pieces of evidence, so here's the People's Exhibit Two: in good wifely fashion, I wished to support my hubby's desire to find meaningful employment by taking up more of the financial slack and so applied (online, no other method possible) for a job with our local postal encoding center. The promised testing packet was never delivered and the job opening announcement was closed before I was allowed to finish the process.

A buddy of mine works there, too, and gave the HR office a call to learn why they hadn't sent packets out when they were so obviously in need of help. The HR bureaucrat told her it was obviously a mistake, to have me call her and she'd get one to me pronto. You can probably guess the end of this story.

Said HR bureaucrat's secretary refused to let me speak with her boss, said she had no idea why someone would tell me I could call her and engaged in some world-class fingerpointing to the effect that "they won't let us interfere with the process except to do new hire paperwork and I shouldn't be calling them, anyway." Yikes. And to think my taxes paid for this woman to pop gum in my ear.

So, my theory stands. The gov no longer exists to serve the people. It is, instead, a leviathan of fingerpointing, double-speaking tools who have forgotten why their jobs exist in the first place. And that's a crummy way to support American families living through a recession (yep, it's still alive and well in Wichita, KS).

Whew! Thanks for letting me vent. My advice for the day? Vote the entrenched out of office, clean house in all government agencies and put the jobs up for bid across the board. I think that's change everyone of us can live with.

Kate

Back from the Wars!

Long time, no type. I was reminded that I hadn't added any new content during the time my hubby was out of work, so here we are at last.

That actually brings me to the topic of the moment - staying balanced through life's wars. If you're like I am, you begin to neglect healing activities such as blogging, prayer, working out, checking in with accountability partners, and so forth to take care of people you love when they need support.

I honestly don't remember the last time I stepped foot in my gym, but it was sometime right around the big layoff. My weight loss partner thinks I've died, and I've obviously been neglecting this blog. I have managed to stick with my spiritual journal, but I'm a wreck physically. So, why do we, as moms and wives, do that?

The knee-jerk answer is that we rush to rescue. Part of our DNA (and our spiritual hearts as women) instructs us to nurture, protect and comfort. When the major breadwinner gets a pink slip, maybe we type resumes and prop up their egos. If a son or daughter is failing a class, we help find tutors and listen to them vent.

And all that's okay. What's screwy is letting ourselves fall into disrepair as we glue everyone else back together. Bear with me as I offer an illustration. In Shorin Ryu karate, the practitioner "plants" herself in wide, deep stances so that, no matter now hard an opponent kicks or punches, she's well-centered.

Even if she's defending someone else from an assault, she never forgets to plant herself into those deep, "rooted" stances. She remains like a deeply rooted tree throughout the assault, fending off blows until the fight's over.

Sounds pretty transferable to real life, doesn't it? Why can't we remember to hold our stance when the wars come? Nope, we leap out into space, completely abandoning the habits that keep us healthy, in defense of the people we love. How silly is that?

So, I'm challenging you and myself at the same time. Figure out how to maintain your firm stance when the assault comes. Stick to the things you know will keep you strong, and I'll try to do the same. After all, we're not much of a center for our friends and family if we can't even keep our own footing.

What Makes You Valuable?

Here's a question to ponder today: "At what age does a person become less valuable?"

Your immediate response, like mine, may have been "What a silly question! Age doesn't determine our value!" I invite you to slow down, though, take this question out of the box and look at it for awhile.

It is, I believe, the defining question for our families. The answer to this question could very well become the basis for our value in future society. So, what's the answer?

To craft my own response, I decided to take an approach becoming popular in political circles. I changed the question to this, "When is a person not a contributing member of society?"

That question opens up a whole new line of discussion, doesn't it? For example, we can wonder if an unborn child, unable to work, pay taxes or vote, has any value to a society. We can puzzle over whether Grandma, trapped in a hospital bed with little recognition of her family, still contributes much to the greater good.

Mull those thoughts for yourself, but here's a peek into my own: the value of a person is not based on what he or she can do for me. That "other", that living being sharing space with me on the planet, has value whether or not I assign it.

To bring it down to everyday life, I simply asked myself, "Did that person's value end when she could no longer communicate? What about her history? Did a lifetime of love, support, or even rage, disappear when dementia took over?"

The lessons learned from living with other people, whether they warm our hearts or chill our souls, help shape who we become. Even if we believe their value is based on the perception of others, doesn't that mean they've contributed?

And that unborn child I mentioned...does her value rest on whether or not she'll complicate my life? Or is it possible she has significance equal to my own? Gets kind of sticky, doesn't it, when we begin to decide who counts and who doesn't?

I'll leave you to your ponderings. I hope you reach a conclusion that allows you to value the people in your families, friendship circles and even your enemies.

It is, after all, a lot easier to live our own lives when we aren't looking over our shoulders, wondering if we're being evaluated by someone else.