RJ

                                                  (RJ's Current Facebook Profile Pic)

My brother RJ is six years younger than me. He has always done things in his own sort of way. A way that is very different than mine. I remember that when he was little he would carry around this old brief case of my dad’s and fill it with all the weirdest things and he would bring it EVERYWHERE. One of my clearest memories of the briefcase was right after Christmas. My sister (6 years old), RJ (2 years old), and I (8 years old) were all in the back seat on the way home after a yummy McDonalds outing. And out of nowhere RJ throws up his burger and fries all over his briefcase. And even after the throw up event he still carried it around with him everywhere.

I have mostly taken the “good girl” approach to life. I follow the rules. I do as I am told. I respect authority. I am responsible. I have always done a good job at winning the approval of my elders (teachers, coaches, parents, friends’ parents, bosses, etc.) RJ has not taken this approach to life. He is more in the “have fun and worry about the consequences later” approach to life. His senior year of high school he came back from a Spring Break Cruise with “5+4=9” tattooed on his foot. I asked him why and he just said, “why not?”. He is currently in his sixth year of college. No specialized degree…just taking his time I guess. For the past 10 or so years I think that RJ’s biggest worry has probably been missing out on a really fun party.

RJ has never really been one for having girlfriends. I’ve always assumed that girls were interested in him as he is both handsome and winsome. And maybe there were casual hook ups, but nothing at all serious. The serious side of life seems to be something that RJ tries to avoid.

About a year or so ago my mom informed me that there was a girl that RJ worked with at Friday’s that had been coming over a lot. When I would be home for holidays or summer visits I would catch glimpses of this new girl. She was very pretty, but also unbelievably shy. She would barely look up when I would say hi to her. I really knew was that her name was Janie and that she worked at Fridays with RJ.

I kind of assumed that as time went by Janie would probably disappear. But Janie did not disappear. I was so curious about her and why she seemed so distant and removed, and how the dynamic of her and RJ worked.

This past summer my dad got remarried and RJ more or less forced Janie to come to the wedding. This is when I first found out that in high school Janie had cancer. I don’t remember how it came up, but she ended up telling me that she had lymphoma and missed out on a lot of high school. That is all she really said.

I wanted to ask her so many more questions.

When I was home last week for Thanksgiving, RJ mentioned, in his usual light hearted way, that Janie had a tumor in her shoulder and they were doing surgery to remove it. That’s all he knew.

On Thanksgiving, RJ was on the phone with my dad, and my mom just looked over at Janie and said, I heard that you have a tumor in your shoulder and that you are getting it removed next week. And, Janie just started talking. She started to tell us her story.

When Janie was 14 years old, she had lymph node in her neck that had been swollen for a couple months and so finally they went to the doctor. They found that it was cancer and it had spread all over her body. She has had over 18 surgeries. She has had over 20 rounds of chemo and radiation. She has had a bone marrow transplant. She will most probably never be able to have children. The doctors say that she should have died and it is a miracle that she is alive. She missed pretty much all of high school. She never went to a dance. She never went to a football game. She never had a boyfriend. She never even had any girl friends. For most of those years she slept either at the hospital or in a bed in her living room and was too weak to even walk to the bathroom alone.

I sat there watching this girl talk about these horrific events. I’m looking at this tiny and beautiful girl, who has obviously become so numb and so angry at the world around her. And why wouldn’t she be.

The reason that she works at Fridays is because her parents and her doctors thought that she needed some kind of interaction with the outside world after having been kept away for so long.

That night my mom lay in bed and cried. She cried for Janie. She cried for RJ.

It’s funny how life turns out. The irony of RJ and Janie. It’s actually really beautiful. The reason humans are all drawn to tragedy is that in all tragedy there is a deeper and truer beauty there. It is in these places of pain and destruction and struggle that new life is found. I do not believe that we are most alive in the easy places of life. I believe that it is the tragedy that so often wakes us up from our sleep walk.

The Plan

       Yesterday I went to put Isaac down for his nap just like every other day.  Since we moved into our house about a month ago, Isaac has gotten promoted to a “big boy bed”.  In part this promotion was due to his age and readiness, but in part it was due to the fact that somehow in the midst of moving we lost some crucial pieces to Lily’s crib.  Since Lily is younger it only made sense that she would get Isaac’s crib, and Isaac would sleep in a big bed. 

         For the most part this plan has been going pretty seamlessly.  Seamlessly… until yesterday.  I had already laid down Lily for her nap earlier and I took Isaac up to his bed.  And right as I laid him down he said, “I want to sleep in E’s bed”.  He calls Lily, E.  I said, “no you cannot sleep in lily’s bed, because lily is sleeping in Lily’s bed.”  Well, for some reason that didn’t matter to Isaac because for the next 45 minutes straight  he wailed and hollered and screamed himself hoarse that he wanted to sleep in E’s bed. 

          On most days I would have simply said, “no, end of story, you cannot and will not sleep in E’s bed” and then I would have walked out of the room and cry as he may that would have been the end of it.  I would have sat downstairs feeling angry and frustrated and wondering why he couldn’t just understand that he is supposed to sleep in his bed, and Lily is supposed to sleep in Lily’s bed.

           But yesterday, something just hit me. As I looked at Isaac's tear soaked cheeks and his tear soaked shirt and watched his chest heave up and down with horrible sobs, I had this very deep sense of compassion and love towards him .  To me this seemed like a simple situation with a simple answer, but to Isaac, for whatever reason, this was a very deeply upsetting scenario.  And as I tried to pat his back, and wipe away his tears, and eventually just lay on the bed next to him as he sobbed, I saw myself and everyone else in Isaac. 

            In life we so often get these ideas of how we want things to go, or how we think things should go, or what our future will look like.  As long as our life neatly follows the plan, we are happy as clams.  But when we find out that our precious plans have gone awry, we find ourselves in Isaac’s shoes. 

Because I am an adult, I know that it is not appropriate to scream and sob the way he does, even though it might do me some good, so I scream and kick in a much more subtle way.  I do it through manipulation, or competition, or judgementalism.  In the adult world, when things don’t go our way, we make a plan of how to get things back the way we want.  And before we know it, we are bowing down to that plan; aligning all areas of our life to get the plan back on track. 

Maybe it’s not about the plan.  Maybe what I want, or the way that I think things should go, isn’t even good for me or for the ones that I love.  Maybe I am too short sighted to be able to make good plans.  Maybe there is Someone who is really in charge making a wonderful and beautiful plan that I need to trust and submit to. 

Isaac couldn’t really see that he is too big for that crib. A bed will be more comfortable and well suited for him, and ultimately it will allow him the freedom that a crib will not.  All he could think was that his crib was comfortable and it was part of his plan, and whatever he knew, he couldn’t let go of the plan.  He ended up sleeping on the floor, because I guess in some way, the hard cold uncomfortable floor represented getting his way more than a cozy bed. 

Over Two Years Later:

I'm still me. It's funny to look back at all these posts, some that are five years old or more, and although my life has changed quite drastically, I still feel so much the same. That is one of the funny mysteries of life. I can think back to my first day of kindergarten, and it feels as though I was looking through the same set of eyes that I see the world through today. And they are the same eyes, but they are also very different eyes.

Since my last post it has been just over two years. I now have a two year old (Isaac) and my little girl (Lily) just turned one. Much of life is spent chasing after these two little people, and cleaning up lots of messes, and wiping lots of running noses, and snuggling with soft and warm little bodies, and laughing at the innocence of first tries at talking, walking, making friends, and figuring out life.

Becoming a mom in many ways has felt very natural and comfortable, but in some ways has been the biggest stretch of my life. There have been occasions when I am not proud of my behavior, when I have grabbed at my children in rough ways, or have literally screamed at the top of my lungs at nothing and everything all at once. But what is so much bigger than those failures, is the grace that children bring to life. The grace of little hands grabbing for you. The grace of a two year old asking his mommy to lay with him at night and when I lay down he whispers, "come closer mommy." The grace found each night as I creep into their rooms and watch their chubby and angelic faces as they sleep. I try to remind myself each day, amidst the choas, that these are all such precious and fleeting moments.

So, back to the rebirth of my blog, I hope. I have been humbled and privledged to be part of a book that is coming out VERY soon called We Feel Fine. It is a project that was started right around the same time that I started this blog. It was started by two guys named Jonathan Harris and Sep Kamvar. They created a program that would scan the internet (especially blogs) for the words, "I Feel" and then pick up any words that followed. Somehow this program picked up some words on my blog, from a post that I wrote about my dad way back. Anyway, something about my blog post hit Jonathan, and it became one of their favorites. They used it in presentations and explanations of their project. Now they have writen a book all about the project and my blog has been featured. HOW EXCITING!! Here is a link to their website: http://www.wefeelfine.org/.

Well...with the release of the book and all, I have started thinking that I need revive this blog. Between life with two small children, working for Young Life part time, and everything else that comes along with life, it's going to take commitment...but I think that I can do it!!! Here's to hoping.

I'm hoping that I will be able to write on all my musings about life. These include: God, spiritaulity, creativity, beauty found in both obvious and suprising places, children, relationships, family, food, and crafts. (I HATE the word crafts...when I hear the word crafts I automatically think of something made of felt, glue, and popsicle sticks...which is not what I am talking about... I am talking about finding ways to build, paint, or sew beautiful things that communicate something of value found either within or without.)