Brother Of The Year

Never underestimate the power of a brother.  I'm sitting here next to him, waaaaaaay past my bedtime, on a work night.  We are together in silence and have been for hours.  It's a comfortable silence.  A movie is on as background noise, two laptops humming and clicking, illuminating the dark room.  Peace.  Except for the stink wafting up from the flatulent dog asleep on the floor at my feet, life is perfect.

Wait, dog? Oh yeah, that's what I was about to tell you...

One of the heartbreaking losses that resulted from my divorce was my forfeiture of Joe and Maggie, our 8 year old Jack Russel terriers.  Because I didn't live in places that allowed them for most of the two years since the separation, it made most sense for them to continue to live in the rental that had already collected a hefty deposit for them.  The two were litter mates and joined our family just after my oldest started kindergarten.  My youngest has no memory of life before Joe and "Mags".  These dogs are pretty normal terriers.  They love to chase.  They have tons of energy and a permanent smile.  They've never been easy to walk as a duo, so I'm guessing they didn't get out much after I was no longer taking them.

One day last summer the kids somehow didn't quite get the back gate latched at their dad's house.  On that particular day, a neighbor cat cruised by to chase a few birds in the side yard, just outside the fence.  Like they've done a billion times before, the dogs slammed their excited little bodies against the gate... this time, freedom!  Sadly, the cat was not the winner of the battle.  Animal control arrests, vet trips for both dogs and the cat. Long story short- nearly $1500 in fines, fees, vet bills and tickets later- oh, and a misdemeanor charge with 6 months in jail, deferred for 6 months for the owner (Yes, for a dog/cat fight), the lines were drawn.  These dogs, under the current ownership, CAN NEVER LEAVE THAT YARD.  EVER.  Well, they disagreed and were bored and lonely, so they found a way out a couple of weeks ago.  Thus, earning themselves a one-way donation trip to the local animal shelter, where Mags, being the smaller, smooth-coated, adorable female, was adopted almost immediately.  Her homeless looking, rough-coated, dirt stained, awkwardly lanky brother wasn't so lucky.  Or so seemed apparent with my online sleuthing skills...

Joe's Animal Shelter Website Picture

This morning I woke up with very few plans for our first full day of my brother's spring break visit.  The kids were signed up for a 5k race and planned to run/walk with the neighbors.  As we were working out the last minute details, the neighbor introduced us to Leo, their new pound puppy.  I recognized the little bugger as the guy in the profile above Joe's on the website.  THEN the neighbor said that they nearly adopted "the one named Joe", but he was just "too old and they didn't want to lose another dog to old age quite yet".

With that, I lost all self control.  I checked the website again... I was sure no one was going to adopt him now, and to think he ALMOST got adopted by my NEIGHBOR???!!!  I quickly explained my problem to my brother.  I can't take him.  I have no fence, or money to hire one to be built.  Nor do I have the skills (amazing I know) to cut costs and built one myself.  The Little Brother Of The Year's advice?  "Get your dog.  I'll help you figure out a fence".

So, with the kids off racing their little tails off, we raced to the shelter, which was closed.  Fifteen more minutes until it opens..........  time crawled.  Finally, I got in.  I found him.  He was the only dog in the place not barking.  Instead he pressed his matted little head against the cage and pouted.  I scratched his face through the prison bars.  He halfheartedly licked my finger, but would not give me eye contact.  My heart choked me as I nearly ran out of there to find an employee.  "I need Joe" I said when finally someone came to the counter.  She looked surprised, probably because I sounded desperate.  She stammered as she asked me about other pets, especially cats... Finally, we got the Ts crossed and the Is dotted, his criminal record wiped clean.  Joe skipped to my car...

Kids' kisses, several applications of shampoo- the people kind, that smells like eucalyptus/cinnamon, a shopping spree for pet supplies and a trip to Lowe's to price fencing... The day whizzed by.

Later, the Brother Of The Year and I took my new, old dog for a walk.  Finally, he and I had the opportunity to just talk.  We talked about stupid things and important things.  He gave me his honest opinion about my fence and my business and my ice cream choice and the newest guy that's been calling...  I told him about fallow, and trying to stop being in love and then gave him advice and opinions right back.  I know my brother's leaving in a few days, but I think this dog and his need to exercise is going to be important as I use the time to think or to connect with someone else.  The Bonus People and I need him and he needs us.

Sunset Just Brings Darkness

Solar Flares.  That's what I'd like to blame it on.  It has actually kind of become the joke between a few of my friends and I.  While there may be some validity to the idea that the magnetic storms on the sun have an emotional and physical affect on animals and people, this is not that.

I spent some time tonight in my spot, on my table by Lake Josephine.  I've been craving solitude today, which is unusual for a people-person like me.  I have to get to a place of understanding on this thing I can't figure out in my head.  Avoidance isn't working.  Neither is sleep.  Over-analyzing is not my friend.  I was hoping that the peacefulness of the park would bring peace to my heart.  I brought my journal, hoping to write until I saw the answer.  I didn't.  So now, I'm reviewing my journal entry and giving it second shot...

I pulled into my lot just before the sun dipped below the trees.  The air is still a bit chilly, the day gray.  Yesterday, the last day of winter, it snowed- slushy and heavy and sorta deep.  That's melted today.  The calendar says spring now, but with the chill in the air, the park is disagreeing.  The sun is casting long shadows now as I sit on the corner of my table.  Ducks are breaking the stillness of the water as they make their way to shore.  Behind me there is a parked car with two young people kissing.  I don't want to see that.  Not today.  I return to my car and drive a bit further.

This is where my first exercise in solitude took place.  That tree is starting to get buds on it.  New growth.  Hope.  Funny though, a few of the leaves that I saw last fall are still clinging to the branches.  Something in me still feels like them.  Did they spend the winter afraid to trust the winds?  Huh.  Yeah, I completely get it:  new growth, hope,  still distrust...

My heart is sad today.  It's been a rough month.  I figured I'd be farther along in the "caring less" about certain things by now.  It seems I care more.  I feel foolish.  Too foolish to even spell it out for you.  It's okay though, because this process is for me and I'll look back on this and remember who, what, where, when...  it's the WHY I can't work to some sort of understanding.

The futility of asking "why?" has still never stopped me from asking.  When I was a kid I HATED the "because I said so" response.  I loathe "that's just the way it is".  Why?  I can't learn, change, grow unless I understand.  Is it protection?  Discipline?  Laziness of the one in authority?  As a parent I've said no for all three reasons...  God is not lazy. God is good and gracious and loving by nature...so, what am I missing?  Still there is silence.  The silence leaves room for the guilt.  I messed it up.  I know, because I have this hindsight vision thing that accuses and points out a million things I should have said and done differently.

The sun is mostly set now.  The ducks and geese are teaming up in couples to take care of their spring families.  That's nice.

The colors are perfect in the sky.  I snap some more pictures, still looking for something that gives my heart peace.  This still doesn't add up.  The pieces don't fit.  I have no idea how to walk away from what I feel, what I know.  Try as I might, I cannot kick it, push it, redefine it, loathe it, smash it to pieces...  It seems that God hasn't released me from it either. It turns out I suck at trusting still.  I stayed until dark.  Faith is blind, right?  Yeah, well faith has been just plain uncomfortable this month. 

As I'm re-reading my heart on paper, I'm starting to think that I need to stop being frustrated at God for other people's choices.  I need to be slower to make excuses for people, to hold them directly accountable, when those choices hurt me.  Forgiveness with accountability.

I can't wait for sunrise. 

The Bonus People

I've been talking to my big sister a lot this week.  She's my big sister in every way, except that she's completely unrelated to either of my parents.  She and I have a sisterly kind of relationship in that we shop, and tease, and eat out lots, and buy each other little random gifts, and laugh, MAN, we laugh!  Sometimes we're completely inappropriate considering we're grown women/mothers. We snicker at the most juvenile thoughts. (Well, that's more than "sometimes", actually.) We occasionally cry, but mostly I do, because I'm the crybaby little sister. Oh, and we shout at each other too.  She is one of the few people that I am comfortable enough with to just let stuff out as raw and uncut as I feel it, because she takes it.  She's also not afraid to dish it.  We are better for it.  The most important thing about my big sister is that she's soooooooo full of grace.  She is gentle, and thoughtful.  She thinks for days sometimes, about my questions and frustrations.  If she can't find and answer for me, she calls in the reinforcements: her husband of 21 years, her brothers, neighbor, sons... This woman is a deep well of experience and wisdom that I have been fortunate enough to draw from for 17 years- my entire adult life.

Wait, I got off topic a little, but I really wish you could meet her...  As I was saying, we've been talking about deep stuff again this week.  Nothing unusual there.  In fact, most of these conversations replay, nearly word for word, month after month- because she's just that patient with me.  Tonight as I'm laying in bed, wide awake again, I'm thinking about her response every single time I come to her with a specific angst...

Also happening this weekend, my parents are visiting.  Dad had to be in Montana on business, so the trip wasn't scheduled around us. It just happened to fall during one of my "off" weeks with my kids.  The time with just the three of us has been good, but it's strange for them to be here when their grand-kids aren't.  I've been feeling a little guilty about that for everyone. (Yes, I said "guilty" didn't I?  Well, it's the right word, so I'll leave it there.)

Okay, so now you're getting a clear-as-mud, scratch-of-the-surface view into my sleep deprived mind. Tonight it rests on the kids, and how they changed my life.  How they've changed my relationships: professionally, with friends, even with my parents.  How they will continue to impact my relationships... I can hear my big sister's angst-answering, urgent voice again: "They're your little bonus people! They are so sweet Collene...." Her voice trails off in another story she loves to tell me about my witty, goofball daughter.

I haven't been the world's most attentive mother.  Ever.  But, especially lately.  I have weeks, occasionally, that could almost qualify me for Superstar Mom status, but for the most part, I'm just proud I've kept them alive and fed.  What haunts me the most is that I've noticed, recently, how lonely they seem.  Most days I get home from work, having listened to and participated in hours and hours of chatter in and around my chair.  At home I find, in the disaster zone that has become my house, three hungry, eager, chatty children that can't wait to tell me about their day.

Mostly, from what I pick up in my half listening ears, they NEEEEED to discuss: the level he just reached in the new video game- and how, who said what naughty word on the playground, the bruise vs. Band-aid ratio she's got on her knees from skateboarding, a description of the disappointing lunch choices in the cafeteria, who messed up everything for the whole class in English, the "guy" she thinks is "hot" today at school even though he's probably going to be so gross tomorrow,  or "Mom, Mom, Mom, can I....?", or occasionally, "oh, hey Mom, don't forget to sign that"... (Obviously, I do forget, because I just told you I'm only half listening- which was me being optimistic.)

All of these conversations are great.  Unfortunately, they all happen simultaneously, before I've even taken off my coat.  Because I'm impatient and I JUST need to use the bathroom and change out of these hair-caked clothes and I'm not good at keeping up three completely different conversations at the same time, I hush them and send them all away.  There are undone chores, backpacks to pick up, a table to set and dinner to figure out, a pile of bills to sort, taxes still to finish. I'm frustrated and overwhelmed.  They don't feel like a bonus on those days.  I am burdened with my apparent inability to give them what they need and deserve. On those days time can't go fast enough.  I can't wait for bedtime, or the weekend...

Tonight, I miss them.  I WANT to hear these stories.  I love to hear the "best and worst" and everything in between like we do on my nights at dinner. On these weeks we rush in and out, dropping off and picking up...  All three of my bonus people will be gone in 8.5 years.  This school year was twice as fast as the last, quadruple the ones before.  It's imperative that somehow I figure out how to stop pushing towards, longing for bedtime, the weekend.  There are roughly only 263 weekends left until my oldest is released into his adult life.  I must stay connected, hear them, give me to them, do for them- be better than I am.

Guilty

I told you several weeks ago that I didn't completely finish my first set of challenges.  The love and wrath sections had me hung up in just about every way.  My understanding of those concepts is being completely turned upside down. 

Love as I understood it 15 years ago, 5 years ago, 5 months ago, was... well, a misunderstanding.  "Wrath", it seems now, has been corrupted in my mind too...  I have been skillfully avoiding writing about it, mostly because I don't fully have a firm grasp on the new "wrath" concept yet.  So, like everything else in this process, there's been a gentle, persistent, undercurrent of pursuit in my soul and a flickering word over these weeks.  It occurred to me tonight: I get a firmer grasp WHEN I write, which is the whole point of this blog.  (Duh, keep up Collene!) So, bear with me, while I prove to you that I know nothing, because I REALLY want to be changed by "love" and "wrath"...

The flickering word is GUILT.  Even in print it's a completely aesthetically displeasing word. When you grow up with an over-abundance of rules, and you have perfectionist tendencies- like I do... and you have no problem creating more rules- you tend to always feel guilt about everything.  It's nonsense, really.  I can remember as a kid feeling guilty when a teacher or parent simply asked "who______?".  I felt this way whether there was trouble coming, or not or whether I was even involved, or not.  I had the same feeling when a police officer would pass me, whether I was speeding or not.  (Back then I usually wasn't speeding, but I've managed to get over myself in that way.)

As an adult guilt has been the undercurrent of my life in other ways.  Desire.  Either I do desire the "wrong" things, or I don't desire the "right" things.   Uggh, what a prison.  What about this "freedom we have in Christ" I keep hearing people sling around.  Whatever, bumper-sticker!!  This is miserable.  God hates this, God hates that.  Clearly God hates me, because I LOVE that.  So, you see where I'm coming from with this "Wrath" topic right?  I'm already, hopelessly a loser.  Guilty.  Condemned.  Deserving of Wrath.

So, It's probably not necessary to define the word as I've always understood it, because I'm willing to bet the majority of the world understands it the way I always did.  But, I'm going to, because it's my blog and I need to- for me- not because I think you're simple.  Wrath to me meant: extreme anger, rage, fury, passionate distaste, emotional punishment- often irrational.

Maybe it's the English language that lacks.  There are 5 words for "love" in the ancient Greek language.  Is it so far a stretch of the imagination that our use of the one word "wrath" in translating as it pertains to God is also lacking depth?  It hadn't occurred to me before, but I'm listening...

I'm not asserting that we should "tweak" stuff in the bible to make it fit our ridiculousness.  I'm just struggling with the disconnect between what I've understood to be true and what actually works out in the testing of real life.  So, I'm finding myself open to new thought patterns.

J.B. Smith says: "Love is the desire for the well-being of another, so much so, that personal sacrifice would not stand in the way. It is not that God's love for us is dispassionate...it is just not an emotion that waxes and wanes... In the same way that God's love is not a silly, sappy feeling but rather a consistent desire for the good of His people, so also the wrath of God is not a crazed rage, but rather a consistent opposition to sin and evil... it is a mindful, objective response.  It is actually an act of love. God is not indecisive when it comes to evil.  God is fiercely and forcefully opposed to the things that destroy His precious people..."

The guy goes on to use MADD as an example of that kind of "wrath".  Mothers Against Drunk Driving is a group that fiercely opposed to people hurting themselves and other people...

Okay, it's starting to sink in.  Guilt is not God's tool, it's the other guy's...  In fact, some of the "wrong" things I desire can be "good".  As my Father who loves me, He wants me to have it all!  He just doesn't want me to have any of those things in a way that will hurt me, or others, or keep me from coming to Him as my Daddy. 

It also occurs to me that this version of the word is necessary for true justice, which I love.  Ultimately, I wouldn't respect a god who was emotionally unstable, indifferent, or played a partiality game when it comes to moral evil. Okie doke, firehose thoughts tonight, right?  I need sleep.  But first, can I just say: I love you people and my grasp just got firmer!

Playtime is Right-eous?

My Grandma Joyce, who passed away several years ago, told me when I was 13 or 14:  "Collene, make sure you laugh- A LOT.  When you are old, your wrinkles will not lie about the kind of life you had.  If you laugh, you will look happy when you're wrinkled."  She had a cute, bubbly, infectious laugh.  Her face even rested in a half smile.

I'm sure that I did not laugh as much in my previous 34.25 years, as I did in the last 6 months.

That being said, I will say that since the divorce, these questions have plagued me: What do YOU like to do Collene?  Who ARE you, when you're not a mom or business owner?  What are your hobbies?  What do you do for fun when the kids aren't around?

Fun?  Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, can I get a definition?  Can you repeat the word?  How about using it in a sentence?

Last summer I started remembering how to play. It was uncomfortable at first.  I was a bit anxious.  I had a nagging feeling that I was forgetting something BIG.  I felt a little insecure putting aside my stress, planning, organization... How do you just "let go" and smile when life is falling apart around you? I'll tell you how started, actually:

I was getting ready to buy a house and was supposed to close July 15th.  Prior to the closing, I had about 6 weeks of wait time.  The loan was complicated, somewhat, requiring more prep time for the lender than usual.  Then, my loan got audited, which complicated it further.   To make things more interesting, I had to be out of my rental home two weeks prior to closing.  Everything had to be moved to storage and I was homeless- for AT LEAST two weeks.  As a mom, I was most definitely not allowing myself to exhale, much less dream about paint colors...

My friend, the one you're starting to know well, who knocks me around when I need it, essentially told me that I was sucking the fun out of everything.  She said "You are always waiting for the worst, and never enjoying the now!  This is FUN, we should be dreaming about how you'll decorate.  Instead, you're so certain it won't happen you aren't having any fun. Besides, you get to live with ME for at least two weeks!"  (Did I ever mention that I have incredibly gracious, generous friends?)

Soooooo, one night, late, she made me go for a walk to the park down the street.  Then she invited me to swing with her on the playground.  Do you remember the feeling of going so high on a swing that you float for a second on the return, before the chains catch you again?  I had forgotten.  Then, as we were swinging and talking and laughing, the park sprinklers came on, surrounding us!  I felt like I was about 9 again...  Later during my stay with her, she forced me to try a boxing class with her, way too early in the morning... there's something about punching stuff really fast that makes this girl grin...

I closed on the house, on time.  Simultaneously, I started trying other new things as well as stuff I had let fall by the wayside when I became a wife and mother.  I found my grin.  I heard my giggle again. I even, literally, danced in the street!  Play became more than a one or two hour event- I spent whole weekends, then even a week, dare I say it: a whole month, "letting go".

 ...but, it seems, I've done it again.  For nearly two weeks, I have slipped back into the all-too-serious business of adulthood.  I've started feeling old again too.  My head is again full of worry. My brow tense with those secret fears (creating lines my grandmother would disapprove of). My joints are even aching as I struggle with sleep and restlessness.  Again.  The weight of the world has never felt more squarely placed on my shoulders. I'm beyond irritated, at myself, to be feeling this way- especially since "feelings" are so stupid.  It's okay, though, because at least it's familiar territory, right?

NO!  My biggest fear throughout this life transition has been forgetting what I'm supposed to be learning, having to endure the painful relearning. So what is it that's slipping?

"I'm supposed to be His daughter, His princess"... was the thought on my mind while I cleaned all day today.  Thoughts about God as a loving father flickered again...

It's trust again, that's lacking.  "Is God still in control?"  I again find myself asking.  My friend's response still comforts: "...trust Him...you just have to get past yourself first."  This week I'm forgetting what I learned, God help me with my unbelief.

Children trust.  They live in dependence.  They do not need to be in control. They are carefree.  They play!  This is right, the way it should be...

When Sleep Beats Me Up, I Obey

It was another one of those sleeps today, the kind that leaves me feeling less rested than when I laid down.  It was worse than restlessness...  This was the kind of vivid sleep battle that left me with my heart racing, body sweating, gut wrenching, soul crushed- with deep unexplainable sadness, emotional/spiritual turmoil.  Not a nightmare, really.  Not a dream either... and I had only had my eyes closed for 20 minutes.

The person in my sleep is not someone with whom I'm in contact anymore, which makes it all the more unsettling.  The fact is, this friend has been the subject of three others like it in the last several weeks.  So, since I don't know what else to do to get my mind and heart to rest, I prayed again for my friend. Now I'll write:

"What is it you want?"

The question has haunted me for years.  The friend in my dream today was wrestling with it too...  I know what I don't want, but up to now, I have been unable to put into words what I DO want.  I'm guessing that my inability to do so is somehow linked directly to pride (the bad kind).  If you know anything about me, you know that I'm not weak minded.  I'm not afraid to make a decision.  I'm not afraid to do. I just don't know how to ask for things I want or need.

Okay, so what I didn't tell you yesterday is that my Week 1 challenge was to write a letter that starts like this:  "Dear God, the life I most want for myself is..."  Yeah, I wrote it. I feel a little silly (pride again?) sharing it, but you people are starting to know me as well as I do by now anyway...

Dear God,

The life I want most for myself is... to be a stable, capable mother.  I want to be deeply connected with all three of my kids- for life.  I want to be able to teach them the tools for honest living in this mad world.  I want to be better at providing for them financially, emotionally, spiritually.

I want graciousness and love to be my instinct.  I want to be humble enough to accept love and help.  I want to live honestly and without duplicity. I want to live like my friend Patricia- with thanksgiving on my tongue.  I want to be wise- discerning of character and situations.  I want to be faithful,  a servant.  I want to sing again.

I want to have relationships started, mended, restored, reshaped, made stronger...

I want to continue to enjoy my job~ being with people all day, encouraging them through words, touch and beauty; being encouraged by them. (I want pretty shoes that I can stand in all day, maybe you could work that out either with my feet or the shoe people...)

I want to be deeply cherished, protected, part of a team, respected, trusted, loved passionately.  Chosen above all.  More than that, I want to find someone worthy of my trust, respect, passion, and family.

I want to forgive myself for my failures, to expect less perfection...

...to do justice, to love mercy, to walk humbly with you.

Sincerely,

~Collene

(The one that you love)

Living The Good Life?

Duplicity.  It's the word that won't escape me this week.  As I put my key in the lock of my back door, during that silent moment between songs on my iPhone, as I shampoo the color out of my client's hair... the word weaves it's way through my week.  I don't know why it's there.  I haven't heard it used in a sentence in years, but now the voice in my mind has started providing them for me...

Here it is, so you don't have to look it up:

du·plic·i·ty  (d-pls-t, dy-)

n. pl. du·plic·i·ties

1.a. Deliberate deceptiveness in behavior or speech.

   b. An instance of deliberate deceptiveness; double-dealing.

2. The quality or state of being twofold or double.

It's the word that describes what doesn't work in so many areas of my life lately.  Really the second definition is the one I'm dealing with in my mind mostly- "deliberate deceptiveness" is too strong for most of my thoughts...

In the beginning of the week, the voice in my mind used the word to describe my romantic relationships.  (My fallow heart was still kicking out, pulling up, the remaining weeds that had tried to stick around.) "They wanted this but also, that... they were duplicitous."  I kept thinking.  "That can't work."

Then as the thoughts evolved, they got more personal.  "You say this, but sometimes do that Collene."  Ugh!  Right to the core... but, it got me thinking.  I am sick to death of being stuck somewhere in the middle of who I want to be and who I actually am.

Soooooo, timing being what it is in this process I'm in, the second part in the set of challenges I'm working through started this week.  I should also add, that I wasn't planning to actually DO my book-work this week.  I was busy and exhausted and furthermore, some of those health challenges I skimmed over in last week's blog, sorta hit me like a brick this week...

Today, as often happens, my mind drifted to a few conversations I had with my friend Patricia a few years back... They stick with me, mostly because they were deathbed conversations.  Those conversations aren't about the weather, usually.  She was a laugher.  Before I met her she had survived brain cancer.  She actually seemed to be in the clear for a long time.  She was vibrant, spunky, gorgeous, witty, wise, intelligent, grounded, humble.

The day she told us that there was another tumor, I remember thinking: "Well good, another surgery, and life goes on. She's strong, healthy, a survivor."  It didn't actually turn out to be so simple.  The tumor was located in a place that made surgery impossible.  Oh, and it was the fastest growing kind.  Interesting, because that diagnosis, and the resulting prognosis, didn't fit with her attitude.  She was downright happy.  Excited even.  Her words?  "Oh, good!  I get to see Dr. So and So at the treatment center again.  I love him, and his staff..."

Ladies and gentlemen, we are not talking about a delusional woman.  I told you she's intelligent, grounded...

As it turns out, Patricia was accepted into a research treatment program at UCLA.  Every other week she and her husband would fly to L.A. from Anchorage for exhausting, painful, slim-hope treatments.  Her outlook?  "Well obviously, there's someone in L.A., or at an airport between here and there, that needs me to tell them about Jesus' love, grace, mercy..."

I know that if you are not one of the extremely blessed humans that got to call this woman "friend", you cannot fathom the attitude I am trying to describe.  I wouldn't believe it myself if I hadn't seen it.

Oh, there were hard days.  She had a few wigs.  (This is what she and I spent the most time laughing about.  I was her tucker/straightener/fashion consultant- like she needed it, FASHIONABLE she was!)  No woman wants to lose her hair.  That was hard.  It was hard when the tumor started pressing, causing facial disfigurement and partial paralysis.  It was hard when she had to ask me, after checking her wig, if she was drooling.  It was also hard that we, her friends, had to drive her everywhere during her husband's "slope weeks"- while he worked hundreds of miles away.  It was hard, for her, when she was no longer able to eat her meals alone and she had to rely on us to take turns feeding and medicating her.  We, of course, were completely blessed to be allowed to serve her this way.  It was hard when she no longer could master the stairs to her bedroom and she had to have a hospital bed moved into her living room.  It was hard when her family decided to call hospice...  Still, until the very last day of her life, we visited.  We laughed.  We sang her favorite songs to her.  We loved her.  Even more remarkably, she loved us. She ever encouraged, taught, smiled, thanked, praised.  Why????  Because, as she would say, "God is SOOOO faithful to me.  He loves me."

She wasn't dying from cancer.  She was LIVING with cancer.  That woman lived until her last breath.

C.S. Lewis said "God cannot give us happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing."  James Bryan Smith said "God is not being stingy and withholding joy apart from (my) obedience; there simply is no joy apart from a life with and for God."  Patricia would have wholeheartedly agreed with both.

So then, if that is how to live, and die, with such grace and peace and JOY... I want it.

Duplicity.  It can't work.  So why do I still faithlessly, untrustingly, continually try it?