I cannot tell you how many drafts I have begun, only to subsequently scratch because I cannot get this post to say exactly what I want it to say.  The teen dating thing is a subject that weighs so heavily on my heart, for many reasons.  The first of which being that I am the mother of a teen daughter who is quickly approaching that stage of her life.  The second of which being that my teen daughter is herself the result of teen dating and I’ve spent her entire life talking honestly and openly with her in hopes that she will make choices that lead her down a less difficult path.

So when I heard the pastor say that dating equates to “practice for divorce” you might think I tended to agree.

But you’d be wrong.

Because I take quite the opposite stance on this one; I’d venture to say that dating is practice for marriage.

I have always believed that dating is a very healthy part of adolescence.  I think it’s quite normal for teenagers to be curious about and interested in relationships with the opposite sex.  The desire to have a companion, after all, was planted into our hearts long ago.  And I believe that–as they approach adulthood–teenagers can and should begin dating, so as to get a feel for what love and commitment is all about.  These are the experiences that shape their ideals for what makes a marriage.  Without those experiences, how would they know what qualities to seek out in a future spouse?

I know what you might be thinking.  You might be thinking that teenagers should have a list (figuratively or literally) of qualities and values that his or her future spouse should posess.  And I agree.  But I also think that without the very practical and principal application of dating, that it would be nearly impossible to get a feel for what those qualities and values look like, in living color.

My own experiences with dating began when I was quite young.  And if those experiences taught me anything at all, they taught me how not to let my daughters date.  But just because I won’t be allowing them the same things my parents allowed me does not mean that they won’t have their own chance to dip their toes in the waters of dating.  I want that for them.  Holding hands at the movies and first kisses and senior proms.  These are rich experiences.  Experiences I wouldn’t want to rob them of.

Dating brings with it more touchy {no pun intended, honest} subjects as well.  And those–I suppose–are what all the fuss is about.  For good reason.  There are bad things–really icky, no-good, just plain awful–byproducts of modern day dating.  But honestly, the only bad things I can think of have premarital sex as the root cause.  Seriously.  STD’s, emotional baggage, pregnancy.  All sex based.  Not dating based.

As a parent, I feel like it is my responsibility to speak crystal clearly with my daughters about sex.  Not just about the nuts {again with the pun thing, sorry} and bolts of it, but about the far more important aspects of it as well.  About the emotional and spiritual parts that carry on long after the deed is done.  You know what though?  It’s also my responsibility to introduce them to the experience of dating.  Cautiously, of course, and with plenty of guidelines.  They’ll know my expectations.  They’ll know the ground rules.  And I pray that–armed with that knowledge–they will make good decisions.

I have long clung to the theory that my job as a parent is to help my children grow both roots and wings.  And while it seems like it would be much easier to seal them safely inside a giant bubble, somehow I don’t think it’d fill the job description.

So yes, my daughters will be allowed to date.  I won’t deny them the butterflies and I can’t spare them the broken hearts.  I’ll equip them as best I can and then I’ll let them spread their wings.  I’ll be praying all the while, mind you.  Because when it comes right down to it, that’s all you can do: love ‘em, guide ‘em, let ‘em go.  And pray.  Pray, pray, pray.

Considering the fact that I have four children, perhaps we should add a small chapel onto the house.  You’ll know where to find me.

We went to church this morning.

While we were there the pastor preached on marriage.  He spoke about young people and dating.  During his “talk” he referred to dating as “pointless” and “practice for divorce.”

I have an opinion.

But I want to hear yours before I taint the conversation with mine.

So tell me.  What say you?

I couldn’t get her out the door fast enough this morning.

It was one of those no I don’t wanna you’re stupid I don’t love you mornings.

One of those mornings when an ugly seed plants itself in her belly.  And so abruptly it blooms – sprouting angry, hateful words.  They grow from the pit of her and spill from her mouth–one atop another–each limb packing a firm punch right into the heart of me.

And I have to step away.  To breathe.  That her overgrown vines not strangle me.

I haven’t mastered the pruning yet: to take a pair of garden scissors and patiently clip – gently separating thorn from blossom.  Weed from seedling.

Instead I feel like a clumsy herbicide.  Like I know no better than to spill gallon after gallon, wilting everything in my path.

My thumb isn’t green.  I don’t have the tools.

These are my excuses.

Sorry excuses.

So again I turn my face upward.  Full of questions.  In search of guidance.

Then I cast my eyes down.  With shame.  Sorrow.

Please grant me the tools, the patience.  Fill my shed with plows strong enough to withstand the cutting and the turning.   With shovels so that I may dig deep.  Shine away my rusted spots – spots that threaten to give way.
Allow me to fertilize a soil rich with patience.  Love.  Understanding.  Strengthen the clay walls of my pot that they not crack under the pressure of stubborn thorns.  Let me be rooted in you O Lord – that the fruit of my labor be nourished through your unending love.  By your mercy and grace.

She gets on the bus.

I sigh.

I take a deep breath.

I wait.

Faithful that through Him I may nourish a bed of roses.

In spite of the thorns.

I lead a blessed life.

This much I know is true.

Well, most of the time anyway.

Admittedly, I’ve been known to forget from time to time.

If I’m being honest I will tell you that there are days when my four young blessing from above seem particularly heavy.

Or when the space between these four walls I’m blessed to live within seems cluttered and cramped.

Sometimes the food that we’ve been so bountifully provided isn’t easy to get to the table.

And even the clothes that protect us from the elements tend to pile up, feeling far more burdensome than blessed.

It’s true.

Blessings don’t always feel just so.

They can be puzzling.  Vague.  Stifling even.

I’ve been there.

I bet you have too.

I wonder, then, if you’ve been here:

Have you looked on at two of your own blessings, as they sit under a shared blanket, watching Saturday morning cartoons?

Have you overheard whispers between two sisters, sharing secrets not meant for mom’s ears?

Have you crept into their rooms–under the cover of night–just to watch them sleep?

Have you prayed for quiet, only to find comfort in the joy of their laughter?

Have you watched them grow–too fast–and wished you could freeze them in time?

Have you held your breath when one of them gets too close to an edge, or a fire, or a busy street?

Have you glowed with warmth at the sight of them feasting on a wholesome, hearty meal prepared at your hands?

I have.

I’ve lived them all.

Little treasures–those moments are–in an otherwise ordinary day.  Not happenstance, or coincidence.  At least I don’t believe so; I take them as something deeper.  Something meant for me: reminders.

He walked this weary land, after all.  He knows how the days can run together.  He knows that I tend to forget.

So He sends reminders:

Snowflakes falling in the desert.

Babies born in the nick of time.

Stars shooting through the sky.

Little whispers, they are, sent to carry me through.  To remind me of that which I’ve been given.  Of that with which I’ve been so richly blessed.

So grateful, I am.

For the reminders.  And for this blessed life I lead.

*This is my take on Gratitude, which so happens to be the topic of this month’s Write-Away contest over at Scribbit.*

There was a day when my husband went to work in camouflage and big ‘ol black boots.

He left long before the sun came up.  And didn’t get home until it had gone down.

“Work” wasn’t a place back then.  It was a lifestyle.

A lifestyle that required not a brief case, but a gun.

I can’t say for sure–because he’s spared me the details thank heavens–but I think he may have had to use it once or twice.  In a desert on the other side of the world.

Our first Christmas together wasn’t actually our first Christmas together.

Because I was at home, here in one desert, while he was in another one entirely.

While he was away I had the most horrible, realistic dreams.  And they were always the same.  I wasn’t plagued by bloody scenes of a world I’d never laid eyes on.  It wasn’t roadside bombs or grenades or blown up convoys that interrupted my sleep.  Probably because I had no concept of those things.  The images that deluged my unconscious were of that which I knew.  Or knew of at least.

More than once I was startled awake and physically got up to go to the front door because I was 100% convinced I’d heard the doorbell.

More than once I cried on the floor of my living room in the middle of the night.  Mostly because I was relieved that the doorbell I’d so clearly heard had been nothing more than a cruel trick of my dreams.

Oh I hated those months.

That lifestyle.

And I lived it for just an itty bitty fraction of time.

Nothing in comparison to so many others.

Others who lived it for many years before we did.  Who are living it still.

Others who still go to work with a flag on their shoulder and a their last name embroidered on their chest pocket.

Others who say goodbye to their baby sons and daughters and husbands and wives for far longer than anybody should ever have to.

Others who do it graciously.  Dutifully.  Proudly even.

They serve us all.

They serve for different reasons.

They serve in different ways.  {Including some who don’t wear a uniform at all but wear instead the many hats of a spouse who is left at home}.

I’m remembering those people today.

Praying for them.

Honoring their sacrifices.

Thanking them for standing for us.

Whether it’s here.  Or thousands of miles from here.

Thank you.

*I stole borrowed the title of this post from Toby Keith’s American Soldier song.  So sue me.*

“We’re not those parents…”

So said my “friend” (in quotations because the term just doesn’t do our relationship justice at this point), Becca, as she stood outside her house on Thursday afternoon.  I wasn’t there to hear her say it though. I was in the ambulance that had just whirred away from her neighborhood, speeding out of the desert with lights flashing and sirens blaring.

My son–my precious baby boy–was in that ambulance too.  He was breathing by that time. But he wasn’t quite right.  He was barely responsive.  Far from the vivacious little monster he had been only an hour before.

One hour.

An hour before we’d been playing and splashing in the pool.  Becca and I sat at the edge of her pool, our legs dangling in the water. Four of the six kids in the pool were proficient swimmers.  And then there were Cassidy and Jayce–neither of whom can swim without some sort of assistance.

My attention–though divided many ways–was aimed mostly at them.

Cassidy wore her arm floaties, and turned circles in the water as though Michael Phelps himself was no better than she.  Jayce stayed close at my side, shooting the other kids with streams from a water gun he’d adopted for the afternoon.  He waded from one end of the shallow lagoon to the other, back and forth, taking aim, over and over.

As we splashed in the water that day not a single sip of alcohol was ingested.  Not one split-second passed when either Becca or myself were not physically in the pool with our collective children.  Because we aren’t those parents.

But in the end, my physicality alone wasn’t enough.

I scanned the bobbing heads once more–as I’d been doing all afternoon–accounting for my four.  But this time I came up one short.

Until I saw a dark mass submerged to my left.  Not across the pool, but right next to me.  Three feet from where I sat.

Words can’t possibly convey the image of him there.  An image that I would pay countless dollars to have permanently deleted from memory.  An image that is burned into my mind’s eye.  An image that haunts me at night, and threatens to pounce even in the light of day, the instant I let my guard down.

While that image is truly horrific, worse still are the torturous thoughts of what he must have gone through in the seconds that led up to it.

Whether it’s a blessing or a curse that I don’t have those images available I’ll never know.

I suppose that when you get right down to it my memory is well supplied with a brutal arsenal with which to assault: the feel of his limp body against mine as I pulled him from the water, the sight of his blue lips as I placed him on the grass, the agonizing hours–or minutes or seconds, it’s hard to be sure–it took for him to finally respond to my demands that he breathe.

And then there was the blur of activity around me.  The fearful, wide-eyed children hovering nearby.  The sight of Becca, trying to answer questions for the 911 dispatcher on the phone.  A random neighbor, having come to help.  The shrill sound of my middle daughter, screaming her brother’s name with more desperation in her voice than I’ve ever heard from anyone else in all my years.

It was through the grace of God that Jayce finally responded.  It couldn’t have had anything to do with my worthless attempts–my misguided efforts to save him.

The sound of his exhausted moans were the sweetest music I’d ever heard.  And when–seconds later–he opened his eyes my heart pounded against my chest.  By the time he threw up, the crowd of miniature onlookers had been herded into the house.  Otherwise how crazy they would have thought I was for heralding it the way I did.

The next thirty minutes were joyous and overwhelming and terrifying and confusing at once.  There must have been ten paramedics.  Four emergency vehicles.  More beeping machines and heavy medical equipment than I ever care to see again.

I held him in my arms, cursing my own stupidity and praising his courage without taking a breath in between.  The decision to transport him to the hospital was not mine to make, though I wouldn’t have hesitated for a moment had it been.

Becca became like a sister instantly-assuring me that everything was going to be fine.  She thought when I couldn’t: repeating Jayce’s birthday and the spelling of his name every time they asked, calling Jeff at work to tell him what had happened, fishing the keys from my purse so she could drive the girls home and stay with them, fumbling through my wallet for my driver’s license when the officer needed it. She freed me to focus on the only thing I could have anyway: the boy I’d come so close to losing.

It wasn’t until we sped away in the ambulance, as Jayce lie there with an oxygen mask over his sweet little face, that I was struck with panic.  Would he have brain damage?  Might he regress at any moment?  Was he out of the woods?  My prayers went up steadfastly; my tears came in earnest.  In the thirty minutes it took to get to the hospital, my amazing little man made a full recovery.

Blessed indeed.

It may have been about that time that Becca stood amongst her neighbors, puzzling at how it could have happened.  We aren’t–after all–those parents.

But in my life I’ve learned that while most bad things happen to someone else…every once in awhile they happen to a neighbor.  To someone I knew in high school.  To a guy Jeff works with.  Or maybe to you.  Even to me.

Not because I don’t love my children with everything in me.  Not because I stole a candy bar when I was six.  Not because I honked at the slow car ahead of me not realizing it was an elderly woman at the wheel.

No.

Sometimes bad things just happen.  To good people.  To good parents even.

I certainly don’t do everything right. Every once in awhile I may look the other way when the TV has been on too long.  Or I forget the multi-vitamin.  I send my kids to school without every last one of the supplies on the back-to-school list.   I allow soda when we go to restaurants.  Once or twice I may even have said “hit her back” when one of my girls tattles on another.

And I looked away for a moment too long in the pool.

But (and believe me when I tell you that I am filled with doubt as I force these words through my fingertips onto this keyboard, and eventually the screen), I am a good parent.  I am.

I know that the very presence of my son is a gift that surpasses understanding.  Hearing his tiny words, the touch of his padded fingertips, the rise and fall of his itty bitty chest, his wet kisses–all are blessings for which I couldn’t possibly be more thankful.

So while every instinct within me demands that I punish myself, that I wallow in guilt for having abandoned him when he needed me most–I’m choosing another way.

This gift that God gave me last Thursday afternoon–this second chance–is not something I want to thumb my nose at.  It’s true that allowing myself to smile at this point goes against my human sense of justice.   What gives me the right to feel anything but gut-wrenching guilt after my failures permitted something so heinously unconscionable to occur.

What gives me the right?

There is but one thing that gives me that right: the grace and mercy of the Lord.   It is because of Him–and through only Him.

Because of Him, I will do my best not to let this experience overtake me.  Nor will I allow Jayce’s experience to be in vain.

So many of you have asked how you can help.  Most of us are separated by vast miles but there truly is something you can do for me in spite of the distance.

You can help me to become whole again.

How?  Easy.   Do something.  Anything.  Take a CPR class (as I fully intend to do).  Buy a life jacket and donate it to the neighborhood pool.  Promise that no matter how late you’re running you’ll turn around and grab that second set of water wings.  But most of all, watch.  Watch vigilantly.  Because being there isn’t enough.  Pledge to stop momentarily on your way to the water and consider our story, so that you, too, can grasp that what they say is true: it can happen to you.  It only takes a second.

And a second was all it took.

Please just do something.

So that I can believe that our story has helped to keep another child safe this summer.

That’s what you can do for me.  Thank you.

A couple of weeks ago I called the small business owner who cleaned our windows last spring to schedule an appt.  The man with whom I spoke didn’t sound familiar and so I asked if he had recently bought the business.  He proceeded to tell me that the former owner had “passed away.”  I was shocked by that news because the former owner had been only a year older than I (that would make him 32 today if you’re curious).  He was young and vibrant and seemingly very healthy.  What’s more is that he was a very, very cheerful kind of guy.  While he had cleaned my windows last year he’d been nothing short of delightful, engaging, and so very positive.  You can imagine, then, how puzzling it was to find out that he’d committed suicide.

I didn’t know him really.  We spent just the one afternoon in conversation as he scrubbed away at our grimy windows.  But I’m saddened at the loss of him.  Mostly because–judging from my own experience with him and that of the people who signed an online obituary guestbook–he hid his pain so well.  My short encounter with him left me with the impression that he was an adventurous spirit.  The kind of guy who would skydive on his 80th birthday.  An optimist.  An encouraging friend.  A lemons into lemonade kind of guy.

Clearly I missed something.

The whole thing makes me want to pay more attention though.  Offer more smiles.  Extend more patience.  Spread more joy.

Not that a simple gesture from a stranger would have changed anything in this case.

But then again, you never can tell.  You never know how a warm smile or an understanding glance or a moment of conversation might change someone’s outlook.

Someone whose outlook you didn’t even realize needed changing.

Cass has been a part of my life for nine years now.  And in those nine years I’ve become accustomed to the nuances of parenting a child with special needs: translating for people who can’t understand her, looming disasters that can occur if I take my eyes off of her for even a second in public, strangers who feel compelled to offer her a hug.

These are things we face and deal with each day.  Things I’ve come to understand.  Things that have become habitual.

And then there are those things that throw me for a loop.

Like hearing the doctor say that Cass is developing cataracts.

Cataracts.

Not such a big deal in the grand scheme of things.  But something that caught me quite off guard.

I expected a routine visit, maybe a stronger prescription.  But cataracts?  C’mon.  Really?  As if she doesn’t face enough as is.

I wish I could lift those struggles from her–take them on myself.

She’s been poked and prodded more times than any child should be.  She’s faced hospitalizations and therapies that exhaust her.  She struggles to learn the most basic concepts.

And those things don’t even touch on her future.

Yet I’ve always parented her as if there is no difference between her and and her siblings.

Little things like what the doctor told me today serve to draw an undeniable comparison.  One that I can’t ignore.

She is different.  In so many ways.

I still don’t understand why she was born into the body she was.  Why it had to be her.

And though I don’t understand, I’m not angry.  Or bitter.  Or regretful.

Just heartbroken.  Sometimes.

When I was very little, I went to church most Sundays.  As I got older that slipped a bit and we became more like the Easter/Christmas church family.  But Good Friday services were always included in our Holy week churchgoing.  And it’s something I’m very grateful for.  Attending that dark and somber service on Friday night made the sunrise service on Easter morning that much more joyful.  I truly believe that in order to fully appreciate the miracle of Easter, you have to be “witness” to the event that occurred three days before.  Only once you see and feel the contrast can you even begin to grasp the magnitude of God’s grace.  That’s why my family and I will be headed to Tenebrae services tonight.  To remind us why we don our Easter best and spend Sunday celebrating with eggs and bunnies and new Spring toys.  To remind us that–like at Christmastime–there is deeper meaning behind the gifts and the big family meal.

One of my favorite worship songs says it best:

I’ll never know how much it cost
To see my sin upon that cross.

That is why we celebrate.  That is why we remember.

If you’ve read my 100 Things About Me post you know that I cringe at the sound of the “R” word.  Likewise, I also take offense when I hear jokes being made about the “shortbus” or Special Olympics.  You can imagine, then, how appalled I was to see the President of our country mock Special Olympians on national television.  If you haven’t seen it, it will take but 29 seconds of your day to watch this clip.

If your life has not been touched by a person with developmental delays you may not understand why those of us who have are deeply offended by the callous words of a man with such great influence over so many.  Allow me to explain.

Not too long ago this man would have been crazy to even have dreamed of holding the office he holds now.  There was a time when men and women who share his skin color and have similar heritage were mocked, beaten, and segregated based on their pigmentation alone.

One would think that the struggles and pain of those who share his African American background would have given this man great insight as to the underside of discrimination.  One would assume that knowing what he knows, this man would be especially compassionate.  One would hope beyond hope that this man–especially this man–would be capable of leading honorably and setting a strong example that all Americans could follow.

Unfortunately though, this man has fallen heinously short.

There is nothing funny, cute, or endearing about the mocking of an organization as instrumental as the Special Olympics.  Special Olympians are heroes who’ve faced tremendous struggle and great hardship and have come out stronger for having done so.  People with developmental disabilities should not be used as an easy target for quips.  Especially by the President of our country and especially when a national audience is tuned in.

I can think of a word that conjures up hateful connotations towards a huge population of ethnic people in this country.  It’s a word that you or I would be ashamed to use, ashamed to teach our children, ashamed to have heard in our homes, schools, and churches.  It’s a dirty word, not because of its meaning, but because of its history.  Its a word that has historically been used to inflict pain on an entire population of people.  People who did nothing to deserve the treatment that fell upon them.  People who were persecuted for simply BEING.

It’s a word I wouldn’t dream of using.

I wish that Mr. Obama would pay me the same courtesy when it comes to being sensitive about the struggles my family faces with regard to my daughter’s disability.

Like him–like each and every one of us–she had no say as to the mental, genetic, or physical state she was born into.  But with each label that is slapped on her, with each disparaging comment that is thrown around, she is made to seem less worthy than she really is.

I am saddened and disheartened that the President of our country would stoop so low as to disparage people who have done no wrong.  I am appalled that there has been no public outrage over an incident that so clearly deserves it. I shudder to imagine what would have happened if our previous President had gone on national television and said the same thing.  Can you even imagine the outcry that would have commenced had that happened?

Whether we are talking about people with developmental disabilities or members of any ethnic group, discrimination is a wretched thing and should long ago have been abolished.

There is something each of us can do to institute change.

We can pledge to stop the frivolous use of the “R” word in our homes and in our families.  We can stop using terms like ’shortbus’ because they garner us an easy laugh.  We can respect the Special Olympics organization as a great resource for children like mine, not an easy target for jokes and mockery.  Together, we can change the way our society reacts to demeaning usage of the “R” word.

YES WE CAN.

And I hope you will.