An Athiest’s Opinion

I wonder what he thought when he met God? Was he surprised? Excited? Disappointed? Or, possibly, afraid?

There's just one problem with his hypothesis - who made gravity and who created that 'law'? Did it simply spring up, out of nowhere? Somehow, we have a immensely large galaxy, filled with billions of different things, all of them in unison working together, each dependent on the others to continue to exist in the spot and condition they are in or in order to effect change. Each, without the others, unable to do anything but exist.

We live in a universe on a planet that is interdependent with the other heavenly bodies around us. Move one of them just a few miles and the balance shifts; everything changes. If our moon, for example, were to be shifted enough by a large asteroid crashing into it, our tides would change dramatically, altering the coasts around the world.

The creatures, plants and natural elements of this planet are similarly interdependent on each other to grow, adapt, survive. Take out one element and the balance shifts; species die, or adaption is interrupted. New species spring up to take their place, others disappear forever. Australia, with its changes due to the introduction of foreign species (mainly house pets and some plants) is a prime example of this. There are multiple species of animals and plants that no longer exist just because some ship's Captain allowed their competitors to be brought over from Europe. Another example of this is the decimation of several species of small animals in the Florida everglades due to the introduction of pythons by irresponsible pet owners. Or take a look at the destruction of some still unstudied species of plant life (one which could hold the cure to cancer or heart disease or extend life) due to clear cut logging in the rainforest.

And yet, somehow, this brilliant mind couldn't see that the idea that it all simply happened out of sheer happenstance - space rocks flying around and crashing into each other - is nonsensical to an extreme degree? Sorry, Mr. Hawking, but that just doesn't compute. As Mr. Spock would say, "That is highly illogical, Captain."

 

Second Chances

This is the third part of my testimony as to the ways in which the Lord has made Himself evident in my life. I hope I’m not boring people with this and anyone is free to scroll on and ignore it. If it helps just one person to feel closer to the Lord or strengthens their faith, then that will make it worth the effort to tell. I’m going to call this part, “Second Chances”.

In my last post I talked about the loss of my first child, Beth, and the miraculous adoption of my second child, Amy. This post details the events surrounding the birth of my third child, Sara, who was never supposed to have been born.

As I mentioned in the former post, I am a DES daughter. That means I was exposed to a medication inutero that was supposed to help my mother not have a miscarriage, as she’d had three already. Unfortunately, much like the thalidomide debacle, DES turned out to be a dangerous medication that not only poisoned the women who were given it and raised their cancer risks considerably, it also caused abnormalities in the babies exposed to it. In my case it caused precancerous lesions in my female organs and an abnormally formed cervix. This caused me to go into premature labor every time I got past the 12^th week of pregnancy, causing more than one miscarriage and the eventual premature birth and death of my first child, Beth.

Knowing that we’d very probably never be able to have a biological child who survived, my now ex-husband and I decided to stop attempting to have children after we lost Beth. I went on birth control, and we talked about my getting a tubal. However, at the time very few doctors would do such a surgery on a woman in her early 20’s, as they feared I would regret it later. So, instead, we were very careful to make sure that we were using the best birth control available.

Fast forward to 10 months after we adopted our second child, Amy. I had been feeling ill for a few days and assumed I had a stomach bug. Finally, not feeling better, I went to the doctor, and he ran a few tests, gave me a medication for nausea and sent me home. The next day, while playing with Amy, I received a phone call from the doctor I’d seen. I’ll never forget the mix of surprise and confusion I felt when he announced, “Congratulations, you’re going to have a baby!”. I do remember replying, “I already have a baby” as I stood there holding Amy in my arms.

While I very much wanted more children, the revelation absolutely terrified me. After the loss of Beth, the idea of going through yet another failed pregnancy and possibly being faced with burying yet another child made my heart feel as though it would stop.

Now, for a little history that’s necessary to make this story make sense. This was the early ‘80’s and for those not as old as I am, it was right after the Islamist revolution in Iran. During the revolution the Shah of Iran (basically their King) was forced out, having to run for his life as his country was taken over by Muslim Islamist extremists. The Shah was one of the last old-time leaders of the Middle East. He lived as his predecessors had done, including having more than one wife and several concubines with which he had children. His entire family, along with his closest advisors, friends and other supporters also had to run for their lives, leaving everything behind. This included the physician whose job it had been to attend to all the Shah’s wives and concubines during their pregnancies and deliveries. This physician, a man named Ali Rahimian, gathered his family and escaped to America. This is how the preeminent obstetrician of the entire country of Iran ended up in a small town doctor’s office in Clarksburg, WV, seeing to the needs of that town’s pregnant population and, eventually, me.

 

When I first went to Dr. Rahimian, I felt reassured. He seemed quite self-confident and calm while talking of my situation. He assured me that, together, we would manage to see to it that I carried my baby to term. I realize now that he was simply trying to assuage my fears and that he was no surer of his ability to save my baby than any other doctor. However, his upbringing as the strong all-knowing Muslim man gave him at least the bravado of confidence. Whatever it was, though, I came away from our first meeting and exam with a renewed hope.

However, it was NOT going to be an easy pregnancy. Dr. Rahimian immediately scheduled me for surgery. At 12 weeks of pregnancy, I underwent a procedure called a cerclage. This involved putting in stitches in my cervix, like the drawstring of a pouch or purse, which were then drawn up tight, to hold the cervix shut and prevent it from opening prematurely. I then had to go on strict bed rest, only being allowed up to use the bathroom and shower once a week and go for weekly checkups. Thankfully, my mother was able to come to West Virginia from Wyoming and stay with us, taking over most of my duties as wife and mother to Amy, who was much confused by the changes. Suddenly, Mommy could no longer pick her up or carry her around and we started spending a lot of time cuddling, playing and reading books on my bed. Still, getting lots of love from Grandma helped her handle the transition well.

Hard as it was to go from being a very active 22-year-old to being bedbound, I did my best to follow Dr. Rahimian’s instructions and rested. Praying constantly, I begged the Lord not to take this baby from me. Even so, I repeatedly went into early labor. I spent the next three months going back and forth from the hospital, having to take the medications that stopped my early labor pains and lying still, flat on my back, bed tilted so that my head was lower and the weight of the baby was shifted upward and off of my cervix. Then I would go home to more bed rest for a few days, repeating this pattern over and over, living in constant terror that I was going to lose another child.

At six months, during yet another hospitalization for early labor, Dr. Rahimian informed my husband and I that the stitches that had been put in during the cerclage surgery were tearing out and would soon give way, allowing the cervix to open. I felt my heart thumping in my chest, my head spinning, my ears ringing. All I could think of was that I was at the same point in this pregnancy as I had been when Beth was born. My sweet Beth, too tiny to survive, had died in my arms. Was I going to watch this child die, as well? “Why God, why?” I silently screamed as I sat facing Dr. Rahimian. Why would He put us through this again?

Dr. Rahimian came into my room the next day. He called my husband to my room, and we waited to hear what he had to say. In his typically self-confident tone, Dr. Rahimian told us that he planned to do a second cerclage surgery, to stitch the cervix shut yet again, with a different technique. He assured me that it would be fine, that we weren’t going to lose this baby. Holding my husband’s hand like a lifeline in a stormy sea, I agreed and took a deep breath. It was going to be okay. My baby was going to live. Dr. Rahimian set up the surgery for the next day.

When time for surgery came, I remember looking up from the gurney as they wheeled me into the operating room. I was surprised to see a five foot stepladder in the middle of the room. Above the operating table was a strange harness made of webbing and straps. Looking at it, I asked Dr. Rahimian what it was for. He told me it was so that they could suspend my hips in the air, shifting the baby’s weight upwards, allowing him to be able to put in the new stitches. I realized then that the stepladder was for Dr. Rahimian to stand on while he performed the surgery. My body would be suspended nearly upside down, only my head and shoulders staying on the table. I remember counting backwards from 10 as they administered the anesthesia and thinking how incredibly embarrassed, I would normally feel in such a situation. However, if it would save my baby, I would have stood on my head and sang opera if it had been called for!

I woke up in recovery, a smiling Dr. Rahimian and my husband looking down on me, assuring me that all had gone well. While I did continue to go into premature labor several times over the next six weeks, the stitches held. Finally, however, there came a time at 7 ½ months when the drugs wouldn’t work, and they couldn’t get the contractions to stop. Dr. Rahimian told me that it was time to take out the stitches so that my contractions didn’t tear them out. He assured me that my baby had a good chance of survival at that point and, tearfully, I agreed to allow him to remove them.

To everyone’s shock, I didn’t immediately deliver! The contractions stopped and I went home for a few days. After about four days, however, daughter number three decided she was ready to make her entrance into the world. Sara was six weeks premature but strong and healthy, breathing well enough to not need any kind of assistance. She was a strong-willed bundle of energy even then which, no doubt, was part of the reason she came out of the gate running, not letting prematurity slow her down a beat.

The day after I delivered, Dr. Rahimian came into my room. Sara lay in the little bassinet next to my bed. Dr. Rahimian, who had always been quite formal in his interactions with me, surprised me by sitting on the edge of my bed. He reached out with one hand and put it on Sara. He covered my hand with his other hand and breathed a big sigh. “Well, we did it, didn’t we, Mama?” he asked me. I smiled and said, yes, proudly looking at Sara. He then told me that the procedure he’d done at six months had never been done before. He explained that he’d come up with the idea and designed and made the harness he'd used to suspend me upside down. He told me he didn’t want to frighten me, so he never told me it was an untried idea and that he had been very afraid it wouldn’t work. I remember sitting there, shocked. He had projected such an air of quiet confidence at the time, and afterward, that I had never even imagined the truth! We talked a couple more minutes and I thanked him for helping me save my beautiful little girl. I also asked him to make sure that one of the nurses took a picture of him holding Sara before we left the hospital, so that I would have it to remember him and all he’d done for us. Eventually he wrote up the case for one of the medical journals and second trimester cerclages are now done routinely when needed.

Three days later we carried our third daughter into the house and introduced her to her big sister. I knew how blessed I had been. That we had the incredible luck of having one of the best obstetricians in the world available to see us through that long and difficult pregnancy was amazing. Even more unbelievable was the turn of events that found all of us in that little West Virginia mountain town, where we not only were gifted with our second daughter through adoption, but were blessed to have our third daughter’s arrival overseen by Dr. Rahimian, who quite possibly was the only reason she survived at all. I knew, deep inside, that it wasn’t all just a bunch of random coincidences. The Lord had been working behind the scenes, sending all of us to that place at that time, so that the blessings He had for us could occur. Dr. Rahimian and his family had found a new life and safety and my husband and I had been blessed with a family after a devastating loss. I knew it was much more than just luck that had placed those two precious babies in my arms.

Lost and Found

This is the second part of my personal testimony as to the Lord’s working in my life. The nice thing about Facebook posts is that you can read them, ignore them, scroll past them and, sometimes, glean a little wisdom or learn something new or just get a good laugh out of them. Feel free to get what you choose out of mine. My hope is that it will reach a friend or the friend of a friend who’ll get something positive out of it. So here is part two of my testimony, which I’ll call “Lost and Found”. I’m going to post it in two parts because it’s pretty long.

To begin with, a little history to put things into context. In the late 1940’s to the early 1970’s many women in America were given a medication called Diethylstilbestrol or DES, a synthetic form of estrogen, during their pregnancies. The intention of the medication was to have been to help women who had experienced multiple miscarriages to carry their babies to term. Unfortunately, not only did it not actually cut down the rate of miscarriages, but it also had several serious side effects. It raised the chances of both the mother and her baby’s risks of certain sexual organ cancers. It also caused many of the girl babies to be born with what was called an ‘incompetent cervix’ and other birth defects, which meant that the cervix was not formed properly and was very thin and weak. In laymen’s terms, once the baby got big enough to put pressure on the cervix it would begin to soften and open up, causing premature birth. I discovered that I was a DES child when I went to my first visit with a gynecologist and he found the thin cervix, as well as precancerous changes to the cells of my cervix. He told me then, at the age of 18 and after having already suffered two miscarriages, that I’d likely never be able to carry a child to term without having to have a ‘cerclage’ surgery to sew my cervix shut at three months gestation. Since I’d lost both of my former pregnancies before the 12-week mark, he assured me that those miscarriages probably didn’t have anything to do with the DES exposure. I found out later that wasn’t true. DES also caused my brother to develop testicular cancer that nearly killed him in his early twenties, as well as causing me to have pre-cancerous growths that culminated in my having to have a total hysterectomy at the age of 25. DES was a disaster that caused the premature deaths of hundreds of thousands of women and their children in the U.S. and countless more around the world.

When I remarried at 19, my new husband and I knew that having children was going to be a complicated and difficult thing. Having just suffered two miscarriages in my first marriage, I was in no rush to try again. However, my husband was 10 years older than I was and at 29 he was eager to start a family. So, we decided to forgo birth control and let God and nature decide when our family would begin. Within a couple of months, I started to have morning sickness. Sadly, before we could get to our first obstetric appointment, I miscarried once again.

Six months into our first year together I conceived once more. By this time, I had convinced myself that God didn’t want me to have a family for some reason, so I refused to allow myself to get excited at all about the pregnancy. Two months passed – still pregnant. Three months and our first ultrasound – still pregnant and everything seemed perfect. Four months in and the obstetrician sat down with us to discuss doing a cerclage, the surgery to sew the cervical opening shut, preventing it (if it worked properly) from opening prematurely and causing a miscarriage/premature birth. There were several possible complications, including the surgery itself causing a miscarriage, infections and possible hemorrhaging due to the stitches tearing out. We decided to keep a close eye on the situation and put off doing a cerclage unless there were signs of a problem. The next month we moved from Omaha to Clarksburg, WV, where my now ex-husband was slated to do his residency in Family Practice. At that point, all seemed to be going well and there were no signs of problems with the baby or the pregnancy at all. I was seeing the obstetrician weekly, just to keep a close eye on things.

At six months along, I went to my weekly visit with my new obstetrician. He did the typical exam and declared that all was well. My husband and I sighed with relief that it appeared we might not have to do a cerclage at all, mitigating the chances of negative complications. We returned home with lighter hearts. The next day, a Saturday, I was lying on the sofa, relaxing and watching a movie on TV, when I felt a strange gurgling in my stomach. Thinking it was probably just gas, I didn’t grow alarmed until I stood up to go use the bathroom, only to have my water break. I was immediately terrified. Sometime during that 24-hour period my cervix had opened up and allowed the gestational sac to enter the birth canal, causing the sac to burst and putting me into premature labor.

 Nowadays, babies born at 26 weeks almost routinely survive, most without issues. In 1981 however, babies that premature rarely survived and those that did often had lifelong issues. I called out to my husband and he came running from the kitchen. He quickly realized what was going on. We called the obstetrician’s answering service and then headed for the hospital, both of us horrified and frightened, praying together along the way for our baby’s life.

The hospital in Clarksburg did their best to stop my labor but to no avail. It was decided that the baby would have the best chance of survival if I were to give birth in the Women’s and Children’s hospital in Pittsburg. They loaded me onto a helicopter and flew off in the middle of a rainy dark night. Four hours after I arrived there, my first child, a perfect, beautiful little girl was born. They whisked her off to the PICU at once, never allowing me to hold her. My husband, who’d followed in our car, arrived soon afterward. We waited for hours before we were allowed to go and see our daughter. We’d named her Elizabeth Kathleen. It was heartbreaking to see her lying there, so fragile and alone, covered in tubes and equipment. We could only reach in and stroke her tiny hands and forehead, unable to give her any comfort.

A few hours later, after I’d returned to my room exhausted and my husband had gone to a local church member’s home to rest for a couple of hours, the NICU physician called my room and urged me to return. Beth, as we’d nicknamed her, wasn’t doing well. I arrived to be told that she had developed an intracranial hemorrhage. In other words, a blood vessel had burst in her brain. Her vital signs were fading, her tiny heart beating slower and slower, her blood pressure was going lower and lower. I asked the doctor if there was any chance she’d survive and he told me that the odds weren’t good. If she did somehow stop bleeding and survive, the lowered oxygen supply to her brain would very likely cause severe brain damage. I stood there beside her, watching her tiny body slowly fading away. I prayed, “Lord, what do I do? What do You want me to do?” I felt a strong certainty in my heart that I should hold her and allow her to pass peacefully in my arms. I asked the doctor to remove the tubes, needles and the ventilator that was forcing air into her fragile lungs. By this time her heartbeat was barely 40 beats per minute and her blood pressure was barely registering. Finally freed from all the painful equipment, Beth was wrapped in a soft blanket and placed in my arms. I sat rocking her and sang her lullabies, promising her that I’d see her again soon and telling her how much her daddy and I loved her. Within a few minutes, after taking a few shallow breaths, Beth took one last gasp for air before her tiny heart stopped. My husband, who’d rushed to the hospital as soon as he'd heard that Beth was dying, arrived just in time for her passing. We sat holding her for a couple of hours, touching her tiny hands and feet and kissing her perfect little face, until it was time to let her go to the morgue.

We returned to my room, devastated, neither of us able to really talk about what had happened. We both eventually fell asleep out of sheer exhaustion, crying ourselves to sleep. Once again, I began to believe that God was never going to allow me to become a mother and that, for some reason, this was His way of punishing me for whatever sins I’d committed. The one thing I’d wanted uppermost all my life - to be a mother - was, from what I could see at that time, never going to be mine. We were completely devastated. The next day they released me from the hospital, and we returned to West Virginia, to the house with the empty nursery. My arms ached from emptiness of the lack of the child that should have been held there. My faith in God was badly tested.

PART TWO:

The weather in West Virginia in late October and early November of that year fit my overall mindset perfectly. It was rainy, gloomy and bone-chillingly humid and cold. After Beth’s funeral in August, attended only by my mother, who was the only family member able to attend due to distance and time constraints, and the other medical residents in the program and their wives, I became severely depressed. Sure that my failures and sins had brought about the death of my daughter, I became more and more isolated, rarely leaving the house or speaking to anyone but my husband. The wives of the other medical residents tried to reach out to me, stopping by to bring a casserole or a book or just to talk. I appreciated the gestures, but I was grieving too deeply to be able to do much more than barely answer their well-meaning questions, tell them thank you and then withdraw into myself again. My husband, Marden, and I barely spoke, walking around the house when he wasn’t at work, like two strangers sharing the same home.

On November 15^th, the day that Beth was supposed to have been due, I awoke in a panic. Dreaming that I could hear Beth crying for me, I’d been frantically looking for her, searching in the darkness as her cries grew ever louder. I woke just as I was jumping out of bed, heading toward the now empty nursery – its contents stored away in the attic upstairs. I made it to the doorway of the bedroom before I regained consciousness enough to realize that I was dreaming and there was no crying. The nursery stood empty, silent and still. After three months, our life was just beginning to fall back into something akin to normal. I no longer spent every day lying on the couch, crying, and we were slowly allowing ourselves to work through the loss of our daughter. I sat down on the edge of the bed and cried for a few minutes, then forced myself to get up and start getting ready for the day.

After being urged by friends and family to investigate adoption, we’d made several phone calls to local social services and local adoption agencies. We quickly learned that the chances of our being able to adopt a baby before at least a seven-year wait would be very unlikely. I felt a horrible hopelessness. My dreams of becoming a mother faded further away each day. Trying to find something to fill my time and get me out of the silent, empty house, I signed up for classes at the local community college in their new physician assistant program. I started classes at the beginning of October, finding it helped at least a little bit to have something that forced me to think about anything other than my loss and the empty nursery at home. Despite the distraction, however, nearly every school day would end with a stop by the little cemetery that lay beside the street that I traveled back and forth from home to school. Sitting beside Beth’s little headstone with the angel inscribed beside her name, the emptiness in my heart was a gaping hole I feared would never be filled.  

November 15^th was a Sunday and Marden was just finishing a 36 hour shift. He returned to the house that morning and we ate a late breakfast together. Afterwards, I sat down to read while he looked over the paper before heading off to bed to get some much-needed rest. A few minutes later, the phone rang. Being before the days of cell phones, our only receiver was in the kitchen, mounted on the wall. Marden went to answer it. I sat, continuing to read but listening to his side of the conversation, thinking he’d probably tell me that it was my mom, calling as she often did on weekend days. However, his side of the conversation didn’t sound at all as I expected it would. At first his voice sounded unsure, almost confused, asking questions and giving short answers – “Yes, yes, okay, I’ll have to talk to Lori. Right. Yes. Okay.” I couldn’t figure out what the subject could possibly be.

After about five minutes, he said goodbye and came into the living room. He had a bemused, almost shocked look on his face. He told me that one of the other medical residents had just called. He’d delivered a newborn earlier that morning in the ER. The baby’s mother was young, unmarried and wanting to give the baby up for adoption. The other resident, a neighbor and new friend of ours, told her about us and our recent loss. The birth mom agreed to allow us to consider adopting her baby. The other resident then called the hospital social worker, who told him that private adoptions were legal in West Virginia and that we could, indeed, adopt the little baby girl waiting in the hospital nursery if we and the birth mom both agreed. The biological mother had already placed another child, a boy, a couple of years earlier and she suggested that the same lawyer handle the adoption of her baby daughter. The hospital social worker called the lawyer, who spoke to the birth mom and then he began to draw up the necessary paperwork. It was at that point that the resident who’d delivered the baby thought to call us to ask if we wanted to adopt!

After a shocked but very short conversation, Marden and I agreed that we wanted to adopt this stunning and unexpected gift of a beautiful child that God had provided. We called our friend back and gave him the news. He then relayed our answer to the baby’s birth mother and the social worker, who contacted the lawyer. In what seemed like a dream, we sat out the waiting period of 76 hours, both of us swinging back and forth from giddy excitement to frantic fear that the baby’s biological mother would change her mind. We spent the rest of that Sunday afternoon bringing the contents of the nursery down from the attic, putting the crib back together and decorating the walls with the cute decorations we’d taken down just three months before, thinking we might never unpack them again. We talked for hours, trying to grasp the amazing turn of events, picking a name for our soon-to-be new daughter and making plans. For the first time in three months, I felt hope again.

At the end of the waiting period, Amy’s (we’d decided on Amy Marie for her name) biological mom signed the paperwork to allow us to adopt her. An hour later the lawyer and his wife knocked on our door, a tiny bundle wrapped up in layers of warm blankets in his wife’s arms. They stepped inside and she handed the baby to me. I sat down on the couch and began to unwrap the layers of blankets, feeling as though I was opening the greatest gift I’d ever received. Finally, I found myself looking down at my tiny, perfect little girl sleeping peacefully on my lap, a halo of blond ringlets surrounding her head. God had answered my prayers in a way I could never have imagined. He’d taken a tragedy and filled in the empty hole it had left in my heart with a beautiful gift, born on the same day that Beth had been due. The ‘coincidences’ of it all were simply too great to be ignored. That we’d ended up in Clarksburg, to begin with, when Marden might have matched at any of the other four residency programs he’d applied to, was the first ‘coincidence’. That our friend and neighbor happened to be the resident handling the ER that day was the second. That Amy had been born on Beth’s due date was the third. Lastly, that everything worked out so seamlessly regarding the lawyer and the necessary paperwork, was the final blessing. Only a complete cynic would be able to ignore the clear and undeniable way that God’s hand had been at work in all of it for months, leading us toward that wonderful day. A devastating loss followed by a blessed gift – love lost and found.

 

 

It's another yo-yo day in paradise.

Some days I open my eyes to an overwhelming feeling of reluctant acceptance. Sigh... still here. Other days I awaken, immediately filled with a combination of despair and anger. Still here!?  Today is an anger and despair day. Why, Lord, won’t you let this purgatory end? The question continues to go unanswered, and I keep waking up. Still here.

I'm so happy to be here in this much nicer, cleaner, larger room with a big window I can look out of. The food here is edible most of the time. It's still hospital food, but it has flavor and isn’t cooked to a dried hockey puck. I appreciate the central air, the ice water, the clean sheets and that the electronic features of the bed work properly. It’s a Western world where there’s hot running water and electricity with lights and WI-FI readily available. Having been in third world and post-Soviet Union countries, I know that those things aren’t available to many of the worlds’ inhabitants, and I truly do thank God for them. Most importantly, the staff here is, for the most part, caring and at least do their best to make me comfortable. So, there too is another reason to be thankful.

That said, I’m finding this stage of my life to be… well, disconcerting at best. Scripture encourages us to always thank the Lord for our blessings, to look for the quiet in the storms, to trust in His plan and delight in His presence. I want to do this. I want to revel in the good things around me. The truth is, though, that I must force myself to try and appreciate what I have here. This limbo I’m hanging in, still very much alive and – most of the time when the pain meds are working – feeling okay, belies the fact that I am here to die. That fact - the fact that fatality is the goal, hangs over every moment. Things have taken on an air of impermanence. Everything seems to hold less importance. I see things and perceive them with a different eye, an altered sense. I watch an episode of a favorite show with the knowledge that I’ll never know how the story ends. So many things that once meant a great deal to me now seem inconsequential, insignificant. Reading news articles, I see stories of events that I’ll soon no longer be affected by, knowing that my loved ones will be, and feel completely helpless and impotent to effect the world around me in any way. I fear I’m leaving them with a mess and that worries and fills me with a disquieting feeling of powerlessness.

Looking out of my window, I see the green grass and the breeze blowing the trees, including the pretty purple leaves of a couple of trees that I have no name for. I see the bright, blue sky and the fluffy white clouds on sunny days. I enjoy the thunderstorms, watching the dark storm clouds scuttle above while the wind whips the trees below. The cars zooming down the streets and the occasional person walking down the sidewalk, sometimes accompanied by their trusty canine pals, add a bit of variety to the scene. I am glad I have these things to look at and I try to enjoy them. I try to count them as blessings.

Still, despite my best efforts, the emotions that I feel as I gaze out at these scenes are more likely to be ones of grief and jealousy. I want to be driving those cars to wherever their destination is. I want to be walking my dog down that sidewalk. I want to feel the sun, the wind and the rain on my skin. I want to smell the scents of fresh cut grass and even the exhaust of the cars going by. I want to be able to get up, walk out of here and do whatever I want to do, even if it’s just to run down to the convenience store and pay an exorbitant price for a candy bar or a bottle of pop. I want to be able to go see my kids and grandkids. I want to be able to take them out to lunch or shopping or sit and play a game with them. The last 19 years of raising five kids on my own, working full-time, trying to deal with all of the daily responsibilites and barely surviving from day to day left no time for those things. I watched those years speed by, hoping that once I retired, I’d be able to make up for all the years that I wasn’t able to spend quality time with them. Life events, disability and chronic illness destroyed any dreams of that happening. Now, I find myself sitting here, wanting so much to be able to do the little things with them that I never was able to, trapped and imprisoned in a body that won’t even allow me to stand up and walk across the room. Life celebrations like birthdays, graduations, proms, weddings and births go on without me and now that I have the time to attend or create them, I am unable to do so. Our current electronic world would have us believe that zoom calls and facetime and texts can take the place of those occasions and milestones in our lives, but nothing can replace the intimacy of gathering with family, laughing and telling stories. No text can replace the warmth of a hug. No zoom call can create the feelings of fellowship. No digital image can substitute for the smell of your grandbaby’s hair as they snuggle under your chin. I love seeing the pictures, hearing the voices, listening to the stories of what’s going on in their lives. Even so, those are hollow facsimiles of the real intimacy that makes life worth living.

The knowledge of that fills me with such deep regret and grief. I wanted so much to be the Nana who made cookies and read stories as my grandbabies cuddled in my arms. I wanted to be the mom who took her adult kids out for lunch or to a movie, her teenagers to the mall, her kids to the pool or the park, but those moments were few and far between. I wanted to be the mom that the kids knew they could always come to if they needed someone to listen, rather than the mom who was too busy putting out fires all day to be able to spend much one-on-one time with any of them. But the reality was that there was no time, no peace and no money for any of those things and distance kept us apart, as well. Hating that reality, I kept promising myself that I’d make up for it when I was finally able to stop spending all of my time simply trying to keep things together and survive. That time will never come now and the realization of that tears me apart. I don’t know whether I want to cry or rage or simply curl up and close my eyes and cease to exist. I just know that I hate it and can do nothing to change it. Yes, if while reading this you feel a stirring of concern about your own life, it is meant to be a warning.

I want to be living, not sitting in this bed, day after interminable day, simply existing until I die. Well, perhaps it’s more accurate to say that I’m already dead, my body just hasn’t quite caught up with the program yet. There is no quality of life lying alone in a bed, hour followed by empty hour. It does leave me with ample hours to think back about all the years spent surviving from one day to the next while my children and grandchildren grew up and left me behind, our relationships never reaching the closeness I so very much wanted them to have. If only I could stop thinking about it now.

Faced with these feelings, I’m at war with myself. “Stop,” I tell myself, “Appreciate what you have, be thankful that your kids and grandchildren are capable, strong, healthy for the most part, doing well, managing their own life struggles and standing on their own two feet. Count your blessings, see the good, relish the positives. Stop whining and feeling sorry for yourself!”  Even so, arguing with my feelings and trying to force the negative ones down, I find myself filled with a mixture of grief, regret, anger and frustration, mixed with shame for allowing those other emotions. Having faith in the Lord and knowing that there is, indeed, a much better place on the other side, Scripture tells me I should be at peace – yet peace is far from what my heart is filled with right now. Yes, I’m still here. Still riding this rollercoaster and wondering if the track ever comes to an end. Still here.

 

The Canyon

If you aren't into God you probably won't be interested in this post. It's just part of my personal testimony of the reasons why I know, without a shadow of a doubt, that my Father in heaven is real and very much a part of our lives.

First, let me say that I am anything but a perfect Christian. To be honest, I don't even know what a perfect Christian is. I don't follow any particular religion and have gone to many different denominations since I was a child. My belief is in God and His Son, Yeshua, and Yeshua's teachings. Mind you, that doesn't mean that I always follow His teachings or that I could even dream of being able to be that sinless, that loving, that understanding, that selfless and giving. I do try, though, as much as I can, to strive for it even if I fall short every day. My faith has dipped and soared over the years and there have been many times when I have railed against God for the things I felt He'd put in my path. For years, there were times that I fought my own knowledge of His love for me and His intervention in my life, even after being shown proof of it. Having faith in Him meant that I couldn't escape the very real knowledge that my sins and failures were every bit as real as He was.

That said, I hope that my testimony can help someone, somewhere, to have a little stronger faith or feel a bit more reassurance of His love. There have been many times in my life when He stepped in and affected things in such a way that I knew it was Him and not just happenstance. I may not have time to tell about all of those times but I'll try. We'll call this first testimony "The Canyon".

When I was a 16-year-old, very romantic and emotional teenager, I met my first boyfriend. He was NOT the kind of guy that my parents hoped I'd meet. I however, being the avid lover of romantic stories, fell in love with the 'bad boy' and the harder my parents tried to pull us apart, the harder I held on. It culminated in our running away together after dating for a few months. My parents allowed me to marry him at 17, very reluctantly, because I insisted that I would just continue to run away until they allowed us to do so. I was a very determined little "Juliet" and I wasn't about to let myself be separated from my "Romeo".

Naturally, due to our ages and our issues, the marriage lasted barely 8 months, but not before I managed to miscarry a baby that I very much wanted. Weeks of deep grief from the loss of my baby, followed by a messy, painful divorce, left me a very depressed, angry and confused 17-year-old divorcee.

On the day of the divorce hearing, I suffered yet another miscarriage. Not even realizing that I was pregnant again and only a couple of months along, I lost the baby in the bathroom of the courthouse. I remember my mother asking me if I was alright when I came out of the bathroom, remarking that I was very pale. I couldn't bring myself to tell her what had happened. Feeling as though I was the biggest failure in the world - after all, I'd failed at marriage, I'd failed at my 'great romance', I'd failed my family and disappointed them. Lastly and most devastatingly, I'd failed at being able to do what I wanted more than anything in the world, to carry a child, not once but twice. I was sure I was utterly worthless.

I rode home to the ranch with my mom after the hearing and then told her I was going for a drive. I climbed into the old red and white pickup truck and headed down the highway. I had no destination in mind and no plans. I just wanted to find a way to escape the whirling thoughts in my head and the soul-wrenching pain I was in. Along and among the thoughts of regret, loss and memories were scattered, stuttered prayers. "Why God?" "I'm sorry." "What did I do wrong?" "Please bring me back my babies!" I felt so alone. I was sure that He would never forgive me for being such a disappointment and failure.

Eventually, I turned onto one of the gravel side roads and began randomly driving around the countryside. As I drove, the pain and anger and confusion continued to swirl and grow inside me. I drove faster and faster, trying to find a way to make it stop.

Just ahead, I saw a short wooden bridge that spanned a narrow canyon. At the last moment, I decided to steer off of the road and headed directly for the canyon edge, stomping on the gas. Did I want to die? I honestly don't know; I just knew that I wanted the pain to stop. The edge of the canyon loomed ahead as the pickup bounced across the uneven ground.

At the very last second, within inches of plunging into the canyon head-on, I felt the warm, firm grip of a hand grasping my right ankle. The hand yanked my foot off of the gas pedal. At that same moment, something wrenched the steering wheel out of my hands and twisted it violently to the side, causing the truck to do a 180* turn that rocked the entire vehicle almost onto its side. I was thrown across the cab, ending up on the floor of the passenger side, my back hitting the door. The pickup, surrounded by a huge cloud of dust, sat idling, rocking back and forth as it settled and eventually stopped moving. After a few moments, the engine faltered to a halt and grew silent.

I sat on the floor of the truck, unable to comprehend what had happened. I could still feel the grip of the fingers that had pulled my foot from the gas pedal. I had no idea who or what had turned the steering wheel. All I knew was that it wasn't my will that had caused it to happen.

I don't know how long I sat there, trying to grasp it all. The dust had settled completely, and I could hear birds singing in nearby trees as I pulled myself back up onto the seat and slid across the cab and behind the wheel. It was at that moment that I realized that the back wheels of the truck were literally on the very edge of the canyon, the back of the truck bed hanging over the edge. "God," I silently prayed, "Okay. I won't do that again. I'm sorry." My hands shaking, I started the engine, slowly driving away from the edge of the canyon, and headed home.

Call it an angel, call it Divine intervention. Whatever it was that turned the pickup truck that summer afternoon was not of this world, that much I know for certain. God decided to stop that hurting, angry, desperate kid from taking her own life, for whatever reasons He had. He'd heard my jumbled prayers and answered them in a way that left me no doubt that He was the cause. While I went through some very hellish times during the years that followed and there were times that I wanted very much to end my life - or, rather, the pain of it - I never tried to commit suicide again. I'd learned my lesson that hot August day on that dirt road in the Wyoming countryside.

Our 'President' (destroyer, dictator, senile puppet, totalitarian, divider) recently gave a speech very reminiscent of other totalitarian dictators wherein he demonized and dehumanized anyone who dares to disagree with him or his party's far Left agenda. He has since repeated that rhetoric several times in speeches and interviews. He called them "insurrectionists, a danger to democracy, lovers of chaos and violent extremists" who needed to be 'rooted out'. Less than two weeks later a Leftist terrorist at a street dance in North Dakota apparently got into an argument with an 18-year-old kid about something political. The North Dakota media (like most of the media in the U.S. - controlled by the Left) is doing little to no reporting on it and won't say exactly what the argument was about. I don't know if this kid was spouting crap or if he was simply wearing a MAGA hat or a pro-life t-shirt. For whatever reason, however, when the argument ended and the kid decided to just leave and head home, the man he'd been arguing with, a 41-year-old adult male, followed him, chased him down in an alleyway with his pickup truck and ran him down, leaving him lying on the ground to die. The Leftist terrorist (and this was an act of terrorism) then drove himself home and called the police to inform them that he'd killed a "right wing extremist" and that he'd felt "threatened by him". The kid was on foot, the terrorist was in a truck, but he felt so 'threatened' that he felt he needed to run the kid over. The confessed murderer is already out on bail, pending trial.

This is what is caused by this sort of rhetoric. The Brown Shirts in Germany carried out violent acts against the Jews and anyone who questioned their beliefs, all at the urging of their dictator. Pol Pot demonized and dehumanized the educated and well-off, manipulating the children of Cambodia with a constant stream of propaganda (just as the Left is currently doing in our schools, on the news, on TV, in movies, on social media, even in comic books). He then raised an army of young people, some barely in their teens, and unleashed them on those 'others'. Convincing them that they were saving Cambodia by rounding up and jailing, torturing and murdering millions. Biden and his party are doing exactly the same thing - only their "others" are conservatives, libertarians or basically anyone who questions the Far-Left agenda. In Washington State last year a man was shot point blank just because he'd attended a conservative gathering and was walking to his car. Now an 18-year-old is dead because he did or said something that a brain-washed extremist Leftist decided he needed to be executed for.

The most horrible thing about it all, notwithstanding that this child is gone and his family is devastated, is that our media is almost completely ignoring the story at all. When they do make any mention of it, they say NOTHING about the political aspect of the killing, even though the killer admitted to having killed the boy because he was supposedly a 'right wing extremist'. What do you think would be going on if the political views of the victim and the perpetrator were switched? You know what would be happening. The leftist news (which is 95% of the media) would be screaming about the violent, evil, dangerous conservatives and blaming it all on Trump.

These people aren't a political party anymore. They're a dangerous, violent cult and they have control of our school systems and academia, our government agencies, our media, our entertainment industry and most of our courts, as well. If they can, they'll pack the supreme court, do away with the filibuster, do away with voter ID laws and make universal mail-in voting a national law. Basically, making sure that America becomes a far Left, one party, totalitarian State. We MUST get out and vote in November and make sure that they lose the power that they currently hold in Congress or America will cease to be a representative republic, once and for all.

On Parenting, Consequences, Miley Cyrus and Global Relations

I was watching a funny video that someone posted recently. It showed old scenes from the original "Star Trek" TV series, interposed with video of Miley Cyrus' 'twerking' at the VMA's. The cut scenes of the Enterprise crew's amazement, disgust and shock at what they supposedly saw on their view screen were hilarious. It was good for a laugh and I shared it on Facebook for my friends to enjoy. Afterward, however, I had time to think about it in more depth.

As a mom, when I first watched the video of Miley's performance, my first feeling was embarrassment - for the kids who'd caught the VMA's on TV, for the parents of the children in the audience, for Miley's parents and, more than anything, for Miley. I can't imagine how she must have felt the next day when she awoke to a huge controversy over her performance and the cruel comments that were made by everyone from the press to fellow performers. My "mom's heart" felt a lot of hurt for what she must have been going through. We all make dumb decisions when we're young - I know I did. Few of us have them broadcast world-wide, however. Almost no one has to go through the public castigation that Miley has, either.

I had to wonder what her parents must have been thinking. I can only imagine their being torn between wanting to be upset with her for the negative comments about their parenting that the performance engendered and their wish to gather their little girl up in their arms and try to protect her. I hope that they didn't give her too much sympathy, though. One of the hardest things - and one of the most productive - that a parent can do is stand back and let their child reap the seeds that they've sewn, even if those seeds are very bitter to the taste.

Someday, when Miley is a parent herself, I have no doubt that she'll have to struggle with how to explain what she did to her kids. Maybe she'll have grown up enough by then to be able to use it as a teaching moment - a way to help protect her children from making their own monumental mistakes. I hope so...

There are bigger implications in all of this. Well, not just Miley's performance - in the current "no holds barred" atmosphere in Hollywood and American culture as a whole. I'm speaking specifically of how America is being presented to the world at-large and how it affects our relationships with our allies - and our enemies, as well.

Any thinking person would probably agree that extremist Islam presents a danger to anyone who disagrees with it. No, I'm not talking about the mostly peaceful Muslims who inhabit America. I'm speaking of the extremist Islamists who have dedicated their lives to destroying America and other Western nations, along with anyone who does not believe in their extreme view of Islam. Unfortunately, the number of moderate young Muslims being recruited into the ranks of extremist Islam grows every day. One of the most successful types of manipulation that the Islamists use while recruiting young Muslims is to convince them that those who don't believe in Islam are morally and spiritually inferior. They convince their young recruits that they are doing the world a favor and doing Allah's work by getting rid of the evil that is inherent in those who don't follow Islam.

Unfortunately, Miley's performance (along with many others' over the past few years) may very well be co-opted by the Islamists as a teaching tool. They may show it and talk of the depravity of the United States and it's evil young people. They may talk of how we, as Americans, speak of the evils of young girls being married off to much older men and then allow a 20 year old young woman to simulate sexual acts on stage with a married man twice her age and broadcast it around the world. They will speak of how Americans teach their young women to be 'whores' and then contrast the way that Muslim women who follow Islam are covered discreetly. They will cast us as moral-less and without shame and teach their young men and women that they, as Islamists, are morally and spiritually superior. Sadly, while their teachings are twisted and used for evil purposes, they are - in a way - too close to true for comfort.

We, as a nation, need to realize how our media is presented to the world. We need to realize that the sexually explicit antics of our music and television stars and the bloody violence of our television and movies say something about us as a whole. It's time that we took the time to step back and look at ourselves from the outside. It's time to reevaluate who we want to be - here in the U.S. and to the outside world, as well. The first step is to consider the choices we make in our own tastes in music, television and movies and those we allow our children to be exposed to. The change, if we are honest with ourselves, will follow.