Shambala

Wash away my trouble, wash away my pain
With the rain of Shambala

- Toby Keith

I am staring at the photos of my parents' house fire, photos I have seen dozens of times over the last 25 years, and for the first time ever I burst into tears.  My mother had them arranged in an old photo album, the kind with the static-cling pages.  The album cover had become tattered over the years and it sported a piece of masking tape that bore my mother's handwriting with two simple words: The Fire. 

As a teacher, I always used storytelling in my classroom to bring content alive for my students.  These photos, that showed the windows shattered by the fire department to let the smoke out, the burned and blackened walls, the melted tile and plaster, helped my students understand why fire drills were serious business.  My brother, the only one home at the time of the fire, got out safely.  But almost everything else was lost.  I would ask my students what their most prized possessions were...and after several answers were given, explain that all the things that I'd grown up with were gone.  That would really hit home with them.

The photos also showed the remains of the house being leveled and the new house that was built in its place - a new design, spacious rooms, and a deck that had never existed before.  This new house was the first house my daughters knew as Grandma and Grandpa's house.  And for that reason I decided to take the pictures out of the tattered photo album and chronicle the fire as one of my many scrapbook projects.

That was in March.  The same month I went to the doctor with a cough and temperature and asked them to take a chest x-ray to make sure the cough hadn't turned into pneumonia.  My lungs were clear, they said, but there was a mass that needed further examination.  Within four weeks' time I had a CT scan, a PET scan, and a lung biopsy, all inconclusive.  But all the doctors were in agreement: lung cancer is aggressive.  We've discovered this so early, it hasn't spread.  Six months from now, we might have problems.  And now I'm scheduled for thoracic surgery - opening the chest cavity from the back to remove the lobe of my lung where the tumor lies.  And I am a wreck.  Not because I have a tumor, but because I went through this surgery eighteen years ago.

Thoracic surgery is considered one of the most painful surgeries a person can endure.   In 1994 we discovered I had a tumor growing next to my aorta.  The only way to safely reach it was to open me up from the back.  My shoulder muscles were cut, ribs broken, and lung deflated.  I remember pain so severe I would slip in and out of consciousness, clogged chest tubes, and months of painful recovery.  After going through it once, I vowed that I would kill myself rather than ever go through that ordeal again, never imagining I would really be faced with another one.  Who has two of these surgeries?

Eighteen years ago, even though I had three very young daughters, it was very much about me.  The tumor, being on a nerve, was causing me pain.  I wanted the doctors to fix it, not thinking ahead to what I was in for.  I made routine arrangements for someone to take care of the girls, and was more worried about who was going to be at the hospital with me.  This time around, my husband asked me the day before the surgery if I was sure this is what I wanted to do?  Did I want to wait six months and repeat the scans and biopsies?  I knew exactly what I was in for this time and I was more sure than anything I have ever done.  It was about ensuring that I absolutely will not have cancer - for the sake of my three daughters.  Three amazing young women who I adore, who were now old enough to understand the seriousness of what their mom was facing, and I needed to reassure them I would be fine.  I would be there for them.  Period.

So at the end of April, having made arrangements to be gone from work, I  underwent the surgery. Although that surgery went well, I had to have emergency abdominal surgery while in the hospital, totally unrelated to the lung tumor, and there were complications with that.  Recovery took longer than planned.

There are days when all my best childbirth visualization techniques, coupled with the pain medication, is not enough, but I am determined to keep myself busy and distracted from it and stay positive.  There are days when I look in the mirror, at scars 12 and 16 inches long that criss-cross my body, and I am thankful I don't wrestle with body image issues.  There are days when my stamina is low and fatigue is high, and I tell myself that these are good days for projects like writing and scrapbooking.

And so I pull out the project I am working on, the scrapbook about the fire, and I thumb through the pages I have sorted out, colored papers in the plastic sleeves along with the photos to go on each page.  I look at the destruction that left my childhood home in ruins and somehow it suddenly seems intertwined with the destruction that has been wreaked upon my body.  And the tears come.

My mother could have chosen not to chronicle the fire.  Or just to have included pictures of the fire without the rebuilding.  But she chose to chronicle both.  The destruction and the regrowth.  The surgery and the healing.  It takes time to rebuild.  It takes time to heal.  It isn't always easy.  If it was just me, I might have waited six months to repeat the tests.  But I wouldn't risk doing that to my daughters.  My mother called these things "a labor of love". 

Better Than I Used to Be

I know how to hold a grudge
I can send a bridge up in smoke
- Tim McGraw

When I was growing up, and was on the receiving end of something that made me angry enough to give a sarcastic response, lash out, or be vengeful, my mother always had the same response: "Don't stoop to their level." That's good advice; but difficult to live. My passions run deep whether it's excitement, anger, love, or irritation. And so when people irritate me or make me impatient, my knee-jerk response is to say something snarky.  My daughters don't hesitate to remind me of this tendency and I try to be more aware of it and keep it in check.

When I was growing up, if my parents did something I didn't like - that I really disagreed with - I remember making mental notes to myself not to do that as a parent to my own kids.  A lot of it had to do with respecting my maturity and willingness to be responsible about things.  Where we could, Greg and I tried to give our girls the information and resources to make their own decisions, help them through processes rather than tell them what they needed to do, and give them the skills to handle the bigger picture.

I was talking with a friend of mine today who is a parent educator, and that the way our husbands were raised weren't the kind of parents they wanted to be.  How both of them were determined to "break the pattern" so to speak, of the way they were raised and do things differently with their children.  And they both did.  Largely, they both did it by trusting us, their wives, the upbringing we'd had, and the strong desire to do things differently.  But she said that in many of her parenting classes, the desire to do things differently doesn't just make it so.  These young parents have to seek out information and skill sets and role models to replace the only patterns of parent-child interaction they are familiar with.  Some also need counseling so they can deal with, and put into perspective, the baggage they carry with them as they try to parent differently.  Some need to actually shield themselves from the toxicity that was their up-bringing in order to truly break the cycle.  My friend put it well when she said, "We all have baggage.  It's just a matter of how much and what kind.  And what are we willing to accept from others?"

My daughters have been raised by two people who took parenting seriously enough to put it above their own needs and above their own marriage - and for that I am grateful.  There are many people who will weigh in on the pros and cons of this philosophy, saying the marriage must come first, or that if you're not fulfilled as an adult you can't make your child happy.  But to help that child become productive, loving, disciplined, empathetic, and all the other traits we desire to see cannot happen by accident, cannot happen if it is put on the back burner, or "after" the adults are fulfilled in other ways.  There is no one right way to make it happen, but there are a lot of ways to make it go wrong.  I believe that in the end it comes down to treating children as the people you want them to become.

I'm learning who you've been

Ain't who you've got to be

No Hurry

Ain't in no hurry, I'd be a fool now to worry
About all those things I can't change
And the time that I borrow, can wait till tomorrow
Cause I ain't in no hurry today

- Zac Brown 

We all like to think we're in control of our lives.  We aren't.  Sometimes I think you can divide people into three groups: those who try to control everything, those who know what they have control over and what they don't, and those who just let life happen to them.  Under each of these three, of course, there are sub categories that carry different personality types, creedos, religions, self-help industries, outlooks, and behaviors.

When a person tries to control everything, I believe their degree of success depends greatly on the level of power they have in the situation.  It can be physical power in a relationship, positive in the field of sports, negative if it's an abusive romance.  It can be managerial power in the workplace, positive if it's used for the well-being of the company/clientele or negative when it's self-serving/micro-managing.  Or it can be delegated authority in a social situation such as the leader of a clique/club or someone who's been handed the reins whether they wanted it or not. If you have power, you have the ability to control.  If you have power along with other traits such as intellect, benevolence, money, drive, etc., you can be seen as a good leader.  Power without any of these other traits leads to tyranny.  

Then there are people who just let life happen.  Due to mental or physical or economic circumstance, they have so little control they just don't even bother trying - they never have or they have given up.  They are dealing with an addiction, overwhelming tragedy, mental illness, or other situation that often puts them in the care of our governmental and social service agencies, or in the care of a family member.

Most people, however, fall somewhere in the middle.  They don't have the wealth, social status, job, affluence, and time to be in control of all aspects of their life.  There are too many variables and life is just too complex.   So to get by, people set up schedules and routines, rules of etiquette, friendships and partnerships that work for them, etc.  There is a wonderfully complex social order to things - and every time something changes in the social order, however small, everything else must slightly shift as well.  Some people need more control than others.  It's a balancing act to establish the control one person needs without infringing on the liberties of another.  We see this in government, in business systems, in social systems, and in personal relationships.

Those who try to establish more control than they have are often frustrated because their need for control can never be adequately fulfilled, leaving them trying to control even more and a great deal of stress.  Those who are put in control and not producing due to their own or or others' inability to come through also face a great deal of stress.  Those who try to follow the established routines, norms, or rules of etiquette and others don't respond as expected often face a great deal of stress.  And so we come to the Serenity Prayer: 

God grant me the courage to change the things I can

The serenity to accept the things I cannot

And the wisdom to know the difference

It is easy to take control when there there is the desire and there are no obstacles, but it takes courage when there is any level of responsibility or change.  It takes just as great an effort to "accept with serenity" the things we cannot change.  And it is here most people struggle and most people find or create the stress in their life.  The prayer Desiderata says,  As far as possible without surrender be on good terms with all persons.  I love this simple sentence.  It does not say to do anything to get along, it says as "far as possible".  And that is what brings us to having the wisdom to know the difference.

And so I have been thinking about my life these last few weeks.  And my stress level.  In two days' time I have endured what the doctors describe as the first and second most painful surgeries a person can undergo.  And yet (with only a few exceptions) I have been in good spirits and laughing with the hospital staff as they come to my room.  And why do I have such good humor in such dire circumstances, and such stress in my job where I am the boss and have so much "control" over things?  And I think it is this:  I really have no control over these surgeries.  None.  Not the circumstances that brought me here, nor the care I'm getting here.  Things are 100% out of my control.  So I have a choice.  I can be miserable or I can make the best of it.  I choose to make the best of it with humor and grace.  I will save my energy for the things I can change, not for getting upset over the things I can't.