When the Unknown Looks Like Potty Training

January 19, 2015September 30, 2015 Lindsey P. Brackett1 Comment

Our little two and a half year old tornado of a boy pulled a package of underwear out of his drawer last week and demanded to wear it. I figured why not? His sisters were all this age when they learned the fine art of using the potty for more than a step stool.

Yet again, our household learns how boys are different from girls.

First, his sisters are appalled by little boy underwear. There’s a pocket! Whatever is that for? He’s a BOY–enough said.

Then, we learn that although Gus Monster is very into his new drawers, he’s not really into his signals yet. Eight pairs and a bath later, I called it quits for the day. Should’ve done this in the fall when he was actually going on occasion. But, silly me. I thought he was too young to be pushed.

Just a reminder that having four kids only makes one an expert on the mistakes of motherhood.

I have no idea when this is going to work. Eventually, I’m sure. But if he’ll be fully functional in the bathroom prior to the need for a new living room rug, well, that’s questionable. We’re living in the unknown–the time when all you can see is a small light at the end of the tunnel and you just plug forward everyday in hopes that it grows brighter.

I’m not just talking about potty training.

I curled up in the corner of our lumpy sofa on Friday morning with my devotion and the scary canyon of what ifs for Amelia looming on my horizon. We saw her neurologist on Thursday and our future right now is certain to hold more doctor visits, more tests, more therapies as we try to uncover what caused her brain to inflame itself. What caused her body to demyelinate and send us searching for answers.

So far, no doctor is really pleased with what they can tell us. We’ve had three different prognosis ranging from super scary surgical to expect full recovery. Right now, it’s Clinically Isolated Syndrome. It might go away, her body may heal itself.

It might not.

No one is sure. Doctors for all their fancy degrees and clinical knowledge and case studies–they’re just practicing medicine as my friend said yesterday.

They are learning and we are learning and the unknown can be frightening. That canyon will swallow me whole if I let it.

Rehearsing your troubles results in experiencing them many times, whereas you are only meant to go through them when they actually occur.

~Sarah Young, Jesus Calling

Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified, do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.

~Joshua 1:9

There’s a bridge over that canyon of the unknown. I can’t see it when I’m pondering all the ways I’m going to slip and fall and have to claw my way back up rock walls. We want to live these lives that are all planned out and shiny with promise, but the truth is we live everyday in a dark unknown that’s only pushed back when we focus on the Light–on the good, the beauty, the reasons to be thankful in the midst of fear.

The blessings of superhero underwear and friends who make homemade blueberry pie and sick little girls who giggle incessantly. These are the images I want to rehearse in my mind when I worry–these are the moments I want to live through again and again.

Not the fear. Not the frustration. Not the many times I’ve cleaned the floor.

But the many times I’ve lived in the beautiful, known moment at hand.

Manic Monday · reflections

When Sunday’s Rest is Over & Monday’s Reality is Settling In

January 12, 2015September 30, 2015 Lindsey P. BrackettLeave a comment

They’re squabbling over episodes of Harry and the Dinosaurs and I’ve begged for just a few minutes. I didn’t get up early enough to write and despite drinking Sleepytime herbal tea before bed I spent a restless night alternately hacking and worrying.

Welcome to Monday.

The past several days have been like a month of Sundays. We’ve rested and recuperated and tried to stumble our way back to reality. I’ve sat and held Amelia while she slept and Gilmore Girls played in the background. Saturday morning we moved slow and curled around steaming cups of coffee and read magazines that have been piling up for a month.

I gave myself permission to escape via the Internet or Netflix or the glossy pages of Food & Wine. Thanks to friends who’ve been the hands and feet of Jesus in the form of folded laundry and hot food, there’s been few dishes and even fewer piles of dirty underwear.

You know a friend is true when they fold your underwear.

For days we’ve lived in this alternate reality where the world gets to revolve around test results and doctor schedules and the hours of the Children’s Hospital coffee shop. I didn’t try to write and I didn’t try to work because I’ve never been able to divide my life up into little segments and square each away to deal with another. I’ve always been a big tangled mess where every little thing bleeds into everything else.

Which is why when I rest, I stop. I halt whatever project I’m on and just retreat away into something mindless. Then Monday’s reality hits hard.

And thank God.

Because there is relief in the structure, the schedule, the normal. Even when it’s a new normal of monitoring progress and scheduling physical therapy and trying not to google every blessed worry. Because even though we are built to rest, we are also built to work and create and exercise.

We are built for the Mondays as well as the Sundays.

May your week be glorious, friends. May it be productive and encouraging and the very best kind of ordinary. Then, when it’s Sunday again, may you find the softest pillow and the quietest hour.

And something good on Netflix.

faith · motherhood

When Words are Few and Hope is Hard

January 5, 2015September 30, 2015 Lindsey P. Brackett4 Comments

My words are few these days. Actually, they are plentiful but they are not worth hearing or speaking or writing. They spew forth like a volcano in hot fiery fumes of anger and distrust and anxiety. They leave behind smoke that burns when it’s inhaled by whoever was unfortunate enough to be in my path.

I miss the easy days of writing. Of saying what I heard with my heart and seeing it form on the page into sentences and paragraphs that helped me find meaning in the struggle of everyday motherhood.

But this isn’t everyday motherhood. This is grinding hard, clay molding, dough punching out all the air motherhood. This is the kind of motherhood no one signs up for but all our names are right there on the dotted line when that baby is called ours.

This is the really, really tough love.

The kind that loves through the unknowing, the unyielding, the unwielding force of uncertainty. The kind that never gives up hoping. The kind that stands its ground in a parking lot when you’re on your knees keening and the only hands there are a mother’s.

My mom held me through it the other night. In the puddles on the pavement and the shaking and the uncontrollable screaming.

I lost it.

Lost it all.

My image as the one who’s holding it together, holding on to hope, holding hands with Jesus through this walk. The umbrella of protection a mother should be to her children in a time of crisis. My faith that all things work together for the good.

Oh, I lost it.

I spewed out all those awful words no one should ever say and the scripture of my morning Bible study had no place on my tongue that night.

Trust, says the Lord.

Trust.

When the neurologist says with calmness and frankness, I just don’t know what’s wrong.

Trust, says the Lord. Your hope is in me.

I’m having a really hard time with this obviously. Truly, I believe I’ll be better when there’s a diagnosis, when our comedy of errors with mistaken orders and misread scans is over, when I can look back on this a year from now and marvel at how we got through.

I’ll be good then.

I’ll be stronger. I’ll be better.

Right now I’m a muck of a mess. I don’t do well with unknowns. I don’t do well with trust.

I don’t do well with waiting.

Be still.

Jesus says that too. Be still and know.

But I don’t know.

I don’t know what’s wrong with my baby girl and I don’t know how we will get through this and I don’t know how I’m going to keep it all together.

Actually, I do know that.

I’m not. Keeping it all together that is. I’m just plain not.

But there are those who are. They bring dinner wrapped in foil and hands folded in prayer. I’m not trusting in a blind unknown. I’m trusting in a living God who has given us people to carry us through.

And if I’m to survive, I have to choose to trust in the great, unfolding plan he has for my little girl.

Her name is Hope you know. Amelia Hope.

18 God did this so that, by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled to take hold of the hope set before us may be greatly encouraged. 19 We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure. It enters the inner sanctuary behind the curtain, 20 where our forerunner, Jesus, has entered on our behalf. He has become a high priest forever…

Hebrews 6:18-20