I’m a working mom. I’m really good at what I do. I studied for four years in college and ended my time with a degree in journalism and English. I used to work as a managing editor for a newspaper, and I rocked that job every single day. Before that, I was a reporter. Now I’m an author.
I know exactly what I’m doing when faced with a blank screen. I know how to create stories from thin air, how to pull from my experiences and craft an essay that someone would actually want to read, how to position words on a page so that I can communicate what it is I’m trying to communicate. I’ve been doing this every single day for more than a decade.
I’ve also been a mother every single day for almost a decade. You’d think that after this long, almost ten years spent in the School of Parenting, I would have a slight idea of what I’m doing.
But I don’t.
When I open the door to my twins’ room, where they were supposed to be taking naps, and I see that they’ve just colored themselves green with a marker they smuggled in their room while their daddy’s back was turned, I don’t know what to do. When the 9-year-old’s mood flips at the drop of a LEGO mini figure and suddenly the whole entire world is ending, I don’t know what I’m doing. When the normally complacent and obedient child becomes a back-talking fool and I have to address all that sass, I have no idea what I’m doing.
I study parenting books, pouring over them for all the wisdom they have to offer me. I’ll read examples about children in the middle of rebellion, and I’ll think, “Yes, I can totally do this,” and then the 6-year-old will sneak out the door with a piece of gum I just told him he couldn’t have and surreptitiously stick it in his mouth while his back is turned to me, and all of that wisdom goes right out the door with him.
My children have the ability to turn me into a completely bumbling idiot with one disrespectful look or one ridiculous prank or one irreverent question or simply their state of being.
When they sneak out of their beds on a Saturday morning before the sun has even deemed it time to wake, just so they can get into the frosted mini wheats and make sure they get their fair share, I don’t know what I’m doing.
When they eat half their brother’s deodorant in the bathroom while everyone else is sleeping, I don’t know what I’m doing.
When they fill up the bath water to a flooding point, even though they’ve been told a billion times not to, I don’t know what I’m doing.
When a boy comes home and tells me about a bully on his school playground, I don’t know what I’m doing.
When the 4-year-olds take the canister of gasoline that sits behind a locked shed and pour it all over the yard, I don’t know what I’m doing.
When they wake up in a horrible mood, even though they got plenty of sleep (because I’m psycho about their sleep), I don’t know what I’m doing.
When they refuse to love each other, I don’t know what I’m doing.
When the angry one threatens to run away because we’re the worst parents ever, I don’t know what I’m doing.
When one wakes in the middle of the night just to tell me he’s feeling sick and then, before the words are even completely out of his mouth, something else comes rocketing out of his mouth, too, I don’t know what I’m doing.
When one of them suffers from anxiety and depression, even though I’ve lived with these myself, I don’t know what I’m doing.
When they take off their seatbelt in the car while we’re driving 70 miles per hour down a busy highway, I don’t know what I’m doing.
When I think of how impossible it is to give all of me to all of them, I don’t know what I’m doing.
When they’re all talking to me at the same exact time, I don’t know what I’m doing.
When they get in a slap-fight, I don’t know what I’m doing.
When I tell them they can’t fly from the top of their daddy’s shed to the trampoline and they try it anyway, I don’t know what I’m doing.
When the 4-year-old cuts a huge hole in his brand new shirt, because someone left the scissors out, I don’t know what I’m doing.
When I worry that I don’t know how to help the one who flies off the handle, I don’t know what I’m doing.
When I worry about them, period, I don’t know what I’m doing.
When they mouth off one minute and then the next minute they act like I’m their best friend, I don’t know what I’m doing.
When I think about the next stage I’m coming into as a mother—the Puberty one—I don’t know what I’m doing.
That’s okay. Here’s a secret most parents won’t ever willingly tell you: We’ll never completely know what we’re doing. Our children are grand experiments—some days we get it right, some days we don’t.
Before my twins were released from their 20-day stay in the neonatal intensive care unit at our local hospital, Husband and I had to take an infant CPR class in order to take them home. We learned all sorts of things we’d done wrong with our three older boys. At the end of the class, we looked at each other and sort of laugh-cried and said, “It’s a miracle they all survived.”
It’s a miracle any kid survives, because we’re all pretty much clueless.
[Tweet “We can spend a lifetime parenting and never feel competent at it. We’re a community of scientists.”]
We can spend a lifetime in this job and never feel quite competent at it. We can read books and take classes and listen to what other parents do and try it with our own, but the truth is, we’re all basically on the same playing field—that is, amateurs. What works today probably won’t work tomorrow. So just when we think we have it figured out, our kids will promptly show us that we don’t actually have anything at all figured out.
Parenting is hard. We’re dealing with irrational humans on an everyday, every-hour basis. We’re never going to know everything. We’ll never anticipate everything they’ll do. We’ll never be able to predict who our children will be when they wake up tomorrow. They are daily growing and changing and coming into their own bodies and minds, and that means that the best we can do is sit back and let it happen and try to roll with the uppercuts, devising our next grand experiment for what might possibly work to turn them into a rational, kind, courageous, creative, joyful, gracious, enjoyable adult.
No parent really knows what he’s (or she’s) doing. That means we, the clueless, are all in good company.
[Tweet “No parent really knows what he’s (or she’s) doing. We, the clueless, are all in good company.”]
Now, please excuse me, because my kid just told me I owe him a million dollars for making him sit down and do his homework and for being the worst parent ever, so I have an experiment that’s calling my name.
Husband and I recently celebrated thirteen years married. What did we do, you ask? We sat at home and cooked our own dinner and ate it while kids tried to talk all over each other and we didn’t say a word, just stared at each other with wide, overwhelmed eyes.
We started our married days honeymooning to Disney World. It was a magical place for a newly married couple, and many times that week people graciously let us cut to the front of the line, because they were so excited to see a happy couple like us out and about. There is no such thing as cutting in line anymore, because I am a parent, and kids do not like to wait. So who was served first at our homemade anniversary feast? That’s right. My children.
Husband and I used to have a date night twice a week. We’d go shopping, just to go shopping. We’d go see a movie if something looked good. We’d go house hunting, dreaming of the home we would one day buy. We’d sit in our room and play music together.
Now we have a date night twice a year, and one of those was not on our anniversary. Now we don’t go shopping unless we have no more food in our refrigerator and the kids are screaming that they’re starving. Now we try to sit in our room and play music together, and kids interrupt every song before it’s even started. I can’t even remember lyrics anymore.
This is marriage with children. It’s hard. It’s also really, really cool.
Every year, around our anniversary, Husband and I will retell our children the story of our engagement and wedding. Husband took me to the Nutcracker ballet. We were all decked out—me in a long red strapless dress I could probably only fit one thigh in now, him in a crisp black tuxedo. He took me up on stage after the show, where everybody could see us, which is actually the worst thing you could do to an introvert like me, but I didn’t care quite as much once he got down on one knee and popped the question. I could hear people in the audience saying “What did she say?” Husband must have raised his fist in a victory pump, because people started clapping and hooting. It was a great memory that brings a smile to our boys’ faces.
And then we’ll tell them about the wedding we had in an old historical church, me in a princess-cut dress, him in a crisp black tuxedo again. We’ll tell them about the path from the church to the reception area, and how deer came right up to us like I was living a real-life fairy tale. We’ll tell them about the dancing and the eating and the magnificent cake we shoved into each other’s faces.
And do you know what they hear? They hear love.
Do you know what we hear? We hear remember.
It’s true that marriage is hard. It’s true that it takes diligent work and extravagant dedication to fold two lives into one. It’s true that some days will be better than others.
Marriage with children is even harder. But children have brought a dynamic to our marriage that I can’t say with any certainty would have been there without them. We know each other better. We cling to each other more desperately, because we hold each other’s sanity in our hands. We chase our dreams and talk about the hard things of life and join together in the some of the most difficult and yet wonderful work there is: raising a new generation to know what marriage is really like. To know that marriage is worth all that hard work.
So even though we sent our children to bed on the night of our anniversary, with the full intention of doing what we always do—which is catching up on our favorite television shows—and the kids, thirty seconds after we’d pushed play, were back in our room for more hugs and kisses, I feel I can honestly say that these days are the best days so far.
Here’s what I’ve learned in thirteen years of marriage: the hardest places are the richest ground for love to grow and bloom.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this inside look at my life and family. Every Friday, I publish a short blog on something personal that includes a valuable takeaway. For more of my essays and memoir writings, visit Wing Chair Musings.
If you missed last week’s blog, I talked about four of the voices writers will hear in their career. I promised that I would talk about each voice in more detail, so today I’d like to approach, with caution, the I Can’t Do This Voice.
This voice has many different manifestations. Sometimes it’s the voice that says we’re not actually equipped to do this, for whatever reason (probably several). It is the voice that tells us we don’t have enough experience, or we don’t know enough about what we’re trying to write. Sometimes it likes to remind us that we have never actually finished a manuscript or, really, anything of note.
Regardless of which manifestation you hear, this voice boils down to I Can’t Do This.
When this voice visits me, it can most often be traced to the doubt within me. Sometimes it comes from other people in my life—like a creative writing professor I had in college who took an instant dislike to me as soon as I walked in the door, and I him. He did not say encouraging things while I was in his class, and some of those things have stuck with me. I daresay many of us have stories that go about the same—whether or not it was a writing professor who first planted in our heads that we might not be able to do this.
Sometimes, in my most unguarded moments, this voice rises up from my past. I come from very humble beginnings. My family was poor. I should not have gone to college, because my parents couldn’t afford it. I went on scholarships, but I constantly battled the voice that told me I would never be anything more than poor. Passed over. Forgotten.
The I Can’t Do This voice, as you can see, is powerful.
This voice typically comes out to visit in three different scenarios.
Scenario 1: When we are doing something new.
Most often, I Can’t Do This visits me when I am writing in a genre or a style that is completely new and unknown to me. As writers, we need to have permission to experiment. This voice doesn’t like to let me.
I encountered it most recently when my email subscribers, after a poll, told me that they would like to see a thriller written by me. I had never written a thriller before. I didn’t really have much interest in writing a thriller. I don’t really even read thrillers. But because they asked, I did. As soon as I got started, the I Can’t Do This voice started shouting.
How to slay the voice in this scenario:Give yourself permission to be bad.
The first draft of my thriller was terrible. The second draft isn’t much better. It’s now sitting in a file on my computer, waiting for probably four to five more drafts before it will even start taking any kind of logical shape.
No one has to read that first draft. No one has the rest the next two or three or four. We don’t have to let anyone read what we’re writing until we’re ready. So we can write badly. In fact, it’s good for us to write badly. Give yourself permission to.
[Tweet “Give yourself permission to write badly the first go round. Take a little pressure off.”]
Scenario 2: When we’re smack dab in the middle of a really involved project.
Typically these really involved projects have about a thousand steps to them. I look at all those steps, and I shake my head and say, Nope. I don’t think I can do this, thus inviting the voice to agree with me
How to slay the voice in this scenario: Chip away at one step at a time.
If it’s too much to plan on brainstorming all the characters and the plot on the same day, do one character a day. Chipping away at a story sometimes allows for the deeper story to unfold.
I encounter this voice often when I am working on my middle grade series, Fairendale. This is a very involved series with a cast of characters that’s about as long as George R.R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire series. It’s massive. Sometimes it feels like I can’t do it. But I chip away, one thing at a time.
[Tweet “Break involved projects into little steps to keep the I Can’t Do This voice at bay.”]
Scenario 3: The instances when we find ourselves completely overwhelmed with everything.
And I mean everything—home, kids, work, people depending on me, deadlines, you name it. There’s a whole lot in our lives, every single day. We’re not going to get at it all.
How to slay the voice in this scenario: Re-evaluate and give yourself permission to cut away all the unnecessary.
If something is taking up mental and emotional space that you don’t need, get rid of it. If you think you need to do everything and do everything well, change your perception. We will never be able to do everything. We have to let some things slide or that voice will win. We won’t be able to do it all.
[Tweet “We won’t be able to do it all as parents who write. So re-evaluate and cut out the unnecessary.”]
Next week I’ll talk about the Who Would Even Read This voice. For now, give yourself permission to write a bad story, chip away one step at a time and re-evaluate what’s really important in your life so you don’t feel the need to do it all.
Week’s Prompt
A picture is one of my favorite ways to generate inspiration. Look at the picture below. Write whatever you want for as long as you can.
In this episode of On My Shelf, I’m giving a general overview of all the voices a writer must battle. In the next several weeks, I’ll be breaking each of these voices down and sharing practical tips for how to abolish them.
Recently I read two kid-lit fantasy books that made me want to watch movies.
I have to qualify this statement a little bit. It’s not that these books were so awesomely written that you would want to watch a movie that was made from them. I only mean that one of them was written by a famous comic book artist and the other was commissioned by Disney and is already turned into a television show.
The first book is Convergence, which is the first book of the Zodiac Legacy, written by Stan Lee and Stuart Moore and illustrated by Andie Tong. Stan Lee is the creator of superheroes like Spider-Man, the Hulk, Iron Man and the X-Men. So this book was full of his typical creativity.
Convergence centered around the story of a kid, Steven Lee, who follows some screams in the middle of a tour in China while visiting a museum, which is probably always a bad idea. In Steven’s case it introduced him to Maxwell, who is trying to steal all the zodiac powers so that he can rule the world. Instead, he accidentally gifts Steven with the Tiger power. Whoops.
So begins a war between Maxwell and his Zodiacs and Steven and the “good” Zodiacs. They are both trying to track down the other people who acquire zodiac powers.
One of the best features of this book was the illustrated pages—which had a comic book sort of feel and kept the pages turning faster. The story was written well enough—it wasn’t awesome, but it was really the imagination that went into creating this story that impressed me the most. I love the comic book world and superheroes and the way those types of stories get boys reading. I’m always a fan of getting boys reading. We’ll work on the literary stuff later, once we show them that stories are awesome.
After reading Convergence, though, I really wanted to go watch all the old superhero movies I’ve grown to love over the years. There’s something about the big screen that makes superheroes come alive. Convergence has a sequel, The Dragon’s Return, which I have not yet read.
The second book was The Isle of the Lost, by Melissa de la Cruz. I originally picked this book up because it was on the display shelf at my local library, and it looked interesting. It’s the first book in a relatively new series, The Descendants. The Isle of the Lost was the story of the children of popular fairy tale villains—like a second-generation fairy tale. It was published and commissioned by Disney, so Cruz was able to use all the names of the villains that we’ve seen in Disney fairy tales over the years. Characters included Maleficent’s daughter, Mal; the Evil Queen’s daughter, Evie; Jafar’s son, Jay; and Cruella de Ville’s son, Carlos. They are all banished from the kingdom of Auradon to the Isle of the Lost, where there is no magic or, really, anything good.
But back in Auradon, there is unrest, and on the isle, there are hints that magic just might be coming back to the isle—which means the villains might have another say so.
While this wasn’t a mind-blowing book, what I think kids will enjoy most about it is seeing familiar people in a new way. The villains are all grown up—and now their descendants are taking on the world their parents created for them. That’s one of the parts I liked most about it, too. There’s something special about feeling like you already know the characters but seeing them in a whole new way. I have not watched the television show, but I think this story, too, would come alive on the screen. And, like Convergence, The Isle of the Lost made me want to go re-watch some of the old fairy tales and Disney productions.
I hope you enjoyed these book recommendations. Be sure to pick up a free book from my starter library and visit my recommends page to see some of my favorite books. If you have any books you recently read that you think I’d enjoy, contact me. I always enjoy adding to my list. Even if I never get through it all.
In this episode of On My Shelf, I’m talking about a fascinating book that details 10 characteristics of a creative mind.
Book link:
Wired to Create: http://amzn.to/2d7OZt3
It’s just a tiny thing, oval and white and smaller than the vitamins I swallow every single day, but I leave it on my desk and stare at it.
It’s not the enemy. The panic-lump in my throat is the enemy, and this tiny white oval could help. I know this. But still I can’t bring myself to touch it.
More than a week ago, my doctor called in a prescription for some of the symptoms I rattled off with an apologetic laugh—lump in my throat, difficulty breathing through some of my thoughts, constant, overwhelming worry about nothing and everything all at the same time—and assured me I was not alone, not even close, because so many people have to take these medications at one time or another.
Yes, but this is me, I thought. I am strong. I can handle it. I can get through all this without the help of a pill.
This is me, and I don’t take medication to make myself feel better, because I have faith and prayer and meditation and mindfulness and hope and joy and gratitude and love and family and…
So I let it sit on the pharmacy pick-up shelf long enough for them to restock it, like it didn’t belong to anybody in particular, and then I went to pick it up and they said they could have it ready in another 24 hours but no sooner because they would need to fill the prescription all over again. I waited another three days and then sent my husband to pick it up, because I could not face the eyes that would see this woman who needed a pill to feel normal.
Two days it sat on the dresser in my bedroom, waiting, and then, today, when that lump made it hard to even breathe, when my chest burned from the weight of the world, I took one pill out and turned it over in my hands and then let it clink back down to the bottom of an orange bottle.
I just can’t do it. I just can’t swallow this pill, because I can find my way out of this. I can. Because there is nothing wrong with me.
And if there were, what would they all think?
///
When I was eight years old, my teacher noticed I was squinting to read the words on the overhead projector, and then I was squinting at my neighbor’s page to copy her notes instead of bothering with the screen at all, and then I was holding multiplication flashcards and books and worksheets a little too close to my face.
She told my mom, who talked to the school nurse, who talked to my teacher and arranged an appointment to check my eyes.
It was a tumultuous time in my life then, because I hadn’t seen my dad for a year, and those absences explained by an out-of-state job that paid more money than he could possibly make in our little town stretched longer and longer every time he came home and left again. And somehow, in my little-girl mind, my dad’s absences had become tangled around my perfection or imperfection. Somehow it all depended on me.
Somehow I had to be perfect, and that would bring him home and keep him there for good. But now something was wrong with my eyes. I knew it before they told me, and I didn’t want anyone else to know.
I cried all the way to the nurse’s office, because I knew what this appointment would show. I cried standing there, with a little plastic spatula over my left eye, not even able to read the one big lone letter at the top. I cried all the way back out, because my eyes had failed me.
I would never be perfect, and maybe that meant my dad would never come home.
///
I looked for all the reasons not to take that pill. I called my doctor to ask if it was really safe, because I’m a natural person, and I’ve never had this problem before and I don’t like medication and there has to be another way, and why isn’t this anxiety going away on its own when I’m praying and meditating and working out my salvation and doing everything I’m supposed to do?
What is the source of your anxiety? she says.
So much sits like five-ton weights on my neck and chest and head and feet that drag slow steps and hands that hold too tight to control. I name all the things I know. Work. Kids. Home. Finances. Chores. Life. Life. Life.
That’s as far as I get. The hole widens in front of me, the lump presses against my vocal chords, the warm flush climbs up my arms. I stop, because I don’t want her to know I’m about to have a panic attack just thinking about it all. She says, Sometimes we need help.
Right before we hang up, she says, Take care of yourself.
OK, I say, even though what I really mean is, I’ll try, because I don’t know if taking care of myself is popping a pill or letting it sit with the other 59 of them in a bottle that tells me to swallow one twice a day. It’s another mark of imperfection, this failure of my mind and emotions.
And I don’t want anyone to know.
///
My junior high school was nine miles from the house I grew up in, so I had to ride a bus for an hour every day to get there and back.
In seventh grade I played volleyball and basketball and ran track and sat first-chair clarinet, and every afternoon one or all of these had practices I attended, and at the end of them, all of us who lived too far away to walk a highway home packed up into a bus and rode it to a drop-off spot where parents waited.
There was a day when I stepped off the bus at 6:30 p.m., just like I did every other weeknight, and I did not see my mom’s gray Ford Escort.
The drop-off point was an old post office, where, years before, when we’d lived in another house just down the way, we’d been walking our dog to check the mail and a car going too fast hit him so hard he spun circles in the middle of the road that ran between our house and the post office that closed every day at 4. This day I sat staring at that same highway, thinking of all the things that could have happened to my mom. Was she spinning in the middle of the road?
What if she had an accident coming here to pick me up? What if she was dead? What if it was my fault? Who would the three of us, my brother and sister and me, live with, since we hadn’t heard from or seen our dad in five years? How would I take care of my brother and sister? How would I take care of myself? Who would love us?
Just when I finally decided I’d walk the six miles home, she pulled into the drive, fifteen-minutes-that-felt-like-fifteen-hours late.
I stared out the window, all the way home, trying not to cry from my leftover what ifs tripping down the highway behind us.
///
I stare out the window now, trying not to cry, because I don’t want my husband or my little boys to see just how fragile I feel. We’re on our way to lead worship to a group of teenagers, and I feel like a fraud. We will sing about not being afraid and walking on deep waters with faith ready to be stretched, and here I am sinking in the rip tide of anxiety and fear.
I try to work out some of my feelings with my husband on the way. He tells me to try to put our problems in perspective with others’ problems. At least we’re not homeless, he says. At least we have healthy food in our refrigerator. At least none of our children are terminally ill.
The rock of anxiety shifts and grows and hardens. No, I say, because this doesn’t work for me. I feel more anxious now, because what if? What if we do find ourselves homeless? What if we don’t have healthy food in our refrigerator tomorrow? What if one of the boys suddenly becomes terminally ill and I have to watch them die?
He tells me to try to spin things in a positive light, try to nip my negative thoughts in the bud, but, no, this doesn’t work for me either. Every try and fail just makes me feel like more of a failure, because I can’t do it on my own, and God why can’t I?
What kind of person can’t choose joy and positivity and perspective on their own? How do you talk yourself out of a feeling when it’s a feeling you’ve walked with your whole life? Because I know I said I’ve never experienced this anxiety before, but it was a lie, just another attempt to prove there is nothing wrong with me.
What is it, then? he says. What specifically is it?
This is the question I can’t answer, so I just start crying instead. I can’t talk about this right now, I say, because we’ve pulled into the parking lot and it’s time to unload the kids and go plug in and do a sound check and then sing like the words wipe away all our troubles.
And because it’s everything.
It’s everything, all piled and tangled and curled into those weights with barbs and spikes that puncture every time something else goes wrong or could go wrong or might possibly go wrong in the next twenty years. And sure, we can tick off those gratitude lists and we can try to take every thought captive and we can post those 100 happy days pictures, but what happens when it doesn’t work, when our choosing doesn’t save a mind or a heart?
Sometimes we have paddled so far into the cavern we need help steering ourselves back out.
///
I grew up in two Southern Baptist churches. They were full of grace and hope and people who knew how to love a fatherless kid, or three of them.
Southern Baptist, though, is a religion full of rules. I’d set rules all my life for myself, and here were more that held a greater purpose, and, yes, of course, please sign me up, because keeping all these rules would finally, finally, finally make me perfect in one domain, even though my eyes were bad and I’d busted up my knee in high school volleyball and I’d broken a pinkie finger in softball that never healed straight.
I could be spiritually perfect, and that would have to do.
I constructed my perfect little life, keeping all those potential friends in my youth group at arms’ length, because if they came too close they would see all those hidden holes in my perfection, and I could not let them see. And then I graduated at the top of my class and rode a full scholarship to university, where, even though all those religion rules had begun weighing me down years ago, I signed up to continue in the Southern Baptist tradition on my own.
I led worship at the Baptist Student Ministry and attended the Baptist church they told me to attend so I could be a leader, and I sat under all those male preachers who said God was always enough and we had a Healer for all our sickness and that when we know Love we will not know fear. And I tried to make it true for me.
No one ever told me in those churches that there might be a chance my Healer wouldn’t heal the kind of sickness that stuck in the back of a throat and the corner of a mind. They only told me to have faith enough to move mountains, and this mountain wouldn’t move.
The mountain never moved. I suppose I didn’t have enough faith.
///
We are back home and the kids are in bed, and still I’m sitting here staring at a pill they said I shouldn’t need if I believed enough, staring at a piece of science they said proves my faith needs improving, staring at a tiny little thing they said tells a definitive story of my spirituality.
I have learned much in the years that roll between then and now. I have learned that there is a fear that can be known in Love, and it is called Anxiety. I have learned that we don’t get to choose our disorders, and no amount of faith or joy lists or gratitude tries can change the hold our disorders keep on us. I have learned that seeking help of any kind does not mean our faith or our God or our own hearts and minds have failed us.
I have learned that courage doesn’t always look like jumping out of a war-plane into enemy territory or rushing into a burning house or opening a heart to fix a vessel block. Sometimes it looks like facing one day and then another, because this is jumping from a war-plane into enemy territory. Sometimes it looks like braving the truth of our disorder and all the opinions and condemnation and misunderstandings that come with it, because this is rushing into a burning house and living to tell about it. Sometimes it looks like popping a pill and letting it work its magic in our mind, because this is our open-heart surgery.
I have learned that there is no shame in inviting medication into our journey toward healing. The world can make us feel like there is, but the world is not telling the truth. There is no shame here. There is only courage.
The Healer sends healing, and sometimes it looks like a miraculous mind makeover, but sometimes it looks like a no-less-miraculous tiny white oval.
So I swallow the pill, and I close my eyes, and I thank God for the help finding my way back to an even road, maybe for the first time in my life.
This is an excerpt from We Count it All Joy: Essays, which does not yet have a release date. For more of my essays, visit Wing Chair Musings.
