To Be or Not To Be...

Some might call me a Drama Queen, and I might just agree with them....especially these past few years!

When someone has asked me, "How are things?" I would give them a laundry list of bad and unfortunate events that had made me quite an unpleasant person.

See, I have forgotten how to be happy.

Strangely enough, I only had this revelation recently. And it's sad really because I have wasted A LOT of time being hurt, embarrassed, scared, and jealous. Oh, I'm not quite cured yet, but I'm getting there.

It has been very difficult to say things aren't that bad. I'm totally stressed out about our move and everything that goes along with such an event, but really it's not that big of a deal. I know I can handle it because I've been through much worse.

So, why is it so hard for me to give a good report of my doings? Why do I have to act like such a Drama Queen? I could throw out those four letters (PTSD) and have that excuse away everything I do and say. I will lay some blame on that because it is a reality right now, but I feel that can pass. No, I have chosen much of what I feel. You may disagree, but I know myself. It is a whole lot easier for me to be angry...it's safer somehow. That way I can believe I'm not showing what I truly feel, which is usually hurt or embarrassed.

But I'm stopping...slowly, but surely, I am stopping my bad attitude. Just like anything I have and will have slip-ups, but I will forgive myself and move on. I can't say I won't have any more drama but I can say I won't let it rule my life.

I do have a confession to make: I AM a Drama Queen! It's just who I am. I choose to express my feelings...ALL my feelings. Instead of holding them inside and letting no one know. But I am learning to tone it down a bit. But I'm not going to change who I am. I have had a lot of things mold me into the person I am today and I can't keep quiet about them, and maybe I'm not supposed to. Maybe I have a story to tell that might touch just one person in the right way.

So maybe being a Drama Queen isn't so bad. I just have to sprinkle some normalcy in now and again!

Still Reeling

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a type of anxiety disorder. It can occur after you have gone through an extreme emotional trauma that involved the threat of injury or death.

It's not just a soldier's plight either...

It's been four years and I am still not over what happened to us...to me. It's frustrating because I want it to be done with. I want the memories, the flashbacks to stop. I want the feelings of that time to stop making my mind think it's happening all over again!

Becoming a new parent was hard enough, but then having to deal with the immediacy of cancer was too much. Then came a death in the family...from cancer! ...the treatments...the postpartum depression... All of it was too much but then to add necrotizing fasciitis to the whole thing?!

Did you know Ben died? Yeah...he had continual problems with his oxygen levels and trauma to his body that he went Code Blue. They brought him back, but he has no memory of this...I do...
He also had 27 blood transfusions to flush out the disease and sustain him since debridement was so detrimental, blood loss was tremendous. He had surgery every single day for two months. One month's worth of surgeries were without general anesthesia because his body was becoming too weak to withstand it (thus the death issue).

Every day I walked through the ICU watching people say goodbye to their loved ones only to get to the area that held my husband. This was the place people never left. I had to walk in a blue suit that covered every inch of my body (head, face, hands) so I would not become infected from what Ben had. 

It was awful...

And then there was Christopher...

He was still a newborn. Ben missed so much. His first crawl. His first pull-up. His first Halloween. His first tooth. And I missed caring and loving for my newborn. I was too busy trying to find someone to care for him so I could spend a few hours with my husband at the hospital.

The worst were the phone calls. Not from friends or family but from the doctor. At 2 or 3 in the morning he would call and tell me Ben wasn't doing so well. I could hear Ben screaming in the background. Blood-curdling screams because they had just done to him. The doctor would tell me to prepare for the worst (death). When I could finally find someone to watch my baby (around 4 in the afternoon) I would get another call from the doctor stating that things were better now...

This happened every day for nearly three weeks...

I know I should be over this because, heck, it was Ben that had all the pain and surgeries right?! But I have never been more afraid of losing it all then I was back then. It's difficult now because I'm sitting here watching my husband buy medical supplies over eBay because free to cheap insurance doesn't cover it. It's difficult to get over it all because I see his body will NEVER be the same inside and out. It's difficult because people even now will still consider me crazy and believe this whole crazy year of events didn't really happen...or at least not as bad as I portray it. 

I suppose the only real way to finally overcome this traumatic event in our lives is to learn from it, and I have. I have learned to be more sensitive to those who are having difficult times. I have learned to just help instead of asking what someone needs. Because unless you can fix everything, you don't know what you need help with! I have learned that everyone, EVERYONE is going through something huge in their lives right now and to wait until that's over is too late to offer assistance. I learned that even a smile can help, a hug even, if I have nothing else to give at that time.I have learned that we will probably never fully recover from all of this. I learned that there is ALWAYS more to the story than you think there is...because there is in my case! Most of all I learned what was MOST important to me...my two loves, husband and son.

Insanity to Zen All In One Week!

When we were trying to figure out what "sacrifices" we were going to have to make, I was mad because I was thinking that we already sacrifice A LOT! But when I found out we were moving to Idaho?!?!... I was more like this...

I was kicking and screaming because as much as I complained about my life situation, I didn't want to move!



I went CRAZY looking for a house and figuring out if we were going to buy or rent...

 

Everything was totally out of control until I finally gave in and let Heavenly Father take over. After that I was totally Zen.

I was feeling pretty proud of myself until...I realized that all of this spanned a total of ONE week! :-P

Oh well, at least I made progress. I'm not freaking out. I'm slowly packing. I'm taking my time and being very methodical with this move. I want us to be so great and easy to move that people will love the ease of it all and still feel they did a good deed for the day! LOL

Our Family Is Growing, but not in the way you're thinking...

I have found that growing happens in many different ways. We grow through experiences in our house, mainly. Through all our trials and tribulations, we have grown into new people it seems. Christopher grows as a child should and in amazing ways. The way his life moves seems to be a similitude of the way my life is. Sometimes his growing pains are difficult for him because he wants to be free and make his own decisions and live his life the way he sees fit, rather than through the guidelines we have set for him.

I find myself with those same growing pains...

Our family has endured much in the short time we have been together and most of it has made us stronger. This new chapter in our lives will probably have the same effect.

We are moving from our beloved first home in Rancho Cordova, California to find our new selves in Pocatello, Idaho! It all seems so crazy, and it is because we are to make the move in the next 3 1/2 months!

What do you do with all the things and places that have memories attached? Leave the things, take the memories.

We have been born and raised in California and it will seem strange to have a child that will barely remember living here at all. I, on the other hand, will have LOADS of memories, good and bad, that I take with me. I know we will obviously be making new ones, but I have become accustomed to my life here with little change. I realize now while writing this, like finding out you've never truly been in love with the person you're with, I don't care for my life as its played out the last few years.

I will miss my friends, our ease of access to fun places I know and love, I will miss what might have been. I'm reading a book that attempts to ease me into my new life when it reminds me that I "must be willing to let go of the life [I] planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for [me]," Joseph Campbell.

So, here goes something...

How Low Can You Go?

I have been having a bad week and a bad attitude to go along with it!

Things have not gone my way and next week's outlook doesn't look good either...
I told a good friend of mine just some of my grievances and she suggested I was being humbled. ME?! Need humbling?! YEP!

At first I was taken aback by her comment and then pondering truthfully I knew she was right, and that she was a VERY good friend for telling me! (Apparently I'm not an easy person who people can be straight-forward with, without fear of losing a limb) She told me that I should "just be". Just be humbled. Just be who I'm being molded into. Just be like Christ and turn the other cheek when life smacks me square on the jaw!

When she told me this, I sat in my car and cried. I wasn't hurt by what she said, I was scared. I'm being humbled in so many ways and have been for so long that I was hoping for a break soon. This advice lets me know that I'm just in the thick of it. ...bummer...

If realizing I still needed humbling wasn't humbling enough, the scale wanted to laugh at me and spit in my eye all at the same time today! But dutifully and humbly I walked into my meeting to receive my penance. After sitting there and stewing, the lead of the group and another good friend told me (without even knowing what was going on) that I was being too hard on myself. I told her that it's difficult not to after so many people for so many years have been just as hard on me. She said something that COMPLETELY changed my life. She said that I didn't have to be one of those people. Simple yet amazing!

So, even though my mood hasn't changed completely (I'm gonna need a pity party it up for another day or so) I have received some AWESOME advice! I know it was Heavenly Father's way of letting me know what's going on and how to better deal with it all, and for that I am truly grateful. 

In Case of Emergency

Have you ever been on a flight as they are preparing you for take-off and they inform you on the proper way to (possibly) survive? After they get done showing everyone how to properly fasten a seat belt (does anyone still have a problem with this?!) they look directly in the eyes of all the mothers on the plane and proceed to tell us about the oxygen mask. Rule number one for these masks: PUT IT ON YOURSELF FIRST! Many moms fumble with this idea and decide to space out from this point on because obviously this "Flight Attendant" isn't a mother or at least not a very good one BECAUSE what child-loving mother would put herself first?!

I remember thinking this as we were on our first plane ride with our newborn son on the down to receive cancer treatments for my young husband. Everything about that situation was crazy... I was in complete survival mode at this point which meant everyone around me mattered more than myself. NO WAY was I going to put that mask on myself FIRST!

Hindsight being 20/20 and having the gift of seeing it has helped me understand a few things...

If I don't put that mask on first, nothing gets done and everything is chaos. I'm not saying I am the queen of all things and nothing gets done without me but my family looks to me to be the steady one and when I can't breathe, no one does either.

Everyone is looking to me for their example. I'm mommy and if I'm doing it, it must be the right thing to do.

If I'm going crazy over a crazy situation, EVERYONE goes crazy along with me. BUT if I can breathe and keep my head about me then things can go a lot smoother.

So, now when the Flight Attendant starts her show on how to properly use those wonderful oxygen masks, I pay close attention; because when the plane (of life) is going down I need to know how to breathe.

Bent Not Broken

For a few years I have been hurt and angry at those around me which left me feeling alone and bitter.

I felt let down.

 Let down by people, church,

and God.

I felt cold.

Then about a year ago I started seeing a pinprick of light at the end of my long and dark tunnel.

 Now I look behind me and see a small bit of black, ahead of me –

 potential.

I heard something recently that broadened my perspective on these years of trials in my life. “We’re not broken, just bent.”

It’s from a song about a dying relationship that still possesses hope.

This got me thinking of others around me who have probably or are currently feeling the same way I did. An image came to mind of reeds blowing in the wind.

 These are beautiful, so beautiful that they are sung about as “amber waves of grain.” Many of us may feel as if they are the lone reed mentioned in poems, left alone to our own devices. I don’t feel this way any longer. I see there are other reeds bending

not broken

standing beside me…and they are made beautiful because of this bending.

Many things are made more beautiful because of bending. Things of nature like the grass,

the waves, 

the reeds. And just like these things

they do not stand alone.

They come together to form one large beautiful scene.

 They cover valleys and mountains,

 rivers and oceans.

We are not alone in our bending process. And those of us that see that MUST help those that don’t.

I see those around me now suffering and all I can think is, “how can I help?” I realize this is probably how others thought when I needed help. I don’t know how to help. I don’t know what to give.

I pray.

I think.

I wait to hear how Heavenly Father wants to bend me.