Completing the Circle.

When I was in college I wrote an essay called "Paper Peelings: Reflections on Writing with a Computer." It was kind of sappy, though I think most of it was good prose.   It sure put my professor in ecstacy. (He was something of a Luddite.)  In it, I compared the process of composition to allowing thoughts to trickle together into a roaring stream.  Writing on paper was to writing on a computer as walking in a woods is to sitting in a plastic storage container.  Still, when the paper says, "I have the patience of trees that only grow because the sun is above them.  I have the patience of water that travels as slowly as osmosis," that's a little corny.  Cue the violins. 

 At the time, I had problems with composing on a computer.  "I write all of my papers by hand.  I like the permanence of ink and paper, the patience of faint blue lines," I said.  And the thing is, I did. I took issue with electronic efficiency.   I hated writing on a computer.  Writing on a computer felt slapdash and tossed off.  "Sitting in front of a screen, staring at all the space that I can fill, looking at all the words that I can move, delete, copy, and paste makes my mind as blank as the screen.  There's just something about the sterile gray (gosh, that's dated) plastic square holding the blank, pasty-white (likewise dated) screen with all my thoughts that dries up the well inside me."

Then I got out of college, and I found that it was possible, even easy,  to let my thoughts go crazy while I was staring at a screen.  As my fingers got faster (after all, if you can't type, a computer doesn't do you any good), I really started to like writing on a computer.  I transferred all my stories to floppy disk (that was a mistake!) and sat happily in front of the blank screen of my husband's cast-off laptop whiling away many hours of deployments and duty nights. 

 I'm not sure what I wrote -- nothing of consequence, I'm sure -- but the fact was, the sterile computer screen was no longer my creative nemisis.   Maybe it helped that computers got smaller, that screens became blue instead of gray, and  that I got to personalize the background.  There's a world of difference between an institutionalized computer and one's own.  At least there was when I was in college.  Now we can store our own home base somewhere in the cloud and log into it from any computer.  I haven't gotten that far yet.  But I do have a blog (obviously), and I no longer dreaded the sight of a blank, glowing page. 

The thing is, since I started working online, I've felt a regression coming on.  All of these creative thoughts are building up inside of me (and my therapist assures me that that's a bad thing),  but after spending two hours a day slogging at other people's papers, correcting spelling errors, suggesting new fonts, putting in headings, and constantly rewriting absolutely abysmal sentence structures, all within prescribed time limits, I can't equate computers with creativity anymore. 

Trying to write my own thoughts on a computer after two hours of all that is like standing up to make a speech and suddenly finding myself deprived of words.  I have all these things that I want to say and none of them come out.  Instead of trickling out into their rightful pool, they build up inside my head, gradually increasing pressure, which in turn increases heat, which means that there likely is metaphysical steam blowing out my ears.  I think I can hear myself whistling. 

So I've picked up my notebooks again.  Notebooks are patient.  I can leave them lying around unplugged for days, and they'll still work when I pick them up (provided I can find a pen).  I can use them before bedtime without unduly stimulating my brain with blue light radiation.  And there's something therapeutic about the process of putting ink on paper.  I can feel the tension drain out of my shoulders and through my fingertips as the ball of the pen rolls steadily along the faint blue line provided for me, and the only reference for my thoughts is my thoughts.  For all the adaptations I've made to a computerized lifestyle, computers still don't do that for me. 

Well, that didn't work.

We went to see the Avengers movie on Sunday, finally.  I've been wanting to see it forever, it seems, ever since Thor came out.  I told my husband that he could not see it while he was in the Netherlands (it came out one week earlier in Europe) because I was going to see it with or without him when it came out here.  Well, maybe we'd have been better off doing that way.

Here's how our scenario unfolds.  Seth's days off are at the beginning of the week: Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and alternate Wednesdays.  Have you ever tried to get a babysitter on one of those days?  In our circles, Sundays are family days, and Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday constitute school nights and will until the middle of June.  (Avengers is going to have a good, long run, but I wasn't confident that it would hold out until the middle of June.) And I've asked enough favors of my family friends for the time being.  So that leaves us with the option of taking the Boo to a movie that should be ostensibly way over her head.   We decided to go for my birthday.

Note to self: the surest way to spoil a movie for a grown-up is to bring a small kid to it. 

Now as far as kids and movies go, the Boo is a pretty good movie watcher.  She doesn't mind explosions or kissing or people falling over dead.  She runs away when the music gets intense, but we were prepared for that.  We put her through The Return of the Jedi one night, just to see if she could handle it (we figured that was as close as we could come to a comic book movie in our collection), and she sat through the whole thing with nary a whimper or nightmare.  We figured we were golden.  But there is one thing she minds.

Angry people.

In real life or on a screen, she will leave if someone's face gets an angry look on it.

Are you seeing a problem here?

And the Avengers has an angry person in it.  In fact, it has several angry people, an intense argument, and several close ups of a very large, angry, green person; a person who gets suddenly very angry and very large and very green.   No sooner did this person become  angry for the first time than the Boo turned to me and said, "Mommy, potty."  (Potty, for my non-parental readers, is the one excuse that no parents can afford to ignore, no matter how often their children use it as a ruse.  I ignored it once.  Let's just let it rest at that.)

I can't ignore the request to go potty, so out we go.  I led her briskly to the potties.  She went into the stall, shut me out (that's her new thing now), and went potty in the potty.  She let me back in to help her clean up, I reminded her to wash her hands, and then we headed back to the movie.

When we get back, Seth said, "You missed the best line."

"Why," I asked.  "What happened?"

"He said, his first name's not Phil.  It's agent." 

"Ha, that's pretty good." 

And the movie continued.  Half of the Avengers assembled.  The first confrontation with the villain happened.  Tension rose.  The action was getting good.  Somebody got angry.  "Mommy, potty."

Now it had only been fifteen minutes at the most, so I was a little skeptical, but, like I said, some things can't be ignored.  So I grabbed the backpack, and we headed back to the restrooms.  I was a little more impatient this time, especially since she was not in any hurry to sit down.  Instead she played with the toilet paper and fiddled with the garbage can.  I stood outside the stall, holding the door closed and trying not to get too waspish, but it was pretty obvious that she was stalling, and dagnabbit, I was missing the movie.  It was my birthday present, after all.  Finally, I barged in on her, sat her on the potty, and commanded her to go.  She did nothing for about a minute and then decided she's done.  She hopped down, dressed herself, insisted on washing her hands, and took her time prancing back into the theatre. 

I flopped  back down into my seat with a sigh, and my husband handed me the caramel corn with a sympathetic smile.  He took the Boo in his lap and tried to cuddle some courage into her while we watched, but she broke free and climbed back into my lap.  "No, Mommy."  She snagged my  theatre sized soda out of my armrest.  "Tirsty."  

Three potty breaks and two key plot moments later, I turned to him and said, "It's your turn." 

He's a good husband.  He took her and the backpack and did, well, whatever she needed.  I don't know what she needed.  I was watching the movie. 

In the end, I know that he took her out at least three times, and I did the same.  Sometimes she had to go.  Sometimes she just needed to get away from the movie.  She's really pretty quick; when she decides she's going to leave, she just leaves, and woe betide the parent that doesn't catch up. 

But finally, we reached the climax of the movie.  The Boo is hiding behind the chairs at our feet, but she's watching.  Seth and I are passing the popcorn back and forth, and the movie is awesome.  I take one last drink of my Sprite and realize that I just drank a movie theatre soda with a little help from my daughter.  And the second that my brain realizes this, my body realizes it too.  Dagnabbit!  It's not fair!  So I had to leave on my own account (and take the Boo with me, of course), and we missed another five minutes of excellent action film. 

So if you ask me how the Avengers was, I can tell you that it has everything a comic book movie should have: great lines, familiar archetypes with just enough twist to add pizazz, big explosions, a few tear jerking moments, a couple of surprises in just the right places, and of course, awesome superheroes doing awesome superhero type things.  I can't think of any enormous plot holes or character flaws that suspend the suspension of disbelief.  But if you ask me how it held together as a whole, well, I just can't tell you.   Between the Boo and myself, I missed about half an hour's worth of the movie. 

We should have just waited for it to come out on video. 

p.s.  In spite of her qualms, the Boo had no nightmares, and she hasn't been reinacting any of the scenes either.  That leaves me wondering how much she really digested.  Or maybe action movies just aren't her thing. 

A very full day.

Thank God for elder saints, people whose walk with God has included moments that made their heads spin and their hearts sink.  People who have worried about their kids and gotten frustrated with the way things are but still say fervently, "God is love and God is good."  We kind of  needed that this past Wednesday. 

We took Boogaloo to the local ESD on Wednesday to have her speech development evaluated.  It's a pleasant, school like place, and the teacher and the speech pathologist were very nice people who were very good at putting us at ease.  They took turns playing with Boogaloo and asking us questions about her speech, the sort of activities she does, the sort of activities she doesn't do, and the way she does things when she does do them.  They said she is a darling little girl, and there is definitely nothing wrong with her thinking processes.  However, Boogaloo is in the first percentile for four year olds speech wise, and she might be somewhere on the Autistic Spectrum a well. 

I didn't really react then.  They weren't really telling me anything I hadn't already thought of, and they certainly weren't changing the facts.  I mean, I knew something was wrong.  That's why I set up the appointment.  Seth was a bit more disturbed.  Like he's always said, the protective parent in him doesn't want anything to be wrong with his child.  But Seth, in typical fashion, has settled down into the facts, doing what needs to be done and not worrying about what we can't change yet.  On the outside, I do the same, but on the inside, I'm waffling a little bit.  It's not good, and it's not helpful, but here's what runs through my head.

In the high moments, I find myself appreciating how special she is, with or without a diagnosis.  She entertains herself so well.  She has, on top of her intelligence, imagination, curiosity, and strength of will, a real capacity to be happy, and it's fun to watch her exercise it.  I notice some of the things that she does, and I think, "Okay, maybe that's what they were looking at."  And it makes sense to me.  I notice others and say, "Well, that is just typical four-year-old."  In those moments, she comes into clearer focus for me.   

In the low moments, I wonder if I will ever have a normal, complete heart-to-heart conversation with my daughter.  I wonder what she would be like if she were at a normal point in her development.  Will she ever ask me why the sky is blue or where animals go when they die?  These are questions most parents have fielded already, but even though I know she's a curious little thing, I don't get those kind of questions. 

The good news:  We've picked a good preschool.  The ladies practically rejoiced when we told them what preschool she is preregistered at.  And with a good preschool environment, there is a strong possibility that she will outgrow most of her symptoms.  Until then we wait for the staff at ESD to get back at us.  They're going to schedule a couple of observations to see her in her normal surroundings.  We proceed with our lives until they give us some more definite diagnosis and direction (Gosh, that sounds awful.  It's not like our lives have been interrupted.)

It would be easy to swim in all this uncertainty  (That kind of swimming is the only swimming I'm good at, actually.), but God decided to head me off at the pass this time.  After we left the ESD, we drove down to Silverton and spent the afternoon with Seth's grandparents.    Pake and Beppe are some of those people who say "Praise the Lord" with so much quiet feeling that you can't help but wonder what God did for them and does for them.  Sitting in their house and absorbing a little of their perspective in life is often a breath of fresh air after the chaotic spinning in my head.

Beppe sat us down around her dining room table, and told us, "It's okay to be upset about these things.  You give it to God, but then you still have to digest it emotionally, and God understands that.  That's how he made us."  She was talking about more than this particular anxiety, but about all of life's anxieties.  "You know, as a mother, you think, I just get my kids grown, and then I stop worrying about them, but you never do.  You always want to make life better.  But then you just have to accept that you can't.  Only God can do that, and he does.  He really does.  Even now, I see, you just have to trust him."

We told her that the ladies had been particularly happy about our choice of preschool, and she said, "You see? You take that as a sign. God is still watching you, and he's going to be with you.  You are not doing this alone.  We are never alone." 

So I'm digesting.  I've had some help.  I talked to my mom, my husband, and a couple of close friends.  I've caught myself in some pretty silly worries, but I've also had reason to rejoice in some small gains just in the last two days.  She's been using verbs more often these last couple of days, largely because of a conscious effort on the part of her parents to talk about action words.   Today, she told me, without prompting, that the robin was flying.  That's hopeful.  It makes me happy. 

I seem to be in biting bullet mode. Last week, I caved and used my first sleeping pill. This week, I set up an appointment to have the Boo evaluated for a speech delay. I've been putting this off for almost two years, but, well, it's just time. 

I should have done something before now, but I heartily suspect that I've been afraid to. I've been afraid that her delay was my fault. For the first four years of her life, she spent half of her time alone with me. I'm not a talker in the best of times, and I wasn't at the best level of performance when Seth was deployed. I didn't read to her every day. There were probably days when I hardly spoke. Did my depression affect her development? Did I fail to provide her with essential stimulation at some essential point?  

So I sought advice from people I love and respect. They said things like, "Of course, she's quiet. She's your kid." or "Just get her more interaction with other kids. She'll grow out of it." All things designed to soothe an over-anxious mother. Granted, she's not their kid. They don't watch her day in and day out. But the reason I go to them is their advice is usually sound. They provide the perspective I am so often lacking. Perspective is not one of my strong points.

Still I'm just not satisfied with Boogaloo's speech development. Sure, she's the child of two introverts. She's highly imaginative. She's not mentally deficient. That doesn't change the fact that she can't walk up to a girl her age and converse with her. They tell me that she just needs more practice, but how is she going to that practice if she doesn't feel comfortable expressing an introduction? I've tried to set up playdates. We have four aquaintances of similar age now, but she doesn't really talk to them either. When she wants to play, she walks up to them and curtsies. If they don't take her up on it, she goes off and plays on her own.

At home too, something just doesn't seem right. She doesn't use complete sentences unless we drill her, and then she uses them by rote, like a blank on a form. A typical conversation runs like this:

"Mommy, hungry."

"What would you like?"

"Hungry."

"Would you like food?

"Food."

"How do you ask?"

"I would like hungry please."

No "I'm hungry." No "Can I have a cheese stick please?" I know two-year-olds who have more developed speech patterns. I think it's finally time to do something.

Acknowledging that something might be wrong felt like acknowledging that I might have had a part in it, at least until I made the phone call. It's funny. Now that I've made the appointment, that guilty hesitation is gone. If I'm responsible, now I'm doing something about it.

The most important thing is that the Boo be comfortable in her own skin, and right now, I don' t think she is. There are moments when she gets upset, and I see the feeling building up behind her tongue, but she can't (or won't) find the words, and all the feeling has to come out as an "Aaaaaaaahh." I see her at the playground watching the other kids, following them hopefully for a few minutes and then drifting away when it becomes plain that they aren't going to play with her. I see her forming habits to compensate for what she can't say, and I don't like them. It's not that speech has to be her first language, but I want her to be fluent enough to get what she needs.

So next week, the Boo and Seth and I are going to Early Intervention to have her speech evaluated. Then, I guess, we'll see what comes.

Once again, he returns.

We are celebrating this weekend.  Once again, the Lord has returned my husband to me safe and sound.  The company sent Seth away for training again, this time to the Netherlands for two weeks.  My navy wife friends would tell me that two weeks is nothing.  As I tell my new civilian friends, two weeks is barely time enough to get in a good groove without him.  Actually two weeks is barely enough time to get over the frenetic feeling of absence that lurks in the background each time he leaves. It's barely enough time to get the house ready for him to get back (especially if my dog brings in a tidy collection of fleas in the meantime.) 

Seth's frequent absences give me pause to reflect on the difference between military and civilian life.  My civilian friends are astonished at how calmly I refer to Seth leaving for weeks on end.  They say, quite honestly that they "can't imagine how I can" . . . whatever the situation requires.  I once said that to an experienced Navy wife when I was young and naive and newly embarked on the challenge.  Now, being experienced in departures and the recipient of such comments, I find that I can't really explain how I cope with the sudden foisting of total household responsibility on my shoulders. The answer is, the same way any sane woman would cope: do what needs to be done and go a little insane in the process. 

But now he's back, and we have a pleasant prospect on the horizon.  The company is going to send him back to the Netherlands for three months at some undetermined date (in that way they're even worse than the Navy!), and we get to go too.  Granted, we'll have to pay for our own plane tickets, but the housing and transportation will be covered.  Seth would work five days a week, but we would have the weekends to tour Europe on the company's fuel expense account.  I'm more than a little intidmidated by the prospect -- other languages, new places, more new faces, new neighbors. 

Then there's also the fact that with every dream achieved, something dies.  The Netherlands is where my ancestors came from.  It holds a certain mystical appeal.  I'm afraid that once I've been there, it will be just one more place.  It's a silly fear, I know.  England didn't lose any magic by a three month stay there.  My expectations of England weren't particularly realistic, and I'm sure neither are my expectations of Holland.  All of my pictures seem to be based on books written during or about World War II.  That was a time ago.  A lot of things have changed since Europe recovered from Hitler.  Maybe I should go check them out.

***

I've finished chapter seven of Scot McKnight's Fasting, and my dominant thought is definitely "Well,when do we eat?"   In establishing a body calendar, which means using our bodies to participate the holy events and hopes of the church by fasting, he cites so many instances of fasting that I begin to feel deprived just reading about it.  The early church fasted ritually on Wednesdays and Fridays but never on Sundays.  The later Catholic church and the Greek Orthodox fasted during Lent, Advent, and before Pentecost, eating only one meal a day.  The church at the time of St. Augustine fasted before each taking of the Eucharist (presumably on Sunday), using the bread and wine as breakfast, so St.  Augustine encouraged the church to hold the Eucharist no later than 3 pm, lest people get hungry.  You know, I'm kind of glad I'm not a Catholic.  That would mean waiting for Mass every day to eat.

I see his point.  Fasting before each of the major blessings of the Christian year would definitely help us cultivate a deeper sense of the blessing that we receive.  How many times have we heard pastors and laymen complain that we don't really appreciate what Jesus did for us at Christmas or at Easter?  Fasting would definitely take an edge off the secular commercialism that plagues and annoys us each holiday season.  And weekly stationary fasting definitely helps keep us connected to the spiritual purposes of life.  Maybe my preemptive  empty stomach is just the flesh wailing, "Noooo.  How can you consider doing that to me?"
So I skipped to the end of the book where he promises to tell us exactly what we would be doing to our bodies and read about potential traps, benefits, and dangers of fasting, just to make sure I know what I'd be doing to my spirit and my flesh.  One thing McKnight makes very clear:  fasting is not a self-help measure.  It is not a purification method or weight loss technique.  There are very real dangers to the heart and other body systems if it's pursued too stringently.  And there are very real dangers to the spirit if it is pursued for righteousness'sake, to prove one's piety, pursued under rules too strict or not to the point.  The pitfalls of fasting are so many that at one point, McKnight acknowledges that they're enough to make a person think about abandoing the pursuit all together.  This, he maintains, is not an option.  Not everyone can fast; not everyone will fast, but everyone should desire the unity of person that fasting represents. 

On the blessings of sleep.

Two nights ago, a miracle happened: I slept all the way through the night.

I have never been a good sleeper, not as long as I can remember.  I was one of those kids that would smuggle a flashlight into bed with me so I could keep reading, and when the batteries burned out, I would lie awake and finish the story for myself.  Unfortunately, that means that I was also the teen that would lie awake and rehearse all the worrisome conversations that I might have the next day.  I developed a bad habit of lying awake at night, thinking, revising, and just replaying thoughts real and imaginary over and over.  I'm a worrier.  I worry my life for more stuff to think about like a dog worries an old blanket to find a favorite toy.  And it's funny how the people who can't let something rest are the people who can never sleep.   But before now, I never had the motivation to do anything about it.   

When I first went to a therapist  for my post-partum depression, she suggested that sleep deprivation might be part of the problem and suggested drugs right off the bat.  I was nursing, and I was a Navy wife whose husband was about to go on deployment.  I had seen what psychotropic drugs could do to people if they weren't the right drug or the right dose.  A good friend of mine had two kids on medication, and it radically changed their personalities, even when it helped.  That's stressful when there's a responsible adult around to manage things, but since I was going to be the responsible adult, I decided that the risk was unacceptable.  I would take the flaws that I knew how to handle instead of imposing new ones on myself.  After all, if I went seriously nuts, who would take care of my beautiful baby?  I opted for a more natural treatment. 

That was my logic until Seth got out of the Navy.  I went to neurofeedback therapy, which helped enormously, but I couldn't seem to get over that last hill, and my therapist said it was because of my sleep habits.  I had a sleep study done, but I still didn't want to take medication.   I was coping.  It was good enough.  But since we moved here, I haven't had NFT, and normal sleep regulation wasn't helping.  I cut down on my computer time, stopped eating sugar before bed, and exercised (a little) more.  We even got a new mattress.  No success.  It was time to bite a personal bullet.  I went to the doctor and asked for a pill. 

 Monday night, I took my sleeping pill for the first time, and I slept.  I woke up once to put the Boo back to bed, and then I came back to bed and went right back to sleep.  (This never happens.)  In the morning,  I woke up slowly.  Man I was groggy, but I was also chipper; I was  buoyant; I was downright jaunty, and my natural tendency to cynicism hovered like an annoying fly instead of sitting on my soul like a big black spider.  I sat at the breakfast table and sorted through the day as a plan instead of a worry.  I worked my way through Bible study with a clear head and a sense of being settled in myself.  I took the Boo's little peculiarities in stride, and even appreciated them as the adorable traits that they are.    And, as I got in the car,  I turned on the Christian radio station, I listened to the words of a praise song, and I didn't have to rectify a feeling of cynicism.  Yes, God really is that good.  No doubt about it.  It's amazing what one little pill can do for a person's perspective.

Now, some people, and I know they're out there because I was one of them, think taking a pill to solve a chemical problem like a nervous sleep disruption is unnatural.  Some would even call it unbiblical.  "Truly my soul finds rest in God," they might say.  "All you need to do is take every thought captive, and sleep will come."  To this I reply from experience, "Sometimes the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak."  When I was in the grip of depression, I knew that God is good and that he still holds me in his hand.  I knew that my husband loves me and that I'm doing a good job raising my kid.  But I didn't have the emotional strength to believe it. I didn't have the mental strength to look around me and perceive all the facts that supported my faith.   And faith has to come before health and healing. 

The same is true for sleep.  One of my favorite bloggers, Kevin DeYoung, posted something to that effect last week.  Sleep is a spiritual discipline, he writes, quoting from D.A. Carson.  If we lack sleep, our ability to believe is impaired.   If our ability to believe is impaired, then the capacity to trust God is damaged.  If the capacity to trust God is damaged, well, I couldn't sleep in a world like this.  It's just too crazy. 

So I'll take my miracle, even though it comes in a little orange bottle with a kid-proof lid.  Some things are just too important to power through on our own, and some things are truly beyond our physical ability to overcome.  The grace of God can come in little orange bottles.  The common grace, at least.  And common grace makes it easier to see salvation.