Living Beyond the Bucket List

This summer we made a bucket list of sorts as a family.  We brainstormed all the things we wanted to do this summer. I resisted making one because I don't like the idea of a bucket list. But we did it so our two kids could see that neither one got to have a monopoly on the fun. Everyone got to put in their ideas, and we would try to do some of them. And we did.

Then, one day on our vacation, we were riding a cable car in San Francisco. As we inched our way up Powell Street, my son burst out unexpectedly, "WOW, Mom! This is like five bucket lists! And it isn't even on our list! This is AWESOME!"

I kept hearing that phrase in my head all day. "And it isn't even on our bucket list!"

What a reminder for life!

I don't like the idea of making a bucket list or any list that keeps track of my accomplishments because it feeds into my addiction to perfectionism and the illusion that I can control life.  All the years of walking through infertility and the adoption process forced me to let go of that illusion.  My life did not go as I planned, and I had to figure out how to deal with that reality. I had to let go of the list and the time table and the expectations. I had to stop comparing my life to those around me. I had to accept that I wasn't in control.

Letting go started when I began living one day at a time. And that came when I started seeing the gifts in each day. Some days it was a stretch. Some days I didn't want to see them. Some days they stared me in the face, and I couldn't help but reach out my hands.

How many times, since then, have I felt like my life is not going as I planned only to miss out on life itself? And then a gift unexpected and I'm shaken from my stupor. Awakened to the gifts in my every day life. Gifts from the One who holds my hand.

Maybe you know what I am talking about. Maybe you too have had to figure out how to live life beyond the if only's and figure out how to live right now and breathe in what is good, kind and wonderful in the midst of stress, pain, and uncertainty.

My circumstances have changed from those years when I was waiting for a child, but I still need the reminder to let go when I am holding on too tight to life as I want it. My heart still needs the gift of gratitude to help me open my hands and let God have control.

I want to live life beyond my bucket list -- One cable car ride at a time. 

A Dance in the Sand

A Dance in the Sand

The announcement at the door

I need to wear my tutu to the beach

I want to dance in the sand

I want to walk on my tiptoes

I want to dance 

She lifts up her arms 

She twirls to the rhythm of surf

She dances

Free

No inhibitions

She wants to dance

To feel the sand in her toes

To listen to the sound of the waves

She prances

She runs

She dances

I want to dance on the beach

I want to have no inhibitions

I want to dance with my girl

My Life Is Not My Own

I have joined others at The Gypsy Mama for Five Minute Fridays. Our assignment is to write for five minutes flat on the topic for the week and share our responses to the same prompt. 

The word for this prompt is ROAR. Here I go...

I am not afraid to roar....I know what it means to feel the roar of anger...The roar in loss...

But there is a roar that is not ear-piercing, but quiet and powerful. There is a roar that says, I am not afraid. There is a roar that says NO to injustice whatever the cost.

I wish I roared like the Freedom Riders in the 1960’s. I wish I roared like Martin Luther King, Jr. or  Rosa Parks. I am always profoundly moved by the courage of that era. I was born in that era. 

I’ve never roared like that.

Elizabeth was from Nigeria.  She was my bunkmate at a conference in Amsterdam in 2000. One night, we sat on her bunk as she told me her life story. She was a woman of faith. She was a pastor. She chose to follow Jesus at the risk of death. She was beaten for her faith. She was denied access to her children for long periods of time. She was shamed by her husband in her village. But she never turned from her faith. She helped to establish nine faith communities. Her husband, her persecutor, asked for her forgiveness on his death bed. Three of her sons became pastors.  

After she shared with me, I asked, “How did you do it, Elizabeth? How do you survive all the persecution?” She looked me in the eyes with compassion and said, “Oh, Kim, my life is not my own. I gave it all to Him. It’s not mine. It’s His.”

I wept.

I wept because I knew I hold on so tightly to what I think is mine. I wept because her eyes said how much she longed for me to know the joy of not fearing anything. Not even death.

I want to roar like that. I want to roar with those who have given it all.

Pressure Cooker

Have you ever cooked with a pressure cooker? It is often used in Indian cooking and many Indian students pack them in their suitcase when they come for their studies in America. I love Indian food so I bought a pressure cooker and taught myself how to use it. It has a very important button on the side that you can press to let off steam so that your lentils don’t come pouring out of your pot. I had to learn to use this often as it took me a long time to figure out how to cook lentils in the pot without making a complete mess.

Last week felt like I was the lentils. But I didn't let off the pressure very well and made a mess. I had a sick child home with scarlet fever (just a fancy way to say strep throat with a rash) for five days, the younger child was fussy because the older one was getting so much attention, too many cartoons, and record heat outside which made it 100F inside the house (our pressure cooker!) where we were quarantined until the sick child was not contagious. 

Here is a snapshot of an evening in the middle of the week. It started to get comical by the end. But I don't remember laughing at four o'clock in the morning.

Broken silverware drawer and injured foot
Rash breaks out all over oldest child and realize he has strep
Broken mercury thermometer in the bathroom, call to poison control,  followed by tedious clean up

Dishwasher leaks all over the kitchen floor
Water bottle leaks in son’s bed at 11pm and completely soaks mattress
Musical beds for mom, dad (to couch) and son
Musical beds again at 4am because son keeps kicking mom and she hasn't slept 

My housemates in Japan can attest to the fact that I do not do well in the heat. After my first summer in Japan, they commented, “Oh, Kim, you have your smile back!” I didn't know I had lost it. Ouch. My kids can now attest to it too, unfortunately. By Friday morning, I was exhausted and cranky and overwhelmed. I lost it when I was doing the dishes one more time because I had just done them. I felt like I had not left the kitchen in five days. It was not a pretty sight. The pans did not go gently into the sink that morning. The mercy in it was that the only one who saw it was my husband.

I am learning, slowly, that having a child with special needs makes a difficult week even more challenging. In my "free moments", I also juggle talking to the doctor about medication, figuring out insurance issues, scheduling meetings at school, and advocating for my son in arenas where he is misunderstood. When you have a child with special needs, you are also learning that parenting looks very different than what you imagined. And you have days when you think you are going crazy because nothing you try is working. Anyone else with a special needs kid feel crazy some days? 

I am very aware that my circumstances were not as bad as I thought. I have been through weeks in the past when I could barely get out of bed because my grief felt like a weight on my entire body. Some of you may be in that season and wishing that you had my week instead of your own. Whatever the season I am in, I have to admit that sometimes I have days that just seem to overwhelm me and I can't get back to a place of gratitude and openness to God's touch in my life. 

My kids will probably only remember that they got to have waffles and ice cream for dinner last week. I hope so. I am thankful that I can make amends and let go. I am also thankful that there is a group of women in my life that are learning how to practice the Spiritual Disciplines in our everyday lives. This past week we practiced Fixed Hour of Prayer**. We did a simplified version and picked one time during the day to set a timer or alarm (I used my cell phone) to remind us to stop and pray. My time was 2:30 in the afternoon. This was my prayer.

Search me, O God, and know my heart; 

try me and know my anxious thoughts. 

See if there be any hurtful way in me, 

and lead me in the everlasting way.

Psalm 139:23-24

I wish that I can say that I was extremely spiritual and was given great insight into God. I was not. I was given great insight into myself. I didn’t like stopping and pausing. I didn’t like noticing how my attitude toward my children and my circumstances was not loving but irritated and grumpy. And yet, I stopped. I paused. I recognized that I needed God’s help. Sometimes I took it. Sometimes I didn’t. I saw how frail I am and how much I need the power of God to enter into my every day earthly life and transform it. This week is “back to normal” but I am very aware that I worship a God who took on our human condition and entered into everyday life so that I could know that I am never alone in it. That is the mercy of God for a mom who needed it so desperately last week. And every day.

**Fixed-Hour of Prayer calls for regular and consistent patterns of attending to God throughout the day. Benedict of Nursia believed that both physical labor (work) and prayer were in God’s hands. They were both God’s work. He is renowned for saying “Orare est laborare, laborare est orare” – to pray is to work, to work is to pray. Benedictines today continue to punctuate their work with prayer rhythms begun over 1600 years ago.

God Box

The best advice I was ever given was to start a God Box for my prayers. At first, I wondered if it would be helpful, but I gravitate toward word pictures to help me grasp spiritual concepts so I was drawn to the idea. The God Box is a tangible picture of learning how to turn over my worries to God and leave them in His hands. 

I've been surprised how the simple act of writing down my concern on piece of paper and putting it in the God Box has transformed how I pray and how I see God. For years, I prayed to God and thought I had let go. But what I was actually doing was telling God how I wanted Him to answer my prayer. Or I was praying for someone or something to change so I could feel better.  But when I write down the prayer and put it in the God Box, I am letting God have it. I am truly letting go. My prayer is simple.  "This is too big for me to figure out on my own. I need Your help.  I'll wait for You to show me what to do."

Don't get me wrong. It's not easy to put some of the big ones in the box and leave them there. But the gift of the God Box is that I'm not trying to figure out the answer anymore. I wait. I live. I listen. Sometimes I have to remind myself, "It's in the God Box. Don't take it out today." Some of the things I put in my God Box are in there for a long time. Months. Maybe years. (I just started in 2011.)  But when I look back months later, I've often discovered that what was once a burden is now gone. My attitude or perspective has changed, and I can just remove it.

This past spring, my son struggled with two boys at school. No matter what he tried, he couldn't get them to stop bothering him. Our school was helping and intervening with the boys, but my son was beginning to feel overwhelmed by the situation. It was often the most difficult on Sunday evening when he was thinking about going to school the next day. I told him about my God Box and how I put problems that are too big for me to handle in it. I told him he could let me know if he wanted to use the God Box for his prayers.

That following morning at breakfast, he said, "Mom, can I put Jeff and Andy (not their real names) in the God Box?" So he wrote down their names on a piece of paper and put it in the box. He loved that the box had a special lock. One side has panels that slide into different positions to lock the box shut. I chose this box because reminds me that my prayers are locked in tight and safe and not to be taken out again!

As my son put the prayer into the box, I found myself thinking, "Okay, God. You got this one? You better show up!" Then I started thinking of ways I might need to explain to my son why God was not answering his prayers right away. Once again, I saw that I think I need to have a back up plan for God.  I too had to put this situation in the box that morning and trust that God could handle it.

When my husband picked up our son from school that day he was beaming. He was surrounded by classmates all trying to stand next to him. We soon found out that his teachers had decided to have a meeting that day with the two classes in my son's grade that included my son and the two boys.  My son was able to share in a safe environment about the teasing and how he felt like he had no friends at recess. Other students also opened up about how they felt the same way as my son. They came up with solutions on how to solve the problem. The teachers initiated letting my son pick a special friend for each recess over the next week. When the teachers asked who would like an opportunity to be my son's special friend, everyone raised their hands and wanted to be chosen. One teacher shared that this meeting was one of the most moving moments that she had experienced in her 30 years as an educator.

You can say it was a coincidence. I say it was God touching my son's life with an answer to his prayer. It was his dewdrop from heaven. And his mom got to enjoy it too. We were both so excited to take out our slips of paper in the God Box that evening. I wish that every slip of paper came out the next day. But that is not the case. But this experience with my son sure made me want to trust God to take care of me ... one day at a time. I could share time and time again when the answer comes in unexpected ways. But for right now, I want to keep those as God's special gifts to me that I keep hidden in my heart.

In this season of my life, I am learning to put my son's diagnosis of Tourette Syndrome into the box. Today I will be writing down, "How to parent a child with Tourette's?" This is what I need to put in my God Box. What about you?  I would encourage you to use the God Box and see what you discover.