Monthly Archives: December 2012

28

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5

This is not a happy post.

Sorry.  At least you’re warned.

I don’t know why the whole Connecticut thing got to me so much.  They estimate about 160 children have been killed in the drone strikes in Pakistan.  160.  That’s eight times what happened a little under a week ago in Connecticut.  Eight classrooms filled with little children’s bodies.  Why am I not more upset about that? 

I think the Connecticut thing rips me up more because it’s easier for me to understand.

So I’m going to focus on that right now – not because the deaths in Connecticut are any better or any worse than what happens overseas, or that they mean more or less, but because it’s something I can wrap my brain around.

I’ve got nothing new to say about Connecticut that hasn’t been said already. 

Except:

I’m so, so, SO very sick of hearing “26 deaths”. 

Everywhere I turn – amidst the rabid debates over gun control and the availability of medical health care – I keep hearing about the 26 deaths from the shooting. 

Pay it forward with 26 random acts of kindness.  Stand on a stage with 26 white placards with names on them.  26 candles lit.

Etc, etc, etc.

It wasn’t 26, people.

It was 28 people.

Look, I can get why people don’t want to count Adam Lanza among the dead –  although I find it a little hypocritical that people are using him as a platform to shout about access to mental health care but won’t even count his death…..but why does his mom no longer count as a person, as a death? Why is she not counted as a victim? Because she was shot somewhere other than the school?

I don’t know why, but something about that rips my heart most of all.

Anyways, I just wanted to take a moment and say that.

It wasn’t 26.

It was 28.

******

I was going to post that – and it would have made a more poignant ending to this post, but I realized I didn’t want to just end with that.

I know it’s been almost a week, so if I were trying to be timely with this message, I should have posted it earlier.  The thing is, I wasn’t really planning on posting about Connecticut, until the whole 26/28 thing got to me last night.

So, in case it helps anyone else, here are some words that my friend, John Norling (the photographer from my sidebar) shared last Friday.  Something about it really helped me find the beginnings of peace in my heart . 

It’s written from a Christian perspective, so if that sort of thing just riles you up, rather than helping you find peace, then you’ve been warned, and you don’t have to read it.

*****

I think I immediately went through the same emotions as everyone else when I heard about the news on Friday morning. My mind kept kept trying to wrap around what had happened. A thought wouldn’t get far before I would realize I was only thinking about one small part of the problem – not the whole. Like a photographer that has to keep backing up to fit everyone in a picture,  I had to keep backing up mentally to try to see the root.

Why did this school shooting hit such a raw nerve? I want to say it was because it’s so wrong, and so evil,  but there are examples of evil everyday that I can read about with little reaction.
What happened was horrible. Yet it was no more horrible than much of what has happen in the long, ugly history of man. In the mid 90’s an estimated 800,000 people were slaughtered in Rwanda. Most of them were killed with machetes, and often while UN troops watched. That was no less evil.

Every day it seems that bodies are found just across the border in Mexico, oftentimes without their heads, but that has become second page news at best.
As I  thought about it, I realized that I have been lulled into a false reality. I (or “we”, if you want to include yourself) have come to think that the world is good, and that we can plan out each tomorrow.

That is not reality.

Where I live – in the time and place that I do –  allows me to believe in the illusion….. until I’m hit with reality, like I was with the events that unfolded on Friday morning.

I have not earned my blessings.
No where can I point at my life, at what I’ve done,  and say I deserve to not have pain in my life.
There is no reason that my children are home in their beds tonight and not in a morgue. It is not because I am a better person. There is nothing those parents did that would make them deserving of losing their child. 

History is full of wars, and rape, and words like “pillage”. The Mayans would demand children from other tribes to offer as a sacrifice. Those mothers didn’t hurt any less than the mothers that grieve today.

All history is written in blood.

Yet we, as Americans, have been so blessed for so long we have forgotten that this life is a vale of tears. I am a Christian. As such, I believe that there is good and there is evil. The Bible describes this world as Satan’s home. Most of history points to that, but there have been a few, brief times in history that a group has been so sheltered from the many evils of the world that they begin to think that they can enjoy a heaven-like state here on Earth.

I had a friend who was in a class at Orange Coast College on Monday, September the 10th, 2001.  The professor lectured that day that there was no such thing as good and evil on this earth –  only what some people like,  and what some people don’t like. On that Monday morning, the students sat quietly and took notes.

When that class met again, two days later on the 12th, many of the students walked in, angry,  and told the teacher he was a fool.

We can only believe the lie until we are hit with the harsh reality of the truth.

Friday morning, December 14th, the truth hit many of us that we live in a evil world.

It honestly shouldn’t have come as such a surprise to us.

Ask any of the relatives of the estimated 75 million that Mao Zedong killed while bring communism to China about whether there is evil in this world. Ask the relatives of the 19,000 lost in the Japanese tsunami.

I am in no way trying to take away from the evil that happened Friday, nor am I trying to put their loss into perspective. It’s just…. for those of us on the outside, who feel kicked in the chest (even though we didn’t know any of them personally), I think there is a lesson. Our reaction shows how isolated we are from what so much of the world deals with every day, and what is common to history.

If we are blessed,  we should adopted an attitude of “blessed to be a blessing”. I have heard people use the phrase “count your blessings” before.  In the past, I’ve only thought about it as counting the good things that have happened to me.
Today, for the first time, I thought about it differently.    I have never thought to count the things that haven’t happened as blessings.

The cancer I haven’t gotten.

The children that I haven’t lost.
No where can I point to my life and say I deserve to not have pain.

I am not trying to cover all the, “How can a good God allow this” type questions writing this. I’m just sharing that I was convicted as I thought about what had happened, and I realized I had taken my eyes of the goal.
This is not my home.

This life will pass in a moment, and only what I have done that affects souls will matter, because only they will last. I need to be more focused on the eternal.

By keeping the eternal in focus I will see this world for what it is/

It will be easy to be obsessed with this story and get glued to the news.

I am going to choose a different path. I am going to focus on who I can bless. I get to go help at a Christmas party this Saturday, taking Christmas pictures for abused women and children. They don’t need more sorrow.

Also,  I want to do more then just hug my kids. I want to teach them that none of us knows how much time we have, but we should spend what time we do have affecting those around us.

I want them to understand that there is evil in the world— and yet even still they should be able to find joy.

A New Low

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Xerox the cat is fat and healthy.

She’s a sweet, happy, OUTDOOR cat. We tried to make her an indoor cat, but we ran into a little problem.

She pees in the house.

She doesn’t mark her territory – she actually squats and leaves a puddle.  The first night she stayed inside the house, she peed on the kitchen floor. 

I moved one of our three (THREE!) kitty litter boxes upstairs and out of the basement, thinking maybe she didn’t know we had litter boxes.

The next night she slept inside she jumped up on the kitchen counter and peed on a plastic bag I had left out.

I didn’t know the pee was there, so when I moved the bag the next morning, it scattered cat pee all over the kitchen. 

And seriously, is there anything worse than cat pee?

The next day, on her way out the door, she backed up to the vacuum cleaner and sprayed it with pee to mark it.

She is now an outside cat, despite her sweet nature and the way she likes to sleep under the  covers at night.

Still, every once in awhile, despite our vigilance, she manages to sneak in – and when she does, she pees on something. 

It’s hard to dislike a cat that sweet, but I’m learning to do it…..especially after what happened.

A couple of weeks ago I took the boys swimming at the local pool.  I hadn’t planned on doing it until the next morning, but the DragonMonkey misunderstood what I meant when I told him we were doing it later.  I had told him we’d go swimming, tomorrow, after a good night’s sleep.  He ignored the “tomorrow” portion of description, and when he woke up from his nap, he came bounding down the stairs.  “FWIMMING!  We’re goin’ fwimming!” 

When I tried to convince him that I’d meant we’d go “fwimming” tomorrow, his face crumpled with legitimate devastation. Something about the way he turned away instead of whining, trying to be brave—it tugged at my heart.  Glancing up at the clock I saw that there was still forty minutes left of the afternoon session. 

To heck with it.  “DragonMonkey, if you get in your swim trunks, right now, we can go swimming.”

He disappeared back upstairs with a flash of skinny legs, while I ran around the house, shoving towels and floaties and goggles and swim diapers and various other paraphernalia in the swim bag, before trotting upstairs to wake The Squid up from his nap.  Three minutes later we were in the car and on the way to the pool.  It had to be some kind of a record.

When we got to the pool, the lady behind the counter took one look at us before glancing at the clock over her shoulder.  “You’ve only got thirty minutes until we’re closed,” she warned.

“We’ll be quick,” I said with a smile, herding the boys into the small family changing room and closing the door behind us.

As I stripped clothes off kids and dragged their swim suits on them, I couldn’t help but notice the faint smell of cat pee rising up from the bag.

Great.  Just…. Just great.  That stupid cat had peed on the bag.  She was sweet, but man, I was really beginning to dislike that cat.

And then I went to go blow up the floaties.

I was in a hurry – I had less than 30 minutes to get the kids dressed, showered, in the pool, and then exercised well enough that they wouldn’t throw a fit about having to get out so soon.

I was in a hurry. 

I learned something that day.

Did you know that after cat pee sits in a puddle for a week or two that it dries out and becomes flaky, condensed cat pee? 

I was in a hurry – and I didn’t look at the arm floatie before I put the little plastic tab in my mouth to blow it up. 

Which is why I did not notice the  dried-out puddle of cat pee around the tab before I put it into my mouth, using my teeth to open the lid.

Which is how I ended up popping an entire little puddle of condensed cat pee flakes into my mouth.

I’ve had a lot of gross stuff happen to me.

I have never had anything that gross happen to me before.

I’m here to let you know that eating condensed cat urine is about as nice as it sounds.

Also, you know how cat pee smell never seems to go away, no matter how much you wash it?

Yeah, well, cat pee taste is kind of the same way.

Xerox is a sweet cat, don’t get me wrong, but I doubt I’ll ever really like her again.

Free cat.  Does anyone want a free cat?  Very friendly.  Excellent mouser.  Fantastic with dogs and children.

Not-so-tasty pee.

Anyone?

Do I have any takers?