Not So Sacred Ground

Earlier this week, I talked about certain things inside of us making us feel as if we are bleeding out as the pain of the situation that we live with day after day can be so painful.

I talked about the need to sometimes voice these things; to be honest.  To admit how it is we feel. 

I always thought that there were some relationships that were meant to be sacred.  They are few and far between but there should be certain people in our lives who we can trust with the things we keep in our hearts; our insecurities.  We can't act on them in our day to day lives but sometimes it is so nice to put a voice to our true feelings; our frustration, our battleground.

But what happens when a person who is supposed to be one of our sacred people, one of the people we shouldn't have to worry about saying things that are politically correct all the time, decides to take every insecurity we have recently voiced and turn it into ammunition against us?  It was akin to having an open wound and this person took a handful of salt and unmercifully rubbed it into the wound again and again...and I never saw it coming.  Someone who I thought understood me apparently doesn't at all.  They want to believe that a calling is really an immaturity.  And they want to rub salt in my deepest wound, using my own words which I said in what was supposed to be a safe place as bullets that went straight to my heart.  Then to accuse me of doing things that this person doesn't do either.  Glass houses and all that.

Angry?  Yes.  Hurt beyond words?  Yes.  Betrayed?  Absolutely. 

I will not apologize for my feelings. I'm entitled to them; they belong to me, whether I like them or not.  What I am sorry for was feeling comfortable enough to say them to this person. 

Never again.

If superficial means safety, then sign me up.  I did theater for years; acting I can do and I will.

Bitter?  You betcha.

Some trusts should never be betrayed.

I am not perfect; far from it.  My post on Thursday was about the same situation that was thrown up in my face on Friday from out of the blue.  So DO NOT tell me what I do and don't feel.  You obviously don't have a clue.  And now you won't.

Have I changed since my surgery?  You seem to think so.  Well, if the changes are involving not simply sitting back and allowing anyone to belittle me, then THANK GOD I have changed.  Changed since surgery.  That was simply a convenient thing to say.  The thing that made you feel I had changed, I have been involved in for two years.  I had surgery nine months ago.  Sorry, your math is way off.

If you want something from me, ask.  Don't expect me to remember every little detail or for me to guess at what you want.  I'm not a mind reader.  My life is insanely full ; with a job, a husband, children, church involvement.  If I forget something now and again, sorry.  It happens.  The last perfect child is the one we worship on Sunday mornings, not me.  But if it makes you feel good to bring up every shortcoming you see me as having, then I don't have the time to be involved.

As far as you will know from now on, my life is perfect.  No problems here!  No siree.  If talking about them means I see them flung back at me with venom, then forget it.  I don't play that game.

And I would have never done it to you.

Have No Worry; Have No Fear

Not to worry, peeps, I'm okay.  Yes, I am struggling with something; have been struggling with it for five years and it never seems to get any easier, but maybe it just is what it is and there is simply nothing to be done.  It's either that or one day someone will hit me up with a great idea to try to resolve it.  Either way, there is nothing I can do about it right now, so I'm just going to leave it be for as long as I can.

Today is going to be insanely busy.  I need to high tail it to the YMCA after work today.  I lost another pound this morning, bringing my total so far to 102 pounds lost.  Yesterday, I upped my workout on the elliptical and found my ability to sweat once more.  I also did treadmill work and ran for two minutes.  I don't feel discouraged for only running for two minutes as if you recall, my first experience on the elliptical was ninety seconds.  It takes time to build up endurance and I have plenty of time.

After the YMCA, I need to go pick up ham for the youth group to make their sandwiches for their Souper Bowl fundraiser, then to Petsmart for cat food, then to my mother's to pick up her soup donation.  Somewhere in there, I'd like to swing by the library for a book they are holding for me.  Home then to bake two batches of brownies and vacuum the upstairs.  Then at 8:00 tonight, I am at the church with the youth to assemble sandwiches, dip soup and then have a lock in, so I will not see my home again until Saturday morning.  Thank God for air mattresses!

Not sure what the rest of the weekend holds other than dinner with friends on Saturday night.  I have also had a HUGE hankering for Pad Thai from Red Curry, but don't see that in my immediate future.  So yes, I still have cravings!

I have found reruns of The Biggest Loser on channel FLN, whatever that stands for, so I have been catching up on the seasons I missed.  I love this show.  I don't always love all of the competition aspects of it, though some of the challenges I feel push people past their comfort zone and prove to them that they can indeed do things they didn't think they could.  But the struggles of the players, the reasons they put on weight to begin with, it just cries out to me and at the end of almost every episode, I am in tears, just because I get it.  I so get it.  I often wish that more people who have never suffered with obesity in their lives, got it.  Many do, but so many don't as even on the internet, I see things from people such as "If they'd just get their fat asses up off the couch and exercise...." Yeah, like those words are going to help anyone.

Keep Bleeding, Keep, Keep Bleeding

Sometimes there are emotions and feelings that we keep hidden in the darkest recesses of our hearts.  We know that perhaps we shouldn't be having these feelings; that maybe they are not really acceptable or even understandable to anyone else.  However, our feelings are our feelings, regardless of what they are.  Sometimes these feelings can make us feel like terrible people and in that case it becomes an even heavier silent burden to bear. 

We can go over and over all the reasons we shouldn't feel this way.  We can try and try to come up with ways to remedy the situation, but when we feel like we are in so far over our heads, answers at best, seem vague.  It's like we want to grab hold of something that makes sense to us, but with each attempt, we grab at empty air. 

There are times when surely we must think that others can see how we are bleeding out.  They have to be able to see it, right?  We feel like it is pouring out of our very existence, leaving a tremendous puddle on the floor and somehow, someone will reach out and stop the flow of the blood before it drains anymore life from us.

Sometimes, we gather our courage to put a voice to these feelings.  To actually speak them out loud to someone.  We know they may not be rational and maybe even to someone else they may be petty and stupid.  But they are still ours.  We own them, whether we want them or not.  It takes everything within us to speak them aloud, to put them out there for others to judge or comment upon.  To speak it means that we are admitting we are not who we wish we were.  We are admitting that we don't have the answers for ourselves.  We are admitting that the wound is painful.  We know that the feelings may be wrong, but maybe we need a fresh perspective.  We don't need anyone to tell us that we are right, or wrong, or silly.  We just need someone to validate that they are our feelings.  We need someone to listen to why we feel that way and to minimally understand why we feel that way.  We need someone to understand that is what we need in the moment; someone to work through it with us, someone to help us come up with a plan for dealing with it, for correcting it, for making it better.  Somehow.

 We don't voice it because we feel we are right.  We voice it because the feelings seem wrong, yet we don't know what to do.  We already feel bad enough when our most intimate and darkest thoughts are not what we think they should be.  We wish we could just turn them off, turn them down, turn them around.  But we don't know how, which is why we try to find the courage to voice them. 

When the answers don't come, we quickly retreat to lick the wound again in private or to maybe slap a band aide on it to keep it from being so messy, hoping we can make people think that they never had a glimpse of it to begin with.  After all, it's safer that way.  No one to think badly of us.  No one to think we are being ridiculous.  No one to make us feel worse than we already do. 

*****

Somehow I finally lost a pound this morning.  I had to get on the scale twice just to make sure.  Thankfully, hypothetical bleeding doesn't cause weight loss

"Enough!" I Say!

So life is still not back to normal as we are now on our second snow day so the kids are out of school, which means, no gym.  I have also been a bit lax on my eating, I think.  I say "I think" because sometimes it is hard for me to decide because even what I feel are my worst days, are so much better than my worst days as a pre-op. 

Winter is just a time when I feel trapped.  I hate the cold and when the kids are out of school and I have to work from home, I feel equally trapped as there is no time to think or plan and on certain days I am driven to distraction.  Probably not much different from what most parents go through, but some days my coping mechanisms are barely intact.  Some folks would probably love to work from home, but other than the perk of sleeping in a little, I would much rather go into the church where I can feel independent and much more productive and being able to hear myself think would also be a perk. However in looking at weather.com, tomorrow isn't looking good either as they are calling for more freezing rain and snow tonight.  Ugh!

I did do my exercise ball workout last night while watching American Idol, but it just feel like it is enough.  Plus I am doing it with Little Brother glued to me, so my concentration is way off.

I need to get down to 149 pounds to no longer be considered overweight. I am still in the obese range, though I think I have dropped the "super morbidly" part of that equation.  I need to get to 179 to fall into the "overweight" catagory. With a little ass busting, this is totally doable.  So, here are the things I want/need to accomplish as soon as the kids get back to school:

1. I need to up my cardio workout.  Sadly, my normal workout, which used to have me sweating bullets, is no longer doing that for me, which I assume (and C&P gals, tell me if I'm right) means my body has gotten used to the workout and is no longer being challenged.

2. I want to try my hand at running. This is going to involve a new sports bra, as I have not lost any of my boobage and a knee support for my left kneem which still give me some grief.  I would like to get over my fear of treadmill running and give it a go at the gym as it is too cold for me to run outdoors right now.

3. I need to get back off the carbs.  Since Christmas, I have been indulging in them too much, so this behavior stops now.  My body is starting to crave them again and the only way around that is to stop eating them.

4. Wine needs to be kept to a glass or two a weekend.  No, I am not transfer addicting, but I have always loved wine and enjoy a glass at night.  I need to stop this.

So there we have it; the goals for the moment.  And yes, I am still burping and my appointment is Monday, Thank God!  I hope we can schedule the surgery quickly as a month of this is about all I can take!

Interesting to say the least

So after working from home this morning due to weather, I got bored and watched "Super Size Me" on Netflicks. 

Now we all know that McDonalds' food is not good for us.  We also know that for the most part, it tastes good.  Yes, there are people who don't like it, and I was always a Burger King gal myself, but I did my Mickey Dee's time in high school mostly and then occasionally as an adult.  Now, Morgan, the creator of the film, ate MDonalds food three times a day for 30 days.  If it wasn't on their menu, he didn't eat it.  What he saw was that not only did he nearly gain 25 pounds in a month, but liver function test, cholesterol and maybe other blood work results went through the roof.  He developed a sense of addiction; feeling sluggish when he wasn't eating but getting a high when binging on his Big Mac and fries.  He only Super sized when the McDonalds' employee offered it which was only nine times during the month.

Even though McDee's claims to place healthy things on their menu, Morgan discovered that the "healthy" items tend to pack just as many calories and sugar as items like the Big Mac. 

I am late to the party with this, because the movie came out in like 2002 and I am just now seeing it.  I rather wish I had seen it seven years ago as it would have steered me clear of the golden arches for life.  No, I rarely frequented it in my adult years, but there were times when dang, a quarter pounder with cheese sounded good and they always had the best fries of any fast food place in my opinion.

What continues to floor me in this country is now much our sizes have indeed changed.  Even before my surgery, I was famous for To Go boxes because even with a normal size stomach, I was more often than not, unable to finish my restuarant portion of food.  Even to order a salad in a place like Uno's is insane; the salad is so massively gigantic that a normal person who is concerned about weight and nutrition should not be eating all of it.  We've become the fattest country in the world and it is so incredibly easy to understand why.

I think I told you all my story about all of my "lasts" before surgery; wanting to have just one more time the items I loved that I would not be touching again in my life.  One of my pit stops was Dairy Queen for a large chocolate malt and when they handed me the cup, I nearly died.  THAT was not what I had remembered a large shake to be.  This thing was huge.  Even as a super morbidly obese person, it was too much malt for me by about half.  In good conscience alone, I knew I should not drink it.  Thankfully, I couldn't finish it anyway though I tried. 

Sadly, until Americans take a stand and say "no more!" we are going to continue to be the fattest country.  We're busier now than we used to be, so we eat out more often and those of us who have been conditioned to be part of the "clean plate club" are going to be in trouble, because the plate and the portion are probably double now then they were ten years ago.  I'm sure there are real statistics for that, so this is just a guess.  We are conditioning our kids to eat crap simply by what they eat for their school lunches.  My kids are allowed to buy lunch twice a week and in my looking at the menus, none of it looks appetizing and probably little of it is actually made in the cafeteria, but comes out of a box in a freezer.

I still struggle with choices, so don't think I don't.  The things I loved before, often still look good to me. The difference is that now I am more aware of what those things did to me. I'd love to find an organization that fights for the rights of the consumer in this country, to help them make better choices and educates them on what they are eating.  It's almost scary how little we really know.

SOS (Save my Sanity)

First off, thank you all for your prayers for The Brit's safe return.  He is home, still a little jet lagged, but thankfully home.

Next up, huge thanks to Meg and Ruth for their insight with my eldest son and the mission trip.  I will be versing the other three adult leaders for this trip prior to it happening and setting up some boundaries for them to be aware of with the son and myself.  The experience you ladies have in the field, from two totally different perspectives, I may add, help me more than you know.

Now, I need more help as I am quickly running out of ideas and maybe there just aren't any other ideas.  Maybe what we are doing is just what we should do and we simply have to hope that one day things sink in with the oldest child.  Maybe this is just simple teenage rebellion and he is perfectly normal.  The problem is that with an ADHD child who is adopted is that I don't think I ever really know where the issues are stemming from.

The eldest child has been challenging the entire five years we've had him, so though there are new challenges, the fact that he is challenging is not new.  He is an honor roll student...until the last two marking periods when he has suddenly decided to get interim reports and pull a few C's on his report card.  For us, the fact that he has made the honor roll more often than not, tells us he is more than capable of doing it.  The incentive that has been kicked into place is that until his grades are up, he doesn't get his PSP (play station portable for those of you not in the know).  He has been without this video device since before Christmas and his latest report card also showed two C's.  He never has homework and per the teachers, they don't really give out homework, but more classwork.  We have been over with this child, that sometimes homework doesn't specifically have to be something that is assigned at home, but maybe a test he needs to study for.  The C's also come from not completing class work.  The PSP has been our best incentive as he seems to care about little else other than his video games.  We tried not giving an allowance and he couldn't have cared less about that, so that was a strike out.

The next issue we are dealing with are chores.  The basic chores the kids have each week is trash and cat litter, on Mondays and Wednesdays.  When we started this, Little Brother had litter, which he did fairly well and Oldest Son had trash, which he rarely did the way he was supposed to (not taking it to the curb, etc, so it didn't get picked up).  After far too long of trying to deal with the trash issue, we traded them chores, stating to Oldest Son that as he couldn't handle doing trash that he needed to have a go at litter.

Well, he has done no better with litter.  Again, constant battles for the job to get done correctly or better yet, at all.  Tonight he was caught pouring new litter on top of the old litter without ever dipping it.  At my wit's end with all this, I grounded him for a week.

The second chore he has, he just got when he turned 13 as there are things I think he needs to learn to do in order to prepare him for adulthood.  His chore is folding his laundry and putting it away.  I collect it, wash it and lay his items on his bed once they are clean.  We went over the expectations with this, which resulted in him throwing his clean clothes either A) back in the laundry basket or on the floor of his closet.  So The Brit and I picked our strategy that whatever was not put away properly, we would take and eventually he would realize he was running out of clothes.  In just three weeks, we had accumulated enough clothing to make about a yard high pile of clothing on the floor of my closet.  When he finally got his clothes back, I sat on his bed and chatted with him while he hung them all up, which took him well over an hour.  He is well versed in telling us what we want to hear, admitting that it was stupid for him to make all this work for himself when it would have only taken him a few minutes twice a week to put them away properly.

A week later, he is again depositing clothing on the floor or in the hamper when they are clean.  The new rule is that now, he doesn't get them back. They are put aside for when Little Brother gets older.

When asked why he doesn't do the jobs properly his response is always "Well, I don't like doing X."  We then explain to him that this is life and that given our choice, neither of us would work, or clean or cook, but there are just things we are required to do.

Where are we going wrong?  Should we be doing something different?  Why doesn't he learn these basic things that he has been in trouble for again and again and again?  Are we setting our expectations too high?  I don't think so personally as these are very basic chores he has.  I'm losing my mind with all of this and it just seems like there should be a light at the end of the tunnel somewhere. 

All My Kids

So The Brit is now safely at his layover in Los Angeles, the long part of his trip home now behind him.  I have the house tidy, the kid's lunches for tomorrow packed and hopefully everything ready for a day off for me tomorrow as well.  I wish every weekend was a three day weekend.

I have to tell ya'll that I love, love, love my youth group kids.  Nothing in particular has happened to make me say that, but they are just such a blessing to me in so many ways.  I struggle so with my relationship with my eldest child, just trying to find some common ground or even getting him to open up about anything.  In the midst of all the madness, I get a text message from one of my girls that excitedly proclaims that she has gotten her driving permit and I find myself feeling so grateful to be a part of her life, enough so, that she texts me to tell her good news.  Another of my girls posted a photo of herself and her boyfriend on Facebook before a dance and I commented her with "Could you be anymore gorgeous?"  Her response was "Only if I were you!"  It made me smile because the kids have been so incredibly supportive of my whole WLS journey and even when I forget how far I have come, they don't. 

I always saw myself raising girls and well, that didn't happen, which is fine, but I still have a few girls on loan a day or two a week.  Now I'm sure if I was parenting these kids, my relationship with them would not be what it is now.  I'm not their parent and I know how my own kids relate to me, which is way different than how the youth kids relate to me.  I'm sure to parent any of them would be somewhat of a challenge.  But though I have my challenges with my own kids in the way of parenting, I don't have that with these kids.  I get to be that ear that is ready to listen if they have a problem, even when my own son is not able or willing to open up to me.  I get to be able to offer advice or another perspective for them.  I also get to enjoy the easy laughter that comes with them over jokes, games, situations, etc.  They are just this amazing blessing in my life that I cannot thank God enough for. 

I struggle a bit already with the fact that my oldest son will soon be old enough to join this group.  He will be on his first mission trip with us this summer as he will be getting ready to enter into high school.  How will he feel about seeing another side of his mother in the way that I relate to my youth kids?  I am not parenting them; mentoring, maybe.  Hopefully.  Where is the line drawn between parenting my son on a trip and mentoring him as I would one of the other kids?  This is a very confusing time for me as we prepare to enter into a new season in our lives.  Generally during a mission trip, we are divided into two groups and then our two groups are intermingled with other church groups to form a few larger groups.  My son will not be in my group as I feel that is the best solution.  I want him to experience his first trip without having to worry about what mom is thinking and what kid wants their mom hooked up with them all day long?  Of course, our church group is together for breakfast and then every evening for meals and Club and group activities.  So, together for the fun stuff; apart for the work.  Better that way I hope.  I think.

I know in my heart of hearts that I tend to be hard on this kid.  He has been work unlike any other job I have ever had before.  He makes fast food look like a cushy acting job.  He is hard work.  Really, really hard and has been since day one.  I keep hoping and praying that his becoming a teen and my ability to be able to relate to teens will somehow merge together into something more doable.  I know, that I will not have the same relationship with him as I do my other youth kids because I am his parent; I am not delusional about that.  But a teeny tiny bit of common ground would be so much appreciated.

How do you draw the line on a mission trip?  How do you draw the line with youth activities between being a parent and being a youth group leader to my son?  Where are the boundaries?  How do I balance this?  Anyone have experience?