Part of your world

I've been taking some well-deserved time off from my studies to rest, reflect, and recharge. As I ponder the various facets of my life, I find myself thinking about the people in my life and what they mean to me. I try to put myself in their shoes to empathize better with them, and when I got to my mother, I found something quite distressful.

My mom's life sucks.

She has dementia. All of her life, she always looked at folks with dementia and told us, "If I ever get like that, take me out in the field and shoot me." And now she has dementia. And she is watched, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. And she is medicated if she gets unruly. And she feels like she is alone: even though people come to see her on a regular basis, she doesn't remember that. She only remembers the last fifteen seconds.

Image "Crying Old Lady" by
imagerymajestic at
www.freedigitalphotos.net

If ever anyone lived in the moment, it is a person with dementia. However, feelings - even if someone doesn't remember the reasons behind them - remain. The feelings affect mood, and can make a person with dementia profoundly depressed. Or anxious. Or angry.

And what makes the feelings? Thoughts lead to feelings, even though the thoughts are no longer remembered. And words - whether spoken by the person or by those around them - create the thoughts. Combined with core beliefs about oneself - things one tells the self through decades of habit - a person who has dementia cannot reason themselves out of those feelings. Reasoning is useless. For someone (like my mom) who has prefronto-temporal dementia, the ability to reason and to make decisions and carry them out is absolutely GONE.  All that is left is the lizard-brain ... the limbic system ... the one that lives totally in the present, that is influenced by words and thoughts but that doesn't remember them; it just feels what it feels. 

So for those who think that it doesn't matter what they say when they visit a dementia patient because "they won't remember what i say anyway", think again. Their MIND may not remember, but their FEELINGS remember. So trying to convince them of the rightness of something about which they have believed all their life is wrong will serve only to frustrate and upset them without knowing why. And after the visitor leaves, it is the staff who have to deal with the fallout: the patient becomes agitated, distressed, depressed, anxious, or whatever, and needs to be medicated more just to make them "manageable." 

So - dear readers - leave your arguments and your opinions home when you visit a person who has dementia. Learn to enter their world - the world of the continual present - and even when they bring up your pet topic, refrain from discussing it. Distract the person toward the positive (not YOUR idea of positive, but THEIRS). If that means lying to them and telling them that it won't be long before they will be going home, then do that rather than tell them that they're going to a nursing home.  To many, including my mom, a nursing home is a horrible, torturous place where people go to be forgotten and to die alone. You can't convince her otherwise; it's too deeply ingrained. Don't even try. 

Phone them. Talk to them, let THEM talk. If you can't physically be there, phone them, send them cards and letters (happy ones!) and little gifts.  Do it often. The hospital / nursing home can be a lonely place. Don't forget them.

If you can be there, then BE there for THEM.  Play cards or board games with them. Watch TV with them. Encourage them, compliment them in every way possible. They are no longer part of your world; accept that. Be part of their world. Enter THEIR reality, the reality of seconds. Not days, not hours, not even minutes, but seconds. Leave your preconceptions and your grief at what they have already lost, and what you have lost with it, at the door. You are there for that person, not for yourself. You are not there to talk anyone else down or to win any arguments.  You are there to brighten their outlook. You are there to make it easier for that person (and for the staff who look after that person) to live a little more pleasantly. 

That is the way you visit those who are infirm, who live inside the prison of their own mind. Don't judge them. Don't judge those they love. Talk only of pleasant things, things that are pleasant for THEM.

Just be there for them, whether in person or not. Just BE.

A Gilded Cage

She sits in her room.  Or she wanders the halls, sometimes with her walker, sometimes without (because she forgets.) Her mind flits about like a butterfly, from memory to memory, all of it disjointed and from different time periods. But to her, it is all the same. 

There is only one consistent thought.  She wants to go home.  That's where she belongs.  She must get out of this place.  And she asks every visitor who comes to see her if they would just help her with her things so she can leave and go back home where she is needed. Her desire is so great to go home that at times, she has gone to the door and pounded and kicked at it. All that gets her is more medication so that she can be more "manageable."

Her visitors, when she begs them to take her home, change the subject. They let her patter on about the same stories, let her ask the same questions over and over again, and when they must go, they make some excuse to get out of the room ... knowing she will forget they were even there in a minute or so. And then she will complain because "nobody ever comes" to see her. 

Mom (in the foreground) in her element - August 2015.
My sister is in the background.

I spoke with her this morning on the phone. She was so pleased to hear from me, and talked about needing to have someone drive her home so she could fix supper because she was working and couldn't come home for lunch. So today, she was stuck in 1992... 25 years ago ... and in that brief period of time, she wasn't even in the hospital. I just let her talk.  It wouldn't have done any good to tell her that this was 2017. She would have forgotten anyway. Time has no meaning for her anymore - except for the interminable wait to go home and how the seconds seem like hours when nobody is in to see her. 

Her nurse tells me that she is doing fine, that she occasionally gets agitated, feeling like she is trapped there (which she is, really), and they just give her an olazepin and she calms down. So I look up that medication on the Internet, and I think about how offensive it would be to her if she realized she was on an anti-psychotic drug, something to keep her from freaking out.  But she isn't in control of that anymore. And now, as never before, I realize that neither am I.  The hospital staff are in control; the government is in control. 

I know that she is safe and protected where she is, that she is fed nutritious food and sleeps well at night with no danger of her wandering. I get that. And it's probably a blessing that she doesn't realize how powerless and dependent she is. It is just wrenching to watch, even from this distance, to hear her lose more and more of her sense of time and self.  One minute is pretty much the same as the next.  She is incredibly lonely, a nearly empty shell looking for a place to lie down, the homing instinct being the only thing she has left.  Much of what made her what she was, is going or gone. The spark, the chutzpah, those are disappearing into the fog of dementia.

And it's Mother's Day. 

Wow.

The Gift of Acceptance

When I was growing up, I was in survival mode.  I spent a lot of time just making it from one day to the next without drawing attention to myself.  I didn't think I deserved anything good because I was told I deserved the opposite. I was the heir to a generational curse that began two to three generations back - one that sprang from poverty at the turn of the 20th century and the subsequent depression.  My parents (especially my mother) were bullied as children and never got away from the bullies - who had kids who in turn bullied me.  Of course, so did my mom, but that is a different story.  

As a result, friends were hard to come by.  I rarely had any friends, because hardly anybody wanted to befriend someone with a bull's eye painted on her back.  (Those that did, already had targets on their backs.)  And because friends were so scarce (I never had any more than 3 friends at a time and even then, not until high school), the title of "best friend" became fiercely competitive, sought after, and a source of great distress if someone else won it. It left the others feeling like losers. Less than.  Rejected.  The next step in that parade was that the one who chose a different best friend would eventually gravitate away from me, get other interests, move on and leave me friendless. 

Again. 

After I married and moved away, that mentality followed me.  Any friendships I had were with one, at the most three people at once. And I cringed every time one of my friends referred to another person as his or her "best friend".   To me, it meant that I wasn't good enough.  That I was being rejected.  That I would be abandoned.  

When I got into recovery from codependency back in February 2009, I learned a whole new lifestyle - a lifestyle of letting go with love.  Much of that lifestyle is based on accepting what is - and that is something that I cannot manufacture. 

It is a gift.  It's a gift I pray for and that God gives.  I don't have it in me to accept what I can't change.  In fact, everything in me rails against it.  I STILL cringe when I hear a friend say that someone else is their best friend.  It triggers all those old feelings and fears in me, feelings of inadequacy, and fears of rejection and abandonment ... even though I know that it's probably not true.  I pray for the strength to accept and I pray for the acceptance itself.  And I have to keep praying for it - because it kind of leaks out or gets used up, I haven't figured out exactly which. 

But acceptance is the key to enjoying today (that is, not letting the 'what ifs' rob me of being happy today), the key to evicting stress from my life.  Once I started (with God's help) accepting that other people not only make their own choices but are supposed to do so without my input, and to bear the consequences of their own actions without me rescuing them, the burden of caring for them in that unhealthy way ...  just lifted. 

It doesn't mean that I'm not ready to lend a hand when God asks that of me.  It just means that I no longer consider myself obligated to do so "just because" I'm that person's spouse / mother / sister / daughter / friend. I'm learning that I am me and that everyone has boundaries, including me.  Crossing those boundaries without permission is a recipe for disaster.  

It also means that I can be okay with my friends having other friends that they consider closer to them than they consider me to be.  Any success I have on that front is more a function of how well I like myself rather than how much they like me, anyway. If I keep focused on accepting people, places and things as they are, praying for the serenity to do so - I fare better.  I don't go off pinging into the danger zone and sabotaging relationships that are important to me by giving in to my fears.  I LET.  With God's empowerment ("to want to, and to do"), I let life happen to me, and accept it on its own terms.  

It's His gift to me.  And that is a gift for which I am repeatedly grateful.

Let it go

Let it go.

But what if it does something I don't want it to do?

You can't control what it does anyway.  Let it go.

But I've held onto it for so long!

Then it's time.  Let it go.

It's going to be so hard!

I know.  I'll be there.  Let it go.

But I'm afraid!

I'll be holding you and I'll never let go of you; you can lean on Me.  Let it go.

But if I let it go, it'll be like saying I don't care - and I DO care!

I know. The best care you can give right now is to yourself.  Let it go.

But if I let it go, it'll be like I am saying that what happened is okay, that I'm okay with it - and I'm not!

I know how you feel in your heart.  Really.  Let it go. 

But I CAN'T!!

I CAN.  Trust Me.  Let it go.

From THIS SITE

Walking through it

I don't know if it is a function of where I live, or the times I live in, or the particular culture of which I'm a part (be it church, or just the "country" attitude that believes everybody else's business is their business - keeping the figurative binoculars by the window), or what it is.  But I've noticed over and over again how incredibly difficult it is to live the lifestyle of letting go, when all around me, there seems to be a silent, yet persistent resistance to the whole concept.  

Some people don't think that it's necessary to do the leg-work that it takes to get to the place of freedom.  They are waiting - as I once did - for God to come in and "zap" them, and suddenly they'll be free.  I don't deny that it happens.  SOMEtimes.  

But more often, He merely provides the strength, like charging the battery if you will, to take the steps that are necessary to walk through it.  Which is why, when people tell me that they're amazed at the changes in me over the last few years, I am quick to say that God gets the credit.  I would never have had the strength to go through what was necessary for me to walk into freedom if He hadn't given me the inner fortitude and strength to do it.  But there were things I had to do - given that strength - to get where I am today (and I am by no means done!)  I had to "walk through it" in much the same way as the children of Israel had to walk into the promised land (in the book of Joshua) and fight to drive out the giants.  

What I find most discouraging (and I know that this is a failing in myself that I even LOOK at what others think or do) is that so very few are willing to take that first step into freedom.  They either acknowledge that the need is there to change, and hesitate to launch into deeper waters because it DOES involve a journey and it IS hard (but worth it, and no, I'd never go back!) - or they don't see the need at all.  

HERE is where I got this photo. Good post, too.

It is that last group that is the most frustrating for me.  I live in a culture of "country living" (as I said earlier) that believes that there are no boundaries between people, that we should all know each other's business and be prepared to jump in and give advice to others or try to manipulate the outcome in someone else's life, just because we "care".  

I hesitate to use the word codependent, because so many think they know what it is, and so few really know what it means - but the idea that I am responsible for my own actions and that so-and-so is responsible for his own actions seems to be lost, swallowed up in the teaching and attitude that is so prevalent in this culture of ... well ... co-dependency (for a definition please follow the link I placed at the first of this paragraph).  In this culture, the vices of the codependent person are lauded as praise-worthy, even adorned in the robes of religious living (e.g., "speaking the truth in love" - often a euphemism or a cloak for being controlling and invasive.  Or "selflessness" - which is usually just self-degradation and doormat-itis wearing a halo).  Why would anyone want to be freed from something that is so socially acceptable?  Isn't it the right thing to do, to look after other people? to try to help them? to tell them what they should be doing? what they should be believing?  Isn't it wrong to think of ourselves first? to say no? to keep others at arm's length?  

Well ... yes and no.  In our results-based society, which looks at the final result of a healthy personality (ie serving others out of a heart of love) as the goal and expects people to behave that way before they've even started to become healthy ... then I would say that our society has the cart before the horse. The end result of expecting people to be selfless when they don't even know what their real self IS - will inevitably be burnout, resentment, bitterness, anger, and depression.  And in a good majority of the cases, not only will that person experience those feelings, but they will also be echoed in the lives of all the people that person tried to "help."  

What I'm saying is that it is necessary to be (or to become) healthy before offering healing to others.  Otherwise, it will most assuredly backfire.  I speak from experience because I lived in that reality for decades before finally reaching the end of my own strength, with my kids and my husband shutting me out. Only then - in desperation - did I wise up.  

And then I had to give it all to God, trust His strength to empower me, and step out.  I had to walk through it.  To use an old King James expression, I had to "possess the land."  And it had nothing to do with any catch phrases or platitudes - for me it involved a lot of unlearning old habits and attitudes which I had tied into my belief structure and called it "my faith" when it was "my preference", and it also meant learning what was healthy for me and for those I cared about, and putting those lessons into practice in the everyday.  

When I had gone through and understood that process, when I had made those lessons a part of my daily living and begun to see some freedom in my own life, that was when I decided to put that process down in an e-book and describe it - not that I expect anyone to be a clone of me, but to provide a template, a guide-book to healing for those who want to be free, an easy-to-follow road-map to be adapted to the individual's own needs.  I've included a link to it on my "About Me" page.  

I know that not everyone wants to go there; I accept it.  A person has to be ready, to really see the futility of such a lifestyle as the one I had embraced and found to be void of any kind of happiness, before he or she is willing to do whatever it takes to be free.  Desperation is required.  And just a tiny spark of faith that God will be there through it all. 

A person cannot give away what he or she doesn't have.  It's only out of a place of fulness that one can be in a position to fill others. And it's only in admitting that one is empty that one can be filled.  If that sounds attractive - if your soul resonates with that and is wistful thinking about it ... then perhaps you're ready. 

Perhaps it's time.

No way out but down

Beep.  Beep.  Beep.  Beep.   The measured noise of the heart monitor almost blends into the background except for one thing - it is reassurance that he still lives.  I wonder how long even that will last, even if he survives this time, whether he'll try a fool stunt like that again.  

A medicine cart rattles by, pushed by a nurse doing the morning rounds in this open ward.  There must be about two dozen people lined up in hospital beds, side by side, with just enough room for a chair on one side and a heart monitor on the other. Some have the curtains drawn for a bit of privacy - but nobody can get away from the sterile, no-nonsense activity of this place. 

My mind goes back, unbidden, to the events of the last 24 hours.  The trip to the emergency room, the chest pains that started right in front of the registration nurse.  The blood tests, the intravenous drip to rid him of the poison he ingested. The concern on the doctors' faces as they talked to each other in hushed tones about numbers and letters that would mean nothing to anyone but them.  Occasionally I would catch a snippet I understood - like 'organ failure' for example - and my heart would jump into my throat. They weren't sure they'd transfer him to a hospital in the next province, but if it looked like there was the possibility of endocrine system shut-down, they'd not hesitate to ambulance him over. The words became a blur.  Everything felt somehow out of phase, as if I was there but I wasn't really there.  This couldn't be happening. 

I barely remember the four-hour drive to the second hospital, just that I was on edge the whole time, praying with all the love in my heart, "Please God.  Please."  It was all the prayer I could muster; the Almighty could understand the pain of fear, of panic deep in my heart.  The ambulance had gone on ahead of me and I was going separately in our vehicle with our two children, then aged 17 and 14; we had hastily had packed a few belongings and made arrangements for friends to come and house-sit with the dog.  I kept thinking that I had forgotten something.  What was it?  yet my mind was racing ahead to where I was going, not behind me to where I had been. 

My oldest sat beside me, tight-lipped, pale and fearing to speak aloud what her naturally worrying mind was screaming. "What if he dies?"  The other, full of faith (for she has always been so) simply quipped, "He's going to be fine.  I don't know why you guys are so upset."  I envied her trust in a God she barely spoke to on a regular basis ... but I knew that when she did, God listened. I allowed myself to be comforted - if only a little - by her words. Throughout the whole trip, silence hung over us like a thundercloud. We followed the directions that the doctor had given us to reach the infirmary, and found ourselves - at last - in the parking garage, able to get out and find our way into the place where only the most exhausted ones sleep.

He was vaguely aware of my presence, but unaware of anything at the same time - in and out of consciousness, not even knowing where he was - I knew that he would never remember this.  But I would always remember.  I would never be able to forget.  I stayed as late as I possibly could - the nurses promised me the doctor would see him at ten pm (after which he would call me) and then again in the morning - and I withdrew into the cold February night, leaving the number at my friend's apartment, my friend who opened her small place up to the three of us to stay the night - or however long it took.  I thought how grateful I was to have a friend like her.

And now it is the next day, although the light level inside has stayed the same and one loses all track of what time it is.  I sit by his side in a chair provided by the nurses, holding his hand, listening to the beep of the heart monitor, watching the numbers on the blood pressure monitor hover dangerously high (now I know what I forgot at home! his blood pressure medication!) listening to the noises of the other monitors, the medication carts, the code yellow announcements, and the voices of nurses nattering on about their normal lives.  All of these sounds are miniscule darts that pierce into my soul again and again.  Time seems to have slowed, or my perceptions have quickened.  

My friend is looking after the kids; she is taking them to a birthday party for her granddaughter.  I tear up again - and there have been many such episodes - at her acceptance and her love.  

The curtain parts.  It is the doctor on duty, a young man with a slim physique, black hair and blue eyes. I briefly wonder how fresh out of medical school he is.  "We were thinking about sending him home today ... but there are some concerns.  One is his blood pressure.  Is he on any medication? did he bring any with him?"  

"No-o. I mean yes, he takes medicine for his blood pressure, but I forgot to pack it."  I smile miserably. "Everything happened so fast, I - "

"Do you remember what he was on?  perhaps we can order it at our pharmacy and see those numbers come down..."

"Of course, yes, that's a good idea," I blabber, so weary yet so relieved that the end was in sight.  And I tell him what the medications are, and give him the dosage instructions.

"Very good. We'll get that probably within the hour.  Now.  One more thing."  He takes a deep breath.  "He ingested a known poison. We are treating this as a suicide attempt.  We can't allow him to go home without some sort of assurance that he will get counseling."  He saw my hesitation, the fear, the doubt in my eyes.  "We can refer him to a psychiatrist in your city if you like - or you can go to see a counselor of your own choice, but he would have to be registered."  

"Well, someone did recommend a counselor ..." I gave him the man's name. 

"Ah yes.  I am familiar with him.  Very good then.  We'll get that blood pressure medication in here and then monitor his numbers.  If they come down, we'll release him.  We took him off the drip last night around midnight.  He'll still be a bit groggy (you may have noticed he's a bit more alert today) so he shouldn't drive for the next 24 hours, just to be safe."  He looks at my face, searches my eyes in what is as close to compassion as I have seen from the bustling people in this white, antiseptic place.  "This was a close call, ma'am.  Too close.  Please get him some help."  

"You can count on it, doctor."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Over six years have passed since that day.  We know so much more about what really happened then, and much of it was harder to hear than the original crisis was to experience. But it was the truth, and the truth does set free - albeit through the fire.  

He had never tried to commit suicide.  He had only told us that to hide his addiction problem.  Three years would have to pass and it seemed that every time we ended up in emergency care, things were a little worse.  The monster of addiction took more of his life, affected more and more relationships, even the ones at work, eventually took his job from him.  But those things (hard as they were) needed to happen.  They buffeted him, and pointed out to him how he was trapped in an insane pattern from which he could not escape on his own.  

That process took over three years AFTER that hospital stay was done.  And when he was finally down to his lowest ebb... (and it's hard to imagine anything lower than that experience six years ago, but that's exactly what happened) when he was at his "bottom" - he finally asked for help.  And God stepped in and ever so slowly started to transform his life.  It's not anywhere near perfect; there are still significant struggles and doubts - but the addiction problem has been removed.  

As damaged as he thinks he is ... he's back.  And I am so very grateful.   

Shoulds and Oughtas - Let the Walls Come Down

Remember the festive spirit that was present when the Berlin Wall came down?

The crowd cheering and roaring, the symbol of their captivity and oppression toppling before their eyes? it's a scene one doesn't easily forget. Some were yelling their heads off, some were throwing rocks at the wall, some were weeping, their faces in their hands. All great reactions to the tearing down of a thing that had been there all their lives, something that held them back, something that separated some of them from their loved ones, something that represented imprisonment, inhumanity, persecution, limitation.

On both sides of the wall before it came down, people went on with their lives and while they were doing so, some if not most of them probably justified their lifestyles. On the west side, people knew some of what was going on, on the other side. They'd heard the gunshots, they'd harbored those who had escaped, and they knew there were probably thousands of people on the other side of that wall who desperately wanted to get out but were afraid to try. Yet the ones in freedom were powerless to do anything to get them out. The decision had to be made by the people on the east side.

On the east side, there were those completely satisfied with the status quo, espousing the rhetoric of the government of the day. Others couldn't stand the oppression and risked their lives to leave. Few made it; the others were held up as an example of what happens to those who try. But there were still others (and dare I say these were the majority) who didn't want to risk life and limb to escape - yet they wistfully looked at that wall and wondered what life would be like if they were ever to be able to see on the other side.

I am going out on a limb here and saying that in many ways, the modern church is like living on the east side of the wall before it came down. Regimented, oppressive, judgmental, protectionist. Those who dare try to get out of that mold, the mold expected by the religious powers that be (I say religious deliberately), find themselves ostracized, stripped bare and crucified by the same people who say they espouse the teachings of Christ. But mostly, there are hundreds if not thousands of people who see the limitations, who despise the rules and regulations, and don't dare try to escape because they see how the ones who try to break free are treated. They want to be free. They hate what the church has become. Yet they have nowhere else to go. They know that only Jesus has the words of eternal life, and they are afraid that by "quitting Christianity" as one lady put it recently, they'll lose the only reference point they'll have, and will endanger their eternal soul. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The good news is that long ago, before we ever got in this horrible predicament, Jesus DID tear the wall down. The Bible tells us that the dividing wall that kept us from God was torn down when Jesus died on the cross. The veil of the Temple, six inches thick and several hundred pounds, that stood between the holy place and the most holy place - representing separation from God - was ripped from the top to the bottom as soon as Jesus cried out, "It is finished!" (From the Greek tetelestai, which means "accomplished" - in the sense of an unbreakable contract being fulfilled.) Did you get that? From the top to the bottom.

God Himself tore down the wall.

Relationship with Him trumps rules and regulations, the shoulds and the oughtas. It is about this life of intimacy, this life lived every moment in the Spirit of God, that Jesus said, "If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink! He who believes in Me, as the Scriptures said, 'out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water!' "

He comes to live inside of us when we claim Him as our personal Rescuer - the only way for us to approach a holy God. He forgives us. He makes us pure before Him. He loves us unconditionally. Passionately. Deeply.

The more we realize this, the more our gratitude overflows back to Him. It changes us on the inside...and overflows into a two-way love-relationship with Him: a oneness that can ONLY happen through the Spirit of God. Such a life can only be lived from the inside out, flowing from our trysting, our intimacy with Him. We love Him, the Bible says, because He first loved us. So, in response to His great love, our "return" love bursts out toward Him, overflows all over us and all over the lives of those with whom we come in contact.

In the context of that kind of intimacy, we don't need to "try" to live the Christian life. It's not something we have to put on like someone would put on a sweater. It is the inner glory, the love and the joy and the peace that clothe us from the inside, where He lives, where He loves us beyond our ability to comprehend, where we can't help but love Him back.

The question that gets us from behind the wall to where He waits for us is this:
Do we trust Him?

Are we willing to let go of everything we've leaned upon, all the s'postas and the gottas, all the stress we unnecessarily place on ourselves (as if it were up to US to save, heal, fix, and rescue everyone) - and give ourselves unreservedly with complete abandon ... to Him and Him alone? to turn our will and our lives - all of it - over to His loving care? Warts, failures, hurts, anger, pride, resentment, bitterness, fear, insecurity and all? just as we are?

It truly is a leap of faith. I'm not talking about "leaving the church." I'm talking about "embracing Christ" - walking in intimate relationship with Him.

I won't lie to you. It's a scary step. But His question still remains, perhaps as yet unanswered. "Will you trust Me?"

With that question hanging in the air, turn up the volume and listen to this story about a "Cosmic Cowboy" told in the 1970s by a man named Barry McGuire. Hear the call of Jesus in it: "Will you trust Me?"

Isn't it time? He's the only way out.
Go ahead ... jump.