All Anyone Wants is to be Included

Lily and Holly are in the church holiday pageant. When they found out that other three year olds are too, but not Isaac (because he isn't ready for the Sunday school preK class) they marched up to our Pastor and asked why Isaac couldn't be included. They said, "All anyone wants is to be included." The Pastor was quiet for a moment and said, "You girls are right. I will find a way and Isaac will be in the show too."

Not five minute later, Isaac was cast as a lamb. He will toddle and run around the sanctuary during the show, making lamb noises and dancing. He can be loud and go where he wants.

All anyone wants is to be included.

Inclusion is not having a kids table at the holidays. Not having special sports just for "special" kids or just for girls. Inclusion is being a family and being involved together. Inclusion is remembering how important inclusion is even when the normal of the world is exclusion and isolation.

My friend Holly says that when you get her family you get ALL of them, no one gets left behind (or at home). This is how we live and to us Isaac really is a normal kid. Even when we encounter fully verbal and active kids his age, we see Isaac as a whole and beautiful person. It is easy for us to forget the delays that others see, easy for us to forget that not everyone can read his hand signs, we just know him.

Holly and Lily though, they advocate for him in ways that even I missed. It never occurred to me to even ask for him  to be in the play. I figured I would stay in the nursery with him while they performed. I would miss out too, but better than trying to hold him while he signed frantically for "trains" and "play" and screamed loudly the whole time. He loves the church nursery so, so much.

The girls, my girls, thought better. They never even missed a beat because to them, of course he should be included. 

The response from our church family? So loving and wonderful. Just one more thing that helps me know we found the place where we can thrive. Open hearts, open minds.

*Unfortunately, a Midwestern snowstorm has cancelled the service that included the pageant. The girls have prepared a speech to present to the Pastor all the reasons why the show should still go on, even if it has to be after Christmas. The story of Jesus is IMPORTANT even after Christmas, they told me. I am so blessed by these children. Every single day, I am blessed.

Not Writing Anything Much

Today I have nothing clever to say. Today was spent doing mundane boring things. My phone spent the day on the charger. I made eggs for breakfast. Shepherds' Pie for dinner.

Nothing special.

That in itself is special.

We were at home, at the grocery store, at the farm, doing things that normal folks do. Not in a hospital, not at a funeral, not wondering what to do next.

Taking this moment to be grateful for our quiet day.

Demolition- What I Can Destroy With Just a......Metaphor?

Destruction is cathartic. When we finally got rid of the strippey couches and I decided I could not ethically burn them (pollution and all, they were really, horribly gross), we stood and cheered when the garbage truck crushed them in its giant, powerful jaws and crusher. Oh happy day.

We were not just crushing fabric and wood and mouse nest, no, we were destroying what it meant to take on couches I hated because I had to leave the gorgeous, lovely ones that I picked out and paid for behind. While owning these strippey ones, I had been friends with less considerate people. My kids had vomited on them. I sat on them with Isaac (covered) upright so he would not aspirate on spit up breast milk while wrapped in a billiruben light blanket. I was sitting on these couches when the neurologist called with Isaac's diagnoses.

That era was over. Now we were able to at least buy a second hand couch, one that I picked out, and these could just go. Go, they did.

So, today, I was feeling again like I had to destroy some of the disappointment and aggravation that the farmhouse still holds for me.

Cue music of doom. Actually. This song works too.

Atom and His Package - I'm Down Right Amazed At What I Can Destroy With Just A Hammer 

 

So. This bathroom. It has/had a plastic shower that was glued on to the wall. It leaked. It got grungy. It is the downstairs bathroom that visitors use. It is HORRIBLE. When I tried to clean it, the gross stuff multiplied and fought back. Norwex? Fought and LOST. It got so bad that I refused to even let muddy kids use it. Ugh.

Bonus? The pipes all freeze. All the time. To the point that I sometimes have to stay home on pipe duty instead of leaving the farm for kid lessons and my friend time. Well played bathroom from hell, well played.

 So. Jessica and I got the crow bar out. Actually she also used the screw gun and took apart the fixtures. Let's not go too crazy here.

See all that water damage? Good thing it isn't that old. The bathroom was an addition in the last 10 years.

Here we go, down to studs!

Not really. The fake plastic shower was glued to a fake plastic wall. Good grief.

Holly helped. She got her fixer boots on and dove in.

Destruction is so cathartic. Try it. (I also threw out a lot of damaged clothing and toys this week and one particularly emotional piece of clothing (all cotton) went into the wood stove). Some things I just want out of my life for ever. I don't want them lingering in the landfill of my emotional landscape. I want them gone.

That's what purging is all about. It isn't just making room for more. I am welcoming in different energy and purpose. Making more time for creative process. Less laundry and dishes= less time working on laundry and dishes= more time for playing, creating, and writing! Win!

A new tile in the bathroom? Less time battling the cracked, deteriorating science experiment of a plastic box that pig farmers and children wash farmyard compost off themselves in.

What can you banish from your life that is fighting you back? I've got my hammer and crow bar and I am making a list. I am not even checking it twice, I am just diving in.

I will post progress as we go with this bathroom. It may take a while, we have zero budget and have to get creative.

The Spirit of the Season

This is a deep sea squid. It lives where the water pressure would kill a human being.
I am a squid.

I meant to do the 12 days of Christmas for the Holiday Spoon Club series but then our drains had a major crisis at the farm and the weather turned to freezing and then a member of our close 22q community got her angel wings. Keeping up a post a day was about all I could manage with food pictures and cute moments with my children. I was in tears so much of the time from both ends of the emotional spectrum. I don't do well in December usually, so this was past my breaking point.

Blessed I am to have friends that recognised this and were there for me. Even more, Chad recognised that I needed more from him, even though he was spending time in the mucky basement thawing the clogged pipes and doing field chores and building fences. He took the time to do dishes more than his usual turns (basically giving me a pass on dishes so far this month. Wow. He also helped me with organisation and some huge purging that we've been pretty intense with lately.

December makes me sad. It isn't just the waning daylight, the lack of fresh vegetables, that my extended family lives so farm away, that my aunt died without me ever getting to tell her how much her encouragement meant to me, or a million other things that all pile up into an emotional train wreck and leave me exhausted and on the verge of a near constant panic attack. I just want to break and smash things and sit alone in the dark with nothing but the feedback loop of self pity.

You know? Many of you do actually. That is what I am finding. So many people feel the same way, so overwhelmed and alone. What is it they say to Harry Potter? He's easier to defeat if he thinks he is alone. That.

I am not alone. I don't just mean my family or friends either. Since I began this journey back in May to reboot this blog and start writing again, (not just blogging, but to pick up poetry again too,) an amazing community of creative people have come into my life. Getting to know and having these folks cheer me on, lift my spirits, allow me to be part of their circle has been so invigorating. I feel refreshed instead of recycled. There are others who feel like small potatoes, others who are afraid to really express their inner forces, and still more who are just afraid to make the time and say this part of me is important, I am an artist. 

So this season, as we count down to Christmas and New Years, take time for your art each day. Sometimes for me that is cooking, sometimes writing, and sometimes visual arts. You know, it is also an art to just be present in the moment and that is a craft I am still working on, for the sake of my children.If I plug into the creative forces at least once a day, I feel like I can make it through the season. The writer's mind is slowly being nurtured and keeping me company through the day instead of the white noise of negative self talk.

Do go out there. Make a list of the things you meant to do- start a blog? Join Pinterest? Paint the bathroom? The dishes can wait. Create and get messy.  (Then pretty please share it here! Link in the comments!)

*The bathroom re-do starts tomorrow!