bewildered by grace

If I see a homeless man on the street and give him money, and he spends that money on booze, was I wrong?

Today I saw the video for www.Kony2012.com. It moved me to tears. This isn't an issue I'm hearing about for the first time. I've known about the issue for a long time. This is the first time though, that's I've heard someone with a plan, and that was inspiring to me.

Here's the thing though: Kony2012 has its dark side. Their financials are less than stellar, they're not being run the way I would run it. They're supporting the Ugandan army, and that's not something that I'd want to side with. They're also not the only charity doing something. You can Google it all and find a lot of reasons NOT to support this charity. Those are good reasons, and I wouldn't fault you for it, except for one thing:

Who WILL you support?

My problem with picking apart a charity is that it's often done by people doing nothing to support the cause. I don't know that this is the best way to end this. But it's certainly better than nothing at all. My issue with it is that Kony2012 is going crazy viral. It's more or less, all that's on my Facebook wall. And then someone smart comes along and gives you five good reasons not to support Invisible Children, and guess what? You stop being a human concerned about positive change and you become a consumer. You're purchasing charity. You're supporting something with that money and now you want to agree with EVERYTHING the charity is doing with that money. That is impossible, so the immediate response is then to do nothing at all. Take your money and go to Starbucks (by the way, I disagree with a lot of their charities too).

Compassion International, as a charity, is MUCH  better run than Invisible Children, as noted by Charity Navigator - you can decide for yourself if you agree with how they rank what makes a "good" or "bad" charity. But I haven't heard from Compassion International about this issue, and what their plan is. I have seen nothing but www.Kony2012.com all morning. I don't think I'd send them a monthly cash donation, but I'm more than happy to buy the t-shirt and posters and put them up. I'd be happy to raise awareness.

But then that's an incredibly tricky word: Awareness.  It's tricky because we're selfish. Raising awareness implies that if we are aware, we will act. And that's incorrect for a huge number of people. This will get spammed. People will ignore it. The fact that the video is 30 entire minutes long will lose a huge number of people. That's sad. It's sad that people will change their profile pictures and not write their politicians. But if you change your profile picture, and do nothing else, and one of your friends sees, and they write their politicians, then something's been accomplished. You've created real awareness, the kind that produces change, even with your apathetic trend following. And that's something. It's better than nothing.

It's a strange world. It's a world that can't be charted in a financial statement. Invisible Children gave only slightly more than 30% of their total income (over 8 million) to the actual cause. The rest was salaries, marketing, travel expenses, etc. But if their marketing budget makes our government spend huge money in solving the issue, should that be charted too? How much money has been spent as a direct result of Invisible Children raising "awareness"? That's not charted, it can't be. It's possible that this "shady charity" could end the regime of Kony. They might be better equipped to do it than anyone else, and so they got my  $30 today, and I'll get a bumper sticker and some posters that I'll put up. I'd be happy to let you photocopy them if you like.

Don't run somebody down because they're not doing it how you would do it, or how you think is right. You only earn that right when you're doing something yourself. Don't kid yourself into thinking that you're not supporting causes that you likely disagree with when you make your purchases every day.

If I give a homeless man on the street five dollars, and at the end of the day he spends it on liquor, that is not up to me. I believe that God honors generosity and I do not believe that His arm is so short that He can't use that $5 in a multitude of ways. I also believe that God honors education, and thoughtful giving. Occasionally I give to homeless people on the street, sometimes I don't.

You don't have to support this charity. You should support this cause. If it was my child who was kidnapped, who was being tortured and raped I will tell you one truth: I wouldn't care about the politics of who rescued her. I wouldn't care about their spending habits or their political affiliation. I would care about my baby coming home. Find someone, ANYONE, who is working towards that end, who has a solution you can agree with, and support that. With your time and your money and your letter to your local politician. Get involved. Change the world. But DO NOT do nothing and point fingers at those who are doing it "wrong". Do not diminish their cause and turn people who were doing something, into people who are now so confused about who to side with, that they're now doing nothing. That's a crime too, in my books.

So I have some strong and totally ridiculous views on certain aspects of Christmas. For instance:

-I don't think that you should mix and match Christmas light colors. Pick a color, or a series of colors, and stick with it. I don't hate all LED versions of lights, but I really don't like the red, orange, and blue ones. They remind me of those chili pepper lights you sometimes see in Mexican restaurants. Okay, I might dislike all LED lights. I love those really fat old glass lights that glow with wanton disregard to your skyrocketing electric bill. I prefer them in the red, green, yellow combination, but have seen some red and white, and even green and white ones that are super cute too. They remind me of my childhood. I actually despair at Bella growing up in a world where only LED lights exist. The only time it is acceptable to mix the above mentioned lighting colors is if you're adding white icicle lights to a solid color. Someone nearby has their house trimmed in red, with white icicles everywhere. It's gorgeous. NEVER, under any circumstances, change the color of your lights in the middle of your roof line. Don't be lazy. I know you grabbed the wrong color at WalMart. Go change them over.

-Our tree has only white lights on it. Only white lights are acceptable. Decorations are mostly red, green, and gold. I have a couple of white ones, and one really special one that has a tiny bit of blue on it, but otherwise the colors are coordinating, though almost none of the ornaments are. The wrapping paper used on any gift under the tree, must meet the color criteria of the tree above. We found gorgeous blue and silver wrap this year, and we left it for slightly less beautiful, but matching, wrapping paper. This is when Peter laughed at me and called me a Christmas Nazi. He's not wrong. I have issues. My mother has multi-colored lights on the tree. She always has, she always should. Her tree would look wrong with white lights. I understand this is unreasonable, but it's the way it is.

-Christmas carols are classic for a reason. They live forever for a reason. I think Justin Beiber should possibly be sued for his version of Drummer Boy. You do not need to make a carol current, or cool, or different. That song has been beautiful for much longer than he's been alive and I find his version almost disrespectful to Christmas itself. I have no problem with making a new Christmas song. There are quite a few that I really love. I'll do a post soon and we can all share original Christmas songs we love, that'd be fun! But under no circumstances is it okay to totally change the feeling of, say, O Come All Ye Faithful so that it's "trendy" and "you". If you're famous and reading this - don't mess around with what is already great. Also, if you're famous and reading this, I need to update my privacy settings.

Speaking of Christmas carols, my favorite might be O Come O Come Emmanuel. I've actually never been able to pick a favorite. I do really love this one though. I love the haunting sound of it, and I adore the lyrics.

So here's the conundrum: So far, my favorite is the Bethany Dillon version. I have a feeling that there's a better one out there, but I haven't found it yet. For that matter, I can't even find a link to the one I like - it's not on YouTube that I can see. Get it on iTunes. You won't regret that dollar. I just LOVE the last verse of it, even though it breaks my cardinal rule of Christmas songs (don't ever change the original lyrics!). See? I'm flexible! She does a beautiful job on it, and the best part about it is that she doesn't rush it. I HATE speedy versions of this song.

So this challenge will be twofold:
Find me a better version of this song that isn't speedy or obnoxious.
ALSO
Tell me your favorite Christmas song, and your favorite version of it. I plan on listening to nothing else tomorrow and I'm needing to update my playlist.

I really adore Christmas. I love everything about it. It's almost a feeling you get when fall starts closing its doors and winter shows up. In BC that happens in one foul windstorm that shakes the house and then a week later it's +15 for a couple of days and then it's all over. Winter sets in and I wake up to frosty windows and a smell in the air that makes people drag out their Christmas lights. 


I think the world would be such a better place if people were the way they are in December. I mostly hate January and February, and even March is just cold and I'm miserably waiting for summer, but December is a perfect month. It's that everything that happens in December is an occasion. Nothing is just another day; it's one day closer to Christmas Day. We are having two tree decorating parties this weekend. The one with just Peter, Bella, and I will be about moving our breakable decorations to the top half of the tree, and eating snacks and listening to music and watching Bella's face when Daddy lights up the tree. I love it so much. Christmas was great before Bella. It's completely magical now. 


I found this amazing kid on YouTube through Becky, and this is a pretty cool rendition of Drummer Boy. I think his mittens in the video make it for me. Bella loved it. But it got me to thinking, I bet there's a bunch of amazing Christmas music out there, that I don't know, that could be playing in my living room this month. So I'm going to post my very favorite version of one song, and you are welcome to one-up me with a song/video/link to a better version of the same song. I'm going to do it a bunch of times this December, maybe close to everyday. Think of it as NaBloPoMo, but late. And not as consistent. And in a theme. 


Without further ado, here's my favorite version of Drummer Boy. I love EVERYTHING about this version. I love the build of it and I swear to you, when he sings, "So to honor him" I tear up. Every year. And the bagpipes? Totally freaking genius. 






PS - Robyn. Justin Beiber needs to have a chat with Josh Groban. That man knows how to sing a Christmas song. And his hair is way nicer.

This morning I woke up and my friend had posted about being "gutted" at seeing the front page of the New York Times. I had to look - and she picked the right adjective. It's horrifying.

Terrorists control most of Somalia right now. They are an Islamic insurgent group and have decided that they are taking a stand against the indoctrination of Western ideas into their Islamic society. That includes refusing aid of any kind if it comes in the package of anything other than Islam. It includes refusing immunizations for incredibly preventable diseases for their children. It includes refusing food from groups like Unicef. It includes the execution of foreign aid workers. They are hemming their people in, refusing outside access of any kind, and starving their own people to death. There are over 500,000 children who are dying of starvation while other people die to bring them food that they're not getting, because it's coming from white hands. The UN is launching investigations into organizations bringing aid because so much of it is being skimmed by known terrorists. It's illegal to aid terrorists, obviously. So if 20% of the food goes to dying children then we stop that 20% because it means 80% is aiding terrorists. To say the situation is complicated is a mass understatement. What on earth do we do? How can we help? It literally looks hopeless.

I'm going to draw a pretty controversial parallel here, just because it's something I can't stop thinking about. You should know I want to be wrong. I want these two things to be separate. It would make me feel so much better about myself and I'd like that. But I don't know that I'm wrong.

Last week while waiting for the ferry, we took Bella to the little park at the terminal. There were two kids, I'm going to guess aged nine and six. They were both so obese that they couldn't play. The little girl ran exactly the way Bella does. Like a speed walk, because Bella hasn't figured out the slight jumping motion that is intrinsic to actual running - this little girl physically couldn't do it. She was trying to ride the carousel, but the moment her dad went to push it, the amount of weight and lack of muscle tone literally didn't allow her to stay on. The motion of the carousel turning forced her off, as though her dad was pushing it sixty miles an hour. He tried again and again, and she flew to the ground over and over and you could tell it wasn't connecting with him. "Hang on!" he'd yell as she hit the ground. I couldn't look.The word 'abuse' popped into my head and I couldn't think of a good reason to make it leave. Maybe it was genetics. Maybe. The six large take-out containers of deep fried food that the mother was holding indicates otherwise, but I guess there's always that possibility. You don't see those kids over in Somalia though. The ones that are genetically predisposed to be huge. They don't exist there, why do they here? I don't know - I'm asking in earnest.

I'm asking how those two things can exist simultaneously. I'm asking how one is better than the other. One is seemingly about religion, one is about....what? How can we literally eat ourselves to death on one half of the world, while they starve on another? Because we can afford it? That's hardly an answer but it's the only one I can think of. Not only can we afford it, we think it's actually a basic human right to eat what we want, when we want, and not have to pay the consequences. Am I being unfair? Childhood obesity is killing our children. Starvation is killing theirs. They're refusing aid. We're refusing to eat something other than McDonald's. Both governments bear huge responsibility. It should NOT be cheaper to get a cheeseburger that is so far from actual food that it doesn't rot, than it is to get some chicken and vegetables that haven't been fed or sprayed with chemicals. How is what we're doing different? We make it impossible for poor people to eat healthily. Those poor people get a myriad of diseases that come from eating nothing that isn't chemical and fat at its core and they die from those diseases. While costing the government untold amounts of money in health care.

It's something I've been thinking about a long time: this question of entitlement. It's a basic human right to eat. It isn't a basic human right to eat something different every night of the week, regardless of when it's in season. Because lets face it, if we stopped demanding the exact same food all year round in our grocery store, it would be less likely that those vegetables would need to be artificially produced. It would mean that local farms could actually make money. It would even mean that the food you ate every day would taste better. Our economy would improve. Organic would stop meaning expensive. Eventually it would. I've been trying lately to eat organically, and do you know what I've discovered? You can eat it for about the same amount as you can eat crap, but you can't eat exactly what you want all the time. You might not eat meat with every meal, or even every day. Why do I balk at that, even now?

I'm the "king of sinners", as the saying goes. I was mad at Stupidstore for not having cilantro just yesterday. I have asparagus in my oven as I type this and I don't know who grew it and I know it was sprayed with chemical. I actually don't even know what asparagus looks like growing naturally. I don't know when any of my vegetables are in season, and I eat crap. I've fed it to my daughter for no other reason than that it was convenient at the time. I'm going to crack a diet Pepsi in just a few minutes because I like it and it's not even my first one today. And to a certain extent that's okay. It's okay to go out to eat and to enjoy what you put in your mouth. But I wonder about all this. I don't have answers that bear any intelligence at all. I want some country to storm the borders of Somalia with tanks, killing terrorists left and right dragging food and medicine behind them. I doubt that's a real answer.

I just can't stop wondering if we're as far removed from the terrorists in Somalia as we'd like to think we are. They're killing their people, we're killing ours - we're even using the same weapon. Don't get me wrong. Even typing it makes me want to rebel against my own words. Except that I don't see how those words are wrong. I'm wrong. I'm entitled and I'm guilty and I'm wrong. And though I don't need to feel guilty about being born on this side of the equation, I can't not think about the other. I can't turn my tear streaked face away from the photos because they're too hard to see, as my brain thinks of what it would be like to watch Bella die in my arm, so so slowly. But I should also think what it would do to my heart to see her get so huge that her body shuts down because it can't cope with what I'm feeding her.

So here I sit. Trying to find a conclusion that proves that we are better than they are. I don't have one.

On Friday, we go to BC Children's Hospital one last time. I have one last pink ferry voucher in my bag, one last list of questions for the doctor, one last chance for a trip to Olive Garden with the transport paid for by the government. 
On March 25th, I put a syringe of Propranolol in Bella's mouth for the last time. The other day she needed Tylenol and fought me giving her medicine and it made me happy. It means that everyone was right. She doesn't even remember those months where she had to learn to deal with it, to suck it up (literally). She's happy and silly. She's incredibly smart. She's super small. I bet she still doesn't weigh 25 pounds and I'm just over stressing about it. I'm done stressing about a lot of things. She's currently jumping up and down on the couch saying "No B-S!" Possibly because I just freaked out over hearing an ad for anti-depressants on TV that said that one in five of us are mentally ill and undiagnosed. I may have called the ad a liar and said they were spreading BS to the masses. Bella has hopped up on my soapbox unawares - which makes me laugh. She makes me bust out laughing every single day. Maybe I could get her a little sign and we could go picket some pharmaceutical company. Anyway, I digress - again.
In the spirit of not stressing about things, we are making this last trip a celebration. Bella, my mom and I. My mom has come with me to almost every last one of these appointments. At the beginning we would sit at the ferry on the way home and I would sob my eyes out and she'd hold Bella and we'd talk. We'd try and go shopping before those early scarier appointments and pretend everything was fine. One time, we sat in a hospital room with Bella strapped to heart monitors and we prayed together for a long time for Uncle John. I would take her out for dinner - once to this stupidly fancy place that we rolled Bella into in her stroller. She napped - we had wine and dinner. We've taken turns while Bella needed to be walked around the ferry because she was crying, then because she was learning to walk and we would break our backs leaning over to help, now to chase her as she runs wildly all over the place and says "hi" to everyone she sees. I don't know how I would have done those trips without my mom. She's cried with me, laughed and shopped with me, helped me to get my questions in order and asked her own and remembered the answers when I was too stressed out. 
So on Thursday, as a thanks to my mom for being so amazing during all those early trips we are going here for the night. We're going to take Bella swimming in the amazing pool and then order Indian food to our hotel suite. The next morning we'll have breakfast in the restaurant and drive to Granville Island to run around and shop and look at stuff. Our appointment is at 2:45 and then we'll probably go for dinner one last time and get on the ferry and laugh at how Bella doesn't want to nap and how crazy she is. I'm looking forward to it. Can you believe that?
We do have to talk to the doctor about possible laser treatments for Bella's mark and when that's a feasible thing if it doesn't go away completely on its own. Now when she goes to sleep at night she "prays to Jesus" to "please heal my little mark and make it all better". Part of my spirit, I can't lie, whispers to Heaven, "Seriously, how can you say no to that? Just do it. Please? C'mon..." I guess I know where Bella gets her little "salesman pitch" that always makes us laugh when she wants something. 
We're hoping the mark goes away on its own and it may yet, but I think we've decided that we'd like to take care of it before she could get teased over it, if it comes to that. I have no idea what that entails or costs or anything like that so we need to figure some of those things out. I need an ophthalmologist referral in Nanaimo to do check-ups on her eye and make sure everything is progressing fine there. When her face went still right at the beginning, it did some permanent damage to the nerve that controls her eyelid. When she's super tired it droops slightly, doesn't blink quite as quickly as the other one. Unless she's exhausted, you probably wouldn't know it, but it's one of those things we keep an eye on.  We've never noticed much difference in the way of actual eye movement but your eyes develop pretty slowly so we will probably still check on that every once in a while. 
That said, it's pretty likely that after Friday afternoon - we're done. She's fine, it's over. I think that deserves a celebration. I'm so happy she's okay - so happy that we didn't damage anything with all the steroids or the heart medication. We've decided to take this summer and all just have fun together. We are doing little day trips with her, and taking her to the beach and throwing her a cowgirl birthday party next month, which of course I'm going a little over the top about. I love pony rides - it's going to be great. Can't wait. 
So that's it I suppose. One last Bella update, one more trip to Vancouver to finish things off. One more time. 

We are driving (DRIVING!) to Wyoming. Next week. With Bella. In the car. To Wyoming. A little fuzzy on your geography? It a road trip long enough that if you could draw on the planet with a big red marker, you could see that road trip from space. Bella is going to be in the car with us. Did I mention that already?

I remember last year, the idea of a 14 hour plane ride nearly drove me to drink. I couldn't imagine keeping her in one spot that long. I was CERTAIN that I would end up in a tiny airplane bathroom bawling and holding my screaming child. She did beautifully. Just perfectly, couldn't have asked for anything better. There AND back. And this time, we have a portable DVD player. And folks, I am heading to the library and plan to fill half my car with exciting DVDs. She's gonna love it. The other half of the car is going to be filled with children's Gravol. Don't judge me. It's Bella in a car for 18 hours.

So far, the plan of attack involves an evening ferry out of town and then do most of the trip through the night. And the Gravol. If we can catch the 8pm ferry, we should hit the border around 10:30. By the time she wakes up, we should only have about seven or eight more hours. Eight hours is only two more hours than I strapped her in a hiking backpack the other weekend. She can totally do it. Plus, Dora and the Backyardigans and the Veggies, and Guess With Jess are all coming and will be hooked up to the DVD player. It'll be fine.

At this point I welcome any roadtrip advice or even meaningless comforting lies about how totally great this will be.

Sunday afternoon I will be taking my last pill. I don't expect to enjoy Monday evening much when my body goes "hey! Where's my stuff!" for the first time, -and I expect to hate Tuesday.  I'm willing to have next week as a whole, be a total wash.
I've dropped from 8 pills (not counting the other medication that I quit a couple months ago) to one pill in 8 weeks and as they don't make smaller pills and I don't want to deal with compounding I'm going to quit and tough it out until the withdrawal is over. I don't have to work next week so that'll be a big help. This last drop has been pretty intense. Today I had the worst brain zaps I've had yet, was nauseated enough to take gravol during the day and not care if I was tired, and a screaming headache.
In total, I will have been on medication for ten short months. For not being depressed in the first place, I have a hard time with that number, but it is still a smaller number than my doctor wanted. My taper has been aggressive and I've paid for it (so has Peter and anyone else unfortunate enough to encounter me on a Wednesday). I'm ready to be done. Three more pills. Three more days.
I wish I felt better about the way it all went. I still feel unresolved about the doctor, still want to egg his office some days. I'm still mad and guilty and I still have trouble remembering things that I did only a few months ago. I have no memory of events that I should be able to easily recall. I'm still getting stressed out too easily, still having trouble multitasking, but hopefully those things will start to slowly get better when my body adjusts to having no medication. My family are all saying what a drastic change they've noticed in me since my starting to wean and that's good. I still spend all my time wondering how I got here, upset at what I've said and done, and guilty over things that I can't change now.
I'm tired. I have to tell you though, when I can get myself to relax and fall asleep, I sleep like a dead person. It's the best sleep I've had since those early pregnant sleeps where you're not quite to the sick phase but you just sleep 14 hours a day because you're so exhausted from trying to produce a human. That exhaustion never goes away, but your ability to sleep will, and then it's downhill unless you can get addicted to a batch of anti-depressants and then fall asleep after dropping your nearly lethal doses to something your body is supposed to be able to handle. If I could quit the nightmares, I'd be golden. The other night it was trying to escape from Russian Mobsters in Tokyo who wanted to rape me, but I was so blind drunk in my dream that I kept stopping while running away and looking at these amazing shoes for sale in the night market, then remembering these guys wanted to do horrible things to me and running again. This is strange in that I don't know any Russians, have no idea why they'd be cruising around Japan, have never been to a Japanese night market (though the Thai ones are cool) and have also never been blind drunk. Or raped (thank God).
Then it was humpback whales who ate Bella because she fell out of a window while looking at them. I'm scared of whales, did you know that? I think they're amazing and majestic and so beautiful, but if I were kayaking and came across a humpback whale, I would pee my pants and probably have a heart attack and drown while the whales ignored me. I was swimming in Hawaii once and I looked down to see a huge sea turtle beneath me and I lost my mind. I was on the beach hyperventilating with panic while marveling at how beautiful it was in about two seconds. Poor turtle. Seriously, what did I think it was going to do? Chase me? Geez. Sometimes when I'm swimming I think about all the creatures that I'm sharing a body of water with and my heart races so badly and I feel so tiny and insignificant, and okay, edible, that I have to go lay on the beach and have a Smirnoff Ice and calm on down. I love to swim - there's something so free, and so quiet about being suspended underwater - just don't be stupid and think "Holy crap! I'm in the same water as like, thousands of whales, some probably within a couple of miles of here. Robyn saw killer whales on the ferry last week (jealous!!!) and those whales could easy be near here by now".
Now that you're all sure that I'm insane and really should be on some form of medication, I'm going to go and mix my powdered cement supplement with some water that I should be drinking WAY more of, take two natural relax supplements (that I may keep around the house forever, because I'm, well, me) and a couple of omega and DHA supplements, a prenatal vitamin (because EVERY woman should take them - always) and crawl into bed and finish my book. And pray that I sleep dreamlessly. Goodness, that would be fantastic. Three more stupid pills.