Pay Attention

Read these questions and answer them, and be honest with yourself.

When was the last time you went the doctor for a checkup?

When was the last time you had some ache or some complaint in your body where something didn’t feel right for a time and you went and saw a doctor about it?

Have you looked into the medical history of your family?

What do you think the condition of your health is? Really healthy? Healthy enough? Questionable?

The point of all this isn’t to make people into hypochondriacs or paranoid about their family’s medical history. It is to encourage people to take a moment in their day and pay attention to the small signs their bodies are telling them. If you will listen to your body, it will tell its secrets willingly; a small ache that won’t go away, a discoloration of the skin and to even leg cramps and shortness of breath. Take notice of these small unusual signs with a check-up to a doctor. Doctors are the best to tell if a small symptom is a sign to something bigger or just something that can be easily fixed.

People might say, “Nothing serious will happen to me, I take good care of myself.” That might be right, but there is a chance that there is a buildup in the body to something more serious. For an example, look into the life of an ordinary stay at home mother who thought there wasn’t anything to worry about.

Her name is Rebecca and she was first a mother, a grandmother, a big sister, a wife, a daughter, a niece, friend and aspiring entrepreneur. Like the average mother she had her daily to-do list, kids, babysitting grandkids and nieces and nephews, cleaning a house, paying bills, making dinner, and the list goes on to more items. She was a busy woman but regular checkups with her doctor were few and far between. I’m sure many people are guilty of that, there is so much to do in twenty-four hours that sometimes it doesn’t seem like there’s enough time.

Born with asthma, Rebecca was good at keeping it under control, but when harvest time came around, with the pollen of soy beans floating about the air, her asthma was at its worse. Soy bean pollen hindered her breathing even more than dust and cat hair.

It was a warm summer Sunday afternoon in a small country town in Ohio during soybean harvest time when something like an asthma attack began. It came on so suddenly it was within the hour 9-1-1 was called. Nearly two hours later three ambulances were parked in front of her country home. Then before the week was out her family was planning her funeral.

It wasn’t until the autopsy that the doctor finally revealed his opinion of the real cause of her death, a pulmonary embolism and not an asthma attack. Several blood clots were found in her legs and the doctor made the educated guess that one of those blood clots got loose and got caught in her lungs. The doctor thought the attack came on too suddenly to be an asthma attack.

The idea that is was a pulmonary embolism, that caused Rebecca’s death, became even more probable when a genetic blood clotting disorder was found in her father’s side of the family. The disorder is inheritable and involves a mutation in the Methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase (MTHFR) gene. This mutation often shows up in various disorders, one being called Deep Vein Thrombosis (DVT).

The discovery of this mutation began when Rebecca’s youngest sister found, through testing, that she had this blood clotting mutation. Then the dominos fell into place as aunts and cousins were found having the same mutation.

The symptoms of having this mutation are small and can be easily overlooked because they are ordinary and sometimes fleeting. “The symptoms can start with pain or tenderness in your arm or leg – often described as a cramp or Charlie horse – with one or more of the following: swelling, red or purple skin color, (and) warm to the touch.” (Signs and Symptoms of Blood Clots, 2008) Left uncared for these blood clots, like what happened to Rebecca, can get loose and travel to the lungs and cause a pulmonary embolism, and those start with difficulty breathing, chest pain and a racing heart beat; then can elevate to fainting and even as bad as coughing up blood. Those blood clots can also result in heart attacks or strokes when they travel to other vital parts of the body.

Just shy of coughing up blood the symptoms of a pulmonary embolism sound much like the attack Rebecca experienced before being rushed off to the hospital.

This story of Rebecca is one of many, I’m sure everyone has someone they worry about and wish that person would see a doctor. Then again, there are people whose health problems hit them suddenly when they miss one crucial sign. “Nobody knows how many people put off medical visits or whether it is harmful for most people…But public health experts agree that scores of people who have money, health insurance and access to good medical centers are choosing not to go for checkups...” (Epstein, 2001)

I personally have begun to pay more attention to my health and it’s started with the death of Rebecca because her story hits home to me, she is my mother. Until my aunt was diagnosed with this mutation, I’d never heard of this disorder. I’m sure there are plenty more disorders, diseases, and other medical conditions I haven’t heard of; but to think that something this serious is actually in my family tree surprised me. I can just as easily have this mutation and not know it. My next step is to get tested for it myself. As it has been said before, it’s better to be safe than sorry.

Again the whole goal of this isn’t to make people paranoid and have them running to the doctor worried that every new symptom is the sign of something dreadful. It’s just that the number of people not going to the doctors regularly seems to be more common that I originally thought. “More than a quarter of women—26 percent—delayed care in the past year because of cost, compared to 20 percent of men, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation survey of nearly 3,000 women.” (Khazan, 2014)

It seems that the lack of time isn’t the only factor in delaying medical care. Yet, whatever the reason is, is it really worth the cost of your life? Think of how many more mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles, brothers, sisters and even grandparents can be around for those special family events if people took time to check up on their health, gritted their teeth and stepped into the doctor’s office and made sure they are as health as they assume.

 

Epstein, R. H. (2001, October 31). Retrieved from New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/31/health/major-medical-mystery-why-people-avoid-doctors.html?pagewanted=all

Khazan, O. (2014, May 15). Retrieved from The Alantic: http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/05/all-the-reasons-women-dont-go-to-the-doctor-other-than-money/370952/

Signs and Symptoms of Blood Clots. (2008). Retrieved from Stop the CLot: http://www.stoptheclot.org/learn_more/blood_clot_symptoms__dvt.htm

Extra Ordinary

True extraordinary beings!

I begin this entry with a heavy sigh. So much is going on in my life, more than I thought I would have to take on at once, especially at my age as a young mother. One challenge that is on my plate is my husband and I have taken in my much younger sister who is still a teenager. My father works a job that doesn’t allow him flexible enough hours to be there for her. Because of this she has had to be more independent than a young teenager should be; and the affects of this independence on this independent spirit is starting to show. So, in short, since I am stay at home mom I can provide the care and attention my sister needs and deserves.

Most days I feel inadequate jumping straight into this world of parenting a teenager when normally I won’t be there for another thirteen with my kids. It’s a trial and error process and I’ve told my sister to be patient with us as we are figuring this out as we go along.

One reoccurring conundrum is the same I feel every teenager faces. She wants to stand out and be extraordinary. There are always the go to answers parents use, “you are unique… there is no one exactly like you… you are special…” and so on and so on. I am sure every parent of a teenager knows those go over as well as, “Because I said so.”

I tried to give her examples, such as her name and no one looks exactly like her or no one has her fingerprint or her back story.

I got responses such as “There was a girl in my last school with the name close to mine” and “Everyone has a face” also “Everyone has fingers” and “I’m not telling anyone about my past.” Or “I like music… everyone likes music!”

Her idea of being extraordinary is drawing cat whiskers on her face with a sharpie or coloring parts of her hair black or other such things.

I was at a lost to how to show her there are better ways of being extraordinary than looking like the Cat Lady.

That’s when my husband said something that I feel is genius.

“Being extraordinary is just doing something ordinary, only a little extra,” is what he said.

BRILLIANT!

 The word is really, extra ordinary. He told her about Marie Curie, how she was a doctor, like many others, but did extra research on radium and what it can do and she changed the world of medicine. Thomas Edison was just an ordinary inventor until he invented the light bulb.

I also want to add William Shakespeare, my favorite playwright. He wasn’t born into a rich family that could afford a great education. I’m sure he was just an average guy that had a gift with words and knew how to use it as well as the other playwrights who could afford a better education and look what he did!

Now, I think that desire we all had as a teenager, to stand out or be unique, never goes away. (Though of course we had that caveat of not standing out too much to where we were mocked. We wanted to stand out in a cool way.) We all want to leave our mark, but sadly, more often than not that desire  gets locked away in our hearts and forgotten when our attempts fail too many times.

I remember my senior year of high school I was trying so many ways to make my mark, but everything I was trying wasn’t working. I submitted an idea for our senior mural; I tried out for the musical and to be a graduation speaker and so many other things previous years. Nothing I did seemed to be good enough. I was so frustrated one day I took it out on my Styrofoam lunch tray while my worried friends watched me and gave me the best encouragement they could as high schoolers.

I still have that desire to not have my ideas die with me. But I learned that high school isn’t the end all be all. If I didn’t stand out there and be extraordinary while in high school, then that’s okay. Since then I’ve still done the ordinary, worked, gone to school, got married, had kids, etc. But on both sides of my family graduating college with a bachelors degree is an extraordinary thing, not many that I know in my family have gone that far in their schooling. And while finishing my degree I felt like I was doing something far from ordinary; I was caring for premature twin babies while trying to finish my last semester. I’ve had amazing life experiences that I wouldn’t trade for anything, not even fame or money.

 With my experiences mixed with my gift with words hopefully can be woven into my stories that will one day be published, and they will not only entertain, but be beneficial for my audience.

My sister may feel like she NEEDS to be extraordinary right now, but great things take time to blossom. After all, Rome wasn’t built in a day!

In the Footsteps of No One

As a mother of twins I have the unique opportunity to watch the growth and development of two people at the same time. They are two little persons born two minutes apart and born from the same parents. However with some much in common, with DNA, and only 11 months old they are vastly different.

My little girl is quiet, calm… but very adventurous! She plays nicely by herself and if I don’t keep the doors shut in our apartment she will wander into dark rooms and even bathrooms. My son however is loud and energetic and seems to be very much a people person. He has to be around people. He will stay close by my side or his daddy when at home. He’ll never wander into a dark room without the company of another person, even though his twin sister will.

These differences go down to the way and timing they have learned to crawl. My little boy, even though less adventurous, has done everything first from being born to most of their development. He has rolled over first, crawled first and pulled himself on furniture first. When he was learning to crawl it almost looked like he was doing the butterfly stroke out of water, both arm pulling and flapping forward to get his to those coveted Cheerios. With his sister she crawled much later and preferred the one-armed army crawl, one arm to pull forward the other to reach and direct. But now they are both on their hands and knees crawling, going this way and that.

A Stare down when they looked alike

They took two different ways and got to the same end result. Again, these are twins being reared by the same parents. These kinds of differences seem to have been prepackaged in them from before they came down from heaven.

From what I noticed, and learned differences in families don’t only exist in my twins.

Again, reared by the same church going parents, my brothers and I are very different. My oldest brother and I are poles apart. He preferred a different path than attending church. He is more artistically and musically talented than I could even dream to be and has chosen to be a tattoo artist. My other brother, even though more similar in personality our career paths are very different. I chose to get my bachelor degree in theatre and writing while his bachelor degree is in business and holds an office job at a cable company.

Not stopping at my family let’s look at my husband’s siblings. As the youngest of five I have seen great differences in each of them. Even though I haven’t been married to my husband that long and haven’t gotten to know my in-laws very well these are the differences I’ve seen already. One brother is very much into sports, another is more reserved, engineer, one sister has strong leadership capabilities and the other sister has a great mind, and works a lot with her husband in his family and marriage therapy practice, while my husband is the people person, business man. He is more energetic than his whole family and often explodes with questions of curiosity about the scriptures.

These five people were raised in the same household, came from the same church-going parents, but each have taken their own path in life, and are raising their families in different ways. (Even My second brother and I are raising our families differently.)

No one is less than the other, neither ways are wrong; it’s what is needed in that family.

For example my husband and I love Christmases with lots and lots of family, the more the merrier. Whereas with my husband’s sister and her family they enjoy a quieter, more intimate Christmas with a few family members at a time. Which way to spend Christmas is better? I say neither. It’s just two different paths to get to the same goal, spending Christmas with family.

As mine and my husband’s family grows; I look forward to watching what unique paths our children will take. What kind of unique personalities they have and will come with that will add to our family. I hope they make their own tracks in life and venture out and explore as they figure out who they really are.

My job as a parent is to help them become who they really are in the eyes of the Lord. In a book I am enjoying called Captivating it says this about mothering:

“Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it” (Proverbs 22:6). This verse is not a promise about faith. It is not speaking of training a child to follow Christ or promising that if you do, the grown child will continue to follow him. Sorry. The proverb is about raising a child to know who he is and to guide him in becoming even more himself. In the way he should go. Not in the way you would like him to go… it speaks of teaching a child to live from his heart, attuned to it, awake to it, aware of it, the heart. It is about seeing who a person really is and calling him out to be that person.

(Captivating John & Stasi Elderedge pg. 179)

I agree with about 99% of this section. I feel that this scripture doesn’t have to have one meaning, I mean the parables of Jesus has layers of meaning, so why not the Book of Proverbs? Yes, it’s about faith and good morals, and teaching those morals to your children, but it’s also as the authors said, helping our children become who they are meant to blossom into, who Heavenly Father intended them to become. It’s not my job, or anyone’s job to decide who they will become. It’s our job to be there for them and teach them all they need to know.

Just because we come from our parents doesn’t mean we ought to walk the same path as them. I’ve been told I look a lot like my mom, but just because I look like her doesn’t mean I am her. Our personalities and talents are our own and quite a bit different.  Just because the children aren’t exactly like their parent doesn’t mean either person is less of a person. Nor are our parents bad parents because the only way we are like them is mainly by looks. Sure there are some similarities, but each of us is our own person with our own capabilities and ability to choose for ourselves who we want to be. We are all on different paths with difference challenges, all with the same goal, to be able to be worthy to return to live with our Heavenly Father.

How We've Stayed Sane

“All work and no play, makes Jack a dull boy.” We all, or majority of the human population know this saying, or have heard some version of it. My husband has a similar way of thinking. He has this philosophy about how to live life; it’s a good one and really thinking on it I feel has helped us stay relatively sane in these very difficult months (six to be exact). It is, “Work hard, play hard.” He has others, but I’m only going to go into this one right now.

He feels living this way you get a more complete life, it’s balanced. When you work hard you get to play hard. And my husband does. He works himself to the bone each week at a job he is over qualified for because he can’t fine descent work that allows him to use his Bachelors in Business. But, nevertheless he works what jobs he can to keep a roof over our heads, food on our table and continue to make payments on the only car we have. He also donates plasma so we have gas money and is trying to get his own business up and running, and that’s not even going into when he helps out with household chores and with the twins. Some weeks I wonder how he survives to the weekends. I believe it’s this god-given extra energy he has that keeps him going. My husband possibly has twice the normal energy given to most humans.

Like I said my husband works hard, but like all people he needs balance. On the weekends, and whatever spare moments there are in the week we find something fun to do. Before the kids came we would go hiking up in the mountains. Lately we’ve been using free passes to visit local museums and the zoo. When he gets the chance, my husband will go play basketball with some guys from church. At church picnics he would come home sore because he played too hard at Ultimate Frisbee.

Living this way my husband has helped me to not just work hard, but balance out by finding the equal amount of fun as well. When I was still going to college I had gotten better grades when my husband was in my life, he inspired me to work harder. Now that I’m done with my husband has made it possible for me to be able to focus on my two careers, being a mother and being a writer.

Now, many maybe asking by now, “How can this ‘work hard; play hard’ philosophy keep you sane?”

Well, since my husband has been working nights I am the one who is usually caring for our kids majority of the time. He sleeps a few hours in the day, and job hunts and other such business stuff several of the remaining hours in the day. This doesn’t leave for much family time in the day, or even time for just the two of us, either. We are all hard at work taking care of each other. Even the kids are hard at work figuring out how to operate their little bodies.

If we continue like this day in and day out someone will explode and end up in a room with padded walls. So, on the weekends we stop, take a breather and remind ourselves why life is worth living. Jon gets to goof off with the kids, we enjoy movies from the library, visit friends and if the weather is good we find reasons to go outside. If family is in town my husband loves to see his nieces and nephews and hang out and goof off with them for they are the younger siblings he never got to have.

Then when Monday comes we take a deep breath and dive right back in ready to take on the world again, or as ready as we’ll ever be.

I’ve seen it when we work hard and leave no time for anything else. I made that big mistake once. One day I tried to do laundry (wash, dry and fold), the dishes, take care of kids and make dinner and more, all while my husband was sleeping during the day. The end result was him missing work because I about nearly exploded. My goal was to try and serve my husband and have him wake up to a clean, organized home where everything was done. That night I learned my limitations. I can’t do everything, but I do what I can is enough, as my husband reminds me often; and I have to remind him of it as well.

I also know hard moments in life don’t last forever, even though it may feel like it and feels even longer because you don’t know when it will end most of the time. I do know that I am not alone in this I am surrounded with help from around and even from above.

Every Christmas Counts




Growing up making sugar cookies was a Christmas tradition in my family. I don’t know how it got started. But what I do know was my mom’s sugar cookies were the best!

With my sister years ago...

Then my mom passed away and somehow the tradition of sitting around the kitchen table frosting and sprinkling colored sugar on the cookies my mom made was no more. I really didn’t take noticed until Christmas Eve this year as my husband and I worked in the kitchen making sugar cookies. I made the dough the previous day and we just had to cut out the cookies, bake and decorate them.

Traditionally my mom had various cookie cutter shapes for Christmas; candy cane, bells, stars, Christmas trees, etc… but for us, we haven’t accumulated such things yet, so out cookies were cut out using a plastic cup. But my husband and I sat at our kitchen table and we frosted them and sprinkled colored sugar on them. I hope next year my twins will be up there with us sprinkling colored sugar on the frosted sugar cookies.

Now, as I was making these cookies I realized the last time I had sugar cookies at Christmas was my last Christmas with my mom back in 2007. It wasn’t just that the cookie making tradition stopped, but the traditional cookies seemed to have stopped when my mom wasn’t around anymore.

My nephew when he was little



 I don’t wish to sound sad at the happiest time of the year and I don’t wish to be pitied either. But thinking about my mom I realized that you never know when your last Christmas with a family member will be. Sure I will see my mom again, like every Christian I believe I will see all my loved ones again. But our time in this mortal life is so short and goes by in a blink of an eye and our world can change so easily that making the most of each moment and each holiday really matters.



This was my children’s first Christmas. I’ll never get that again. I’ll never have another Christmas where my husband and I were parents for the first time. There may not have been a lot under our tree this year. My kids won’t remember this Christmas, but I will.



My sister helping my dad

When it’s my turn to go home to heaven I want my mind to be full of loud, full Christmases, full of family, full of children anxiously waiting by the Christmas tree since 5am waiting to open their presents from Santa Claus.
I want holidays thick with family tradition and full of family and love. I want every year to have people around my kitchen table decorating sugar cookies because I’ve realized every Christmas counts in my book and I don’t want to have any regrets on any of them.

One Miracle at a Time

Long, long ago, in possibly my middle school time, I read this poem whos concept has stuck with me all these years. I don’t remember much about it just that it was about a mother and daughter talking after the death of the father and husband. The daughter asks “How will we survive?” And paraphrasing horribly the mother pretty much says “One day at a time.”

That’s kind of how it’s been for my family these past few months.

Now, don’t worry, nothing horribly tragic has happen to us, thank goodness. But, to keep a long story short my husband hasn’t had the best of luck with work. It hasn’t been an easy past four months. More often than not we had to take one day, and a few times one moment at a time. Sometimes I would have loved to have traded these months for prosperity and the assurance that a good job brings… sometimes I don’t.

It is said that retrospect is 20/20. Things become clearer about your life after you’ve gone through it. You can see the forest for the trees. Looking back right now I still don’t understand why my family and I have to go through this difficult time, but I can see that we’ve actually done really well.

Some days it feels like I don’t know how we are going to get through it all, bills, babies, more bills, sickness, horrible jobs, rough nights, and so on. Then the next day comes and we’ve made it through that day. Often with snatches of sleep and on the brink of sanity, but we survived by some miracle.

When October ended I was looking at our calendar at all the recorded milestones of our twins, appointments, and events I realized how much we have achieved, survived and witnessed just within that month alone.

My little girl was showing signs of developmental delay in her large motor skills. You see, at the end of September she hadn’t rolled over yet. Then in the middle of October, with help of physical therapy exercises she had finally rolled over, both ways. Her brother was leaving her in the dust when it came to large motor skills. I was afraid she was going to be far behind due to her and her brother being premature. I’ve just had learned that she does things on her own pace- much unlike her me growing up. (I didn’t learn to ride a two wheeler bike until I was eight-years-old)

Now, as each month passed kids are soaring along and bills were being paid because we had the money because of the generosity of an unknown person or people helping us along.

These past months sacrifices have had to be made as we’ve survived one miracle at a time. Sometimes I don’t know how we've been so blessed; we still have a roof over our heads, a good running car, our health (no counting the ocassional colds that come with winter) and we have gained several new talents and have gained a gratitude for the help we’ve received, the smaller things.

We’ve had to be humbled and reach out for help- which isn’t easy for us. For my husband and I, it’s important to us to be self-sufficient, but we exactly can’t do that right now if we want to survive. It has been a humbling experience. I just hope we can pay it forward or back all the kindness we’ve received.

And like I said we have gained new skills along the way because of this hard time. A few times I’ve had to improvised dinners with what I could scrap together in our cabinets. Several times I’ve created meals that are now our favorites. I learned to make soup, homemade noodles, spaghetti sauce, tortillas, and bread. I have learned how to patch up clothes, entertain my kids with things around the house; since we can’t go and buy a bunch of toys, and much more…

Now, I’m not writing this blog for people to feel sorry for us; that is far from my intent. I want to tell people who may be going through something similar or will go through something similar that it is possible to survive, even when the end is not in sight.

Just take one day at a time and you will be taken care of one miracle at a time just as we have.

             

I Remembered What My Mom Said...

I know, I know… I haven’t been great at keeping up with this blog. Life has gotten in the way. Well in all honesty my hands have been full. It’s been a year since I last posted something. I even had a list of topics I wanted to write about. I might post them later.

You see a few months after my last post I found out I was pregnant. Also, my last post was during my second to last semester at college. So in under a year I crammed in finishing school, moving and having babies.

No, that wasn’t a typo. Four months ago my husband and I were given two babies, twins, a boy and a girl. They came a little too early and that provided its own challenges, but I won’t go into, at least right now.

They are home and doing fantastic!

What I want write about is a funny little experience I had not long after our twins were born.

Since our babies came a little too early they had to spend some time in the hospital to get ready to face the world. And due to that fact we did a lot of commuting for a few weeks from home to the hospital.

It was on one of these commuting trips that this event I am getting to occurred.

My husband and I were driving back home after spending some time in the hospital with our children were driving alongside a school bus when I looked up and saw a boy, no older than twelve scowling at me while he was flipping me off.

I knew the boy was looking for a reaction and that he was trying to appear tough, like all boys try to do. I thought about how to respond when I remembered my mom telling me years ago, “When someone flips you off on the road or is rude give  them the I love you sign or the peace sign.”

So that’s what I did!

I gave the boy a smile and held up the “I love you” sign and held it there while the boy held his scowl and kept up his middle finger for several long moments. It was like a silent competition.

I won.

The boy put down his hand and a bashful smile came over his face ad he turned back around. His plan was thwarted.

It made me smile how the moment turned out.

I could have gotten mad at the boy flipping me off and complain about, “the children of today.” But I tried something different and fought fire with a little bit of kindness.