He was supposed to love me

We have all seen the memes, the inspirational posters, the Hallmark commercials. It's a given, or it's supposed to be, that big brothers love their baby sisters. Even my five year old says it, "Family sticks together!" Why is this such a foreign idea to my big brother?

He was 12 when I was born and until I was about 7 or 8, I thought he hated me. We fought all the time and over every little topic. Sure, there are a few pictures of the two of us together that prove he at least tolerated me. He joined the Navy after high school and something miraculous happened in boot camp: he started to miss me. When he came back, suddenly I was invited everywhere he wanted to go, he loved me and we were best friends. We were so close that years later, when I met my first husband for the first time, he thought Barry and I were a couple because we finished each others sentences and were just that tight together.

That's why this hurts so much.

You see, I'm flawed in his eyes. Fatally flawed. Beyond redemption. Beyond repair. Beyond forgiveness. Because I, unlike he, have different political beliefs. He is a staunch conservative as was our mother and most of our family. Politics steeped in religion and faith, even though it's meant to be separate. But as I grew, I found I couldnt stay "on their side". I dont believe abortion should ever be used unless it's to save the life of the mother. But I also believe that I do not have the right to force that belief on anyone else. I am heterosexual but I do not believe I should prevent anyone who loves one another from having the same rights as I do.

The problem is, in his eyes, that I have these beliefs and share them. In doing so, I disrespect our parents. Basically, I was "raised better" than that. And because these beliefs differ from his, I'm no longer loveable in his eyes. Oh I'm sure he'd say he loves me and that he's praying for me to "return to Jesus" and repent. But until I do, my punishment is banishment, emotional abandonment. I'm dead to him.

I wonder if he knows how badly it hurts to see him comment on our family's photos on Facebook and yet he refuses to acknowledge my friendship requests or comments. At least he could do is block me so I didnt have to see his name everywhere and know I was being left out. How is it that my other family members, most of whom think differently than me, are able to tolerate me but my own brother cannot. It will be this way until I change my mind. Simply not speaking my mind will not work. I'd have to deny everything that is important to me to get him to talk to me again.

It's like I've died and I'm just a ghost in his life. I wonder if he even misses me at all. I miss him.

He was my big brother. I was the baby sister. He was supposed to love me.

When we were kids

We fought because you were older

And because I wanted to be

Separate rooms, separate toys

Separate seats in the car

Just to save the peace.

Didn’t understand why, what I’d done

To make you hate me

You were supposed to love me

Then you went off

Off to see the world for a while

And when you came home

You were a different man, in a different place

Actually seemed to want me around

I wasn’t a pest, I wasn’t a chore

It finally seemed to me

That you really loved me.

You were my hero, my big brother

My first knight in shining armor

You were the first one I turned to

In all my darkest hours

Despite years and miles between us

I never doubted you’d be there for me

Until now... 

Tonight you dropped me a line

A few words to say goodbye

Said I'm too different, too separate

That you don’t know who I’ve become

And that you'll talk to Jesus about me. 

But you were supposed to love me.

I miss my mother...

When my mother died, 22 years ago (give or take a few months), a friend handed me a poem and told me not to read it that day or the next, but when I was ready. She said I would know when I was ready. I waited until curiosity got the best of me and I sat down on the couch and read her card.

She told me that when her own mother had died, someone had given her this and while she didnt believe in such things as God or heaven, it did - eventually, bring her comfort and that she hoped that for me it did the same. I unfolded the piece of paper and started reading. Before I was finished with the brief lines, I was sobbing uncontrollably with the truth of it. But I also felt a small glimmer of hope, of dare I say joy? No, the feeling of joy came much, much later. In all honesty, when I read it now, I still cry because even after all this time, the pain of her leaving is so fresh.

But I'm feeling selfish too. Oh how I miss my mother. I wish she could see me now, that she could meet my husband and my children. How I wish I could sit next to her on the couch during the Ohio State football games - knowing full well it would mean my she'd pound on my legs in excitement. I wish I could hear her singing again. I wish... I wish... I wish... I want my mother. I want her back and that's so selfish - to want to take her from heaven and bring her back here. But I do, I want to tell her I'm sorry. I want to tell her that I dont hate her, that I never did. I want her here. I am not a grown up. I'm just a little girl and I need my mommy. 

My best friend is facing something that took me completely by surprise. She knows her mother is dying. She is bearing with grace that which brought me to my emotional knees and I wish to God that I could take the pain from her. I know what's coming. I know the feeling of being vulnerable, of being little, of being a child that happens when your parent dies. But someday, when she's ready, I'll share this poem with her too and pray she also sees the hope in it.

And That Is Dying

I am standing upon the seashore

A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze and starts for the blue ocean. She is an object of beauty and strength. I stand and watch her until at length she hangs like a speck of white cloud just where the sea and sky come to mingle with each other.

Then someone at my side says: "There, she is gone!"

"Gone where?"

Gone from my sight, that is all. She is just as large in mast and hull and spar as she was when she left my side and she is just as able to bear the load of living freight to her destined port.

Her diminished size is in my, not in her. And just at the moment when someone at my side says, "There, she is gone!" There are other eyes watching her coming, and other voices ready to take up the glad shout, "Here she comes!"

And that is dying. 

*Source: "Gone from my sight" The Dying Experience, Barbara Karnes, copyright 1986

It's a sick, sick world

My son just turned four years old last Thursday. He is beautiful and engaging and so smart. But this weekend I was reminded of what a sick world we live in. I was reminded that there are unscrupulous people out there who will do anything, and I do mean anything for a breath of attention from someone else. 

When I first knew I was pregnant back in 2008, I joined the online community at Whattoexpect.com, commonly known as WTE. I found my homeboard for my due date, March 2009, and settled in to the daily questions of everything from "Am I having a miscarriage?" to "Is that a kick or gas?" Sadly, we did lose a few to miscarriages or arguments - we were a board of hormonal, pregnant women, there were arguments. But by the end of the forty weeks, we'd formed a fairly tight group. 

I will never forget the day it happened. One of the ladies, one of my friends, had felt her stomach tighten, and with that, felt her baby boy moving less and less until she didnt feel him. She tried resting after drinking juice or really cold liquids but nothing worked. So she came in to see the doctor and found out that her baby had died. We were all shocked. When you get to the end, you feel like,"Ok, I've made it, I can breathe now." But as we sadly learned, that it was not the end. Tragedy can and does strike. In the United States, it occurs in 1 out of 115 births. The pain is unmeasurable and intense. 

Our friend stayed in touch with us and shared the beautiful pictures that the hospital had arranged to take of her son. While I dont know if they're something I'd have done, I have to admit they're beautiful. You can see the sadness on the faces of family and the boy was so peaceful and beautiful. The pictures stab at a place in the heart so dark and deep, the place where you put things you dont want to talk about happening to you as if talking about it will jinx you. It is those pictures that are at the heart of my blog today.

My son just turned four, I just mentioned that earlier. The anniversary of her son's death was also last week. Imagine her pain, her horror at finding out that not one, but at least two women have used the picture of her son that she placed on Facebook to get attention for themselves. One woman used the picture to show other women in a Grief and Loss page on Facebook to get these women to give her love and support over the loss of her son. Another woman used that same picture to create an entire memorial web page for the loss of her son, pretending that our friend's son was hers. 

What is wrong with people? Are their lives so empty that they must do this to get attention? Do they get a twinge of sick enjoyment out of hurting other people? Do they get off on the "oh you poor woman, how sad for you"? It just makes me angry. It makes me want to find them and slap them. Instead, I used the technical age to help my friend. She was afraid that with people posting on the website that the woman was a fraud that she'd shut down the site before the authorities could be alerted. So I saved both the website and the source code of the website for her. But my heart still hurts for her.

It used to be enough to tell people to be careful of what they posted online in case they didnt want it seen. Now you'll have to warn people not to post pictures that other people may steal as their own. 

Maybe God Meant...

"Maybe this is God's way of saying I warned you with the last now this is your final warning."

"Maybe God means for them to stop"

"Maybe God's trying to tell them something..."

This week, Michelle Duggar and her family lost a loved one. She and her husband Jim were at their 20week ultrasound, typically called an anatomy scan when they were told that their baby had died and a heartbeat could no longer be found. 20 weeks into pregnancy, half way. But she'd probably been feeling the kicks for at least 2-4 weeks already. She, like any pregnant woman, had been talking to the baby as she stroked her stomach and I'm sure her husband and many of her 19 children were doing the same. How heart-breaking that must be.

People will be cynical and people will be harsh but when I read those comments I'm immediately taken back to when my husband and I were telling our family that we wouldn't be able to have children without IVF or something like that. Someone told us, trying to comfort us, that maybe that just meant that God didn't mean for us to be parents. I remember those words almost every day when I watch my son - who was conceived, miraculously, without any help from modern medicine. Who are we to even begin to try and guess what God meant or what God is "trying to tell" someone else.

Who are these people hurting? The Duggars? They made the decision, when they miscarried a baby because Michelle was taking birth control and didn't know she was pregnant, that they would not prevent pregnancy and let God decide when they would get pregnant. Did they take it to an extreme with 19? Um, probably. It would be for me, but I'm not them. They've raised those kids without government assistance - LONG before the TV show was around to help pay for things. They own businesses and manage their own bills and live a comfortable life. The kids are loved and appear to be happy. So again, who are we to criticize them? They have said that they prayed after their loss and felt this is what God was guiding them to do. If they still feel that way and are willing to take the risks - however irresponsible I might think that is - then that's new to them.

Long and short of it. Unless you are in fact God, shut up. You cant possibly know what life lesson I'm being taught when God says "no" to a prayer. It ties back to "if you cant say something nice..."

So to the Duggar's I say, I'm so sorry for your loss. And I stop there and hope they find comfort in God's love and in their large family that surrounds them still.

Yes Logan, There IS a Santa Claus

(This is the editorial given when a young girl wrote the New York Sun asking if Santa was real. It's also been an animated story shown in my childhood and just was recently recreated using digital animation. To me, the message is beautiful and what I'd love to teach my son.)

VIRGINIA, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except [what] they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men's or children's, are little. In this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.

Yes, VIRGINIA, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus. It would be as dreary as if there were no VIRGINIAS. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies! You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas Eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if they did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that's no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.

You may tear apart the baby's rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, VIRGINIA, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.

No Santa Claus! Thank God! he lives, and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.

Leaving Christmas in Christmas...

I can remember when I was a little girl how furious my mother became when she saw "xmas" on anything. She would continue walking around the store ranting (much to my embarrassment) about how there was a reason the word "Christ" was in Christmas and to leave it out was blasphemy and a reason for outrage. At the time, nearly 30 years ago, I thought she was over-reacting just a bit. I mean, c'mon, who could be upset at the word "Christmas"? It's not like people didnt know what the "x" meant.

I was wrong.

Today, it's everywhere or I should say it's NOT everywhere. In New Jersey, there are billboards declaring the entire holiday is a myth. In Philadelphia, the German Christmas Village is now the German Holiday Village because neighbors and a "few workers" complained. Schools are no longer allowed to sing O Holy Night or O Little Town of Bethlehem or even Silent Night in their Holiday concerts. The nativity scene is not permitted on city/state/federal properties and many offices "discourage" the display of anything but secular decorations. Even at my workplace, there are no more "Secret Santas" and the Christmas party became the "Holiday Party" then it became the "Annual Event" and is held in June.

Yes, yes, I know. Christmas is a Pagan holiday and was before Christ was born. Yule was stolen by the Christians so that they could ease the pagans into Christianity by using established "holidays" as their own. The same thing happened with Easter (Ostara) and Hallowe'en (All Hallows Eve). It wasnt right to usurp the existing holiday and make up Christian reasons for the decorations (Christmas Tree, yule log, gifts, etc). But it happened and is now so woven in our framework that I dont think it can or should be separated again.

In this Golden Era (turn on Sarcasm font) of Political Correctness, I think we're going too far. No one is forcing you to celebrate Christmas. If you dont, if you're Jewish and celebrate Hanukkah, or you celebrate Kwanzaa, or if you are and celebrate something else or you are an atheist and just like getting gifts, no one is forcing you to participate in Christmas. Yes, the decorations and songs and imagery are everywhere, but so are the symbols of other seasonal celebrations but this one is ours. I dont see anyone taking down other decorations or preventing them and saying, "Sorry, you might offend someone with your menorah" or the symbols of any other religious holiday for this time of year (mostly because without googling, I cant think of specific ones). It seems to me that only the religious symbols of Christianity are forbidden... to the point that we cant even call it Christmas without worrying that we'll be offending someone.

So, before I just start ranting without making sense or start repeating myself...

Yes, Virginia... there IS a Christmas. It lives in the heart and soul of everyone who remembers it. It lives in mine. And NO ONE can take that away from me unless I let them.

So MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

Must be a trend...

Not the kind of trend one wants to see, but ...

You know, if I thought it would really help, I'd tell everyone what happened in my first marriage and what lessons I'd learned.

I learned, first and foremost, never to settle. I dont care if it's in a romance, in a job, in yourself. Life's just too short. I wrote in a journal once that I missed feeling passionate about the person I was with but "that's ok, I dont need passionate love". How sad is that? It wasnt enough to like my ex. He did some rotten things to me, things I'm not ready to write on the internet yet. But, I also wasnt in love with him. I just thought nothing else would come along and thought, why not.

"Why not?" lasted me though 5 years. By then I was fed up with settling and missing out on feeling passionate about anything and didnt know how to handle it. So I cheated on him... alot (well, by some standards). I didnt like myself much for that decision, still dont as a matter of fact. And yes, for all you out there who think, "It just happened" or my favorite, "well you cant control who you love..." It was a decision for me to step outside my vows and it was a decision to get on a plane and fly to Atlanta and it was a decision to let that other guy share my bed. I DECIDED and had plenty of moments to stop and say "No, not this way."

I learned that I should have been a better person and been truthful with myself and him and told him things werent working, that I didnt love him. I should have left him first, gotten my marriage settled first, THEN searched for love. Not the other way around. I owed us both that much. Then I could look back on my past without so much regret and shame. I could still hold my head high or at least a little higher than I do now.

Just within that last week or so, I've heard so many stories of this person leaving that person, telling them they just werent in love anymore or marriage wasnt what they expected, or that it was too hard. They went and found someone who made them feel better about themselves or gave them that energy you get from new relationships or whatever it was they felt was missing and they threw away the other person like they were a piece of used toilet paper stuck to their shoe.

They, like me, CHOSE to respond to desire instead of treating their partner with the respect that every human being deserves. Oh how I wish I could rattle their heads together, but the damage is already done. That's why I say I wish I could tell people what I'd learn. But adultery is a sin as old as time... wouldnt be one of the Ten if it werent so. That's the saddest part. I could expose my sins, my shame, and no one would learn a thing. They'd just rationalize why they have the right to go on with their lives they way they want.

It's just so sad.

When I say that I think someone was wrong for cheating on their partner, those who know me ask, "Well what about you and xxxx"? Yeah... I'm a cheater... You'd think that having lived that mistake and being strong enough to admit that how I handled things was a mistake would entitle me with the right to tell someone else they were wrong.

Nope.