Conversations with my mother

I’ve been meaning to blog about the process of turning a large proportion of this blog’s content into a book. I still mean to and will absolutely do so; I just haven’t found the time. May has been such a crazy-busy month.

One of the things I will say about the process in the meantime is that I was introduced to my editor a couple of months ago; the editor has done the first review of Book Draft 1 and sent back comments, which I recently addressed before sending Draft 2 back. In the very first set of comments, a key message to me was that I would have to get written permission from the identifiable people in the book to actually use their words. As you can imagine, as I absorbed this message, I wondered what I had gotten myself into.

One of the identifiable people happens to be my mother, whom I’ve written about and whose words I use in the ‘Permission from my mother’ post (http://remembering-my-journey.blogspot.com/2012/03/permission-from-my-mother.html).

I immediately emailed practically all of the other identifiable people, sharing the excerpts that involved them and asking for their written permission. With my mother, though, I held off until this week. I should also say that the editor’s comments included encouragements to say more, to go deeper on certain issues. After I’d fleshed out ‘Permission from my mother’ a bit, based on the feedback, I was really reluctant to have my mother read it. I just wasn’t absolutely sure how she’d react. I finally forwarded it to my sister on Monday or Tuesday this week, though, and asked her to print it out and have my mother read it for the first time.

By Wednesday, I sent my sister a one-sentence, nervous email, totally on edge:

‘Did she read it?’

She hadn’t.

My sister forgot to give it her. There were just too many distractions that day because my mother had all these impromptu doctor’s appointments, etc.

I got a two-sentence email from my sister the next day, though:

‘I gave it to her this morning. Give her a call.’

Uh-oh.

This was really nerve-wracking.

‘Why?’ I replied. ‘What’d she say?’

‘She was reading it when I left this morning,’ my sister explained.

Oh, Lord.

I took a deep breath and called my mother. She didn’t pick up.

I panicked and called my sister: ‘She didn’t pick up. I hope she’s okay …’

‘Of course, she is,’ my sister said impatiently. ‘She’s probably just on the other line. She’s going to say ‘yes,’ anyway. Calm down.’

I hung up, unconvinced. I decided to focus on my two million deadlines at work and get back to being on edge later.

I called my mother again that evening.

As usual, it took her some seconds to figure out which one of her children was on the phone. This ritual never fails to amuse me. I suppose with six children – four of them, girls who probably sound sort of alike – it’s easy to get us mixed up.

I nervously asked about her health and we chatted about this for about five minutes. This was followed by a pregnant pause. It’s hard to explain why I felt this way – extremely uneasy. I’d asked several other people for permission to use their words from actual conversations we’d had, after all, and they had all said ‘yes.’ I suppose my mother’s approval (which her permission symbolized to me) meant more to me than I ever realized.

‘Well, what did you think?’ I finally asked her – in my mind.

As if she had heard me, she said quietly: ‘I’ve read what you wrote.’

She said it in Igbo, suddenly switching the language with which we had begun our conversation.

I exhaled.

I didn’t reply. I couldn’t reply. I listened carefully with my ears pricked up, trying to use her verbal cues to picture what her expression was like.

After some seconds of silence, she said quietly, in Igbo: ‘You wrote well.’

I exhaled again, blinking back unexpected tears.

I finally spoke out loud: ‘Thank you.’

I said it in English.

I could’ve said much more, but I sensed that it wasn’t necessary. Without being verbose, we were having probably the most important conversation we’d ever had in my life. My sister later said – and I agreed – that those three, simple words (‘You wrote well.’) were high praise, coming from my mother. They actually seemed to hold deeper meaning, in Igbo, than they would have in English. In my mind, in Igbo, the words referred not just to the quality of the writing, but to the importance of the message conveyed by the writing as well.

Ordinarily, the fact that my mother carried out this entire conversation practically, in our language, shouldn’t be remarkable. However, my parents never really spoke to their children in Igbo, and so her doing so now made me wonder if there was any significance. The most my mother would do, typically, is give a, brief, one-sentence instruction in Igbo – you know: ‘Get me this’ or ‘Go get me that.’ So it was very unusual for her to be addressing me in Igbo throughout the conversation.

So unusual was it, that as she spoke, I wondered whether the choice of language was a conscious or sub-conscious decision. I knew the subject of conversation was extremely sensitive for her. It’s one thing to talk about other people, but talking about your own daughter – talking to her about her own divorce must be extremely difficult. And so, at first I thought that in choosing to speak in Igbo (a language she never actually speaks to me in), she was using the language as a sort of barrier between me and her raw feelings. It must have just been too close for comfort – a bit too overwhelming. And then I changed my mind and thought perhaps she just needed to speak in the language she’s most comfortable with, and so her first language made the most sense. I don’t know.

‘In our days,’ she continued, ‘that’s just how it was. You didn’t talk about those things. You couldn’t talk about such things. You just kept quiet. That’s how it was.’

I nodded understandingly on the phone, reaching out with my heart to the woman she once was decades ago as a young bride.

And just as we had made this rare connection, my mother brought us abruptly back to reality (the reality of our relationship), saying:

‘You got what you wanted, now.’

My heart sank momentarily and then I burst out laughing. Good ole Mummy, I thought. You just had to ruin the moment, didn’t you? LOL.

I thought to myself that perhaps this was yet another measure to ensure that we didn’t get too close for comfort. Of course, with my knack for over-interpreting things, I could be totally wrong.

‘I wouldn’t say I got what I wanted. I just did what I had to do. If I had stayed and gotten HIV, what would you have said? That I got what I wanted?’

I listened patiently without surprise as she swung (in her characteristic fashion) like a pendulum, back in my corner, re-hashing stories of the many she knew back home with ‘malaria’ that wasn’t really malaria. I continued to listen, bracing myself for the time when she would, like a pendulum, swing back to her earlier position.

She spent some minutes lamenting over what good people my in-laws were, and how she couldn’t understand how I had hand-picked the ‘wrong’ brother to marry. I patiently pointed out that the problem might not have been that I married the ‘wrong’ man; the problem could simply be that he married the ‘wrong’ woman. It could simply be that his brothers are married to women that are very different from me. Who knows? They may have had similar experiences as me without talking about it. Not to suggest that they have – I’m just saying. I pointed out that in my days, it’s still rare to really talk about these things, so her generation really isn’t all that different. Maybe I’m just an outlier. If I had just kept mum, I would still seem like the ‘right’ woman, and he would seem like the ‘right’ man. What’s happened has happened, so let’s just move on, I urged.

In the end, she didn’t actually indicate verbally that I had her permission to use her words, and although I didn’t actually ask, I sensed that I had it. The next day, my sister emailed me back a scanned copy of the ‘Permission from my mother’ excerpt. My mother’s signature was on it. She had signed it, indicating the date: May 17, 2013.

I marveled that her hand-writing was still the same after all these years. My mother is in her seventies now. Her beautiful, neat, cursive hand-writing stood out from the page almost like art work. I thought about what a stark contrast this was to my absolutely hideous, chicken scratch writing.

My mother and I definitely have our differences. Apart from our shared natural shyness, we are really nothing alike. Both of my parents firmly believe(d) I am my father’s mother reincarnated. This idea is way to spooky for me and far too removed from my own belief system for me to have ever given it much thought. But I am aware that this belief on my parents’ part informed their individual relationships with me. To my father, I was the mother he adored; to my mother, I have always been the mother-in-law whom I never met, but who allegedly made her life a living hell.

All the more reason why I’m grateful we’ve come as far as we have in our relationship ‘second time around.’

Cutting Loose

I was looking for something in my purse without success on Monday. I searched three times and then decided to dump everything out. I came across an envelope and opened it to find – to my surprise – four health insurance cards. They were old health insurance cards which expired two years ago. Typically, I cut up my old insurance cards, so I was wondering how these ones had escaped my attention for two good years. I also noticed that there were four of them, representing what used to be my family of four.

I stared at them and the memories of how I went from four cards two years ago to three cards today came back. I sifted through my emails to reconstruct the pathway that got me here and confirm the dates of each critical incident along the way. This all started with a retirement account:

August 6, 2009: I email HR to find out if I can list my sisters, rather than my spouse, as the primary beneficiaries of my retirement account in case anything happens to me. I am informed that in order to do so, my spouse would have to waive his rights to being the primary beneficiary by signing the ‘spousal consent’ section of the retirement account form. I brace myself and prepare to have this difficult conversation with him. If anything happens to me, my sisters would know exactly what I want for my children (we’re very similar when it comes to what we want for our children, what we think is best for children in general, and how we raise ours), and they’re all so good with money management.

August 7, 2009 (I think): I discuss my plans (about the retirement account changes) with my spouse on the phone. He expresses displeasure. I sense that his displeasure is not about the money per se, but rather about the fact that my actions are a major indication that the relationship is over (access to a partner’s finances can be such a deep sign of intimacy).

August 17, 2009: My spouse sends me an electronic copy of a signed ‘spousal consent’ section. I am very relieved. Relieved that I got it without any major hoopla, and almost proud of his attitude.

November 23, 2010: I email HR to find out if it’ll cost me less to have three members of my family (me and two children) covered by my health insurance rather than four (me, two children, and a husband). I’m told it’ll cost me exactly the same amount, whether we’re a party of three or a party of four. I chicken out from severing this tie with my spouse, reasoning that it’s not costing me anything to just keep things as they are. What if he got sick where he was (God forbid.)? Wouldn’t it be nice for him to be able to come over here and have his health taken care of? Why was I being ‘wicked’? What did I stand to gain from this?

In the weeks to come, I wrestle with this issue. I come to the conclusion that I really shouldn’t spend all this energy trying to take care of someone who didn’t seem to be making any effort to take care of me or our children.

Still, I wait another year before making a move.

December 8, 2011: I email HR asking them to drop my spouse from my medical and dental coverage.

December 9, 2011: They reply saying they will process my request, and that this change will be effective as from January 1, 2012. They remind me that the amount deducted from my salary for this new arrangement will still be the same.  I breathe in and out deeply to try and push down the pangs of guilt.

April 15, 2013: It was about a year and a half later this Monday. The guilt is gone. It must have left long before now – I just haven’t had an opportunity to think about this particular issue in a long time. And he has risen to the occasion. Although he’s had his share of illnesses since December 2011, he has somehow sorted himself out.

The issue, though, was never that he wasn’t capable of doing so. It was that he just didn’t (or wouldn’t). I would like to believe that, in the end, I helped both of us by making this tough decision.

On Monday, April 15, 2013, I reached for the pair of scissors on my desk, cut up the four cards into little pieces, and disposed of them in the bin.

Consequences

Divorce has consequences. Let no one tell you anything different.

But it’s not because  there’s anything special about ‘divorce.’ Divorce in itself holds no unique powers. Divorce is an action or reaction. And any action (or inaction, for that matter) can potentially provoke a result – a consequence. Divorce has consequences. For this reason, a number of people wisely advised me to be very cautious about deciding to get divorced when I was still married.

I want to say upfront that they were right.

Their account was as right as it was incomplete. What they neglected to mention is that marriage has negative consequences, too – an unhealthy marriage, I mean. That angle is usually completely overlooked. It’s really not about two people staying together blindly, with no game plan for making things better.

I’ve talked quite a bit about my children lately. I think that children are probably the number one reason why anyone considering divorce would hesitate and hesitate again. I know it was a major reason for my lengthy, four-year period of making up my mind once and for all.

There are much-cited studies about the short- and long-term impacts of divorce on children. I remember watching The Oprah Show, many years ago, when, prompted by Judith Wallerstein’s findings, Oprah did a segment on children of divorce who were now in their 40s, etc. I watched with horror as grown, middle-aged men and women wept on the show. It simply ripped my heart out. I recall turning to my husband, who was watching along with me, and saying: ‘You know what? Let’s make sure we don’t get divorced, no matter what. If for nothing else but for the sake of this child [we only had one at the time], let’s do whatever we can do stay together.’ 

And, to be fair, we did. For a long time. But we did it blindly. We were visionless. We thought the miracle would stem from ‘staying together,’ and did not really ask ourselves what exactly that meant or could mean. 

I compare my family now to my family then. I just want to say that my family now is not perfect. But it is better.

Not better because there haven’t been challenges and hurdles to overcome – there definitely have been. But better because we are wide awake and actively dealing with reality. Dr. Robin L. Smith says:

“A lot of the time it just feels easier to curl up with a fantasy than to wake up to reality. But once you do wake up, it’s hard to go back to sleep. And the longer you stay in a state of wakefulness, the better and more natural it feels” (Lies at the altar: The truth about great marriages, pg.9).

In my family now – made up of my children and I – we have become much better at staying awake. Daily, we are staring our challenges in the eye and dealing with them with everything we’ve got, knocking them out one at a time. The child that actually remembers having two biological parents under the same roof has had a harder time of it, which is understandable. But even this child acknowledges that there is a lot to be grateful for, that at least one parent is here, and that no matter what, we will get through this together.

Although they have received less publicity, there are also studies concluding that “a ‘healthy marriage’ – and not just any marriage – is optimal for child well-being. Marriages that are violent or high conflict are certainly ‘unhealthy,’ for both children and adults” (http://www.childtrends.org/files/marriagerb602.pdf, p.5).

I imagine fewer studies like these exist because, while a ‘divorced’ status is more cut and dried, identifying respondents who will admit to being in a ‘bad’ marriage must be fraught with challenges. But we all know people who, as children, wished or prayed that their parents would just get divorced already because of the turbublence in the home.

In church today, I was thinking about how my family’s daily challenges have strengthened me, how much they have taught me, and how grateful each little victory along the way makes me feel. I reflected on how much my children have enriched my life. I cannot imagine what it would be like to be without them, as tough as it can be to be a single parent. I started to feel a bit selfish, actually, wondering how their dad coped with the reality of living without them, unable to watch them grow, and I thought back to see if I simply made it impossible for him to have them. Then I reminded myself that where I come from, children ‘belong’ to their father, so to speak, and any father that really wants the responsibility of taking care of his children barely has to raise a finger to make that happen legally. I was filled with a complex feeling that I get now and then – a combination of immense gratitude that my children’s father did not fight to have them and a slight sense of bewilderment about why he did not.

I suppose it goes back to the fact that he knew their mother was ‘capable’ and that they would probably be better off in a stable, predictable home where their needs would be taken care of. I might have made the same decision if I were in his shoes. Why should I cause my children discomfort just to prove a point? Or maybe our cultural background makes it ‘easier’ for a man to sit back and wait patiently for his children to make the transition to adulthood, reasoning that they will always eventually seek out their father when they’re independent. Whatever the reason(s), my feeling of pure gratitude came back in the end. I’m just grateful that I have what I have.

I want to be careful not to sugarcoat things, though. The consequences of divorce can be horrible. This is true. The consequences of a bad marriage can be horrible. This is no less true. Let’s not conveniently leave that part out simply because it doesn’t quite fit with our philosophy of life. Two different sets of consequences, but consequences just the same.  

I took my pick.

A Teachable Moment

As I huffed and puffed and got my workout in this morning, my daughter watched me patiently and said with a hopeful look in her big, beautiful eyes: ‘I wish I could have waffles for breakfast.’

And since I’m the Good Fairy, I thought about whether I could make this happen or not. I don’t remember the last time I saw my waffle maker. I wonder if I still have one. Did I ever really have one?? If so, it must be hidden at the back of one of those kitchen cabinets. So we reached a compromise and agreed that I could make pancakes instead.

We mixed the batter together and then I stood in front of the stove, flipping one pancake after the other, while she sat at the counter, munching on the first one.

Out of the blue, she said with puzzlement in her voice: ‘I don’t get it. Why don’t animals read the Bible?’

I hesitated for a moment, and looked over my shoulder at her, wanting to make sure I heard her correctly. Then I started cracking up! (Have human beings finished reading the Bible for animals to now come and start reading?) I must have laughed for a good minute right from my belly.  She stared back at me with an earnest look in those big, beautiful eyes, and so I fought to regain my composure.

‘How do you know animals don’t read the Bible?’ I asked, stifling a giggle.

‘I just noticed,’ she replied.

‘Have you noticed animals don’t read, period?’

She thought about it for a second. ‘Yeah …’

‘Why do you think they should read, though?’ I asked, wondering what all this was about.

‘Well, if they don’t read the Bible, how are they supposed to know how to get to Heaven?’

Good point! I thought to myself.

‘I don’t think animals need to worry about that,’ I said, flipping another pancake over.

She thought about this for a moment. As I type this, I now wonder if she was worried about her dead gold fish. Most likely. She did mention yesterday that during Science class, the teacher showed them the heart of a dead fish, and this made her remember Dory and Sam (http://remembering-my-journey.blogspot.com/2012/08/the-gift.html).

‘I was just wondering,’ she said, ‘If God created Heaven for us and the animals, who did He create hell for?’

Hmm! This was getting ‘deep’ now.

‘Who told you God created Heaven for us and the animals?’ I asked, wondering if this was a new Sunday School theme in her class.

‘No one. I just guessed.’

‘Well,’ I began carefully, ‘Who did God create hell for? Certainly not for the animals, who aren’t capable of making a decision about whether they want God in their lives or not.’ I was dissatisfied with my own weak answer, but didn’t feel like I needed to break things down any further.

She thought about this for a moment.

‘If God created Heaven for us and the animals, why did He create hell for us and not the animals, too?’

Ha!

I paused for a moment and wondered: Should I go into the intricacies of Christine doctrine – the fall of man, redemption through Christ, salvation by grace through faith, free will, etc.?

Nah.

As I type this, I’m cracking my brain, trying to remember what response I gave her that she found satisfactory. I honestly can’t recall right now. Whatever it was, let’s just say I was #stumped, people!

If you have any age-appropriate answers for a kindergartner, puh-LEEZE share.

Maybe I missed an opportunity to teach my daughter some deep stuff – I don’t know. I’m sure there’ll be many more opportunities, by God’s grace. Our conversation this morning reinforced certain lessons and reflection points for me, though:

1. God cares about the animals. Last month, this occurred to me when I read something in Jonah 4:11, where God said: ‘But Nineveh has more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left, and many cattle as well. Should I not be concerned about that great city?’
2. If God cares about the animals, then He sure cares about me. Nuff said.
3. I need to be more conscious of Heaven … and of hell.
4. Critical-thinking skills rock. My daughter’s critical-thinking skills displayed this morning made me marvel and made me proud. I think God is proud when we think critically, too. God’s decision to create human beings (and not robots) was a deliberate one. And He has all the answers we need.
5. If I consider myself a Christian, I really do need to read the Bible to get information on how to live.
6. I have not read my Bible today. I’ve worked out, made breakfast, had breakfast, taken a shower, talked to my children, checked and responded to email, and blogged this morning. No Bible-reading yet. I’ll get to it, Lord, I promise – right after I post this.

  

In conclusion, have I ever mentioned my daughter is a little chatterbox?

She chattered to herself all the while as I typed this up. As I finished up this post, her voice rang out at me with her millionth question of the morning:

‘Mommy? How come your eyebrows never get tangled?’

(She had just finished doing her hair. She also has had some sort of weird eyebrow fetish since she was a toddler. She strokes one eyebrow when she’s about to fall asleep.)

How will the answer to this question enhance your life? I wondered internally.

At least I had an immediate answer for this question. Out loud, I said: ‘Because our eyebrows are much thinner than the hair on our heads, so our eyebrows can’t really get tangled.’

She thought about this for a moment, and then replied, satisfied:

‘Oh.’

Random niceties

I can live for two months on a good compliment.

---- Mark Twain

Someone sent me a sweet text message last week.

“I must say you are indeed a wonderful person. Thanks so much for giving me your attention.”

Okay, looking at it now almost a week later, maybe it wasn’t ‘out of this world,’ but the gesture meant a lot to me and the message warmed my heart. Partly because it was unexpected and partly because this is someone I really admire and I honestly didn’t see spending a chunk of my time on her project as a big deal.

And then my son got back from a 10-day school field trip yesterday. He came into my room with a wrapped present – for me! I was so, so touched and took it, protesting about his spending his pocket money on a random gift when it was meant for purchasing other things while on the trip.

My heart melted and my eyes welled up with tears after I’d opened up the wrapping paper and discovered what the gift was:

A jewelry box!

A beautiful, glossy jewelry box with two exotic birds painted on it, perched on a tree. A jewelry box with a sharp mirror on the inside and a good deal of space in there for most of my earrings!

I was beyond shocked. I marveled at his good taste – and at the fact that he knew me so well! I asked him how come, out of everything he could’ve chosen as a gift, he chose this. He replied that he noticed my old jewelry box was ‘sort of ghetto.’

Excuse me? Can you imagine?

He was right, though, so we had a good laugh about that and I gave him a big hug. We talked for about 20 minutes about the trip, and then I shooed him into the bathroom to take a shower and scrub himself thoroughly with a wash cloth. He was reeking. (Don’t these teenagers take baths on field trips?)

As he sang in the shower, I transferred my pieces of jewelry to their new home: two necklaces (which I neither notice nor wear), lots of earrings, and my wedding ring.

He mentioned he bought a gift for his sister, too. It turned out to be a cute, immaculate white stuffed animal-cum-pencil case/purse thingy. It’s a polar bear. Too cute! Let’s just say I was blessed that he remembered us in this way – and so was my daughter.

All this got me thinking of The Five Love Languages identified by renowned marriage counselor, Dr. Gary Chapman. Turns out that this is another one of my books that has disappeared into thin air. So I got online and was pleasantly surprised to find that you can take a short, 5-minute test to identify your primary love language right here: http://www.5lovelanguages.com/profile/.

The website explains that “The Love Language Profile … will give you a thorough analysis of your emotional communication preference. It will single out your primary love language, what it means, and how you can use it to connect with those closest to you and effectively enhance the relationships in your life.” It continues: “When we think of love languages, our immediate thought may be of a romantic relationship. However, we express love and affection in a variety of contexts and relationships. As you work through the profile, think of a significant person with whom you are close: a boyfriend or girlfriend, a good friend, a parent, a colleague, etc.”

The 5 Love Languages in alphabetical order are as follows:

• Acts of Service
• Physical Touch
• Quality Time
• Receiving Gifts
• Words of Affirmation

  

At the end of my test, my primary love language turned out to be (surprise, surprise): Words of Affirmation.

It was fun for me to see how I’ve changed since I bought The Five Love Languages book in my first year of marriage. Back then, I remember there being a close tie between ‘Words of Affirmation’ and ‘Acts of Service.’ Today, ‘Acts of Service’ came 4^th out of the five languages. That was really interesting to me, and I wondered if it had to do with the fact that I’ve done so much on my own for so many years that ‘Acts of Service’ as a love language is just less relevant.

So I’ve changed and I haven’t changed. I’m still a sucker for words. Words of affirmation.

What about you? What’s your primary love language?

Don’t be shy – do tell!

The Elephant in the Room

Written on April 8, 2013, but posted today since the transformer in my neighborhood blew out/up and I still have no electricity!!

I got an email message from my sister just before 1 pm today. The subject title read “Rick Warren’s son.” My heart sank ever before I read the actual message. I’ve never read any of the best-selling Purpose-Driven Life books, but I’m a Rick Warren fan. I get his brief devotionals electronically each day. In fact, one of them popped in my inbox a few minutes before I received my sister’s email. His simplicity comes through in these devotionals and I really like the way he demystifies the Christian walk with his simple teachings. Although I haven’t read his books, like most of the world, I’m aware that in 2005, he returned the salary he had earned over the last quarter of a century to the church that he pastors and subsequently stopped receiving a salary. I read on Wikepedia that he and his wife are now ‘reverse tithers’ – meaning they give away 90% of their income and live off 10%.

When I saw my sister’s email come in, I braced myself for bad news. We all usually try to give our children our best, having no idea what they will give us in return. What could it be? What is it now? I wondered. Drugs? An arrest?

Her message read: “27 – committed suicide. He shot himself – he had suffered from mental illness and depression.”

I was shocked and saddened beyond words about Matthew Warren’s suicide. Who knew that the son of this world-renowned pastor struggled with this serious health issue?

His parents, Rick and Kay Warren, were so gracious in their account of their son’s struggles – gracious and simple. One news article reports the following: “After a ‘fun evening’ as a family, Warren said his son took his life ‘in a momentary wave of despair at his home.’ Warren said he marveled at his son’s courage to keep on living in his darkest moments despite his pain. ‘I’ll never forget how, many years ago, after another approach had failed to give relief, Matthew said, ‘Dad, I know I’m going to heaven. Why can’t I just die and end this pain?’ Warren wrote. ‘But he kept going for another decade.’” (http://abcnews.go.com/US/pastor-rick-warren-overwhelmed-support-sons-suicide/story?id=18901130#.UWPW-6JmiSo)

At the beginning of this year, someone I know of that has the same sort of health struggle tried to describe to me what it’s like. What it’s like to be a devout Christian physician – a consultant psychiatrist at that – while living with clinical depression herself. How debilitating it can be. How frustrating it can be to look and seem “highly functional” to everyone else (You have a medical degree, after all, so how can anything be ‘wrong with you’?), and yet feel like you are simply unable to cope with life sometimes, to get out of bed even. How you begin to keep this reality to yourself after a while – especially when your diagnosis becomes cause for suspicion among your fellow Christians: Have you really prayed about this thing? Have you gone for deliverance? How much have you really fasted about this? Whatsoever you allow on earth shall be allowed in Heaven – why are you ‘allowing’ this?

I understood completely. Well, not ‘completely,’ as I cannot claim to know what it’s like to live with mental illness. But I do know what it’s like to sincerely believe God heals (whether it’s a physical or emotional health issue, for instance, or a marriage) , while not necessarily experiencing that healing in certain areas of my own life, for whatever reason. And then what it’s like to be questioned for making peace with things the way they are – even if that wasn’t how I originally wanted them to be.   

It’s interesting to me how, even among many of our health professionals in Africa, mental health issues are often the furthest thing from our minds – even when they are staring us in the face. We tend to think of this particular health issue in extremes: if you haven’t completely stripped and made a concerted effort to “enter the market,” then there’s no way you could have some sort of mental health challenge.

My sister says I’m always trying to “diagnose” people, and that not everything boils down to mental health. Some people are just plain mean (for instance), and that’s that. I don’t disagree. I just don’t think that’s all there is to the story. I would argue that a considerable proportion of our relationships are the worse for this sort of mentality. Many mental health issues simply go under the radar, resulting in situations where there are seemingly no solutions. If you can’t get down to the root of the problem, after all, everything else you try to do is a waste of time.

I wish we could talk more openly about this issue. Not for the sake of talking. But so that the understanding, compassion, and strategies required to deal with the issue are available – both for the sufferers, and for their families and loved ones who suffer along with them, oftentimes having no clue what is really going on.

As stunned as I am by Matthew Warren’s death, I’m impressed by his ability to acknowledge his own health challenge and to keep on seeking care for it, when he was alive. I am glad that at least he had parents and a family that took the time to understand his illness and that helped him live with it until the age of almost 30. I’m also impressed with how they are handling this tragedy. How, through it all, they are still simply grateful for the life of this child that they were privileged to parent.

We don’t always know the answers. It’s not always about a deliverance prayer/session. Some things only come out by fasting and prayer … and some things (for whatever reason) simply don’t ‘come out.’ And when they don’t – if they don’t – where does that leave us, if we have built our faith on the idea that things must turn out exactly the way we’ve planned?  

My first words to my sister in response to her email were: Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no. This life!

And then, after a few minutes of reflection, and of seeing how Rick Warren was responding to this tragedy through his tweets and via news articles online, I wrote back to her, saying: “A Christian walk is a Christian walk. It helps make the inexplicable bearable.”

I clicked ‘send’ and the following words came to me:

Our God is able to save us, but even if He does not …

I looked it up to remind myself of exactly what Daniel 3: 17-18 says in the NIV:

If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to deliver us from it, and he will deliver us from Your Majesty’s hand. But even if he does not, we want you to know, Your Majesty, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up.

God help us all.

The Payoff

In the next week or so, I will hopefully make the last payment toward my student loans. It’s hard to believe; I’ve had them for what seems like forever.

I made up my mind 9 months ago to actually pay attention to that area of my life in order to address it and put it behind me once and for all. At the time, I had an 8-month goal for paying it off, but life happened (I mean, REALLY happened) and I had a disappointing setback. My 8-month goal was ambitious, but doable. In paying more attention to things, I realized I really could pay more than the monthly minimum if I simply made up my mind to. And so I began to pay about 5 times the monthly minimum almost feverishly, suddenly having this strong urge to get this repulsive, creepy, crawly creature off me.

The interesting thing about my student loans is that I didn’t take them because I needed financial aid as a grad student. Thankfully, I got tuition remission from the program I was enrolled in, so there was no justification for racking up debt. I took the loans in my second or third year of marriage. My ‘dirty little secret’ is that I applied for them in order to plough them into different ventures my husband at the time was involved in. I took three of them, one after the other. Sometimes because he asked, and other times because, well, I just did.  

I took a whopping total of USD 24,000 in student loans. Whopping for pretty much any student, and whopping for me, even now, many years after graduation.

The reality of all this is hard to overlook when you’re actually making an effort to pay down the bill – the weight of what this means is hard ignore. But after I transferred the last payment, realizing I had only one more left to go, I paused for a minute and really thought about it. Then I emailed my sister with the words ‘almost done …’ as the subject heading.

Some excerpts from the email conversation:

Me:        … So explain to me, B: What possessed me to borrow $24,000 as a student – money I didn’t need

to borrow, just in order to give it to a man? …

Her:       That was your path to walk and you have learned the lessons from that journey. … Congrats on

                getting this loan paid off; so proud of you!

To say that my actions were not wise is an understatement (as a matter of fact, I briefly thought about using the title ‘Dumb and Dumber’ for this post). But there’s got to be much more to it than that because I think very few people on earth can actually be categorized as truly ‘dumb.’  And so, this week, I’ve been wondering what was in it for me. What was the payoff for doing this? What sort of emotional capital did I believe that this action would afford, and why did I feel the need to invest in it?

I have not completely answered these questions and I’m not sure if it still matters a whole lot because I feel like I’m in a very different place now from where I was back then.

Being transparent about it all has been a big help, I must say. I never would’ve come this far in making a huge dent in the debt had I not announced to the blogosphere that I was going to do it. Had I not felt like a million eyes were watching and waiting to see if I really meant business.

My sister is right. I’ve learned my lessons.  I’ve paid the price – a very high price. I’ve paid every penny (almost). And I can hardly wait to post the words ‘PAID IN FULL!’ in a week or so.

Hopefully.