faith and value

The sure sign that we consider it cold outside.
Right now we have one warm room in the house.
It's a wonderful kind of warm. It even smells warm.
But not the dry smell of a heater when it comes on the first time in the winter, but of wood smoke and autumn. It will get down to thirty-five degrees tonight, so I'm going to try to get the stove very hot before going to bed. The fire will be out by morning, but I'm hoping for enough hot coals to restart it before the children get up for Church.

The temperature is expected to climb quickly back up to the seventies this week, so we'll have time to get more wood cut for the winter. My oldest son was able to get a pretty good stack started with an ax.

 But the remaining will get done faster with a chainsaw.

Before the mobile home next to us was bought by the present owners, the tenants living there took it upon themselves  to start clearing the fence line on my property. They assumed it was an easement between our properties, but the truth is the entire line of trees and brush was on my side of the property line. I pulled up in my driveway one day to find them tending a large bonfire made of hardwoods from my yard. I stopped them before they burned this tree, but it's been laying in the yard ever since, waiting for us to get the chainsaw working. Once cut and aged a few months, it will keep one end of the house warm a few weeks.

We had the wood stove installed the first winter we lived here. When searching for a home, I was drawn toward the houses that had stoves for heat. As it turns out, we settled on a house without a stove, but also without a heat source for part of the house. After much research and store searching I bought the largest stove I could afford and had it installed. Who would have thought there are people who make a living selling and installing wood stoves in south east Texas?

Our first winter, I purchased wood. The man who installed the stove referred to me a man in the another town, and I had to pay a pretty penny. Later that same winter I was able to get a load free from another man who had removed a large oak from a yard and allowed my children and me to gather the smaller pieces and fill the back of my Suburban. I admit I was concerned about the next winter and what it would cost in wood.
When the next winter came, a friend loaded up my truck with wood he had purchased for me, without telling me. Soon after, he lost a tree to a storm, and he cut the tree for me and kept us warm all season. I felt protected and cared for. This winter, we have enough wood  left from this tree and from our property to keep us warm all winter, once we get it cut to fit the stove.
I have been told that faith is a gift. I have prayed for this gift, but it eludes me. I profess the Creed willingly, but under the veil I wear to Mass is always a bit of doubt.
After two winters of wood being provided, I have no doubt that we'll continue to be warmed by our stove in the future, but I'm not sure I'd be so confident if I had not already had two winters of provisions. Sometimes, it's not my lack of faith in a higher power, but my insecurity in my own worth that keeps me from believing that all be well.

For twenty-five years, I heard "you can take care of yourself" with regards to everything from filling up my truck with fuel to walking to it in a parking garage late at night in the fourth largest city in the US.  Not only was my basic need of feeling safe and protected not met, but what I heard in his words, "you can take care of yourself", and what I felt every time I walked alone to my car in the dark was, "you are not valuable enough for me to be concerned about you or take care of you." Not valuable enough in the eyes of my spouse- in the most intimate of human relationships. If I didn't feel valued by my husband with whom I'd spent all of my adult life, how could I feel valued by anyone?
I've learned that yes, I can take care of myself, or, at least, can find people to help me get things done. 
But the idea that I am worthy  to have my needs met -even by the One who created me-  is taking a little more time for me to learn.
As time goes on, and as I receive love from others, I am learning that it was not my lack of worth that prevented my former spouse from valuing me, but his own inadequacies. But as my spiritual director recently told me, my biggest wounds are not what has been done to me, but what my reaction is, and only I can control my reactions.  Getting out of that relationship was the necessary step that stopped me from receiving the message from my husband that I'm not valued.Clearly, I don't need him to fill my truck, walk with me in the dark, or chop wood for my winters.
It's now up to me to allow my heart to be loved and heal, and trust God to take care of the winter cold.

the luxury of feeling

It hit me this week and it started to soak in. My son had cancer.
Of course this is old news. Seems silly to get 'hit' by it now, but, I did.
He's been in 'permanent' remission for a year and a half. That means for a year and a half he has had no spinal taps, no infusions, no daily chemo-pills, no port-catheter in his chest. After almost four years of steroids, he no longer takes them every weekend. His anti-cancer regimen now consists of seeing the doctor every two months for a check up and blood labs, and taking care of his health by eating right and exercising. When he gets a fever, we don't have to go to the emergency room; he simply rests until it passes, like his siblings. He is completely normal as far as we can tell, but suddenly, I realized how sick he was.
I don't think I had time to really think about it. I know I didn't have time to feel it.

Part of having a child with cancer was knowing other parents who had children with cancer. Every time we were in the hospital for infusions, or with fever, I would meet a parent who had a child who was sicker, or who had lower chances of survival. Perhaps her child had a tumor that couldn't be removed, or his baby had spent the first six months of her life there on the 9th floor.
Her child was dying and not going home from the hospital, so my son's 80% chance of survival made me one of the lucky ones.
His child was getting radiation again, so I wasn't about to complain about another series of shots in the legs.
They had to drive from another state, so I couldn't talk about being tired, or complain about driving the 90 mile round trip to the hospital three times in a week.
Besides, it wasn't about me.  His cancer was never about me. And there was always someone else who had it worse, so I put my feelings aside.

During  the forty months of treatment, my son's father attended two outpatient visits. I was the primary caregiver; for whatever reason, he couldn't do it. This worked for me. I often wished he was able to support me, or at least ask his family who lived locally to help me, but he just checked out emotionally. I did what I needed to do. It came naturally to me. Taking care of my son was my instinct and it brought me joy to be able to do it.  But that doesn't mean I always felt strong. One late night after more than two years into it, I spilled out some of my feelings about my day at the hospital. It was a rough day. I vented. I felt bad. I was tired. I complained. The word he used was 'bitching' and he told me to stop. I asked him to just listen. I asked him to love me, by listening. He said he was loving me. He said it was "tough love" and that was what I needed. I never tried again.
I already knew that because I was the only one, I had to be the strong one.  I couldn't even talk about it, or even feel about it. 'Strong' was all I could afford to feel.

During the last year of the big guy's treatment, I officially became a single mother. I became close friends with someone what told me he could see strength in me, and was drawn to my ability to handle my stressful situation. I was at the beginning of my legal divorce, houseless, taking care of my son as well as four others, and yet I was cheerful and optimistic for the most part. He saw a strong woman. I didn't feel strong, I felt tired.

Fast forward to nine months after my divorce and depression clobbered me. I was seeing a therapist from the women's shelter, and she suggested I see a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist offered meds, and I told her I would think about it, but I really didn't want to go that route. My plan was to get back to eating right and taking my vitamin D  and exercising as well as having more spiritual directions and frequent reception of the Sacraments. 
I turned to my friend and made the confession that in truth I wasn't strong, and I wasn't able to handle the stress. I was no longer cheerful and I wasn't always optimistic. In short, I wasn't the girl he thought I was. I told him  that I was considering taking medication for my depression.  He assured me that he still saw that same girl, depressed or not, on medication or not, even if I couldn't see her.

I decided to not take any medication for the depression, and my therapist agrees that I made the right choice. I've taken more time in self-care and have been vocal about my depression, reaching out to a few close friends who know of my situation. I've been able to avoid that downward spiral that landed me in the psychiatrist's office.
 Maybe this full circle is why the cancer suddenly hit me.  Maybe now I'm ready to feel all those things that I didn't have the luxury of feeling while living them. I do believe though, that it is there as a cancer mom where I find who I truly am. 
That was me in the waiting room alone while my son was in surgery getting the catheter placed in his jugular for chemo-therapy. That was me holding his foot and maintaining eye contact with him when he stopped breathing during one of his treatments, and that was me running as fast as I could, trying to keep up with the trauma staff as they raced his bed to the emergency room. That was me counting pills every morning and night until he was old enough and rehearsed enough to do it himself, and that was me waiting again on the same surgery floor when the port-catheter was removed at the end of three and a half years.
There I was, living every moment, telling myself that 'strong' was the only acceptable feeling because there wasn't time for anything else and because everywhere I looked there was someone who had it worse.

I can see how getting "hit" with the memory of son's diagnosis as if  it were just happening is an opportunity for me. I now give myself permission to feel the hurt, the scared, the tired, and the lonely. In doing so, suddenly those feelings don't seem too overwhelming. More importantly, they don't contradict the strength that is always in me even when I don't feel it.

around about

Part of our healing was to find this house. We were without a walled home of our own for several months and lived with friends, and in the homes of other friends while they were on holiday. The children and I moved a total of seven times before finding this fixer-upper.
This is my view of my back yard as I sit at the table on the stone patio. That patio was one of the big things that drew me to this house. That, and the fact that we could afford the house. And we couldn't find another one. So we bought this one.
That's about three acres you can see there. Behind that row of trees along the line with the stable is another acre or so, with a pond. With the side yard and the front, I have a total of five acres. It's a dream come true for me. Though sometimes if feels more like a nightmare.

The grass was knee deep in some places and higher in others a couple of weeks ago. Our riding lawnmower, which to be honest is not hefty enough for this terrain when it is working, has been at my friend's shop for months. Before it broke, there was heavy rain and we weren't able to mow, so between the two issues, the fields became very overgrown.
 My oldest son was able to cut the highest grass with a scythe. To create some walking paths, he scythed and then went back over the areas with a string trimmer. This was also a necessary chore to be done around the aerobic water sprayers which had become clogged in mud.

Several weeks ago, I stopped at a neighbor's house and asked if he would be willing to mow with his tractor. I offered to pay him, and after surveying the yard, he told me he'd come back with a price. He never did. I left notes at his gate, but he never responded. 
After sitting empty for months, the mobile home next door was finally bought, and as luck- or divine providence- would have it, the new owner owns a lawn care business. He accepted my offer of payment to mow the back area, and although it took a few days, he got it done. As you can see in the photo below, it's cut quite high in some places, but when you're starting from a foot deep, you can't cut it 'suburb lawn short', especially when the ground is uneven from crawfish mounds.

The edge of the property is quite thick with brambles and shrubs and I'd like to trim it back to the fence line.  I looked into renting a brush hog, but apparently out here in the boonies one does not rent a brush hog. If you need one, you own one. I'm not in the position to buy a $1200 machine so it looks like a few weekends of manual labor with a machete and the scythe.
.

Walking back to the pond, I turned back and faced the house.  If you look closely, you can see a radio tower in the fog. A very dear friend of mine used to gaze at this tower and imagine base jumping from it. Seeing it today, (or not seeing it) I am terrified by that thought.

The back field behind the row of trees is easier to walk. The grass is not nearly as thick and the ground is more even and firmer.

There are remnants of a fence around most of the property, but it won't hold critters in. Horses, maybe, but it certainly does not keep our dog in. She bolts every chance she gets and she gets a chance every time someone leaves a door open.  The property would be great for horses, a mule, sheep...  anything that eats grass.

I made stacks of sticks and branches around the perimeter of the yard on my morning walk, and my sons came behind me the next day, gathered the wood and burned it.  

The pond is surrounded by bush and trees. I think it has a lot of potential. What it needs is ducks to eat the duck weed. What we need is duck eggs. Pond needs ducks, we need duck eggs...

We need a fence.

The fog is clearing and now you can see the radio tower.

I'm still not sure it's safe for base jumping, but if my friend says he's going to do it, I'll trust his judgement and I'll be there to watch, and sneak him in my back door to hide from getting arrested.

Some of the wood that was gathered was large enough to keep for firewood to heat the house. We have enough for next winter, but it has to be cut to fit the wood stove. I have not taken our chain saw out of the case yet. That's a little scary to me and I'm waiting until my son-in-law has a weekend to help with it.

On the opposite side of the property is a trash heap in a hole that fills with water. Our original plan was to get the trash cleaned out with a tractor of some sort, but that was when my son was smaller. His growth in two years is mind numbing. He was still on chemo when we moved here, and his growth was slow going. Now that he is in permanent remission, he seems to be growing

exponentially.
He was on steroids and chemo-therapy for forty months. I watched him play with boys a year younger who were a foot taller. I'll never know if his late growth spurt was a result of the chemo, the cancer, or genetics. It doesn't matter; he said he could clean out the hole, and he did.

The pile of greenery is what he scythed from the edge of the hole, and the wooden beams are what he pulled from the hole. 

The next step is to find a mini-bulldozer of some sort to push a load of dirt into the hole. The dirt is presently piled next to the hole; I had it delivered when it was available for cheap, so I'd have it

ready when the hole was emptied.

 

Using the scythe again, he cleaned up the area around the horse shed. Our next [huge] goal is to clean out the inside of the stable to make it habitable for animals. It is sturdier than it looks in this photo.

Both boys worked on the side fence line that separates our house from the new neighbors. The electric company already sneaked onto the property and sprayed the vegetation to stop it from growing up into the power lines. Although I was quite irritated that they did this without warning, I admit it is easier to clear away dead and dried brush than green growing brush.

 

So, the fence is not up, the yard is a never ending issue with mowing until we get the fence so that we can contain grass-eating critters. There is still the issue of the duck weed on the pond, and the brush around the perimeter. But we've moved ahead and started planting flowers, bulbs, a few vegetables and trees. Our citrus trees, though small, stand and grow as  symbol of our hope in this home. We're learning our limitations, and we're pushing them. After being pushed by so many things, it feels good to give life a little push back.