Im Gonna Let It Shine or How to Love Your Enemy

How do you love someone who hates you? I went about looking for answers in the new media inspiration station, Pinterest and BrainyQuotes and found the same answer. "Love your enemies" from the old inspiration station The Bible.

I recently went to a funeral that moved me so deeply I couldn’t stop crying for most of the ceremony. This perplexed me and was embarrassing because although I had met this most beautiful and kind lady who passed away on only one occasion, I couldn’t say I was crying for her. I was crying for someone else. Me. Someone who felt like God was absent in her life and abandoned her, even though she could see all the beautiful gifts he gave her on a daily basis. If God was a boyfriend, Id say he was trying way too hard! Listen buddy, enough with the last minute miracles, the amazing friends, the continuous flow of job opportunities, the unexpected kindness of strangers in a pinch, the generosity and charity, the laughter, the beautiful and talented children I certainly don’t deserve. If this was candy and roses, Id weigh 500 pounds and die of a hay fever attack in my living room. Don’t you think you are overdoing it, God? I don’t know if I LIKE YOU like you. I do receive these things from God every day and HAVE every day since the time when I decided I "lost faith."

When Ryan was one, seven years ago, he contracted Bacterial Meningitis. The week before... his dad left. When children with Down Syndrome are babies, they often have fragile health. Ryan was constantly in the hospital for the usual Down Syndrome baby stuff, pneumonia, aspiration, reflux...blah blah blah. I can say that now that its over but it was quite harrowing while it was happening. Like doing the Tough Mudder. Its hard emotionally, physically, its dirty and you want to quit. When its over you take pictures of yourself with dirt all over your face and big smiles. That’s how Ryans stint with illness was. We have lots of pictures of us with dirt on our face (hospital rooms in those darn tiger pajamas they give kid patients that are always too big) but don’t really remember how tough it was once he recovered.

Its funny that most people look at Down Syndrome kids as just happy go lucky and sweet. They are also monster-truck-flannel-wearing-hillbilly-strong fighters who drive over things you cant imagine health wise and barely raise a fuss or leave a dent. My boy will always be Ryan the Lion. So the week Ryan was admitted to ICU and his dad left was also the week Ryan almost died in the hospital and I spent every breathing, stressful, terrifying moment in the Intensive care unit for two months with a man who clearly hated me. During that time, I was numb to the core and don’t really remember much except two wine-in-your-white-carpet-stain moments aka never going away. The first was descending the elevator in utter silence with my husband to wait for Ryan to come to and wanting to reach out and grab his hand and say, we can get through this but instead feeling completely awkward and stunned like those people you see after a tornado digging through the rubble of their belongings and clinging to a ragged inconsequential item that WAS their life. There is no loneliness more profound than being right beside someone in physical presence only and desperately longing for a lost connection. The second was when Ryan had a horrible reaction to anesthesia and nurses were rolling around too quickly for it to be a casual event. I asked my sweet cousin, a nurse, if Ryan was going to die and she looked me in the eye and said," I don’t know." I have never respected another human being more for that moment. She loved me enough to be honest when others were avoiding eye contact and saying not to worry. That moment profoundly changed me, so, really, it was also a clear and joyful gift from God to me. Honesty. Love. A chance to brace myself emotionally, Someone who saw me. I wasn’t alone at all.

Back to the funeral...so since then, pity party in tow, I still pray to God but I have this little flickering flame of untrust. I realized I was crying so hard at a pseudo stranger's funeral because I really needed to let go of that untrust. My friend's Mom who passed away gave that gift to me that day and I know it would please her to know that. I know she had a hand in it. According to everyone who spoke at her funeral she had a light in her that can only be described as "hide it under a bushel OH NO! Im gonna let it shine!" I always loved that song in Sunday School. Bringing this full circle to love your enemies, he STILL hates me with a venom Im not sure Ill ever understand. How do I love him, my "enemy?"

Let that shit go...to be crass. Let it shine!

Im not good at letting shit go. Im a full bodied, hot blooded woman. We never really let it go, but I guess Im going to LOVE his kids so much it wont matter that their Dad only sees the negative in me and trust me, there are many negatives to see. I curse when frustrated. As I always say, I COULD turn to crack to relieve stress, so its just swear words, folks! I yell A LOT when Im tired. Ironically, my kids find great joy in my tantrums. "You're funny, Mom!" That’s also a gift from the LIGHTEN UP ANGEL. Hes floating down from heaven in the form of kids laughter saying," you look like an idiot." It works. I laugh at myself a lot! Adding to my negative list, I can be petty and dwell on perceived hurts too long. I also need too much validation about my choices. Thank God I have THE most amazing friends ever!

How do you love your enemies? Don’t see yourself the way they see you. That’s a hard one. How do I love someone who hates me? Let them live their life and try to support what you can. Its like when your kids puts on a ridiculous outfit and you still say they look nice because that’s what being a mom is about...building up. Loving your enemies is not helping them tear down when there are ways to build up. It will be hard. Wish me luck!

The Day Ryan was Born or How I Became an Island

August 29th was the perfect storm. Up until then, my life had been a sea of emotion, churning doubts about my marriage, the tides of being a stay at home Mommy ebbing between joy and boredom and the great hope of my new son looming on the horizon like a sunrise. It would all come together that day.I had never had a planned C-section and because of fate, I still haven’t.  Ryan decided to come a week earlier than the orderly, planned out arrangement we thought we had made with the hospital and our world. Those things never work out (pacts with the Universe). For the first time, my flair for drama failed me. I was not worried about the contractions I was having all morning. I had fallen for that trick too many times. The ruse where you called an annoyed on call Doctor, described your symptoms and they send you to the Hospital to be told you need to drink more water. The one time I vowed to be laid back was the time I was wrong. I was in labor and since I ate a cracker in the waiting room, the main event would have to wait six hours because of the anesthesia and other precautions. This was the calm before the storm.

 I guess what I remember the most and I use the term remember ridiculously lightly. This “rememberance” is seared onto my heart like acid burns an image to be printed. I remember how tangible my husband’s joy was. He was about to have his first son! His eyes were shining with a radiance I had never seen before. He was joking around and laughing and filled with a lightness that made me step away from the room like I was in an out-of-body experience and see him as a spectator. He deserved that moment because in a few hours he was going to carry the entire burden of telling everyone we loved that Ryan was born with Down Syndrome.  My family (immediate and not) told me in hindsight that he cried so hard when he told them the news. That he sobbed uncontrollably and they were stunned as to how to comfort him because it was so heartbreaking  and uncharacteristic. I never saw him that way because in his mind I needed to be protected from his emotion or shunned from it like catty schoolgirls ousting a weaker student. We had already begun the separation emotionally, we just didn’t know it.
On the operating table my predominant thought was that I had just been abducted by aliens. The room was stark and cold and sterile. The lights were shining in my eyes and the Hospital staff would appear above my head with their masks and business-like questions. I was terrified. This is not what I pictured. There was nothing endearing about this scene. Can I get a do-over and just push my little boy out?
When they presented Ryan to me, I recall the absolute exact millisecond our eyes met. I can see it again so clearly. His eyes. They were different. I saw it immediately and just as immediately, my mind said, No. Its funny how that works…denial. If that moment was an action movie sequence, my mind would have been the sexy black leather coat wearing hero that throws his body over yours just as the runaway train is about to tear your head off. My mind dismissed the recognition of those beautiful almond shaped eyes , those cleary distinctive trisomy 21 eyes for me, because it wasn’t fair to spring that on me like that! I had been through hell. I was declared high-risk early on and monitored like a freak of nature. We had so many high resolution ultra sounds. The kind where you can actually see your unborn child’s features clear enough to declare, “He looks like his sisters.”I was stressed tested once a week the entire third semester. Never was there any mention that our beautiful son was going to be born with this disablilty. It wouldn’t have made a difference in keeping him but the emotion that moment was denial. A hostile momentary mental takeover designed to help me cope with what was clear to all the doctors and nurses in the room. Not to mention, I was on an operating table. Not convenient for full on life changing moment revelations.
The doctor told Troy that his son had Down Syndrome in much the same way you would say, “Hold the elevator” or “Are you in line?” I don’t blame that doc for being a cold unfeeling prick. He was just doing what was required and nothing more. He wasn’t as bad as the doctor who told us a few days later that our child would never be a rocket scientist but that there was “one” in his church who seemed to be living a happy life. The worst part is when the people you love and love you back say horrible things and you know they don’t mean to hurt you. You are transformed back to ancient Rome, “Et tu, Brutus?” as the dagger hits your heart.
I call it the perfect storm because every emotion one could possibly feel, stupendous joy, sorrow, rage, bewilderment and helplessness came together and transformed a life story for a family…my family. Each person is affected by and changed by events that we cannot control except by how we let them transform us. I can never be that woman in that delivery room again because I don’t want to be protected from any challenge life has to offer. Looking back, my husband was being what I set him up to be, a knight in shining armor. He wanted to shield me from hurt because my weakness demanded it and he couldn’t do that because it was inevitable, but my heart recognizes how he tried to love me that day. We never became one soul in our marriage but he taught me that great fear draws upon it the very thing you fear like a light luring a firefly. I always feared he would leave me and he did.  Sometimes a storm tears away parts of a continent to build a magnificent island.
 My son is a phoenix who transformed a life that was stagnant and unfulfilled aside from my daughters. That delivery room was the spark that lit a fire in me and for me.  I send great praise and graciousness to the Universe for giving me his life as a gift.

Ryan is joy, sadness, accomplishment and disappointment, and pure love in one human being. I cannot possibly deserve such a wonderful son, but thank you very much for trusting me, God. Your faith in me restores my faith in you.