Grandma D's Cancer Treatment Update

Jacque & I have both been having problems logging back in to the CaringBridge website to update the journal about mom's treatment, and we know a few others have been as well. I decided I'd use my blog to do the updating going forward.

Mom (aka Grandma D) received her fourth round of chemo on Wednesday. Each session leaves her a little more fatigued than the last. She hasn't gotten "sick", but definitely loses her appetite. But the great news is it seems the tumor has responded to the chemo and has shrunk significantly. Her oncologist determined she's ready for the next phase...surgery. August 10 she's scheduled for a double mastectomy. She'll likely have some type of follow up treatment once she heals from the surgery.

Again, thank you everyone for your prayers, cards, and support in other ways. We (the Greene's) are hoping to be able to go back to Iowa toward the end of August before school starts. The kids haven't seen Grandma since she began treatment. Jac's family has been helping Grandma D, and Jacque has been taking care of mom's ladies during her recovery days.

The danger in polish

“Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go.” This is my usual chant every Sunday morning. I’m usually the last one flying out the door, often not ever being fully “ready.” My husband tells me I’m late because I plan on being late. I (usually) bite my tongue and think “I’m the one making sure everyone else is getting ready.”

Or I tried to fit in a quick game of Scramble with Friends.

Either way, I’m usually not early. Usually not fully put together. And often my kids can be seen in sweat pants or mismatched ensembles. We usually are not Christmas card perfect on a Sunday morning. Especially on the drive to church (can I get an Amen?)

A few weeks ago I was running especially behind and I decided my half put together self would have to be okay once again. As I flew into the van I noticed my husband still had a bleeding chin from an early morning shaving accident. As we drove to church I was trying to get the bleeding to stop. As we pulled into the parking lot with minutes to spare I proclaimed “you cannot go into church like that” (that being bleeding profusely). I searched my purse for a band aid. All I could find was a large purple band aid. My triage mind thought a) we go inside and he just keeps wiping away the bleeding, b) I throw on the big purple Band-Aid, or c) we run home so I can get some proper equipment to stop the bleeding. Even in my half put-together state, a purple Band-Aid to the face did not sound like a viable option.

So by the time husband was all patched up we were late. Really late. And half put together. We were a frustrated quartet. And slightly embarrassed.

I often wonder about the pressures of Sunday morning. Not just the pressure to get out of our pajamas and tame the bed head, but the pressure to walk in to church like everything is okay. We often put on the appearance that all is well, inside and out.  That façade does more than just make church a place where we strive to keep up with the Jones’s. It makes it a place where it’s difficult to be real with the stuff in your life.

Church can be a lonely place to be when walking through a dark time. Maybe it’s a prodigal child or spouse, an addiction, a mental illness, a job loss, abuse, financial distress, broken relationships, doubts…the list could go on. But there are so many areas where it’s really hard to reach out and share our stuff when that stuff carries with it a stigma. Going through cancer with a loved one is hard, real hard. But within the church you’ll usually have no shame in putting your loved one on a prayer list or organizing meals for the family. Yet if your loved one is struggling with a mental illness, the stigma that would cause others to shy away from you or your loved one often ensures such struggles are endured in silence and isolation.

We often want to just cling to the polished side of ourselves. Jesus chastised the scribes and Pharisees: “For you are like whitewashed tombs which on the outside appear beautiful, but inside they are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness” (Matthew 23:27, NASB). We worship the polished version of ourselves, a polished version of the church, yet often fail to acknowledge that both within our own lives and the life of the church, there is brokenness. It makes us uncomfortable to acknowledge that life is far from rainbows and unicorns. It may cause us to question our faith or admit that we really don't have all the answers when we deal with some of the messes in life that are not easily cleaned up. We don’t fully carry out Matthew 9:12: “’It is not those who are healthy who need a physician, but those who are sick.’”

Jesus came to heal the sick. We often forget that Church is a hospital. Sometimes we are well and God allows us to be caregivers for the sick. Sometimes we are the sick in need of medicine or simply someone to sit and hold our hand.

Often I am both.

First look at GhostTunes

Much to my mom's lament, I spent most of my babysitting money buying music albums and books. She always wished I would spend money on clothes, and looking back at my junior high and high school pictures, she totally had a point. But there was something about browsing Sam Goody and buying a brand new cassette that was more gratifying than frosted jeans. One of my first cassette's was Garth Brooks' "Ropin' the Wind." I likely listened to the album in it's entirety about a million times and had spent many a night imagining myself singing backup or screaming from the front row of a concert. I would bellow songs like "Friends in Low Places" as if I actually had ever experienced whiskey drowning anything...I hadn't. But for a girl growing up in the middle of corn fields and the excitement of the year being the Plymouth County Fair, Garth Brooks' music was the soundtrack of my youth.

But when my disposable income was sufficient enough to actually include attending a concert, Garth announced his retirement to help raise his daughters. My hopes of every seeing him live were dashed. A dream deferred. That was until he announced his return tour would begin in Chicago. As luck or fate would have it, I was able to buy a few tickets when they went on sale in July. After 90 minutes of waiting and screaming at my computer, I was finally told I had secured two tickets but had only 3 minutes to complete the transaction. Should your life ever depend on me typing codes into a computer under such duress, I apologize ahead of time. I was instantly sweaty and shaky, worse than any first date jitters. But when that magic screen popped up to tell me I had in fact purchased two tickets to the Garth Brooks World Tour I let out a WHOOP that alerted the world...I WAS GOING TO SEE GARTH BROOKS.

Sadly, I lost much of his music in my move from cassette to CD to digital.Considering it was the music that was the soundtrack of my life, I had a limited supply of nostalgia. And you could not buy his music digitally anywhere (and heaven forbid I actually try to find an actual place that sold CD's.) Yesterday, that all changed. Garth and company launched GhostTunes, your one stop shop to buy all of Garth's music digitally. For the price of $29.95 I was able to get all eight studio albums plus a live concert (which confirmed my suspicion that I will in fact both cry and scream at the concert.). You can also buy music by other artists, but because Garth's music is literally not found anywhere else in electronic form, this was a big hairy deal.

Here are my thoughts on GhostTunes:

Pros: 

• You can get all of Garth's music...cheap. And the concert (epic 90's clothes and hair included).
• The visual layout of the site is appealing and somewhat easy to navigate.
•  Did I mention you can finally buy all of Garth's music digitally? For the first time ever?

Cons:

• GhostTunes itself is not a media player. You buy the music and can then listen to it via the website or download it to the music player of your choice. For Garth's music it was a bit cumbersome, somewhat like the early days of physically downloading a CD onto your computer.  To download Garth's music I first had to open the album in the zip manager, then drag and drop the files into my music folder. From there I could download them into iTunes. Once I knew what I was doing, it didn't take long. 

There had been information that you should be able to download the music right into a media player like iTunes, so I had to buy just another song to try it out. That song did give me the option of opening it in iTunes.

• The search function seems a bit wonky. For example. I was looking for Meghan Trainor's "All About That Base." When typing in the title of the song, her song didn't come up. But by typing in the artist's name, I was able to find the song. A few other songs/artists I tried didn't pop up at the top of the search like I thought they would. So if you're looking for anything beyond Garth, the search may not be as user friendly as you're used to with other music services.
• I could not get the music to download from the browser on my iPhone. I had to download it into iTunes then sync it with my iPhone. I'm assuming the same will be the same for trying to download the video content to our TV or other media device.
• The site doesn't seem to store your credit card/debit card data. The downside is I had to enter my information for each purchase. The upside is that I can't go on a music buying binge without a little thought. My finances thank GhostTunes. The part of my brain that is used to click and buy is a bit miffed.

I'll still use a variety of electronic media services to access music. I would definitely consider using GhostTunes for future music purchases. Artists are going to be able to create their own bundles and have more control over how their music is delivered. For example, some artists currently only have singles on GhostTunes, while others only allow you to buy entire albums. Remember listening to an album? Getting a wide range of an artist's work? You could appreciate the thought that had went into song selection along with the flow of the album.

So in this ONE WEEK leading up to my 25 year dream-come-true concert, it will be all Garth all the time thanks to GhostTunes. I will once again have visions of having a front row spot, although my actual seat is more nosebleed than "I can see nose hair." But you can bet your belt buckle I will enjoy Every. Single. Note.

Why do I lunge? Hatred or Love?

 How would your life be different if you could double your confidence level?

Wow. What a loaded question. A friend asked me that question a week ago, and the answers have been rattling around in my brain ever since. I stick with my original answer: “I would be better in relationships because I wouldn’t be looking for someone else to validate me.” (I admit my answer probably did not come out that smoothly). Even after I gave my answer, the question got me thinking a lot about the source of my own confidence and my motivation for exercising.

My thoughts took me to the novel “Eyes Wide Open” by Ted Dekker. I won’t go too much into the story, but the struggle of one of the main characters really gave me new insight into confidence and self-perception. The female character is being told she is ugly. She is told by someone in authority (paraphrased) “you think you are average or even pretty, but I’m going to show you just how ugly you are. Then you will be able to appreciate how we recreate you into something beautiful.” She is exposed to mirrors that distort and contort her image into a hideous creature. She is exposed to the distortion long enough that it becomes her reality. And she buys into the lie that she is a hideous being that needs to undergo extreme transformation.

I had to set the book down for a moment when her struggle really hit me. Isn’t that our own struggle? If there were no outside influences we would look in the mirror or some other facet of our life and think “I’m pretty average, even above average.”  But every single day we are exposed to false mirrors that show us how we should be displeased with ourselves. We are shown the images of chiseled physiques and airbrushed beauty. We are told over and over again that we are not even close. We are not average. We are below average. Hideous. And only by buying this product and that product and doing this exercise or not eating these foods will we become beautiful. Any effort made to improve our life is born out of a place of self-hatred. We are sold on the lie that we are in need of extreme transformation to even be tolerable.

I’ve told some people that I was less confident and more critical of myself when I lost 35ish pounds. How can that be? I was getting every compliment in the world and the reflection in the mirror was definitely smaller. But that transformation came out of a place of self-loathing. Because hatred was my motivation for restricting my eating (ahem, dieting), when I arrived at a lower weight that hatred was still there. It was telling me I still wasn’t small enough. Or that maybe I was small enough by my nose was too big or my hair too flat. I hadn’t been choosing to eat a Spartan diet because I loved myself and wanted to make food choices that would add to my health. I was living on salads and eggs because I believed that what I saw in the mirror was grotesque. And that thought stayed with me as the number on the scale went down. And it’s a curious thing. Now that the scale has gone back up I actually am more accepting of this body that I have.

After a hiatus from strength training I’ve been slowly adding weights back into my weekly activity. I love strength training in a gym setting but hate doing it at home. And with a serious lack of gyms within a 40 mile driving radius, I’m pretty much stuck with my dumbbells. And it’s like pulling teeth to even start a home workout. But today I reminded myself that I want to be able to carry my own groceries and get off the toilet by myself as long as possible, so it was time to pump some iron. As I started doing lunges I caught a glimpse of my legs in the mirror. Hideous. Ugly. Grotesque. These were the words that came to mind. I chided myself for poor discipline and told myself that I needed to start doing 100’s of squats and lunges to get rid of the lumpiness. But then the other thought passed through my head. Those thoughts come from a place of hate. Even if you arrive at less lumpiness your voice of hate will always tell you you’ve never arrived. You’re a slave to that voice. So I changed my focus. I want to be strong to continue being active with my kids. I want to be able to rock a strength training workout because of the empowering feeling it gives me.

I want my confidence to come from a place of love, not a place of hate. I want to choose to exercise not because I hate my body and want to change it, but because I love my body and I want it to stay active, vibrant, and powerful.

On mental illness and the Church (Part 1)

Can I be brutally honest for a moment? The church can be a terrifying place when you are broken by mental illness. It can be hard place if you are struggling addiction. It can be a scary place to share your struggles in loving someone with a mental illness. The place that should be a place of comfort, respite, and healing is more often a place of condemnation and gossip.

Why? Because we really don’t understand mental illness. And because we don’t fully understand the neurobiological disorders, we often are quick to pass judgment or give really poor advice.

Monday I was finishing up a meal with my husband on a rare evening with no kids. I had overindulged on chips and salsa (my own form of self-medicating), and I was ready for a leisurely walk in the beautiful evening and then on to enjoy a truly quiet evening at home. But as we were leaving the restaurant I received news that Robin Williams had committed suicide.

My reaction was I don’t want to believe this tragedy is real. I wanted to have one more beautiful evening where Robin Williams was still alive and would erupt in hilarity on some talk show or give a moving dramatic performance in an upcoming flick. For everyone who enjoyed the depth and breadth of his characters, the loss seems surreal. His close friends and family are dealing with a grief that is beyond words.

Even though Mr. Williams had been open about his struggles with alcohol and even depression, the news that he committed suicide was shocking. But it has hopefully helped open up a discussion about the pain and reality of depression, and the truth about how little we really understand mental illness. If such a beloved actor that gave his time and talents to help others that were hurting could be tormented by this often misunderstood illness, anyone could experience the pain of depression or other mental illness. If the man who brought Patch Adams and the Genie to life couldn’t just “be happy and get over it”, then we need to realize that such ill-given sentiments help no one.

His death shows that mental illness is no reflection on how many people care for you. Mr. Williams had the adoration of millions, not to mention close friends and family that cared deeply for him. Yet somewhere in the neurobiology of his brain, none of that mattered. I don’t assume to know what he was going through, but I do know it wasn’t a lack of people that loved him that caused his depression. So many times people that commit suicide are loved deeply by their friends and family, but somewhere in the chemistry of their brain the reality becomes clouded and the message they receive is “you are unlovable.” I have cried over loved ones in the depths of their illness, begging them to try to grasp that their brain was lying to them about reality, that despite the internal messages they were receiving, that they were loved deeply by their family. For the person in the middle of the illness, the feelings of despair and loneliness are real to them. That is their reality.

The most loving thing we can do, especially within the church, is to try to understand mental illness better, and realize there is probably more that is unknown than known in the realm of neurobiological disorders. We need to remove the stigma of mental illness and make the church a safe place to be broken. Church needs to be a place where we can come with all of our baggage, sadness, illness, and altered reality and receive support, not condemnation. To have people understand that there is a physical problem manifesting in emotional and relational problems. We need to be a place where people can share their struggles with mental illness and addictions, and know that their struggles will be handled with grace and love and not become gossip fodder.

Beauty from ashes

I couldn't handle watching the video on my screen. I could only handle about five seconds of one of our town's beloved play areas going up in flames. Even with the barrage of carnage we see on a regular basis, I couldn't handle seeing the playground engulfed in flames. It felt like violence against children and against my own family. That park had become part of our history.

The park where I took my 21 month old each day after we first moved to Watseka. It was within walking distance for a very pregnant mama with plenty of appropriately sized equipment.

The park where both of my kids learned to climb and hang and slide.

The park where I was dubbed the grumpy old troll and had to guard the bridge while Dora and Boots tried to cross.

The park where I first started to meet with other moms and kids for play dates.

The park that was the first place Watseka first started to feel like home.

And now it stands broken and charred.

My kids' reactions were mainly saddness. With tears in his eyes my five year old asked, "Mom, why would someone burn that park? Maybe they didn't like the yellow park...but some kids really like the yellow park." My reaction was one of anger...and saddness...and a feeling that I was ready to run away. When things get tough and my "fight or flight" mechanism kicks in, I'm a flight kind of girl. I don't like dealing with conflict and messiness. I am 100% honest when I say my gut reaction to such circumstances is to do everything I can to preserve my own comfort. Even if it means packing up the truck and moving to Beverly. (Hills that is. Hollywood. Movie stars.)

But my second reaction was much more productive. "How can we help make this park a safe place for children and families?" And popping up in conversations and facebook posts in the area was much of the same sentiment. First anger and saddness, but from it is emerging a desire to rebuild and reclaim. Not to run away to greener pastures, but to join together and restore.

Today I saw blackened play equipment not safe for use. But I can imagine a day down the road when the equipment is replaced with the help of community members coming together to say this space is important. And those feelings of despair will replaced with hope.

Beauty from ashes.

Wouldn't trade it

If we're honest, we all grew up with some strange misconceptions about what it meant to be successful. One of my biggest misconceptions: my success would be determined by the distance I was able to live and/or travel from my hometown. Meaning, if I had to fly home for a wedding, I had reached the pinnacle of greatness.

In December 2001 I had graduated college and had started my life as an adult about 600 miles away from my hometown. My sister, the one who got the good looks, was getting married in May. I had a goal. I wanted to not only fly in for the wedding, thus showing my arrival into greatness, but I also wanted to transform from the overweight sister with a personality to someone slimmer and hotter to add to my plane ride distance success.

May 2002 arrived, and I was anything but thin. And anything but hot. And for some reason I had decided to get an unfortunately short haircut that did not flatter my face at all. Sigh. I was still going to be the sister with personality that did a good job of reading scripture at the wedding and apologizing for all of my sisterly meanness at the reception, but I was not hot. And I also realized that a plane ride in no way correlated to success. Thus I was still plain old me.

But if a genie happened to appear and offer me thinness in place of that weekend, I wouldn't trade it. Not because it was one of the biggest days in my sister's life, but because the whole weekend was filled with memories that didn't depend on me looking perfect. The above picture was taken the day after the wedding, when much of the groom's family was involved in various pranks including moving the new couple's bedroom into their living room. I would not have traded the laughs and memories for a smaller dress size.

I'm not saying people that are thin or beautiful don't have any fun. But I think we often equate looking perfect with more fulfillment and fun. We think if only I was a size (or two or three) smaller, then I would have a good time in social situations. In reality, our most meaningful moments seldom have anything to do with our appearance.

This is my challenge for you. Find a photograph of a memorable time when you look less than your best. Think Walmart-on-a-Saturday-night bad. Would you trade that moment for a perfect appearance? Appreciate the significance of the experience and the insignificance of your hairstyle or waistline. Maybe even throw it out there for #tbt.

My fellow bridesmaid in the picture above? She's getting hitched this weekend. I had set a goal to lose weight and "tone up" before her big day. And once again I find myself anything but thin. In the past, I've dreaded or even skipped events because I didn't feel that I looked good enough. But this weekend I'm going with full anticipation that I wouldn't trade this weekend for the 10 pounds I wanted to lose.

#wouldnttradeit