"Fuk Off & Pray"

That’s how he signed his FB note to me. (Are you not allowed to spell fuck correctly on FB?) I laughed when I read it, such an odd combination of commands... but I wasn’t surprised or fazed in the least. After all, he hates me and God, and I have known this for the last 15 years because he is very obvious about it. Our connection in life is that we are both TK’s step-parents.

That line solidified some thoughts I have been struggling with for some time now. I have a hard time forgiving Christians, and I realized, in those words, partially why this is. I expect Christians to act like... well... my preconceived notions of Christians, and when they don’t, I am not just hurt or angry but also hardened against them. (Um, yes, I know this is very unChristian of me.) When a declared God-hater is aggressive and hurtful toward me, I find it easy to let it roll off because I expect that from him. But I assume Christians pray when they have things to consider and when they hand me a “fuk off” attitude, I am thinking that there is no way God told them to do that, so either a. They forgot to pray or b. They forgot to wait for a reply.

I wrote a while ago about a crisis of belief I experienced when we returned from Ukraine with our newly adopted daughters. There were so many complicated factors behind that period of suspended belief... personal ones, and public ones. My husband and I had been involved with our church for 9 years, and the relationship was souring leaving him cold and me heartbroken. Before this church, we had attended a different, very small, church for about 7 years. The more involved we became with church number one, the more blemishes we saw... policy rivalries, clicks, gossiping, pressures to take a side... we started shopping around for a new church. I naively thought that the issue of having issues was unique to that first church.

It was not. Humans are human, and by last October that realization was dawning brightly in my mind. (Might I say here that I am the first to admit that I am not the role-model Christian and part of why this blog started off anonymously was so that I could explore my weaknesses publicly in private, or rather privately in a public space.)

When Kimani was born, everything changed for me. God took me places I did not want to go. “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death...” (Psa 23:4) By that time I was already working for the church, and a shadow was just beginning to rise. Christians I looked up to and respected visited or chose not to visit for reasons unrelated to why I was actually sitting in the NICU. Work-related commitments and agreements made to and with me were broken and I had no strength or drive to care.

And like the stock market crash of that summer, things never went back to the way they were, and the seeds of anger and disillusionment took root deep in my heart. I confess, I let them grow. Because I have a hard time forgiving Christians. “Fuk off & pray”... that message encompasses what I have felt for three years now. I heard it behind closed doors in meetings of all sizes, and I saw it rolled out in how we approach our congregation and in our expectations of how they should desire to interact with us.

Now to be fair, I firmly believe that our pastor is one of the greatest preachers of our time. I am convinced that our elders make prayerful choices. I know that one of our long-term leaders is one of the most “Christian” Christians I have ever known.

However, men like that don’t a mega-church make and when your growth numbers don’t match your goals, you need a different kind of man to get the job done. And thanks to that and one of my least favorite bippity-boppity-boo-God-hates-you associates, I will remember to pray before I "tell" someone to “fuk off” and I will remember to ask others to pray for and about me before they "tell" me to “fuk off”.

As for that forgiveness issue I have? Yeah, I’ll work on that and when you think of me, pray that God moves my heart in this area.

(When writing this post, I may have chosen option c. Don’t pray about it because who wants God to interfere with their imperfect and ugly human emotions? No really, I did run it by Him quickly and my computer did not spontaneously combust, so here it is.)

Before... and After

Before the actions of hate struck fear and then sorrow into our hearts, only one of our combined eight children (who range in age from 24 years to 22 months old and have all been to NYC) ever saw the Twin Towers in real life.



When TK was in second grade, my husband took her into NYC for a day of fun and adventure. A few months later, she started third grade and life as we knew it changed forever.

She doesn’t remember the trip, nor does she remember how our day played out on 9/11. At that time my husband and I had not yet even begun the talks about creating her younger siblings and her older half siblings lived far away and only came to visit NYC after 9/11.

This morning I made our children who live at home watch some of the 9/11 anniversary specials on t.v. They fussed, bored and antsy to get back to their cartoons and computers. They could not feel my sickened stomach as my memories flooded back. They could not feel my sadness as the victims’ family members shared their stories. For them, 9/11 is a page of a history book, as Pearl Harbor once was in my mind.

For me 9/11 made all historical accounts of war and tragedy real, tangible, things I can now truly envision and feel when I read about them or visit sites like Babi Yar. But for my children, before and after 9/11 is all the same to them, and a part of me hopes nothing ever changes that.

Baby's Got Down Syndrome, 4: She's Got My Legs

I watch her tromp across the kitchen floor after her pink ball. She has on navy blue shorty shorts and tiny boy-looking New Balance sneakers. I am captivated by the shape of her legs. Those sleek calves, rugged knees, and straight-lined thighs... How can it be that she has legs just like mine?

By the end of my pregnancy, I had so many fears about what a child with Down syndrome might be like. Surely this child would be chubby and have a flat face. Stubby limbs, a giant tongue, droopy everything... Isn’t that what the literature from the doctor’s office said?

And then I delivered a baby that looked like... a baby. She was fairy tale pretty. Three years later, that baby is gone, replaced by a little girl with my legs. But something still isn’t right. Meningitis turned her mind into a labyrinth. Words cannot escape, images are lost, neurons get rerouted. This is not the typical development of a child with Ds, is it? Specialists brushed off my concerns contributing every difference in her physiology to the extra 21st chromosome.

On blind faith we adopted two more little girls, a three year old and an infant with Down syndrome from a village orphanage in Ukraine. The moment Masha and I locked eyes, she burst into a smile and reached for me to pick her up. She then wriggled away and ran for the swingset. From there she rode a tricycle down the walkway, and then she took her baby stroller for a walk. A little while later she climbed into a real stroller parked on the porch and began strapping herself in.

Later on I found that Masha will brush my hair, try on my shoes, dress and undress herself, and sing into a pretend microphone. She puts her plate in the sink, carries her own backpack, plays soccer, and plays tricks on me. She feeds her dollies, enjoys tea parties, understands English, and picks berries with her brother Jade.

Life with Masha confirms what I have wondered about, suspected, worried about... that Kimani’s brain trauma changed everything for her. Thus it is bittersweet for me to know that children with Down syndrome are so very much like ordinary children.

Baby's Got Down Syndrome, 1: Lunch at Pizza Hut

Baby's Got Down Syndrome, 2: Crossing the NICU Styx

Baby's Got Down Syndrome, 3: Seeing in the Raw

This is the final article of a four-part series.

"Mommy, You Forgot..."

Let me set the stage for this one...

It is early Monday morning. The rain is coming down and I have four children to get up and ready for school and camp. At 8:10 my boys have to be over at the middle school to catch a bus that takes them up the mountain to Swamp camp, and my girls have to be waiting at home for the bus that takes them to school. My husband is in Michigan and my mom is unavailable to help so my best girlfriend is at my house to stay with the girls while I drive the boys to the bus.

This is my first attempt at getting four children ready by 8:00 am to leave the house for the day. I am packing lunches, doing ponytails, putting on sneakers... We are all ready to go on time and I think I have it all under control.

I drive like a mad woman to the middle school since this is the first day and who knows if the bus will be early. There are several minivans in the school parking lot and no bus yet, so I breathe a sigh of relief.

And then Jade pipes up from the backseat, “Mommy, you forgot that I have to go poo-poo when I get up in the morning.”

OMG, seriously? Instant panic attack.

He continues, “You also forgot that I go pee too.” I have a good excuse for this one. His pull-up was soaked when I got him up and I asked him if he needed to pee more and he said no. So much for taking the word of a four year old.

“Do you think you can hold it for a little while until the bus gets you to camp?”

“No mommy, I have to go poop NOW.”

There is a chance the school is unlocked and that I might locate a bathroom and get this done before the bus comes and goes... but that is doubtful. I explain to Jade that maybe for today he will come back home with me and start camp tomorrow.

He starts freaking out and I am afraid he is going to poo his pants right then and there.

Then I remember a hilarious story my mom told me about having to poo in a bag while waiting in a parking lot to board a deep sea fishing boat. I grab the tube of Wet Ones and hop in the back of the van. Surely somewhere in this mess there is a suitable bag.

We start off by just peeing in a cup, which fills up way more than I expected causing a second wave panic attack. A half inch from the top, he stops. Whew. And then, yup, I had him poop in a paper bag. Just after he was all set back in his seat, the bus pulled up.

Tomorrow I promise I will remember to put Jade on the potty whether he says he has to go or not.

Dresses

The only things prettier than little girl dresses are little girls in little girl dresses.

The Princess and the Poo Poo Treats

I spend an impressive amount of time in front of the potty trying to convince little girls to go poo-poo. So much time that it finally occurred to me that it would be worth my while to go the route of poo-poo treats. I filled a plastic container with m&ms and put it up in a cabinet just outside the bathroom. Two m&ms for every successful trip to the potty.

Yesterday while Kimani was on the potty I found that we were out of m&ms (that post would be titled, The Pirates and the Poo Poo Treats.) So I offered her a cookie instead. While I was trying to bribe her with a cookie, my mom was offering to go buy m&ms and...



And then it happened. She signed cookie. SHE SIGNED COOKIE!!! She has never signed cookie before. In fact, she has not signed anything new in over a year, and during this past year she has hardly signed anything other than More.

I felt like crying. It has been hard watching her lose what little words and signs she had by age two. It has been so scary wondering if her cognitive development had stopped.

But over the last few weeks something strange and wonderful has been going on. I have noticed changes. She is focusing more. She is starting to engage in pretend play with her doll. She is being more cooperative. She is understanding more of what is being said around her, evident in her reaching for and putting on a bib when she heard my mom say that it was snack time. She finally knows that there are gifts inside the wrapping paper...



At first I could not believe what I was noticing. Coincidence, I told myself. But yesterday she signed cookie, and now I know that her brain is building new synapses, and strengthening what was left behind by the meningitis. I feel like God is giving her back to me one neurotransmitter connection at a time.

Get Outta the Trunk

Have you been following the Casey Anthony trial? Even if you weren’t interested, it was hard to miss. But I was interested. I was fascinated. I was right there in the trunk every night following it on Fox News.

It is difficult to believe that small missteps in the investigation allowed what seems like a murder to become a possible accident... reasonable doubt. One of the nights during the trial, there was a forensic consultant on t.v. saying that the prosecution should have tested the flies and maggots in the trunk of Casey's car to see if they had been feeding on little Caylee's dead body. Her DNA would show up in their teensy bug bellies if that were the case.

There were flies and maggots in the trunk of Casey’s car? Hellooooo, I have three year old french fries in the back of my van, along with an assortment of other “leftovers”, but no flies or maggots. I suppose bugs don’t prove a cause of death but they sure do signal that something grosser than a trip to MacDonald's went down.

At the very least the girl is guilty of more than just lying. And everybody knows it. And everybody also knows that she is not only getting away with it, but she is going to profit from it big time. She wouldn’t even dare take the oath and speak on behalf of her drowning story, and yet her lawyer has already hired a hot shot NY agent to help set up the most lucrative talk show deals. Who knows, maybe there will be a book or a movie forthcoming. Then she’ll be all set for the bella vita.

Or maybe not... maybe we could all get out of the trunk of Casey’s car. We could stop ourselves from acting like the maggots who gorged themselves on that rotting baby. We could boycott any shows Casey appears on. We could refuse to purchase any magazines that print her paid story. We could use our collective purchasing power to stop Casey from getting rich off her daughter’s tragic death.