According to this website, a total of 35 people in the U.S.A. share my first and last name combination. Middle initials are not taken into account. However, not to quibble over the URL of the website, there remains only one of me. So there! thbbbppt!
Okay, I quibbled. Sue me.
I've now seen Ben Stein's film, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, and I cannot recommend it strongly enough. It is a documentary and does not showcase the famous Ben Stein sardonic humor. It is serious, both in tone and in import. See it.
I held a Compassion Sunday, today, at the Vineyard Christian Community, in town. Aside from the opportunity to talk about Compassion and about child sponsorship, I also reconnected with some old friends from the mid- to late-70's. That's always neat, and I really enjoyed visiting a bit with Sandy, and with Phil (they are not a couple). But even more special to me was to reconnect with Aaron, whom I first knew when he was 18 months and for a few years afterward. He was such a neat kid, a truly precious little boy, and I've often wondered about him and his younger brother, Kevin. Aaron isn't a little kid, anymore, and he has a little girl about the same age that he was, when my first husband and I became friends with his parents.
I did get to see two child packets picked up, the children sponsored. And I had ended my presentation with a brief invitation to join the Advocates Network, with four people coming to inquire about that. The last one introduced himself as a friend of Wess [Stafford, our president and CEO]; he must have thought I was barmy, or something, because on hearing he was a friend of a man I hold in such high regard and with such affection, all I could do, at first, was stand there and smile at him. Then I realized I really ought to say something. Anyway, Jerry is going to join the Network, and I'll be delighted to have him on the team.
So...I hope your day was as good as mine! :o)
Suicide is not an easy subject, but an article about it was headlined in one of our local papers, a couple of days ago. Many readers of the online edition left comments, mostly slanted on the need to make suicide easier to talk about. The idea is that someone who is feeling suicidal or having such thoughts needs to feel free of the "taboo" and more readily ask for help. With that much, I agree. And, certainly, the survivors of someone who has committed suicide need to be encouraged to seek help in working through the pain, the anger, all the aspects of grief related to the self-inflicted death of the loved one. Having once been close to someone who was often suicidal, I feel pretty strongly about my response to the article and to the comments. That is not to say that I am right.
I might have let the article go by without addressing the topic here, except that I know the holidays are very painful for a lot of people; I believe it's true that more people flock to hospitals and community mental health centers, at this time of year, because negative associations of past holiday seasons send them into a depression. So...some of my thoughts follow.
In the first place, any "taboo" on suicide, especially when based in religious training or belief, has probably kept a lot of people alive long enough to get the help they needed in order to live reasonably happy and productive lives. Obviously, it doesn't stop everyone. But the article did not come close to addressing all the reasons that people make attempts at suicide, which include the usual suspects of severe depression and mental illness, among others; it did not, for example, address the fact that many times, the person is angry at someone who has, or is perceived to have, let him down. Often, in such cases, revenge is at least a part of the motivation to make an attempt. Sometimes, the person unintentionally succeeds.
I added my one-and-a-half cents' worth to the comments online, and I offer them here, inadequate tho' they are:
Yes, I hope some who are thinking or feeling suicidal will call someone for help--and if the first person fails, call someone else.
But my concern is that others, especially teens, will think, "Oh, no taboo...so it's okay for me to kill myself" and then do it. Two points that are not stressed enough, often enough and clearly enough are that (a) there is always hope, even when we can't see through the darkness, and (b) if the person who should help you refuses--or fails through lack of understanding--someone else will help. Ask. Ask again. Talk to a trusted teacher, counselor, clergy person; call a hotline for suicide prevention; if nothing else, call the police, and you will get help.
Finally, if you're thinking of suicide as the ultimate revenge against someone who has let you down, consider: They will probably get the help they will need to work through [their grief over] your act, and eventually, they will find happiness in life, again. You, on the other hand, will be dead. Don't do it. There are better solutions.
No, I didn't specifically write about having faith in God, trusting Jesus, or any of the things I would probably say to an individual for whom faith might have some meaning. Suppose someone who is suicidal in the wake of clergy abuse, or abuse at the hands of very religious parents, for example, were to read that; I would have lost that audience. But if I were talking with someone who was threatening suicide and knew that she or he made a profession of faith in God, I would encourage that; if she or he made no profession, I would--unless I knew a good reason not to--broach the subject and encourage the person to put his or her faith in God, our best and only real hope. I know some would tell me I'm wrong even to think of not pointing someone to Jesus Christ, and maybe I am. But if I were talking to someone with whom I had not yet earned the right to speak of Him, I would not push it. But I would be listening for any direction from the Holy Spirit.
I learned from professionals, many years ago, to take seriously a threat of suicide; even if the one threatening the act doesn't really intend to follow through, she or he may succeed, by accident. If you are talking to the person on the phone, do not hang up, as long as the other is still there. Don't say, "I'll call you right back, but I have to call the police (or an ambulance) for you." Stay with it. And meanwhile, pray that you will never have to deal with such a horror.
I'm a solid week and a half behind in writing this post, but it's high time I did. I wish I'd been able to write it as soon as we returned from my 40-year college class reunion; why I wasn't able at that time is another story.
This was the first class reunion I had attended, and I'm so glad Bruce went with me. It really was more than a class reunion, for me, though; I also reunited, reconnected with Jerry and Nadine, and Warren and Jan, who were my peers in our youth group before they ever paired off; and with Norm and Judy, who were the adult leaders of our group, in the church in which I grew up. I should say they were very young adult leaders, being college students, still, when they began working with us. Anyway, it had been roughly 35 years since I'd seen any of them.
I left college without graduating for the same reason many young women quit school: to get married. My then-husband and I moved away, but we were still in the loop, to some extent, for maybe 10 years. Several years after that, tho', we divorced; that was the one of the first of the twists and turns in my life, to the point that I was out of touch with almost everyone.
During the reunion weekend, the reconnecting with old friends seemed to be filling up a hole in my soul. Even several people that I had known, but not known well, in college, contributed to that sense of being filled. I had kind of known the hole was there, but I had no idea how deep it went or how important it was--how important those people were to me. The opportunity to sit and visit, to play catch-up with each other's lives, and just to have great fun during the reunion luncheon, could qualify for a part in one of those commercials--you know, "Travel to and from the class reunion: $150. Hotel room for two: $100+/night. Seeing old friends: priceless." And the cherry on top was that my husband enjoyed it as much as I did. I've started a photo album (look in the right Side Bar), but I have more pictures to add and editing to do.*
It wasn't quite all fun, however. As I mentioned in a post below, one of my friends is now in a wheelchair. I learned from her that 25% of patients with spinal-cord injuries live with a constant, intense, burning pain that nothing even helps. She is in the 25% group. The grief I felt for her and her husband after their accident, years back, all came up again. I just wanted to be able to put my arms around both of them and make it all better, and I don't have the power to do that. Oh, how I wish I did.
But the luncheon was fun. We discovered a couple of stand-up comedians in the group; I'm not sure what they do for a living, but Eddie and Clyde ought to hire an agent and take it on the road. Everyone was congenial and ready to reminisce. It did come as a bit of a shock, tho', that both the school song and mascot have been changed! I shouldn't have been surprised; the college moved from Pasadena to San Diego in 1973, and that really did call for a change in the song. Face it--locating in San Diego, on Point Loma, is a bit of a change from being "Nestled in the High Sierras!" (I'm not sure Pasadena's exactly nestled in the High Sierras, but we did have some nice mountains to look at, when it wasn't too smoggy.) Somewhere along the way, someone must have said, "You know, we're at the ocean. We really ought to have a different mascot." So the college is now represented by sea lions, rather than Charlie Crusader. I wonder how that works on the basketball court....
I let 40 years go by before attending a class reunion; now, I can't wait for the next one. Five years! Listen, at our age, a lot can change in that time. Sigh.
UPDATE: I have completed the Photo Album for PLNU Class of '67 Reunion.
Mine is either sick or broken. I hope to get someone out to fix it tomorrow. Once it's fixed, I'll blog about the reunion as soon as possible. Hint: It was great!
Forty years. 40. Years. Surely that's a mistake! It cannot possibly have been 40 years since my class graduated from Pasadena College (now Point Loma Nazarene University)! My mind keeps wandering between denial and excitement, as we approach the time to leave home and travel to see some of my old friends...and most likely, some who were never friends of mine. Ever since I made a firm decision to go, people I knew back then, old friends, have found their way into my dreams, night time or nap time. People I haven't seen in 35 or 40 years. I know they will all have aged, but I'll just have to be gracious about it; I, of course, haven't changed a bit! I've considered trying my hand at a Confunding charm and telling them that I entered college when I was ten years old, but someone borrowed my wand, so I'm stuck.
I am old enough to have graduated a little over 40 years ago (repeat three times: I am old enough, take a deep breath, and repeat the set). I did not, in fact, graduate then, not until 1991; and I graduated from our local university, so my real graduating class was 1991, from our local university. But I will never attend a reunion for that.
When I was wavering over whether to go to San Diego, I kept visualizing people I didn't really want to see--people around whom I had always been uncomfortable, because I never knew whether they were going to be friendly or stuck up. Finally, I realized two things: First, the people who persisted in passing and pausing before my eyes were not in my class; they were a couple of years ahead of me. When I began digging in my memory banks for people who were in my class, I began to get excited about going.
Second, I am not only older, I'm not the same person I was then. I don't usually approach people the same way as I did then--What do they think of me?--but more open to seeing and hearing who they are. Besides, they have all no doubt changed, as well, for better or for worse. One of my good friends from our youth group is now in a wheel chair, a result of a nasty accident while on vacation, more than 10 years ago. Others have lost close family members. I'm sure, if I were privy to the information, I would know many others who had experienced severe hardship or catastrophic illnesses. There may be some deaths that I haven't heard about. These things have a way of pruning us, reshaping, smoothing out rough edges (sorry about the metaphoric shift).
One person I would like to see who will not be there is Jeannine, but in addition to the health issues in her household, she will be retiring at the end of this week. I dunno, I guess she didn't want to miss the party, or something. <gr> You see, there's another reality check on my age: My close friend, the one friend I've known the longest, is retiring! Oh, wait--she's taking early retirement. Whew!
So...we will leave the campus on Saturday afternoon and go north, a couple of hours, to spend a couple of days with my family, again, and then come home on Tuesday. I probably won't get around to blogging until Thanksgiving, maybe even Friday. We'll see. If I don't, I hope you all have a good Thanksgiving time with family and friends that you love. And please--not to lay on guilt--try to remember that we all, no matter what difficulties we face, still are far, far better off than most of the world. So let's give thanks, even for those things that we all take so for granted, even for the things that annoy, irritate or drive us a little nutty. Someone told me, long ago, that anything for which you can really give thanks has lost its power to defeat you. So thank God for it and ask for the insight, the wisdom, the clarity to see him, her, them, it, even yourself, through His eyes.
Happy Thanksgiving, and God bless.
Sorry I haven't done any posting, of late. It's been longer than I thought. Intentions have come and gone; I'll try to lasso one of two of them before the week is out.
Call me ignorant; you wouldn't be the first. But until last weekend, I had never heard of Operation Gratitude. Now, in case I'm not the only one, I will tell you that it is a volunteer-run organization that accepts contributions of gifts (and, I'm sure, money) and sends the gifts in care packages to our troops overseas. We are now in one of only two periods of time during the year when they will accept contributions; i.e., it's not a year-round thing.
So if you support our troops, follow the link, look at their Wish List and choose a few items to send to them in time to reach the volunteers before December 15. I won't ask if you did, and you don't have to tell me. But it seems like a small thing to do for those who are laying it all out there for us, doesn't it?
I don't think I've posted in a couple of weeks. What does that tell you? Okay, this is a little peek into our week.
Last Sunday morning, we left home for another trip to visit my mom and family. We had delayed our trip by several days and enjoyed far more favorable weather, as a result. Tuesday was still hot, but roughly 10 degrees cooler than it had been the previous week. It was a good visit, and you can read more at Bruce's blog, where he also has a couple of pictures.
My sister introduced us to Spaghetti Eddie's, a great little Italian restaurant she's known about for years, but had never thought to mention to us. We loved it so much, we went twice. Tucson could really use a Spaghetti Eddie's, in case anyone over there is listening!
Now, then, about the 24 hours since we returned: Determined to retake mastery over our own bed, Bruce blocked Bailey's access to even the hallway to the bedroom, so that we can start getting some sleep. Of course, she did not go down without a fight. Such pitiful, truly pathetic whining and carrying on she treated us to! No, this did not come as a surprise. But at one point, when she had been quiet for a little while--maybe 20 or 30 minutes--she started up, again. Then she burst through a door that hadn't been closed fully, ran into our room and was on our bed before we knew she had broken through.
Bruce got up, very nicely picked her up and carried her back to the living room, talking in a soothing voice all the way. Until, that is, he felt a sharp pain in his foot. Expecting to find a sharp piece of glass (tho' nothing had broken), he found a little scorpion under his foot. Bruce got even, and that critter will never sting anyone else. But adding insult to injury, he stubbed his other foot on something. He was up for a few minutes, putting ice on the scorpion sting; when Bailey saw him just sitting there, holding ice against his foot, she jumped up on the sofa, curled up and went to sleep. We never heard another sound from her, so we got maybe a little more than four hours' sleep before Kat woke us up before 6 a.m.
You're thinking I've gotten off scot free of trouble (unless you count sleep deprivation as trouble), and you're wrong. I reached for something under a cabinet, this morning, and felt my low back go into a major spasm. It's still tied up. I've had heat on it, twice, but this evening, I'm going to switch to a cold pack. Sometimes that works, when heat doesn't.
I'm taking bets as to whether tonight will be any better.
