In a month where I spent about
One thousand dollars less on food than normal,
Where almost all my wishes were put on a wish list,
And only necessities (and a few treats for a trip) bought,
We didn’t have nearly as much money left as I would have expected.
James comes to visit only occasionally.
But we sit up until late and talk for
Six to eight hours:
Sports, evangelism, prayer, relationships . . .
Anything that’s on our minds.
What a privilege and a joy.
Caleb finished copying all 26 sentences.
I wanted him to see the letterboxes for the next day,
So called him in to do one.
He did all nine on that page.
Then read them back.
He’s excited to read!
My sweet friend said,
“Wilson and I have always thought of you
As true and solid friends.”
And I thought later—
I do not express myself,
Those deeper emotions, in words.
I believe I feel love,
And show love,
But it doesn’t come out verbally.
This is a Natrum muriaticum tendency.
I made rice bowl for the boys for dinner,
Then ate a bowl myself.
It had some organic corn.
My face, almost immediately, turned red and angry.
This happened last weekend, too.
I usually eat corn almost every meal.
Time to give my body a break.
If I could study for
One year
And have clear direction
On how to give a life back . . .
What an investment!
What a privilege!
I asked my dear friend,
To bring me an album.
I meant to remind him.
But he remembered on his own,
A feat he would not have managed
Just a few years ago.
What a privilege to have a friend
So close I can see such progress.
For about 5.5 years
We went to a church.
It celebrated 10 years yesterday.
We went to the celebration service,
Several hundred strong,
With perhaps a hundred out-of-towners
Come back.
What a reunion!
In my dream,
My boys were playing in a room,
When a pastor said something insulting.
I gave a witty, slightly cutting reply back,
And the pastor then upped the ante,
Leaving me silent, resentful, chastised, doubtful.
What else will my body work out?
Thank you, God,
That I am not a Gentile,
A slave,
A woman.
Paul, transformed:
“There is neither Jew nor Greek,
Slave nor free,
Male nor female,
For you are all one in Christ Jesus.”
When he claimed incapability,
The angel didn’t give him a pep talk,
But a transcendent truth:
I will be with you.
You’re not all that.
It’s the one who fights on your behalf.
On Wednesday, Caleb melted down after one letter in a writing workbook.
I put it away.
On Thursday, Caleb finished the problem page with no difficulty.
I put it away.
On Friday, Caleb had Abraham and his stuffed dog Fred to encourage him.
He worked on the pages for B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, and N.
A little brotherly encouragement goes a long way to boost internal motivation.
I finished the third semester of homeopathy school.
What a thrill, to send it away,
Knowing that my next semester
Will probably not arrive until
After my return from vacation.
Two full, enforced weeks off.
I’m already wondering what textbooks
I can read in my spare time.
Jonelle has been wanting to do a 5000 piece puzzle for years.
One family member consistently shoots down the idea—
So expensive, no space, does everyone want to do it?
Another family member said, “Just buy it.”
So I did.
In my dream,
I was cutting a piece of parchment paper,
And tugged at the end.
Somehow my grey turtleneck had gotten stuck
On the shockingly robust teeth,
And I tore a big hole in my shirt.
I woke up to find that I was crying
In real life,
Over a nonexistent hole.
But I would actually cry about such a thing.
Is this dream about trying too hard?
I don’t remember really having a headache before.
I’m sure they have happened occasionally,
Minor things.
At 6pm, I was alone, and realized my head was hurting.
I found myself whimpering as I worked.
After 45 minutes, I put the work away
And began to pray,
And I found myself sobbing,
A mix of pain in the head
And pain the heavenlies.
After many hours,
How lovely to hang up
And be in my own home,
With boys who want me to read.
Watching a case,
The commentator mentioned
The homeopathic LM potency
Had made the woman
Wake in the night, sleepless
Start to get terribly sensitive
The two exact symptoms
That I have been feeling.
Easy cure: just back off the remedy,
Until you feel normal,
Then adjust.
I felt much more sane today.
I have been lurking on social media,
Waiting for someone
Anyone
To mention my book
(Hoping for good, preparing for bad).
And, today, the floodgates opened,
Multiple reviews to gladden my heart.
Jadon sat in the workshop
Through all five sessions,
Saying not a word . . .
But laughing in all the right places.
After a truly delightful and blessed weekend,
I arrived home, completely wiped out.
The seven books I’d brought for Caleb:
All now water damaged.
My precious son upset when I showed emotion.
My coworker had sent a panicked email—
I am making her crazy.
I missed talking to my parents,
And felt both guilty and grief and sorrow over that.
On top of a 9-hour drive, it all felt just too much.
The Concordant Bible translates,
According to the Greek manuscripts,
Some words as “conciliation,”
Some words as “reconciliation.”
“Conciliation” is right relationship to another,
Regardless of the person’s attitude to you.
“Reconciliation” is right relationship between both.
God has conciliation to us.
We need to be reconciled to him.
What if Jesus didn’t say
What everyone thinks he said.
Move the comma.
Change the emphasis.
“I say to you this day,
You shall be with me in paradise.”
In an Old Testament battle,
The enemy focused on the
Mass of Israelites,
Unaware of the smaller
Shock troop force.
In the New Testament,
God kept his plan secret,
Sent his shock troop perfect man,
And then, through Paul,
Could reveal his plan to the world.
Or, if the chosen people were at the forefront,
The church of God comes,
As the unanticipated shock troop,
To fight victoriously.
Imagine if:
The word “forever” and “eternal”
Don’t mean what you think they mean.
“Burning” is not meant as torment
But as refinement.
Pruning, but not destroying.
“Election” is to designate the people
Called to bring in the others,
Not to define the only ones saved.
The Bible would read much more
Grace-full-y.
And there’s a compelling argument
That this is all true.
I had guessed there would be
Ten to thirty people.
There were the two hosts,
Two other couples,
And one man.
Isaiah opted against sitting with us,
But Jadon stayed, and stood on the periphery,
Listening and laughing,
Until we all went inside to bed.
Such lovely, sincere people,
Talking about how to rightly divide
The Word of Truth.
With a family of seven,
It took eight hours to get from Esmont
To Harrodsburg.
I had planned to read a school book to Abraham and Joe
While Jadon drove.
Jadon did drive for an hour and a half.
But traffic was heavy at first,
And Phil was tired at the end.
So we shared the driving between three.
The boys kept exclaiming over the sights.
Caleb was about as thrilled
Going under a typical overpass
As he was of the more impressive bridges.
The merest hint of fall colors
Brought raptures from Abraham.
No videos, just a bit of audio books,
Mostly the treasure of five boys,
Delighted in being on the road.
Caleb, at four, usually can handle
Writing about five letters a day.
Z Z Z Z Z
Or maybe three words.
Buzz Fox Zip
So when I showed him the cards
With illustrations, ready for dry erase lines,
I didn’t expect much.
And he did them all.
One hundred fifty-six letters
Written rather well, in one day.
After four days and 36 total hours,
I have finished writing for a wire frame:
Edited articles,
Written a voice over,
Thought about product descriptions.
Thirty-six pages for the website;
Forty-three pages of articles.
A lot has been done;
A lot remains to do.
When children don’t follow directions well,
Or suddenly forget the things they could do yesterday,
Parents tend to assume the worst.
Labels: Spacey, lazy, rebellious.
They don’t realize the problem is
Auditory processing, vision processing, or both.
It’s a physical, not a moral, issue.
Phil and the boys picked pears off our trees.
He needed to use the tractor and bucket
To get high enough
For some.
Two large backs of sweet, ripe fruit.
He cut up a block of Gruyere he found in the fridge,
And started on the Manchebo.
I partook.
It was my first taste of cheese in a month.
And once I started, with the salty umami richness,
The creamy texture matched with the crisp sweetness,
I kept eating.
Dr. Karen called to answer some of my questions.
She had played a voiceover I wrote and spoke for George.
“Wow,” he said, “that came from the heart.
It must be fun to work with someone who
Is smart and who really gets it.”
Joe took his beloved journal
Up to a private place,
And there he wrote
A silly story
For forty-five minutes.
In the middle of a work project,
I suddenly thought,
I am so sad, I can hardly stand it!
About a decision I didn’t understand
And didn’t agree with.
I think I’m going to cry!
And I did. Sobbing deep into my pillow,
Face up only for breath.
After about thirty seconds,
The feeling passed,
And I placed the call I should have made,
And felt like I could move forward again.
Natrum muriaticum is all about suppressed grief.
If taking the remedy allows griefs not to be suppressed,
I might be surprised like that a lot
In the days and weeks to come.
A friend mentioned to Phil
That she thinks I’m always trying
To come up with excuses for sin.
This child is melting down
Because of wheat or sugar.
This child can’t focus
Because of undeveloped pons and midbrain.
This child is schoolwork challenged
Because of vision issues.
All these are accurate.
But only because I’ve watched
My even-keeled son have night terrors
with wheat and sugar,
My solid son turn teary.
I’ve seen the difference in the family
With a more fully developed pons and midbrain.
And I’ve seen a son blossom
With the glasses he needs.
And I think about how terribly much
I hate being accused of something untrue about myself,
And I do not ever want to do that to my boys.
If there’s a chance they are working as best they can,
That deserves praise,
Not accusations of laziness.
I had no desire to watch the movie
During the Sunday school hour,
In which I was informed of the
Necessity of date night,
As if that would help me have godly children.
So I sat in the car for a lovely half hour,
On the verge of tears the whole time,
As I watched beautiful/broken people
Head into the shelter of the Church,
So very thankful to be there.
I had thought, several times,
I should bring down a bag of strawberries.
But this seemed impractical, and the freezer is full.
So I brought them down in the midst of a light rain,
On a Sunday morning before church.
I had thought, several times,
I should get remedies ready for a friend.
But I ignored this impulse, figuring I’d do it at church.
Except those remedies weren’t in my kit.
So I’ll mail them, along with instructions.
But, oh, how much better if I had listened!
Oh, Lord, keep prompting me!
“Homeopathic remedies, oral dermatitis.”
Natrum muriaticum showed up as an example case.
Nat mur people are grief-stricken and closed,
And I have never thought about that as a remote possibility for me.
I feel like I handle grief well, and process through my emotions.
I am happy to talk about most anything with people.
But reading the description was incredibly hopeful for me.
Perfectionistic, responsible, strong, sensitive.
Dislike chicken.
Suppress their grief so much they don’t know they’re grieving.
Like music and reading.
Good at listening to others, though they rarely share their own issues.
Loves deeply, but finds it hard to communicate that.
Want to avoid hurting someone at all costs.
Want to avoid being hurt—and so sometimes avoid relationships,
Going into a shell.
Fundamentally kind. (My mom always says, “You’re way nicer than I am.”)
This is a melancholic remedy, not a choleric remedy.
Both resonate almost equally, but I think I feel sad more than angry.
And I kept thinking about this.
I always wear black.
Books are my crying outlet, or worship songs at church.
Three years ago, when my face broke out,
Our best couple friend was dying,
And one of my best friends was almost engaged and disengaging.
My friend wrote a poem about how I carry my pain on my face—
And my face has had the dermatitis for three and a half years now.
A lovely season of close friendship was coming to an end.
I write poems every day.
I took the remedy.
I had a vivid, very cathartic dream.
It was not a happy dream, but it was productive and prayed over.
I cried through church.
And I wanted to put my head down on Phil’s shoulder—reaching out.
Can I please be a Natrum muriaticum person?
It would make my life make so much sense.
After a week of Sulphur LM,
I proved the remedy:
I felt like an internal pressure cooker,
Ready to go off.
“You seem stressed,”
Said Joe, the intuitive son.
So I antidoted and went back
To the drawing board.
My prayers reached no higher than the ceiling . . .
When I remembered to pray them.
(Only a quarter of my brain seemed to be functional.)
We stopped school early to go to the pool,
And most of the boys didn’t have the great time they expected.
All my hard-earned extra pages: poof.
At life group, we were chatting as friends,
But spent a half hour in unproductive, unnecessary conversation
About what to do next, and I didn’t recover my cool all night.
I started a load of laundry after midnight, trying to get a jump on today.
Phil woke me with the words: the washing machine is broken.
(So that was the beeping I heard as I fell asleep.)
I watched, for the first time, the reading assessment with Joe.
And though I can see now what I couldn’t see then,
I am still heartbroken at how hard reading was for him, for so long.
The announcement of the announcement
Of the National Book Award Longlist reached me.
And I felt, with a physical longing, how much I wanted my name to be on the list.
And so I moved through the motions
Of cleaning and kitchen prep during the last two hours of wakefulness
In my silent, not terribly prayerful, kitchen.
I have made salads before,
Using the high protein grain
And black beans.
It’s not bad.
And in my dwindling kitchen,
I had all the ingredients.
Maybe it was a slightly modified recipe.
Maybe my taste buds changed.
But in any event,
It tasted amazing.
When I submitted some articles
To a friend and colleague,
She called back, choked up and
Astonished.
“These are so encouraging!
You have intuitively grasped
So much complex information—
It’s truly astonishing.
It’s making me quite emotional.”
Which, of course, makes me feel
Like I’m walking on air.
I have a son who has never yet spelled
Only
Correctly.
Onle
In not correct.
We’re getting close, though.
Omly demonstrates hearing challenges,
Not vision.
Achan took what he should not,
Refused to confess
As the dragnet closed around him tighter and tighter.
After causing the deaths of dozens of innocents,
He was stoned, with all his family and property,
In the Valley of Trouble.
Years later, Hosea prophesied that God would
Transform the Valley of Trouble into a
Gateway of hope.
Stones piled as a monument to sin and death,
Now, in Christ, transform into
An empty tomb, stones rolled away.
Phil brought up Isaiah’s science,
About the idea, as accepted as gravity,
Of spontaneous generation.
Ah, the limits of science.
Abraham remarked that that was like
What we’d read that day about the Wright brothers.
Everyone knew man couldn’t fly . . .
Until they did.
From there, we moved to power voice,
That deeper, falling intonation that
Demonstrates full control.
And I talked about one way to reduce cancer risk:
To breathe from the diaphragm,
So the stomach acts as a bellows, in and out.
It was a real family meal, with laughter and participation.
Weeks back, I started to write for a new brand.
And it was lovely, but it also felt like it went nowhere.
I’ve been praying in the meantime.
And now, though still not easy, I feel satisfied.
This is No Spend Month,
But I woke up that vacation Monday
With the thought that we are out of town soon,
And I’m not sure the boys have clothes that fit.
Starting with Jadon, we looked at all clothes,
And passed down those that he had outgrown.
Isaiah is shorter, but stockier,
And Jadon’s clothes didn’t fit him.
So we ordered him almost an entirely new wardrobe,
As a pair of ill-fitting, stained shorts,
Three ugly, holy t-shirts,
And two pairs of holey jeans hardly clothe a person.
Abraham, now with hand-me-downs from Jadon and Isaiah,
For now, is fine.
Joe had three pairs of 8-year-old shorts.
Abraham’s old clothes were far too large.
So he has three pairs of jeans and three shorts
Now on the way, too.
I spent $288, but, thanks to sales, saved $225.
That’s how it is sometimes in No Spend Month.
I spent the afternoon
Reading a homeopathy textbook for fun,
And re-repertorizing old cases,
To see if I could find a new direction.
What an excellent few hours that was!
I (think I) found a case of
Aurum
Hyoscyamus
Sulphur
Where I hadn’t seen those before.
When a retired pastor brought the word
For Communion,
Our pastor stood up afterwards and said,
“We’ve had worship and fellowship
And the ministry of the Spirit . . .
I think we can sing a few songs again,
And then be sent out.”
What a lovely conclusion that was!
When the head feels fuzzy
And the sinuses ache,
And you’ve read for hours
Despite a froggy voice,
There is nothing that feels better
Than curling up in bed under the covers.
My friend taught on marriage,
Eighteen months after his wife passed away.
And the thing I remember most
Is that he said that it is only now
Does he realize how precious
And glorious and miraculous marriage is,
A picture that, in its simplicity and challenge
Is a declaration of God in the heavenlies.
