Gratitude is Beautiful

I'm standing in line at the pharmacy, waiting for some drugs, and I glance to my left. There she is. Perfect Woman. I know her at first sight. It's the hair that gives her away -- the waterfall of perfect blonde spiral curls, swishing and swooshing this way and that when she moves her head to look in my direction. I smile at her. I know what she's thinking: "Poor thing. Look at that lifeless, straight hair. I really should count my blessings."

Okay, maybe not. For all I know, maybe she was thinking about the horrible illness that had brought her to the pharmacy in the first place. Maybe she was thinking about an argument she had with her husband or the balance in her checking account or the chicken she needed to defrost for dinner. But I was certain that she wasn't thinking what she should have been thinking: "Thank you, God, for giving me the most gorgeous hair ever."

I came back home from the pharmacy and I tweeted about running into Perfect Woman standing there in line. And within minutes, my friend Wanda who has just finished her final round of chemotherapy and is awaiting the re-growth of her own hair, made a comment about my ugly jealousy: "I'm jealous of a Chia Pet!" Yikes. Good point, there, Wanda. My perspective is duly renewed.

I'm learning, you see. Learning to be grateful for what I have (including my boring, straight blonde hair) as well as what I don't have (including cancer). Gratitude, as it turns out, is quite attractive in a person. I even dare say that gratitude is beautiful.

So, back on the wagon I go. And tomorrow morning when I blow-dry my head of ho-hum hair, I'll think of Perfect Woman and I might feel a tiny twinge of envy (maybe a bit like a knife, twisting between the ribs), but then hopefully, I'll remember to thank God for His amazing love and mercy toward me. And I'll be grateful. And gratitude is beautiful.

I wonder if the people standing beside me in line at the pharmacy will notice.

Nothing to Hide Behind

You've had this nightmare, I know you have: You walk into an office meeting (or your study hall room, depending on your life stage), sit down, and smile. You glance around the room from face to horrified face, and suddenly gasp as it occurs to you that you've forgotten your clothing and have arrived naked. Utterly, completely, birthday-suit naked.

Usually, this is when you awaken in a cold sweat and begin mentally conducting your heart back into its normal rhythm: ONE two three four, ONE two three four... (Or, if you don't awaken, this could also be the part of the dream when the phone in your hand turns into a banana and you peel it and feed it to your boss who is now a monkey sitting in the office chair beside you and is wearing lipstick and clapping along to "We Are the Champions." But, usually, it's the former.)

I'm sure some people like being naked in front of a crowd, and some of them make darn good money performing on the VMA awards. But for most of us, it's a horrifying prospect. It is, in fact, one of the most popular reasons for wearing clothes. But there are different kinds of 'naked', of course. There is the physical, literal sense of nakedness, as we so courageously imagined in the previous paragraphs, but there is also the sense of nakedness that comes from sharing our hearts, speaking our truth, and letting down our guard (and sometimes our hair). It is that vulnerability, that sense of being so very exposed, that can be not only horrifying but healing as well.

I've written a memoir, which is old news to some who will read this. It has a release date of May 1st, 2010, and I am only now becoming aware of how my life will change after that date on my timeline. If it accomplishes what memoirs are intended to accomplish, it will let people -- strangers, mostly -- into parts of my private world, my theretofore-private past, and even a few of my private thoughts. How's that for feeling naked in front of the world?

And it's okay. I'm cool with it. Go figure. I, who brings a sweatshirt with me everywhere I go so I can drape it over my legs whenever I sit down and thereby have something to hide behind, am cool with it. I who make a beeline for my towel the very nano-second I get out of the pool lest anyone see me, for Pete's sake, am cool with this. I actually think I can suck it up, for the glory of God, and deal.

Why? Because I seem to be discovering that only when I become vulnerable do I become truly effective as an encourager. Life is one big show-and-tell, but showing is ever more effective than telling alone.

When my kid was struggling to form his letters correctly in kindergarten, I told him about how I struggled with dyslexia when I was little, and I showed him one of my old papers from school. And I watched his face as he stared at my backward letters a minute, possibly thinking, "Huh. She can write now..."

I distinctly remember the day when the shame of being a divorced Christian woman left me. I read an article written by someone whose situation had been similar to mine. She shared her heart and her story in those 350 words, and suddenly I wasn't alone. It was like my self-affixed scarlet letter peeled off of my chest and fell to the floor. And I thought, "Huh. She's okay now..."

No one likes the idea of becoming vulnerable, at least not at first. But as I prepare myself to stand before friends and strangers alike, with nothing to hide behind, I get a little excited at the thought of how God might choose to use my vulnerability to reach people. I might even have to learn to leave my sweatshirt at home.

From the Heart: Interview with Diana's Client Jena Morrow

From the Heart: Interview with Diana's Client Jena Morrow

Stress Will Make You Ugly

Stress is a killer. Stress will make you do stupid things, say even stupider things, make lousy decisions, and lose sleep. But did you know it will also make you ugly?

Now that I have your attention, listen up.

Last week, I noticed a weird lump behind my ear, that hurt like heck. So I ignored it, because that's what I do when things bother me. The next day, I awakened to three more weird painful lumps, which made turning my head and swallowing quite difficult. So I ignored it, because surely it was nothing and I was being a big baby. (Are we seeing a pattern yet?) Finally, my friend Anne noticed that my hand kept flying up to my neck and my head while we were talking to one another, and asked me what the heck was wrong with me. And I, of course, was taken aback -- because nothing was wrong with me. Nothing is ever wrong with me. Ever.

Are you ready to smack me yet? Me, too, in retrospect.

So, because my friends love me and freak out on me when I refuse to be sensible and take care of myself, Anne had her daughter Christi, a physician assistant, look me over. Christi felt around on my neck and said "yikes" a few times, and then looked at the huge bug-bite on my temple and made a funny face and suggested that I might want to call my doc the next day.

When I walked into my doc's office the next morning, she had me hop up on her table and she laughed a litte under her breath as she slipped into a pair of rubber gloves. "Nice bedside manner," I quipped at the internist who feels like an old friend. "Do you laugh at all your patients?"

She shook her head and went straight to poking around on my oozing bug-bite thing. "Only you, Jena girl... So, you been a little stressed-out lately, huh?"

"Who says?" I asked quickly, wheels turning in my head as to who could have been talking to her. (Oh yeah... did I mention that stress can also lead to paranoia?)

"Your body, that's who says!" she poked around a bit more, then threw the gloves into a bin and felt my lumpy neck with her warm play-doh hands. "Nice... very nice..."

"What?"

"Your lymph nodes are like golfballs."

"I know," I said. "Gross, huh?"

"Yeah," she agreed. "Super gross. You have Herpes."

"What?!?"

"Herpes Zoster," she said, "Not simplex. It's different. What's all the stress about?"

"There's a connection?" I asked, still reeling at the word 'herpes.'

"Ohhhh, yeah," the doc said. "Your immune system is shot. Stress will do that to you."

I hung my head, feeling like a little bit of a dork. And a tad guilty, too. How, after thirty-two years on the planet, have I not learned by now to better manage stress? Or to at least admit to myself that I'm not above its influence? And when, oh when, will I learn to tell myself the truth once in a while, instead of ignoring my every need like some sort of stubborn martyr?

Herpes Zoster is Shingles, by the way -- a viral infection of the nerve endings. I have a head of scaly, stinging red lesions and nerves that feel like they're being tased with stun guns. It's Day Six now, and I am starting to look a lot better, but I was downright homely for a while there. Which brings us back to my thesis: Stress can make you ugly.

So chill when you can, kids. Don't sweat the small stuff. Try not to freak out... and if you do, at least admit it to yourself, so you can try to change. As for me, now that I've allowed stress to make me ugly (temporarily, I hope), I think I'll try a little harder to listen to the words of the master: "Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now, and don't get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow. God will help you deal with whatever hard things come up when the time comes." (Matthew 6:34, MSG)

I'll just have to consider it part of my beauty regimen.

The Day the Cuteness Died

Little kids know they're cute, and it doesn't take long for them to really get a handle on the sort of power with which their innate cuteness imbues them. Most kids know how to use the puppy dog eyes and the crocodile tears to their advantage, and many have a favorite aunt or uncle or friend-of-a-parent wrapped tightly and mercilessly around their tiny little finger. Cuteness is some powerful stuff.

Until it wears off.

My aunt Kathie, known to me as "Aunt Kas", used to adore me. She noogied me and hugged me and kissed me, and just generally ate me alive whenever we went to her house for the holidays. The routine was always the same; I'd run ahead of my mom to ring the doorbell next to the big French doors of her home, and I'd listen to Kelly the Collie barking and the sound of footsteps growing closer. Then, Aunt Kas would swing open the door and make an exaggeratedly surprised and delighted face, as if she hadn't known I was coming, and scoop me up into her arms as she exclaimed, always, "It's Jena Jo!"

That went on for about five or six years. For five or six years, on some level, I thought I was really something. I never thought I was particularly cute -- I had a goofy eye that wandered when I was tired and made me see double, and funky reddish hair that never seemed to stay neatly braided, and a perfectly normal little-kid body that always seemed, to me, a bit too round in the belly and butt -- but Aunt Kas did, and for those five or six years, I rather enjoyed it.

Then something snapped. I don't know what it was -- I don't recall growing a hump on my back or a third eye or breaking out in a contagious rash -- but after age six, the cuteness must have worn off. I distinctly remember the Christmas Eve when it happened. I stood there, at her big French doors, waiting to be swept off of my Mary Janes and called adorable. Instead, Aunt Kas opened the door, smiled a little, squeezed my shoulder with one hand and said, "Hi, Jen." That was it. That was all I got. I had lost my touch. The glamor of the Cute Life was gone, and I was just a six-year-old kid with a wandering eye and messy braids. Ho hum.

This sort of thing still happens to adults, unfortunately. Human beings have rather short attention spans, and it seems we fall in and out of attractions with the shifting of the breeze. Just this week, I read a friend's post about her boyfriend of three years who had decided she just didn't do it for him anymore. She just wasn't enough. Her appeal had worn off, as far as he was concerned. I have several friends whose spouses decided, after many years, that they wanted a change -- they had a taste for a different flavor, so to speak.

Ouch. No one like rejection -- neither the insecure six-year-old or the middle-aged exec who seems to live above the threshold of emotional fragility. We want to know that we are loved. Wanted. Desired. Adored. Appreciated. Valued. Cherished. And we want to know that our status as such is not subject to change. Unfortunately, few things in this life offer that sort of insurance policy.

"I'm absolutely convinced that nothing—nothing living or dead, angelic or demonic, today or tomorrow, high or low, thinkable or unthinkable—absolutely nothing can get between us and God's love..." (Romans 8:39, The Message)

There we go. There's something stable, something changeless and solid and unshakable. There's a love that isn't contingent upon my cuteness. I can't make myself endearing enough to earn it, and I can't become so ugly as to lose it. It is what it is, because God is who He is. Period.

Had I known this love when I was six years old, it might not have rocked my world so much when I outgrew my cuteness and lost the power I thought it had given me. And if you know it now, maybe you can rest in this same assurance: You are loved... and your status as the beloved is not subject to change.

We're All In This Together

At my church, whenever we have a baby or child dedication ceremony, we have made it our practice to say to the parents, as a congregation, "We promise to withhold any and all judgment of this child and his parents while he is being raised." That part always puts a little lump in my throat, to be honest.

As a single parent, I tend to be a little hard on myself, a little overly self-criticial of my mommy skills (and general competency). As a mom, I'm so far from perfect that I often feel guilty even wearing the title of 'mother.' My kid, likewise, is not a perfect kid. Fortunately, though, I've yet to meet a perfect child, and this brings me a little comfort.

He's a good kid -- mostly kind, definitely tender-hearted, smart and quick and precocious and funny as all get-out. He can also be mouthy, selfish, bullheaded, stubborn and strong-willed. (I know those last three basically mean the same thing, but if you'd ever met Jaden, you would know that he deserves all three adjectives). It seems the proverbial apple indeed does not fall far from the tree.

There is no one on this earth I love more than my child. There is also no one on this earth who so regularly and effectively threatens to compromise my sanity. And I don't always handle myself like an adult, quite frankly.

Last Friday, for example, is a day that will go down in history as one of my less-stellar mommy moments -- one of the rare occasions when my child screamed at me and I, the rational superior adult with the advantage of a more evolved and developed handle on impulse control, chose to just scream right back at him. It was not a moment I wanted any of you to know about, honestly.

And yet here I am writing about it. Why? Because I think we need to be real with one another about how hard this parenting gig really is. None of us have it all together. Not even those friends of mine whom I always tell myself are much better parents than I am.

Here's the cold, hard fact: kids are human beings. Kids have rules to follow (or, at least, they should; they need them, and secretly want them on some level). Kids can make choices. If we are doing our jobs as parents, the choices will have consequences, whether positive or negative, and we will let those consequences befall them. Kids have free will, from day one. And that means they will embarrass us at some point. And they will push our buttons. And they might even wear us down so far that we scream, even those of us who are self-declared "scream-free parents."

It hasn't happened to me often, but it has happened. And it might have even happened to you. And now that I've admitted it, you can, too. Even if only to yourself.

Look, parenting is hard. So let's choose to withhold judgment of one another and of one another's children. Let's do what we can to encourage one another and keep it real. We're all in this together.

Tattling... in Jesus' Name

You know how it is when you have someone in your life who weighs heavy on your heart, whose face pops up on the post-it note of your brain whenever you stop to pray, your concern for whom can keep you up late at night? You know how it is when you have several someones in that same category? Yeah, me too.

So, late last night, I go to God, like usual, and I start blabbing about my friends. I tell Him everything He may be missing as He observes them from His lifeguard chair. I tell Him about their behaviors, their slip-ups, their desperate need for Him. I ask Him to please intervene, step up, DO something, for Pete's sake... um, in Jesus' name, of course.

I'm halfway through my spiritual rant, working up some good momentum, starting to "feel" like I'm really interceding in love, really making a difference, really getting through. God's gonna come through; He's gonna be on top of things now. Good thing I prayed. Right?

And then, almost audibly, I hear: "Shhhhhhhhhh."

Excuse me? I start in again. "Anyway, God, would you please get a hold of so-and-so, grab them by the heart and--"

Again: "Shhhhhhhhhhh."

What the... I'm praying here! I'm trying to be spiritual! And God is shushing me? But it was unmistakable. Every time I started in again to pray, I sensed it. It wasn't condemning (it never is, when it's really God)... in fact, it was reassuring. It was as if I could hear the spirit of God say, "I know, Jena. You're not telling me anything I don't already know. I've got this; I'm on it. You can sleep now."

I don't sense it when I am praying for someone's physical healing, as I have been for a pastor in our area. I don't sense it when I am praying for people who are being victimized or persecuted. I only sense it when I am tattling. It seems our parents were right; no one likes a tattletale. Not even God.

He knows what His kids are up to. That whole eyes-in-the-back-of-the-head thing, that we thought our mothers invented -- He's got that down. He sees all; nothing gets past Him. Nothing is beyond Him. No one hides from Him -- no one. (Sigh... not even me.)

So if you have those people in your life, weighing heavy on your heart, maybe you can take some comfort in my tale of tattling. Maybe if you listen for it, you'll hear it too: "Shhhhhhhh. I know. Rest."

I guess we might as well.