I'm thinking of going back to school to get a degree in history -- all history. That's probably not the best plan, since if you're going to post-post-post graduate study, you ought to narrow things down a bit more.

But I'm convinced we need to study how things have been done in the past to gain some perspective on the crazy way we do things now.

Work takes work. I'm convinced a study of any past major accomplishement will reveal that the acheivement was a pain in the butt. We all know about the light bulb story and Edison's take on mistakes, but then we go right on behaving as if this whole innovation and good idea stuff is just-oh-squeeze-it-out-one-errrr-consultant-uhhhh-away.

If we can just plug the right "solution" into our problem, we'll have this thing fixed in an hour.

I'm not against optimist. Heck, I couldn't get out of bed in the morning if I didn't believe something good might happen to me that day. But I'm against the tendency in today's world -- work day, personal life, choose your sector -- to believe that life ought to be easy.

It's dangerous nostalgia to think that things were ever better than they are right now. Solving problems, creating innovation, moving forward . . . it all took work. Sometimes it was incredibly painful work. Sometimes, people refused to do the work and generations of their progeny suffered because of the communication dynamic they put into play.

Right now is the best time in history. And I mean right now in the literal sense, not in the sense of "this era." The moment you are living in as you read this is the best moment ever, because you can act within that moment. That moment is reality.

You can plan in the future, you can regret in the past, but you can only act in this moment, right now.

We get into trouble when we allow our inner child to take charge of the facilities questions. The childish part of us thinks we ought not have to work. There ought to be a way to routininze or normalize every process so that its predictable, and most importantly, that everything happens when it's supposed to.

Sure, shoot for that. Give it your best shot to see if you can create the perfect system, the perfect work team, the perfect family dynamic. But you know what, people will get in the way. Damn those people!

I used to work with a human resources consultant who's favorite saying was: If we could do this job without people, we would. Sometimes I think the rest of the world doesn't know she was joking.

People -- no matter how well trained -- will have personality clashes, unrealistic expectations for themselves or others, sick days, uncertainty, vulnerability, weakness. They always have.

This weekend I was talking with some elders at my church about a ministry we support for families of children facing critical illnesses. One elder mentioned that this ministry "just came out of no where." His point was that God made it easy for us, and we jumped at the opportunity. I happened to know how the ministry came to our church, and it didn't just land in our laps and the elders at the time wrestled significantly over whether to incorporate the ministry into our church or not. In fact, the plan was to support it as a start up and then spin it off within a few years, but ten years later it remains a vibrant and beloved part of the church.

Also at my church, we're going through a search for a new pastor. As an elder, I don't know any more about the process than anyone who's not on the pastor nominating committee, and they don't know much more than the rest of us. Since I wasn't here when we called the current, much beloved pastor, I just assumed that God would lead us unnerringly to the next man or woman who is to lead us. I met a woman today who mentioned that her father was on the nominating committee for our current pastor, and she remembers what a difficult time it was for the congregation, and how anxious we all were.

Time and again in my life I face struggle and only find comfort in remembering the times I'd overcome pain in the past. It's not the kind of thing you want to get good at (surviving trauma!) but since the world is filled with all sorts of challenges and surprises, it's better to be a survivor than not.

I feel at my most lost when I forget to revisit the past difficulties. I am not dwelling, but neither do I try to forget the troubles and challenges I've faced. The trick is to use them as part of the arsenal to overcome the next challenge.

Going to sleep now! Write more later . . .

Profoundity

The agency I work for had a thank you party for our donors and volunteers. I had to speak, which isn't unusual for me. This was a group of folks whom I know, most of them anyway, and I've asked many of them to speak for us from time to time, so it was a friendly crowd.

The trouble is, particularly when I'm with a group I respect, I feel like I have to be the one who says the profound thing. The thing that haunts people, that they talk about on the way home. And I just don't have that in me.

I guess that's not entirely true. I don't have it in me to be profound about every single subject. I'm kind of a straightforward gal, not sentimental or romantic. Really a boring broad if you want to know, but if I had to say something to folks to pull at their heart, this is what I'd say:

I'm the mother of a twelve year old boy who loves to talk about, well, poo. His favorite joke is anything that involves passing gas, he believes having to attend school is a human rights violation, and would endure any three painful alternative activities rather than voluntarily read a book.

But everytime he embarrasses me in front of my colleagues with scatalogical humor, everytime we fight about the math homework, everytime beseiges me with requests for expensive video games, I want to shout to heaven how happy and grateful I am. He is alive!

It seems to me like that is the only truly profound truth left in the world: life is good. Being alive is the greatest gift, and we really do not get that.

Having the awareness that I have is also a gift. To konw you are blessed is a separate blessing.

That's what I'd say, and then I'd leave the podium and go find my kid and let him rag at me for leaving him with the babysitter while I went to "AH-nutherrrr meeting!" Truly, it's like music.

Introduction

My son was bereft when summer ended and he had to go back to school. At the end of his first day of middle school, I picked him up and, as usual, he asked me "what's for dinner?" Before waiting for me to answer he added:

"Let me guess, tears, bacon and a side of hope."

Who knows where that kind of thing comes from. EJ doesn't. EJ is twelve and just started 6th grade. He's wickedly smart, but he's also disabled. At two years of age EJ came down with a bad case of cancer. As a result, he lost some of his vision, some of his ability to walk, some of his IQ, some of his hearing, but not an iota of the essential EJ.

I'm a single mother and I live with EJ, our dog Pearl, our cat Billie and numerous dust bunnies in our home in Seattle.

I decided to start writing this blog to talk about parenting a disabled kid, living in the Northwest, loving Jesus and generally facing life in the 21st century.

Hope you enjoy!