Can we be honest here? Deep thoughts by Sarah

Can I be honest here for a minute?


I don’t really want to write this blog. I don’t. I’d rather go lie down and veg out. Or pretend to be productive working on a brochure or website or something. Or paint. Or talk on the phone to someone. Or even just write about something funny or silly.

But I got something to say… not to anyone in particular. Just in general.

So a few weeks ago I somehow I found myself one evening watching oh, I don’t know, several hours’ worth of the show ANIMAL HOARDERS on Animal Planet (yes, all caps is necessary). If you know Hilton and me, you know we are not big TV watchers. Reruns of The Office and certain classic movies are pretty much the only thing that captivate us anymore. Because we’re just so counter-culture like that? No, because we’re too busy catching up on life in the evenings once the kids go to bed.

I digress.

So I’m lying there in bed watching show after show as if it’s the most fascinating thing I’ve seen in years (this is possibly true). I’m only slightly gorked out on Percocet (more on that later), but the entire situation is enough to just put me in a light trance and percolate some interesting thoughts in my little head.

It doesn’t take me long to determine the show is set up with a set formula: introduce deranged person, give a sweeping overview of the trainwreck that is their life, go back in time through person’s ancient history to discover exactly when it all went wrong (and it always goes WAY back), interview concerned family members, introduce a third party to help person pick up the pieces, show person taking steps to make their life more on-the-grid, and then wrap up with a happy update.

Just good TV, all the way around (bet you can’t tell if I’m being sarcastic here or not). Considering my addiction to the A&E show Intervention (yes, I get the irony), it shouldn’t be surprising that a similar show PLUS animals would suck me in. In the course of time I watched, I learned the story of a couple with 100 cats in their home, a man who was overwhelmed with caring for a huge pack of feral dogs, a many-times divorced older lady with a bird problem, and an older couple with 83 dogs. Not a typo.

Of course, I had time to pontificate on these people and how screwed up they were…. Which is an easy task. But I was more intrigued by the pattern across the board for ALL of them… they were making up for a deep-down need that most of the time originated in childhood to be LOVED. To be WANTED. To have a PURPOSE.

Oh how sad it was. Little girls who never got the attention they so desperately needed. Runaways who had no place to turn to. Wives who were ignored and mistreated by their husbands. Young men who were literally kicked out of their home because they didn’t “fit in” their family. Even mothers who’d seemingly led a normal life until their kids were old enough to move out and no longer needed them anymore.

I cried. I’ll admit it. These people were LOST. They had a huge, gaping hole in their hearts that they were trying to fill with ANIMALS. At first glance, you wonder why animals? So many people turn to other extreme addictions… but animals… they depend on you. They love you unconditionally. They accept you…

But still… when it comes down to it, at the end of the day they are ANIMALS… and their redeeming power is limited…. Right? You could see the struggle they all had coming to grips with this reality. Each person made the decision toward the end of each show to part with some of their animals and make a step toward recovery. Watching them make that decision and go through with it was wrenching. It was like listening to the story of that rock-climber who had to cut off his own arm when he got wedged down in a ravine… You KNOW it was hard. You KNOW it took so much courage and conviction. But they KNEW they had to do it to be free of this sickness and false belief system they’d been trapped under.

Pretty deep huh? Think it doesn’t apply to you? Ready to close this browser window? Hold up, hear me out.

So much of the stuff we see on TV or read about involves extreme stories, extreme lengths, extreme circumstances…. It catches our attention. We are drawn to the intense.

But I also think we are drawn to it because on some level whether we will admit it or not, we can empathize. We know what it’s like to hurt, to hold onto a cure that is only for the symptom, to cover up our problems with something pretty, to throw ourselves into a purpose that we’ve convinced ourselves will fulfill us.

It’s just usually on a much smaller scale… we’re all screwed up. There’s just a continuum of screwed-upness (yep, just made myself a new word).

Most of us never come face-to-face with that reality. We might laugh and say we’re all a mess and no one’s perfect, but usually that’s as deep as it gets. Who wants to be that honest? It’s ugly and messy and what if damage is permanently done? I have heard this world would be a much better place if all our personal darkness was front and center on the evening news every day…. I’m not suggesting we all go on national TV and air our crap…. But how about some authenticity and vulnerability? … starting with ourselves.

Allow me to go first. A few months ago I hurt myself running. Because I am stubborn and vain and not very intelligent, I pushed through the pain and continued to exercise. This happened not once but twice. Five weeks, two doctors’ appointments, two MRIs, many tears, a great deal of harassing of my poor dad, and lots of “quiet time” later, I have come to the realization that I am broke. I have a muscle tear in an extremely difficult place to heal, and my recovery in the short term is uncertain.

Let me be clear that this is not a running injury. This is a disabling situation that requires I am stationary as much as possible. No lifting, no housework, no going up or down the stairs for goodness’ sake. Sound like a dream come true? Does anyone remember what 11 weeks of bedrest was like for me?

Suffice to say, it’s been very humbling. I can’t get away from this problem. It has taken away my independence and seemingly, much of my identity. I’ve been lost. I’ve been depressed. I’ve been angry. BUT (there’s always a but, right?), I’ve been reminded. This is NOT my identity. I am not what I do or what I am able to do.

I’ve been humbled beyond belief by my helplessness and in turn, Hilton’s care for me and our family. Rebuked for my vanity and selfishness. Realized my impatience and misplaced values. Provided for time after time. Lifted up by family and friends. And brought to my knees in gratitude for His love and mercy that fills all my gaps if I will get out of the way and let Him.

With so many options for soaking up our problems, it’s just really easy to try to make a deep wound “all better” when a symptom pops up. I’m starting to think that trying to immediately fix it is just as much avoidance as running away. I think sometimes we are called to just sit in the misery and be humbled for however long it takes for Him to do His thing.

Whether your problems qualify you to be featured in a documentary or you’re putting lots of seemingly harmless band-aids on your hurt, recognize we all live in that place and we don’t just need intervention… we need His restoration.

We R Fish-Killers

(First, this is going to sound real cheesy but wanted to give a big ole shout-out to my peanut gallery who encouraged me to blog yet again... I promise I'm trying to get my act together, y'all)
Okay.

The title pretty much says it all. We’re the Hastings, and we kill fish.

My apologies go out to Granny and Papaw, who bought the boys a very special gift for their 5th birthday last summer. A full, ready-to-go, comprehensive, dummy-proof goldfish and tank set-up. A perfect package deal sort of thing that should have simply set us down the path of goldfish ownership.

Except that it didn’t. And I want to clarify it is Not Granny and Papaw’s Fault. They had no way of foreseeing that we the Hastings were destined to become serial fish killers. That the laws of science as they apply to algae simply don’t apply in our house. That we’d find a way to break the bounds of ineptitude in owning a couple of (sorry) dumb fish.

I believe our first fish died within 36 hours of entering our house. I think the next followed soon after. That first week, I lost track of how many replacements died for reasons we still can’t determine. Maybe they got sucked into the filter, maybe the water was toxic, maybe we fed them too much/too little… we don’t really know. Because we suck at this.

Multiple calls to and visits from were made to Granny, our official fish expert who has become something of a goddess to me for her ability to raise and sustain aquatic life in her home for decades. She was stumped. I don’t think she’s seen such incompetence. More than once she’s offered to take the poor fish off our hands (more for the fishes’ benefit than anything). Visitors to our house have marveled at the cloudiness of the tank water and chastised us for our negligence. We’re trying, people! Something is seriously wrong with us. Personally, I am kind of amazed that the girl who grew up wanting to be a veterinarian, who managed to drag in and care for countless animals into our family (including two horses) somehow now at 30 cannot manage to care for some fish in a tank.

 

We are also creative at how we manage to kill fish. One day while changing the water out in the tank (a lovely task that I look forward to for weeks and shouldn’t be necessary) I managed to scoop out a perfectly healthy little gray sucker fish and deposit him down the drain in our kitchen sink. The boys were supposed to be making sure Mommy didn’t scoop up a fish accidentally, but they’re five… and I should know better. The worst part is we didn’t even notice he was gone until a week had gone by.

This was probably the same sucker fish that nearly got killed before we even left Wal-Mart because we let Ben carry the bag around and he’d sloshed the poor thing up to the top of the bag where he helplessly held on, oxygen-less, with his little sucker mouth. That would have been a record kill time. The other sucker fish in that pair we bought somehow mysteriously disappeared a few weeks later. The only thing we could figure was he was eaten by one of the two freak-of-nature goldfish that somehow have remained living in the tank for the last six months or so. They’re huge, they’re smart, they fight, and I’m really not sure how they’ve stayed alive. I don’t believe in Darwinism but there's something about watching them live despite the odds against them that makes me pause.

For the last few months things have been fairly uneventful with the fish. But then Hilton got all brave with the boys last week and brought home two big and stout suckerfish, from the Nice Wal-Mart, no less. These guys will make it, he said hopefully. They seemed to take to their new habitat well, sucking away all the day. The boys showed a renewed interest in the tank, watching the new additions carefully.

How long did they last? Five days.

At morning feeding this week, Ben noticed one was missing. Closer inspection revealed he wasn’t missing but dead at the bottom of the tank. Where was the other? Oh, he was dead, too. At 6:40am, the boys and I all stood there and blinked, stunned. We had managed to kill two more fish. Fish that were supposed to make it. I nearly cried (it was early, people). I thought the boys might. No one spoke. Jake finally spoke.

“Yeah, I thought they might die.” It’s a good thing my kids are made of stronger stuff than me.

So what’s the worst part of a fish dying? Yep. Getting rid of it. With how many fish we’d lost, one would assume we had a net to scoop them out. But we didn’t. Somehow with the detachment that only a police officer could have, Hilton has scooped them out without a net and disposed of them. Hilton wasn’t due home until late in the evening. And the tank already smelled off. I couldn’t even stand to glance at it with those now-disgusting fish corpses floating at the bottom (hope none of y’all are reading this on your lunch break).

This is a perfect time to insert just how disgusting a fish tank really is. I mean, they are swimming around in their own filth and grossness. I can’t even stand to walk by the seafood counter at Kroger…. Bleccchhh!!! Gag me with a spoon and all that.

But by 4pm I was getting desperate. There was no doubt the room reeked of nastiness. I had a Bible study starting at 6:30pm and there was no way my house was going to smell like Dead Fish. I tried, I really tried to make myself reach down and scoop them up with a cup. As soon as my hand hit the water, I screamed and shook my hands like the baby I am. I finally decided to sacrifice a ladle spoon from the kitchen and scoop them up. I say sacrifice because I afterward I threw it in the trash afterward. Not even the hottest water or strongest soap could make that thing usable again. Into the trash, buh-bye.

But I couldn’t just flush the fish. Hilton wanted me to save them in a bag in case W-mart needed evidence the fish had actually died (we were getting our $8.00 back, by golly). So I had to pour them into a bag, which I put in another bag and threw in the garage. Then I did another tank cleaning and sprayed the room with so much Febreeze it made my children cough and sneeze.

The End.

(Granny, I hope you’re not upset by any of this—it has been an adventure for all of us and I do not blame you a bit!!! I am in awe of your Fish-Raising abilities!)

Thisclose

Ha! Betcha didn't expect to see me here.

Me neither.

Gonna make this real quick. Please give me a reason to not take this blogsite down for good... because I am thisclose. I mean... I still have my FALL photos up. And they are from 2009, people. 2009!

Trying to re-evaluate my priorities (again!) and figure out life and how it should look. Not sure this fits in. The only thing that is currently keeping this site alive is I'm not smart enough to find the delete account button.

Anyone out there?