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?

Ummmm.....

So, I’ve decided that facing long gaps of time between posting blogs here is a lot like putting off that dreaded six-month teeth cleaning appointment at the dentist when it’s really been more like nine months. Or twelve or eighteen… not that I have any experience doing something like that.



And not that I dread posting blogs. I don’t. I rather like it. But when my LIFE gets in the way and I push ut further and further back, guilt grows like bacteria on the bottom of a pack of strawberries, and before long I’m tempted to chuck the whole thing rather than trying to salvage my investment.


I’ve decided my problem is I put way too much pressure on myself to write some brilliant masterpiece each time, requiring gobs of time and thought. Neither of which I have do I much to spare (so that would make me busy and thoughtless, right???).


So my solution is to copy my BFF’s often-used blogging mode of stream of consciousness. Which essentially means write whatever comes to mind and pretend it’s brilliant. I’ve got some big topics to blog about but don’t have the willpower to sit down and stamp them all out with my stubby little fingers on the keyboard. So I’m going to chitchat with you about the random stuff in my life as it comes to mind.


Since I last blogged, lots of big stuff’s been going on in our lives. Just wrapped up my huge calendar project for the company I work for, designing 13 different calendars from scratch. I started the work back in June and finished up way ahead of schedule as compared to other years. Which is great except sometimes I wake up wondering what important step I left out or screw-up I might have made that cancels all that out. I remain hopeful that a miracle occurred and I really did get ‘er done.


This past weekend we had a big block party bash for our neighbors, alongside members of our amazing church. We had about 100 people out and I’m pretty sure God was partying along with us. I think Hilton and I have been blessed with the gift of hospitality but lately I’d been letting that twist into a form of anxiety over expectations of being the perfect hostess and doing it all. God took over for this event and I’ve never felt such a peace about serving others in this way. It was like I’d taken a Xanax. Except I hadn’t. Yay God!


Now I pretty much don’t know what to do with myself. Wait, I do. I just don’t feel like doing it. That would be detail-cleaning my kitchen (scrubbing down cabinets, appliances, floors, chairs, etc). Have you every detailed your kitchen? Me neither. But I’m pretty sure it sucks. I’ve been meaning to do it for a YEAR. Whoops. My mom says she’s never even done this to her kitchen. And they’ve been there for like eight years. I’m compelled to use that as evidence I can keep putting this off. But y’all I swear my kitchen is nasty. We’re having another big party in a few weeks (wait, it’s next weekend… good grief) and I’m trying to use that as motivation. But my new relaxation revelation about hosting events is kind of cancelling that out.


I know I’m biased. But I think my kids might be the most creatively hilarious creatures I’ve ever met. I really can’t effectively convey how funny they truly are through the written word because anymore, it’s not just what they say; it’s HOW they say it. Even though there’s only two of them, I think I could pitch a TV show to TLC execs and they’d buy it. This morning, Jake was putting on his shoes and I thought he kept saying, “Look Mommy, it’s a statue, look Mommy, it’s a statue.” (Jake just goes on repeat repeat repeat until you finally give up and answer… it’s GREAT). Finally I caved and walked over, looking for the freaking statue. He kept holding up his shoe, and because it was only 7:10am and I was still staggering around, I leaned over and spent a good 30 seconds looking for a statue on his shoe, pretty certain one of us was Not Right. Finally I realized he was holding the Velcro strap backwards and down past the shoe, declaring it a “Sad SHOE.” That would be funny enough, but then Ben came marching in proclaiming he was the Statue of Liberty, freezing in a perfect pose (I don’t think he knows Liberty is a girl). Then there were questions about who gave us the Statue of Liberty. Still staggering around, I mistakenly thought he was asking who gave us the Statue of Liberty magnet on our fridge. No, he wanted to know which country gave the United States the actual statute. And me, college grad (ONE B in all my years of school) could not tell my five-year-old son which country it was. The fact escaped me and I was again reminded what a waste school was on me. But the blessing of being five (especially if you are Ben) is that you can make up your own reality and people think it’s funny. Ben informed Jake “I think it came from the country where Rock [Barack] Obama came from.”


I can’t make this up.


We also recently had the stomach bug (known in the EKY as the Vomit Virus) pay a visit to our home last week. Fall always sucks at our house because we all get slammed with sickness, but we hadn’t welcomed in a stomach bug in probably three years. I’m pretty sure angels of health were surrounding Ben and me, because we miraculously escaped unscathed. I felt like the house that the tornado somehow missed while it destroyed the rest of the neighborhood. It’s a very good thing, because Mommy Doesn’t Throw Up. No sirree. I will do Lamaze breathing and swallow it down and wail and moan and sweat but I REFUSE to vomit. I would rather be beaten with a baseball bat or run over by a car or something like that rather than be nauseated to the point of vomiting.


When you become homebound with small children, you begin to let down boundaries you previously swore as off limits in Times of Wellness. Last year it was the Wii (hello, we were trapped for like 5 weeks) that we said we’d never buy. This year it was the introduction to the Star Wars trilogy (or whatever). The boys are all about Star Wars but don’t have a CLUE what it’s all about… after watching about three of the movies so far, I can honestly say that status hasn’t changed. Hilton did censor much of it, but have you ever watched Star Wars with a five year old? I don't reccomend it without a strong dose of patience and humor. Here’s a sampling of the questions that came out during the viewing: How many light sabers are in this entire movie? Is Darth Vader a boy or a girl? Why is Yoda so small? Are those aliens or is this real life? Why do they call it Star Wars? … I have to admit, I have no idea what’s going on in Star Wars either, so I think these are pretty valid questions.


Do you love your Wal-Mart? I hate mine but the boys tell me hate is not a nice word. I boycotted it for some time over the summer when they were out of things like milk and bananas and simply turned off the light and left the customer service department unmanned (is this even legal?). I even bookmarked the Wal-Mart corporate number to file a complaint but I was too lazy to actually do it. Eventually my convictions wore off and I got tired of driving across town to the Good Wal-Mart and going broke going Krogering. So I went back and got myself a new attitude about my Crappy Wal-Mart. When they refuse to re-stock items over the course of weeks, when they simply discontinue items every single week without checking with me first, when they only have one (ONE) cashier lane open at 8:45am on a Tuesday morning, I take a deep breath and take the beating. I briefly curse the store under my breath and then repent, making it a lesson of humility and grace. Instead of flipping it the bird, I smile my happy face to the Greeter Person and say “Grace to you, Wal-Mart” I say as I wheel away my cart to the parking lot that smells like a sewer. Because eventually, I’ll have to come back.

Enough randomness for now. I’ll leave you with what I think might be one of the funniest commercials I’ve ever seen. You're welcome.

Jakeroo

I have been trying to write this blog now for two weeks and quite simply have not been able to find the time in my schedule or my mind to give Jacob the attention that he deserves through the written word. I won’t bore you with the details of the craziness that has kept me from this place. Today is no different, but I am here at the end of another work week that got whisked out from under me. Before my rear hits the floor and I wonder how it all happened, I’m going to tell you about Jake and what sets him apart.

Although I described Ben as an overconfident, comical, and sometimes angry little man, my goal with these two blogs is not to portray the boys as caricatures of themselves and broadly generalizing images of starkly contrasting good/evil personalities… they are way too complex to paint with that wide of a brush. Instead, my hope is to somehow give a glimpse of how even sharing the same DNA, God has created them both so uniquely and wonderfully… as he’s done with all of us. I know they are difficult to tell apart and it’s easier to simply call them “the twins,” but whenever I feel their distinctiveness is overlooked and they are seen as a unit because of the novelty of duplicity, there’s a part of me that wants to plead “They can’t help it that the egg split into two for some reason! They are so special apart from one another, too! Please let them know it!”

I know— MY issue. On to Jake.

The best way I can describe Jake is that he’s a pillow. He’s soft and snuggly and sweet and incredibly easygoing. It’s so hard to separate nature from nurture, but Hilton and I often wonder if his laidback characteristic came from his six days in the NICU after birth. Probably the healthiest baby in the unit, he learned to lay flat on his back under the bilirubin lights with his little sunglasses on, wearing nothing but a diaper and lots of tubes and wires and surrounded by beeping noises, monitors, and all the other chaos of a NICU. Totally comfortable, he progressed at a much faster rate than anticipated and would show the doctors when he was ready to move on to the next stage by ripping tubes and wires out with his little preemie newborn fingers, including twice removing the gastric tube fed down through his nose, despite having it taped firmly to his face the second time.

He was and has always been just ahead of Ben in terms of weight and his bones and structure have always felt more solid. We were never sure if it was just his nature or the fact, the fact that he ate more reliably, or that he had more meat on his bones to sustain him, but he rarely screamed to be fed, in contrast to Ben-the-fire-alarm. Jake would wake slowly and quietly and politely begin making murmuring noises. “Hello, it’s me, Jake,” he seemed to be saying. “Whenever you get around to it, it’d be great if you could feed me.” After a month or so I began feeling terrible that he always got fed last simply because I knew he’d tolerate it, just one small piece of the guilt baggage I carried around trying to split my resources equally.

I’m happy to say that despite our screw-ups, his sweet, good-natured ways haven’t left him. This is going to sound disgustingly biased on so many levels, but Jake is quite simply one of the most sensitive, nurturing, giving children I’ve ever come across. When given the opportunity to give his resources away for someone/something else or use it for his own needs, 99.9% of the time he will selflessly give it away. We try to be realistic about our finances when talking to the boys, and if Jake has an inkling that we can’t afford something (for something clearly not intended for him), he will pipe up that we can have his money he’s saved in his piggy bank. We have a sliding glass door with a finicky lock that needs to be replaced. The whole process has taken some time, and Jake asked me last week if he needed “to give us some money to get that door fixed.” When the earthquake hit Haiti last winter, it was Jake who over and over wanted to send all his money “up to the people in Haiti.”

He has a servant’s heart that I can only attribute to his daddy. I will never forget his first self-initiated and self-led prayer, in which he prayed “that all of those who were poor were helped by their neighbors.” Months later, he prayed for someone we knew who’d lost two loved ones within weeks of each other that the person would have people around him to make him not feel sad anymore. Did you catch that? He didn’t pray for God to simply do this or that… he prayed that God would use other people to help the situation. We are the hands and feet of God, and I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to say that Jake gets that.


Agreeable and hardworking to a fault, Jake will take criticism and take it to heart, something I have to be mindful of when coaching him to do anything the right way. I see him realize he’s messed up on something and I cringe as I watch him process it and try his guts out trying to make it better. I’ll never forget him seeing him sit on the toilet when he was learning to potty-train. So proud of himself and eager to please with a success, he’d ask, “Dat make mama hey-appy [happy]?” With his big ole soft almond eyes and sweet accent, you’d have to be a coldhearted you-know-what to not be melted by that.

Ben will self-destruct immediately because he hates being told what to do, but I worry Jake will self-destruct further down the road from the burnout that I know firsthand comes from being so dang hard on yourself. If you examine the photos of him carefully, you’ll even see the difference in their expressions that tell the story: Ben is carefree, impish, wild. Jake is studied, inward, almost self-conscious. Again, I want to take out the parts of me I see in him and delete them…. But it would make him not Jake, so I try to steer them in a healthy way.


This sensitivity plays out in other ways that have broken my heart and will no doubt continue to do so. Such consideration and intuitiveness don’t come without a great deal of inward thinking and thought, and co-dependency is so often borne out of it. I hate to say it, but he comes by it naturally through his mother’s lineage. In fact, my sister says I should just go ahead and enroll him in therapy for it—and she might be right. It’s not uncommon for Jake to be wronged by some kids at school, notify the teacher, and then be nearly sick with sadness as he sees the kids sit in timeout during recess because they got in trouble. Sometimes the worst part of his day is seeing other kids get in trouble. I’ve even seen him trying to give away his hard-earned money through our chart system for being good to Ben, who’s had a rough day and lost some money here and there. To these things, I repetitively pull him aside and given him the same gentle but firm talking-to I have to give myself periodically as well: you can pray for your brother and your friends, you can help remind them, you can be a good example, and you can love them, but you are NOT responsible for what they do. You focus on how YOU behave and trust God it will be okay.”


I’ve gone on long enough speaking about his sensitivity, and lest you think that’s he’s all rainbows and teddybears, I’ll speak to Jake’s other attributes. While Ben has an in-your-face, completely quirky, strange-old-man funkiness to him, Jake has a subtle, sly, passive-aggressive twist to his wit. Rarely going after Ben directly, he’ll often casually do something that might seem like a coincidence but it is anything but. Like tripping and “accidentally” knocking down Ben’s wall of bricks he’s built. Or singing a song he knows Ben can’t stand just loud enough for Ben to hear in the backseat but not loud enough for us. Or refusing to play a game Ben wants to do just for spite. It’s an “I’m-not-touching-you” strategy as he holds his finger in front of his face that just goes right through Ben. And Jake knows it. Let me just say that disciplining this type of disobedience is much more difficult than dealing with Ben, who’s more likely to just smack Jake in the face and walk off. Often a spectator in watching Ben sabotage his evenings with meltdowns, he’ll sit on the sidelines and helpfully hand out parenting pointers to Hilton and me. “Give him a spanking, Daddy. Get him. Don’t let him have any candy, either.” Thanks Jake.

It’s Jake’s cleverness and sharpness that makes me think he’ll be a lawyer some day. He’s the king of finding a loophole, clearly calling you out for ambiguity or failure to follow through on some random promise or rule you’ve made, whether it’s in regards to whether fruit qualifies as a dessert or if I said we’d be going up to Nana and Boppaw’s for the day or to Huntington in general. He forgets nothing, and there is meaning in EVERYTHING.

I’ll close with this recent interaction between the two of them. I was rushing around the kitchen trying to clean up and asked if one of them could do me a favor and take a stack of mail to Hilton’s office. They were both in foul moods and neither of them wanted to do it, so they began bickering.

“Alright, alright, boys,” I interrupted. “What would Jesus do?”

“He’d do it,” Ben reluctantly, clearly indignant.

“Okay, so who’s gonna be Jesus here?” I asked.

The answer came with no hesitation from Ben.

“Jake is.”

And with that, Jake took the mail.

Still makes me laugh just remembering it.

Profile: The Benstigator

This blog topic is all about Ben.

I’ve given this topic some thought over the last few weeks, wrestling and turning over in my head whether or not he’d grow up and use this blog as evidence that I wasn’t quite right as a mother. Or if it could be construed as making fun of my own child, who can’t even make his own retorts here in the comments section. Or if it would somehow subconsciously cause me to egg his behaviors on even more so in a type of self-fulfilling prophecy. Or if it was unfair to single him out apart from Jake.

But pushing aside these concerns of social acceptability, I’ve decided to do it anyway. Besides, Jake’s turn is next week.

So, onto Mr. Ben.

So many times people ask me just how alike the boys really are in their personalities. Considering they share the same DNA, it’s not surprising that they do share quite a few characteristics—about the food they eat, the lilt in their voices, their love for sports, the way they like to engage in intense imaginative play. But I always laugh when I hear this question, because after spending less than an hour with them, you can see there are remarkable differences in their personalities. And it’s not necessarily because one is on one extreme and one is on the other extreme.

It’s mainly because Ben is on one extreme.

If I had to describe Ben’s personality in one word, that word would be “STRONG.” This has always been the case, but in the last six months it has become even more obvious. In fact, the only way I can really describe the situation is that my son has turned into a cartoon character of himself. I don’t know if I can truly paint an accurate picture of what Ben is all about, but it is worth a try.

I would be thoughtless and remiss if I didn’t say here that Ben was named after the precious child of our dear friends Tom and Jennifer Bowen. Their Ben passed away while I was pregnant with the boys, and we were honored to take on the name Ben and the legacy it carries. Although Ben Bowen was a child clearly set apart in his purpose here on earth, I do feel in some way our Ben carries on his fighting spirit, his love of life, and “go big or go home” attitude about life in general.

Ben was the first born by one minute, a fact that doesn’t escape him in the least and which he feels entitles him to all sorts of random privileges. Although Jake was several ounces heavier at birth and simply felt more “solid” when held (our theory is he had more room in the womb to move around while Ben stayed low and caused all my preterm labor issues), he had breathing issues and stayed in the NICU for six days.

Meanwhile, scrawny, feisty little Ben was perfectly healthy and living it up in the room with us, soaking up all the attention and completely forgetting that the pesky little brother of his who’d been kicking him in the head for months had ever existed (we think he was a little ticked they were finally reunited and he’s been plotting how to be an only child again ever since). The day we brought him home he weighed four pounds even, but we quickly learned that when he was upset about something, he was the loudest four-pound creature we’d ever come across. When feeding time came in the middle of the night, it was as if an alarm went off. The entire house would go from zero to DEFCON 1 in a matter of seconds.

As the boys got older and interacted with each other, we went through a phase where we worried that Jake would take advantage of his own strength and use it against Ben to steal toys, smack him in the face, and whatnot. That phase quickly passed. Ben might have been smaller, but he made up for it by being mean (it was immediately confirmed by Hilton that Ben took after me and Jake took after Hilton). In fact, Ben was a biter. Jake could bite, too, but the marks Ben left on Jake made us anxious that CPS would somehow get involved.

Eventually outgrowing that phase (thank God), Ben moved onto other strategies of getting his way, which included stirring up trouble and instituting his own scams. My dad coined him “The Benstigator” for his ways of entering into a room with an eye toward creating a situation that was all about him. I haven’t figured out exactly what career this will serve him well in, but he’s always had a knack for spotting something (figuratively) just out of his reach and strategizing a way to get his hands on it. Even before he really had conversational skills, you could offer him one piece of candy and he’d state in no uncertain terms he’d like three pieces. Many times I found myself in negotiations with a two-and-a-half year old over something, often caving. You can even see in the pictures of him that he’s got the shining, picture-perfect, impish big smile going on, as if he’s just swallowed the canary whole.

I have to say what has always stood out the most about Ben is his never-flagging assurance in himself. We like to joke that Ben has a confidence problem. Once as a toddler (barely able to express himself with any words) he began to climb the log steps in Mom and Dad’s house. Mom followed close behind, “spotting” him with her hands. The child stopped what he was doing, turned his body to face her, held up his hand and firmly said, “NO, Nana. BACK. NO.” He wanted to do it himself. We still laugh about that story today because it so accurately sums him up.

I’ve come to realize that in Ben’s mind, his world mostly occurs as some sort of video game. And he is the champion of the video game. You’ll often catch him randomly spouting off all sorts of video-game language about “beating the bad guys in the battle with the swords” or “getting blammed up by that big ole rocket booster” or something. Last night he informed me that he was braver than a shark, and that if he saw a shark he’d just punch it right in the face. It doesn’t faze us anymore, but we sometimes have to remind him to talk about normal things when in public.

Speaking of being in public, last weekend everyone at the boys’ soccer game had a front-seat to Ben’s display of overflowing confidence. While both boys did crouch dramatically before any play on the field began (we think they were confusing it with football?), it was Ben who was also randomly leaping in the air and spouting off soccer “smack” to no one in particular as the rest of the players meekly waited for the play to start. I wish I could say that the behavior was appropriate because he was trying to psyche himself for the game, but we often catch him standing in front of the mirror talking smack to himself when he’s supposed to be brushing his teeth.

Obviously, this cockiness does have some benefits (usually it doesn’t occur to him to be scared of something), but it has presented some interesting challenges along the way. For one thing, when someone thinks highly of himself but happens to also need corrected in regards to behavior, he often doesn’t understand what the big deal is. I think part of what made Ben so difficult to potty-train (check out my blog archives for the gory details) was the fact that he simply didn’t see what was so bad about pooping his pants. He’d eventually get cleaned up and be given new underwear, so who cared? In fact, when he had not one but two accidents a few weeks ago at kindergarten (an event that would have made Jake suicidal), Ben literally had forgotten it had even happened by the time he got off the bus. Firmly asked by me what happened, Ben simply replied “I got these ole school undies on me.”

This ambivalence toward things that don’t concern him has made it difficult at times to instill certain values like social responsibility . One evening while wound up he tore a page in a library book, and I informed him he’d have to fess up to the librarian when we returned the books later that month. Clearly more horrified than his brother, Jake came up to me a week later and tearfully confided that whenever it came time for Ben to talk to the librarian, he “didn’t want to be a part of that conversation” (his words). Sauntering up, Ben asked what we were talking about and I told him. “Hmm,” was his reply with a shrug of his shoulders. And he walked off, the thought gone from his mind entirely.

Lastly (because this has turned into another marathon blog), I have to speak to what has happened to the way Ben talks. I like to joke that he’s simply picked up the Eastern Kentucky twang, but I don’t think that can account for all of it. Ben has developed a serious, dramatic southern accent that is so pronounced I think it could qualify as a dialect or a speech disorder. I have no idea where it’s come from, but what began almost as a schtick or comedy routine has become so deeply ingrained that it is now officially a part of him. Combining it with the way he uses his “jazz hands” to describe things is almost too much. The other day as I got him out of car at school I commented on how his hair smelled nice, to which he replied, “Yay-up, it’s becuz of that ole bay-ath I hay-ed lay-est nat (Yep, it’s because of that old bath I had last night).” I try not to laugh at him when he talks, but I couldn’t stop laughing. Now at school (where there are big kids to impress), he was intensely aware of his surroundings. “Now, stop that, Mommy,” he said. “Thay-at’s enuff.”

So while some of you might think it overkill to spend so much time and space describing a little man who obviously already thinks highly of himself, in my heart I know his unique, strong-willed, hilarious character merited display and discussion. Hope you’ve enjoyed it as much as I have. Next week I’ll take on sensitive Jakeroo. ;)

It's baaaaa-aaackk.... and why

Okay, let’s just get it out of the way.

I haven’t posted a blog here in one year, five months, and eight days (but who’s counting?).

In the blogging world, I’m likely known as a deadbeat blogger. If there were such a thing as a “Dead Blogs” list, mine would be listed. Faithful readers removed their bookmarks of this site off their computers long ago and moved on.

You get the idea. The blog was stuck in a corner and forgotten for some time.

If you ask me why, I could give you a dozen answers, all of them valid (for starters, I’m on my computer enough for work as it is, and there’s barely enough time to communicate with my own husband and children).

But most of those answers would neatly and conveniently skirt around much less apparent and much more entrenched issues in my own heart. Issues that are complicated on their face but underneath the surface all point to one undeniable diagnosis: living life without intention.

Yes, I know what you’re thinking. Here she goes.

Yep, here I go.

I don’t know about you, but I tend to somewhat blindly rush through my day, beating deadlines, wiping noses, and neatly wrapping up everything in my schedule. Messy things like relationship problems and looming obstacles and personal flaws are rationalized, justified, shoved to the side to deal with later, or just plain old ignored. In short, I bulldoze.

I get it done, but I couldn’t possibly tell you what I did or why I did it. At the end of any given week not to save my life could I tell you what I fixed for dinner or who I talked to or what I accomplished on any day of that week. I often have to check my calendar backwards or my emails from the day before to get an idea of just what happened with those hours in my day.

There’s no awareness. There’s no pause. There’s no evaluation. There’s no reflection. There’s just doing. All in the name of busyness/productivity/efficiency/gratification/fill in the blank.

Sounds pretty horrible, right? Sounds pretty personal, too, hmm? It is. Then why on earth am I sharing it for all the world to see here?

To be honest, I’m not counting on many others reading it…. Just kidding… sort of.

I actually have to give some credit to my best friend, who has recently bared her soul and flaws and questions for a much, much wider audience through her blog. For someone who’s motto has often been “fake it till you can make it,” it’s been huge and humbling and inspiring. And completely a God thing… for who or what else could give us the strength and courage to look ourselves in the face and admit just how screwed up we really are?

If I were to be even more honest, I’d say we’re ALL faking it until we can make it… we’re all wearing masks of perfection and got-it-together images to cover up something that is anything but.

Can I just say I think this world would be in much better shape if we were all more real with ourselves and with each other? About our fears, about our hopes, about our mistakes, about our struggles… why do we try to be something we’re clearly not? I’m on a mission to be authentic.

I even intentionally chose the photo at the topic of this blog to prove my point. Looks like a beautiful, profound photo of a perfect family walking down a perfect beach on a perfect evening. Right? WRONG. Did you know the wind was blowing at approximately 45mph and we could barely see straight? That we all had our panties in a wad because the stupid weather had prevented a photo shoot that actually WOULD have been perfect? That minutes before this photo was taken Hilton and I had gotten into a silly spat and were holding hands only for the photo? That with our faces turned away we were both muttering about the injustice of it all and Ben would you STOP kicking the sand?

See?


And then there’s something to be said about accountability. Putting big statements out there even on a little ole blog in the corner of the vast Internet puts my feet to the fire, so to speak. If I believe these things, if I say these things, if I communicate these things-- I better be living them out. If not, feel free to call me out (just know that turnabout is fairplay… lol).

Let me speak to a minute here on using our gifts as well. It’d be a slap in God’s face for me to not freely say that He has blessed me with a gift of communication through creativity—through words and art/designs. I have several choices on where to go with that. I can ignore/deny it. I can abuse/hoard/exploit it for selfish purposes. Or I can let Him work through this gift and somehow glorify Him with it through whatever I create or do.

The right choice seems so simple, but I can assure you it’s not. As someone paid hourly, it’s a moment-by-moment thing for me to avoid a life where I am calculating how much money I’m making or losing based on what I happen to be doing. The only thing that truly keeps me on track is the CONSTANT question I must ask myself: What I have been created to do RIGHT NOW?

Good grief, this is getting LONG, but I also want to recognize the fact that I’ve traded the “This is my life” blog title to “To this is OUR life.” It might already seem obvious, but my goal is to make it clear that I don’t live in a vacuum (and neither do you). It’s not just about me. This can be taken in a broader perspective, but I want to make clear that this blog belongs to my family, first and foremost.

So, Sarah, exactly what does all of this babbling this have to do with funny stories about your kids pooping their pants and saying hilarious things? You wonder. Speaking of which, when are we going to hear those stories? You ask. And are ALL your blogs going to be so melodramatic and uncomfortable? You question.

All good questions. And my answer simple: My ability to use the resources I need to collect, input, and share those stories hinges directly on all of the things I’ve mentioned here. And I can’t promise it’s all going to be laugh-out-loud anecdotes and epic tales of disastrous days… but I will do my best to carve out a part of my life to come here and share what God’s doing in our lives.

In short: No inner peace, no funny.

Mm-kay?