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miss kez turns 14
Miss Keziah celebrated her 14th birthday in style. She is pretty tired of our simple birthday celebrations and decided to take matters into her own hands. She spent all afternoon and evening on Thursday blowing up hundreds of balloons and hanging up streamers. Then she insisted we all wake up at 12:36 to open her presents at the exact time she was born. Although we didn’t get much sleep that night it was totally worth it to make her dreams come true.
This girl is such a delight to me. Since the night she was born, she has been passionate and full of vigor and vim. When she was little, her temper tantrums were intense and long-lasting and often more than we thought we could handle, but her fierce determination has grown into a great work ethic and we as parents just need to support her in helping her achieve her long list of goals.
She is a huge Michael Vey fan and since the new book just came out, we gave her book four, Hunt For Jade Dragon.
She has been asking for a new CTR ring so Richard made her a giant cardboard ring.
She also loves highlighters, so a new pack of fancy retractable ones showed up for her birthday.
Her birthday book this year is Girls Who Choose God which is so fabulous I need to do a whole post about its awesomeness, but let me tell you, it is so, so lovely and everyone needs to buy a gazillion copies.
Keziah is a list maker extreme – She has entire notebooks of packing lists, song lists, book lists, future dog name lists (for her 47 dogs she is going to eventually have), she even makes lists of lists – so when I saw this list making notebook at TJ Maxx a few months ago I snatched it up to save for her birthday.
But her big present, the present she has been hoping and praying for for years is a second dog. We have told her at least a thousand times, “We are a ONE dog family!” but she has continued to beg and plead and search for another dog. Well, about a year ago, I started looking for a dog for her. It had to be a well-behaved dog that all of us, even the non-dog-lovers, could live with and not lose our minds. It had to be young enough to be Keziah’s running partner, but not so young that we would have to endure an endless puppy/toddler stage of accidents, jumping, chewing, barking, etc.
A few weeks ago we found what we hoped was the right dog. She was down in Utah so we made arrangements to pick her up on our trip down for General Conference. Last night we picked Harley up from her adorable family and made the long and squishy drive home with our new family member. Keziah has renamed her Charley (from her list of future dog names!) and is thrilled to pieces to have a dog that loves to play fetch, go running, and has plenty of energy to keep up with her.
Sadie wasn’t so sure she liked this new addition when she met her in the middle of the night. But we worked with both of them and by this afternoon they were getting along quite well. A trip to the lake for a family walk helped Sadie accept her as one of the clan.
Charley pulls on her leash too much for Miss Annesley’s muscle strength, but Sadie is a perfect running partner for her.
Charley loves the water and it seems will swim for sticks all day.
We hope this first walk together is the first of many happy days at the lake.
Happy, happy birthday Miss Kez!
here i am
A warm smile of gratitude graced my face as I went to bed last night. For I was given a beautiful gift.
I was given the gift of myself. Yesterday for the first time in many weeks, I felt the passion and joy of being Miss Tracy. I smiled real smiles of happiness and shouted real words of excitement and felt real energy moving within me.
I can use exclamation points and have them mean excitement and not flaming rage.
Glorious!
I had been wondering all week about having a book discussion at my home when I was feeling so dark and dismal. I didn’t see how it could possibly be enjoyable for anyone and frankly didn’t see how I could discuss a book with such heavy thoughts weighing down on me.
But I woke up on Wednesday feeling centered and loving and loved and me. Through the grace of God I was able to be calm and patient when Kez was in freak out mode as she got ready for her Shakespeare presentation. I didn’t yell at her or lose my patience – I was able to speak calm, soul-filling words, and help her get there on time and with all the stuff she needed. When people started coming into iFAMILY, I was able to connect with them instead of wanting to run away and hide from everyone. I was able to listen and love and care about others.
And then at our book discussion last night, I was alive and excited and it was such a gift to my soul to discover that I am still in here somewhere. After so many weeks of black sludge permeating my being, I had started to wonder if the bright and bouncy Tracy would ever be found again.
I will probably have some more black sludge days – I need to have more as I know I am not done processing the anger and hurt and violation – but now, finally, I can have some days of light and love as well.
some victories
It’s high time we focus on some victories, wouldn’t you say? Even in the sludge of what I am experiencing right now, I can see the goodness around me, the blessings of my life, and for that I am grateful. If I was in this sleep-deprived, grief-laden state without being able to see the good, I think I would go completely bonkers.
- Blythe is working! Wahoo!
- We get to go to General Conference this weekend! Big Wahoo!
- Keziah is running cross-country and loving it. Yesterday she clocked her fastest time on a 400m at practice and came back to the car full of confidence and satisfaction.
- Even though I was sorely tempted, I did not take up residence in the land-of-everything-is-awful-and-Richard-needs-a-new-wife. I thought about buying a ticket, but I refused to put out the money and did not board that train. And it was even in the midst of my progesterone dropping! This is huge folks. Huge. I would have fully expected that in the midst of these sleepless nights and awful dreams, I would have jumped on board that train, but through the grace of God, I was able to stay here and hold onto his (and His) love.
- This case of pneumonia is doing much, much better! In fact, I think I will try to ride the Elliptigo for a few minutes this afternoon and see how my lungs handle it.
- After years of Keziah begging with every cell of her body for another dog, we have finally decided to get her a cutie pie named Harley. Kez will promptly rename her Charley and we will all live happily ever after as a two-dog family. Right? We pick her up on Saturday when we head to Utah for General Conference.
- I am cooking meals for my family…not every night, but more than I have in months. Kat’s lentil tacos and this delicious fried rice recipe (I don’t even put chicken in it and it is still so, so delicious! I think the sesame oil must be the secret ingredient I have been missing all these years.) have become once-a-week standbys.
- Fisher and I finished reading Iron Thunder today. It is a story about the Monitor vs. Merrimac battle in the Civil War. He is doing a presentation about the battle in a few weeks at iFAMILY. He also just finished listening to G.A. Henty’s book With Lee in Virginia.
- Speaking of listening to books, that birthday boy is listening up a storm on his new birthday CD player. We looked for weeks for just the right one. We wanted it to play CDs, MP3s, and cassettes if possible. We finally found the right one and as a bonus it has an aux-in line as well. When the rest of us get to be too much for this quiet, peace-loving guy, he can go to his room, build with his legos, and listen to fabulous stories.
- Keziah’s 14th birthday is on Friday. My little fireball is growing up. She is louder than ever (and if you knew her in person, you would know that is saying A LOT) and though we all tend to breathe a sigh of relief when she is gone for two hours each morning to seminary, we wouldn’t change her hilarious, spirited, hard-working, obnoxious, goal setting (and achieving) self for anything.
- We have consistently held 6:00 a.m. scripture study for 6 weeks. Oh my goodness, never in a million years did I think I would be able to say those words. We are rocking this! Every single morning I lie in bed and decide I am NOT going to get up and every single morning I do anyway and by the time I get out to the front room, I am grateful.
- My room is cleaner than it has been for a long, long time.
- Fisher has earned a couple of dates (one for finishing his set of reading books and one for filling up his Happy Jar with Warm Fuzzies) with me and Annesley has almost earned one, so we are going to get to spend some lovely one-on-one time together in the next few weeks.
- Even this grief has good points. It helps me see the stark contrasts of life and cling to the beautiful and precious even more fiercely. It has reminded me why I do what I do…why I mother and love and work to strengthen families.
Life is good. This may not last, but at least today I can see the light and can feel a real, genuine smile on my face.
blessings from on high
Family home evening last night was just the balm of Gilead I needed – Richard gave us all Father’s Blessings.
And the light came.
And my heart-pain eased.
And I felt the love of my Father, my Savior, my ancestors, and my husband.
And I remembered the feeling of joy.
who am i and what am i doing in this life?
I’m living in several different realities right now. It is hard and painful and incredibly confusing to my psyche.
In one, I feel like a volcano ready to erupt with a massive lava flow of rage that will cover the earth.
In another, I feel so fragile I could break into a million pieces.
Then in my little homeschooling mother realm, I am going through the motions. Teaching reading, doing math problems, exploring the Civil War with Fisher, working on handwriting with Annes. Playing games with everyone. Learning and loving and encouraging, trying my best to keep this realm safe and happy and calm for my children.
In my wife realm, I am hurting. Hurting so very deeply. It is the only safe place for me to hurt this deeply. But I want to stop hurting and stop feeling and stop this madness, so I find myself pushing him away. Trying to get him not to care and stop being so incredibly kind.
In my public realm, I am calmer than perhaps I have ever been. My bubbliness has evaporated. But I am still acting. It’s not like I can walk around screaming at people or bawling my eyes out. So I try to smile, try to do all the public niceties that are expected of people in a civilized society. And it hurts. I was almost paralyzed on Saturday before the General Women’s Meeting. I DID NOT want to go and see all those people. I couldn’t face them and put a smile on my face. But I finally went and loved the messages. But I didn’t mingle, it was too much, I think, humanity, for my state of being. The thought of going grocery shopping or running errands and being with people is painful. I don’t want to see anyone right now. I want to curl up in a ball and disappear.
I slide from realm to realm and emotion to emotion and never get to stay in one realm long enough to actually make progress.
I cannot go on like this. I think I may need to go live in a treehouse for a month and let all the tears out once and for all, then perhaps I can come home and function again.
love makes the world go round
In the midst of all these bad dreams, pneumonia-laden lungs and a body full of faulty connective tissue, I am a mother.
A mother of four beautiful children who need me to be emotionally present in their lives.
We are trying our darnedest to create an emotionally safe home for these precious ones God has blessed us with. Lots of times I fail. I resort to anger and impatience and the poor coping mechanisms I was raised with.
And many times I choose love. And forgiveness. And patience.
And snuggles.
Always the snuggles bring us back to center.
Early in the morning, before anyone else is moving, Fisher creeps into my room with a book and with his sweet blue eyes asks if I will read to him, “just one chapter before school?”
Late at night, after everyone is done moving, Annesley will sneak into my arms for just one more hug and kiss before bed.
And my heart swells with oceans of gratitude that I, the person who never wanted to be a mother, the person who entered marriage as such a broken, angry soul, the person who believed my life was far more important than a child’s life, get to hold these children in my arms and nurture them with my heart.
I get to mother.
annesleyisms
Today on the way to gym, Annesley burst out with the declaration, “Mama, you are a hard woman.” I could barely contain my giggling because she sounded so happy about it and yet, being a hard woman doesn’t seem like something positive. This is how our conversation proceeded.
Annesley: Mama, you are HARD woman.
Me: What? A hard woman?
Annesley: Yes! I mean you started iFAMILY. You started gym. You are a hard worker.
Me: Oh! I see what you mean.
Annesley: That took a lot of effort! I mean look at how hard you have worked to create iFAMILY.
Me: Hmmm, why do you think I worked that hard?
Annesley: To help children learn and have fun?
Me: Yep. And because I love you. So, so much.
Annesley: Yes! And you wanted your kids to get exercise. And you too. But you don’t really get much anymore, do you?
I guess our many talks on effort, process, and determination (instead of results) have made it into her psyche.
Tonight for prayer she said, “Dear Heavenly Father, thank thee that we can be together as a family. Please help us to be guided. Please bless my mama to be healed. And my grandma. And please help us be kind and do what we need to do. And please help my cough. In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.
Ahhh, so precious. I love this girl. So, so, so very much. She cracks me up, reaches the deep places of my heart with her happy, joyful spirit, and reminds me of the good things in life.
1st day of counseling
Eeeek.
Today is the day I go to counseling.
I am nervous.
This morning I tried to convince myself I didn’t need to go because I have slept the past few nights with no bad dreams.
What will I say to him?
What if I pass out?
What if this is all a big mistake?
Oh my goodness, I hope I am courageous enough to take this step into healing.
seven weeks of sleeplessness
The last seven weeks I have been dealing with many sleepless nights and gut-wrenching dreams stemming from abuse situations in my childhood. At times I have felt so fragile, it has seemed possible that if someone touched me, I would shatter in a million pieces. At other times, I have felt strong and able to face this new layer of necessary healing with faith and courage. At other times, I have been simply exhausted and unable to even think.
It has been tough.
I have learned a lot about myself and a lot about healing.
But not enough yet. There is still much for me to learn.
I have learned that quiet, peaceful moments with my children have come to mean immensely more than I ever knew they could. These precious moments of love and trust and connection are full of life-giving-light, they are sacred.
I have learned (or relearned) that Richard’s arms erase the fear and pain stored deep down in my soul.
I have learned how incredibly painful it is to go through life, doing all the things that life requires, while behaving on the outside like I am not dying on the inside.
I have learned that I absolutely cannot separate my physical body from my emotional body. I know this, yet it still surprises me. My emotions are screaming to come out and it seems they scream at me best through my physical body. Remember my 10th miscarriage hair debacle? My lungs are full of fluid – pneumonia has got the best of me, and the emotion for the lungs is grieving. I can think of no other emotion for what my spirit is experiencing than grief. I have been in bed since Wednesday night, coughing and hacking and gagging on the piles of mucous that need to come out of me. In the midst of the coughing and hacking, my kidneys woke me up screaming in pain several nights in a row. The emotion for kidneys is fear. I try to honor my spirit, to listen my emotions, to be in tune with myself, and (laughably given my many failures in this department) I actually think I do a really good job at it…and yet, my body pretty much never gets sick from a germ. Everyone around me can be sick and I won’t get sick. I get sick from my emotions. When I was pregnant with Fisher I made my whole body sick because I was so afraid of having a boy who would grow up and hurt others. No amount of talking or crying or gnashing my teeth could heal me. God was the only one then and He is the only one now who has the power to heal me.
However, I am doing some things to help the healing process. I am trying to be really open and honest…to say “I am not okay” when I’m really not, when I’m really suffering. I am spending time in deep, heartfelt prayer. I am looking at little girls and seeing how small and innocent they are and allowing myself to let go of the responsibility I have felt for so long for somehow not preventing these older, stronger, intimidating boys from touching me. I am crying. A lot. I have never cried this much in my life. Tears pour out of me nearly every day…and I am letting them flow.
There was a time in my life from about age 12 to age 22 where I did not cry. I would not allow myself to “lose control” like that. I held it all in and became super girl, getting straight A’s, being a teaching assistant for the math teacher and the principal, running every organization I was part of, working at our family’s grocery store, befriending the elderly people of our town, taking care of my young siblings, protecting my little brother from my stepfather’s rage, and keeping a smile on my face from sun-up to sundown. I actually believed I was okay. I didn’t know I was a hot mess on the inside. I was so effective in stuffing all the pain deep down inside that I didn’t even know it was there.
But sometimes it would explode out of me. Like when a Young Women’s leader at church would give a lesson about listening to our (future) husbands. Angry words would burst out of me (as I had decided that not only would I never, ever have a husband, but if by some terrible, unfortunate accident I ended up with one, I would never, ever be bossed by him.) about how men are not the boss of us and why should we listen to them! All they do is hurt us! And I would run out of the room and collapse in the bathroom or gym and every once in a while a few minutes of tears would come.
But then, I would calm down and put on my happy face and go home and take care of everything. And believe I was okay.
After we were married, I fell apart. Really fell apart. Richard was so safe and stable, I no longer had to hold it all in. Together we worked really hard on healing…he had the much harder road here because I was nearly impossible to live with. One day I would be loving and warm and safe. The next day (or minute!) I would be a raging lunatic begging for a divorce or stomping out of the house or demanding he leave me alone forever. It was so, so hard. But he loved me. Deeply loved me, scabs and scars and rage and all. And slowly, through his great love and patience with me, the bloody wounds healed and my heart calmed down to a much more even keel.
From the time we were engaged, we have talked about my abuse. We have dealt with it again and again and again. I have let God heal it again and again and again (and He has.) I have seen counselors, Bishops, and others. Up until a few months ago, I would say I was healed. And yet, here is another layer to deal with. Another stage of healing that we get to traverse together. And we are. We are talking and holding and praying and loving and helping this black slime come out of me.
We have decided it is time for me to see a counselor again, it has been about 19 years since my last set of counseling appointments. We are praying these appointments help me sort out the dreams and hasten the healing power of the atonement. I know God can heal me.
I feel a need to be fairly open about my journey on this current path. Since the morning I woke up with the awful, awful dream over a week ago, I have felt the need to write, to share, to bless. I think abuse is often spoken of in whispers or downright prohibited from being spoken of at all. There are a lot of people hurting in this world and my journey may help one of them know they are not alone in being abused or full of rage or feeling crazy, that abuse does not sentence you to a life of misery, that God can and does and will heal your deepest sorrows, and that it is okay to talk about.
So, if you see me, know I am hurting, know I am fragile, know I am doing everything I can to make it through each day with love and trust and hope in my heart. And be gentle.
And I will try to stay in a place of real.
together on a quiet morn
Early morning scriptures.
Snuggling in bed with my little ones.
Reading about Harriet Tubman’s escape with Fisher.
Doing math with Annesley.
Stillness in my trees after a night of gentle raindrops hitting my roof.
Quiet.
Calm.
Learning.
Routine.
Gentle excitement in their eyes.
Just what I needed today.
I'm Tracy, a mama with big dreams, crazy ideas, loads of laughter, an insatiable desire to learn, and enormous piles of laundry.
