Category Archives: Observations

Hope (not) in a Bottle

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Image courtesy of aschaeffer via stock.xchng

Anti-depressants, as a group of medications, are creepy things.

But so are migraine medications.

And the reason is that no one really knows how or why they work.

Of course they have a guess about the SSRIs (block the resorption of the brain’s happy-messengers– so they’re still floating around bringing good cheer), and it’s a reasonable one as far as I can tell, but practitioner after book after consumer has confessed that the specific cause and affect stuff is a bit nebulous.

So, not-knowing how they work is one element of creepy.

Another thing is the statistics that the SSRIs are only effective (upon first prescription) in about 40% of patients.  Then this weekend I learned that that 40% success rate could even be referring only to that group of people whose nutritional profile is strong enough to make sure the medication is used effectively by their bodies. Author/Doctor Mike Hyman quoted some statistics showing even lower effectiveness in people with compromised health and nutrition.

This matters to me, because the book quoting these stats– The UltraMind Solution (borrowed from the library because I dislike spending money on something with the word *ultra* in the title)– reiterated the disturbing statistic that individuals on anti-depressants are *more* likely to commit suicide than those without medication.

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Words That Go Down Deep

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I’ve been more and more aware lately of lies I’ve absorbed.

And maybe lies is too strong a word, but for ideas and concepts that have nested deep in me (some over decades) sucking life like unrecognized parasites, I’m not sure I can come up with a strong enough word.

Here’s one example:

There’s a lot going around now about making significance for (of) your life, whether it’s Don Miller’s book about telling your life-story on-purpose, Jon Acuff’s blog (no, not that blog), and now in Jeff Goins‘s just-released ebook (the opening story, no less).

The emphasis is on our deeply felt hunger to matter. To “put a dent in the universe.”

But the problem I find (here comes my sexism) is that these words are being written by men, and therefore (again displaying my assumptions) define success in terms of observable achievement.

Image courtesy of Nicolas Raymond via Freestock.ca

Activity.

Change.

As in widely observable.

  • Published.
  • A Tribe.
  • Influence.

And yeah! I want those things.

But it comes down to the cost.

These men-writers use cost as a challenge (in their sphere, rightly so, I can see where it makes sense). But I see it as a check. A reason to pause.

I discovered this poem last year, and especially with my affinity to Old Tales, I found it a sober warning.

Fairy-tale Logic

By A.E. Stallings

Fairy tales are full of impossible tasks:
Gather the chin hairs of a man-eating goat,
Or cross a sulphuric lake in a leaky boat,
Select the prince from a row of identical masks,
Tiptoe up to a dragon where it basks
And snatch its bone; count dust specks, mote by mote,
Or learn the phone directory by rote.
Always it’s impossible what someone asks—

You have to fight magic with magic. You have to believe
That you have something impossible up your sleeve,
The language of snakes, perhaps, an invisible cloak,
An army of ants at your beck, or a lethal joke,
The will to do whatever must be done:
Marry a monster. Hand over your firstborn son.

I feel a deep gravity– a warning from all the Old Tales– when I hear writers (another is Heather Sellers) emphasize the need to commit fully.

Generally I take these as hyperbole, because I like to think the best of people, and I have to imagine that healthy, aware individuals will be divertable from their single focus if the price becomes too high.

And it is the awareness of how high cost can go that keeps me from using that language.

Nevertheless I find myself (embarrassingly) susceptible to the call.

Make a dent.

Do good.

Be noticed. Continue reading »

Second-Borns and Authority

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There are many families in our church with children of similar age.

A few years back, this led to an observation that the 2nd-children of the families, while every bit as sweet (we have an *amazing* group of kids. I just love ’em), the 2nds were distinctly less compliant than the oldests.

This isn’t to imply that *all* of the oldests were compliant, just that, set on a scale the 2nds were all less so than their older siblings.

It was from this observation I came up with my current theory about birth-order and response to authority.

It goes like this:

When you’ve got an oldest/only child raised in a healthy home, s/he is interacting directly with his/her source of authority; learning about the reliability of the authority figures; learning the consistency of their motivation and the extent of their power (e.g. of enforcement).

When you add a younger child to the same environment, you have the same reliability/consistency etc, but you also now have the older child.

In my experience the older sibling can act in proxy for the adults (e.g. carrying messages), or they may freelance (offer a command based on their own authority/desires).

I contend this is where s/lower compliance comes from.  It comes from the extra layer of filtering the younger child (feels s/he) must do before deciding how or whether to act. If nothing else the extra questions create a response-lag, or a suspicious orientation toward authority.

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A Meme!

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How long has it been since I did one of these?

I guess I’ve not done many.

There was interviewing myself as a writer, and (the one that made em laugh the most) fortune-telling via iPod.

Both are worth checking out, but especially the iPod one.

Angela, aka Farmer Jane, from The High Desert Chronicles tagged me for this meme, but considering how long it’s taken me to find time for it, I’ll not be passing on the assignment.

1. Where is your favorite place in the world? Tell us why?

Home. Everything I want to do and be I can find here.

The tricky corollary of that is how selfish I feel when I assert that.  My kids are at the age where I expect I ought to be teaching them how to be involved in the community, volunteering or whatever; but that feels beyond me at present.

2. What person has inspired you most?

It’s hard to narrow it down– I find so much inspiration in stories (fiction or non-fiction) that show possibilities I’d never imagine on my own.

I will say my parents in particular.

I love that my dad’s on his third (ish. Depending how you count) career, that he’s excelled at them all; how he pursues his various hobbies/interests (new instruments, juggling, building, restoring) with energy and excellence, setting a precedent that validates me in my own  various pursuits.

I benefit so much from my mom’s quick mind and willingness to speak truth.  She still listens well and responds to input, modeling humility and responsiveness.

3. Who would you like to with have over for dinner (famous or not, currently living or not)?

More, I’d like to sit at table with a few interesting people, and not be responsible for the conversation, but included if I thought of something to say, or just ask questions and hear their answers.

  • C.S. Lewis
  • G.K. Chesterton
  • Ravi Zacharias

There’s probably others, but this is where my mind has been lately.

4. Where were you born?

Washington state

5. City, coast or country?

Country to live, coast for vacation, if it’s not too crowded.

6. What is the best surprise you’ve ever had?

First one that comes to mind was when one of my adopted grandmas was brought (behind my back) to Fairbanks for my wedding.  I cried as I hugged her (wedding nerves I think) and she said how she’d told them not to make it a surprise.

7. What is your favorite song and why?

Too, too many beloved songs to just have one favorite.  I do love the One Faith duet between Michael Card and John Michael Talbot.

8. What are you most passionate about?

Oh my. Another hard question.  I think the short answer might be the truest.

Freedom.

9. What were you like as a 3 year old? (as far as you know)

I think it was as a three-year-old (as the stories go) that I had my “Calamity Jane” week: getting my arms stuck in the slats of a rocking chair, attacked by fire ants and falling out my bedroom window (my 5-year-old sister caught my legs and our parents found us like that: her screaming inside the house, me hanging upside-down outside.

Don’t remember any of it (from my own POV), but I can see the scene play out like I’m in the room watching; it makes a great story.

10. Describe your most cherished photograph?

Again, too, too many pictures.  I love the ones where people precious to me have *that* smile, where it spills out of their eyes and posture and makes you grin back just looking at them.

11. What have you done that you are the most proud of?

This is a tricky one, mainly because of the word done. I have done many many things in my life already.  I don’t feel as though I’ve accomplished a lot yet.  That is, I love  being married to Jay, I really like how my kids have turned out so far (even though we’re still working on unsupervised kindness), and I’m intensely proud of the fact I “won” NaNoWriMo three times now,

but all these things are still very much in-progress, and (except for the WriMos) don’t feel particularly like accomplishments.

Still deciding what that means.

Thanks, Angela for inviting me to play.

Is there a way to stop caring if I look like a fool?

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I’ve been (re) reading the bit in Chesterton’s Orthodoxy about the logic of Elfland, and how the wonder that exists in that story-world is to remind us of the wonder we forget of our own world.

And I’m filled with this surge of remembering. Of my capacity for wonder and delight.

Then just as quickly it is checked, by the cost of that wonder and delight.

To immerse without reserve means there is no net when I fall through the broken parts of this world.

I lost a whole litter today.  Mneme’s, that I just mentioned on Monday that I was eagerly looking forward to. My first litter since just after Christmas.

At 7:30 this morning I found nine naked kitsicles.  Three on the straw outside the nest were misshapen, and one was bit open and laying on the wire, but the other five looked perfectly formed.  On a last wisp of hope I immersed those in a bowl of warm water, up to their noses. My wonder expanded with my hope when four of those five began to kick weakly, and make gasping motions with their tiny mouths, revealing incisors as delicate as toothpick tips.

But the motion gradually slowed.  They were so cold the water cooled almost at once, and I couldn’t leave them to refresh it or their little noses would sink under the water.

I did what I could but eventually dried them and returned them to their nest, warming in front of the fire. But I knew I’d lost another litter.  And I grieved it.

And I hated grieving it, because it wasn’t necessary.  There were other things I’d expected to get done today.  I also wanted to not-care because if it can happen now after what I’ve learned, it can happen again any time.  And if it can happen any time, I am continually vulnerable.

And since I had just let two new babies into my heart, I did not want to be reminded of my vulnerability.  I didn’t want to think of all the ways I could lose these delicate little lives.

~ ~ ~

But what reading Chesterton tonight reminded me of, was that I am exchanging– surrendering– deep delight for the cheap payment of neutrality.  That is, in exchange for connection, and awe, and wordless wonder, I can now anticipate the worst and practice being numb both before and whether or not it happens.

I don’t limit my pain to events that are actually painful.

But the other cost of the delight– of indulging it– is being willing to look (or at least feel) like a fool.

To be surprised, burnt or wounded by something any pessimist or “realist” could have told me would happen.

I want the delight.  But I’ve forgotten the road. And I still care too much what others think.

But  am praying about what to do about that.  And what not to do.

Creativity and Depression

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Have I ever mentioned here (on Untangling Tales) that I wrestle with depression?  Usually seasonal, and usually manageable, but there are times and varieties that just eat my mind and (as a result) basically freak me out.

Well, this post is a chewing on that variety.

Last summer I went back to Weight Watchers for a while, to see if their new system was a good match for me. The first group I visited was a  convenient time for me, but I was “twilight zone” weirded-out by the emphasis of the majority on consuming.

That is, they never talked about recipes they were discovering and trying out with their own twist (what I was used to from my old group) so much as they talked about the right websites and recipe designers.

Now, this is a subtle distinction, so it took me a while to decide what felt so off.  These were women who were not (as a group) creative people.  They didn’t experiment on their own (at least from their talk). They were good at sussing out the “perfect” recipes and following them exactly for perfect results.

Objectively I see nothing wrong with this, but it is (to use an Alaskan analogy) like warm dark.  I know it exists, and is even normal to some people, but it is so far from my life-history I can’t be all that relaxed in that environment.

Shifting groups actually helped me stick it out longer in WW.  My later group was (as a whole, at least in what they shared) much more creative.

~ ~ ~

I have found a fairly tight correlation between creativity and managing depression. That could be why a non-creative group felt dangerous.  Depression feels like zombie-mode to me, so being surrounded by folks who didn’t need it… Well yeah, was just creepy.

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Speaking of Homeschooling

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Here’s a reprint from about two-and-a-half years ago.  Because the idea of ambassador is one I want to keep in front of me. For many reasons.

I mentioned  that life will be getting even busier soon since school will be starting, then added the clarification that we are homeschooling.

“Oh,” says Person-A, “Will Jay be teaching them math?”

“He could,” I said, surprised at the question and not wanting to make Jay look bad by saying he’s not currently planning on doing any of the teaching.

“I was just thinking he ought to be able to,” Person-A finished.

Then (this was my moment of lucidity) I realized Person-A had just insinuated it took an engineer to teach 1st-grade math.

“Are you implying,” I asked, genuinely hoping to embarrass him, “That I can’t teach 6-year-old math?”

Yes, that’s what he was implying.  He didn’t even try to defend himself.

I was surprised, but shrugged it off.  It wasn’t important to me what he thought.

It wasn’t until later that night, thinking again of the leggy Darwin fish on the car in his driveway, and remembering the sign during voting season for the local fellow I wasn’t voting for, that I began to feel something about our interaction wasn’t right.

And then this morning I realized that I had gone into the conversation utterly unprepared.

I had gone to admire a delicious new baby and prattle family small-talk and keep up positive neighborhood relations.

It was not in my mind that I was entering as an ambassador of Christ, and Homeschooling, and Conservative Thought, and Purposeful Parenting.

Lord-willing, that will never happen again.

I acted as though I was a friend among familiars, being sloppy in my explanations and imprecise in my reasons.  In short, I did more to reinforce any (diminished) view they may have of those things than to correct it.

And maybe it wasn’t that bad, but the problem is that I didn’t enter as an ambassador, aware of what I represented.  If I’d had the right mentality going in, I know I would have done better (If I’d only know this was a job interview…).

I might have recognized the “playing” of me and my ideas before the next day, and maybe refused to play.  I want to think I’d still not be offended (it never serves a diplomat’s goals or purpose to be offended), but I could have been more “professional” and less of an airhead.

Again, not that I’m sure I was the opposite extreme, it’s just that I muffed a fine opportunity to muck up their stereotypes.

And I find that disappointing.

All the same, I haven’t yet learned how to respond politely to subtle insults, and it occurs to me that had I fully known what was going on I might have been a poorer representative of Christ than I otherwise was.

Defender

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I’m a defender. It’s what I do– often without thinking about it.

I see someone on the defensive doing poorly, I jump in on their side.  Especially if it’s an argument I know and think I could do better than them.

I think I lost a friend this way last year.  He hasn’t spoken to me the same way since I took the other side of his literal-6-days creation debate.  It is in my nature to try and homogenize, to find the perfect faerie* argument to make everything “technically” mesh.

For the record: I think the “specific Hebrew word for a 24-hour day” argument is weak.  The argument that brings me to a literal creationist stance (which, for the record, I hold) is my belief from scripture that death did not exist before the Fall.  Therefore, billions of deaths over millions of years– in order to get to a human creature, sentient and capable both of communion with God and division from him– is not possible.

I have a high degree of empathy– the ability to get into other people’s heads or emotions and imagine how certain things affect them.  As a result I can take far too much responsibility for their comfort.  For their feelings.

And I recently figured out that to be healthy as me I have to quit thinking so much of others.

Whoa! Is a Christian allowed to say that?

You see for about three years now, about as long as I’ve been homeschooling, I’ve been feeling responsible to keep my choices (for example, to homeschool) from making other parents feel guilty for making a different choice.

Before that it was about being a stay-at-home mom, but it seems more people do that with preschoolers so I didn’t feel the separation as keenly.

The point is, I imagined how I’d feel if I were the other parent, and I downplayed the significance of our different choices because, well, if she wanted to be home, I didn’t want her to feel bad, and even if she didn’t, I wanted very much to avoid any possible conflict or fight over which choice was better or (an even worse word) “correct.”

This sheltering or defending of others has continued as Jay and I made our lives more complicated and atypical: gluten-free, debt-free, tiny house, homegrown (I like to call it “ethical”) meat.

I’ve avoided talking about our choices, especially the whys, because I didn’t want to draw such stark lines as I knew they’d create.

So I basically said what anybody chooses doesn’t matter, because we’re all different, with different needs and different stages.  And while that’s true, and I really don’t want to create a hierarchy or polarize folks, it killed me emotionally.

Because I had just said– continually said, over years— that what I invested in, the hard stuff I chose because it was important to me and I felt it was worth it and made a difference– Didn’t. matter.

And I don’t want to do that any more.  This is where I need to be my defender and trust everyone else to be grown-up enough to own and love their own decisions.

I’m certainly not going to pick any fights, but I’m going to quit being embarrassed of how hard I work. I do it for real reasons, and those reasons carry me through. Make me stick with things even when they’re hard.

What I do is valuable. Not something to kick under the bed like the shoes my husband won’t get rid of.  I’m proud of what I do. It is important and worth defending.

 

 

*Faerie are creepy to me on a couple levels.  The main one is their commitment to the truth– as it is useful to them.  Their methodology is to manipulate the “mortal” they speak with by speaking nothing but the *exact* truth.  Of course they will direct, imply and manipulate to their purpose’s end, but they will never be culpable to the charge that they ever spoke falsehood.

When I talk of me speaking faerie I mean it in terms of working words or reality as a puzzle that I’m trying (by means of the exactness or slipperiness of language) to meld differing views enough to bring cooperation if not true peace.

And in case anyone needs me to add it, no I don’t believe in faeries. They’re just a usefully specific type of truth-teller, and I like having a precise vocabulary.

Atavistic Dreams

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Atavism is the idea or concept of a throwback.  A recurrence of a trait that (genetically, say)  had not shown up in a few generations.

I tripped over the term earlier this year.

I’d stopped into a yarn shop to see what blends they sold of angora yarn, and to buy a pattern.  My girls were with me (we’d just come from a baby shower), and between us we started talking with a woman who was probably in her 50s.

It came out that we raise rabbits, that I spin their wool and knit and love old stories– the old tales where spinning and knitting could be critical elements.

“Ah,” said she, “so you’re atavistic.”

I’d never heard the word, and asked what it meant.

“It means you love the old ways,” she said.  “Traditional things.”

I really enjoyed being given a useful new word (I had her spell it for me).  It is used more frequently in an evolutionary context, but her explanation is still solid. (The word is related to the word for ancestor.)

Anyway, all that to say, that I’ve been looking for a focus on Untangling Tales, and this might be what I end up with.

I do not automatically agree with Older-Is-Better (expect a post on that, eventually), but I am also against reinventing the wheel.  Such a waste of time.

With such a full life, I often think about time and how we have to make the most of it.  One of the ways I look at frequently is How did other people manage?

“There is nothing new under the sun,” and that concept gives me hope: I don’t need to know everything, or even figure out everything. If our generation has fewer physical resources because of the “depletion of the earth,” we can at least benefit from the many generations that have come before us.

Stories, songs, skills, delights: What a gift that we are not limited to ourselves– the past or the present.

 

Failure Happens

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I get nervous when I discover new things.

Not particularly because those things rock my world (so much) as I immediately start to wonder how long ago I was supposed to figure this out.

This popped into my novel a couple days ago:

A: I just figured out I’m ‘gifted.’
B: Just now?
A [self-conscious, embarrassed]: Yeah.
B: Maybe you should seek a second opinion.

A new friend mentioned how no one believed her when she said she was afraid she might fail. “Oh no, not you,” was all she heard.

It made me think of a quote I read recently: “I want to die” is often the way of saying “I want the pain to stop”… try, if you can, to respond as though you heard the second statement rather than get caught up in the horror of the first statement.

Not only in writing circles we can trip over the concept of *subtext*. The idea (reality, actually) that what’s being said is not always what’s really being said.

While listening to her story and hearing how utterly unhelpful the friends’ response was, I was embarrassed to realize I would have responded the same way.  It led to my new discovery:

We are (culturally?) conditioned to negate negativity.

When child says I can’t we jump in to say he’s wrong.  Only we do it by saying You can! A child says I’m afraid and we say she’s wrong by insisting, There’s nothing to be afraid of.

An adult friend asks, What if this proves too much for me? and instead of saying, I’ll love you anyway, or, How can I help you feel less overwhelmed? we jump in to remind her of her past competency.

I loved it last week when (in response to I-don’t-remember-what) Jay jokingly misquoted, “Past performance is no indicator of future success.”

“Uh-uh,” I corrected. “Past performance is no guarantee of future success.” (He agreed that was the accurate line.)

The past is an indicator, but it can also become a type of impossible standard.

Just because I’ve been relatively competent and self-sufficient much of my life does not mean I’ll never fall apart and call up three different people for help in the same week.

I did!

And I’m so thankful that there are those in my world who hear me when I’m scared or weak. And I’m even thankful for those folks who, even if they don’t particularly seem to believe me, will still come and wash dishes or fold clothes so I can keep my nose above water.

~

But hearing this friend’s frustration was a good reminder of what I’ve bemoaned lately: What’s so horrible about failure?  Instead of jumping to head every *potential* failure off, I wish we could adopt more of a wait-and-watch approach when we’re not dealing with life-and-death issues.

Yes, this might not turn out so well, or *maybe* it just isn’t what you would choose to do with the same time; but with no heart/soul/mind or body in line to be irreparably damaged, maybe you could just say you’ll love me anyway? No matter what?

That’s what we need to hear most.

Especially when we fail.