The Davis Family

What a year!

Looking at the pictures from January…. it feels like it’s been a very long time.

We took our half-fated big family trip to a beach rental… where Jordan and Daniel barely slept and Brian got sick and the girls still managed to have fun.

I was making packing lists for our March trip to Delaware for some serial casting for Daniel… and taking cute photos of his feet for his orthopedist.

None of us had ever heard of Coronavirus.

February 2020 rolled in without any announcement and we enjoyed a special birthday celebration for my dad at my sister’s new home – all the kids were there!

Ballet in person was still a thing! People touched each other and didn’t wipe down the ballet bars or anything! 🙂

English Country Dances were in full swing and oh, how we miss that!

We started hearing rumors about some illness in China that was causing quarantines. We didn’t think it would affect us.

A determined friend came and helped us with some yardwork… it was a treat to have him drive so far to spend the day with us!

And lastly, Brian and I were getting better at taking care of our personal health… Brian took up hiking and I began exercising frequently. Sometimes, he takes the kids along. This is up on Bells Mountain Trail.

I’ve been thinking a lot about self worth lately. I’ve been struggling to generalize what I happily and naturally extend to my children… to myself. It’s been hard to believe God values us while I’ve been observing the unfair suffering of my children and reading books set in WWII. I do NOT have the answers. But I need to blog… I need to talk through and think out some hope here.

I’m going to focus on one little piece of the puzzle that is broken, missing, or malformed in my life. I’m not sure which.

This piece is disguised as:
Difficulty accepting compliments
Hunger for affirmation/praise
Self sacrifice to others
Difficulty recognizing personal skills
Giving but never receiving
Self-deprecation
Humility

For me, personally, it often looks like:
Working too hard
Self condemnation
Self damnation for mistakes
Expectation of rejection
Impression of being invisible

It’s the piece of me that, deep down inside, when push comes to shove, believes I am special, beautiful, valuable, important, of note, and at my core… good.

That piece… is broken.

I have done work to fix the surface. I accept compliments. I try to think and move as though I am beautiful. I look at the things I do well and allow a sort of self pride. I try to recognize and acknowledge my better character traits. I have begun putting a serious effort into taking care of myself and my own personal needs.

But… but if the compliments are genuine and about something deeply personal… an impenetrable wall flies up and I feel a slice of fear or pain.
If I have depression that day/week/month, I can only take care of myself in solidarity with things I believed before I was depressed, because it doesn’t make sense any more.

Last night, I did some qigong before bed. It tends to “flush” my depression and refresh me in general.
When I did the following qigong movement… hands to heart… I was surprised by a powerful internal grief rising up. I’ve done this movement before… with the same experience. Even just watching it, I feel an echo of the ache of yearning and loss. Please… watch for a moment or participate.

Start at 10:25

A gift? For me? For my heart? The things my heart needs most? My hands… giving gifts to my heart…
I…
it…
My whole chest clenches and feels fragmented.
Tears are hot and stinging.

Why?

Why have I trained myself to be so unkind to myself? I grew up constantly hearing people tell me not to be so hard on myself!
It alternated with instruction to better myself. My parents, whom I love and who love me, are more likely to verbalize criticism than praise.
Was this the beginning?
But, I have a husband who is more likely to praise than to be critical and I’ve been married for fifteen years in my own home.

I grew up in a church culture that celebrates the beauty of self-sacrificial love… without the balancing wisdom of self love and kindness, appropriate boundary setting, or self care.
But I’ve been a rebel and haven’t wholly swallowed church doctrine since I was in Kindergarten. Also, I have been completely outside of the church for several years now, learning to take care of myself and to see myself as God sees me.

I see myself being critical of my children… demanding, correcting, judging. This is the easiest mode for me to interact in.
It doesn’t bear good fruit. Even though they need instruction, this is creating results I grieve rather than celebrate.

I see myself being loving toward my children… accepting, supporting, validating. This is hard to do.
But this is bearing the fruit relational closeness, though I don’t know if the needed guidance is getting through.

I dislike the dissonance of be hopping between the two.

But I want to go back to the “Hands to Heart” movement.
Giving to myself.
Those things that I need most.
Kindness.
Love.
Acceptance.
Value.
Belonging.

Random strangers tell me that I am their hero, just because I’m a mother to children with special needs.
People who know me a bit tell me that I am skilled and that I do ___ really well.
People who know me intimately tell me that I am kind, generous, a good listener.

These compliments rub up against a big, raw wound that is where life and other people both close and distant have told me that I’m unwanted, unloved, unimportant, and rejected. In truth, I am socially isolated. That I have tried to develop in-real-life community, but have been largely (though not completely) unsuccessful is fuel to the fire of self damnation.

Deep down inside, I want to have confidence that when God made me… he made something good. Something that He looks at and smiles with warmth, delight, desire, and pride. To know without a doubt that I have been made for a purpose that is good. To believe without hesitation that he considers me perfect even in my very-obvious imperfections.

Does He accept me like that?
Can I accept me like that?

Fighting my demons.
Not giving up.
Believing that I am created for life, not death.
Choosing hope.
Choosing, in the absence of natural understanding, to believe that God sees me like I see my children, like I see the wildflowers, like I see other people:
Beautiful
Valuable
Exquisite
With purpose
At the core… good.

p.s. If you, like me, are struggling with mental health and emotional intelligence and self worth or depression… I was recently amazed to watch this self interview of a man and his life partner who has multiple mental health diagnoses. (SBSK is a pretty fantastic resource for getting to know people with a wide number of diagnoses and life experiences. It’s like the “Humans of New York” with a focus on people with diagnoses. In this case, he is interviewing his life partner.)
Alyssa’s 5 Mental Health Disorders (The Truth About our Love and SBSK

Motivation: Popular phrasing is SHTF Prep. (S&*! Hits the Fan) Between social stress/unrest in our country, the pandemic, the potential for a major earthquake in my part of the country and the fact that I just read a book set in World War II France with food rations and starvation… well, I feel motivated to save some food the same way I try to save money in case of emergency.

The Long-term Goal: Save 1 year’s worth of food, which does not have to be rotated or replaced for many years, to feed each member of our family 1,500 calories a day or more. Include water-purification supplies and a few non food essentials.

Short-term Goal: Save 1 month’s worth of food and a little bit of water.

Plan/Process: Save a little at a time, as I am able, focusing on staples that will last a very long time. I will NOT be rotating through this food and using it regularly. Instead, I will label the foods with the expiration date and donating or using it a year before expiration.

Supplies and storage area: An unused basement, an unused shelf, 5-gallon buckets, 5-gallon-sized Mylar bags and oxygen absorbers. May also purchase some pre-packaged #10 cans. More shelves will follow… I hope.

You can view the live document where I am collecting my research about what to store and what I’m storing.

DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH… I’m doing most of my research (reflected in this blog and on my living document) by googling and searching a variety of prepper web pages. A great, long-standing resource is the Church of Jesus Christ (LDS).

My process, in pictures, for long-term food storage (my first time!):

Recommended amounts of oxygen absorbing packets for 5-gallon bags according to USA Emergency Supplies, a commercial company (not government) is 2,000-4,000cc oxygen absorbers. The Winco package had instructions for 1500cc per 5-gallon bucket.

All shelf life expectations below assume best case scenario storage: No oxygen, no light, cool temperatures.

Staples with a 25+ year shelf life:
Dehydrated Apple Slices
Beans, Pinto
Dried Carrots
Corn Meal
Corn Starch
Lentils
Popcorn (to pop or grind)
Rolled Oats
Spaghetti (or other pasta)
Split Peas
Sugar
Wheat Berries
White Rice

Other Essentials – life span not researched by me yet
Baking Soda
Coconut Oil
Cream of Tartar (for making baking powder)
Salt
Vinegar
Yeast

Other “good ideas” in my opinion – life span varied, but most 15-30 years
Cocoa Powder
Coffee
Dried Peanut Butter
Dry Milk (nonfat)
Flour (all-purpose)
Hard Candy
Honey
Meat (freeze dried beef)
Meat (freeze dried chicken)
Molasses
Potato flakes
Powdered Eggs
Powdered Fruit Drink
Taco Seasoning
Tea
Water

Non-food items I’m considering:
Candles
Cat and dog food
Cold medicine/Benadryl
Dish Soap
First aid kid
Grain mill, manual
Hairbrush/comb
Iodine,Calcium Hypochlorite (pool shock), or some other chemical water purification method
Kleenex or cloth tissues
Laundry detergent
Light bulbs
Menstrual pads (fabric?)
Playing cards
Prescription meds
Razors/aftershave
Sewing kit
Shampoo/conditioner
Soap bars
Thieves or other cleaner
Toilet paper
Toothpaste/brushes
Tube feeding backup
Water purification filter system

Still Researching:
1. Volume reducing: If I’m successful in a year’s worth of food, that’s 7 people x 1500+ calories/day x 365 days = 3,832,500 calories. That much would take an enormous amount of space. I am interested in researching to learn which long-term-stable foods are more compact.
2. Fats/Oils: Finding any oils that store long term
3. How to know if something is rancid
4. How to use Pool Shock for water purification
5. What cleaning agents will last a long time? (Bleach lasts less than a year!)

I am often a micromanager of our household and was pretty successful at it when the kids were younger. I like organizing the home to be most efficient and comfortable and I like prepping events or activities to be orderly and enjoyable. With money, I like it going where I expect, doing what I want, and not running out. Early on, we had a really small income. And now that our income is larger, the volume of expenses is greater. My early money-management techniques and decision-making processes need to evolve with my family! And… so I’m blogging to try and do that.

For several years, I’ve struggled to keep my spending within the budget plan that I’ve set for myself.

Aside: I love budgeting. I use a program (used to use Microsoft Money but now I use AceMoney Lite) to track my expenses. I sit down at my desk about once a week and copy every transaction from my bank account to AceMoney. I double-check that the balances match and I assign a category and subcategory to every transaction. These are the best way I’ve found to keep track of what I’m doing with my money. Once a month, I run a report from my program that shows the totals for each category/subcategory. Those values get entered into my written budget. My typed budget. Whatever. I use excel to write my budget numbers down and transfer my monthly totals there once a month to see how I’m doing.

And how I’m doing is consistently overspending in most of my discretionary categories. (Mortgage payment, phone bill, water bill are not discretionary. Grocery choices, household supplies, hair cuts, hiking gear, etc…. that’s where the problem lies.)

So I’m sitting down to think out loud. Why am I struggling to limit my spending? What changed that made this harder? What thought processes have I added or abandoned? What can I do differently?

-Making more money means I can buy things I couldn’t before.
-Buying things I couldn’t before makes me think that I can afford to buy ALL the things I couldn’t before.

“Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds nought and six, result misery.” Charles Dickens

-Being overspent or overburdened emotionally, physically, schedule-wise, or in any other way means something has to give and support is needed.
-Healthy eating, home cooking, careful prioritizing, etc….. are the give.
-Fast food, easy food, activities of respite and relief are the support.

Once again… overspending.

-Prioritizing expenses is how we have always decided where our limited, finite money will go.
-The amount, the volume of expenses has increased tenfold at least as the number of children has increased, the ages of the children has increased, and our own adult lives have gotten more complex too.
-I’ve gotten lost in the sheer volume of options and given up prioritizing carefully.

Hey – that’s pretty good progress for one morning of journaling/blogging!

Goals:
Self reminder: Just because we have more income than early in our marriage doesn’t mean we can afford everything!
Self awareness: Stress makes me reach for expensive solutions. Choose the less-expensive option more often.
Preparation: Attempt the list-making solution for complex priorities. Write down what I think I need and refuse to make the purchase until 1 week or more has passed. Choose a good place to keep this list.

Soooooooooooooooooooo, unpacking. Deconstructing.

As I get close to present (part two got all the way up to about five years ago (2015ish) it’s getting messier and messier to blog through. I’m unable to condense this into just talking about spiritual and faith-based development any more. It’s going to get personal and if I get to the present, I’m going to be talking about hot topics that I am confident a significant percentage of you will disagree with. Is gender a spectrum and is there still racism in the United States and stuff like that. So if your heart rate is increasing already, you should probably take a pass on this post and go pet a puppy or something. I welcome conversation, but I am processing hard stuff about my own personal development here and my own personal development is not a topic for debate. I will exercise my freedom to ignore/delete any comments here that call me a damn fool or question my value or rightness before God.

Oh, and family and friends… I cuss sometimes now. Even more in my head than out loud, but ya know, some things don’t change easy.

This is a good time to talk about how I think about myself. How I thought about myself. What I expected of myself.

Doing stuff. Canning. Gardening. Camping. Going for walks. Cooking dinners. Kids’ clothes. Fun. Family. Birthdays. Pets.

I did the stuff. We have loads of beautiful memories.

As the years went on, I became able to do less and less and less. I was not able to fix some things. For me, it was autism, developmental delay and attachment disorder. One little boy whom I love dearly was the first to turn our life on its head. I expected things of myself that I couldn’t do. I actually don’t want to get into that right here. But it is IMPORTANT stuff that I couldn’t do. They are true heart goals that I was failing. I don’t know how much of it was an idol of an image that I was aspiring to that the church created… how much of it was perfectionism as a personality trait that was getting crushed… how much was the conversation of depression that showed up with my depleted physical state… and how much could have been avoided.

Blog attempt falls flat.

Regroup.

A day passes.

Another day passes.

Brave

It’s time for me to step back and evaluate what I’m doing and why. I am revisiting my spiritual history, both long past and recent, to get a better understanding of where I am now and why… and what I believe and why – particularly as it relates to religion and spirituality.

This process of review and assessment cannot happen without honesty. Testing my faith without honesty would be a waste of time. Testing my faith without being willing to reconsider everything lessens the authenticity of my review.

It’s not easy to ask questions that allow myself to go all the way to the question, “Am I even a Christian any more?”

Brian and I sat on the front porch (Hiding from the children and dinner.) and talked about that. He asked my why it was scary to me to consider if I am not a Christian. Firstly, because I’m “supposed” to be. Christians are taught to fear Hell. Secondly, because I have made 37 years of life choices based off of this Christian foundation. Would I regret life choices if they came from a place of error? There are other things, but I want to move on.

As I sat on the front porch step, leaning on the shoulder of my best friend, life partner and soulmate, I saw the sky.

I cannot believe that the world and universe created themselves or always just existed. I believe in a Creator.
I saw the beauty… the wild beauty of the clouds against the sky and the tall fir trees reaching up toward them… and I believe that the Creator knows and loves beauty. I believe the Creator must be good.
As a person interested in the sciences, I am somewhat aware of the incredible, impossible complexity of all of Creation. The detail work of the Creator goes beyond our ability to see with the most powerful microscope… so I infer that S/He cares about every bit of Creation. That means God cares about me.
I believe that a person named Jesus existed and I believe that He represents the heart of the Creator’s love for us… putting away patriarchal behaviors, putting away rules and prejudices and loving and teaching us in person, by example.

I want to rush through the end of my spiritual journey now and then articulate some of the things I DON’T believe and try to articulate where I’m going from here.

It’s ironic that I’m going to spend a little time here judging churches for being judgemental…

I left off when we were attending a local church, but weren’t truly accepted or loved. We did not feel valued or important. We were given the impression that we were an imposition even. Though our children were still small, they were very well behaved in church. We worked hard to show up on Sunday clean, well-dressed, and equipped to make it through several hours of service and small group with babies in tow, including Jordan who has Down Syndrome and Autism. They encouraged us to use child care there…. and then didn’t provide competent care. I kept my children quiet in service except for the occasional wiggle or whisper, but one Sunday they asked us to leave service so we didn’t distract the pastor. (I didn’t.) We signed up for our kids to participate in the Christmas service… every one of my children were put in the baby angel choir, despite some of the kids being much too old. We decided not to perform. We participated in a small group where we shared our hearts and supported the other families. Since leaving, the only contact we’ve had with those families is one family trying to have me hire her son for piano lessons. While I was just home from the hospital.

Do you see why we need to be honest? Because if we just look right, but don’t honestly care for one another, we hurt each other!

We church hunted again. We found another community church with a great children’s program. We attended for a year and volunteered and went to classes and initiated conversations with families and leaders to get to know them. Our children made friends and we began to feel at home. We decided to pursue Daniel’s adoption while we were there. We volunteered how 10 month process was going to leaders and members we spent time with and I asked for prayer regularly. Jordan often struggled to go to church and we were very visible as he and I often sat in the lobby during service… or Brian took him to walk around outside. Time came for us to adopt and bring home Daniel. I spent two weeks in Bulgaria with an emaciated and scared little boy who wouldn’t eat or drink. We got home and were admitted to the hospital for a week. We got home. Nobody called. Nobody showed up. Nobody checked in. Orphans are close to the heart of God’s business. Nothing. A friend outside of the church initiated a meal train with a mom in our church for us to help. Time went by and we showed up at church for the first time with our new family. There was no special greeting. We came. We left. We didn’t return. I should also share that my older boy was struggling with big emotions and behaviors and we tried, very directly (with emails and phone calls) to find a way to get him to church. Their advice was to wait for summer. We were NOT VALUED OR WANTED by the institution of this church either. While two families reached out to support us individually (which is pretty awesome, considering how short a time we’d known each other), the church as an institution and culture did not “see” us.

El Roi is a name of God. It means He who sees me. And, by implication… cares about me.

Church… has failed us. Over and over.

The message of the church if I listen to their words is: “Love. Hope. Grace. Humility.”
The message of the church if I listen to their actions is: “Rejection. Incapacity. Requirements. Pride.”

Is it any wonder that I need to go through this process of deconstruction?

I have often wondered, or even asked God directly, “Why in the world did you choose people to represent your church!? People suck. We’re terrible at love and grace.”

So my religion is stripped down and I’m learning what it is I still believe.

I believe in the Creator. I believe He’s good and that he cares about me. I believe that the message of the gospel is less about Jesus’ name than it is about the message of hope and grace and love and tenderness and compassion.

Special needs forced me here.

If we hadn’t adopted, we could have maintained the image required of church attendance indefinitely. But we didn’t. There are things that changed when we invited brokenness into our home. And for the record, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Brokenness. Special needs. Attachment disorder. Trauma. PTSD. Autism. Developmental Delay. Physical differences. Wheelchair use. Chronic illness. Chronic fatigue. Syndromes. Etc.

It means that we cannot all:
Sit quietly in church service
Behave nicely in children’s services
Serve in church
Show up on Sunday regularly
Show up in person at all
Participate in group activities
Attend a potluck
Stand in the lobby
Stay seated

It means that we need:
To be seen and wanted and needed
To be supported
To have activities adapted
To have differences welcomed
Others willing to be uncomfortable
Others willing to change

Am I not valuable to God? Are my children not made in His image? If you attend a church that CANNOT make space for a child or adult that makes funny noises, struggles with behaviors, needs an adult sized toileting/diaper changing area, and cannot access areas that don’t have wheelchair access, then you are NOT welcoming the least of these. And that grieves me. You are missing out on real life.

Did you see the video some time back of the pastor who showed up at church dressed as a homeless man? Was he welcomed and invited in? What about an individual who looks or acts funny? Is your church body healthy enough to develop relationships with each other? The kind of relationships where you’re not threatened by weakness and neediness? Do you feel the kind of love for each other that compels you to acts of service and sacrifice for each other?

Because that’s the kind of church I long for. One that understands and does not shy away from suffering. One that identifies with the broken. Actually, I’m slowly finding it. It’s not in a building and I don’t know if we’ll ever attend church in a sanctuary again. At this point, we’d need extraordinary support to pull that off. And I’m not convinced it’s necessary.

The heart of the Gospel is love. Love is an experience of relationships. And we’re slowly finding and developing a few relationships. We’re awfully isolated and few people are comfortable standing in the suffering with us. But those I’ve met who have experienced or are continuing to experience suffering… the kind where it’s beyond endurance or fixing… they reach out a hand in solidarity.

So here I am. Unfixed.

And hoping.

My wedding band, created a few years ago, reads: “Stand Fast. Made Whole. Poured Out.”
Three things will last forever—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love. 1 Corinthians 13:13

My faith has changed, but it still stands fast.
My hope is for the broken things to be made whole. And for many broken things it’s too late. So my hope is set on eternity.
My love is poured out. Continually. All I have. All He gives me. Gushing or barely dripping. For myself as well as others.

Be willing to challenge your beliefs.

Stripped down faith.

Love wins.

P.s.
Yes, conservative and fundamentalist friends… this means that I will not support rules that exclude. Obviously, I am talking about MY OWN experiences with “the church” as I’ve experienced it in the middle class white church of America. Yes, segregation in churches is a thing.

I do not support the exclusion and damnation of LGBTQ+ people. They’re people, dammit, and don’t deserve that damnation from the church. If (IF!!!) the Bible is against gender as a spectrum and love and devotion in non-heterosexual couples, then that STILL doesn’t mean excommunication and judgement. Our job is to love and support each other, not to condemn. If you want to make a big deal out of this, then make a big deal out of smoking, gluttony, anger, hate, and selfishness. Because they’re way more damaging.

I do not support the judgement and “looks” given by the church to divorced, incarcerated, impoverished, intoxicated, addicted or otherwise “unclean” groups of people in the community. The church ought to welcome homeless people to camp in their parking lots. We ought to serve refugees and support abused women and make space for individuals who are still in the grips of addiction. It’s messy, y’all, and it hurts. And it’s still the right thing to do.

Churches should do a better job of practicing intolerance of spousal abuse and related.

I am no longer a Republican and please don’t defend Trump to me. I hate even calling him President Trump, because he and what he stands for is so distasteful to me.

White churches need to stop ignoring racial bias and begin to stand with the hurting.

That’s all. I feel flat like a balloon. I think that means I’m finished! For now.