Tag Archives: fear

If I was your true friend

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I’d be asking you those tough questions. You already know the questions. The ones that we ponder in our hearts and we want so desperately to ask, but we are afraid of hurt feelings or overstepping into that private place that says Do Not Enter or Keep Out. These are the most important questions, yet we hesitate. I am guilty of remaining silent far too often only because I fear the response. Those sign posts again.

If I was your true friend, then I would ask you:

How is your spiritual life?

Are you praying? Reading your Bible?

How can I pray for you today?

What are your struggles? Hopes? Dreams?

Past friendships never heard me ask those questions, when I knew I was supposed to ask them. Now I see these women struggling, drifting away, falling into a place I’m sure they never dreamed they would go. I stand at the shoreline of our friendship and they have drifted so far away. I wonder if they are happy. I am not happy for them.

Slowly I am learning to cast aside the fear, to speak up. To run after another crying girlfriend who just walked out the church door.

If we were friends away from the confinements of this cyberworld, then I would be having you here for dinner or coffee. I’d have your kids play with my kids, especially on a day when you needed a break because raising kids, especially if you homeschool and are with your kids more than usual, is exhausting work. Our husbands could hang out by the grill, we ladies would no doubt be in the kitchen. I’ll wash, if you dry. We would laugh together, cry together.

I hope you would answer the tough, difficult questions with honesty because if we are truly friends, then we shouldn’t have to fear.

Don’t think so much, Monica

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Dear Monica,

On Friday, you will travel by car, ferry and foot to attend the first Book Blogger Convention in the great City. The renowned Book Expo America will also be in the building; not sure you will have time to walk the floor there with all the other crazed book fans. I suspect you are going to have to chose between book blogging workshops and free books.

You better bring a tote bag.

I know you are nervous about going into the City. You are not a city person, as much as you would like to easily move between the two worlds of city and country. The crowds, the traffic, the amount of man-made material under your feet is not part of your daily life. You can count the number of cars that pass your house daily.

And I sense the heart of your apprehension, the “What if?” lurking in the back of your mind. This will be your first time in the City since that day when the towers came down and the City proved vulnerable to evil and the innocent fell from the sky.

You were a mom of only two then – a toddler girl, a baby boy. Today, you have four young ones at home and that toddler girl is now what they call a tween.

You’ve seen the City from a distance, from the safety of New Jersey soil, driven past the Manhattan skyline several times to visit the Statue of Liberty, a museum or to vacation further north. This time you will be walking the City streets, in a convention hall with scores of people. Your children will be with your mom and dad, enjoying time with Grandma and Poppy, happy to jump on the trampoline and eat numerous ice cream cones. Your mom is generous with the treats, isn’t she?

They won’t be anywhere near the City.

Your brother told you how he walked past that car bomb earlier this month. The bomb that didn’t work right, only filling the car with smoke to alert a pedestrian of the danger smoldering inside. He and and his friends left Yankee Stadium to go to dinner – his May Day birthday dinner – that night in Times Square.

We had to have walked past that car, he told you the next day. He told you the story and you immediately thought of the Book Bloggers Convention.

Don’t think so much, Monica.

Who would want to harm a bunch of book nerds? This is the world of publishing and book blogging, we are not sitting at the popular kids table in the high school cafeteria. Nobody is paying attention to the book geeks, right?

Right?

Friday is going to be a bright, bookish day. You are going to meet friends you have only talked with online for the first time, make new acquaintances, dwell in the world of book blogging all day. Maybe you can steal a few moments at the BEA convention floor.

I’m sure you’ll have a great time. Don’t forgot Who goes before you, surrounding you with His love.

Sincerely,

Me (or You, if you want to be more accurate)

My fake heart attack

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It all started with a pain in my right arm. A sharp little stabbing like an imaginary nurse stuck me with with a needle. I rubbed it, fussed over it. I remember thinking, “Could this be a heart attack?”

Looking back now, I believe that thought sent me on the path for all that happened yesterday.

That was in the morning. I kept going with my day: fed the kids lunch, corrected Math-U-See papers. Typical homeschool mom fare. Susan spilled milk, sending a lake of liquid across the table almost ruining science and math books.

By 1:30 pm, I jumped on the Dell. Tweetdeck, blogs to check. I decided to try out the online Mango program for Spanish. It was fun trying to get the accent just right, I imagined speaking Spanish to new friends at church. I even sent out a tweet about it too. Traded DMs with Tanya Dennis about the Mandarin Chinese also available.

My arm was still hurting. More thoughts of doom. What the heck is wrong with me? More computer time.

Then – the numbness shooting down my right arm, the tingling as I stood up to find my cell phone because I knew I needed to make a phone call.

911.

By now, I was scared. My heart pounded as I dialed the phone. My arm – wow, it hurt. Still numbness and tingling. Jesus, I’m scared, help me. Don’t take me yet. Too much to do, kids still so young. Joe…

So I laid on my kitchen floor answering the questions of the calm 911 operator. Lucy sat on top of me, Edmund with the goofy questions because he’s six and has no idea what it means when his mother is breathing heavily while lying on the floor. Peter, outside. Poor Susan. Scared too, because in Serious Mommy Voice I directed her to call my mom and my husband.

This is it. I can’t believe this. Jesus, help me.

Quickly there was a gathering of strangers in my kitchen. One EMT grew to several, then paramedics. All looked a bit perplexed because by this time my breathing started to return to normal, my arm felt better and I was cracking jokes. (Because that’s what I do when I feel ridiculous, with everyone looking at me. Kind of the way I felt walking down the isle to get married. Everyone’s looking at me! )

On the way to the hospital, with all the sirens and lights creating this Red Sea effect on Rt. 31, I thought of  the spilled milk and how Susan cried when I yelled at her. All that anger over an accident and protecting those stupid books.

How I wished I could go back to that moment to react differently.

You can guess the rest: the blood tests, chest x-ray, EKGs. I’m fine. No heart attack; not at risk for a heart attack either. I don’t smoke, drink, no strong family history. Medically, I’m as boring as a block of wood. By 9 pm, we were on the road home.

Diagnosis: arm pain. My diagnosis – and I feel silly admitting this after all the fuss I created yesterday – my arm fell asleep due to too much computer. I made this happen sitting at the laptop too long, combined with my knowledge of heart attack symptoms (arm pain, numbness, etc.), I freaked myself out when I felt the numbness. Calling 911 sent me into an “Oh, boy, This is serious,” hyperventilation-breathing fit.

I’m such a dork.

When I got home, Susan was still awake and I finally got to tell her what I was afraid I wasn’t going to get the chance to do. “I’m sorry. Please forgive me.” And she did.

Postscript: Just now, as I’m thinking how to end this story, to show you the impact of my fake heart attack and how I suspect it’s going to change me and my mothering, my four year old was scribbling on the wall with crayon.

Old me, before fake-heart attack me, would’ve yelled, pitched a good ol’ fit. The new me? Not one shout. It’s not about the books or walls, milk or crayon. It’s about people and love and forgiveness and mercy.

Hallelujah! It’s about Love.

***

Twitter and Facebook friends, much love and appreciation to you all. Often I’ve doubted what we have is true community, never again will I think that way. You proved yourselves with the retweets, replies, DMs, emails. Thank you, thank you. I look forward to the day we meet face-to-face, and if not here, with Him who has given you all to me for such a day like yesterday. Again, thank you.