November

Well...November came and went. The time changed and the dark envelops us earlier in the evening now. Some days I want to laugh and some days I want to cry. Most days I do both. It's not bad, and maybe it's cleansing somehow. It's been a month to cry and laugh about anyway.

I had my appendix out November 4th after some several days of pain that I thought had to do with my ulcer. November 9th I had an endoscopy, which revealed that I do NOT have an ulcer, and the pain of the previous week was entirely related to my appendix. Most likely it's been related to my appendix for the last 4 months. I've currently been free of ulcer medication for 9 days. I had a teensy cup of coffee over the weekend. My stomach feels like a new woman, and I have loads more energy now that I'm not taking medication. Go figure.

Two of my very dear girlfriends came over the weekend after my surgery. We were supposed to be spending a weekend away, but, instead, they came here to be with me. I feel honored to have such loyal and compassionate friends. They paced themselves to my hobbling walk along the sidewalk and never complained about sleeping in the living room.

November 23rd, at almost 3 weeks post-surgery, Mango came down with an awful stomach bug, and we had a trip to the emergency room with him, too. Now, a week later, he's finally feeling ok, and he went back to work today.

In the meantime, we've sort of floated along, thanking God for our lives, crying about the things that feel overwhelming...or even the things that are beautiful and piercing.

My childbirth class ended. I learned about acupuncture. Vespera learned to trust Mango to help her write her college papers. I learned that I cannot edit papers while under the influence of whatever drugs they used to subdue me during the endoscopy. I learned to ask Novio for a little help now and then, and he learned to call me for help, too. I crocheted a doll for the first time. And I currently have a turkey in the oven...something I've only attempted once before. Mane learned to do laundry. But I think she forgot how to do any formal homeschool work. At least it's been nice enough to play outside.

Yes, it's been nice enough to play outside. And Advent has begun. This is the week for lighting the hope candle, and we are feeling deeply the hope of this season....the hope of new relationships, of renewed health, of deep friendships, and, of course, of a God who knows us, loves us, and is present with us.

Stuffed Poblano Peppers

We did this on a whim. It was Mango's idea. We called Vespera while she was doing her homework at the library to confirm some details. The results were DELICIOUS!

Ok, so take as many poblanos as you wish and burn them over an open burner on the stove. Let them sit in a covered container for a bit, and then the outside skin will peel off...a little like tomato skins when you boil tomatoes.

Brown & season ground beef however you wish.

Slit the peppers & remove seeds but not the stem.

Stuff the peppers with seasoned ground beef and cheese of your choice. We used Juusto baked cheese because it's got a hearty, meaty flavor.

Wisk 2 or 3 eggs in a bowl. In a separate bowl pour some Pamela's gluten free Baking and Pancake Mix. Roll the peppers in the eggs & then in the flour.

Fry them in hot oil on the stove until golden brown, using a tongs to turn them by the stem.

Not too difficult and very yummy!

More Green Smoothies!!

I made 3 more green smoothies today - 1 for Mane, 1 for Vespera, and 1 for me. My kids are getting totally hooked. What could be better?!



Smoothie #1 (for Mane)
1 cup Brown Cow maple yogurt
1 cup Almond Breeze Original almond milk
1/2 c. frozen cherries
1/2 c. frozen mangoes
1 c. fresh spinach
3 T rich chocolate Ovaltine

Smoothie #2 (for Vespera)
1 c. almond milk
1 scoop Spiru-Tein chai high protein powder
2 c. fresh spinach
1/2 c. frozen mangoes

Smoothie #3 (for Me)
same as Vespera's smooothie, without the mangoes

I tried making a smoothie with kale. Yuck. Some people claim this is among the easiest greens to put in a smoothie. I beg to differ.

Green Smoothies

So, the mamas on the message board (http://www.gentlechristianmothers.com/community/index.php) are all talking about DRINKING their veggies. So, I decided to try it. I must say that after just two days, I'm hooked!

Yesterday I made a smoothie with 1/2 cup frozen strawberries, 2 bananas, 2 cups romaine lettuce, and water. It was good but not great, and Mane hated it. I later read that romaine is one of the hardest greens to "hide" in a smoothie.

Today I made this smoothie:

2 cups of spinach
1 cup almond milk
1/2 cup frozen peaches
1/2 cup frozen cherries
2 pitted dates
1 small banana

YUM!! I don't think it needed the dates. I'm trying to move away from bananas because Mane doesn't like them much, and I'm hoping to get her drinking some green smoothies, too. She wasn't impressed with this one today, either. However, she is sitting here eating a bowl of peas. So, perhaps, I'm being a good influence anyway. She told me I was crazy to post about green smoothies here because nobody could possibly like them. *shrug* Let me know if you try it. ;)

(I'll tag on to this healthy post that the weather has been great this week, and we biked to the clinic & Savers yesterday. Today we biked to the co-op. Last week we spent a lot of time on the bus it was so rainy.)

Announcement

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. We here at The Midnight Cafe are in love with love...with the God who is love, with love stories and love songs, and the love between us, our family, and between the couples who make up our family...most newly, Vespera & Novio, as they are now officially engaged!!

We are so delighted. I don't think even Mango and I could imagine two people more perfectly suited to each other, except ourselves, of course. ;) They have worked together, planned events, cooked, danced, biked, hiked, and played guitar. They have gotten angry, cried, made up, and laughed...loud and long. They have held each other, literally and figuratively through some major life changes, pain, and stress. They have generously and openly shared their thoughts and even some struggles with us, and we have been honored and privileged to witness their journey of falling in love. Now it is our honor and privilege to walk beside them as a couple. Of all the beautiful gifts that God has bestowed on us, one of the sweetest is knowing that our precious daughter will marry someone who loves her deeply and completely, who respects her and honors her, and who expresses this love without reserve in word and action.

This is a gift to us, knowing that we would not choose anyone else for her, even if we could. It is a tremendous gift to us because we know what a gift marriage can be. Marriage means we have someone to face the world with us, to share our dreams, goals, stories, work, inside jokes, and warm winter quilts. Marriage can sharpen and refine us, as we rub against each other's sharp edges day in and day out. A marriage rooted and grounded in the love of God has the power to be balm and healing for the places where we are hurt and wounded. Out of our own healing, we can reach out and bring healing to others.

I strongly believe in the concept of synergy - the idea that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. A marriage has the potential to be and to create so much more than those two people working separately. Vespera and Novio have already been through much in their separate lives, and it's clear to me that God has brought them through for a purpose. They were born in two little towns in Mexico, not far apart. And, yet, they found each other here, in Minnesota, several thousand miles from their birthplaces. They found each other here, where they are surrounded by people who love and support them and people who have taught them much. A divine appointment, perhaps? Separately they are talented, courageous, and accomplished individuals. Together they are dynamite waiting to explode! I am convinced that God has plans for them, big plans.

I am curious and excited to see it all unfold. For now, though, I am simply content to walk beside them...to cook dinners and watch movies, to snowboard and camp and sit up late talking. They are our children...and our companions. How fortunate we are.

Riveted

I spent the evening with my eyes riveted to the girl who unexpectedly changed my life forever.
We were at a soccer game.
I watched her watch the ball...
watched her kick hard, fall down, laugh, sweat, SCORE, run...
Since the day I met her I've admired her courage,
her willingness to push through pain.
And her ability to come out the other side.
I don't think I've ever met anyone who wants to learn more
about everything
and who CAN.
Soccer is where she pushes her body,
college is where she pushes her mind,
and relationships are where she pushes her emotions.
She's had the courage to be the one to make change in relationships,
to be different,
to stand up for herself,
to admit mistakes,
and to forgive.
I kept my eyes on her.
Riveted.
Because who she is
has changed who I am,
and I'm trying to understand who I am.
While all the while she keeps changing, too.
My daughter,
mija,
Evening Prayer,
Vespera.

She turned 19 a few weeks ago, and the words that I couldn't find then started recklessly pouring all over the pages of my mind as I watched her play soccer last night. There's still so much more to say, but this is my Happy Birthday post for her...just a little late.

Would you, if you could?

If you could eliminate the emotional pain of a difficult or traumatic event in your past (without actually getting rid of the memory), would you do it? Think of the worst, most difficult, tragic, painful experience you've evre had and the ways in which it still affects you today. What if you could still remember but you could neutralize the emotions attached to the memory? You could get rid of the depression/anxiety/tears/pain/fear/embarrassment or whatever it is that comes with the memory. It seems so often that the emotions attached to traumatic or difficult experiences affect our ability to live a whole and healthy life. We make poor choices out of the woundedness and scars.

I'm reading a book called The Promise of Energy Psychology, which claims that through the stimulation of a sequence of accupressure points, the scenario I just described in the previous paragraph can happen - remember the trauma without the emotions. A person can eliminate phobias, anxiety and post traumatic stress by calling up the memory while interrupting the emotional response of the limbic system by massaging or tapping pressure points. Those with experience in this type of therapy say that the whole procedure takes only a few minutes and the effects are long lasting. People who have been through this type of therapy report that they are still free of their emotional distress even 2 years later.

At first, this seems entirely too good to be true. My first response was to say OF COURSE I want to get rid of the anxiety and depression I experience. OF COURSE, I want to stop feeling the upset whenever I recall particular instances of childhood trauma. I want to stop living with the drive to be perfect and the fear that I'm going to totally mess things up. I know that much of the fear is driven by painful life experiences. What if I could interrupt the emotional response and, thereby, the unhealthy behaviors?

The book gives examples of energy therapy working to relieve phobias. This seems pretty wise to me. And, yet, the book also mentions that people who have been treated for phobias often end up with even less of an emotional response to the object of the phobia than the general population. For example, a person with a fear of heights might eliminate their phobia and then some. Generally, people have some physiological response to heights, keeping them alert and cautious. The book says that the treated person with have less response then most of us but still have a healthy caution. This leads me to 2 questions. First, HOW does the treatment stop at a "healthy caution?" Who defines that? How do we know what degree of caution is healthy? And, second, what if the response of the average person is actually healthy and a certain degree of fear is necessary to keep us safe? Do we really want to deprogram our hard-earned responses that have taught us how to be safe? Of course, phobias are generally unhealthy, and we want a more balanced response, but can we garuntee that this type of therapy automatically stops at a good balance, a healthy place?

The book also gives an example of a woman who was raped by her stepfather at a young age. In one meeting with her energy therapist she went from shaking, flushed, crying, rapid breathing, and over-all very upset to calmly stating that the rape was a long time ago, it didn't have power over her any more, she is old enough to protect herself now, and she is able to protect her own children. Basically she went from very upset to telling herself and her therapist that there was really nothing to be upset about and she's over it now. Two years later the therapist followed up with her, and she still had no emotional response to recalling the rape. She had been able to "move on" with no depression, anxiety or post-traumatic stress.

This last story seems ideal on the one hand and scares me to pieces on the other. It doesn't seem right somehow. It seems to take some of the humanity out of the person. We were made to feel. God created us with a limbic system, an emotional response system, with the capacity for love and joy...and pain and sadness. And feelings serve a purpose - to protect us, to teach us, to connect us to others. What happens to a person's compassion if they disconnect or neutralize their emotions related to pain or trauma? I'm entirely in favor a balance and learning to come to a balanced place with emotional responses. I do see how getting lost in the haze of our emotional over-response leads to unhealthy and even destructive choices sometimes. I get that there are sometimes reasons to take medication to balance emotional responses. I understand that brain chemistry is a powerful thing. I'm scared stiff by a therapy that ELIMINATES the negative emotions. How can it do that?

Even considering the possibility that this might be possible brought me to some conclusions that I feel somewhat ambivalent about. I've learned a lot. I guess it upsets me that I had to endure some kind of trauma to come to some profound realizations, but it seems to be the case. I've learned things about God and faith, life, community, families, and even my own capacity for love, joy and sacrifice through the really painful things in my life. And much of the learning has happened through actually feeling the pain. If I had done some energy work to change my emotional response, I'd feel fine, but I wouldn't be the same person I am today. I wouldn't think as hard about things. I wouldn't know the depth that's out there, that's available to me.

And there's something else, too. If I hadn't been wading my way through so many tough emotions, I wouldn't have experienced the love and compassion of my Mango in the same way. I wouldn't know the depth of his love for me. I wouldn't know about love so deep and fierce, so patient and gentle, so persistent and unwavering. I wouldn't know who he really is on the inside. Maybe he learned something, too, about his own capacity for love and sacrifice.

Yes, I think people were made to feel. And nothing about feeling is clean and neat or simple.

I still have a lot of questions. I mean, if God made us with pressure points that change the flow of energy in our bodies and neutralize emotional reactions, maybe there's something valuable to be had there. Maybe it's not so all or nothing as the vibe I'm getting from the book I'm reading. It probably isn't. It's been a journey for me to process this, though...to think about the role that broken and desperately painful emotions have played in my life. I know I haven't experienced the worst pain out there, either, and I wouldn't ever fault anyone for seeking salve for their wounds, balm for their bleeding emotions. Who could find fault with that? I can only say what I say here from the other side, for the most part. More days than not, I'm free from the emotional fallout of painful memories. What if I hadn't found the other side yet? What if no other side was in sight? Ultimately, I am left with more questions that answers.

What would you do?