What happened when I took a pillow into the bathroom.

(This is the second part of a two part post. If you have not read part one (my lesson in humility) you may want to scroll down and read that one first.)

A few years after my smack to the head (heart,ego...)in the parking lot, I found myself pregnant with my third child (of five). Pregnancy, for me, is as difficult as finding parking downtown.......times 1000. I have a condition called Hyperemesis Gravidium. What this means basically, is, for the first 5-6 months of my pregnancy, I throw up every 20-30 minutes, 24 hours a day, 7days a week, am confined to bed and/or hospitalized and I lose 25-35 pounds. (If you are asking yourself why I would have 5 children if I knew I had this conditon, there is an answer....but that is a whole other post.) This, of course, creates a severe state of weakness. So severe, in fact, that a trip to the bathroom to throw up again is nearly impossible. Which takes us to the pillow.

My husband, who was working himself to death trying to keep everything going while I was sick, had taken our two sons to a friends house to be cared for while he went to work. I was supposed to stay in bed and do the best I could. On this particular morning the prospect of 57 trips to and from the bathroom was more than I could face, so I gathered up my pillow and my blanket and laid down on the bathroom floor, next to the toilet. I know...EW!!!..but you do what you have to.

I had been there for a few hours and after my 12th time of hanging my head over the bowl, I laid back down and started to cry. I said out loud, to God (and anyone else who may have been listening), "Are you not paying attention?!?! I'm SICK down here! Really, REALLY, sick. What do you want from me? I've prayed. I've pleaded. I believed. I'm trying so hard and...NOTHING! Is there no help for me? No relief for a few hours, no comfort, no healing? I'm SICK!"

Ah! Self pity. The greatest high of all. Now here is the drug the DEA should be waging war on. Shooting up with self pity can blur the realities and feed that "I deserve beter" halucination better than anything else. I'm not sure there has been an official study but I would imagine that breaking a self pity addiction is harder than giving up heroin or meth. Powerful stuff, this self pity thing.

Anyway, back to the pillow. As I lay there crying, a thought enters my head ,just as clear and real as a flashlight in a darkened room. "You're not dying, you're pregnant". The tears stop for a moment. What??? "I said, you're not dying, you're pregnant. You're having a baby. I know you're sick. I know you're REALLY sick. But, do you know that there are millions of women, all over the world, who would GLADLY go through what you are experiencing if they could just have a baby? You can have children. Do you know how fortunate you are?"

If I hadn't already been laying on the floor, it would have knocked me to my knees. The crash from a self pity high can be very startling.

Suffice it to say that I tried very hard to remain self pity free for the remainder of this pregnancy and the two others that followed. And, thankfully, I have finally learned to apply the "do you know how fortunate you are?" lesson to many other areas of my life. It opens all kinds of doors for my life and I'm grateful to the powers that be that, when it comes to self pity, I am learning to "just say no!"

My Lesson in humility....or...what 2 1/2 inches and a pillow in the bathroom have in common. Part 1

I admit it. I can be pretty slow sometimes. This is why the powers that be frequently have to teach me something and THEN teach me again so that I may apply it to many areas of my life, thus eventually retaining it's full meaning and influence. This was one of those times and for that reason, this post is a two-parter. First, the 2 1/2 inches....

One of the many things I have done in life is to teach people how to find, buy and sell foreclosure properties. I only tell you this to explain why I was in Downtown Kansas City one day at my "regular" parking lot. Parking is no small task in downtown KC (or downtown anywhere for that matter). In my many trips to teach the "newbies" at the courthouse, I had found a relatively safe, inexpensive parking lot about 4 blocks away. This particular lot was next to an abandoned fabric factory and a very small neighborhood bar aptly named the "high time".

I had finished my "lesson" early that day and had just entered said parking lot when I noticed a man in a car slumped over his steering wheel, apparently unconscious.
With every fiber of my kindhearted, brotherly love, lean on me conviction, I said to myself "Look at this loser. I guess he's had his "high time". It's only one o'clock in the afternoon and he's already had so much to drink he's passed out in his car. What a waste of his life".

Just moments later, as I continued down the aisle to my car, mentally patting myself on the back for being so hardworking and responsible, I noticed another man, this one homeless and "bum" like, digging through the dumpster behind the "high time" bar looking for food. Once again, oozing compassion and understanding, I said to myself "and here's another one! Boy it takes all kinds. If he put half as much effort into cleaning himself up and finding a job as he is in digging through that dumpster, he wouldn't be in this condition. Just plain lazy I guess".

Yes, I know. Some people just need to be smacked, and on that day in that very moment, the hand of God was pulling back and aiming right for me.

I pulled out my keys and the "bum" turned around, noticed me and waved. I nodded at him and hurriedly tried to locate the one that would unlock the door (this was before those handy little fob things we have now). As I put the key in the lock I noticed that the "bum" was running...but not towards me. He was running to the car that had the "drunk" in it. I watched in amazement as he tried to open the door and
banged on the window.

"Hey, buddy! You okay? Are you sick? Do you need help? Hey, buddy. Can you hear me? Are you okay?"

Over and over, frantically trying to help, while I just stood there, frozen in my complete and utter shame.

I had been so busy judging, or rather pre-judging, this man's condition that it never occurred to me that he might need help. It was not a proud moment. Or maybe, more to the point, it was the result of an "I'm too proud" moment.

Finally, the man in the car replied and said he was fine, that he was just thinking. He said he didn't need any help and that he would be leaving in just a moment. The "bum" asked him if he was sure, did he want him to stay with him until he was ready to leave, but the man said no. So the "bum" says "have a good day" and waves as he walks back to resume his dumpster search.

I can honestly tell you that when you are smacked by the powers that be, it flattens you completely. I was feeling so small and petty, I doubted if I was any taller than 2 1/2 inches. Even if I could lift my shame filled eyes from the dirt, I wasn't sure I could reach the door handle on my car and slink inside for the trip home.

This was one potent lesson, but even so, about two years later, I would need to learn it again.

Next week......what happened when I took a pillow into the bathroom.

The bee, the braid and the banana

I grew up in sunny southern California and everyday at school, we would head outside and eat our lunches at pinic tables, surrounded by our friends. I didn't realize what a luxury this was until I moved to the midwest to raise my family. Outside eating is pretty much unheard of in the midwest. Anyway, one day, when I was in the 5th grade, my friends and I were talking, laughing and chewing when all of a sudden, Doris, one of my friends, jumped up and started to flail around like she was on fire.

Doris was a cute little thing with long blonde hair that her mother braided into two pigtails each day, and on this day, that would prove to be a problem.

"Get it out!" she screamed. "Get it out!"

The "it", as it turns out, was a large bumble bee that had flown into the curly little neck hairs at the bottom of the part in her hair and had gotten himself hopelessly entangled. For every panicky, gyrating move she made, the bee matched it with buzzing and twisting and, well basically, bee flailing.

It took us a few seconds to figure out exactly what the problem was, and a few more seconds to look at each other and scream "DO SOMETHING!!". Finally, in the inestimable wisdom of a ten year old, another friend , Lisa, grabs her half eaten banana and shoves it smack into the bee and the neck hairs, thus forever silencing the buzzing and flailing and saving the day.

"Okay. It's okay Doris. It's dead" she announces, trying to calm her down while we all gather around to help. There is a fair amount of back patting and soothing words and then, the inevitable. Someone gets a closer look and says....."EW!".

"What?" Doris asks.

"Ew! Gross!".

Now, "ew gross" may be a fun filled, move over let me see, phrase to a pack of little boys, but to 5 fussy little girls it could only mean things were about to get worse. Doris reached up to feel the banana/bee part in her hair and the minute her fingers encountered the goo that was a mixture of banana slime and dead bee guts, she broke into tears.

"Get it out!" she sobbed. "Get it out!".

A teacher finally heard the comotion and came over and took Doris to the nurses office to begin the clean up and bring life back to normal.

Okay....So here is what I learned from this....

As much as we try to prepare for what might lie ahead, whether for our family, our health or starting a business, there are going to be things that just happen out of nowhere that will have to be dealt with. Truth be told, you just never know when a bee will fly into your braid. So just stay calm, grab the nearest half eaten banana (so to speak) and go for it. Even if the problem solving gets a little messy and you have to clean up some slime and bee guts, you will at least have the satisfaction of knowing that you were able to respond to the unexpected and deal with it.