Two Wrongs Don't Make a Right ... and other lessons from childhood

I watched the impeachment hearings last week. I even had to listen to Sirius XM on the last day because I was on the road to Boerne, Texas, for a show. At one point, I was just moving along in cruise control mode on barely wet roads when all of a sudden, I lost control of my truck and trailer: The truck hydroplaned on the wet pavement and fish-tailed with my trailer. It is only by God's grace that I regained control.

While the moment scared the you-know-what out of me, I still felt annoyed that my listening was interrupted. As soon as I could, I drove to a stopping point to check everything out in the trailer. All was well, but still ... I missed valuable testimony! (But I caught up with it later.)

The fact is that I should have been paying attention while driving with my trailer in that weather, but I was enthralled with Fiona Hill's testimony. Wow! That brave woman is my hero!

Since the hearings, my thoughts have percolated to the point I finally had to write. Today, I submitted my letter to Sen. John Cornyn and Sen. Ted Cruz. While I believe my efforts have most likely been a futile attempt at change, I did it anyway.  And, obviously, I wrote this letter with the assumption that President Trump will be impeached.

So, I am sharing my letter, and I challenge anyone else who feels strongly about this most important event in our country to do the same.

(I realize fully that Facebook friends who oppose my views are likely to "unfriend" me; so be it.)

*****

Nov. 29, 2019

Dear Sens. Cornyn and Cruz: 

Like many other Americans, I am deeply concerned with what is happening to our country. I am reaching out and hoping beyond hope that you will hear me out and truly listen to what I am saying. 

I think first you need to know a little about who I am for perspective, though.  I am a 51-year-old white female who was born and raised in Amarillo, Texas. I am a married empty nester. I’ve worked since I was 15 years old, and I grew up in a family of farmers and teachers that always voted Republican. I tended to follow that ideology until about 20 years ago, but I’ve never voted a straight Democratic ticket.  I grew up as a middle class American, and now, my husband and I are neither wealthy nor poor, but we work hard. 

I’m telling you these things because I believe I represent most Americans who are neither far left nor far right. The problem is, however, that the loud “squeaky wheel” fanatics garner the most attention, and fanatics do not listen to other fanatics. We’re living in a most important time in history in which the squeaky wheel is squawking loudly in a frightening circle of senselessness. 

I watched the impeachment hearings (and listened while I drove eight hours on the last day) with great interest.  I’ve heard many people say the hearings were just a waste of time and tax-payers’ money, but I completely disagree. I have to wonder whether those saying that even watched the hearings. I learned things about the way our country operates in foreign affairs, as well as was reminded why America is important to countries such as the embattled Ukraine. I felt a measure of pride as I watched and learned, because in the middle of my own feelings of helplessness regarding President Trump’s behavior, I saw that other courageous Americans who are (were) in a position to make a true difference had spoken out about problems with Trump’s behavior and that maybe something would finally be done. Most important, I learned why the specific problem in Ukraine was so important, and that is Russia. 

Growing up, I was taught communism and Russia were to be feared, and I believe most Americans my age and older grew up knowing this. What has happened? Have we become complacent about Russia? Are we going to sit by and let Russian President Vladimir Putin continue to meddle in our business and weaken our country from within by dividing us? From my vantage point, he’s doing a frighteningly good job. 

Why (and how) are those who are opposed to Trump’s impeachment ignoring the testimonies of non-partisan Americans whose life’s work is foreign policy in Ukraine?  How can anyone ignore former NSC staffer Fiona Hill? Her impressive testimony was of only rock-solid intelligence and facts. She clearly tied the timeline of events together, which strengthened the testimonies of those before her. She boldly stated Ukraine’s importance to the United States and the dangers if Russia were to regain control of Ukraine. We cannot afford to ignore that, so why would we? Even more compelling about Fiona Hill is that she is an immigrant. She came here from England and became an American citizen because she believes in our great country and all it has to offer. 

And what about the passion, dedication and sacrifice of Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, another American immigrant? I was touched by his testimony, his service to the United States and his willingness to stand up for this country he and his family chose. I’ve wondered whether those of us born here have become complacent, and I felt ashamed. We all should be fighting hard for this country and its commitment to world peace.  We should all be committed to doing the right thing, period.

Two issues could not be more evident to me at this point. 

One: Donald Trump should never have been elected president in the first place, and I believe most people understand that. I sincerely thought it was a joke when he first announced he would be running. First, where is his experience outside of the business world? Second, he is well-known as a dishonest, mean-spirited, selfish, misogynistic and narcissistic man, among other things. I will even go a step further and place him within the 4 percent of the population that is sociopathic. He is a man without conscience and will do anything to anyone and any country, including his own, that he believes will benefit him. 

Sadly, my own party contributed partly to the problem by giving the country Hillary Clinton as the democratic presidential candidate. While Clinton would have been an excellent and outstanding leader, in my opinion, years of Republican efforts to destroy her credibility did just that, and the Democrats should have understood this!  By the time Clinton could run, she had become someone who was either loved or hated, and that was too risky for a viable presidential candidate.  I have heard so many people say they didn’t really want to vote for Trump, but they saw Clinton as a worse choice. 

Both parties created this presidential fiasco named Donald Trump.  

Nothing can be done about this issue now, except that maybe we can all learn from it and do better next time.

Two:  We surely all learned as children that two wrongs don’t make a right. Nothing has changed, but the Republican and Democratic leaders of this country continue to up the ante with every counter act of, “They did it! We can, too!”

The latest and most obvious example of this is the TRUTH that Trump attempted to use a foreign leader to interfere in the 2020 U.S. elections.  But what do the Republicans do? They have tried to muddy the waters (i.e., deflect public attention from this truth) by raising debunked conspiracy theories and past perceived wrongs to somehow minimize the president’s clearly criminal behavior. 

Both parties have engaged in bad behavior since this country’s beginning. When we’re lucky, it gets addressed and handled; however, most often, as I stated earlier, someone ups the ante, and behavior gets worse; this is exactly where we are today.

I never could have imagined someone so dishonest, hateful, criminal — so sociopathic — could be elected as our president! And even worse, I could never have imagined that our system of checks and balances would allow him to behave so embarrassingly juvenile and horrifyingly corrupt. Instead, his behavior is being accepted as “the new normal” because people are afraid to stand up to him. Now that several respectable people have, stop being afraid! It’s time to listen and take care of the problem.

Several questions arise by your unwillingness to address Trump’s corruption:

1.     Are Republicans afraid Vice President Pence can’t step forward and do the job of the president, if even for only a little while? (That’s pretty ridiculous.)

2.     Are they afraid another Republican will never be elected if Trump gets ousted? That’s ridiculous, too.

3.     Are too many Republican leaders caught up in Trump’s dealings and are afraid for their own positions and reputations? (If that is the case, then get over it and do like the rest of us have to do: Take responsibility for your sins and mistakes, no matter the cost. You’ll survive and be better for it.) 

4.     Most likely: Are Republicans afraid to admit they’re wrong and lose power? If that is the case, then GET OVER IT! Now you can do what’s right and address it. If you don’t, this turmoil we are in and this division we’re experiencing only continues. BUT EVEN WORSE: Russian influence and power wins. We cannot afford this.

Donald Trump horrifies and disgusts me — I see with my own eyes and hear with my own ears. His alliance with Putin frightens me. Why doesn’t it you?

It’s past time for someone to step up and do the right thing, and the ball is now in your court, Republicans. I am begging you to do it. Convince your Republican peers to do the same, and let this country begin to heal. 

The Pain Rollercoaster

It's a new blog look for a new start!

So, let's start with the beginning.

When I was a kid, I was never sick. I rarely missed a day in school. I played sports. I did everything kids do. Nothing stopped me.

When I turned 16, everything changed.

In short, my emotionally distressed self developed an eating disorder that led to 12 long years of active abuse to my body. I alternated starving myself with binging and purging, and every day I exercised obsessively. Even after discontinuing the eating disordered behaviors, I exercised religiously and hard.

At one point in my running career, I decided to train for and run a marathon.  I actually ran a full 26.2 miles as part of my training but never got to run in the event because I had an intestinal blowout of sorts. Inexplicably, eight inches of my colon died somewhere along the way, so of course, I had surgery to remove it.  (Frankly, if I had to guess a cause, I would say training on very little food to fuel me paved the way.)

After recovering, I tried running regularly off and on. I say off and on because I always ended up with some kind of injury. It was only two years ago that I admitted defeat as a runner and resigned myself to walking for exercise. I miss running. It's such a great calorie burner. It kept me thin. And while I don't actively have a diagnosable eating disorder, my eating can still be pretty disordered.

Let me explain: I've come to terms with the fact that once an eating disorder, always a disorder of some kind. Most often for me and for others I know, it manifests itself in a poor body image. That part never has gone away, no matter how hard I've tried acceptance. As a result, my relationship with food has never really become healthy.  I have had periods of healthy eating, but like most people who diet, I have never maintained long-term healthy eating.

So I admit it: My eating habits are still crappy a lot of the time. If it weren't for Dorsey's cooking, I would rarely eat anything healthy; I would not eat regular meals. I could easily snack my way through life. I'm just messed up that way.

But that's not all of the abuse on my body. For a period of several years, up until six years ago, I also abused prescription medications with alcohol. For some unknown reason, my body always hurt. I didn't feel well a lot of the time. I would go to doctors and be treated for various symptoms, from my gastrointestinal issues to pain. I'm telling you, for the past almost 20 years, it has always been something and always some kind of pain. I was tested for so many different diseases, but nothing was definitive, except fibromyalgia.

I have continued to have pain. Pain everywhere. Five years ago, I started going to a pain clinic for treatment. MRI's indicated three bulging discs in my spine, which partially helped explain pain. Fibromyalgia, of course, is a big cause. I had been to a rheumatologist for the fibromyalgia, but I stopped due to his incompetence. I also continued to have migraines.  By the pain clinic providers, I was prescribed various opiate drugs, and, frankly, I did very well on them. I can proudly say I never abused the medications or received a high off of them. Those days have long passed.

Then the United States got into an opiate addiction crisis. Opiate overdoses and deaths became a serious problem, so the government cracked down on the medical community; I got a knee-jerk reaction from the clinic out of it. A little over a month ago, the clinic discontinued my pain medications, citing fibromyalgia is not indicated for treatment with opiates. (And it's not; in some cases, it can make it worse.) Somewhere along the way, they seemed to have forgotten the other sources of my pain.  Don't get me wrong; I didn't want to have to take Hydrocodone, or Fentaynl or Suboxone or something just as dangerous and strong for the rest of my life. I hated going to that clinic once a month so I could pee in a cup in order to get my refill like a good little drug addict. I couldn't help but feel treated like a drug-abuser, even though I didn't abuse any of my medications. I was just thankful to get relief. It wasn't perfect relief, but, as my dad has always said, "Ol' somethin' beats ol' nuthin'."

For the past five years on strong pain medications, I've still had lots of days of not feeling well, but my lifestyle is such that I have been able to manage it. I've been fortunate to not have to work and to be able to pursue hobbies I love. I get to do my antiques business.  I've gotten to drive myself across the country many times. In short, I've managed well enough on my pain medications.

But everything changed a month ago when taken off of my opiate medication; instead, the clinic prescribed me a couple of things to help manage withdrawal symptoms, and referred me to a rheumatologist.  That referral was for an appointment three months down the road! I was so angry with the pain clinic people, not because I didn't have the opiates anymore, but because now I had absolutely nothing to manage my pain.

So here's the bad news/good news part:

Bad news: I have miserably suffered opiate withdrawals, despite the antidotes (it feels like the flu times a thousand), and my pain has SKY-ROCKETED. Clearly, the opiates had masked the majority of my pain for a long time.

Good news: It's only by the grace of God and maybe some help from another doctor that I got in to see the rheumatologist earlier than January.  I really, really, really like Dr. Davy at Allergy Arts. She was so nice and supportive, as was everyone else there! I finally felt like my pain was being treated as legitimate and not all in my head. (It's really hard not to feel like a head-case without diagnoses.)

Dr. Davy performed several physical tests, took sonograms and X-rays and seven vials of blood.

Now, we finally have answers. I have been diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis and lupus. When told, my response was, "Oh, shit!" And then I cried. These diseases don't have cures! This is lifelong! These diagnoses mean I have one disease that causes muscle pain (fibromyalgia); another disease that causes pain in the small joints (RA); and another that causes pain in the large joints (lupus). That's pretty much pain all over.

But there's still good news in this: I'm healthy internally. These diseases haven't done anything to my organs or blood or anything else important yet. Dr. Davy told me that with treatment, my issues can be contained from progressing — I even asked if I would get really big knuckles and curled hands someday. The answer was no, with carefully monitored treatment. (That's great news for the jewelry freak in me!)

The fact remains, however, that pain will always be part of my life. Right now, it's exceptionally bad — but still lots better than last week. As I said in the previous post, I've lost a lot of sleep and cried a lot of tears because I've hurt so badly.

The medications I've been started on will take effect slowly, I'm told. For now, I get to hold on and just bear the pain for awhile. However, Dr. Davy and her nurse practitioner also told me that patients do really well, generally, on these treatments once they take effect. I'm hopeful that will be the case for me, too.

These illnesses, including fibromyalgia, are not caused by just one thing. It takes several pieces of a pie to create the whole problem. In my case, one significant piece is the amount of trauma I've subjected my body to for so many years. That's why I said in the last post that it's my fault. It truly is, though it wasn't on purpose.

A familiar adage says that youth is wasted on the young. That has been true for me, and I very much regret how badly I mistreated myself. It's not that I intended to hurt myself or create such problems; I was just messed up all those years. But there are consequences for our actions, and these are mine.

I'm not messed up (much) anymore, so I have to get serious about taking care of my nutritional health. The goal is to contain the diseases and prevent progression, as well as pain management.

While neither of those diagnoses are good, I'm thankful to have real answers so that I can be treated properly for them. The rest is up to me.

And ... it could always be worse.

Will You Walk With Us?

"For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." Jeremiah 29:11

I'M BACK!

And I'm sorry to say I didn't fulfill my desire to continue writing like I said I would last year.  I even lost access to my blog for awhile.

But I'm happy to have regained it, because I absolutely want and need to keep the story of my parents' journey. That's most important to me.

After Mom and Dad died, my blog captured the inevitable grief that followed, and as I lost my desire to write,  my blog followers also lost the desire to read about it ... like, who can blame you? Not me!

And now? Wow ... so much has happened! I hope you will walk with me on this journey; I admit I probably will need you; maybe you can get something from me, as well.

There truly is no such thing as aging gracefully — at least not as far as I'm concerned. When I began writing this blog, the posts chronicled my experiences with caring for aging parents. That wasn't graceful at all!

Now, I've reached a new chapter in "ungraceful aging."  I'm no longer in my 40s. I recently turned 51, to be exact. And so are many of my Facebook friends, which is so crazy!  I don't feel 51 emotionally, and I don't see my friends as 51. We're still kids, right?

But we're not. We've inevitably been subject to life's rules, and while I might not "feel" 51 ... my poor body feels older than that.

It's my fault, but hold on; we'll get to that in posts to come.

Since my last post, I have continued to grieve for and miss my parents. After four-and-a-half years, I now know that I always will, but I'm not going to talk about that anymore.

I'm living a new chapter now.

Since my last post, Dorsey and I have become true empty-nesters. Hart, 26, moved away to pursue his own career and life in Chicago, and he's having fun traveling most anywhere he wants.  And Jordie, 24, has moved off to Pennsylvania to pursue his career in baseball, which he has always loved.  (He's actually living in the part of the country I only dream about, due to my Tin Cats Antiques business.)

Since my last post, I became a great aunt to the most beautiful baby girl: Rowan Harper Migliaccio. She belongs to my sister's son, Cole, and she is a treasure!

Also since my last post, Dorsey and I decided to sell the house we've loved for 17 years in a neighborhood we've enjoyed. Last year, we were convinced and committed to moving off to New Braunfels, but the house didn't sell.  Recently, shortly after we decided we wanted to stay in Amarillo because of Dorsey's tennis network and our friends, we got an unsolicited offer on our house! How blessed is that?! So, we're selling for another house in another neighborhood in Amarillo. It's a perfect example of how sometimes we make plans God has no intention of fulfilling for us ... at least at the time we want.

The new house — well, so long as it doesn't fall through due to a problematic contingency in the house-buying equation — will allow space for our two home offices, a mother-in-law's quarters for when Mary comes to live with us, and room for antique overflow! It even has a pool, which is a bonus for entertaining. I also believe that pool is going to become important to me in the summers to come.  So, you know ... as perfect as this looks and sounds for us, I can't help but wonder what God is up to with the newest setback, just learned yesterday. However, I've lived long enough to know things will work out.  Just gotta sit tight!

In addition to those developments in my life's newest chapter, I finally have received unfortunate answers for my roughly 20-year progression of chronic pain and illness that has seriously disrupted mine and Dorsey's lives.  We also learned this yesterday.

Nope. There's nothing in the world or in this life that's graceful about growing older. Health eventually and noticeably fails. Our kids move away. Loved ones die. Peers get ill and/or pass on, too. It's just how life works, plain and simple. What makes aging ungraceful are the inevitably human  feelings of sadness, doubt, depression, anger, resentment and fear, among others, that accompany these realities.

Regardless and in the end, I'm still responsible for making the most of my circumstances and my life, and for finding beauty wherever I find myself; I often have to remind myself to suck it up because some people aren't blessed with the privilege of growing old. And, you know what? God even says we are to give thanks in all circumstances ... even if we don't feel thankful. (1 Thessalonians 5:18.)

So I am and I will. But you might have to remind me at times.

I'll share my unfortunate news another time. (Sorry! There's just too much for an already-too-long post to go there now.) And don't quit on me yet by assuming that because of some awful illnesses, I now share Eeyore's world-view; the purpose for picking up the writing again is for encouragement — for me and for anyone else affected by serious chronic illnesses.  I believe I am required to live as spiritually and mentally graceful as possible, no matter my circumstances. That doesn't preclude the existence of some pretty dark days; it just means I have to keep going.  The Bible says in Hebrews 12:1-2: "Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything (italics mine) that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles (uh, like maybe a bad attitude and self-pity?). And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith."

I very much hate that this isn't just my cross to bear. I hate that Dorsey has to go through it, too, but I love that he loves me enough to do it.  Just now, I had to remind him in his discouragement with the house situation and with my health news that we just have to trust.  That's another of God's commands, right? Check out Proverbs 3:5-6.

And sometimes, Dorsey is going to have to remind me to trust, because believe me, I'm no spiritual powerhouse.  Shamefully, my life's story so far has proven me to be quite the opposite.

So, currently, I'm sitting in a house that's in chaos because we've already been taking it apart and packing; but now the move is questionable, or at the very least, on hold. And I have spent several nights the last two-to-three weeks without any sleep at all due to pain that's caused me to cry real tears; some nights, I have gotten a couple of hours or fifteen minutes at a time. Anyone who knows me also knows I love sleeping, so this has been horrendous for me. I'm exhausted. I'm cranky. I'm beaten.

But ...

I also believe 100 percent that everything already is okay because God is in the middle of it, and that "in all things, God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called to His purpose." (Romans 8:28)

So, as I close, I ask again ... Will you walk with us?