Hating Grocery Shopping

Nothing overwhelms like the mundane when you are struggling through grief. At least that’s been my experience. Dishes and laundry and picking up the house are bad enough. But grocery shopping and meal planning are the worst.

I will give myself credit in that my kids are being cared for. Since losing my husband they have been on time to school every day they have gone. They have been bathed (as well as they usually are bathed), dressed in clean clothing, and well kept. They are fed each day and our home does not yet require an intervention from the show Hoarders—thanks in no small part to a few friends who have helped me clean this week. Laundry is getting done and they have even had clean sheet day several times.

But then there’s planning their food.

This has always been a struggle for me. I used to find joy in baking. Kraig was the one who liked to cook and so he did dinner prep at least three nights a week, sometimes more. I struggle with getting stuck in the same ruts—spaghetti, tacos, burgers and fries, hot dogs and mac n’ cheese, and the ever popular scrambled eggs.

Today was one of those days when I needed to go to the grocery store. We were out of some essentials and, truth be told, my kids have had frozen popcorn chicken, hot dogs, and left overs too often lately. So I tried. I really did. But the vast quantities of choices lining the shelves brought tears to my eyes. I felt like I was failing in this essential part of my job as mom and homemaker. What to make for dinner? I can’t even process what my to-do list should look like today.

I have a friend who has offered to sit down and help me with this chore. Our schedules just haven’t meshed yet. I need to take her up on the offer. I don’t like panicking in the produce aisle. I don’t like fighting tears as I look at boxes of hamburger helper and hear my health-food-conscious friends gasp from a distance. Yeah, I’m imagining it but the knowledge that this is now uncool is still there.

I’m doing OK in this process of grieving. But that assurance goes out the window as I step into Walmart to buy food. Nothing makes me feel so small, so lost, as trying to determine what is good for my kids to eat for dinner over the next five days. What is healthy? Who the heck knows anymore! What is easy for me to accomplish when I’m struggling to get organized, help with homework, get baths done, and fit in TV shows that they like to watch with me? What can I make that will have a minimum of complaints or will appeal to them as comforting? What can I make the one gluten-free kid if the rest of us have this? Argh.

So I came home with three meals, I think. Two are processed and I don’t care. I made it out of Walmart without crying and for today, that is a win.

Don't Tell Me "I don't know how you do it."

Two months ago my husband died. It was earth shattering. We had just celebrated our 20^th anniversary this summer. We were preparing for a new stage in life with all four of our kids headed off to school for the first time. From Freshman in High School to two in middle school and now our baby in Kindergarten, this was going to be a cool new world.

Except it’s not.

On September 3rd, my Kraig suffered a massive heart attack. We now know he had been having smaller ones for days. Multiple doctors missed it. There was no chance to say goodbye. One minute he was suffering from what we thought was back pain and the next I was having to take a deep breath and tell my children Daddy went to heaven.

I am a strong woman. I say that without conceit or vanity. It is something God has built into who I am. It’s one of the things that attracted my husband to me. Some of it is my nature and some of it is lessons in faith God has been teaching me throughout my life. Some of it is supernatural support from a God who knows my pain and promises to equip me for the road ahead. One truth I know: God is faithful.

October 2013, The Kids & Me

Now my days are filled with caring for confused and wounded kids. I’m trying to figure out a new normal in our lives where once there were two actively involved parents and now there is just me. Each day I’m encouraging the kids and myself to ride the roller coaster of grief as it comes. If they feel sad, that’s OK. Feel it but don’t stay there. Life doesn’t stop. If you feel happy, that’s OK too. Daddy loved to laugh and would want us to laugh again.

I just finished one of the hardest weeks of doing this by myself. There were teacher meetings and parenting challenges that made me mad at Kraig for leaving me here to handle it all alone. There were concerts at school and trick or treating obligations. There was a sick child and craft fair I had to sell my handmade wares at. And there was a mother-daughter event to take my daughter to even though I would have rather stayed hidden. But she needed this.

As the week got harder and harder I began to feel so sad, so overwhelmed, so exhausted. This morning, someone uttered those words that many have said over the past weeks: “I don’t know how you do it.”

Let me tell you I hate those words. I realize they are meant as a pat on the back that I’m doing something amazing. They have been uttered by many people. There are two reasons I hate them.

First, what else am I going to do? I have four little hearts to shepherd through the greatest tragedy of their lives. I have mouths to feed and baths to arrange and schools to communicate with. I do not have the luxury of curling up in a self-pitying ball and stopping my life. I wouldn’t if I could. My children need to see that life goes on and it’s going to be OK someday. They need to see from me that God is here in the daily struggles to breathe and eat and laugh and cry without their daddy.

The second reason I hate that sentence is that there is hidden inside it the implication that I shouldn’t be doing this well. Hearing that sentence makes me doubt myself. If I loved him more, should I be finding it harder to function? If I was sadder, less functional, would that show I was grieving better? Am I somehow too strong? Should I be falling apart more?

I sat here today struggling with exactly those thoughts and realizing for the first time since Kraig died that I was feeling depressed. Up until now I could confidently say I was not depressed. I’m sad, I’m lonely, I’m lost sometimes, but depression was not on the list. Until I realized this sentence was making me question myself, making me feel like I’m doing this wrong.

So here’s my request from strong women everywhere going through amazing amounts of trial—stop telling us you just don’t know how we do it. I do it because life must go on. I do it to honor a husband who told many people that he had faith in his wife to carry on living if something ever happened to him.  I do it because my kids need me and that right there will get any good mother going when life knocks her down. I do it because I trust in a sovereign God who gives me strength each day.

When I need help, I ask for it. When I need to collapse, I have friends waiting with comfy couches and open arms. But as I’m teaching my kids, I do not stay there. Life doesn’t work like that. So please, don’t tell me you don’t know how I do it. You may not like my answer.

Shopping with Lucy

She was positively giddy when morning arrived today. Lucy, age 4, was going to get to shop with her own money. Somehow she ended up with a dollar bill, though I cannot remember who gave it to her, and some change she’d found around the house. When her sister told her she had enough to buy something at the dollar section of Target, she was ecstatic.

When it was time to leave, she carefully emptied her money out of the decorative box marked “Savings” her sister had given her. She smiled up at me with this great grin and headed out the door in her boots, winter coat, and pink superhero cape. Interesting fashion choices in South Dakota in January, I know, but you're only four once, right?

In the van, she found her tiny tutu purse and deposited her money safely inside. I buckled her and pulled out of the driveway. As I found my favorite station on the radio, I soon realized something much more rewarding was coming from behind me. Lucy was “reading” a book. Since she cannot yet read, she was making up a story. How long had it been since I’d heard one of her siblings doing this great, pre-reading exercise? I shut the radio off entirely and enjoyed the vivid descriptions from the book and the made-up names for the characters.

When we arrived at our destination, she was again thrilled to find a bit of luck—there was a “fun cart” waiting in the corral in the parking lot. This is the name she’s given the carts with the extra plastic seats for bigger kids to enjoy as we shop. I pulled it right next to the van and announced that her magic chariot had arrived. In full character complete with accented voice, cape flying behind her, purse clutched safely in hand, she declared, “Thank you, madam,” and lept into the cart.

As we entered the store, I explained to her that perhaps we should move around the whole dollar section to carefully examine her options before she decided. She agreed this was a good idea. I pointed out which things were indeed in her price range and immediately her eyes landed on the colorful rubber ducks. In a very sensible voice, she explained that since she no longer had a rubber duck, this might be a good idea. A woman standing behind me couldn’t help but smile. We placed it the “maybe” section of the cart while we continued to look.

Next came a flower, made of plush fabric with a thick wire running up the stem. “It is pink,” she reasoned. I suggested it could go in the maybe spot as well. As we rounded the corner to the next aisle, she considered a book with letters to trace so she could learn her ABCs. I told her that was something I would buy. No need to spend her own money on that. She was satisfied.

After finishing our rounds of the dollar section we still had only the two items in the maybe section. She had briefly considered a coloring book and spent quite a bit of time on a larger rubber duck. But when I explained to her the one she had chosen first had no way for mold to build up inside, she decided it was the better choice. Another customer shared a knowing smile at the sight of my pint-size shopper trying to make her decision.

A pink duck and a pink rose were all that were left to choose from. She placed her finger thoughtfully on her chin and let a small “hmmmm” escape her lips as she contemplated them both. The duck, of course, won out in the end. We rolled the fun cart to the check out for the final part of our adventure.

As Lucy placed the duck on the conveyor, I told the lady my book was separate. She rang it up and told me it was $1.06. I looked at Lucy and then the checker realized she was speaking to the wrong customer. She repeated the number to Lucy, who looked a bit confused, unsure of what to do next. I told her to give the lady her dollar and then helped her find six cents. When the checker put the duck in a bag, I asked Lucy if she needed a bag or if she just wanted it in her purse. With a sheepish grin she quietly said she needed the bag. I think it made the transaction more real.

She skipped back to the car, her cape floating in the cold winter air, making a few more incoming customers smile. On the drive home, I contemplated telling her how she was learning to save for something and be a careful shopper. But why ruin the magic by letting her know this was a learning experience? Instead we talked about how her cape gave her super powers and how she was making the van fly. She thought we’d be rich with all the money we saved on gas.

Oh to capture this moment in time forever. Perhaps I just did.

A Roller Coaster Autism Day

Today started out as a delightful day for me. The last really warm day for the season, most likely, I joined a friend at the park so our kids could play. We both had a lot on our to-do lists but snow is in the forecast this week so seizing the moment seemed a good idea. After getting home, I worked my way through that list and was feeling on top of things.

Then the phone rang. It was Michele, my son’s special education teacher, and immediate I could hear it in her voice. Something was wrong. I asked, as I often do, “Is he having a tough day?” With autism there are sometimes just days when his emotions are closer to the surface or his odd behaviors more prevalent. She said he was and started to tell me about the two, very different events that had impacted Ryan’s day, both connected by one thing—autism.

Ryan

In Ryan’s reading class, his teacher had been reading aloud. Now, you need to understand that kids with autism have difficulty understanding figures of speech. Say, “it rained cats and dogs” and they look for pets. Today it was his teacher reading the sentence, “He was a god in high school.” Ryan freaked out. He interrupted, loudly, saying that he could not listen to this story. He declared, getting more and more agitated, “I am a Christian and there is only one God!” The teacher tried to explain but he could not let it go. “There is only one God!” They had to take him to the special ed room to calm down. Michele patiently explained to him the non-literal nature of what the sentence meant.

This story made me laugh. It made me feel that Ryan was getting the essentials of our faith firmly grounded enough in his mind and his heart that he protested heresy. And yes, I knew that his disruption was not appropriate and that he needed to understand what the sentence meant. But in this outburst was the truth he knew was worth arguing over—my faith is important enough to defend and there is only one God. Both of those are huge.

But next Michele went on to tell me about the second incident that disrupted Ryan’s day. At lunch time, Ryan eats and then goes outside into the courtyard to walk around. He gets lost in his own imagination and paces while enjoying the sunshine. That’s always made me a little sad for him. He has no friends. But since he has autism, that fact doesn’t bother him. It bothers me more. But nevertheless, this is his routine and what helps him cope with a day full of sensory input and noise and kids who do not function in the world like he does. The solitude helps him reset to take on the rest of the day.

Today, he was followed out by four boys, one of whom already had been in trouble for picking on Ryan in math class. They picked up his lunch sack and began a cruel game of keep-away. At that moment, Michele just happened to walk out into the hall by a window. She says it was luck. I know it was God. She saw Ryan yelling at them to stop and give him the sack and them laughing as he got more upset. As she told me this part of the story, her voice cracked and we both began to cry at the same time. She said she went out and put a stop to it and took all four boys to the office. She got Ryan calmed down in her room and left the troublemakers to the principal.

The principal is new this year. I’m still getting to know him. What I found out about him today earned him 

some respect. When he found out about this bullying behavior, he was incensed. Michele told me when she left the office he was threatening to have them arrested for harassment. I called to make sure that wasn’t the punishment. While I was hurt for my son and angry at these thoughtless kids, I wanted to voice my opinion that the punishment should fit the crime.

I had a nice talk with the principal and I heard from the secretary that he had indeed put the fear of God in the boys as there were some tears. The boys were not arrested but were made to apologize to Ryan, individually and given some consequences along with the promise should it happen again, handcuffs and the school police officer would be involved.

As the day ended, I walked up to school to walk Ryan home. I had spent some time that afternoon crying for my son. I hurt for him. And I was struggling with my fears for his future, always near the back of my mind. My friend, Chelsea so wisely reminded me that Jeremiah 29:11 applies to Ryan too. “’For I know the plans I have for you,’ says the Lord. ‘Plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” NIV

Ryan was fine when I got there. He was calm as we walked home and I asked him about his day and the lunch incident. Sometimes his autism means he can’t let things go. This was not one of those times. He was fine with the boys apologizing to him the next day. He said he wanted to make sure their parents knew what they had done. We talked too about the reading class moment. He said, “I forgot to take my break in the squeeze machine before class. I think that’s why I got upset.” Sometimes he is very self-aware. I explained figures of speech again and he seemed ok with it.

At dinner, Ryan prayed and thanked God for a good day and asked that tomorrow would be a little better. It was all I could do not to cry. In my heart I thanked God that the day’s events hadn’t wounded my special son more. Life can be cruel. But Ryan and my friend are both right—there is one God and He holds the future in His hands…even with autism.

Adventures in Gluten-Free Baking

Since my son, Ryan, is on a gluten-free diet to help with the symptoms of his autism, I have spent a lot of time baking a second version of whatever the rest of us are eating. You see, I love to bake. I don't just like it--I love it! I love creating something comforting and delicious to give to my family and friends. Yes, I know, food is not love. But isn't there something delightful in being able to enjoy something tasty with good company?

I also know that gluten-free diets are two things--1) expensive and 2) a lot of trial and error. Whenever I have made something for the rest of the family, I have had to search for a comparable alternative for Ryan. Some things he doesn't miss. But things like zucchini bread make his mouth water. And really, zucchini bread isn't such a bad treat, what with all the vegetables involved. ;-)

So, for all my friends out there needing a great gluten-free recipe to tackle the bounty in your garden, here ya go. It was so good, my husband accidently ate several slices before Ryan got mad at him and told him this was HIS treat. Kraig didn't even realize it was gluten-free. This is Kraig's great-grandmother's zucchini bread recipe, easily altered. Enjoy!

Gluten-Free Zucchini Bread (with regular recipe notation for the non-gluten-free)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Mix:
3 eggs
1 c. oil
2 c. sugar
2 c. raw zucchini, shredded (I include the peels and seeds but that's up to you)
2 tsp. vanilla

Add:
3 c. Mama's Almond Blend All-Purpose Gluten-Free Flour (or regular all purpose flour)
1 tsp. Xanthan Gum (omit this if doing a regular recipe with regular flour)
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp. baking soda
2 Tbsp. cinnamon
1/4 tsp. baking powder

Mix well. Pour into 2 loaf pans OR 5 mini-loaf pans sprayed with cooking spray. Bake at 350 degrees for one hour for the loaf pans OR 50 min. for the mini-loaf pans. They are done when a toothpick comes out clean.

NOTE: I usually double this recipe and freeze the extra loaves. They make a great treat to have available when company comes over. And you feel very Martha-Stewart to be able to set out a warm (from thawing in the microwave) loaf of zucchini bread.