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I Accept God’s Plan, But I Don’t Have to Like It

I’ve spent my life accepting God’s plan. Whenever I think of the deaths of my brother and best friend, I chalk it up to God’s plan. Surely, I tell myself, their deaths were part of some greater good mere mortals could never understand.

Accept it, yeah. But I’ve never liked losing those two. There’s a lot in life that may be part of God’s plan. I truly believe that I have to accept it and work the experiences into being a better human being. But like it? Not today. Probably not ever.

Mood music:

[spotify:track:2yWOMbhPN2XJAiVy46Bhvz]

Those are very personal examples, but something in the American political discourse has me thinking about it. Friday, I showed you a quote from Jon Hubbard, a Republican state representative from Arkansas. I called him an asshole for suggesting that slavery may have been a blessing in disguise for African Americans, because through that awful American tragedy they get to live in the “greatest nation ever established on the face of the Earth.”

A reader and friend commented, asking why I felt the need to stoop low and call Hubbard an asshole. She then quoted Scripture. I’ve always loved that about her, because she’s one of those rare people who can discuss faith and actually have the biblical knowledge to back it up. She also said:

I read his statement as comparing the ultimate fate of those once enslaved in the US to those who were not and now live in famine, poverty and a daily threat of torture or death.

When comparing where one is today because of past events and where one could be if they had not occurred, perhaps the right statement is “there but for the grace of God go I”. That isn’t to excuse slavery, or it’s horrifying existence, but to look back on it (as we often do when we are past some horrible experience) and consider it in terms of God’s plans and how He might have worked it to our benefit.

But that’s probably asking too much from people who think with their emotions and overreact to every little statement they read from the “opposite” side.

I don’t disagree with any of that, and I get that Hubbard was suggesting something similar. What angered me about Hubbard’s statement was that his language almost makes it sound like African Americans got a hell of a deal. They were enslaved, living in famine, poverty and a daily threat of torture or death. But now their great-great-great-great grandkids get to live “in the greatest country on Earth.” In hindsight, calling him an asshole wasn’t my finest hour, and I apologize for that. I don’t apologize for disagreeing with a guy who justified evil as a blessing in disguise.

The deaths of my brother and friend were part of God’s plan. We had no control over them; we didn’t cause them and we couldn’t prevent them. Could Michael or Sean have prevented their deaths? Hard to say.

But slavery is humanity’s evil. Mankind could have prevented it or ended it sooner. Mankind had control. Just because God made something good come out of it doesn’t mean slavery was a blessing. If blacks had been free from the first, they would have had better lives in the colonies and their descendants would have better lives now.

It’s particularly problematic to say slavery was a blessing because even after slavery was abolished, blacks were still marginalized and treated brutally. They were excluded from many of the blessings of American life for more than a century after slavery ended. Many died in lynchings and their homes were burned to the ground.

Are African Americans in a better place today? Surely. That doesn’t mean I have to agree that their past subjugation was a cloud with a silver lining; that they were getting what was good for them and they just didn’t know it at the time.

Just as I don’t have to like the things that happened in my personal history, whether it was part of God’s bigger design or not.

There’s a huge difference between accepting something and liking it.

Rough Justice

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Prayers For Nana Ruth

Erin’s maternal grandmother, Ruth Robinson, has always been one of my favorites among the in-laws. Her smile is contagious. She loves unconditionally. She’s always there for all of us. Now, she needs all of us to be there for her.

Nana Ruth has been in the hospital for the last couple weeks, and a few days ago she suffered a stroke.

I don’t think she’s ever used a computer in her life, so she won’t see this post. But that’s not the point.

The point is that I’d like all of you to pray for her as she fights the increasingly powerful beast we call aging.

If you could do that, I’d be grateful.

Thanks.

 

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Cheering My Aunt As She Fights Breast Cancer

My Aunt Robin has been valiantly fighting breast cancer for the last several months, and I wanted to take a moment and thank her for showing us all how to do it with humor, grace and grit.

Mood music:

[spotify:track:4ygP2GX8MbCufiYz77XZtl]

She’s always been a tough one. Why cancer chose to pick a fight with her is beyond me. It obviously had no idea who it was fucking with.

I’m not the best nephew when it comes to picking up the phone or driving down for a visit. No excuses there. But I want her to know that I admire her.

And I want you to help her and the millions of others who fight this scourge. A friend of hers is doing a walk Sunday to raise money for breast cancer research and treatment. As my aunt says, “Five years ago there was no cure for my type of cancer. But because of these walks there is now hope with herceptin. Help another woman have hope in the future.”

Details here.

Thanks.

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OCD Awareness Week

Here we are at the end of OCD Awareness week and I’m only now remembering to write about it. I guess you could say my ADD ran over my OCD.

Obviously, OCD awareness is the central mission of this blog. But it’s better for me to observe this week by leading you to others who are fighting the good fight. We recently set up a resource page for that purpose.

Please take some time and check it out. These are truly excellent resources I’m thankful to have.

OCD Dice

 

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Happy Depression

I’ve been in a mental space lately that some would consider strange. I’m somewhat depressed but also fairly content and happy. To most people, feeling all those things at once doesn’t make sense. You’re either happy or depressed. But I’ve found that it’s more complicated than that.

Mood music:

[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/33409634″ iframe=”true” /]

I used to spend my depressive episodes curled up in a ball, feeling sorry for myself. Depression was cause for making the world stop and accepting everyone’s sympathy. It was a time to let things slide at work and to binge on food, alcohol and worse.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to see my depressed episodes as a mild nuisance, like the common cold or a toothache. It sucks to have it, but life has to go on. I still have to work, get my kids from points A to B and be available when a friend or family member needs help. Curling up in a ball is no longer an option, though the occasional 20-minute nap is OK.

Medication has helped. So has therapy. My faith has made a massive difference, too. But I think the bigger game changer in how I view my depression came from the realization that I had unrealistic views on what it was to be happy.

We have an overdeveloped sense of what happiness is supposed to be. I call it the Happily Ever After Syndrome. We have this stupid idea that if we can just get the right job, find the right mate, accumulate the right amount of material things and have as little conflict with people as possible that we’re going to be on cloud nine for the rest of our lives.

Deep down we know that’s bullshit. But we reach for it anyway.

It’s a battle of false expectations. And when we can’t reach those expectations, it’s a huge let down. It creates a hole in our souls that we try to fill with more material things and addictions.

That stuff makes us feel better for a few minutes, but before long we feel worse than ever.

I think that hole is still in me. But through the grace of God it’s gotten a lot smaller.

I used to raise my fist and scream at God over how unfair life can be. I saw myself as a victim. Now I get it: We all have our ups and downs. We all have difficult problems to carry on our shoulders.

Happiness isn’t the absence of trouble. It’s not the worry-free, rainbow-infested existence I used to think it was.

In my case, happiness comes from getting a shot at doing things that matter to me. When I feel depressed, I can still keep going because of all the good stuff in my life: my wife and kids, a job I love, this blog, etc.

The depression wants me to forget all those things and give in to despair. And that’s what I used to do. But when I keep focusing on the important things in my life, I find that the depressed periods go away sooner than they used to.

So while I’m a little depressed this morning, I’m also full of gratitude. I have a great life, despite all my missteps along the way.

October Sun

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Led Zeppelin Gets Me Through the Rain

A while back I wrote about how Van Halen’s music helps me through  the winter blues. Too much rain can depress me, too, and for that I’m finding a remedy in Led Zeppelin.

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/S4v-_p5dU34

Like most teenage rock fans, I listened to Led Zeppelin nonstop, studied every lyric and guitar solo and read any book in which they were at least mentioned. I remember reading Hammer of the Gods when I was 15, and though I know the band members never liked that book, I absorbed it obsessively. There were always rumors that the band was cursed for making a deal with the devil. I never believed that. They had their lows like any band, including the deatha of Robert Plant’s son and drummer John Bonham. But for me, the music is all that ever mattered. And this music didn’t come from Hell. No fucking way.

These guys channeled something that came straight from Heaven. They rocked hard, but some of my favorite songs were done acoustically. Zeppelin drew from every culture and used every obscure instrument known to man to get their sound. Folk is as integral to their sound as heavy metal. The song I used for today’s Mood Music is one of my favorites and cuts to the heart of the matter on rainy days like this, when I’ve given to blue moods:

These are the seasons of emotion and like the winds they rise and fall

This is the wonder of devotion — I see the torch we all must hold.

This is the mystery of the quotient — Upon us all a little rain must fall.

Which brings me to another point: Robert Plant has always gotten his due respect for vocal prowess, but he is also one of the most underrated lyricists who has ever lived. Those lyrics in particular speak to me on a day like this, when I’m given to cursing the sky for handing me more gray instead of the sunlight I crave.

I’d even go as far as to say that a song like this makes me appreciate the rain.

I stopped listening to Led Zeppelin for a long time, not because they fell out of favor with me, but because I was simply exploring other bands and genres. My interest was rekindled by the film It Might Get Loud, in which Jimmy Page, U2’s The Edge and Jack White get together to share the stories and techniques behind their best-known songs.

Here’s a preview:

Also rekindling my interest is the new concert film Celebration Day, in which the surviving members of Zeppelin and John Bonham’s son, Jason, do a reunion performance in 2007. Here’s a preview:

This stuff permeates my soul and helps me see the joy in life, even on my most depressed, pissed-off days. Thanks, gents.

Led Zeppelin Flower

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The Winter Bill Blues

This is a typically a shitty time of year for me, when I come off the high of summer and crash hard onto the cold pavement. When the days grow shorter and the air colder, I become easy prey for seasonal depression.

And when that state of mind sets in, I usually do something very stupid.

Winter 2011: By February, I was forgetting things all the time, including Valentine’s Day. I was traveling on this day of romantic feelings, and I forgot to sign my wife’s card and leave it where she could find it. I left it in my storage drawer in the garage, but I got embarrassed and lied to her, saying I got to San Francisco to find her card still in my laptop bag. At some point during my time away, she went to put a stray pair of gloves in my drawer and found the card.

Winter 2012: It was nearly a year to the day since that last big fuck up, and I was sitting at the airport waiting for another flight to California. Erin called and asked me if I told Duncan he could stop taking medicine we were trying out for his ADHD. The day before he had been freaking out about the potential side effects he heard the doctor mention, and in a moment of weakness I caved. I promptly forgot, and now, while I was at the airport, Erin was dealing with Duncan and what I did the day before. The worst part wasn’t that she had to deal with a difficult child. It was that in a moment of not thinking things through, I arbitrarily made a decision Erin and I should have made together.

A very stupid chap, that Winter Bill is. A hurtful, stupid chap.

The real kick in the ass is that I do deal with winter better than I used to. The last couple winters, the depression came and went. In previous winters, the depression was constant.

And so the challenge is to get through an entire winter both less depressed and more mindful, which will prevent me from doing the really dumb things.

In recent days, signs of the Winter Bill have emerged. I forgot to deposit a check that needed to get into the savings account. I had an episode of crankiness yesterday that came out of nowhere. And yet I’m not dreading the coming winter and shorter days as I have in the past. There are a few reasons for this.

One is that I’m taking a mindfullness course that should give me new skills for getting out of my self-absorbed head.

Another is that I have picked the guitar back up and am looking forward to the joy it’s going to bring me as my skills grow. Nothing gets you out of your head like making music.

In past winters the feeling was all dread. I was annoyed that I’d have to deal with these feelings, that I couldn’t hang on to the good feelings I got from the endless summer sun.

This time, I think I’m eager for the challenge. I want to learn to enjoy life despite the darkness. Oh, I won’t go through it with zero depression. That’s just not realistic. But I think that maybe I can do this without the big annual stumble. I’m ready to try.

I have my eye on you, Winter Bill. You don’t scare me.

 

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Was She Bullied, or Did the Truth Cut Too Deep?

A good friend disliked yesterday’s post, “The Fat Lady Sang, And It Was Beautiful.” His main criticism was that I centered it on my own weight battles, which I traced back to Crohn’s Disease, Prednisone and addiction.

Mood music:

[spotify:track:1DH4YwHHGBkWO8dX3JISjl]

Livingston, a morning anchor at WKBT in La Crosse, Wisconsin, went on air after getting an email that read in part:

Surely you don’t consider yourself a suitable example for this community’s young people, girls in particular. Obesity is one of the worst choices a person can make and one of the most dangerous habits to maintain.

After reading the email she received, Livingston then took her critic apart, noting that he doesn’t know her well enough to pass judgement. She also accused him of bullying her. I applauded her for doing this because I felt her critic wrongly assumed she and other overweight people simply made a choice to be obese. My argument was that weight trouble can come from a variety of factors and that this guy was out of line.

My friend felt my response was based on assumptions and that framing my complaint in the context of my past issues with Prednisone and Crohn’s Disease didn’t jibe with the news woman’s situation. “Does the anchor woman share those same issues?” he asked. If she doesn’t and her obesity is simply a matter of her not taking care of herself, he said, my comments were off the mark.

“I also have issues with those that view the original comment as bullying,” my friend continued. “Some view things through the eyes of responsibility. Others just want to place blame and make excuses.”

For all we know, Jennifer Livingston falls into the latter camp, he said, concluding, “What you wrote is representative of not having all the facts.”

I agree that many people make excuses for being overweight and that their real problem is laziness and gluttony. There’s a joke making the rounds where a fat guy tells his doctor, “The problem is obesity runs in my family.” The doctor responds, “No, the problem is that no one in your family runs.”

When someone lets their body go to crap because they don’t feel like doing what’s good for them, they are being bad role models, especially when it comes to their children and how they’re allowed to develop the same bad habits. I took one such parent to task for that a while back in “When Parents Fail.”

Unfortunately, a lot of people who work hard to be good role models and take care of themselves end up overweight anyway. One friend of mine gained a lot of weight because he developed a foot infection that left him unable to do much physical activity.

As for Livingston, I don’t know why she’s overweight, and I don’t care. These days, a lot of people are hired to anchor news shows because they look like supermodels. That Livingston was able to break through that and succeed in the industry speaks volumes. TV media is a cut-throat field and you don’t succeed unless you work your ass off. As far as I’m concerned, that’s an example of a good role model.

Livingston is also a good role model for showing that you don’t have to be someone else’s idea of perfect to be on TV or to do a job. It’s not just men who come in all shapes and sizes. Society says that women must be skinny to an unhealthy degree and look perfect. She’s not perfect, but that doesn’t mean everything she does is wasted.

Actually, I don’t think perfect role models exist. People do big things and overcome obstacles in ways that inspire others to do better. But they make big mistakes along the way. It’s called being human.

Finally, let’s look at Livingston’s use of the word bully. That’s what she called Kenneth Krause, the man who sent her the email. To me, a bully taunts you with names, making sure everyone in the vicinity can hear it, and makes threats. Krause did none of these things. He called her a bad role model for being obese and called it a choice. Obviously, I disagree.

This guy was mean, superior, judgmental, disrespectful, and prejudiced. He doesn’t think fat people should be on the air.

Fuck that.

But was Krause a bully? He didn’t threaten her or call her names in earshot of others, which is how I picture the act of bullying. I don’t think he’s a bully per se. But consider these definitions Erin (my wife and editor) found:

The American Heritage Dictionary defines a bully as “a person who is habitually cruel or overbearing, especially to smaller or weaker people.”

The fact that Krause only wrote in once probably doesn’t fit, but he was cruel and overbearing, especially to someone he thought was weaker. And he never apologized, saying instead that she should follow his advice.

More important, though, to bully, says AHD, is “to treat in an overbearing or intimidating manner”; “to make (one’s way) aggressively.” Krause did treat her in an overbearing way and he was aggressive about trying to get his own way: that she lose weight.

No matter where Livingston’s weight problems come from, what Krause did was wrong.

Disagree if you wish. But that’s my position.

Jennifer Livingston

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The Fat Lady Sang, and It Was Beautiful

I just read about some asshole who told an overweight news anchor that she’s a bad role model for children. As someone who has had a lifelong struggle with weight, this hits me like a punch to the gut.

Mood music:

[spotify:track:66s9KuIsH7xoJDQerDhX69]

Jennifer Livingston, a morning anchor at WKBT in La Crosse, Wisconsin, went on air after getting an email that read in part: “Surely you don’t consider yourself a suitable example for this community’s young people, girls in particular. Obesity is one of the worst choices a person can make and one of the most dangerous habits to maintain.”

On air, she took this guy apart piece by piece. As someone who struggles with weight and self esteem over appearance, I applaud Livingston. Here’s the TV segment:

Is Livingston overweight? She says she is, and I guess appearance speaks for itself, though I feel like a shit for saying so. But when I look at her, I see nothing wrong. Here’s a woman who has succeeded on television despite the demand these days that women on TV be skinny everywhere but in the chest and behind. She’s got guts. She’s real and, in my estimation, a pretty good role model for kids.

Kids live in a particularly cruel world, where classmates call them names over weight and appearance, among other things. It’s always been this way and, I think, always will. I’ve lived it. Sometimes the name-calling stops once you hit high school; other times it gets worse. Either way, kids that age become obsessed about how they fit in, and  that’s where those who don’t feel like they fit in turn to drugs, alcohol and food to escape. Some, like me, survive it and find a way to thrive in the world. Others don’t, dying from their addictions and depression that become so overwhelming that they choose to end it.

What infuriated me most about the letter writer’s rebuke was how he called obesity “one of the worst choices a person can make.” That’s probably one of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard.

Sure, we all make bad choices in life. We choose not to exercise and take on weight as a result. We make bad career and financial choices, which can lead to addictive behavior, including overeating. But nobody chooses to be fat. Nobody rationally decides to grow obese. The extra flesh is often the result of many things.

For me, it was a childhood of Prednisone intake for Crohn’s disease that drove the appetite into overdrive after periods of not being allowed any food at all. By adulthood, food had become the focus of my addictive impulses. I binged my way to 280-plus pounds, not because I made a choice to be fat, but because I couldn’t  back away from a binge. The more I ate, the more I felt like a filthy, sub-human slave.

A choice? Fuck you, pal.

There are plenty of fat people in history who became the ultimate role models. For me, Leslie West of the band Mountain, creator of some of the fattest, most powerful riffs ever, is one of mine. He has lost the weight in more recent years but has maintained his fat sound, which I mean as a compliment. There’s also Winston Churchill. His portly appearance didn’t matter to a country that needed his leadership in the face of Nazi aggression.

I’ve maintained a 65-pound weight loss for more than three years now by cutting flour and sugar from my diet and weighing out most of my meals. But I’ll never be thin. I continue to be what one of my kids described recently as “wide.” Sometimes I wish I were thinner, but I care less about that as I get older. What’s more important to me is mental clarity, and my food choices are driven by what’ll get me there, not what’ll get me to a 32-inch waistline.

As a weight-challenged person, I now have a new hero: Jennifer Livingston.