Tag: healing

The Solution

Our story opens with me having decided to move up to a larger apartment in my current complex.  I had come to this decision while working with a financial planner and also on advice from my son who suggested “an interim solution“.

Finally the day came for me to put my plan into motion.  It was October 3, 2016, when I received a letter from the apartment management with a “Lease Renewal Offer”.  My current lease was going to expire on December 11 and the letter explained my options: a minimally increased rate for another 12 months in my one-bedroom, a more than $200 increase for a month-to-month rate, and a reminder that per my lease I am required to give 60 days notice if I’m planning to move out.  It was time to make my move.

On November 15, I went to the management office and talked to Lauren about renting a two-bedroom apartment.  She showed me the two floor plans that had two bedrooms. One plan had two bedrooms that share the same bathroom and the other plan had a main bedroom with an en suite bathroom and a second bedroom and separate bathroom.  I chose the one with the en suite bathroom.  I wrote the rent for each on the page with the floor plan I had chosen along with notes about transfer fees, apartment number, and the date it would be available.  And most importantly the date of this conversation.

Then on Thursday, November 17, I submitted a move-out letter stating my intention to move to a larger apartment within the complex.  The next Monday I went to the management office to settle which apartment and find out the next steps.  But when I walked in I immediatley noticed that something was different, wrong.  The doors to the two managers’ offices were closed.  No one was sitting at the two desks outside the offices.  It was very quiet; no music; some lights were off.  Then a young woman I recognized came out and asked if she could help me.  I told her why I was there for and we sat down at one of the desks.

After I explained the situation and which apartment I wanted and how much rent I had been told I would be charged, she took the paper and went in the back.  When she returned she said the rent would be about $200 more.  I explained that I had been in on November 15 and pointed to the date on the floor plan.  I was   told the rent would be this amount and I showed her on my paper where I had written the amount.  She left again and this time a man came out with her; his name was Kenny.  I had never seen him there before but he acted as if he was in charge.  “Strange”, I thought, “but ok, I’ll go with it.”

I explained to Kenny everything I had explained to the young woman and he agreed to the rent.  Next step was sending me a lease to reveiw which they would do in the next few days.  When the lease came in my email, I reviewed it.   It was all as expected except for the rent which again was the higher rent.  I went back to the office with all my papers in hand and this time the managers’ offices were open, people were sitting at the desks outside and the lights and music were on.  Now this was normal except I didn’t recognize anyone.  A young man, Saia, sitting at one of the desks, asked if he could help me and I explained the situation to him.  He pulled my lease up on his computer and left.  In a few minutes, both he and Kenny came out.  He told Saia to honor the cheaper rent.  He told me they would send another lease for me to review.

It was all so weird, these new people and all these mistakes with the rent.  I commented to Saia that there were so many new people.  It was then that I found out the apartment complex had been sold to a new company, Greystar.  It all became clear.  But so odd that the sale and change in management hadn’t been announced to the residents.

A few days later I received the final lease for me to sign.  I reviewed the pertinent details like how much rent.  Again it was the higher rent.  I was so frustrated and wondered if they were trying to pull one over on me.  So I called Saia and told him about the discrepancy in the rent.  I did not tell him about my ugly suspicions.  He apologized all over the place and promised to correct the lease and send it to me that day.  He did; it was correct; I signed it.  Finally, my new apartment was all ready to go.  It was going to be repainted so it would be like new, I hoped.  I was very excited.  It was December 20—Merry Christmas to me!  I could start moving in on January 6—Happy New Year to me!

I began planning the move and packing.  My new apartment was in the same building, same floor—second—but off a different breezeway.  So there was going to be lots of stair climbing—nineteen steps up and nineteen steps down. (I frequently counted them when I carried my groceries in.)  Two of my sons and my daughter-in-law were going to help with the move.  Fortunately, my daughter-in-law worked for an office furniture distributor so she got one of their mover guys to help with the furniture.  I did all the packing.  On moving day everything was ready to go.

The weather on moving day was beautiful: sunny skies, rather chilly breeze, no humidity.  Perfect for stair climbing.  The move went very quickly and smoothly.  It was amazing, and a little scary, to watch the professional mover pick up my couch—a small, but rather heavy couch—and walk down a flight of stairs and then up a flight of stairs with it on his back.  He was one strong guy!  We could not have done it without him.  No way!

Once all the big stuff was moved, I told everyone I would finish up the small, light stuff and let them all go.  That afternoon, as I walked back and forth from apartment to apartment, down stairs and up stairs and then up stairs and down stairs over and over, I had a lot of time to think.  I remembered when I had sub-let and how easy that process was.  I simply took over someone else’s lease.  Of course, I had to prove I was financially able to pay the rent but that’s all.  No negotiation or fees; just move in.  Then I rehearsed the process of renting my new apartment: all the back and forth over the rent and how I had to stay on top of it or I could have ended up paying more rent than necessary.  I remembered how at first I was tempted to just accept the higher rent.  And realized that’s what the old Kay would have done instead of standing up for herself.  Wow, I really had come a long way.  I frequently thought I had become stronger, more independent but here was proof.  Tears came to my eyes.  I was simply astounded.

Around this time, I was dating a man named Berne.  I confessed to him that I was feeling nostalgic about my one-bedroom apartment.  It was the first place I had ever lived on my own and the first place I had picked out on my own, both the city and apartment.  The move was a momentous event in my life.  Now I was leaving behind a lot of adventures, tears, joy and all the growing up I did in that little apartment.  While I was excited about moving on to a bigger place, I told him, I was also sad to be leaving a place that had sheltered me through the last year and half.  He suggested writing a letter to my apartment expressing all these emotions and saying good-bye.  So after I had cleaned it, I sat on the floor in that special little one-bedroom apartment with my journal and wrote a letter.

Sunday, January 8, 2017

Dear Apartment,

This my last time to be here as an inhabitant.  One more load is stacked by the door ready to go to my new place.  I am tired and sore and stiff, way past ready to end moving.  But I couldn’t move on without telling you what you have meant to me.  You helped me grow up, become independent.  You’ve seen me cry, be lonely, be happy, be regretful, even think about going back to my old life.  You saw me grow out my grey, cut my hair short and be happy about it.  In your kitchen my habits became those of a singe person.  I started out cooking real meals with real recipes and slowly turned to canned soup and single serve recipes that I made up as needed.  I learned how to handle my finances and grow efficient in money matters.  I’ve contemplated and made lots of decisions for good or bad within your walls.  Since Augurst 14, 2015, I’ve been sheltered by you and grateful every day that I had you to call home, a warm, safe place.  So today I cleaned you up one last time.  I hope you felt loved as I did so.  I will never forget you.  So now I’m moving or have moved to a 2 bed 2 bath place just across the building.  I’ll still see you and think about you.  I hope someone deserving of you moves in, someone who will take care of you and appreciate you.  So this day is bittersweet.  Good-bye is sad but I feel confident I’m moving on as I need to.  You were my  “college” apartment, just left home figuring out life.  Now it’s time for a grown up place.  Thanks for helping me get to this place.  You’re the best, little apartment. You will always be a part of me.

Love,

Kay

Movin’ on up,

Woodpile Kitty ATX

A Father’s Day Reflection

Sunday is Father’s Day. How are you going to honor your father? Grilling up some steaks or hot dogs? Ice cold watermelon? Or maybe dinner at his favorite restaurant? A day at the golf course and no complaining allowed by those who stay at home?

My dad, me on right and my sister on left.
My dad, me on right and my sister on left.

When I was growing up fathers were expected to be the main breadwinners in the family. My own dad provided ample food, clothing and shelter for my mom, my siblings and me. In fact, he did so well at providing that when my mother and he were both in an assisted living facility for patients of dementia, my siblings and I had no worries related to finances. By the measure of a good provider, my dad was a good father.

But in recent years it has come to the attention of researchers that a father’s influence effects everything from how successful his adult children are in their chosen professions to how successful they are in their marriages. If you want to read more about this aspect of fathers, here are links to two articles: “The Importance of Fathers in the Healthy Development of Children” is from the Department of Health and Human Services and “The Importance of Fathers” from the Psychology Today.

The most important way a father influences his child is in how his son or daughter views God. It is not unusual for a person who does not believe in God say that if God is a father, they want no part of him because their own father was angry, unloving, critical, or some other negative quality. I didn’t understand this way of thinking. In my mind, if you had a bad father, then God should be all the more attractive because he is perfect in love, kindness, and mercy.

Then one day I was reading Psalm 51 in my Bible. This psalm was written by King David when he was confronted about his affair with Bathsheba. I had read it many times before, but on this particular day I saw something astonishingly new: I had been trying to make up to God for all the ways I had disappointed him. I tried to get on his good side by being and doing good so he would love me.

As I meditated on this psalm in the days following this revelation, I realized that I was doing the same thing with my earthly father. I tried to make up to him for all the ways I sensed I had disappointed him. My view of what God thought of me and how much he loved me was wrapped up in my view of my dad and how much I thought he loved me. I was looking at my heavenly Father through a lens that was my relationship with my earthly father.

Then I began to realize that trying to make up to God was fruitless; there was nothing that could be done in my power that would make up for the bad things I had done. And even more amazing was that there was no use in making up to God because he had already forgiven me. He had already given me a second chance and a third chance and as many chances as I would ever need. And further, that the bad things I had done in no way effected how much God loves me; he loves me regardless of my actions or attitudes.

Once I understood that and started changing how I related to my heavenly Father, accepting the forgiveness and the second chances, I began to see my earthly father differently. I saw not through my own ideas but through the thoughts and words of God as expressed in the Bible–a new lens. If God could forgive me, then I could attempt to forgive my dad. If God gave me a second chance, then I could try my hardest to give my dad a second chance.

This is a simple explanation of a process that took years. I was an adult that day I read Psalm 51. Twenty years later when my dad died, I don’t think I was even halfway to forgiving him. That was almost nine years ago. As I’ve forgiven and forgiven again–that second chance God is so ready to give–I have come to a place where I can say that I have forgiven so much that the parts I haven’t forgiven aren’t that important any longer.

If you are interested in reading more about my dad,  click here to read my post “A Couple of Street Corners and Imagination”. On the website of mmLearn.org you can view two videos in which I talk about my dad and me: one about my relationship with my dad and one from which this post was taken, “Father’s Day Reflections”. The mmLearn website is a service of Morningside Ministries and was created and designed for caregivers, both those who work in care facilities and those who care for loved ones at home. “Father’s Day Reflections” is just one of many presentations in their Prayers for a Caregiver series.

My dad will be in my thoughts this Sunday, Father’s Day. If your dad is still with you, I hope you have the opportunity to enjoy his presence that day. If, like my dad, he has passed, I pray that your memories of him will be sweet and filled with forgiveness.

From the Woodpile Kitty,

Have a blessed Father’s Day

Does It Hurt on the Inside?

I pulled up the right leg of my jeans and revealed a long scar running parallel to my shin bone. My neighbor had broken her ankle and, for the first time in her life, was on crutches. So, of course, I had to tell her about the only time I’ve ever been on crutches.

It was in 1983. My youngest son was 2 years old. We were at home getting ready to leave for the day. I picked up a large glass jar, the kind in which old-fashioned candy stores displayed Tom’s candies, but I collected loose change in mine. As I walked to the kitchen table to count out change for a vending machine lunch, somehow I tripped and fell on top of the jar. It broke and a very large piece cut my leg about halfway through the calf. My greatest fear had come true: being home alone with a small child and becoming incapacitated. I managed to call my husband. He got to the house in record time, took Joe to a neighbor’s house and put me in the car. Our first stop was the minor emergency center where they packed the wound, wrapped my leg in bandages, and sent me to Brackenridge, Austin’s trauma hospital. That’s when I knew the cut was really bad and not something I was going to recover from in just a few days.

At the hospital they put me on a gurney and wheeled me into the emergency room. Butch stayed in the office area filling out paperwork. A nurse started cutting off the bandages. She suddenly left. A few minutes later she came back with another nurse and, standing right by my gurney, said, “It looked so bad, I didn’t know what to do”, further increasing my fear that this was really bad. After they got me cleaned up, they put the packing back in the cut and left. Soon the emergency room doc came by, looked at my wound and said he would have to call a plastic surgeon to stitch it up. Then he put the packing back in and left.

I was still lying there all by myself because Butch was doing paperwork—how long can that take? A young man came over and said, “May I look at your wound?”

“Sure”, I said, thinking he was the plastic surgeon.

He took the packing out, thanked me and put the packing back in and left. That’s when I remembered that Brackenridge was a teaching hospital. Two or three other student doctors came by and repeated the process, each time not talking to me or looking at me.

Then three EMT trainees stopped by my gurney and asked if they could look. As one of them was taking out the packing, another one looked at me and asked, “Does it hurt?”

“No”, I said.

He said, “It doesn’t hurt on the outside, but it hurts on the inside, doesn’t it?”

“Yes”, I said and the tears started. Amazingly up to this point, I had not cried and the cut had not hurt. Shock, I suppose.

Telling my neighbor this story got me to thinking that there are lots of things that don’t hurt on the outside, but they hurt on the inside. And no one knows. Worse, it can seem as if no one wants to know.

Yesterday I flew to Denver on Southwest Airlines. I read a Kindle, but there is time taking off and landing when all electronic devices must be switched off. That’s when I read the in-flight magazine; on Southwest it’s called Spirit. An article titled “A Story in Black and White” caught my eye.

The article began with a story that took place in the 1970s. The narrator recognizes that her co-worker, Shirley, was in a lot of pain, “that something had cost her.” That something was her mixed-race marriage: he, Pat, was black and Shirley was white and Jewish. They married in 1952 and lived in San Francisco near the neighborhood where Shirley’s family lived. For Shirley to marry someone who was not Jewish was bad enough. It was even worse that he was of color. Her family would probably have reacted by sitting shiva for her, mourning because she would have been considered dead. So Shirley and Pat hid their marriage from her family. Her mother visited every week and every week Shirley gathered up everything that indicated a man lived there and hid the things in the basement. Pat would leave the house, but sometimes he too would hide in the basement. He died in 1974 leaving Shirley with a hurt on the inside that didn’t show on the outside.

How many things do I carry around on the inside that don’t show in the outside but still hurt? Carrying those hurts on the inside and not letting them get to the outside, does not allow healing. Sharing those hurts with a trusted individual gets them to the outside. The light of day has a healing effect. I think of it as coming clean, confession.

For me, the thing I kept inside for many years was the fact that I was pregnant when Butch and I got married. I think most people guessed it when they found out we got married in high school which was another fact I kept inside. I had been married about 25 years when I realized that the greatest blessing God had given me was my marriage. If that’s what I believed, then I needed to come clean so others would know the greatness of God. I was keeping my light under a bushel. Little by little, I began to come clean, telling trusted friends and slowly widening the circle as I got used to saying out loud what I had kept secret for so long. Coming clean, exposing my secret to the light of day, brought healing. Several times I found I was confessing to someone who had experienced the same thing and my confession gave them permission to bring their secret to the light of day.

So what about you? Is there something that hurts on the inside but not on the outside? Is there something that needs the light of day to begin healing? I encourage you to find a trusted person to talk to and come clean. Expose your secret to the light of day and experience healing.

If you feel safe in this forum, I’d love to hear from those of you who have a story to share about something that hurts on the inside but doesn’t show in the outside.

Seasons of Healing

While we were out with our walking group on Saturday morning, a cold front–or cool front–blew in. The breeze picked up to an actual wind. The temperature and humidity dropped. Not only did our bodies feel better, but our spirits lifted. It had gotten to the point in the summer that I wasn’t quite sure it would ever be less than 100 degrees and 99 per cent humidity. And then just like that, the season changed or at least promises to change. A reminder that God is in charge. His natural laws are true and reliable.

Last Wednesday I cut my finger. We had gone to a restaurant that serves giant cinnamon rolls. And I mean giant. They weigh 3 pounds and are about four inches high. But yummy! Cinnamon and sugar all through the entire roll, topped with icing that melts in the between the rolled layers. It is not health food. We took three-quarters of it home in a box and planned to share it with guests. I was cutting our portion off, holding the styrofoam platter behind the roll where I couldn’t see it. I sliced into the index finger of my left hand. Of course, I didn’t want to get stitches; I could heal it with band-aids and ointment. That was almost a week ago. It is still sore, but on the mend. A reminder that God is in control. His natural laws work regardless of our dumb mistakes.

My Aunt Joyce  called on Saturday night. Her husband, Charles, passed away on Friday night. She had moved into a new season: widowhood. Uncle Charles has experienced the healing that was not possible in this world. Joyce is left with the pain of grief. However, as surely as cooler temperatures and as surely as my finger is healing, her pain will be lifted little by little until she experiences with Charles the healing that is possible in the world we cannot see from here. God is in control of the seasons of life. His law of love and grace stands strong and immutable.

What season are you in? What pain are you experiencing? Where do you need healing? No matter what you answer, God is in control of even that.