Jenmenke

Road Warrior

anger

Thank You.

Thank you God, Thank you friends. Thank you, thank you.

Morgan walked away from this car accident unharmed yesterday.

Is it me, or is that a miracle?

I’m so thankful and so grateful and so… zombie-like. I feel like I am walking in a dream underwater.

We don’t know what happened. She remembers nothing. While she could have swerved to avoid an animal or something, it is most likely that she simply took her eyes of the road for an instant. No, she wasn’t on her phone. But who’s to say she didn’t look at it? Or reach into the back seat? There are no shoulders on the road, the gravel on the edges are soft from all the rain and the ditches are deep. We’ll probably never know exactly how it happened or why.

An event like this should deepen my faith. And I’m sure that eventually it will. Unbelievably, I find myself questioning God. Going round and round wondering why her life was spared when so many others are not. My dear friends are on their knees thanking God and what is my reaction?

“Why me, God? Why am I so lucky?”

Shouldn’t I, too, be on my knees? It shouldn’t matter why! She’s OK! Hug her, love her and support her!

But I just can’t get over it. There have been so many tragedies in our small town over the past few years. Two kids have died in almost identical circumstances. Another was critically injured and will never have the same life he would have. How can I look those parents in the eyes again, knowing how lucky I am when they were not? What do I say? How should I feel?

So now in addition to thankful and grateful and zombie-like, I am also feeling lucky and guilty, all at the same time.

Did I mention angry?

Yes, I am also angry. How can a mother, who’s daughter’s life and health were spared, be angry with her for making a simple mistake? What kind of mother feels like that?

This mother does.

So please add angry to the previous thankful, grateful, zombie-like, lucky, and guilty.

Thankfully, that feeling is subsiding. As well it should be if you knew how many ‘mistakes’ I made driving as a kid and continue to make as an adult. If my mom was a writer and there were such things as blogs, she very well could have written this same post when I was 17 and rolled my car into a telephone pole.

So please add hypocritical to thankful, grateful, zombie-like, lucky, guilty and angry.

Mostly I feel numb. I’m finding it hard to find the words to properly pray and thank God for this amazing gift of life. I’m a baby Christian with as many flaws as there are words to describe them. And regardless of the years I’ve been trying to follow God’s plan for me, I will probably always consider myself a baby Christian because I’m so terrible at it. All I know for sure is that I am a believer. A skeptical one. A perennial Doubting Thomas. And I know He loves me just the way I am, regardless of my circling back around, time and time again in my faith. I didn’t use to think it was important to believe this, but now I know that it is: I believe in Jesus Christ, only Son of the Father, who died on the cross and rose again to save us from our sins.

Period. Now you know: It’s my dirty little secret.

And poor God, I add so much to his list.

Thank you for listening to me. Thank you for praying for me. And thank you God, for this gift of life. I will not squander it.

 

 

The Black Rage of Menopause

mad faceThe only thing that qualifies me to write anything on the subject of mental health is the fact that I suffer from my own mental health. Or lack of it. I am certainly not qualified to write anything about menopause, given I have done almost no research on the topic. So why am I writing about it? In my gardening and cooking blog no less?

To be clear, I am only 44 years old — way too young to be talking about menopause. Only I’m not. Too young, that is. Peri-menopause can go on for years. I’ve had maniacal hot flashes–which seem to come in phases–for over a year now. I was hoping the Black Rage would also be a phase, only it doesn’t seem to be going away.

I am writing about the Black Rage because I have been living under it’s cloud for about 3 months now. And instead of it getting better, it is getting worse. So I have decided to cave in, stop fighting it and embrace it. Today, for the first time, I googled these two words: Menopause + Anger. The search results were almost as funny as this weekend when I googled “Underduck vs Underdog.” The top hit in that search was freakishly perfect. (For the record, it is “underduck: when you push someone on a swing and run under them as you push.”) Friends and I were having an argument about it. It was 5 to 1 against me. I was so pissed. I digress… Google it yourself. Vote for what YOU called it in the comments below, cuz I’m curious.

Anyway, the search results for “Menopause Anger” were so astoundingly spot-on that it actually made me mad (are you sensing a theme here? A theme of rage?). I was irritated because I like to think of myself as unique and special. How can all the other people in this world be experiencing the same thing as me?

For example, on one of the sites, a woman named Lori wrote: “…I have found myself getting mad at my dog because she wants a pet.” Check. (The only difference is that I don’t “find myself getting mad,” I rise up in an unadulterated fury and scream “GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE, YOU STUPID DOGS, THIS IS MY COUCH!” And, I might try to kick them as they scatter.)

Another writer named Pat found the need to “detach myself from some longstanding ‘volunteer’ commitments that I’d taken on when I didn’t really want to, because I felt obligated or guilty or whatever.” Check. (The only difference with me is that I didn’t detach myself, as Pat did. What did I do? I simply made one of the people that I do volunteer work for cry this morning. Do I feel bad about it? Well, if being madder that she started to cry counts as remorse, then yes, I feel bad about it. If not, then no. I’m ticked that I didn’t think of crying first.)

Anyway, for all you who actually know me, go ahead and say it. Chant it aloud if it makes you feel better. You know you want to:

POOR DAVE.

Only, if you are really going to go to the trouble, you might as well throw in:

Poor Morgan. Poor Charlie. Poor Buzz. Poor Lola.
And as of this morning, Poor Susie at Freedomfarm.

Something tells me I might need to add a new category to my blog topics.