A big month for the Byrums

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This past month has been crazy! Some of it good, some of it not so good, but all of it full of change. First for the not so good, because I’m not an optimist. Some would call it pessimism, I call it realism, but whatever the case I appreciate dealing with the not so pleasant stuff first and getting it over with. I travel in worst case scenarios, call it anxiety, or call it preparedness, but most of the time it serves me well.

Anyway, I’ve mentioned before that our son Josh, who has Autism and ID, has not been doing well since our move in January. February was thankfully a very quiet month and then came March. He never does well in March. His birthday is March 18 and it just seems to make life difficult. People with autism don’t appreciate change, good change, bad change, it doesn’t matter. And Josh has always had behavior issues in March around his birthday. This year was no exception. We struggled with some monster fits and then a few days after his birthday we found ourselves in a new and scary place of having to take him to the ER in the midst of a fit. I’m not going to go into all the details as to why this became necessary to respect his privacy but it was what we felt we needed to do and was what his psychiatrist had advised. We HATE the ER. It’s the worst and we have way too much experience with it due to our daughter’s issues. At the height of her illness we found ourselves in the hospital 6 times in 3 months. So we are well familiar with the good, bad and ugly of the ER and a hospital stay. Josh was admitted and stayed for 3 days. In that time they choose to switch his medications. And low and behold we were finally approved by our insurance to get ABA therapy which we’d been waiting on for months. I know how the system works at this point and I will admit this was in the back of my mind as a reason for going. Insurance companies listen when you make them spend money, unfortunately it means we also get to spend money, but it’s where we are. I can’t really say that things have been more settled since he was discharged. I didn’t really expect they would be, if I’m honest, but we did make noise and are now getting ABA therapy which should start soon and his psychiatrist is following us closely and will admit us to an inpatient crisis center instead of the hospital should the need arise again. We are hopeful for change, but also preparing for that not to be the case. It was a traumatic experience to go back to he hospital where our daughter passed away just four years ago this month. The poor doctor in the ER had no idea what to do with us when she asked how many kids we had and Josh brought up his sister and we both started crying. But healing only comes through experiencing the grief so, I guess it was helpful in some way. We cannot control Josh’s choices or his behavior, but we are resting in the fact that we are doing all we can to help him.

Now, on to the good news. In February, I called the Autism Society of NC to get some help for Josh. I talked with a woman who is a Resource Specialist there. I told her my situation and she asked me if I had done this and that, and I said yes. At the end of the conversation she said, “do you work?”. I said, no, and she then told me she was retiring at the end of May and that since I was so familiar with resources for kids with special needs I should apply for her job. It’s part time and mostly work from home. I kind of laughed and we got off the phone. I looked at the job listing and thought well, it’s the kind of thing that would work for our family but I wasn’t really planning to work until Gavin started school in another year. I felt like God had really just placed this in my lap in such an obvious way, so I decided to apply and just see what happened. So, I did. A month went by and I heard nothing. So, I moved on and decided to pursue becoming a Relationship Coach through this training program. The program is six months long and then I would slowly build up my business so it would be ready in a year when Gavin is at school. Then a week after I started that program I got an email from the Autism Society telling me they wanted to interview me. Three interviews later they offered me the job, and I start May 5. So, now I went from not having worked in 20 years to becoming a part time Autism Resource Specialist and in relationship coaching school all at the same time. Crazy!

This will be a huge change for our family, having me working and in school after not doing any of that for so long. Thankfully the kids are older now and are mostly self sufficient except for Josh and Gavin. So I will lean on my older kids some for help with them and Josh will be going to summer day camp most of the summer. I’m excited and also overwhelmed at the same time. I totally never thought I would work with families of kids who have autism, but I do have so much experience with my own kids and those around me that I do feel like I can be of help to other families, particularly those in crisis like we have been. And I am also excited to get to do relationship coaching and help other people in their marriages with the information that has helped my own marriage tremendously. It’s a huge season of change for us. And a great new adventure.

A new thing…

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A few weeks ago I wrote a post about what to do now that my kids are headed towards Kindergarten and my long season of having little kids at home is coming to a close. I have been thinking about this question for years really, but I finally settled on an answer.

First off, I used to think God had one thing in your life you were “called” to. If you missed it you were just out of luck and would be not in God’s will for your life. This was a big concept in Christian circles in the 90s. Honestly, it was extremely stressful. It’s also a first world problem. Most of the world doesn’t get to consider many options for that they want to do with their lives. They are concerned with basic necessities and live day to day. They do whatever they can to make money and don’t worry about whether it’s ‘God’s will’ for their lives. I spent much of my early life thinking about this concept and being worried about it and I don’t think God meant for that at all. At the end of the day all God wants for us is to have a relationship with him. That’s it. As long as that is your purpose then that’s His will. Full stop.

Now, does God place in each person unique talents and abilities? yes. I think so. I think He makes everyone unique. Some of us are good at art, or sports or helping others. We all have gifts. BUT, I also think there are lots of ways you can use your gifts and God is good with all of those. I love helping people and listening. I have been doing it my whole life. Just because it was never something I did professionally doesn’t mean I wasn’t using my gifts. God can and does use us anywhere we happen to be if we are open to it. He values no one more than anyone else. A plumber is just as valuable to Him as a missionary in a foreign country is. That’s not at all how I felt growing up. And it is bled over into being a stay at home mom.

I loved being at home with my kids, but I always felt it was a little less than what some other people did. People love to ask you “what do you do for a living?” and when I tell them and they either say one of a couple things: “That’s nice, I could never do that.” or “what did you do before you were a stay at home mom?’ What I finally realized was that I was using my gifts as a stay at home mom, both at home and wherever I was, even though I wasn’t working in some helping profession. And God was just as pleased with that than if I had been out being a missionary somewhere or a pastor.

So, I wanted to find something to do with my time that was helping others but also have time for my family. My kids are still really little and needy and do require lots of time. I want to be there for them after school and during the days off of school. That’s a hard thing to find, something with flexibility.

I researched being a therapist and going to grad school but that was going to be a huge time and financial commitment and ultimately I’d need to work full time, which wasn’t what worked best for the family. But, I still felt drawn to help people in a counseling sort of way.

So….I decided to enroll in a course to become a Relationship Coach.

It’s a 6 month training program to learn how to help, in my case couples, people use tools developed by giants in the field of couples therapy such as John Gottman and Sue Johnson. Coaching is about helping people improve their relationships by setting goals for themselves to improve areas in their lives that aren’t currently working as well as they could. We all have those areas. It’s a new field of coaching and I’m excited to be apart of it. So many couples want help in this area but for whatever reason don’t want to seek out a marriage therapist. Their reasons might be that they don’t have access to a good marriage therapist, they are hard to find and insurance doesn’t pay for marriage therapy so many don’t want to get into the field. Or it could be that they don’t trust therapists. That happens many times in the church space, where there is a mistrust of therapists for various reasons. Also, therapy can be expensive. Coaching may be more accessible to people. I’m excited to get to help couples find a better relationship than they have had.

It’s also scary to start something new and to start my own business. Thankfully this training also helps you with that part. To put yourself out there in a new way is intimidating. I have not worked in so long but I know I can do it. I can work from home and set my own hours, which is wonderful for our family. And as the kids grow and need me less, the business can grow and expand. “A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step”. So I’m taking that first step. My classes start March 25.

Happy 13th Elijah!

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Dear Elijah,

I can’t believe you are 13 already. 13 years ago today I was so excited to meet you! You had waited to be born on your due date, something most babies don’t do. It was a significant day because I had experienced a miscarriage the year before you were born and that baby was due on March 9. So when we had our first ultrasound with you and the tech told me the due date was March 9, I was like, “can we pick another day?”. She reassured me that babies are never born on their due date. She obviously hadn’t met you yet. The day you were born was the first anniversary of the due date for the baby I had lost, but it wasn’t a sad day. You redeemed that day to a joyous one. I should have known then that you would be unique and always do things in your own way and at your own time. I love that most about you. Keep being your own person, always!

This is one of my favorite photos of you. Papa Duncan was such a special part of our lives and you were the last baby of mine he got to hold. We brought you to their house on the way home from the hospital.

You were always such an alert baby, even from the moment you were born. You always knew what was going on around you and were an old soul from the beginning. You loved music and your dad loved to hold you while he played.

You were always easy going and sweet. Having an older brother so close in age, with special needs, I know was not always easy. You didn’t get the attention you deserved all the time, but you have always handled it with grace and patience. You are always willing to listen and you ask me every day how my day was. I love that about you. You are so attentive to the needs of others around you.

You are currently upstairs rapping. You don’t care that the whole house can hear you, you just do your own thing. Keep holding on to that, as you go through the teen years, it will serve you well. Don’t do what the crowd does, just do what Elijah does.

I love how open you are with us. You trust us with so many tough topics and I hope we continue to earn your trust to come to us with any and everything as you grow. We are here for you, always, no matter what.

You are such a good big brother. You love your younger brothers well and they love you for it. They love when you babysit, and so do we! I know it’s hard to be stuck in the middle of so many brothers. I know having two older brothers who tend to pick on you is hard sometimes. They do it because they love you and because you are the younger brother. Keep being an example of how to be a good person, to your younger brothers and older ones alike.

I love that you hang out with people no one else seems to gravitate towards. I know entering public school from homeschool at age 11 was hard. I know it’s even more complicated to have your dad be who he is at the school, but you handle it so well. From the first day, you made friends easily and looked for those around you who needed a friend. I know your friends look up to you and love you. And I love how you are there for them through all of life’s ups and downs. Keep being a good friend, it’s the most important thing you can be.

I love how dedicated you are to church life. You are at youth group every week and camp too. It takes so much guts to begin a new youth group in middle school, but you have done it and thrown yourself into making friends and growing in your relationship with God. I love seeing you grow.

I love how you have learned to set boundaries in life at such a young age. You know how to protect yourself and your time. You know yourself well enough to tell others when you need a break, and I admire that about you. It’s a skill few adults have.

I love how you have pushed through adversity. Dyslexia is not easy to overcome, but you have done it without complaining and you have succeeded. You aren’t afraid to work hard and try new things. I love your love for theater. I love seeing you do something you are so passionate about. Keep pursuing things that make you happy and give you joy. Those are the best things in life.

Dad and I love you to the moon and back. We can’t wait to see what the next 13 years bring you. You are the best son we could ever ask for and we are blessed to be your parents and get to watch you grow into the wonderful young man we know you will become. Love you Lijy.

What now?

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My oldest baby is turning 20 next week. Seriously, where did the time go? He was just a baby a minute ago and now he’s an adult well on his way to becoming independent. He’s in college and we never see him, which is how it should be in college lol.

(Samuel 2 years old)

20 Years of being a mom. Since 2006 when Jordan was born, I have stayed at home with them full time. I worked part time when Sam was little and hated every minute of it, having to juggle working and being a mom to a toddler. I wanted to just be at home with my kids while they were little. I always thought I would go back to work when they started school. But our plans changed and our family grew and I never went back to work because we always had little kids and were homeschooling for a number of years. And I wouldn’t trade any of it.

(Sam 9, Jordan 7, Josh 3, Elijah 2)

Now I find myself about to enter a new season. Jordan will be graduating next year, he’s our last homeschooler. Everyone else is in traditional school. My two youngest will be entering school in the next two years. So, August 2025 I will have no more homeschoolers and no more preschoolers at home. It’s a new season for me and admittedly scary. I have been thinking about what I should do after that. Honestly, I don’t know yet. My original plan, 20 years ago was to go back to grad school and work as a marriage and family therapist. I’ve considered that, but life with seven kids is different from life with the two kids we had when I had those plans. And having a special needs child is a full time job all by itself sometimes. Someone is always sick, or has an appointment, or whatever. The family has gotten used to me being available to step in when needed on all those things for so many years. To make a shift to full time work would be a huge change. Just grad school alone would be 2-3 years full time. While I love the idea of being a therapist and feel like it’s what I would love to do, it feels like it might be a bigger sacrifice than is worth it for us all.

This whole thing leads to a bigger question that so many moms face. Will I work outside the home? If so, how do I balance it all? If I stay at home, how do I find things to occupy my mind and heart that don’t involve kids all the time? What is the role of a mom in this day and time? So many questions. And now so many of my friends who have stayed at home with their kids for years to care for them full time find themselves asking “now, what?”

In my deconstruction and reconstruction process of the past few years I have changed many of my beliefs about things. I used to believe in the complimentarian structure of the church and family, meaning men were the head of church and family and women were under the men. Women were not allowed to lead in any way. Their responsibility was to the kids and they should stay at home if at all possible because that was their place. Their God given role. I grew up believing that wholeheartedly and always thought I would stay at home with my kids, to a certain point. But I also had a mom who worked, even before she was a single mom, she and my dad ran a very successful company. She had a Masters degree and found great pride and accomplishment in her work. She was never going to be a stay at home mom. I grew up in that dichotomy. Seeing her accomplish great things and being so proud of her and yet in our church she was not seen as valuable for any of that. Her only acceptable role was to be a mother. I couldn’t make sense of it. She wasn’t allowed to teach high school Sunday school to teen boys, because she was a woman. And yet she led a very large company Monday-Friday and was passionate about studying the Bible. She knew more about the Bible than many of the men at church but it didn’t matter. She was female and less than.

(Mom’s 70th Birthday)

Four years ago when our daughter passed away, I began to reexamine my beliefs. I began to study women in the Bible and what Bible scholars said about all these verses that seem to suggest or outright say that woman are restricted in what they can do for God within the church and society. It just didn’t line up with what I saw when I looked at how Jesus treated women when He was on earth. He was radical in his acceptance of women and up ended the societal norms by including them in many roles and gatherings they would have not traditionally been allowed to be in. He was not limiting their roles, he was expanding them. I now believe that God allows women to have any role they would like in the church and family, equal to men. God loves women and gifts them with things to do on earth just like men.

Let me say that we can take this too far. I am not in support of men bashing or extreme versions of feminism where men are devalued. Men are just as valuable as women and I think as women, we should not seek to do to men what was done to us for so many thousands of years by declaring men are less than us. God made both of us to work together, not against one another.

Changing my mind about this idea of complementarianism (men are head over women) versus egailtarianism (men and women are equal) has ripple effects. It has changed how we do church, how we function in our home and I’m still untangling how to walk it out in my own personal journey of motherhood. Glenn is fully supportive of whatever I want to do next in my journey of working versus not working. And honestly, I change my mind about every week, lol. I still have echoes of guilt for considering working. Like I’m betraying my true calling or something. Now of course, you can work to such an extent that you do neglect your kids, that is all too common. So many people work to escape issues at home. Raising kids is hard work and not something anyone wants to do everyday. I have certainly fantasized about getting a job to escape the grind of motherhood some days. But I do truly believe you can do both and do it well. You can work outside the home doing something you love and you can be an excellent and present parent for your kids too. So many moms do it everyday.

So, I find myself trying to make decisions for my future. It feels daunting and scary to enter a new season after so many years of doing the same thing. I know there is something out there for me, and I’ll figure it out eventually, probably not as soon as I’d like or in the way I’d want. God never does things on the timeline I would like. No matter what I know what I am doing now is valuable. These kids are my calling right now, and forever. They are gifts and blessings. And whatever God leads me to next will also be valuable and I can do both things. God has good plans.

(Luke 9, Gavin 3 and Will 5)

Why, God?

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I slammed my fist down on the kitchen table and yelled, “this can’t be how it ends!”. I sat across from my best friend, she had come as soon as she heard the news that my daughter was in the hospital following an accident in the home of her caregiver. Kaki had been left in a bathtub unattended, and because of her intellectual disability and mental age, had slipped under the water at some point and drowned. She was 17 years old. We had adopted her at the age of 11 from Hong Kong. It had been a very difficult transition for her. She had lived in an institution since the age of 3 and she had struggled with behavioral issues since that time. She was nonverbal and needed full care for her activities of daily living (aka brushing teeth and changing diapers). She didn’t handle being in a new country, with a new family well at all. She didn’t seem to understand we loved her and wanted to care for her. She saw us as the enemy, or that’s how it felt. I prayed for years that things would change, and they would improve slightly, but never the big changes I wanted. Still we believed that maybe someday she would love us or at least tolerate us. And as I sat at that table and the realization that she was not going to make it washed over me, I was angry and sad. Why didn’t God answer my prayers? It couldn’t end like that.

Four years before, I was halfway through my pregnancy and excited to welcome another baby boy into our family. I went to my midwife appointment and my whole world stopped. They told me he had died and I would need to go through a delivery. We had experienced miscarriages before, but I was 21 weeks at this point, I was blindsided. After a long labor, I delivered my son in the maternity ward of the same hospital where some of my other kids had been born years before. The woman in the next room was loud and excited and here I was hysterically sobbing through the delivery and then the room was just silent when he was born. This tiny perfect little person. There were no answers. Where was God? I could understand when my mom died at 83, she was older and that is how life works, but this tiny baby who never got to breathe his first breath, I just couldn’t understand why.

There have been so many moments in my life when I just couldn’t understand why something traumatic had happened. People made silly comments after both my son and daughter passed away. Stuff like, “God has a plan and it will be okay”, “God must have needed another angel in heaven”, “You will get through this” , “She/he is in a better place”, and my personal favorite “you can always try again to have more kids”. Those comments, while well intended, just made me angry. If this was God’s plan then I wanted not part of it, God does not need another angel in heaven, I don’t really believe I will get through this since I’m barely alive at this point and while this child is in a better place than earth, that doesn’t help me any.

For a while after my son’s death I wasn’t sure God loved me and I was just angry. Why would He give me this child just to take him away? I wrestled for months about what I believed and how could I believe in this God that seemingly did such terrible things?

Disclaimer: I am not a theologian, so anything I’m about to say may or may not be what is actually true of God, but this is how I reconciled it all in my mind. And to be honest what I believe or don’t believe about God’s nature doesn’t really matter. God is bigger that we can understand as humans, do I don’t think anyone can actually full grasp how God works and why He does what He does.

Controversial opinion: I don’t think God causes people to die. I don’t think He caused my son to die before he was ever born and I don’t think he caused my daughter to drown. It’s a fine line, I realize, because did He know what would happen before it happened? yes. Could He have stopped it from happening? Also, yes. Why didn’t He do that? I don’t know. But I cannot believe He CAUSED them to die. I don’t believe that because God is good. He says so Himself, and He did not create us as humans to die. Death is a consequence of sin. God’s original plan was for no one to ever die and no sickness to enter the earth ever. But Adam and Eve messed that up and we continue to with each generation of humans. God does not like death. He sent his Son so we could have eternal life with Him again in heaven. So, I don’t think he causes anyone to die. It is not in His “plan”.

In marriage therapy we have learned about dysfunctional patterns of communication. These are loops that you get into in marriage that cause dysfunction. For example, one person might be a pursuer of emotional connection, meaning they are always asking the other if everything is okay and trying to seek out connection. The other person might be a withdrawer, they pull away when they feel pressure to connect or are threatened. The two can get into this dysfunctional loop where the pursuer seeks connection a little too intensely and the withdrawer gets triggered and withdraws and that makes the pursuer more anxious and they pursue harder. And it keeps going and going. The way to fix that is to recognize the pattern and then to focus on aiming any negative feelings at the pattern and not at your partner. You hate the pattern, not the person. The same is true of God and death. I learned that God hated my children’s deaths as much as I did. He grieved just like me. I learned I could direct my anger at death and not God. God did not cause death, sin caused death.

I was praying once after Kaki’s death and I felt this overwhelming sense of guilt and grief that I wasn’t there when that accident happened. She was all alone. It haunted me. One day God dropped an idea into my mind. He was there. He is everywhere, so of course He was there with her at that moment. She was not alone. And He was heartbroken by her death just like me.

I know some of you are thinking, “well if he was there, why didn’t he stop her from dying?” And the real answer is ‘I have no idea’. Why does He intervene in some situations and not in others? I don’t know. There are just some things we cannot understand. If I zoom out and look at the big picture, I understand that for us who believe in God, death is always an improvement over life. Both my children are with God now in heaven and, of course, I can see that is better for them than living here on earth. And it brings some comfort but it’s still hard for those of us left here to deal with their loss. I wish it could have been different.

There are some songs in Christian music that bug me. Small soapbox: you really gotta be careful with the Christian music messages you listen to, because they might sound good but theologically they don’t add up. These are musicians, not theologians writing these songs after all. So, one lyric that bugs me is “if it’s not good then God isn’t done”. It implies that if a situation has not turned “good” then God isn’t done and He will continue working on that situation until it is “good” on this earth. Or that’s how I take it. I have an issue with that. Kaki’s story on this earth was never “good”. It didn’t end the way I wanted it to. It ended in ash. Have I learned a ton from the experience? Yes. I am not the same person I was before her death. I think it’s been a positive change mostly, but her life didn’t end “good”. Now if we zoom out a bit, and see the eternal and not just the temporal, we can see that everyone who believes in God’s life ends “good” in heaven. We all get our healing, but that doesn’t always happen on earth. And I resent people saying that it does, if I’m honest.

Have you asked God, WHY?! in a situation. It’s a hard question to wrestle with. We cannot fully understand. We never will be able to here on earth. There will continue to be things in my life that happen where I ask that question. What I’ve learned is that God is not against me. He wants good things, He loves me. The bad things that happen on this earth are not from Him. And we can both be united in our hatred for them and our grief. He is with me, not against me.

Therapy 101

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When I was about 12 years old I was at a conference at my church and they presented the DISC personality profiles. I was fascinated with it all and knew then that I wanted to study psychology in college. As time went on, I felt a pull towards being a therapist. After I graduated with my BA in psychology I got the application for grad school to get my MA in Marriage and Family therapy. As I was dragging my feet in doing my essay, I decided to take a year to work between college and grad school. We had just gotten married and we really couldn’t afford more school. A year passed and we found out we were expecting Sam. I was overjoyed, I always wanted to be a mom. I decided to put my Masters on hold to be a mom and figured once our kids were in school I would go back to school myself. Life happened and I never went back to school. But I have always enjoyed talking with people and have done some volunteer peer counseling over the years.

I went to therapy the first time early in my childhood when my parents divorced. I don’t remember much of it but I do remember feeling safe there. Years later in my early twenties after my father’s passing I went to therapy again. Since then, over the years, I have been in and out of therapy multiple times, usually following a loss of some kind. Each time it has been helpful. I am currently in therapy myself and we as a couple are also in therapy. This is the first time we have ever done couples therapy and it has made a huge difference in our relationship. I highly recommend it. Even if you aren’t going through some catastrophic issue in your marriage, we can all use a tune up every now and again and you will learn that we all have dysfunctional patterns we have learned in our lives that we carry into our relationships. We function completely differently than we did before we began therapy. You just don’t know what you don’t know.

There is a stigma to therapy, not as much in the secular world but in the church world there is. There are a few ideas that lead to this I think:

  1. “If you just pray about something it will get better. If your marriage is in trouble, just pray and your spouse will change. ” I do believe prayer changes things, however, I also believe God wants to do to our best to make a situation better and sometimes that involves getting help. Most of us would go to the doctor if we are sick, so why is therapy any different? We are not undermining God’s ability to heal us if we take medicine, and the same is with therapy. I fully believe God uses doctor’s and therapist’s to help when we are not doing well in mind, body or soul.
  2. “Pastors can help, you don’t need a therapist”. Ugh this one gets me. Would you let a pastor do surgery on you? Heck no. Therapy requires training that Pastors just don’t have for particular situations. Pastors are there for spiritual direction, not for dealing with mental health issues. Trust me, I have a son in seminary and they take maybe one class about pastoral counseling if you are lucky. That is not the same as a therapist who does 60 credit hours of a Masters Program in therapy plus so many other continuing education credits to maintain a license.That’s 3-5 years of school plus an internship. My unpopular opinion is that Pastors should outsource premarital counseling to a therapist instead of doing it themselves. So much damage was done in my own personal experience with premarital counseling, stuff I have had to undo in therapy, that could have been avoided if a pastor had not given us premarital counseling. With my own children, we will insist that they complete premarital counseling with a licensed therapist before marrying and we will pay for it. That is how much I believe in it.
  3. “You should suffer to be a good Christian”. This one I am still unwinding in therapy. Many people in the evangelical world would tell you that you should suffer for Christ, particularly in marriage or other relationships. This leads to, particularly women, suffering in unhealthy and abusive relationships at much higher rates in the Christian world than the secular one. That’s crazy. That is not at all what God wants. And it’s a bad witness to the world. This new generation of young people doesn’t even want to get married and the reason they don’t is they see unhealthy marriages and don’t want any part of that. I saw a very unhealthy marriage in my parents. My mom stayed and put up with rampant emotional and financial abuse for years because she felt that she had to do that to be a “good Christian wife”. “A study in 2019 of Christian marriages found that 1 in 4 highly religious US marriages have intimate partner violence”. My goodness, what have we done? Women think they have to put up with this abuse, and that is just physical not even counting the emotional and sexual abuse that may be happening in countless more marriages under the guise of “suffering for Christ” and “being submissive”. That is unconscionable. We have to stop telling women they can’t go get help from a therapist if their marriage is unhealthy. And we have to stop telling them to stay with abusive men and pray for them, instead of getting out and getting safe. It’s damaging these women and children who are being abused. Studies have found it is less damaging for kids to experience divorce than to be in an abusive household. But that is not what most churches are telling women. We need to help them get safe and get therapy.

Therapy is so helpful. It has been for me in my life and I highly recommend it to everyone. It is an investment of time and money, but will pay off in your life and relationships.

How’s the new house?

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At the beginning of January we moved into a new house and now this is the question I get so often lately. The short answer is it’s wonderful for most of us and not so much for one of us.

For most of us we love it. We have more space, more bathrooms (hallelujah) and it’s closer to the kids school and Glenn’s work. We have so much more time and everything just seems easier here. It’s amazing what more space can do. We have a wonderful street with great neighbors and a view from our backyard. It’s everything I wanted and hoped for. Everyone is adjusting great and feeling more room to breathe, except one.

Joshua is our third born son and he was adopted at birth. We met him when he was 8 days old, in the NICU at Atrium hospital. He was born at 29 weeks and weighed 2 lbs. He was so tiny and helpless. He was born into a situation that was not what was best for him, so he needed a new family to care for him. We saw him everyday through the ups and downs that is life at the NICU. Finally he was sent home two months after he was born. He weighed 5lbs at that point. Shortly after he came home, I knew something was not typical about him, having had two babies before him. He never looked at you or smiled. He was delayed in everything he did. We got him into therapies and worked so hard to get him to walk and talk. He went to special preschool and special classes when he entered school. The experts around us told me he would catch up, but I knew he wouldn’t. Finally at age 8 he was diagnosed with Intellectual Disability. He has had behavioral issues since he was two. It was not the typical two year old fits, but rages that would last hours and involved self harm. Experts kept telling me it was just his disability, but I knew it was something more. Finally after years of asking and telling people something wasn’t right and years of testing, he was diagnosed with Autism and ADHD in addition to his ID. That was fall of 2023. It took 13 years to get someone to make his diagnosis. By that point, we were in a crisis of trying to figure out how to handle his behaviors. Having a 13 year old child who is sized like a small adult throw a tantrum that involves, hitting, kicking, and throwing stuff is next level. There are so many holes in walls and doors at our house. And the most awful things come out of his mouth when he’s angry.

Kids with Autism don’t really like change. They like predictable routines and schedules. I knew us moving would be challenging for Josh but it was also necessary. He is in 7th grade and the school he was going to wasn’t great and the high school he would have gone to was the worst in the district so I knew we needed to find something better and that would require moving. Sometimes you have to choose your hard. Moving is hard and staying is hard, which hard will you choose? We chose moving. He did okay through the process of preparing and selling the house. He was already having behavioral issues (aka tantrums) but they didn’t increase until just before we moved. And that was expected and understandable, we were all under stress. I think I had just hoped that after a couple of weeks in the new house, we would see it calm down, but it hasn’t. We are seeing tantrums every weekend and sometimes during the week. Most of it is about fixations he has or things he wants that he can’t have. It feels like the traits of autism have gotten worse since his diagnosis, but maybe we are just noticing them more. Puberty and developmental disabilities are not a good mix. Trying to explain hormones and feelings you have as a developing young person to a person with a developmental level of 5, is impossible. And they don’t have the emotional or mental maturity to tell you how they feel. We have tried all the ideas of parenting a kid with autism, rewards, punishments, all the things. Nothing works in the long term. We looked into ABA therapy but they do a minimum of 30 hours per week, outside of school hours. In your house. How do people do that? That would take over your entire life. And at 14 almost, there is very little evidence that it would be effective. We have tried other therapies but because they are usually during school hours he gets upset by the schedule change. You just can’t win. We are working with his psychiatrist to start yet another new medication, but if I’m honest I’m not super hopeful because it’s just the latest in a long list we have tried. We aren’t sure what to do next to get him stable. I’m hoping time will help.

I know the popular opinion is to say that developmental disabilities are a gift and the kids see the world differently and isn’t that wonderful. And I support all that for other people, but for me as a parent right now I think Autism sucks. To function differently in the world is terribly difficult. And as a parent to try to know how to help someone you have no idea how to relate to is the most difficult thing I have ever done. Maybe he’s happy like this, I don’t know. We sure aren’t living with him. He’s doing well at school, which is great, but it makes me wish it could be like that at home too. Why does he act nice at school and hateful at home? I know we are his safe space to really express himself and all that stuff, but seriously, it’s just hard. And it brings back echoes of his sister and all we went through with her. It makes you feel like you just aren’t equipped to be a special needs parent, but who is? I mean, typical kids are challenging, but special needs parenting is next level sometimes. The psychiatrist who works with kids like him everyday told me she has no idea how to help him and he’s a complicated case. Makes me feel better honestly, because if she doesn’t know what to do, how in the world can I? I don’t know how we won the lottery with two really difficult special needs kids but sometimes I wish we didn’t. I know there are special needs kids who don’t throw tantrums and say mean hurtful stuff all the time, but my experience is limited.

So, we keep putting one foot in front of the other and try the next thing we think might help. That’s what we’ve been doing for 14 years almost and we will continue, but man it gets heavy sometimes.

Build

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My word for this new year is “build”. The past few years have been about dismantling and clearing away the ruble of things in my life that were no longer useful or helpful. Things that were dead or dying. Things that were even harmful and hurting me. Clearing away those things is a worthy cause and takes time. You have to sift through all the things in your life and keep what makes sense for your growth and well being, and discard what does not. That’s a hard process and a painful one at times. Sometimes you have to let go of some good things, things you thought you would hold on to forever. But they no longer were what is best, they were from another season and that season is past. We can’t hold onto relics of old seasons because they can become a hindrance to our growth in a new season. It’s like a hydrangea or rose bush. Its beautiful and lovely in one season and then those same beautiful flowers fade in another season. They are the same flowers but in one season they are beautiful and healthy and in another season they are wilted and dying. If you don’t prune back the plant, and cut away all that was once beautiful but is now dead, there will never be room for new growth. I feel like these past few years have been about pruning and stripping away things. But I feel like things are shifting now. This new season will be about building. Our pastor has been preaching on the principle of replacement. Taking away something harmful or dead is a good thing but one must replace that old thing with something new in order to grow. That is the season I am in. Replacement. Building.

My life today is unrecognizable from what it was three years ago before the great terribleness of the virus hit our lives. And even before that we had a season of loss for about 8 years or so. We had miscarriages, a still birth, my mom passed away after a long illness, other extended family members passed on. It was just loss after loss. Then there was our daughter’s passing. That put an exclamation mark on the loss season. We were in the middle of the pandemic (April 24, 2020) and she passed away in a tragic accident. It sent our family into a deep pit of loss. The deep loss and dark cloud that hung over our house for some time led us to a rock bottom sort of place. We knew we needed help and we sought out counseling for ourselves as parents and also for our kids. Depression gripped us and our oldest boys. It was very dark. There is no grief like losing your child but on top of that there was so much trauma to deal with before her passing. When I recount it in bits and pieces to people now, I see the shock on their faces and I realize the extent of it all. When you are in the middle of trauma you tend to down play it to survive. You gaslight yourself to survive. But grief demands a witness and you slowly begin to share your story with others. No one really understands, because our story is our own, but sometimes you find others who have walked a similar road and you see the empathy on their face. No one wants to be in this tragic club, but we all understand it will change you and make you into a better version of yourself someday. For now, you just grope around in the darkness and try to take the next right step.

As we began to emerge from our dark season we started to take stock of our lives and evaluate how things had changed and what changes we needed to make to become healthier. We recognized nothing was the same and never would be again. We started to dismantle things that were unhealthy and dead in our lives. We started internally with our own relationship and lives, then as that transformed, we realized that it caused a ripple effect on the rest of our lives. We began to sense God was leading us to make some very whole scale changes in our lives. 2023 became the year of big changes. First we left the church we had attended for Glenn’s whole life and most of mine. It was a very difficult change, but one we felt we must make. It was where we were supposed to be for that season but we felt that season was coming to a close. We prayed and evaluated and felt God leading us to a new church. God had placed our son there six months before, to go to college. I walked in with him the very first Sunday and felt at home. But we waited and prayed and God finally nudged us to begin attending there February of 2023. We have found home, friends and growth there in the past year and we are thankful.

And then this past summer God began nudging us again to make a huge change. In November we found a perfect house and we put an offer on it and they accepted. We were completely shocked, because it was under list price. Then within a week, listed and sold our house. Just after the first of the year we moved into the new house closer to the kids school and Glenn’s work. It has been the best decision for our family. We have so much more space and the kids are so close to school and Glenn to work. We have literally added 1.5 hours to our day without the commute. It was a very hard decision. We lived surrounded by family, in Glenn’s grandmothers former home. It was so emotional but we knew this was where God was leading and He provided the perfect house for us at the perfect price.

And now God has provided a preschool for the two youngest boys to attend beginning in February. Something I did not at all see coming, but we feel is where God is leading. Change after change.

I don’t really like change. I like adventure but permanent change is hard for me. Last year was all about being brave and stepping out into the unknown and new things. It was about leaving the comfortable, but nonfunctional place, for new unknown places. And now this year is about building the life we want to live in these new places.

There are some song lyrics that have spoken to me in this season:

“Sometimes sorrow is the door to peace
Sometimes heartache is the gift I need
You’re faithful, faithful
In all things”

Sometimes sorrow and loss is the door to peace. That’s tough to accept, but in some situations it is true. Sometimes there are things in our lives that were once good, that are no longer. Sometimes there are people and places that we had in our lives for a season, but the season passes. That is no ones fault, but it is the way things are. People grow and change. Sometimes we hold onto people, places or seasons in our lives that are not growing anymore. That isn’t healthy for anyone. It’s okay to let go of something and walk into a new season. And it’s also okay to take people, places or things we have had in one season into a new season with us, but those relationships must shift and change with the new season. I find this must happen particularly in marriage. There must be shifts in a marriage or it will die. I feel like I’ve been married to multiple versions of Glenn and he with me. And that is healthy.

And now we move on to building something new.

Should we expect better of our boys?

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I read a quote on Instagram recently about purity culture that really resonated with my experiences as a teenager and even now.

“Purity culture models and even baptizes an immature masculine expression of sexuality as normal or just ‘part of being male’. We have trained a generation of Christian men to view themselves as victims of their own out of control sexual desire. Thus, the conversations around sexual sin in many churches have been dominated by “strategies” for avoiding temptation…Really these strategies amount to avoiding women. The result has been a radical dehumanization of women, who are viewed as either a threat that could compromise either a mans faithfulness/career or (in marriage) as a God given “outlet” for a man’s animalistic sexual desire. ” Zachary Wagner

Wow. I feel that. Deeply. I have read extensively about the purity culture, in addition to living it myself as a teen. While I think at it’s core it was meant to be a way to keep kids from engaging in sexual sin as teens the result was devastating to my generation and the one that has come after me and unfortunately is still being touted even today in some churches. If you aren’t familiar with the purity culture movement it happened in the late 90s and early 2000s in mainstream evangelical churches. It taught, in short, that men were more sexual than women and couldn’t help themselves so they should avoid women if possible but if they struggled with lust, which was expected, then they shouldn’t worry to much about it because it was “normal”. They should just manage that desire as best as they could until they got married and could they exercise their God given rights to express their ever present desire with their wives in any way they saw fit. This led to a lot of sin management, instead of heart change. And obviously some serious issues after they got married as well.

For women, we were taught our bodies were dangerous to men and we should dress in appropriate ways so as to prevent men from lusting after us. We were to guard our purity at all costs, because ultimately that was the picture of our worth as women. We were to be the brakes in our relationship with men and not “allow” them to push our boundaries in a physical sexual relationship. We were given purity rings to seal our commitment to remaining pure, but if we should somehow not remain pure, we were damaged goods and not as worthy as those who did remain pure. Even if we had been sexually assaulted, which many leaders have stated “must be because of something we were wearing”.

Now most of this was not stated explicitly, but inferred through examples of toothpaste being squeezed out of a tube or water having dirt put into it. Teens are very perceptive and that leaves one to understand their worth is only in how they act or what they do or don’t do for God in a performative way.

As one can imagine this was damaging and continues to have ripple effects on people and marriages years later including my own. There was a point in my own teenage story that I was in an unhealthy dating relationship. The boy was much older than me and a leader in our church group. Lines were pushed and I was put into situations I would rather have not been in. He was doing what he was taught. No one expected better of him and no one helped him understand he had deep issues that needed to be addressed. No one was holding him accountable and I was left in the fall out. I felt like damaged goods but would never admit that to anyone because according to the purity message I had failed and was not worth as much as someone else who had followed all the rules. And so I stayed in an unhealthy relationship for years because I was convinced that was my only option.

Now as an adult, much older than that 15 year old girl, I can see the damage. I can tell her that it wasn’t her fault, it wasn’t something she said or wore that made that happen and that someone should have told her that. She should have heard about consent and that what you say matters. But it’s taken 20 some odd years to come to grips with that. I deserved better and so do the boys I am raising. Not only was this message damaging to girls but also to boys.

When we tell boys they can’t help themselves and that lust and sexual sin is normal for men to struggle with we deprive them of their autonomy. They assume they are victims of their own bodies and minds instead of taking every thought captive. We teach them to treat women as objects instead of people. We expect less of them and they live up to those expectations. We expect women to be their mothers instead of equal partners and that is emasculating. You see influencers like Andrew Tate who tell men to take back their power from the feminists and then use that “power” to view and treat women as objects for conquest. And a whole generation of boys are listening to that garbage and some church leaders are encouraging it. I don’t think men need other men telling them to not let their women boss them around and a church telling them the same when the church is partly responsible for this lack of ownership of manhood. The church told these men they were victims not feminism. You wonder why they stopped trying and don’t step up as men, maybe it’s because you told them they were nothing more than sexual animals and not capable of better. Maybe it’s because you told them they didn’t need to take responsibility for their actions with women and that bled over into the rest of their lives. Maybe it’s because you steeped them in shame for sexual sin and just told them to “stop” but didn’t give them any tools for how to. Maybe it’s because you told them sexual sin was expected behavior and now 50% (probably much more if they were really honest) are addicted to pornography and it’s tearing their lives apart and they feel defeated and aren’t being given the tools with which to change because we as a church are about sin management not heart change.

I recently sat down with my teenage boys and told them about purity culture and it’s damage. I told them they are responsible for their own choices, regardless of what other people do. Women are not the enemy, they aren’t scary, they aren’t to be avoided. They are to be seen as God’s beautiful creations and respected for the person they are. They are not to be objectified, even if you are kidding. They are not in competition with you, they are equal and partners in life with you. Porn is dangerous and will ruin your life and the lives of those around you, but if you fall into that we are here for you and will get you appropriate help to overcome it, which does not include sin management but actual heart change. There is no need for shame. Purity is great but it isn’t everything in life. You are not less than for any mistake in your life. There is such a thing as consent and you are responsible for asking about boundaries and maintaining those, you don’t get a pass because you are male. (insert eye roll emoji). If you find that you aren’t lusting after everything that is female, that doesn’t make you abnormal. There is a large range of normal when it comes to libido. Interests that aren’t seen as prototypical male are absolutely fine for everyone. My boys are artistic and musical, they don’t play sports and hunt, but that in no way makes them less masculine and any man that tells you otherwise has a form of toxic masculinity.

If you experienced purity culture, I’m sorry. I know it’s caused some damage to everyone it touched. We have to recognize it and do better for this generation of kids. No more purity messages and for gosh sake no more ring ceremonies.

Seasons

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One of our favorite movies is “Encanto”, a tale about a magical and imperfect family that overcomes trauma to grow closer together. It’s become quite popular for its songs, one of which is “Two Oruguitas”, which means “Two Caterpillars” and beautifully illustrates how life brings change, transformation and wonder. Similarly, in Ecclesiastes 3, we read that there is a time for everything (vs. 1) and that God has made everything beautiful in its time (vs. 11), including the toil and burdens we carry from time to time (vs. 10). 

As many of you know, Ruth and I (Glenn) have endured a great deal of difficulty over the last decade through trauma and loss. We find ourselves in a season of healing and transformation and have realized that we need a space to simply “be” and heal quietly, at least for a season. We sense God’s direction to begin attending Multiply Church in Concord, where our oldest son Sam attends Southeastern University Carolina and where we can plug in to specialized support ministries that larger churches like Multiply are able to offer.  

The CHURCH is the body of Christ and fills the earth. We firmly believe that the various locations that we all attend should not detract from the kindred spirit we share with all believers (Colossians 3:14-16 and Ephesians 3:2-6). We have been deeply invested at Harvest Church Charlotte for many years and remain committed to supporting Pastors Tom and Tracey and all of our brothers and sisters in Christ there. We particularly appreciate how Pastor Tom serves our community sacrificially, boldly preaches the Word of God in kindness and shows love and acceptance to all. In the same way, Pastor Tracey has a great love for others, leads with a bold faith and calls us all to grow in Christ.  There are many others in our HCC family whose friendship we value, and we look forward to remaining connected in this new season. 

So to ALL of our friends and family, both old and new, THANK YOU for being a part of our lives, for your understanding during this transition, and for your continued friendship as we all move forward in this journey together. 

“Wonders await you

Just on the other side

Trust they’ll be there

Start to prepare

The way for tomorrow…”

-Two Oruguitas