One of my all time favorite quotes is from a book called Poisonwood Bible. This historical novel made me laugh, shocked, surprised, angry, and a whole host of other emotions. I read it during a time in my life where I was willing to recognize some difficulties that had built up in my first half century of dancing upon this earth. Like it is for many, reading is an escape, but it also helps me feel a bit freer to contemplate, imagine, reflect on my experiences, hopes, and my needs. Even though I read that particular book with my own eyes, for the past several years, reading by way of Audible is my main way of inviting new ideas and new people (authors and others who love the same books) into my life. I don't have what one might consider a book buddy where one of us is trying to show the other one the ropes, but I do have a couple of very close friends in my life who are readers outside my current scope and we sometimes share titles of the really, really good ones. I do have to admit that I fall asleep many nights to true crime books. I don't ever listen to them during the daytime unless Storm and I are on a road trip and we sync up and listen in. But, night time is for the scary ones. I have found an author or two who have superb narrators and I get lulled to sleep despite the subject matter. Often it is challenging the next night to find exactly where it was when I dozed off and that aggravates me because it wastes my time. I have listening, shivering, and then sleeping to get to! Did he kill another one yet? No, that was fast forwarding too far because I don't remember this new victim or new plan are such things that I have to wade through before I find my spot again. And, no, I don't want to set a timer because that's just more crap I have to type into my phone without my glasses on in the dark, so zip it! ha!
So in the aforementioned book there is a young 12 year old gal named Ada whose father is a Baptist missionary in a hostile and poor foreign country with horrible living conditions, the Belgian Congo. Ada is extraordinarily intelligent but mute. (kind of like Storm when we argue. Wait, I argue. He sits there trying to reinvent the wheel but telling me nothing about it. Pfft!) We, as readers, however, get to read her thoughts that no one else in the book is privy to. She, like her siblings, wanted the heck out of Dodge for many reasons, but there was no way of escaping or getting her father to be reasonable (he's a fanatical Evangelical nutjob.) Ada thought that he would get a hold of his mind and get them the heck back to America exactly "On the 12th of Never!" I laughed so hard. Good luck getting any Evangelical to stop some of their ways if they are way over the top. Stop what? Jesus take aaaaaaall the wheels! Even the more mainstream ones are challenging to deal with. I know this because I have been doing so from the time I took my first asthmatic breath until this very night.
In my mind, especially at night and sometimes early in the mornings when I awake, I have written dozens of posts over the past year, but as you know my words made it here on the 12th of Never! They're all just stuck in my head, pushed aside, or forgotten. But, in my heart, I have been here in blogland and I even chuckle to myself when I think of something that I know would make some of you laugh.
We all know the world is crazy right now with Covid. As I begin writing this, it's the Sunday night before many people return to work or school tomorrow and we all face the same danger. For those of us who accept science even when it is above what we can scientifically personally understand, it makes enough sense that we trust vetted, experienced and peer reviewed epidemiologists and immunologists at prestigious universities, etc. to give us guidance. I swear if I hear one more time that, "Well, we are receiving mixed messages and that doctors disagree with one another, so who should we trust when it comes to the vaccines," I am gonna scream. Or I will type just as I did last week to someone, "Please quit sending me MISINFORMATION from this idiot osteopathic doctor with no studies to his own credit but his fly by night MISINTERPRETATION of someone else's study of which the researchers say he's completely wrong anyway! I have tried for the past 5 years to present facts to others' fiction and effed up science and I am done wasting my time. Now, I just say STOP talking to me about it, period!
So why am I sharing my thoughts on these things now and not so much 2 years ago or over the past year? Because Storm's unvaccinated mother is in the ER for the past 48 hours with Covid, being treated in the emergency room itself because there are no hospital beds available here to actually move her to the Covid ward. (She got a bed Monday night. It's now Wednesday as I am editing this.) Blood clots on her lung. Right now, her oxygen is good, but they are trying to lower the level that they're giving her to see if she can sustain it on her own. The next couple of days will determine if she is given whatever drug. What a mess. We feel horrible for her, but no way are we going to visit even though it is allowed for 1 person per day all masked and suited up.
It's not really a surprise that this is happening because, duh. Storm was on the receiving end of his mother's wrath this summer when he told her she needed to get vaccinated. His family is extremely private to the point where no one knows anything about anyone else until something major (usually bad) happens. He has many siblings and they've all been extremely concerned the past 2 weeks while his mom remains passive aggressive and refused to get medical help until she got really bad because as she told Storm this summer, she "felt her asthma was under control and if I take my vitamins, I should be fine. It's not that I am against the vaccine, it's just I don't think I need it. And it doesn't affect anyone but me." He explained to her that it would affect other people....... she told him don't come to her house to lecture her. Good grief. That isn't what he was doing and he is educated......she should be proud of him and take his dang advice. Grrrr. We didn't see her all summer or fall because we're not putting ourselves at risk because of my health problems, mainly lifelong asthma. Now she is in the hospital. Storm is not glad that he was right about what would happen if she didn't get her vaccine. So many worries, scary decisions for her kids. So many healthcare workers taking care of her and ......well, you get it.
Anyway, the whole world is dealing with Covid. Here in the US we are dealing with science deniers (I know other countries have that, too, but I don't understand it because why it's so political here, is it political there, too? Seems like it.) Also here, we have to deal with the extreme right ... the religious right...... the Capitol stormers, Evangelicals = OUR WHOLE FAM DAMILY on both sides! My God in heaven, help us all.
For myself, I am dealing with all of that plus I have finally begun to address my own religious trauma and let me tell you it is tough. Most people deconstruct, but some of us want to reconstruct as well ....... I am learning some authors and bloggers and podcasters who talk about these experiences and other closely related ones. Some of them are Jen Hatmaker, Glennon Doyle, Jamie Lee Finch, John Paplovitz, and Brene Brown. I don't know where I am going to end up but acceptance that my religious trauma is real and very much alive to this day is where I am at. I'm listening to many stories that strike uncannily close to home. Not sure when I will land in a safe spot religiously or with this whole Covid thing. So like Ada has said, probably on the 12th of Never!
