Category: Family

Outrageous outrage.

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In the wake of the US Supreme Court’s decision in recognition of gay marriage, I’ve noticed a few interesting things.

The flood of rainbow coloured profile pictures on Facebook and other social media and the parallel flood of statements in support of marriage equality for all suggest at first that there is stronger social support for marriage equality than the Australian government seems to believe.  I wonder how many of the people I know splashing rainbows around this weekend have written to any Australian politicians voicing their support.

All those rainbows have also prompted a wave of people bemoaning the loss of their “Christian” right to object or to openly state that they do not support gay marriage.
What nonsense.
Nobody is being asked to live against their morals. Nobody is having their personal ethics persecuted or the security of their family endangered.

In fact, if gay people are allowed to get married, I’m pretty sure that the only personal lives affected will be their own.  For heterosexual couples, kids at school, and Rover the family dog, absolutely nothing will change. They can still go on doing what they’ve always done. So can your church, mosque or local football club.

In terms of the Australian constitution, nothing will change. The Marriage Act would change, but that isn’t going to annul or change anyone else’s marriage. And please, don’t start bleating about “undermining the sanctity of marriage”.  A 50% divorce rate in Australia, the chronic problem of domestic violence, and a popular culture full of dysfunctional families and parents, usually fathers, made out to look like idiots by smart-arsed kids has done more to undermine the sanctity of marriage than legalising gay marriage ever will.   If heterosexuals want to be precious about their marriages, it’s about time more of them started treating their marriages as precious.

I fully understand that the Bible teaches that homosexuality is immoral.  No argument there.
However, what most of the predominantly Christian outrage against gay marriage conveniently overlooks is that the Bible teaches that there are many practices and lifestyles that are immoral: anyone who is dishonest, greedy, prejudiced, cruel, selfish, rude, atheist, or sexually active outside of marriage is just as guilty in terms of what the Bible teaches.  Let’s not even start on different religions. And judging other people? Oops. There are plenty of people in our world who are guilty of that.
All of these things are called immoral in the Bible. Yet all of these other people are fully entitled, as consenting adults, to marry the person they love. That is, of course, as long as it’s a heterosexual marriage.  Anything else would be… well… sinful.  And we can’t have that, can we?

The Bible wastes no words in condemning those who oppress the poor, the vulnerable, the widow or the hungry. The Old Testament is very direct in that regard. Ironically, though, we don’t hear people raging against the relationships or marriages of the Australian politicians who are actively involved in locking up asylum seekers in small neighbouring third-world nations, do we?  No,  because that would be stupid. So would opposing the marriage of Joe Schmoe and Mary Bloggs down the road because they don’t believe in God at all, or they worship the fairies at the bottom of their garden. In fact, I do believe it’s been a very long time since anyone living in Australia was publicly stoned to death for “living in sin”, but that’s immoral too.

My point is that it seems that marriage is an option for everyone except gays and lesbians, even though everyone is flawed or immoral in one way or another.

Nobody is suggesting that churches or individual pastors or priests who hold convictions and teachings against gay marriage should be forced to perform the ceremonies. Nobody is suggesting that because something becomes legalised, everyone has to do it.  Smoking tobacco and drinking alcohol are both quite legal, yet many people choose to do neither. It’s quite legal to be a nudist if someone wants to be, but most people don’t practise that lifestyle, either.

It’s high time that we all just got over ourselves and treated one another with respect and kindness.  If someone wants to marry, let them.  If they don’t want to marry, don’t make them. And for heaven’s sake, stop pretending that someone else’s marriage or relationship has anything at all to do with yours.

My Canadian brother from another mother.

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I have a friend that I love a lot. We live thousands of kilometres apart, but we spend part of every day talking with each other. It’s a beautiful friendship that has grown out of a chance meeting, a random response to a random tweet.

When I visited Canada last year, I spent some time at Sean’s house.
I remember we were both nervous about finally meeting each other after talking online for so long, but that first hug was just incredible. The next few days were proof that our friendship was real. Even our partners commented on how it seemed like Sean and I had known each other forever.

On the morning that we left, the mood was sombre. Goodbyes were tearful. As I was about to go, he said, “Please don’t leave.”

My response was immediate and honest. “I’ll never completely be gone. You’re my brother now. I’ll be back.”

When I do go back in September this year, Sean and I are going to have our own little adoption ceremony. What we have is a friendship more valuable than we ever realised it would be when we started joking with one another on Twitter way back when.

Today, when I signed into the instant messenger that we both use, I found these words from him.

You Just Rock Jun 19 2015 ©2015 WordyNerdBird

He may have known how timely his words were, but I don’t think he realises just how healing and restoring it was to read these words after a tough week in which I had confronted some tough challenges, both professionally and personally.

It’s so incredibly good to know you have someone who has your back, no matter what critics and problems life might throw at you. Sean is by no means the only one of my friends who does that, but I wouldn’t want to be without him. He has his own very special place in my heart, and nobody could replace him.

Thank you, Sean, from the bottom of my heart, for your words and for being an amazing friend and brother.

Acc-cen-tu-ate the positive, e-lim-in-ate the negative…

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I was reading a newsletter in my school staff email this morning when one paragraph really caught my attention.

“Can you remove yourself from people who are negative or holding you back?
The quality of our lives will depend on the quality of people with whom we surround ourselves… It is a sign of our maturity to identify any negative effects of others and then have the courage to remove ourselves from that influence.” (Vital Staff, 2015, 14)

This is a truth that many people don’t realise.

I’m not just talking about people who don’t like your haircut or the way you dress. I’m not even talking about people who don’t share your views on politics or religion. I’m talking about those people who bitch, backstab, undermine, conspire and manipulate so that people they perceive as “powerful” will see and treat others in a negative and often quite destructive way.

I know the effects certain negative people have had on my life in the past, both personally and professionally. I’ve seen friendships and relationships eroded gradually until they no longer exist. I’ve seen different people nearly bring down a church, a school, a family. It’s ugly. It’s an incredibly awful thing to experience.

I’ve also experienced the benefits of removing those people from my life. It hasn’t been easy, nor has it been painless, but it has been totally worth it.

Negativity is a cancer that attacks and weakens from within. We often can’t detect it working away under the surface, threatening to overtake and kill the very thing it’s feeding on.

When we do realise it’s there, the best way to treat it is to cut it out and leave it behind. We can’t afford to allow it to continue to grow, because it will gradually choke the joy, and then the life, out of us.

I can hear some of you thinking, “But wait. You’re a Christian. Aren’t you supposed to love and forgive and all that?”

Sure. Love and forgiveness are at the top of the list of ways in which we’re meant to treat other people.

However, that doesn’t mean we have to allow people to continue behaving in ways that are hateful and harmful to themselves and others. How is it showing love to someone if others just let them destroy every relationship they have? How is it forgiving or restoring them if there’s no stand against the behaviours that will eventually destroy both them and other people?

So, when it comes to my friendships, relationships, and interactions with other people, I will continue to choose to surround myself with the positive and constructive, and excise the negative. I can, and will, continue to remove the negative people from my life.

There’s no compulsion for you to follow suit. There’s no obligation for you to keep me in your friends list if you think I have a negative effect on you.

I know not everyone will like me. I realise that even the people who like me don’t like everything I do or say. It would be naive of me to think otherwise.
You know what? I’m entirely okay with that. I don’t need to be liked by everyone. I don’t need a fan club. And I am more than happy to accept that there are some who will be much happier without me. That’s life.

I do not desire to be everything to everyone. At some point earlier in my life I did, but I have long stopped trying to achieve that, because I found out the hard way that it simply isn’t possible. That’s a sure-fire recipe for heartbreak.

What I do desire is for the people close to me to continue to be positive and constructive in my life.

I relish the freedom to choose who and what will speak into my life and influence my thoughts and actions, and the freedom to be who I am without always looking over my shoulder, afraid of the judgement and negativity of others.

Just making sure we knew.

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LMC: (to the visitors). What’s the time? Oh, wait, I will check on my iPad…

Me: you just asked that so you could say you would check on your iPad in front of everyone, didn’t you?

LMC: Yeah….

At least she had the dignity to blush. 

Creepy.

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LMC: Hey, do you want to see something creepy? 

Me: Creepier than you??

LMC: Oh, it IS me, though! 

“Going home!”

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Last night,  my father-in-law was transferred from the specialist hospital in Melbourne to our regional hospital because he is no longer critical. For someone who the doctors weren’t convinced would survive his injuries until ten days ago, he has come a very, very long way.

When I called in to visit him after work tonight, some of the family were still there. It was nice to see Mum looking so much more relaxed, and everyone happier now that Dad is improving and responding more frequently. I’ve heard from others that Dad has tried to say a few words, but sometimes they didn’t know what he was trying to say, but I haven’t been there when it happened, until tonight.

As I was about to leave, I said “Night Dad, I’m going home.” He turned his head and looked directly at me, raised his eyebrows and said, “Going home!”  His words were slurred the way a man talks after seventeen beers, but definite. He had responded directly and verbally to me.

There are no words for that feeling. I had tears. I wanted to sing, I wanted to cheer, and I wanted to hug everyone in the room. I knew they were all feeling it, too. I didn’t really know what to do, so I just smiled and said to him, “Yes, I’m going home. I’ll come back and see you tomorrow after work.” He looked pretty happy with that, so I smiled and squeezed his hand.

After being part of this family for 25 years, and working side by side on the farm with him for 15 of them, it’s wonderful to know that he still knows who I am, and that I’m still special to him. Even more wonderful is that we still have our beloved Dad whom we have very nearly lost twice to accidental head injuries after a fall.

Maybe we won’t have to cancel Christmas this year after all.

Tired.

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I am so very ready to sleep throughout the entire three hours’ drive home from Melbourne.
I didn’t sleep much last night. It was a hot almost-summer night and my pain levels were beyond the stupid end of the scale. Truth be told, they still are, even though I’ve been throwing drugs down my throat whenever I’m able to.

I’ve spent most of today either wishing I were asleep or actively trying not to be, given that I am at the hospital with family again and sleeping on the job is not likely to prove too popular with the others, given that they are all pretty beat too.

It is an enormous blessing that the immediate threat to my father-in-law’s life appears to have passed. Now the family must begin to consider questions of care, ongoing assessments and rehabilitation. We have no idea what he will or will not be able to do.
What does seem clear is that the short-term future is going to become a new “normal” of more routine hospital visits once he is moved to a hospital closer to home, which is infinitely better than the ICU waiting room vigil we’ve been keeping since his accident a few weeks ago.

We’re on our way home. I’m off to sleep. ‘Night.

Tiny, huge victories.

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A week ago there was not a lot of hope. The doctors thought that there was insufficient progress or response to indicate any great hope of recovery.
That changed in the blink of an eye – literally.

We stood by the bed and my husband spoke to his father.
“Hi Dad, it’s Fred.”
Eyes that had been closed for ten days opened a little.
I saw it; so did the nurse.
We didn’t know that the same thing had happened to my brother-in-law a couple of hours earlier.

Those two responses were tiny, but huge. They were enough to show the doctors that there was response and possibly recognition.
Feeling encouraged, we all sat outside in the courtyard and talked.
We looked at a patient across the courtyard, under a tree in his reclining chair, and commented how nice it would be if we could do that with Dad “one day”.

Since then, there has been significant improvement and more direct response. He has nodded slightly for yes and moved his head sideways for no.
Then, this morning, there was a golden moment. I commented to him that the family were being noisy. He raised his eyebrow in a “What’s new?” expression. Everyone saw it and we all laughed.

I could have cheered. This was the first time since his accident that he revealed his sense of humour. This was more than I had hoped for this early.

A little later I was holding his hand. I talked with him and gently squeezed his hand. He squeezed back. I had to swallow my tears. I am so thankful I don’t even know how to express it.

And now, Dad is in his reclining chair outside, in the sunshine and surrounded by his wife and sons and a few other family members. He turns his head when his son speaks to him. He dozes off and wakes again, and looks up to see blue sky and sunshine. He nods when I ask him if the sunshine feels good on his skin.
Was it really only a week ago that we thought this was a pipe dream?

We don’t know what the future holds or how he will progress, but it’s such a blessing to see that the man we know and love as our dad is still with us. His body may be a bit broken but his spirit is not.

Even through the pain, fear and despair of the last few weeks, we can see that we have been very, very blessed. Every victory is tiny, but huge.
Thank you, God.

The Other Kind Of Journey.

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I’ve had enough of hospitals. Waiting, wondering, hoping, fearing. Staring at walls in various shades of white, surrounded by people in scrubs who are all hurrying to be somewhere else. Steeping in the tension and quietness of suspense, strongly brewed.

I’d like to be somewhere else. Of course, I have preferences, but I wouldn’t be too choosy about a change of locale right now. Perhaps not jail, though.

Yet I am held here by forces stronger than my desire to be gone: an eclectic mix of fear, grief, loyalty, duty and belonging, amongst which the balance of power alternates at a sometimes giddy rate.

I belong here with the family, yet I know it’s different for me. I’m the only in-law here, but he’s my dad too. I’m still as afraid as they are.

I know what it’s like to lose a parent, to say goodbye that last time while still not wanting them to go at all. The others don’t know that yet. I think they all realise, though, that whether he lives or dies, they will never be the same again.

They’re blessed to be here together. When my mum died, it was just her and me. My sisters and brother couldn’t get there in time, although they desperately wanted to. It was me who watched and waited and wept in that quiet room. I sang her hymns and prayed with her. She held my hand, even though she was not conscious, and even though she had long forgotten who I was, I knew something buried deep inside her remembered me. How I longed for my siblings then. It was unfair for all of us. I had to do it on my own, but I had precious, awful time with her that they did not.

I thought about that day a lot yesterday when I knew the others were together. I’m glad they can keep each other strong. I’m glad I am here with them today.

The ominous, helpless heaviness of waiting has wrapped its dreadful cloak around us. There is nothing to be done except remain there.

ANZAC Day.

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My great-uncle, H.C.E MacAuley, was a member of 6 Div AASC. He was captured in Kalamata in April of 1941, and stayed undercover and on the run for more than twelve months during which he tried to make it to the Turkish border. He was recaptured in June 1942 and remained a POW until liberation by the 101 Airborne.

I was privileged to know this man as my beloved Uncle Charlie.

He had a great sense of humour and always made time for me. I used to go and visit him and my Auntie Marion on Saturday afternoons with my Grandpa. We would watch the cricket, football or other sports and talk and joke and laugh.
This was where I learned to love watching sports, where I the learned the rules of the different games, where I started to learn about politics, and where I first learned about the war.
Uncle Charlie would tell me stories about things he and his fellow soldiers did, but as I got older I realised how gentle and careful he had been with my young heart and mind.
He told me of events and characters of the war, but he never revealed to me its horror or brutality. He always told me how lucky I was to be Australian and explained that men like him fought so that we could remain the lucky country.

We cannot underestimate the degree to which we owe those soldiers our social and cultural freedom.
We cannot allow our society or our nation to forget the reasons for each war in which we have participated or the outcomes and consequences that each delivered.

I am proud of Uncle Charlie and every other person who has risked or sacrificed their own freedom to preserve that of their countrymen and of the oppressed.
I am thankful for their service.
I am thankful for my country and our prosperity and way of life compared to many other countries.

This ANZAC Day, I encourage everyone to remember and reflect on the freedoms the Australian military services have won on our behalf, and what it cost many of those men and women to achieve them.

Lest we forget.