Lidna’s Thanksgiving meme!

 1. Are you sticking to traditional Thanksgiving foods this year, or are you being culinarily adventurous? Mostly traditional – maybe some surprises but you never can tell when 20+ people contribute to the meal!

2. Tell me something concrete that you’re thankful for. (Something you can literally touch, see, etc., not a concept like “hope.”) Does the weather qualify? It is absolutely beautiful – cool (for us!) and clear. High tomorrow 65. Which brings me to the second thing I’m thankful for – this warm, wireless laptop!

3. You knew the flip side was coming: Share about something intangible that you’re thankful for. The unspoken, sometimes incomprehensible ways my husband shows his love for me.

4. Share one vivid Thanksgiving memory. It doesn’t have to be deep or meaningful, just something that remains etched in your memory. Last year – eating Thanksgiving “dinner” at a hospital McD’s. Realizing how much we had to be thankful for in that our son’s injuries were severe, were not life-threatening.

5. What is one thing that you know beyond a shadow of a doubt is going to happen this Thanksgiving because it always does, year after year? Consuming too many calories! With lunch at husband’s parent’s and dinner at mine, it’s unavoidable.

6. Do your pets get any left-overs? Our one cat will probably get a little turkey.

7. Does your family pray before the big meal? If so, do you join hands while seated, stand, repeat a formal prayer or offer a spontaneous prayer? Who does the praying? Yes, we pray holding hands in a circle. At the in-law’s, it is usually my father-in-law who prays. At my family’s, it is usually my husband.

8. Will you be watching football in the afternoon? If not, what will you be doing? The guys will watch football – the women usually talk. I’m taking the game “Apples to Apples” and my daughter and I will coerce others to play. We did this at my mom’s last year and it was a HUGE hit.

9. There are two distinct camps of people on this issue: How do you feel about oysters in the dressing/stuffing? There are recipes that call for oysters in the dressing?

10. Do you consider yourself informed about the first Thanksgiving? semi-informed. I’m just glad we’ve expanded the menu!

11. Which variety of pie will you be enjoying? Buttermilk and pecan, baby!!!

12. Do you feel for the turkey?? Only when I think about him…her???

Recently, I was reading in Luke. Chapter 18, verse 1 says that Jesus was telling the disciples a story to illustrate that they need to always be in prayer, and never give up hope. And I realized that sometimes prayer is so hard for us to ‘get into’ because that is the one thing that Satan wants so desperately to destroy for us – that fellowship, that communion between us and God when we pray, when we are face to face with Him.

Now, a little background story; I had been looking forward to this weekend, when I would have all three of my children together for months. The weather had turned cool and was absolutely beautiful, and I was baking, cleaning, decorating in full Martha mode the entire week before. I should have been on-guard. I had already been dealt a spiritual blow when I had stood in front of the card-rack at the store, trying to pick out a birthday card for our oldest son. Everything I read talked about how proud we were of the man he’s become. And I just could not bring myself to say that. I am not proud that he has chosen a homosexual lifestyle. So I chose a card that talked about memories.

And then he was on the local news.

But I realized that I was caring more about what other people thought. And that really doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter whether or not anyone else questions if I’m taking a stand. My son knows I don’t approve of his lifestyle choice. What matters is that I continue to love him and minister to him and keep him in prayer before God.

And then he was the local news AGAIN.

The night before we were to pick up our other son at the airport.

The night before our daughter drove in.

Satan – trying to steal my joy. Trying to steal that sweet anticipation and sense of completeness that comes from a mother having all her chicks under her wings again – even for a little bit.

It was another reminder to ‘put on the full armor of God so I can stand strong against all the strategies and tricks of the enemy.’ (My paraphrase of Ephesians 6:11)

…at this point in time, anyway. If you’ve read any of my posts, thank you for taking the time. My prayer is that somehow, something I said might provide a bit of encouragement.  Pray for me…and if you need me to pray for you, I’m still answering email.

This past weekend, we went to help our daughter move.

• She was moving from one 2nd-story to another. Stairs…lots of stairs.
• Her bookshelves broke apart on moving
• We lost her dresser somewhere on I-35
• Stairs. Up and down…
• The used dryer we bought for her did not work. It was an electric, we have gas, so there was no way to test it before we took it up to her. Like innocents, we trusted the guy we bought it from off craigslist.
• Stairs and more stairs.

We lost the dresser on our first load. We are still not sure what happened to it. When we went back for another load, we looked but never did see it or its remains. Thankfully, she had taken the drawers out and put those, with her clothes, in her car.

My fix-it-all husband did get the dryer working, after replacing the heating coil. After we drove all over Ft. Worth trying to find the replacement. We finally found a Sears Parts and Repair place just a few miles from her old apartment. And since we still had to pick up another load from her old apartment, it worked out well. Did I mention the stairs? Oh my word my legs are sore!

The good news? I definitely got my 30×5 in for the entire week.

Oh…and I think we’re safe from ever being asked to help move her again.

I am not going to presume to know what is or has gone through my son’s mind concerning his homosexuality. I am sure that he has been tormented about this, because he was not raised to believe that it is “OK.” It’s not as if he just decided one day that he was going to be gay, and everyone was going to be fine with his decision. I am sure he knew that making this lifestyle choice was going to hurt and disappoint a lot of people – including his brother and sister.

Kris told my husband and I that he was gay a few months ago.

But he did not tell his brother and sister, nor anyone else in our family.

To me, it seemed almost as if he was embarrassed about it. And if embarrassment is there, I firmly believe it is God working on him.

We…Mark and I…respected his decision to tell his brother and sister in his own time. I think that we were both holding on to the hope that God would convict him of his wrong choice.

What we didn’t realize was that our politically active son, as president of the 4th largest city in the nation’s GLBT caucus – would be interviewed on the news a few weeks ago. And that someone our middle child knew would “facebook” him and comment about his brother being on the news that night. It was very obvious from the interview that my son was living a homosexual lifestyle.

It was a horrible way for our middle child to find out about his brother. We gave Kris a little while to tell his sister, but when he did not contact her, we told her. We just could not risk her finding out from one of her many friends who still live in the area.  

She was hurt and angry that he did not talk to her about his homosexuality before going public…very public…with it.  Up until Friday before our weekend together, he still had not called her and she had no qualms about letting him know how angry she was.

I was not looking forward to our time together, knowing that a confrontation was coming.

But he called her Friday. And I was so very proud of her. She told me that she had wanted an apology, that he gave her one and told her it was inconsiderate of him. She said she forgave him, and she knows holding a grudge is only going to hurt her.

I was also proud of him for admitting his insensitivity, and saying he was sorry for the way he handled it.

And it was so, so wonderful to see them talking and laughing together over the weekend. I had prayed for healing in their relationship, and that prayer was answered.

This weekend, we enjoyed an evening spent with all three of our grown children.

It was no easy task to get everyone together.

A couple of months ago, our middle son told us he was flying in to a city about a 4-hour drive from us for a medical conference. We talked about going to see him, and discovered our oldest son was going to be in another city about an hour from that for a political convention. He was going to be free Saturday evening, so made arrangements to meet up with us. When our daughter heard what was going on, she decided to drive down from where she lives, about 4 hours north, and stay with us at the hotel. We knew we wouldn’t have a whole lot of time together, but we knew our next time together would probably not be until Christmas.

It was a great time together. I had been a little anxious about it for reasons I’ll post at another time. We all met up in San Antonio, which is a fun city to visit. The weather was gorgeous, our hotel was extremely nice and roomy, dinner was delicious, and we managed to get a photo of the 5 of us together.

The only thing missing was our daughter-in-law!

The past few weeks have found me battling a lot of inner turmoil. I have struggled with how much to say here. But one thing…one thing I know. I know how much it would help me if I could talk to someone in my situation, someone who is dealing with the same things I am, someone who has been where I’m walking right now.

And so I have decided to be open and honest about my struggle in dealing with my son’s homosexuality. I’ve shared a little bit already but there’s a lot I’ve kept to myself.

In doing this, I know I am making myself vulnerable. And I have to say that that scares me.

One thing I want to address – in no way am I saying that what I’m going through is the very worst thing that could ever happen. I know my son is still alive, and I am thankful for that. And I am thankful that he wants to have a relationship with us. I am thankful for a husband who shares this burden with me, one who must be hurting himself but loves his son whole-heartedly.

That, in itself, is something I struggle with. It’s a conundrum. I struggle with the fact that I am struggling even though I have everything in the above paragraph. I have a son who is alive, who desires a relationship with his parents, and a husband who is supportive.

So why? Why is this so darn hard? How do I show unconditional love without showing approval for his sinful behavior? How do I get past the feelings of intense…I’m just gonna say it…disgust for the homosexual lifestyle?

I know that the only way I can do this is with the help of God. And I know He is faithful. Somehow, some day, this will bring glory and honor to God’s name…even if it is just the way my husband and I learn to lean on Him. My prayer is that somewhere down the road, my journey will help another mother seeking to love a son who says he is gay.

I do believe I am the most undisciplined person in the world. If I don’t feel like doing something, I just don’t do it even if I know I need to. That goes for housecleaning, eating right, exercise, and paperwork.

But I think something happened on my 50th birthday, last year.

I guess I decided to grow up.

Someone asked me how I motivated myself to get moving even when all you want to do after a long day is just veg out on the sofa.

And my answer may not be something that works for you, but it has worked for me the last 8 months. Nike said it before me…  Just do it.

Or, in the case of wanting to eat something that’s not healthy…  Don’t do it.

I know that’s easy to say.  But it’s what I’ve been telling myself when I am faced with something I just don’t want to do. And it doesn’t work every time. My house still isn’t spotless all the time, there are still days when I put off what I know I need to do. And the occasional cookie or french fry has passed my lips.

But for the most part, especially when it comes to keeping off the couch vegging out, it works.

I think that’s why the past 2 weeks of the 30×5 challenge haven’t been the challenge I thought it would be. I didn’t realize until this challenge that I was pretty much already moving 30 minutes a day. I’ve taken to playing with the dog almost daily. He loves playing ’soccer’ and it benefits both of us.

And it helps that the weather here has been absolutely gorgeous!

I’m down 2 lbs in the last 2 weeks…about 40 lbs. since my 50th birthday, last August. My goal is to lose another 10, maybe 15.  I’m getting there!

My laptop is healed! My arm is sore from patting myself on the back. From everything I had read, it was almost impossible to get rid of the bug that had invaded my hard drive, and re-formatting was about the only option. I had given up, and was just awaiting a new external drive to store all my data in one place.  (Notice I did not say “stuff”!)

I decided Monday just to work a little more on it. Yesterday and last night I ran scan after scan, and they’ve all come up clean!

I am just amazed at myself.

All day Saturday, I struggled with a root-kit bug on my laptop. I couldn’t run it in anything but Safe mode. By the evening, I finally got it where it would at least boot up. The only good thing was that I managed to take out my frustration by getting outside and working.

On Sundays, I am up in the media booth at our church. Part of my past job was getting the Sunday morning visuals ready, and actually running them during services. I don’t work at the church anymore, but I still do the Sunday morning stuff.

We use an Apple MacBook pro. Would not boot up properly. Finally, after 10 minutes and a couple of re-boots, it was up and going. Turn the projectors on…and more problems.

I am still battling the bug on my laptop. The time has come for a complete reformat. I’m just waiting for our new 1.5 Tb external hard drive to get here so I can store my stuff.

I think I’m ready for a technology fast.

ETA: Just when I lead you to think I am computer-savvy and really know what I’m doing – I had to throw in the comment about saving my “stuff”.  I didn’t mean stuff – I mean data, people.