Damaged

Damaged

or

Things They Should Tell You Before You’re On Your Own

Today has been a perfect storm of the kids acting out.  This has happened before – it’s not abnormal that the kids have behaviors related to abuse and neglect that we try to work through as they come up.  Normally, we make sure the child is safe from harm, call the caseworker, write up an incident report and then address it at home and in therapy.  For two years, this is how it goes.

But after finalization, there are no caseworker calls, no incident reports, no one person who can say on the phone “this is not unexpected and here’s how we work through it with the other kids who do this.”  It’s a support system that one day just disappears.

Thank God that the kids are still in therapy.  My therapy seems to be this two  cigarette a day habit I’ve picked up.  Shaun called the kids’ treatment center and they gave him some pointers on what to do for today and we’re going to try and get a family therapy appt for tomorrow.

So, here’s what happened.  This morning I wake up to the smell of smoke and Ethan is hiding something in his bed.  As soon as I make sure nothing is on fire, I ask him what he’s doing.  “I’m about to get back in bed and go to sleep.”  Um, no you weren’t.  I’m not stupid, bucko.

The kids know my routine – nothing is going to happen until I’m halfway into my first cup of coffee.  So, I get it and sit down, and I hear the girlchild saying “let me lay on top of you and tell you a secret.”  The oldest boy is going “no, I only wanted to tickle your feet!”  She says “But I have to lay on top of you and give you kisses and tell you secrets!”  This alone makes me want to cry.

We discussed good touch/bad touch for the zillionth time and talked about the kinds of girls who laid on top of people to give kisses and if it was appropriate for a 5 year old girl to be that kind of girl.  Hoochie Mamas and Stupid Girls get talked about quite a bit in our house too.

Then I separate them into their rooms and then I start to smell smoke again.  Match smoke.  I walk out and the oldest is in the kitchen pretending to play with the magnets on the fridge.  My nose traces the matches to an end table in the sunroom.  I hold them up and ask who lit the matches.  The oldest tells me the youngest did it, but the youngest has been in bed since I caught him stealing and lying to me.  I play along: so where did E put the matches that burned?  In the trashcan.  I look, and sure as shit, there are about 15 burned matches in there.

So, I go ask E.  Did you light matches?  Yes… he mumbles and makes square face.  How many?  Just one, then one with the red tip wouldn’t work so I put them back.  Ok, this fits with the story I’ve alreayd figured out in my head.

Before I woke up this morning E and L snuck out to the sunroom with a box of kitchen matches and tried to light one up.  It quickly went out because with the AC and the ceiling fan in there, you couldn’t light a zippo if you were standing in a puddle of gasoline.  They tried another and it didn’t light at all, then they heard me so they disposed of the evidence and ran back to their stations.

Then, after A was in trouble and E was still in his room, L snuck back out in the sunroom and started try trying again.  My bloodhound nose perked up and I caught him disposing of the evidence.

Add all this to the encopresis that has been flaring up again, and mommy needs another cigarette.  L is back in diapers full time again because he keeps pooping his pants.  Night, day, busy times, not busy times.  Is it a physical problem or does it have to do with the Oppositional Defiant Disorder or the ADHD?

Looking on the internet, all of these problems are fairly common but what’s getting to me is that my support system (that actually knows what they’re talking about) is gone.  The moral support system sees the kids as “damaged goods.”   I hope the therapists have something to tell us that will help.

I’m not Catholic, but St. Jude, Patron Saint of Lost Causes – here’s a prayer coming your way.

Rising from the ashes

I woke up today headache-free!  Yay!  After a week of waking up with that “it might be a migraine” feeling, I’m actually up and moving.  This last bout of migraines started last weekend on Sunday when we went to Target to get a Wii for the kids.  I don’t know why the electronics department is always 20 degrees hotter than the rest of the store, but I got to feeling like I was going to fall out in the middle of the aisle.  I’m going to blame it on the increased electromagnetic energy coming from all the displays and tell Shaun I can’t window shop for TVs with him because I’m allergic.  What do you think?

On the rising from the ashes idea, it amazes me how many people think my tattoo is some perverted form of the phoenix, because it’s a flaming bird pointing DOWN.  The common thread seems to be that I think I’m on the fast road to hell… um… or something.

It’s actually the Pentecost Dove.  It has nothing to do with the phoenix other than the fire part.  Acts 2:1-4 from the Message Remix -

When the Feast of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place.  Without warning there was a sound like a strong wind, gale force – no one could tell where it came from.  It filled the whole building.  Then, like a wild-fire, the Holy Spirit spread through their ranks, and they started speaking in a number of different languages as the Spirit prompted them.

From the NIV:

When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.

It goes on “wow, everyone is like wtf?”  then in verse 13 it says “other joked that they were drunk on cheap wine.”

Oh, ok.  The dove is the Holy Spirit and it’s on fire because of the tongues of fire that set men to testify in other languages.  Got it.

Here’s where I get universal WTF?  Behind the dove, the tattoo says ARSON.  Arson is the first crime the HS committed on Earth at Pentecost.

I live in the Bible belt, so the reactions go something like this:  THE HOLY SPIRIT DOES NOT COMMIT CRIMES, BLASPHEMER!

Um, yeah, actually social disobedience is a crime and was a crime especially in first century Rome.  Jesus wasn’t the only Jew crucified during that time period.  The crosses lined the streets and people who were in the secret cult of Christianity could be executed without a trial.  Many people were.  To flagrantly go out with flaming beacons and declaring in every language that you were a member of this cult and hey, you should be too, was a crime punishable by death.

There are many places in the world that you would be shot on the street for being openly Christian.  Americans and Europeans have it so easy these days – they don’t have to think about risking their lives for a belief system. They just believe because their parents believed and that’s how they were raised.  They’ve never faced persecution and fear of death.  They walk around in their snarky t-shirts from Lifeway with their cross rings and necklaces, toting their Bible in a cutesy cover and scorn people who don’t go to church on Sunday.  They listen to Christian radio and only know gospel songs.  We have entire generations of idealists who have never confronted the gray areas of life without dismissing it with a “tut, tut, that’s bad.”  The closest they’ve come is reading The Voice of the Martyrs.

It’s arson because the HS set men’s hearts and tongues on fire for God with a unlimited potential for spreading.  Fire spreads where it finds fuel and it can’t be contained once it’s let loose.  It’s purposefully set with the idea that once it gets going, it’s gonna do a lot of damage before it can be put out.

If we’re all little candles with little lights that shine a little, then the Holy Spirit was the proverbial napalm bomb, except no one yelled GRENADE! before it hit.  Think of all the sayings that have to do with fire:  light a fire under someone’s ass.  Burning up with an emotion.  On fire for a cause.  I’ll show you light if I have to burn the whole city down.  (Fallout Boy reference) and then what actually inspired this train of thought:  We are the arsons who start all of your fires.  We are the arsons burning your city down.  (Glass to the Arson by Anberlin)

I love symbology and theology, if you can’t tell, and this tattoo just fit me.  Since I’ve gotten it, my husband has too and we are constantly asked about them.  I’m not looking to evangelize through my body art but I am looking to show off my “stained glass” in my temple.  Sometimes you have to shock people out of their comfort zones so that they’ll be ready to go out and look it up on their own.

The only two people who have automattically understood it were a women who was raised Catholic and a Lutherin.  Everyone else goes for the perverted phoenix or thinks that I like to go around starting fires in real life.  It’s fun to educate Christians on their own religion.

If you want to go hardcore with pissing off people in the Bible belt, tell them that you can prove Jesus probably had a small penis.  That gets em going EVERY time.  Don’t believe me?  Read the prophecies about Jesus in Isaiah.