Why I Believe in the Power of Prayer

I started taking insulin injections on Wednesday and felt better immediately. I can do this, I thought: it'll be smooth sailing from here on out.

But when I woke up on Thursday, my throat felt like a sidewalk-scraped knee. Jim had been feeling badly for a couple days and was diagnosed, that same day, with bronchitis and an upper respiratory infection. "Go to the doctor," he encouraged, but I didn't see the point: I try to avoid medication (beyond Tylenol and, obviously, insulin) while pregnant.

I fell asleep praying I wouldn't get worse, but--for each of the next three mornings--I woke up feeling worse than I had the day before.

For days, my daughters ate candy corn for breakfast. They curled around my legs and tummy on the couch, and we watched an endless stream of cartoons. I hacked up a lung and cried for my mom, who lives eight hours away and couldn't come to my rescue.

Today is Day 6 of my crud. I can breathe (and smell) through my nose. I can function as the mother of little girls; we resumed "homeschool preschool" yesterday. They just had cereal as a side dish to their candy corn. I played board games with my son, last night; I got him to the bus on time, this morning.

I still sound terrible. I still feel as though I've been kicked about the ribs by an ornery old mule.

But this is what I really wanted to tell you: while I was dying on the sofa, my husband was cleaning and painting my recently- and suddenly-vacated bitty house. With diagnosed bronchitis and an upper respiratory infection. I was over there last night, and--considering the smoke, dog-pee-stained carpet, half-painted wall (as in, someone painted around a gigantic piece of furniture?), non-working light fixture, black and clogged (completely washable?) air filter, and broken toilet our former renters left behind--I wanted to cry for the beauty and freshness of it all.

And you wouldn't know, if you didn't know, the miracle in this: the power of prayer in this. Because, traditionally, my man has been the one hit hardest by any and all sickness in our household. I can't even count the times I've watched him crash and burn. But he's down 85 pounds since surgery (135 since the beginning of summer), and he's a new man.

He took us to the Amelia County Fair for his birthday; for hours, we walked around in the dark, and who knows how pitted with holes that cool ground? He bagged up clothes for Good Will and, twice, shopped in his closet; he came downstairs, this morning, proudly modeling a new size. He looks like he did on our wedding day. He's just so well, even when he's sick.

And that, my friends, is the power of prayer. Thank you, Lord.

To My Unborn Child

Dear James Reo Galyon III, "Baby Chip":

I never in a million years imagined I'd raise four children, and neither did anyone who's ever known me. Some dreams, though, carry so much weight that they can't be shaken. I dreamed your name; I dreamed your face; and--even though I don't completely understand it--I've known for years: I won't have peace until you're here.

I've been waiting for you.

I asked your daddy, the other night, what he hopes for you, and he answered: he just wants you to be healthy. I started listing, in my mind, a slew of secret hopes for you (that you will be the calm, quiet type; that you will be a wise leader, sought for counsel; that you will play football, etc.), but then I thought: ultimately, so long as you love the Lord, I really just want you to be who you should be.

I really just want you to be here.

I want you to feel that every day. I want you to know: I believed enough that you were meant to be here that I pressed in, hard, for the day you would complete our family. I welcomed four pregnancies  in less than four years, waiting for you, and I allowed nothing--sickness, loss, depression, or (most significantly) fear--to overwhelm my dreams of you.

Your papaw calls you Big Medicine. He believes your purpose is--at least in part--to inspire your daddy's health. I can't say, but I do know: I've wanted desperately to give your daddy a son and a namesake. I can hardly wait to see you, learn you, and feel (at last) that we are all here. Just six weeks more.

I love you so much.
Mommy

The Stairs

I never imagined how fine the needles: finer than pine; finer than silver loops topping vintage Christmas ornaments; finer, even, than threads of silk hanging, unraveling, from those balls.

I can't do it, I thought, when she said: "Prick your finger fours times a day."

I can't do it, I thought, when he said: "Give yourself a shot every morning." Crying, I picked up my beloved's cell and dialed "Brother," wanting mine, getting his. But that was almost four years ago, and, as it turns out, I can do all things; my body has produced two healthy girls since that time.

I prick my fingers over and over with fine needles and cross my fingers for insulin because my body's become a grinding food processor. I eat a cheeseburger, no bun, for breakfast and feel the lurch, the protesting engine, of my body. I yawn on the couch. I sit on a stool to wash dishes. I sing from a chair in the choir loft, the others standing around me like golf tees on a Cracker Barrel Peg Puzzle.

I broke my tailbone, once, falling down stairs. The doctor prescribed pain meds (How does one take pain meds while mothering a toddler and driving two hours, each way, for grad school?) and time. I befriended a donut pillow.

Interesting, those pains in the ass that cannot be seen.

I am ready to put a needle in the hand of my beloved and bend over.

David Salle's Flying Down, 2006

**My thanks to Tess Kincaid and Amber Haines for the prompts that inspired this post. I am pleased to share with them and their communities.

The Necklace

Fifteen years ago, in Dallas, I approached a well-respected tattoo artist about a wedding ring of ink. He shrugged, said he didn't tattoo fingers because of their constant exposure to the elements. He went on to say: most people don't get the touch-ups finger tattoos require, and their faded ink reflects poorly upon the artists.

I'm sure I could've found someone to tattoo my finger but didn't pursue it further, and thank goodness, because the marriage ended. My ex-husband's band felt heavy in every sense; I wore it infrequently while we were married, and (no surprise) never, after. It brought a pretty penny when I sold it, a few years ago, for gold.

These days, I wear my wedding ring like I wear my flip-flops, which is to say: I slip it off when I'm in the house. This means nothing except that I prefer bare fingers for washing dishes and children, for preparing food, for sleeping.

As a matter of respect, I try to remember to slide that ring back on before leaving the house, but I wear jewelry best, it seems, when I can forget it's there. I prefer necklaces, and--over the course of my lifetime--there have been a long line of them.

I think of the one my mom gave me from my infant brother: candy-looking hearts on a chain, from Avon.

My dad presented a slightly older me with a gold heart, an opal heart nestled inside it. "I keep your heart inside my heart," he said. After I'd grown, he replaced that necklace with the heart of white gold I wore on my (second) wedding day.

While my beloved and I honeymooned on St. John, he bought me a silver book on a chain. The pages inside, engraved by Kathy Bransfield, bear the last stanza of William Ernest Henley's "Invictus."  We hear the tapping of those silver pages and return to a hotel room by the Caribbean Sea.

I have two necklaces that celebrate my children on earth, and the one I wear, typing this, memorializes my child in heaven. 

I write in necklace places and feel lighter: like I'm wearing a necklace and not a millstone. I scatter and scratch and spill and vomit words on pages and know: I will not drown, today. I have said everything I need to say.

**Sharing with Amber, Emily, and their communities.

Dear Me: A Letter to My Teenage Self

Dear Brandee,

You'll turn 16 in a few, short weeks. Don't do that thing you're on the brink of doing. What a big bunch of hype for a whole lot of totally not worth it.

I get you perfectly, some twenty-two years down the road, and you're putting a truckload of unnecessary pressure on yourself. You know that--by the time Mom was your age--she'd been dating Dad for something like three years. She married him at 17. You're feeling frantic and even a little old. It would be funny if it weren't so tragic.

Sixteen is not old. Take it from me: 33 is a pretty good age to marry, and your body will be capable of growing a baby even at 38. I know, I know: Mom is 37 right now, and the thought of her, pregnant, is unfathomable. But she's more of a hottie and a spring chicken than you realize.

Stop thinking about Mom and her timeline. Stop it. Stop it! I understand why you're doing it (She's amazing!), but stop it. You'll never be her: never, ever. (Do let her teach you to sew, though, and cook...and can food.) You're what happened when two people collided: two! You're at least 50% Carl Shafer and, at the end of the day, wholly yourself. Concern yourself with becoming who you are. Allow your life to unfold in its own way, in its own time.

Because here's the thing: you have perfect instincts. You're headed for the right college. Also, the boys in your life worth loving are the very same ones with whom you never consider intimacy. You tell Mom: you love them too much to risk losing them. You're wiser than you know; you'll love them, still, over two decades from now, and you'll know how to find them. Don't try to date the one because--even though the two of you never cross any lines--that unnecessary history will complicate things down the road.

Your memories with your three boy friends will become some of the ones you'll cherish most. Make more of them. Go to your junior prom with Matthew. Spend even more time riding with Jason. Spend even more time swimming with Mark.

Enjoy more fully your family, your girlfriends (especially Carlena, Sonia, Annie), your church youth group, your high school band. You're getting ready to leave Scott County for good; make the most of what time you have left. Spend more time listening to what James Watson and T.L. Lay have to say. Love on Stacey even harder. Go ahead and track down Hoyle Hutson and tell him you're sorry for acting out in his sixth-grade science class because--by the time you actually feel sorry (having tried and failed to teach a bunch of heathens)--he'll be in the ground.

Or don't change a dad-burned thing.

I'm not going to lie to you: you can save yourself a whole heap of trouble, here. But--even if you don't--it'll all be ok enough, in the end. The Lord will go with you wherever you go, and you'll fall in love with Him one way or the other: even though you'll find Him different than how they teach Him in the little, white church. He lives in your heart, and He's more faithful than you can possibly fathom.

I love you.
Your 38-year-old Self

The Cup

When someone drinks from a cup, she drinks from something other than glass because--if she drinks from glass--she'll either call that container by the name of its substance, or she'll call it a mug: not, generally, a cup. I prefer to drink from glass: especially wine, also sweet tea and most anything with fizz to it.

A glass seems cleaner, somehow, than a cup. Cups (especially plastic ones) trap odors and stains. Ice doesn't taste so good, out of a cup, as it does from a glass. Perhaps nothing does.

Cups haven't that charming ring when tapped with silverware; they're insufficient for toasts.

Cups melt, sometimes, but they don't tend to break. Cups are safe and--let's face it--childish. Undignified. They're sold in spill-proof varieties. They house Kool-Aid, medicine, pee.

Aside from a few juice glasses and mugs, in this log cabin, we drink from only cups: plastic cups. My husband prefers Big Gulp cups from 7-Eleven. Cade, my 12-year-old, seems to like the tall, skinny black cups with fading owls on them. They belonged to my grandma and remind me of the days when she had her own house, cupboards, cups. The girls drink from sippy cups: Sesame Street, Mickey Mouse, Tinkerbell, various princesses.

I'm indifferent. I drink from whatever cup is clean. I prefer to drink from glass (Were you paying attention?) but suspect that this season of cups is meant to draw me closer to Jesus.

Jesus is a cup man. There are those who would try to capture Him in glass; trap Him in glass; make Him as transparent/dangerous/cutting/fancy-schmancy as glass, but He's a cup man. Scripture bears it out.

"Suffer the little children to come unto me," Jesus says, and I'll tell you the truth: I don't think He minds if the children come carrying sippy cups. Nor do I think He minds if their mommies come running behind with little cups of medicine. Jesus loves little people with sugar highs, Kool-Aid mustaches, medicine breath. He loves, too, the mommies behind them.

Jesus takes the cup; gives thanks; tells His followers to drink His blood out of it. It's shed for the remission of sins, He says.

Jesus loves the kids, the sinners, ordinary (wo)men. He loves us here, in this log cabin, drinking from cups. He's right here. He's a cup man.

**Sharing with Amber, Emily, and their communities.

Random Updates

So, I tanked the one-hour glucose test, but--thanks to a mix-up with the lab--it took my doctor's office two weeks or so to figure it out. They ordered the three-hour test two days before we were supposed to drive down to Tennessee, and I couldn't figure out how to to squeeze it in before we left. I saw my doctor upon our return, and he suggested that--given the results of the one-hour test and the fact that I had gestational diabetes with Clementine--I skip the three-hour test and return to my diabetes doctor. So as not, you know, to waste more time.

But...it took the office of my diabetes doctor two weeks to schedule me in, and that was just for a consultation with their dietician. She gave me a brand new meter, today, and told me to check my sugar four times a day, starting tomorrow, and return in two weeks.

So, basically, if I need insulin (as I did with Clementine), it will be available for about six weeks before baby time. Chip may well be my first baby to bust up out of the nine-pound range. I guess it stands to reason that the person most concerned is the one with her nether regions in question.

In other news, the girls and I have been rocking the chore chart, and, this week, I've started "preschool" with them here at home.

Also, I got so sick and tired of punishing Miss Charleigh Evangeline (who was thoroughly unphased by both spankings and time outs) that I told Clementine: if she bites you, bite her back. I realize this doesn't exactly align with biblical principles, but it seems to be working, and I'm happy enough in not seeing fresh bite marks on my older daughter. Oddly, I don't think it's working because Charleigh has a new understanding of how much it hurts to be bitten (I wonder, sometimes, if Charleigh has a congenital insensitivity to pain!), but because Charleigh knows Clementine will do something other than cry.

I really do have my hands full. Clementine's grown up a lot just in the last couple of months, but Sister has hopped up on the crazy train. I do think I could potty train her fairly easily, but one thing at a time, right?

Jim's doing great: down 50 pounds since surgery and 100 pounds since the beginning of summer. He took the girls out for dinner and ice cream Friday evening, also for shopping on Saturday, and those just aren't things he would've done a few, short months ago.

Cade's settling into Junior High. Last year, he tried out to play bass clarinet--an instrument provided by the school--and was chosen. He seems to be enjoying that challenge. The two of us went out to dinner Friday night and had an amazing, two-hour conversation.

Charleigh's moved into a toddler bed, and she's talking in complete sentences. Clementine's writing most of her (capital) letters. Chip's kicking me to death. Yesterday, the girls and I went to the zoo, where I managed to push the double stroller (with both girls in it) up a hill that seemed big as Mt. Everest. That is all.