Welcome To The Colonoscopy Years

Things are looking a little tipsy here in the Skornia household.  Tonight I was looking at what I made the kids for dinner (Dallas is out of town, so I didn’t have to be fancy) and I was thinking how different it was from what dinner would have been last month this time.  The kids had peanut butter sandwiches -- bread made with non-genetically modified wheat flour (French Pantry, from the CSA), and peanut butter that was just ground up peanuts, no partially hydrogenated anything (yeah, they didn’t like it.  Guess I’ll have to add in some sugar till they adjust.).  Veggie sticks instead of chips, and fruit smoothies.  How far we have come.  Carter loved the smoothie, which was made out of strawberries, blueberries, and bananas, but Sarah Cate said, “This tastes terrible.”  That’s her thing lately.  If she doesn’t like it, “This tastes terrible.”  However, after she denigrated my smoothie, she went over to the refrigerator and got the blueberries out and plopped herself down on the kitchen floor and proceeded to eat straight out of the container.  So whatever.

Even Betty has redeemed herself with a banana bread recipe that apparently was written on a day when she wasn’t hitting the sherry.  Not that I trust her completely, but she’s back in my good graces.  I made scrambled egg and bacon burritos for breakfast yesterday and put them in the freezer, and roasted Romanesco cauliflower last night for dinner.  That stuff is weird, folks.  It’s kind of like a cross between broccoli and cauliflower and really, I need my vegetables to not have identity issues if I am to be expected to eat them.  The florets are all pointy and dangerous.  It’s like eating arrowheads for dinner.   I feel the same way about asparagus spears – aptly named.   “Hi dear, just putting together your dinner of weaponry symbolism, be just a second.”  Hope we don’t get that again.  It wasn’t bad, it just wasn’t good.  Kind of non.  Even heavily medicated with parmesan cheese and olive oil, which I’m convinced covers a multitude of sins.  If you can’t be saved by olive oil and parmesan cheese, then you are a sad, sad vegetable.

I drove a few hours down I10 and back today, to pick up Carter from a visit with his grandparents.  While I was driving I was listening to one of Doug’s sermons (they’re on podcast, if you want to listen), you know, because of this whole growing thing.   Why God couldn’t just slap a sticker on your forehead and pat you on the butt as you go down the line of New Christianhood I just don’t know. 

I’ve done Bible studies and read books and all that, but one thing I love about Doug is that he has a way of dumbing things down enough so that even I can understand how to apply the Bible to this life I’ve been given.  So I listen to old sermons of his because I think they help get me where I’m going, which is to be so transparent that you see Jesus in me.  Anyhow today I was listening to a podcast on loving others, and exactly how we love people.  So I was on the one today about patience.  (You know, Love is patient, love is kind, etc. etc.) 

I am a naturally not-patient person.  What?  You?  But Dana, you’re a veritable BEACON of serenity.   I hear you saying it. But no, I’m not terribly patient.  I’m learning to be, even when it kills me.  I’ve learned to wait while Sarah Cate ties my shoe for the ninth time and makes us late for school, because her learning to tie her shoes and the satisfaction she gets from finally getting it right is way more important than whatever time it says on their sign-in sheet.   And to wait, and listen, when Carter is in the middle of the Longest Explanation Ever because it’s important to him that he gets to tell me THE EXACT MOMENT in the Lego song when it says “they’re awesome!”  There are no short stories with him.  This morning I asked Sarah Cate to come get dressed, and I had to wait while she laid on the floor, pushing herself on her back over the hardwood floor, doing the backstroke all the way to her room, because she was a mermaid.  I’ve only heard the song “Let It Go” fifteen hundred quadrillion times.  I have to wait for Max to come in from outside but first he has to rub his face on the door 6 times (three on each side) EVERY SINGLE TIME.  I waited for Sarah Cate to pour her own milk in her cereal even though it took three times as long and made an unholy mess, because learning to do things herself is important.  I don’t always get it right; I lose my patience and snap like every other red-blooded mom on the planet. 

But sometimes I see a moment in me when I do show patience, when I KNOW I would have responded differently 20 years ago, when God hadn’t started on me yet.  Like it was with the anger issue – who I used to be is not who I am now, and that is entirely due to God’s work in me.  When I endure the pain of waiting, or being annoyed, or being ignored, for the benefit of someone else, because I love them – when I do that, I show patience.  And I like to see that because it means I have grown just a tiny bit; at least I’m moving in the right direction even if it’s three steps forward and two steps back. 

Case in point, my butt.  You may well ask yourself why I'd talk about my own butt, but it's better than talking through it, and if you can't laugh at your own butt, I implore you, what can you laugh at? People, growing old ain’t for the faint of heart.  When you turn 40, everything starts falling off or breaking or growing hair or losing hair or changing color.  And my growing-older issue is a particularly sensitive one, related to the unmatched elation of carrying around two 8lb. bowling balls in my nether regions for 40 weeks each, and pushing one of them through a hole the size of a ball point pen.  This causes pressure, folks, and not the kind that makes diamonds.  I’m talking hemorrhoids.  Yes, the ugly truth, there it is, I had one.  (And now he’s 8 years old, ba dump bump.  I’m here all night.)  Even though I had it taken care of, I’m still dealing with a tear in my skin down there, and it hurts. In light of that, I’ve seen three different doctors, and tried all their medications, suggestions, therapies, pills, for a YEAR.  I have exhausted their ideas and I have been patient – when I really want to yell and say, "Would you just FIX it for Petes's sake?  I'd really like to poop just once this year without feeling like I'm being impaled, thanks ever so much."  Because I know they really are trying to help me, and it really does take time for something like this to heal, I don't say that. It's not their fault childbirth has been the gift that keeps on giving.  

Enter the colonoscopy.  I will soon be violated like I have never been.  Not that I have any dignity left, mind you, that went LONG ago, shortly after conception of bowling ball #1.  Once you’re pregnant, your body is not your own.  People want to poke it, touch it, rub it, look in it, feel it, comment on it, and take pictures of it.  You’re in the delivery room and your doctor comes in with 6 residents and he’s like, “Mind if they take a look with me?”  Sure, buddy.  Bring ‘em on.  I’ve had everybody but the janitor looking in there so far today.  Maybe your Mom’s in town, we could get her.  The food truck guy down on the corner hasn’t seen my cervix yet, could we get him to come up?  So, no.  I have no dignity and the thought of having someone shove a Nikon up my back door is not really too upsetting.  At this point.

So yes, I’m old now.  Heather and I used to make fun of our parents for discussing things like colonoscopies and foot fungus as topics of idle conversation, and now I'm one of them.  I’d like to just have this little issue go away and solve it myself without having other people look at my butt, but it’s not like I can go grab some liquid bandage or something and shove it up there.  I’d glue my own butt shut.  And since I already talk a lot of crap as it is, eliminating (get it?) alternate exits would only make that problem worse. 

I’m interested though, if you want to share.  What are some things God has done in you that you couldn't have done on your own?