Miracles

I’ve read through a lot.  I’m 43 years old, and I read all the time.  If there are words, they will be read. 

One of the trends I’ve noticed…is that miracles are often not recognized until long after the fact.  Or are so huge they can’t be overlooked. 

And, since we have been able to mostly figure a lot of things out, much rarer than they used to be.  And are often on the lines of Divine Inspiration being heard and noticed, either in research (medical, scientific, or otherwise), or in our personal lives. 

It was a miracle in ’80 for Regan to take the White House.  Less of one in ’84, considering how well he did in his first run through at jacking back the illusions the political classes were pushing, and showing the normal people who live in reality that yes, there was a man behind the curtain pretending to be the Great and Powerful Oz…and that he was kinda disappointing, actually. 

Too bad his VP (elected in ’88) yoinked that curtain back shut because he was part of that particular class…which set the circumstances for the resurgence of Marxism…socialism…whatever you want to call the anti-individualist, collectivist philosophy that drives the political aristocratic classes. 

The problem they had is that they couldn’t force the curtains all the way back shut.  There were gaps.  And reality kept showing through those gaps. 

And the realists got pissed off at the fools whose damaged fingers kept reaching for the fire, and elected Trump (another miracle, honestly), which has set us up for a massive miracle, of the majority realizing what I learned as a child: the government does not care about the individual, and will not protect them.  This realization could, with His Providence, bring back sanity in the way things are done in politics.    

Note, I am saying that this has been a miracle, and that the miraculous will have to continue to happen, or things will…slump back into the swamp.  Or worse. 

Those miracles were on a national stage. 

Other miracles, miracles of research…I know, first hand, people who should have been dead years ago.  The only reason they’re not is because of pharmaceutical giants still searching for more treatments for things that are still a death sentence.  One of my closest friends developed inflammatory breast cancer while she was breastfeeding her year-old son.  It went to stage IV before it was identified, because it’s so sneaky of a disease. 

She should have been dead five years ago, but she isn’t.  Yes, she’s still got active cancer, and is fighting a rear-guard action to prolong her time—her son’s ten.  She’s fighting for long enough to raise him.  Because his father’s…not the advocate for him that he should be. 

Her continued (and continuing) survival is a miracle.  Yes, she’s in constant pain.  No, she hasn’t been outright healed.  Yes, she’s been praying (as have I, and everyone around her). 

But that’s not how it works. 

Thing is, every time one treatment starts failing to work, there’s another one that does work.  That’s a fucking miracle, right there. 

I’ve heard the whole argument: “That’s not a miracle, that’s science.  A miracle would be having her healed.”  Remember what I said about Divine Inspiration?  How else do you describe the massive leaps forward in the medical research profession realizing that every type of cancer is different, and requires different treatments?  How else do you describe the medical research profession finding new and different ways to approach something that defies anything other than the broadest of categorization? 

Diabetes used to kill people.  Routinely.  Still can, if the individual with diabetes doesn’t understand what’s going on, and how to manage it.  Or if they decide to just…stop treatment.  HIV/AIDS used to absolutely kill people.  It still can and does, if the person who has it doesn’t pay attention, and/or stops treatment.

The advances that turned those certain death sentences into manageable, if serious, health conditions?  Miracles.  Driven entirely by Divine Inspiration, and the gift of understanding and intuition. 

I’ve heard other arguments: “If they had the faith, they’d be healed.”  Or, “If they just prayed harder/was a better person…”  

That isn’t the way God works. 

He does things in a much smaller, quieter way than He used to.  Partially because those gifts He set us up with?  The ability to learn, to reason, to understand, to intuit and generalize?  Those require less flashy intervention on His part.  Which means He is actually requiring greater faith to actually keep going when something hurts, and the doctors are having a hard time figuring it out.  Or when your treatment for a disease that will kill you makes you feel awful for a while (like an antibiotic does for the first week of a two week course for a nasty infection). 

Or when the people in charge of the nation are cheerfully trying to play with matches in a grain silo. 

He has made the way straight before us.  It’s not easy, and it’s not level.  But it’ll get us through to safety, if we stay on it.

And humanity in general, like sheep, have this nasty tendency to get distracted off the safe but hard path He has laid out for us, and bound off on the easy path (that leads straight to a sudden drop we can’t see, but that He can). 

He laid the path out for us.  He’s set our feet on it, and pointed us in the right direction (and He will keep doing that when we stray…if we ask for guidance).  He’ll bap us back into line (assuming we’re paying attention).  But it’s still up to us to walk the path.  It’s up to us to grit our teeth and do the hard stuff to get to safety. 

(I’m praying that the nation discovers the gumption and wisdom to stay the right course.)

My mood today

 

I have...reasons. But I have not been in a good mood since Monday.

Kid stuff

School is now in session.  The first week at the kids' school is always a short one: they start on a Wednesday or a Thursday.  The kids both think it's for easing them back in, but as a (former) teacher, I know better.  

I'm trying a different organization thing for the imp this year: the individual binders by themselves didn't work last year.  He knew it by the end of the first day: "I can't keep up with this.  Not all the binders and all the books."  The everything-in-one-giant-binder method sort of worked last year, but he still ended up losing things because he'd shove loose papers into the locker, rather than into the expanded files in the front of the binder.  And then, he'd lose the week's board work, instead of getting the points for it.  

This year, he's got a tote bag for each class.  Most of them are different colors: he's got five different colors to work with, and six classes (yeah, that means there's a risk of grabbing the wrong tote for two classes--English and Science, I believe), but all of the totes have writing utensils and a clipboard, along with a binder with dividers for the class.  I suggested carrying a backup writing utensil, and he's asked for cargo pants for that.  Because "I don't have any way to keep spares on me--no, I won't hang a pen on my cross necklace, and I don't care if you did and it works!"  

I do need to find him one more tote of a different color from the ones he's got (red, blue, turquoise, ecru, black) for either the science or the English class...

He was a bit worn out after school yesterday.  There wasn't a meltdown, or even a crappy attitude, but he was noticeably tired.  My first hint was that he went to the wrong pickup point yesterday afternoon: school policy says that the oldest sibling goes to the youngest's pickup point, and last year, his younger sister was in elementary.  His fourth grade teacher brought him back through the building to the right pickup point.  He was dragging and tired, and worked really hard not to be cranky at the rest of us.  I sent him off to play with Legos and unkink his brain, and then let him play computer games for a little while after he did some chores for me.  

Upside is that I think he's got the right doses and blends of medication to help him function normally.  He was less tired yesterday than he was before we got that dialed in, because he wasn't spending as much energy fighting himself to behave as he has to without the meds.

The pixie, when she got in the car, just mournfully stated that she was having a hard time remembering where she needed to go from one class to another.  I had to tell her that she'd probably have her schedule--at least, the order of classes--memorized by the end of the second week, and would probably mostly have the hang of it by the end of this week.  

The pixie is starting to learn to girl: she's almost twelve, and I've got her started on learning to carry a purse.  No wallet, no money, just...the purse, with extra note-taking supplies, writing utensils, and her color pencils (which need to go from class to class, because some require them, and others don't.)  She said yesterday, when I asked, "No, the purse wasn't helpful.  It just got in the way, and I kept almost forgetting it."  

I hated to tell her that that's the way of it, but having a purse is one of the major advantages of being a girl: it's the best way to carry everything we really need to carry.  I will point out that her choice is a little off-beat: it's a little faux-leather backpack type purse.  It's big enough, but not well organized.  Her slightly-better-organized one isn't big enough for what she needs.  

She's eleven, now, and will be twelve in the first part of December.  She's the same height I am, and is really starting to shoot up.  She grew around two inches between the end of last school year and the start of this one, and is now pretty much my height.  I'm foreseeing at least the upper end of female average height for her, and am delighted.  

Both kids have a study hall at the end of the day, so neither should have much, if any, homework this semester, other than studying for tests.  Both kids have indicated a need for "not-brain-work" after school, so I'm going to have them grab a snack, then go do something outside or play with their Legos or something for a few minutes, then help me with a chore for the first half hour to an hour, even if they come home with homework.  

I'm crossing my fingers, but I think this year may work better for both of them than last year, not just for the pixie.  

Gah. What a relief.

Today is the first day of school.  The past two weeks have been an absolute cluster-fuck--I've been running around like a suddenly-headless barnyard fowl, trying to get everything together for the kids to start school, and randomly remembering things I'd forgotten to get, either for school, or for the household in the mad scramble of getting ready for school.   

That's all done, now.  School started this morning.  

I'll have (most of) a day to get stuff done, then there'll be a different mad scramble from the time I pick them up to the time they go to bed.  

First day of school, and I managed to get most of my daily checklist dealt with.  If the library hadn't resembled a tornado's aftermath, with bits and pieces left over from putting school supplies in order...I might have knocked it all out for today without having run out of my energy budget for housework.  

(What was left was reserved for fixing supper.)

I managed to get the first run through of the editing job I picked up done--the family for whom I'm doing the work approved it all, and I'm going to go through again and fix the changes in.  Shouldn't take as long as the initial run-through did, and won't be nearly as infuriating to do.  

I'd edited the old fellow's autobiography, and thought "sure, why not?" when his granddaughter contacted me to see if I wanted to deal with her grandpas second manuscript.  Why not was that he assumed his expertise in a technical area of a scientific field translated to expertise in theology, linguistics and the cultural psychology and philosophy revealed thereby, and translations.  

It...really didn't carry over.  

Anyway, that's done.  I don't have to read it again to fix the changes in.  

So, I should be able to get that done (or mostly done) tomorrow, and then get on...some read-throughs for a couple of friends.  

Then I'll be back to writing. 

Because the majority of my attention won't be devoured by trying to pay attention to what the kids are doing and how they're interacting while ignoring the TV that they're watching.  Believe it or not, that right there eats a lot of energy.  Honestly, it eats a lot more than I realized until recently. 

Success for Widgets...and Not-Widgets.

I’ve been thinking, recently.  I know, I know: you’re either thinking “when aren’t you?” or “oh, shit, what now?”  But no, I’ve been thinking about the tantrums I’ve been seeing happen as the widgets don’t react as widgets, but as individuals with different ideas, hopes, dreams, and philosophical outlooks. 

I think the “social activists” have forgotten that every human is an individual.  Assuming they ever really learned that, in the first place (I have my doubts—a lot of those people are…well, to put it bluntly, stupid).

It explains so much. 

They assume that, since the outcomes for women haven’t changed appreciably—as in, the proportions of women in top positions in a lot of different walks of life haven’t changed despite an equal opportunity, that there has to still be sexism somewhere, keeping women down. 

Or, they look at how the proportion of racial minorities hasn’t appreciably changed, any more than the proportion of women has…and assume racism must be at fault. 

What they’re entirely missing is that individuals are exactly that: individual.  There have always been the driven few, pushing through everything in their way to whatever they’ve envisioned as success.  Individuals.  Not groups. 

Honestly, the way I look at it, every individual who ends up where they’re content has reached what is success for that individual, man or woman. 

And that…varies.  Wildly.  And sometimes, can change without notice, even to the individual, in question.

For a long time, I was…entirely content with my classroom.  I had an utter blast, sharing office space with several other part-timers.  I didn’t want to be a full-timer, didn’t necessarily want my own space (even if I didn’t focus well in shared space), and absolutely didn’t want to be required to deal with department meetings (I attended one that was requested, but not required, and did not feel like putting up with it ever again), much less on-campus politics. 

Then I…started feeling…unwelcome.  So I started holding office hours in the main part of the campus library and/or coffee shop, with the excuse that more students were willing to come ask for help there.  Contentment restored.  Then I got pregnant, and ended up leaving campus entirely for five years, teaching online, and meeting students during my other half’s working hours, when they needed an in-person meeting.  I missed the classroom, but did not miss the increasingly hostile-feeling work environment outside of the classroom. 

Eventually, after I went back to campus…I realized I was starting to burn out.  I was losing contentment with everything.  I quit being able to write. 

That…was a very bad time.  Then I realized something: my definition of success had changed again.  I was failing in several key areas. 

I am not a widget—if I were, I could have continued on where I was indefinitely.  But since I’m not a widget, I wasn’t happy.  Not where I was, not with what I was doing.  It had very little to do with the job, a lot to do with the changing environment, changing rules, and feeling like I wasn’t meeting obligations elsewhere. 

And those other obligations?  Cannot be met by just inserting another widget from somewhere else. 

Humans are not widgets.  What makes one wildly happy will make the next wildly unhappy.  In general—note I said in general, and am not speaking for specific individuals—men are happier in traditionally masculine work, and women are happier in traditionally feminine work.  If you look at actual jobs taken by either sex*…well, it still mostly holds.  You’ll find more women in nurturing-type** work, and men in everything else. 

I never, ever thought I’d be happier as a housewife, but really?  I am.  There’s a lot of contentment and satisfaction with taking care of my family. 

And that…is something that the hard-line leftists can’t understand, much less accept, because it goes against their narratives—all of them.  And they’re really just not bright enough to understand anything outside their narratives.

 

*Note, I said sex, not gender: the biology, both brain chemistry and body composition, does a lot to drive career paths and preferences. 

**Nurturing type jobs: teaching, human resources, nursing, feeding people, secretarial-type work (which can include all of the above)…the list goes on.