Life is NOT a Fairytale 03/25/2024

 Life is NOT a Fairytale

Happy Easter to all near & far.  If you have time please settle in with your favourite drink & Easter treat while you read.  There are many special foods that come out this time of the year and they can bring back warm memories. 

If you are a female, do you remember wondering if you’d find your Prince Charming?  Do you remember wondering what love really was?  Maybe you still wonder. 

In my childhood, it was common for Fairytales to be read to us.  What great joy emerged by first just looking at the pictures and dreaming.   A grand day it became when we mastered reading ourselves… oh the places fairytales & books would take us.  The love of “The Wizard of Oz” was four generations deep in my family.  What was your one of favourite books?  If I am vulnerable and honest, mastering learning to read was a struggle for me. 

How many of you remember the “Dick & Jane” reading series by the Scott Foresman and Company?   “Run Spot, Run.  See Spot Run.”  When I started school in the early 60’s, they put us in groups by what they felt were our reading abilities. This was decided by setting something in front of you that you’d never read before & you were asked to read it aloud.  From my childhood perspective, I found out that day that I wasn’t good at reading aloud.   All I knew was that I was in “Group 2”.  That left its own “scars of feeling less than”.  That’s when comparing one’s self to someone else became very real for me.  It is not a healthy place to go emotionally.  “Feeling less than” is a LIE from Satan, as we are ALL equal at the foot of the cross.  I heard it once said that, “No one is good at everything but everyone is good at something.“  God also gives us each our own gifting that we can use to bless and help others.   Often this gifting is developed in the deepest, most profound valleys, for this is exactly where we learn the skills we need to bless someone else with Christ-like love.  It is the place where we learn the ‘Golden Rule’,  “…do unto others, as you would have them do unto you...”  Matthew 7:12   What do we really learn when things are easy???  Sometimes when things come easy for us, we even lack compassion for others who struggle in this area.  We have to open our hearts to receive the concept that we are all different & have different abilities & perspectives.  We need to be open to stepping out in “blind faith”, even when we don’t understand.  My struggles to learn followed me throughout my school years in various areas, but I was blessed that my parents supported me, encouraged me and in my high school years, could afford to get me tutored.  Oh my poor high school math teacher Mr. Ostrander ( Bob Ostrander) !  Let’s just say that I learned differently and my math approach was “Ma & Pa Kettle style”.   Do you remember proofs and theorems from geometry?   What took ten steps to solve… well I would have 20+ steps, but I would get the right answer.  Mr. Ostrander & Susan Parry , thank you for your help!  So grateful for you both! 

Because of my struggles and growing up in a town where special needs were embraced as a normal part of community life, my dream was to become a special education teacher & help other children not go through the struggles that I had.  Also I had watched students\friends quit school who were smart but just learned differently.   There was a lot learned about unconditional love from my Nana Snow & Great Aunt Bea and how they raised my Great Aunt Ruthie, who had Down’s Syndrome with their unconditional love.  Also from my across the street neighbors the Reynolds in Lubec, who raised precious Bobby Reynolds whom I loved.  Growing up with Beav ( Howard Reynolds ) as my best friend & neighbor was a HUGE blessing.  Maybe not to our parents sometimes though.    Remember all the times we played in the swamp Neighbor?  Or how about when we snuck hot homemade rolls of the cooling rack & picked fresh things from the garden.  Peter Rabbit had nothing on us!  Many Godly seeds were planted here in my life though.  From my childhood experiences, my perspective was EVERYONE should be loved and deserved a chance to learn.   

As unlikely as it would seem, I went to the University of Maine in Farmington & was blessed to obtain my Special Education Degree.  Any course dealing with education, I received an A in.  Not so much in the required sciences.  You learned the reward & challenges of getting in to sign up early for your college courses.   As I was new to this game, I remember signing up for a “botany class” because it was a science  & it had an opening left… all while thinking it would be the study of “pretty little flowers”.  That fantasy was crushed on that first day we went on a fieldtrip and my professor told us to pick any flower.  After I had chosen mine he said, “Now trace it back to its origins etc.”  It was the first D+ that I had ever received in my life!  Most people in the class were majoring in the sciences & were in their third year of University.  So you see that D+ was truly the professor giving me grace because of my sincere efforts, so I wouldn’t have to repeat a required science course.  I can also remember one teacher telling me that my answer was so full of bull that I could chop it & sell it in the market.  He did give me an A- for creativity though.  It seems ADD is good when applied to some things.  After all we all have our strengths & weaknesses. 

After I had graduated from University, my mother confessed to me that she didn’t think I would be able to accomplish getting my degree in Special Education, but she wanted to support me by giving me the opportunity to go to University.  What an honest confession of love by my Mom.  She had seen & experienced with me my years of struggling to learn.  You see I had an older brother who was extremely gifted and was in college books in High School and he became a nuclear engineer!  Right Henry Stevens Jr. !?!  It was not a good match when my Mom tried to pair him to help me with my math.  Imagine being at his level & trying to come down to my “Ma & Pa Kettle” level of conceptual math thinking!!!   You might guess that I NEVER won when playing Monolpoly against him. 

Again, the comparison game can be dangerous.  Many people had compared me to him, but others invested in the gifts they saw in me, even though they were different.  I graduated with honors from the University of Maine in Farmington.  Honestly, I believe my struggles to learn throughout my earlier educational years played a major role in that achievement.  Lots of people who had not struggled in school went away to University & quit.  Did I feel like quitting at times that first semester of University, yes… BUT I had been used to working hard to learn, so that was not an adjustment for me.  Also Special Education focuses on learning how to teach & test students with learning challenges.  As that had been “my story”, I naturally knew a lot of concepts of how to break tasks down in a way to present them to students who struggled.  The thought of thinking outside the box to learn was natural for me… and I was thirsty to learn whatever I could to make a difference.  Also, I was sincerely interested in understanding why I had learned differently.  Only God could take what were my learning struggles in my youth and have turned it into an ability that enabled me to help others.  Believe it or not, I became a reading specialist at one point in time.  Honestly, I learned an authentic compassion in the valleys that occured within my K-12 years of learning struggles.  God can truly use everything for good.   He also teaches us our limitations… thus I never chose to become a math teacher!  Yet I became Jamie’s bookkeeper when he had his own business.    That’s a story for another day. 

You have probably heard the expression, “If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.”   If we are honest sometimes FB creates a “fairytale concept” that doesn’t exist, by people writing & only posting the images that are positive, instead of presenting life as it truly is.  My heart cautions you NOT to step into the comparison game.  No one lives a perfect life.  No one gets everything they want.  The only one who led a perfect life was Jesus Christ!  As Oscar Wild said, “Everyone may not be good, but there’s always something good in everyone.  Never judge anyone shortly because every saint has a past and every sinner has a future.” 

As an adult I’ve learned that when things surface that seem impossible…. they can be made possible by God.  And as I LOVE to say EVERYONE has a story, if we will just take the time to listen with a sincere ear of compassion.  The key is that when God asks you to reach out to someone, you need to be honest & vulnerable with others to open a door to hold “real space” for them in your life.  Oh the places God will take you are places that you never imagined you’d go.  Remember Mexico!   If you are sincerely open to what Christ would have you to learn, your times in the valley with sorrow & suffering will have a divine purpose.  Again, it will be “beauty from ashes” that only God could orchestrate.  One thing that changed my perspective was to keep a gratitude journal when in one of the hardest valleys of my life which kept my brain focused on what was true, pure & right from God’s perspective, despite living in devastating heartbreak within this fallen world. 

So where is this ADD writing leading.  Well let me repeat a question.  Do you remember wondering what love really is?  Sadly that can be a comparison game too.  That is because it is something that develops from each person’s perspective, because of where they have walked within their life’s journey.  The only love that I know that is CONSISTENT & NEVER changing is God’s love.  He loves us UNCONDITIONALLY.  He goes BEFORE US to make a way.  He NEVER leaves us. 

Don’t be afraid to pray & give your request to God.  In James 4:2 it says, “...ye have not, because ye ask not”.   

“Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.”
Philippians 4:6 (To me, the key word here is with sincere “thanksgiving”.)

Yet remember, God’s blessings do NOT look like the earthly “fairytale” blessings we might imagine, but they are God’s perfect gifts for us.  He is the only one that sees the beginning from the end.  We have one perspective but God encompasses all perspectives.  This is His Divine perspective.  His perspective is NOT a “fairytale”!  He does NOT promise us that it will be easy. 

“I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace.  In the world you will have tribulation.  But take heart, I have overcome the world.”  John 16:33

The care I receive from Extra Mural is such a rich blessing for both Jamie & I.  It removes levels of stress because the services are in home as needed.  Recently I had a visit from the respiratory therapist & she put a plan of action in place for me.  In the future I will be having a “breathing test” at CCH &  will also be seeing my lung specialist.  Both are people that I think the world of and have seen before.  My good news is that I have graduated from seeing my nurse once a week to seeing her in person every other week.  Though she will call me on the phone to check in on me the weeks she isn’t seeing me in person.   It has been reinforced several times and is reassuring to know that if things arise assistance is always only a phone call away.   Both Jamie  I are truly grateful for the care I receive. 

One day Jamie was out for quite a while and came back & was busy.  I was kind of wondering what he was doing but when I made a trip to the bathroom, I saw that he had installed support railings on our toilet seat for me & bought a special TP holder to go on the other side that I could reach without hurting my right arm, that has bothered me because of the cancer in my right shoulder.  He had listened, heard & understood my real needs.  Then he came up with a plan of action himself to meet my needs.  Well that is what love is.  It is done through listening and action & not just words.  Jamie also became a professional at making my coffee for the “Bottom’s Up Cafe”.  Love is waking up & having my “Bottom’s Up Cafe” coffee warming on the stove & then him setting everything up for me, that I can’t do, that makes this possible.  After his part is complete, him having that grin on his face & chuckling while saying, “Have Fun!”   Then he goes to have his morning coffee, while I have mine.    There can be joy, love & peace in the valley.  We need to listen to our hearts & God’s nudges.  It is the simple things that can really make a difference too…  like reaching over & taking his hand because I can, leaving his favorite coffee mug out etc.  Sometimes no words are needed, just a glance & a smile. 

In my head I hear Miss Mullholland saying, “What is the main idea of your story Paulette?”  Trust God’s immutable word & follow His will, even when you’re in the deepest valley where things just don’t make sense.  Let God ease your load & stop trying to figure everything out and instead just listen to His Divine Voice.  He is the Prince of Peace and the only Prince we need!!  Jesus Christ is what love is and His is the greatest love story of all time.   Who can you show Christ-like love to today?  Happy Easter and remember when “Good Friday” is here that “Resurrection Sunday” is coming!