Super Trooper Redefined

Super:  anything of excellent or superior quality. 

Trooper:  a member of a cavalry unit or a police officer.  

Super Trooper: a ridiculously whacked out cop who thrives on tormenting others, who finds satisfaction in moral degradation, and who has ambitions equivalent to those of a street rat.  

The above definitions aside, I’d like to claim that I discovered a new and much more noteworthy definition of what a Super Trooper is last week. 

Super Trooper: A nearly one-year-old baby who has to suffer for 18 hours with a dislocated elbow (thanks to her unknowingly clumsy momma) who still finds strength to smile and laugh amidst sharp shoots of pain. 

Super Trooper: a little girl who manages to sleep an entire night uninterrupted while her arm is four times its original size due to a rigid splint and tenser bandage. 

Super Trooper: a baby girl who endures the agony of having her elbow snapped back into place and who gurgles with glee the moment she realizes that she can move her arm again. 

A Super Trooper worthy of mention is a 2-year-old who can sincerely claim to be happy while talking to her aunty on the phone amidst bouts of vomiting. 

A Super Trooper, if I’ve ever seen one, is a brave little child who dares to sleep in her own bed, in a room by herself, while repeatedly waking from fits of sickness.

I’m pretty sure I saw a Super Trooper every time I scrambled to rub my daughters back as she heaved with hardly a complaint. I saw a real Super Trooper each time my girl willingly changed her clothes and crawled back into a bed lined with scratchy towels covering up remnants of puke that missed the bucket.  And when that little girl waved at me and said “Goodnight mom, I love you” every time I left her that long, sick night, I’m pretty sure I was blowing kisses to a Super Trooper.

Last week, I saw examples of the kind of Super Trooper I want to be. 

I want to be a Super Trooper that can bear pain and challenges with bravery and grace.  I would be honoured to be a Super Trooper who is humble and open enough to admit fear and doubt but who can also find strength to offer a hug, smile, and words of compassion in hard times.  I’d love to demonstrate faith and courage while facing the unknown; and to exhibit forgiveness and love when I am confronted by the ugly truth of my own mistakes as well as the blunders of others.

The kind of Super Trooper I’d like to be seems lofty and impossible to achieve.  But a Super Trooper of the redefined kind wouldn’t turn around and sit in defeat.  A Super Trooper earning my respect would continuously strive to attain the standards of her definition despite her recurring setbacks. 

Last week, I saw two Super Troopers.  They were little, but they were brave!  They were young, but they showed age-defying determination!  They were insignificant in the grand scheme of things, but in my world, they were gigantic examples of the type of Super Trooper that I wish I could be!

I know I can’t be a Super Trooper on my own.  I would fail before I even started.  But, Dear God, take me by the hand and help me to be the kind of Super Trooper that you can be proud of.  Jesus, mould me to be even a fraction of the Super Trooper that you designed me to be in the first place.  Father, continue to open my eyes to the amazing examples of Super Trooper-ness around me so that I have something to model and strive towards each day. 

And God......thanks for the two amazing little Super Troopers I get to kiss and hug every day.  I stand amazed.

When the Song Stops

It is happening.  My 2 year old is beginning to realize that the world can be a sad and scary place beyond her crocodile tears when she doesn’t get a candy right before supper. 

Ironically, it has been kids’ movies that have made her especially aware of deep loss.  Lion King was her first taste of it.  She watched Simba weep as he tried desperately to wake his trampled daddy, and then she watched him curl up in a defeated ball cuddled as close to his daddy as he could get for one last time.  Myla’s eyes were glued to the TV and wide as saucers.  All the while she was repeating in her littlest big-girl voice,

 “He wants his daddy.  Mommy, what happened to his daddy?  He wants his dad”.   

What do you say to that?

“Honey, he got stepped on.  Now he’s dead.  Simba doesn’t have a daddy anymore.” 

Really?! 

The next event that blatantly exposed Myla to loss was Finding Nemo.  Nemo’s mom and dad are blissfully flirting with each other and admiring their multitude of soon-to-hatch babies when his mom and siblings are suddenly gobbled up by a horribly ugly and terrifying monster-fish.  For the next 15 minutes in the movie, Myla was asking where Nemo’s mommy was.   The cherry on top of the cake came when Nemo got stolen and separated from his daddy too. 

As her mom I want to protect Myla and make her life happy.  This new awareness of sadness and loss has been a bit heartbreaking for me to watch.  My instinct is to shield her.  Hide away with her.  And always play happy music and dance with her.  But then the song stops and I realize that I can’t do that.  I must let her feel the pain.

Beyond the movies that made Myla put on her seriously sad puppy-dog face and look to Brad and I for answers about where the lost dad and moms went, Myla has started crying giant silent tears while watching a World Vision commercial and while I sang Robert Munsch’s “Love you Forever” song to her. 

As I’m writing this, my own heart is feeling raw and achy, and my eyes are stinging for the tears I’ve shed in the last couple of days.  These tears aren’t for a hypothetical situation displayed in a Disney movie.  These tears are for the very real pain and fear that my sister-in-law’s closely knit family is feeling as result of a sudden and unexpected severe stroke that their dear wife and mom suffered.  These tears are for one of the most dreaded events that could happen in this broken life.

While I shed tears and shared hugs with my sister and brother-in-law this past weekend  I also saw an incredible testimony of love as an entire community wrapped themselves with care, prayers, and help for this family in need.  I also saw that our young kids’ joy and happiness remained largely intact as we openly struggled with questions and unknowns. 

In those rawest instances of brokenness and pain, I saw glimpse’s of the grace, love, and comfort that God promises he will provide in moments were we don’t have the strength to find that assurance on our own.  Although the pain and fear wasn’t gone, there remained a faith that both God and the love of surrounding this family would help each member of the family face another minute, another hour, another day.

So, I sit in deep reflection about the realness of this broken world.  I think about how Myla will inevitably see much more real pain than the sadness colourfully shown in The Lion King, Finding Nemo, or Bambi.  And she won’t have to confront this just once, but repeatedly in this life.  There is nothing I can do to stop the hurt.

What I can do is meet her in that dark place, wrap my arms around my girl, let her tears soak my shirt, and cry right along with her.  What I can do is show her that I care and that there’s Somebody even bigger who cares even more.  I can describe and point out places where love, comfort, and grace still exist even in the worst of times.  What I can do is remind her of the promise that although times may be impossibly hard here, we will one day belong to a place that is unbelievably perfect and beautiful. 

I don’t look forward to those hard times.  I wish they wouldn’t happen.  But when they do, I want to mirror the peace, hope, and comfort I saw demonstrated by a family and community this past weekend and I wish to exude just a glimpse of the powerful mercy that only our God can provide.

* I ask that you join me with fervent prayers concerning my sister-in-law’s family.  May God provide the miracle of peace that passes understanding and mercy to carry everyone through this extremely difficult time.

Beautiful Love

Weddings are kind of like funerals.  I know, that sounds horrifyingly morbid.  Please don’t be offended. I am a huge fan of weddings.  I dread funerals.  Weddings are occasions of joy, and that is something to be celebrated, for sure.  Funerals are celebrations of the person that lived, and that should not be trivialized.  Both events hold immense value.  In the meantime, hear me out.  Weddings ARE kind of like funerals.

Right off the bat, there are a number of similar effects that both weddings and funerals have on me.  Both make me cry.  Both make me want to hold my loved ones a little tighter.  Both lead me closer to the very rare occasion of wearing a dress.  

Look even closer.  At both weddings and funerals, the subjects of the event are the in the spot light for the day.  Each individual is referred to in the most flattering way possible.  Man, or woman, they are described as nearly perfect manifestations of humanity.  At the end of the day, the guests attending the event are often left with a lasting impression of the incredible person/people the main attractions are.

I’m not saying that these things are bad.  I appreciate and justify that each person deserves to be celebrated for their positive attributes without having their dirty laundry exposed for all to feed upon.  However, I do sometimes regret the negative effects that weddings can have on people, particularly us feminine counterparts.

Weddings can sometimes leave us girls with our head in the sand.  That sand may seem like warm, white sand of the Caribbean, but it’s still sand.  Weddings sometimes get us caught up in thinking that perfection in relationships really does exist.  They sometimes make us leave feeling defeated because our marriage doesn’t seem nearly as delightful as the couple of the hour.  Maybe even worse, weddings can brainwash us into believing that we can’t say “yes to the dress [or man]” until we’ve found ourselves in a relationship that can be deemed just as dreamy. 

Let’s not lose sight of the real truth.  We are wonderful.  But sometimes, we stink.  We can be nice.  But sometimes we’re rotten to each other.  Nobody is exempt from occasional nastiness.  Not me.  Not you.  Not any person on this planet.  Before you allow yourself to leave the next wedding over-estimating the perfection of their relationship and doubting the quality of yours, don’t lose sight of reality.  No love is perfect.  But imperfection can be beautiful too. 

Beautiful love is being well aware of the impending annoyances even an amazing spouse will bring and the incredible CHOICE it is to accept your spouse despite his many imperfections.  Beautiful love is being aware of the chunk of wood in your own eye before gauging your partner’s eye out by trying to remove his plank.  Beautiful love is fully accepting that even though relationships hurt at times, it IS possible to find contentment in imperfect love.

So girls, I encourage us to go to the next wedding with our eyes wide open.  Let's celebrate the beauty of relationship while being aware that the impression of perfection must be laid to rest.  May we find hope in the fact that imperfection can be beautiful too.  Let's stop searching for perfection and instead be determined to make beauty out of the imperfect. 

Cheers to that.

About Me

I am your ordinary run-of-the-mill mom of four usually delightful kids.   I’m married to a pretty wonderful guy who graciously allows my often relentless chatter take up hours of his beloved free time.  Plus, he rarely gets me in trouble for my inevitable babbling to other people even though he knows it may contain information that he would regard as private.  I dislike cleaning, and I like the couch.  I love junk food and consider watching x-weighted on TV my form of healthy living.  I talk a lot and think even more.  Most of all, I am drawn to be connected to others, even if it is across the span of internet wires. 

I wonder if there’s room for yet another rambling blog on an already blog-infested cyber world.  Yet, when I’m left wide awake on multitudes of nights with ideas that are sticking in my head like flees to a dog, I raise my hands in submission and write.

To stick to my compulsion to over inform, here’s some more background details about me.  I grew up with three older siblings and an identical twin.  My parents had a wonderful marriage that led me to feel like my childhood was almost heaven like.  As much as I disliked people regarding my twin and me as “the twins” or thinking that we were one and the same person, it was easy to cling to security of having an almost always like-minded sidekick.  At least we didn’t have to spend a whole bunch of time trying to figure out who was who when we were referred to as “ugly and her sister beautiful” either.  My dearly beloved dad passed away from cancer when I was almost 19 and to this day, I am well aware of many ways that that heartbreaking experience shaped me.  In many ways, it made me hyper aware of what is truly important in this life.  I’d like to think that allows me to have fewer breakdowns about the trivial disappointments in life.  It has also made me painfully aware that, yes, bad things do and will happen.  Despite inevitable struggles and tragedies, I remain bound and determined to cling to the rich joys in this life and I settle on the hope that one day, every tear will be wiped away and the lion will fall asleep by the lamb.

I invite you to indulge in this transparent record of my musings.  May you find mild entertainment in some of my writings and a slight bit of inspiration from others.  Thanks for joining me.

Corinna