Sacred Cows

    I probably shouldn’t say this. It’s getting so there are so many sacred cows in the world now that they’re all stampeding. I might even say I’m taking my life into my own hands by using them to write my thoughts down. After all, political correctness has taken us so far that we can’t even laugh anymore. It’s insensitive to make fun of ourselves.

I don’t care. I’m just gonna write like no one’s reading.

Every single summer it’s hot. If you look up the word summer in a thesaurus, you’ll find these synonyms: brutal, sweltering, sweaty, exhausting, hellacious. Wait. No. Sorry. Those are the synonyms for Phoenix.

I’ve lived in the Phoenix metro area for forty-five of my sixty-five years. I lived on the gulf coast of Florida for another ten. The remaining ten spent in northern California’s Pacific coast are the only years of my life on planet earth when I owned a coat. I am experienced with hot climates.

What the heck is someone like me doing here? I don’t have the complexion for this.

And yet, here I am, a freckle faced pasty-skinned girl whose pastimes include growing skin cancers, thriving in the Arizona desert. Where summer runs from March until November and spring and fall are tiny bookends to our version of winter. Only the tough survive here and I don’t mean meteorologists.

It must be lonely to be a weatherman. Half the time you’re wrong and the rest of the time you’re not right. It’s miraculous the kind of job security this occupation provides. Still, summers like this one keep us glued to the weather channel, anxious to find out if the heat wave will ever end. Especially a couple of months from now when even locals will be begging for relief and the kids go trick or treating in shorts and tank tops. My favorite ever weather guy was a comedian. Every September the anchorwoman would make small talk by asking him, “When will the cooler temperatures arrive?” And every September he held up the same handmade sign for viewers at home to read: “The Second Week of October.”

He’s the only meteorologist I know who was always right.

It's Arizona. It’s freaking hot here. I don’t know why I live here. Maybe because I don’t know where else to go. When I was a kid growing up, the only air conditioning we had in our house was a window unit in the family room. The rest of the house depended on a swamp cooler for relief, including the bedrooms. We didn’t even have ceiling fans in those days. And when the summer rains, the monsoons, began each July, evaporative cooling was worthless. We hit 118 every single summer which forced us to hide out in that family room for days on end.

It was miserable but not unusual. Unless it happened on a date not previously known to reach 118. Then it was front page news. I ask you, what difference does it make if 118 happens on June 23 or July 2? The difference is called a “record.” As in, record breaking heat.

We love breaking records. Competition is in our boiling blood, even if we’re just competing with ourselves. This summer Arizona has outdone herself. Not only are meteorologists the stars of the show, but our dehydrated state is the belle of the ball. Today we celebrate our thirty-first day spent at or above 110 degrees.

Big deal.

Here’s the thing. Once we hit 105, there’s not a lot of difference between that continuous, monotonous heat and the super scorching 118 I grew up with, or the shocking 122 Phoenix became notorious for in 1990, which I’d like to point out occurred thirty-three years ago. It’s just that big numbers like that make headlines. But is it really hotter than summers in Florida where you still risk heat stroke in the humidity because it’s harder to sweat? Not in my experience.

Miserable is miserable, whether it’s a dry climate or a wet one. Pick your poison.

I know this isn’t a popular perspective. That’s why I’m putting it out there, because I might be the first one to do it. And doing something for the first time is record breaking. Like thirty-one days spent at or above 110 degrees.

Yes, I’m sick of it. The problem is, it’s only July 31. We still have another three months to go. While Hobby Lobby is already rolling out Halloween and Christmas decorations, and department stores are switching out swimsuits for turtleneck sweaters, us desert rats are still hiding inside in the air conditioning and dreaming of a white Christmas.

There’s nothing unusual about hot summers here. We don’t praise the Lord and put on a sweater when it cools down to 102. The numbers may vary, but the intensity is the same. It takes tenacity and endurance to survive this annual season, but we know when the sun moves to the south, the heat will go with it. We’ll get through one more summer just like we always do so long as the media and politicians leave us alone and find something else to panic over. Arizona natives know there’s hope just beyond the horizon. It happens every year.

The Second Week of October.

With thanks to Spike Stitch for permission to use the angry cow photo seen above. The original can be viewed by following this link: cow | Spike Stitch | Flickr

Naturally

I have struggled against this. Struggled with this. Reasoned against reason and listened to the professionals who are paid to know more than I do. But the only one who knows my heart, besides my God, is me. Learning to trust my heart has been harder than learning to trust my God.

Death is not natural.

It’s not. It’s a thief. It’s a liar. It’s an illusion.

I’ve been reassured without reassurance for more than two years that death is a natural part of life. That it is, as songwriters insist, the “circle of life.” This is exactly why music is so powerful. And also, at times, dangerous. Caught up in the emotion of its swell and passion, who really listens to the words? Yet the words are the most important thing.

Death is the enemy. How can we believe it’s a natural part of life when it is the exact opposite of life? The day the palliative care doctor called and said Rob wanted to “die a natural death,” was the day my heart began to beat out of rhythm. Something wasn’t right. Those couldn’t have been his words. It didn’t sound like Rob. It didn’t sound like God either. What is supposed to be so natural about a life ending?

That’s the point. Life doesn’t end. Death is an unnatural separation of a soul from its body. Our bodies were designed by God to last forever. That’s the reason it’s so hard to die, because we weren’t meant to die at all. And by that, I mean that our bodies were not meant to die. Something has interfered with God’s design.

We stood at the foot of Rob’s hospital bed watching as he labored to breathe, listening as the cheerful hospice representative voiced the pattern we were encouraged to follow. “You can go now, Rob,” she insisted. “It’s all right. You can go.” Easy for her to say. He wasn’t the sun to her moon. He was mine.

The idea was that he was now hesitant, despite what we’d witnessed when we asked him ourselves if he wanted to “die a natural death.” Again, words spoken in the pattern of the professionals. The implication was that we were unwilling to let him go. That we had to release the reins of our hold on him so he could escape his body in peace.

But here is what I struggle with. If letting him go was the greatest act of love I could ever give him, why am I still in so much pain? I have been robbed of Rob. He was robbed of the future we dreamed about together. Of watching his grandchildren grow and investing in their hearts and lives. They grieve his loss still. Surely this is not natural.

It’s not. And I’m weary of being told that it is the final step in life, as if we are, as that melancholy shepherd journaled, flowers that bloom in the field only to disappear when a wind sweeps over it. (Psalm 103) Only that’s not exactly what he wrote. It’s an analogy, because David was an artist who painted with words. But words matter. When you read that in context, he prefaced it by saying, “As for man, his days are like grass.” Here today, gone tomorrow, our days are like grass, disappearing quickly, difficult to remember. But mankind, humans, are created in God’s image, the image of the Eternal One. The One Who does not die. And neither do we.

I think the problem lies here—the topic of death has been taken over by humanistic logic. Evolutionary explanation. A reduction in our value. If we are simply another in the animal kingdom, then we can be summed up by the words, “Start” and “Finish.” We become walking tombstones, lacking the details as represented by a three-inch hyphen separating “Birth date” and “Death date.” That’s it. That’s the total summation of a human being. You were born. The wind blew. You died.

Pathetic.

I will not accept that death wins. Nor that it is “normal” and “natural.” I don’t have to. Jesus didn’t, or he wouldn’t have stood in his full humanity at the grave of his friend, Lazarus, and ugly cried like He did. Of course those who are released from the confines of physical bodies are jubilant afterward. I’m not an idiot. I fully realize that Rob wouldn’t want to come back here even if he had the chance, no matter how much he loves all of us. And he loves all of us tremendously. I get that. If he needed my permission or my blessing to be set free from his suffering and an interminable future in a broken body, I loved him enough to put his needs before my own and I did.

I am through being mollified or patronized with the idea that having to make a decision like that at all is “natural” or even “God’s will.” I've lost my person and half of my heart. This is no place for judgment.  I won’t be convinced to put a new spin on Rob’s death by painting it up with flowers and flourishes labeled as “natural.”

If death was not natural to Jesus, then it is not natural to us either. He’s the one who called it the Final Enemy and promised it will eventually be put under his feet. I admit, it would soothe my heart in this terrible meantime between losing Rob and being with him again if I could view his death as a common transition. If I could stop fighting against the unfairness of it all. Stop pushing back against the idea that it is normal and ordinary, even expected, to see God’s damaged, perfect creation perish.

But I can’t. Because He doesn’t.

We are not grass. We are eternal. Created in the image of God.

This Is That Story

Two inches.  

What good is two inches? If you’re hitchhiking, that two-inch thumb might get you a ride. If you’re hangry, a snack sized Hershey’s bar cheers you up. If you like pickles, a gherkin makes your sandwich sparkle. If you don’t like pickles, it ruins your lunch.

Two inches of something indulgent is no cause for alarm. Unless it’s a pickle. Two inches of something crawling up inside your denim capris is a different story.

This is that story.

I’ve lived most of my life in the desert southwest. I was born in Arizona, so even though I should have been born in Ireland, I’ve adapted to sweltering heat and harsh terrains. I owe my resilience to the invention of air conditioning and a good dermatologist. What I haven’t adjusted to very well are two-inch invasive species. It’s a fair descriptor. Native or not, some species shouldn’t invade my space.

When I was in the sixth grade, my family and I moved to a small house in the desert where, one afternoon, I stepped outside and crushed the life out of a scorpion with my bare foot. I didn’t mean to. I just didn’t see him. But I felt him. It scared me to death to step on the creepy thing, but the pain was no worse than a bee sting for me. I thought I’d learned my lesson—shoes matter. It was the only time I’ve ever been on the wrong side of a scorpion.

Until last week.

In my own living room.

Wearing shoes.

And denim capris.

I’ve probably killed about two dozen of the crunchy little demons in my lifetime, but only one of them with my bare foot. All the rest I’ve pulverized wearing sturdy shoes. It’s easy to recognize Arizona’s dangerous bark scorpion, even on my fake wood floors. Sure, they’re the same color, but they still look like a scorpion.

Maybe overconfidence was my downfall.

When I’m sitting at my desk like I was last weekend, lost in my writing and enjoying some iced tea, I’m not usually thinking about scorpions. Not until I realize a two-inch version is crawling inside the leg of my capris. Suddenly, intuition becomes better than vision, and I don’t need to see the freaky beast to realize I’m in a lot of trouble.

No one was here to watch me boogie last week. Or stomp my leg until the terrorist fell to his death on the fake wood floor, crushed by my frenzied dance moves. He deserved it. Nor did anyone hear me sob like a baby as the venom quickly spread across my shin and encircled my lower leg. Within seconds, from knee to ankle, my leg throbbed with fiery pain, pulsating my nerve endings like a TENs unit set to warp speed.

I kid you not. 

My daughter, Katy, came over to administer first aid, but as it turns out there is no pain relief for an attack like this. You just put up with the effects of its powerful neurotoxin for the next seven hours, making sure you can still breathe, and facing the fact that it’ll be close to a week before residual numbness goes away.

Oh, goody.

I had my home sealed last year by professionals against criminals like these. They missed a spot. Yesterday they came back to re-seal my foundation and go after all the door jams that don’t jam and gaps in the plumbing, as well as every air vent in my ceiling. Never underestimate predatory arachnids. They are contortionists on steroids, able to squeeze inside the house my contractor promised was impossible for them to penetrate.

im·​pos·​si·​ble.

I do not think that word means what he thinks it means.

There’s not a lot to do while sitting with your leg elevated except shallow breathe and wait for the poison to work its way out of your system. For the next two days, while every nerve in my lower leg pulsated to the bizarre beat of some frantic jungle rhythm, my unnerved thoughts drifted to my grandmother. Not because she was bohemian or a bad dancer, but because she was well acquainted with scorpions.

For twenty-five years, she and my granddad lived on fifty acres of desert land, raising their family in a home devoid of both air conditioning and evaporative cooling. In the extreme heat of Phoenix summers, equipped with only floor fans and cross ventilation to alleviate their suffering, she developed frequent, massive migraines.

One afternoon while dealing with one of those awful headaches, a scorpion, meaning to add insult to injury, crawled over and stung her on the leg. Unfortunately, I don’t know how she would describe the pain that followed. All she told me is that her migraine instantly disappeared.

Gone.

Kaput.

Vanished.

Vamoose.

Umm, bu bye. And instead of showing up every few weeks, it didn’t return for six months. So, while she rubbed her throbbing leg instead of her throbbing temples, she came up with a brilliant idea.

Now, this might have been a side effect of the neurotoxins ravaging her body at the time. Possibly she was hallucinating from the pain. I’m pretty sure that’s what I was doing last weekend. I actually wonder if Grandma had an out of body experience, perhaps something akin to what Peter Parker encountered when a radioactive spider bit him. (Well, they are distant cousins of scorpions.)

Yes. I’m saying it right here. That savage beast changed Grandma on the spot. She leaned into her new superpower Spidey Sense and, every six months after that, whenever a new migraine tried to take over, she invited another willing scorpion to sting her. On purpose.

I’m telling you the truth, they don’t call them the Greatest Generation for nothing. That woman was tough. Sad to say, on the advice of her doctor, who lacked spidey sense, she eventually gave up on her homeopathic remedy and resorted to enduring regular migraines for the rest of her life.

I often wonder how much better she’d have felt if that horrified doctor hadn’t discouraged her from trusting her own instincts. It’s not like the poison transformed her into some kind of mutant. She didn’t start climbing up walls with her bare hands. She didn’t develop supersonic hearing. And she didn’t become a crime fighter on the back streets of Phoenix. She just wanted to get rid of a bad headache.

In other words, the neurotoxins from scorpion stings seemed to counterattack whatever triggered her migraines. It’s like two negatives making a positive. Isn’t that what science is all about? Or maybe that’s math. I don’t know.

So, while I sat there ruminating on Grandma’s courage, I wondered if I, too, would reap benefits from a severe scorpion sting. Maybe the poison would clear up my chronic hives. Or my chocolate cravings. I don’t really want to look through walls like Superman, but it would be nice if my eyesight became an even 20/20 again. Is that asking too much for everything I went through?

Science and math will never know. Because I’m not as brave as Grandma. I’m doing everything I can to keep two inches of pure terror from ever tormenting me again. I’ve sealed up this house so tight I’ll probably asphyxiate from lack of oxygen.

This is my new normal. That, and glowing in the dark. Hmmm. Grandma never mentioned that side effect. 

With thanks to hjl for permission to use the great visual aid seen above. His original photo can be viewed at this site: Horizontal Measure [50mm + 12mm macro extension test] | Flickr