Goodbye 2018, you were a year of great change

Every new year brings the prospect of new beginnings, a chance to have a fresh start and hope for the future. As Christmas ends, many turn their attention to New Year’s Eve which for many is a party night. For me, it is a chance to reflect on the year past and anticipate the year ahead. When 2018 dawned, many, including myself, called it the year of change. And what a year of change it has been. It was filled with the changes I was expecting and a few changes that I wasn’t expecting at all. It has been a year of tremendous joy and a lot of tears. 2018 has brought a new baby, a new home and new personal growth.

Right off the bat, an unexpected change was that my husband and I learned that we were expecting a baby. After many miscarriages in recent years, our hopes were cautiously optimistic. Cautiously optimistic may be an understatement. We were excited but feared getting too excited.  We looked to our due date as if it was so far away. Given our loss history, my doctor recommended a cerclage and weekly progesterone shots, which I did. I had the cerclage placed in March and started the shots shortly after for 20 weeks. With each shot and each doctor appointment, our baby was growing, thriving and it looked as if we would hold another precious child in our arms. Even though things were going well, I still looked forward to my due date with trepidation. I was still afraid to let my hopes get too high. However, God had us in his hands and on August 22, our beautiful baby girl was born via c-section at 36 weeks 1 day. And despite being born late preterm, she is a healthy four-month-old. She is the greatest, happiest and joyous unexpected change of 2018. I look forward to watching her grow in the future.

An expected change of 2018 was that my husband and I moved our family to a new home. We knew we wanted to move and finding a new home proved to be more difficult than we anticipated. We settled on an area which some would consider to be undesirable. However, we found a small but beautiful complex hidden among the “weeds” of the area. We have met amazing and very welcoming neighbors who are quickly becoming friends. Our oldest daughter is thriving in her new school and she enjoys going to school every day. I want to shout out to the family and friends who helped us with this change in our lives. As many know, moving is a great undertaking and no one moves without help. There are so many people who offered help especially with the heavy lifting since I wasn’t allowed to lift anything heavier than a gallon of milk. I know they wouldn’t want me to name them directly, but they know who they are. “Thank you” sometimes just doesn’t cover the gratitude my husband and I feel when we remember the help and support we received.

2018 has been a year of great personal growth on my part, particularly with my commitment to establishing boundaries. It hasn’t been easy to set those boundaries and I have been met with anger, guilt and silence at my boundaries. However, I realize that I cannot control how others react to my boundaries, I am only responsible for my reactions and responses. I have also learned that many people talk about boundaries but when you set a boundary with them, they get angry as if to say, “boundaries with others, not with me.” Everyone gets boundaries from me, yes everyone, and I have learned to respect boundaries set by others. If you haven’t read Boundaries by Drs Henry Cloud and John Townsend, I highly recommend it. It has been an eye-opener for me and I have learned where I let others take control of areas of my life without really realizing it. It is easy to talk the talk and difficult to walk the walk, but once I started to walk it, the easier it became to continue. Personal growth is always a work in progress and it is important to learn from any failures, pick myself up and move forward.

In conclusion, every year has the potential for great change in our lives. With each new year, we can make the decision to better ourselves, to learn from the year’s mistakes and treasure the achievements. 2018 has been an amazing year with extreme highs and happiness to extreme lows and sadness and everything in between. However, life is about enjoying the happy days and learning from the sad days. I look forward to 2019 as it will bring continued growth and happiness. One of the many things I have learned in my life is that happiness is part of the journey and not a destination. I’ve learned to deal with the things in life that I can change and leave the ones I can’t to God.

Native American Heritage Month: a time of celebration and contemplation

November is Native American Heritage Month. First sponsored by the American Indian Heritage Foundation through the efforts of its founder Pale Moon Rose, the aims of the heritage month is to provide a platform for Native people to share their culture, traditions, music, crafts, dance, and ways and concepts of life. It also gives Native Americans the opportunity to express to their community, at the city, country and state levels, their concerns and solutions for building bridges of understand and friendship. I’ve been interested and have great respect for Native Americans and their history and culture since the seventh grade. I will touch briefly on the topics of culture and traditions, music, crafts and dance, and ways and concepts of life in this post.  There are approximately 566 federally recognized Native American tribes in the US each with their own culture, language and history, and each with their own unique traditions, housing, dress and food.

I want to address the common misconceptions about Native Americans and there are many; however, I will address a few. First, the Natives weren’t that advanced when the Europeans arrived. They were primitive and similar to a third world country. The truth is they were advanced just different than from what the Europeans were used to. They had a complex society with medical advances that scientists today are using the plants they were as medicines today. The French who traded furs with many different tribes, had a great respect for the Natives and recognized the things they actually did better. Second, Indian Royalty. We’ve all heard people claim that they are descended from an Indian princess. My family was included in this as we were told we were descended from a Canadian Indian princess. While I was excited to be descended from First Nations (as they are called in Canada), I was skeptical of the princess part. Why? Because the Natives had no concept of royalty. Chiefs were not ordained from birth to lead the tribes. They were often chosen for their bravery and leadership and their family may have been well treated and respected but they were not royalty. I think the idea of royalty is how the Europeans tried to explain the Natives’ societal hierarchy and it stuck. Lastly, Native Americans worship nature. While they do have a profound respect for nature and are greatly in tuned with it, they do not worship it. There is usually a god they worship who represent an aspect of their daily lives. For instance, they would pray to the god who would help them with the crops or the hunt or. They also have a concept of a God, usually called the Great Spirit and an evil spirit similar to Satan.

With so many different tribes in the United States and each unique, it is hard to speak in general terms about the Natives’ culture and way of life. The Plains Natives were different from the Natives who lived in the Desert and those who lived in the Northern Mountains. No matter what area of the country, the Natives contributed a great deal to our country both past and present. Many foods were introduced to the world’s diets and became staples were first cultivated by the Natives of the New World. Foods such as corn, potatoes, peanuts, tomatoes, chocolate, pineapples and avocadoes just to name a few (Scholastic). Natives were also the first to raise different types of animals for food, for example, turkeys. They also were the first to cultivate cotton, rubber and tobacco. Approximately 60% of the world’s food supply came from the Natives agricultural system (Gibson). Native Americans contributed a great deal to medicine as well. The Canadian Natives knew how to prevent scurvy by eating foods rich in vitamin C and passed the information to European sailors (Scholastic). The Shoshane tribes used crushed stone seed powder as an oral contraceptive while the Potawatomi nation used the dogbane herb for contraceptives centuries before modern medicine developed the birth control pill. The rate in which Native Americans have participated in military service is higher than any other ethnic groups. Most notably the Code Talkers in World War II; however, Native Americans served in the Korean, Vietnam, Desert Storm and the Iraq wars as well (Gibson). The concept behind American Sign Language originated with the hand signals used by the Natives and traders. Lastly, many of our English words are Native in origin such as barbecue, hammock and hurricane as well as many American cities are Native words, for example, Miami, Wichita, Spokane and Seattle (Gibson).

I also understand how many Native peoples would feel conflicted or even insulted at the idea of a month dedicated to people who were systematically abused and still suffer. Sunny Clifford wrote in an opinion article, “As much as I appreciate the gesture of Native American Heritage Month I feel torn about it. I’m torn because this nation needs a month to remember how it came to be. No, if you want to honor Native Americans then teach the real history in your schools.” I understand her conflict. While I think it’s great that a culture gets to be highlighted for a month; however, it is insulting that for the rest of the year, their part in history is largely ignored. I also hate that while I was in school, most of our country’s history is taught by dates and major events. I did not truly learn about Natives in our country’s history until I took history and ethnic studies classes in college. Unfortunately, history is expansive and detailed that it would very difficult to teach it as the individuals who lived it deserved to have it retold and remembered. History is only one subject that American children must take and unfortunately the focus is not on history but on math and science. Another hurdle is the Winston Churchill quote “History is written by the victors,” those who “win” are those who can write about “how” events occurred and who was at fault. Often, the victors or those writing about the victors will ignore or rewrite facts in order to make the victors look better. Some information gets lost to the sands of time and other information gets drowned out by the loud and more powerful. It is will take an extra effort to make sure every voice in American history is heard.

In conclusion, there is no denying that the Native Americans were not a backward or primitive society that many European settlers would have history believe. The Native peoples contributed not only to the United States but the world as well. I still have a deep respect for the Native peoples and I continue to discover new things about their culture, their way of life and their contributions to my life in ways I never knew before. Unfortunately, there are many myths about the Native tribes which are still believed by a vast majority of people. Whether it is by design or it’s by ignorance, our educational system has ignored the voices of those who lived through historical events. Only through education can we dispel these myths and see the Native Americans as great contributors to our country and our world. For the next couple weeks I will feature a post about an aspect of Native Americans in our country through books, films and sports.

References

Clifford, Sunny What Native American Heritage Month Means to Me. Indian Country Today. November 24, 2013. http://indiancountrymedianetwork.com/news/opinions/what-native-american-heritage-month-means-to-me/ Retrieved November 4, 2017.

Gibson, Kelly Native American Contributions to the U.S. September 22, 2011 http://blog.nativepartnership.org/history-of-native-american-day-part-2/ Retrieved November 5, 2017

Scholastic Native American Contributions www.scholastic.com/teachers/articles/teaching-content/native-american-contributions/ Retrieved November 5, 2017.

Mary, did she know? A Christmas Eve reflection

As Christmas Eve approaches, I think about Mary. A young girl, pregnant and married to a man she barely knows. She’s nine months pregnant and on an uncomfortable journey to Bethlehem for the census. When I was nine months pregnant, I was very uncomfortable, everything ached and I had modern conveniences. I can only imagine the aches and pains of Mary as she traveled on a donkey on a very long road. As they arrive in Bethlehem, her child is coming and she has to settle in a stable. A stable filled with smelly livestock as the baby Messiah begins His journey into the world.

I never truly grasped Mary’s journey until I am became a mother. The song, “Mary, did you know?” took on a whole new meaning. The song was written by Mark Lowry and Buddy Greene and originally recorded by Michael English in 1991. The song has since been covered by countless artists, most currently by Pentatonix, an a Capella group. The song asks Mary if she truly realized all the wondrous miracles that her child would grow up to do. A tiny baby who depends so much on his mother will one day fulfill the prophecies that Mary would have learned as she grew up. When Gabriel came to her with his birth announcement, did she fully understand then? Did she realize his mission at all the miracles he performed. Or did she fully understand as she watched him die on the cross? I think she did know, feared the future because she knew that God’s plan was greater than a mother’s love.

Committing herself to God’s will opened Mary to many different scenarios. At worst, she would be stoned to death for what she claimed. At best, she would be ridiculed. Knowing this, Mary said, “May it be as you have said” (Luke 1:38). When did she share this news with her family and friends, did she know the skepticism she would face? I admit if someone today claimed that she would become pregnant with God’s child and he would become the Messiah, I would believe she was crazy. Did Mary receive this reaction too? I’m sure she did and she still kept the faith and allowed God to use her to bring His son into the world. Her faith was courageous. She risked everything for God’s will and promise. She would have a child and raise him. He would go out into the world and perform miracles. She would watch him suffer for the sins of the world.

Mary had a small mention in the Bible but she played a big role in fulfillment of the prophecy which would bring the world her Messiah. This Christmas as you celebrate the birth of Jesus, remember the young girl who said yes to God, despite the cost to her life. Her story is an example of how God uses everyone in great and small ways for His purpose.

Merry Christmas to you all!