The Game Plan

Occasionally, when I ask my dad how his day went, he'll say it started with him feeling 'blah.'  I think I have been feeling like that for the past couple of weeks.  Not really motivated to do anything but what is necessary.  I don't know why I'm feeling like this.  My dad takes a nap and that seems to dissolve the blahs.  I can't nap during the day now that school has started back.  Plus, I'm not really any more tired than usual.  I feel like one of those cars you pass along the side of the road, where everything on the car looks okay (no flat tire, or parts hanging off) yet, someone tied a little white rag to the driver's side door handle, and left.  So there the car sits, in surrender, waiting for help to arrive.

I called for help. I called a friend of mine and asked her if she wanted to go to lunch. Sure!  So, I picked her up Sunday afternoon and we went to this Mideastern restaurant.  The flavors and spices in the food they bring are so healthy feeling (I don't know how else to describe it).  We ate things like, hummus, babaganoush, tabbouleh and stuffed grape leaves. The meal concluded with Turkish coffee and a piece of baklava (in all honesty, that was so good, I could have bathed in it). 

Not only was the meal nourishing, but, as always with her, so was the conversation.  Several years ago, her son (he's a year older than my daughter) was playing baseball.  I'm not sure how it happened, but someone hit the ball and it ended up hitting him in the head.  The hit caused a concussion.  The concussion has caused an even bigger ripple in the health of her son.  He suffers from headaches, can't drive for long periods of time, for a while light was bothering him, and it seems to have had an effect on his temperament.  He gets angry quicker and it seems as though he has a difficult time with it. Like he knows its happening but the feeling is so quick and strong he hasn't developed the skills to grab that feeling to wrestle it down.  They live in a beautiful place.  A creek flows right past their house.  They have a large yard, so, now, when he's feeling mad, he'll either calm down by the water--just sitting and listening to it, or (and this made me laugh when she told it) he throws apples at the shed in her back yard.  

As she was catching me up with what has been happening, she told me how she has changed her approach to her son's circumstances.  When this first began, and she was still trying to understand it all (and she wasn't fully believing what he was saying--she wasn't comprehending the new, foreign situation) there would be a lot of yelling and fighting.  Her son had to quit his job over this and is living at home.  Though he did go to counseling and a rehabilitation place for brain injury, it has taken a long time for him to develop the skills.  During that 'developing' time, is when the fights occurred.  I remember her during those times and she was exhausted and drained.  Everyone was butting heads and judging and seeing things from their point of view instead of surrendering to the situation and working from the ground up to build a new set of rules to deal with this very unique situation. 

What she told me on Sunday was so simple, yet so hard to do in the midst of turmoil.  She said that it just came to her to start being more loving.  She doesn't react in rage, she is calmer.  She makes sure to tell him she loves him everyday.  She includes him in everything, even if he can't participate. She tries to touch him more.  A hug, her hand on his shoulder.  The little things that are so often brushed aside in a busy day.  I watched the peace in her face as she told me this.  What popped into my head is how biblical it was.  1 Cor. 13 describes what love is and if God is love then, that is a good guideline of how to act if we choose to follow it.

I know from my own experience here from last summer to this past summer.  The summer from hell was filled with anger and hate and rage and ignorance.  Things got better once my thinking changed and I started from scratch to work on a different game plan.  I guess the game plan is love.