Spiritual Steroids

Steroids. What do you think of when you see that word? I’ll tell you, I’ve always envisioned muscle bound weight lifters with huge biceps and small brains. My guess is that it’s the same picture a lot of people see in their mind’s eye. I also see those overly-muscular women who lift weights, too, but that disturbs me and I change the channel. But that’s another story.
Okay, so I had to go to the doctor today for an uncomfortable infirmary of the mouth. For two months I had stubbornly dealt with the annoyance and pain thinking, “I can lick this!” Chad looked at me last night and said, “Veronica, it ain’t normal. Go to the doctor…or do I need to take off work and take you myself?” Now let me give you a bit of background on that man…that infuriating, wise-beyond-his-years man. Chad Tuttle does not take time off of work. I’m pretty sure that if his vacation time could roll over from year to year and accumulate that he could take time off, work that 6 month stint in Iraq doing some rebuilding job for $100,000 of tax-free money, come back to the US, spend a couple of months with the family, take me to Europe and on an Alaskan cruise, spoiling me shamelessly with that tax free money and still report back to his vibration analyst job before his vacation was depleted. So, when he threatened to take time off to escort me to the doctor, I knew he meant business. I figured I’d better go to the Urgent Med before he got home from work today or I was gonna get it! I’m not sure what “it” was, but I didn’t want that particular gift, and I’m a girl who likes to get stuff!
As I sat in the waiting area with Jonathan and Christopher stationed vigilantly by my side, I thought of every unimaginable disease known to mankind and even a few that mankind didn’t know of. What if I have some flesh-eating disease that attacked one orally, rendering a person completely speechless so she couldn’t verbalize her agony and pain to the well-educated physicians sent to her rescue? What if one of my precious sons had been kissed, victimized by one of those vial creatures otherwise known as “teenage girls”? What if in that victimization, they had become carriers and in one of their nightly displays of affection of a kiss on the cheek accompanied with an “I love you, Mom” they had unleashed this unholy debilitation that headed straight for my mouth. I envisioned a vicious, rapidly metastasizing virus that would ravage my young soon-to-be 35 year old body, leaving me a helpless heap that Chad would have to admit to a nursing home where they would feed me chocolate pudding intravenously because I no longer had a mouth! “Oh, God, PLEASE don’t let it be….cancer!!!”
At that moment of near insanity, I felt a nudge from Jonathan. “Hey, mom, you got a dollar? I sure could use one of those Snickers bars.” In my head I screamed, “I’m dying and all you can think of is a Snickers and your stomach?!?!?”I’m not sure what my outward response was, but his calm reaction of, “Okay, that’s cool,” I was certain my words hadn’t frightened him into the fetal position searching for a happy place.
The nurse called me into the inner sanctum of the doctor’s lair to check vitals, ask a long battery of useless questions, and essentially pre-prod me before the doctor got his chance to do the same. The boys followed dutifully. I was finally seen by the doctor. Well his little white jacket said he was a doctor, but I’m pretty sure he was there on a “go to work with dad” field trip, because I’m pretty sure he was still in pampers. He looked so young. I’m pretty sure Doogie Howser could have been his roommate and that they both would have had to be supervised to the dance their senior year of college. Anyway, his diagnosis: stress. Stress, you say? STRESS?! What do I have to be stressed about? I have an amazing husband who works very hard all the time to support our family, three teenage sons who are awesome in every aspect except that I have suddenly become the stupidest person on the free planet, a near-8 year old princess who refuses to clean her room, but she knows every word to every worship song ever written. By the way, if you figure out how to get an 8-year old daughter to do anything she doesn’t want to do, be sure to e-mail me with the particulars. I also have the cutest, sweetest Morkie puppy, that’s a Maltese/Yorkie breed, that for some reason I cannot to save the life of me get completely potty trained. He is currently at the vet being neutered. He’s going to love me tomorrow, I just know it! I get to teach swimming lessons this summer, six classes a day Monday thru Thursday. It’s great!! I just love all those little fish! I am also blessed to get to sing on our worship team at church on a regular basis. I really love doing that…I live to sing. Chad and I have an amazing Middle School youth group of 30-40 pre-teens and young teenagers who are all entering puberty on, well, last Wednesday night, apparently. I’m waiting to see if the State of Oklahoma is going to renew the grant for my really great early childhood parent education job for the next school year. I’m also hoping to hear from the local hospital about an overnight job because I’m a night owl and I want to utilize that time in an economically advantageous way. And, the twins are wanting their new best friend, Nick, to stay the night this week and the house is in pre-garage sale disarray, but Nick is an incredible kid…the type you really want your kids to be around. Again, I say, my life is wonderful! What do I have to be stressed about?
Obviously I didn’t verbalize that bit of ranting, but when I asked the doctor what sort of things could trigger that sort of stress, he basically said that the day to day stress of being a mother of four, overexposure to the sun, having too many irons in the fire, worrying about the future and even having an overactive imagination could trigger stress in the body resulting in a virus that causes painful mouth legions. I was stumped. I just couldn’t think of a single instance of serious stress in my life at that moment. He gave me three prescription: an antiviral medication to stop the virus, a pain reliever to stop the pain, and the third reverts us back to the start of this chapter. It was Prednisone, aka, steroids…a seven day regimen. I was sitting there thinking, “Okay, young padawan doc, I’ve been trying for TEN months to lose weight. I’ve lost somewhere around 50-60 pounds and you want to give me a little pill that can pack on the pounds!? You’ve gotta be kiddin’ me!” I felt a new legion pop up right then and there. I took the scripts, smiled, said, “thank you,” and left. We headed home.
On the way home, I dropped Jonathan and Christopher off at the pool, went to the pharmacy to fill the prescriptions, went home, gave Joey the dog a bath, got dressed for swimming lessons, painfully ate a quick bite of food so the medicine wouldn’t make me sick, drove back to town to drop Joey at the vet and reported for duty at swimming lessons where I had to sit on deck for two and a half hours because one of those blessed little pills had rendered me a jelly-legged, stammering lump. I was assigned paperwork. I think I did it all correctly, but now that I think about it, I don’t remember doing any of it for the last class. After all of the festivities, we finally made it home. I jumped into the shower only to feel the steroids kick in full force and the exact moment that I recalled the conversation I’d had with the pharmacist. His suggestion was to wait until the following morning to take the pills because they have a tendency to give you an increase in energy. In some robotic daze I had nodded and left. However, my brain and the pain in my mouth registered, “Take the pills now. Right now. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200.” The robot brain won at 3:00 p.m. between two slices of day old pepperoni pizza. I felt like I could run a marathon right then…at least a 25 mile marathon, easily. At 11:30 p.m. Chad and I went to bed. At 12:30 a.m. after an hour of really wanting to go to sleep, I was up writing. It is now 2:30 a.m. and I am finally feeling a touch of sand in my eyes. Whilst I ponder the day’s events, I’m reminded of a refrigerator magnet that a friend gave me a while ago. It read, “What part of ‘rest in me’ do you not understand? --Love, God.” Wow. I feel ashamed of myself. I am also remembering a plaque that a former colleague had hanging on her office wall. It read, “Hello, this is your captain speaking. My name is God, and, no, I’m not in need of a co-pilot today.” That’s what we try to do, isn’t it? Especially we mothers. We are so
determined to be superwoman or the number one candidate for woman of the year that we forget that God has it all under control. He doesn’t need our help. I suspect that there are many of you out there who share my short-coming of refusing to wait.
Wait? I don’t wait. I’m like a new runner in track who is so intent on reaching the finish line that he spends his cache of energy too soon only to wind up in an exhaustive state long before his goal is met. I know I sometimes leave God three states behind me hoping he will pick up the pieces I’ve dropped along the way. Fortunately he always takes care of me.
Did you know that eagles carry their young on their back while trying to teach them to fly? They carry them high into the sky and roll over so that the eaglet falls. The hope is that he will fly out of necessity. If the eaglet gets too close to the ground, the parent swoops down to catch it and carries it back to the heights for another lesson. I’m like that eaglet that has to be caught on the way to catastrophe and be carried back up over and over again. He is so faithful to do that, but how much easier my life would be if I would just slow down. If I would just realize that I am one of those heavy laden people the bible speaks of that need to lay all their burdens on the Lord, for his load is light. He is so much bigger than anything I could possibly be facing or carrying. He can handle it in a snap if I only hand it over and just rest in him. Just thinking about it relaxes me. It is sobering to think that I have been so stubborn and self sufficient that it took two whole months of pain, frustration, and a mouth full of stress-induced legions to understand such a simple lesson that God was trying to whisper to me. Unfortunately, I tend to be of the “beat it into her thick skull” variety. It usually takes a load of bricks being dropped on my head to grab my attention. In this particular instance it took a bottle of little pink pills, also known as steroids, to jump start my spiritual awareness. I’m going to carry that awareness into slumber tonight, or rather this morning. I’m going to dream of soaring the heights on the wings of my Heavenly Father. Hopefully in my dream I will learn to fly when he rolls over and I will carry that success into my tomorrows. Won’t you come fly with me?