Stand Up!

Ring….Ring…. It was early evening when the phone rang. It must have been around 6:00, and I remember thinking, he must need help with his math homework again. Cameron’s best friend called him around this time when he needed some help with his homework. As I picked up the phone my heart sank, my knees got weak. What? No!! It was a fellow soccer Mom calling to give us the horrible news… his friend had died in a hunting accident earlier in the day. We were speechless, stunned and in utter disbelief. It was November 2005, and for the past three years we had been jumping through the hoops of the now-mandated governmental barn project. Things had been moving along well until earlier this year. In reflection, the call informing us of his friend’s fatal accident seemed to be the pivotal point of the rapid spiral out of control. The year 2006 became the year of chaos, pain, fear and agony that each of our family members experienced in different ways. As a mother, watching it spiral was like having one foot in the stirrup while getting dragged over cobble stones, dirt and thorns. “It is upon disaster that good fortune rests.” This quote by a Taoist sage, Lao-tzu, kept resurfacing over and over in my head. At first it came with a laugh and a sarcastic, snide thought and comment. As my family plummeted down, spiraling out of control, the idea of good fortune was becoming a thought beyond recognition. And I watched in confusion and disbelief as my family members began to take on wholly new personae. Cameron shut everyone out, all his friends and us too. He started hanging out with what the teachers referred to during a parent/teacher conference as “not Cameron’s crowd.” Cameron was a straight-A student until this year, when his grades dropped to Ds and even an F. He was angry and bitter at the world, and it took great effort to get him to school. Sometimes he just refused to go. Meanwhile, LaTicia was experiencing peer relationship issues that can be all too common during the high school years. She was randomly fainting and the doctors could not find out why. They suggested a special diet and more medical tests. We maxed out one of the credit cards paying for this test and that test, but still there were no answers. At this point Robert was giving up too. There were times when I literally had to take his hand and force him to shower. The strong hard-working man I married was being whittled away before my eyes! At one point I wrote in my journal: I feel like I am in a batting cage, trapped with no way out, fast balls, curve balls all sailing past me and my family members at 98 mph. I started the batting practice with some good solid swings but as the machine picked up the pace I soon began ducking and dodging until I felt like curling up in a fetal position just taking the hits hoping and praying the machine would short-circuit and stop or at very least run out of balls! As I lie in the fetal position, crying and gasping for a breath I would hold on to the Lao-tzu’s words and hoping it was not just words on a piece of paper. There were days I felt like staying in bed and curling up as in my journal entry. However, some days were better than others so we pushed on. And in losing ourselves we slowly, steadily and eventually all found ourselves each with our own pace, hurdles and triumphs but all with the help of a family of horses. They helped us, as we remembered how to live again!