Author: Grace by any other name

God-lover

Apologies to my YouTube Friends

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I know that some prefer to read. I’m one of them! With a busy household, or when I’m hiding from my Pull Mommy Twin, or when I’m lying down in pain and they’re napping, reading works better than watching video. So some things will be on both channels though with different slants or twists or new information. Apologies in advance.

You know, it’s hard. We won’t sugarcoat it. I have young people who said they didn’t get what I meant about my gentle mentioning of sleep issues till their newborn stopped sleeping well. So I’ll be one of those who shows the reality. Not to complain. Not to be dramatic, but because it’s true, to remind those with easier lives to be grateful for the things they’re probably taking for granted, and to encourage others in my shoes.

I spent ages searching for learning centers for my Pull Mommy Twin. Mostly BECAUSE she pulls me so much. How will I teach the other three and supervise the teens if I’m being pulled away, and when I refuse, I cause a long and loud tantrum? And also, I can’t. I just can’t.

Unlike my older two at this age who were doing their Maths on their own…As in, I’d show them the pages they’re meant to be answering (after we’ve learnt how to do sums) and I could leave them to work while I went to care for the baby. But now, at the exact same ages, my middle two can’t even COUNT. Can’t even recognise all numbers, let alone be left alone to do anything- not only because they can’t read anyway, but because they’ll do impulsive things when left alone.

Like this. This is why we don’t go to the library…🥹

So, I can’t. I can’t split myself up. When I’m busy deeply involved with one, what are the other three doing? And what are the chances that Pull Mommy Twin would even leave us in peace?

For now, while I ‘do school’ with the middle two, the twins have quiet time in their bedrooms where they get to regulate themselves in peace and quiet. Where they play with their toys that are meant for individual play, and where my Talking Twin can read books the way SHE wants to read them. Which is to zoom past instead of letting mom read the words accompanying the pictures.

But then Quiet Time ends! It’s not forever! So I give them iPads with Khan Kids Academy and other pre school stuff but Pulling Mommy Twin doesn’t like much so she just runs around screeching in peace.

That also ends! It’s for educational purposes, not to turn them into zombies.

And in all of this, there’s a very sick mom who can’t sit, can’t stand without pain. Teaching, truth be told- is not for me anymore. I need disability leave.

It’s hard. But God is with me. I search and seem to be empty handed, but there might be hope this week. We just need to know how much this will cost us. And that’s the rub. Some things medical aid will cover, but specialized autism care isn’t paid for. Not the kind of help my angel needs. And so many learning centers want children who can go to the toilet independently. My girl doesn’t even feel uncomfortable with her diaper used, and never seeks help and can’t sit still long enough to produce a wee! So there’s no potty training any time soon.

It’s hard. But God is with me. He has the power to fix things. But now is not HIS time and so I submit. I know He pities me. He said so in the Bible that He pities me just like a daddy pities his child. My nine year old has a weird lump on her knee that’s very painful and scary to us. I pity her. I wish I could fix it. In the same way I phoned the paediatrician’s office and accepted a call to go in sooner, He too is doing what He can under certain limitations, before helping us out completely. But He is with us just like I’m with my girl though I’m not able to do anything materially to help her.

When the time comes, we will get help.

When the time comes God will help us in an even better way than any hospital can. He will give us brand new bodies! Bodies that will never get AS, painful lumps in children’s bodies. Bodies that will never run out of air when doing low impact exercise.

I just need to wait. It’s excruciating but God is waiting with me. And how can I rush Him when maybe tomorrow a dinner might repent? By begging Him to shut the chance for others! repentance so that I can stop suffering, I shut heaven out. So, I wait for His timing. Plus, I know He has His own timetable anyway so my begging for His return is almost silly!

Some Christian ideas can’t be tied up in a pretty bow. Doesn’t matter that Christ rose again, He still suffered first. How sad for Mary to watch her firstborn son suffer so terribly when He’d never hurt a single soul. Some stories don’t have near endings like Job’s did, where he regained His health and became a parent again.

Some people will go to the grave never having borne a child in their womb. Some will die never having had a job despite trying everything they could. Some people have to accept that God’s grace is sufficient and learn to be content despite the ache be it in their soul or in their bones.

It’s hard. But it’s not hard ALL the time unless we wallow in our misery. But if we are open to the tiny moments of release or reprieve or joy, we will have a mental break from the hard.

My girl wanted her siblings to put their stacking rings in her brother’s flip flop on Friday.

Of course her big brother and sister couldn’t fit them all in. But I hoped that a shoe change wouldn’t be cause for a tantrum. And it wasn’t. Simple!

And just when I thought the coast was clear, she took some rings from her twin’s toy to add to the shoe! I begged my son to run to the toy box and get rid of any he might come across! Save me!

Not only was she happy that she, I mean, I , got all the rings in a shoe, but she became so happy that she spoke! “Boat” she said, as she played and moved it as if it was in the sea.

I need to remind myself that I don’t always have to be supermom. Plain mom will do. I need to be constantly worrying about her speech, her mood, her brother’s delays…I can be in the moment, savoring being able this time, to find a solution to her problems.

And when I hear that scream, the one tells me she’s being denied something she shouldn’t have, or wanting something impossible to achieve, I’ll remember the time I could please her. And hope for many more moments. Hope is ok. Hope is sometimes all we have. And it helps us get through the hard times with less scarring on our hearts.

What was your recent victory? When you feel overwhelmed, remember it. You are more than all your problems. And if you are faithful, they will end while you remain. Better. Happier. Healthier. Trial free.

Just keep gritting your teeth till then. We will grit them together.🙏🏾

I Loved Her Part 2

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One of the major lessons I learnt during my studies was that retelling a painful story over and over again is good. It takes the sting away with each retelling till it stops becoming something that happened to you, but just a ‘story.’ And so, I will tell till the pain is decreased.

Also, I’m hoping those who have condemned me unjustly will one day come across this and see the truth. (Don’t ask me how they’d find this blog,)

I shared in one of my YouTube videos that I was excited to get married. I was happy. And I deliberately chose April 27, Freedom Day, as I felt I was breaking free. Interestingly enough, a dear friend went to live with my parents and sister in 2020 and told me after a week, “Now I see why you wanted to escape.”🥹

After my wedding, my mother chastised me. I was apparently looking too happy at me wedding, as if they’d abused me. Never ever have I seen a happy bride and made it about her mother!🙄

One night, in June 2023, I thought back over my life. Why did my mother lie to my cousin and leave me vulnerable to her abuse? My cousin…In May 2022, I made the grave mistake of telling my cousin that with the inadequate care my mother was having under a relative supposedly living there to care but actually never there, my mother would lose her life earlier than she should. (A doctor had told me she was dying slowly.)

This cousin then asked me to hire a full time caregiver. She asked ME, an unemployed woman, to hire someone. Here’s the thing, this cousin KNEW I’d first hired my friend even though I myself didn’t have money for a helper for ME. And my poor friend lasted a whole six weeks before she had to leave.

There was too much abuse from all parties in the house.

I then hired a driver. My parents lived with an able bodied relative younger than I am. But still, we hired caregivers with OUR money while still providing grocery, toiletries and electricity for them every month since 2013. That person also quit due to abuse they were receiving. Also telling me that I was being abused-father expecting money from me while spending HIS money on the able bodied, employed relative living with them. And he-the driver-having to drive my father to the relatives WORKPLACE to ask why they’d stolen his social grant money. My father wept. Yet got angry with US, his non-thieving children, for referring to the habitual thief as a thief!🫣

Then we found them a three times a week cleaner and the poor lady quit because they weren’t paying her.

Under those circumstances, and the knowledge that my father wanted a slave, not an employee and given my medical costs were rising terribly, I refused when later in the week, cousin sent a message telling me I need to hire someone (again) despite my still feeding and providing electricity. (He even sat my friend down, telling her I was “poison” for allowing fat her a day off.)

I asked, “Why is it that my parents are suddenly my responsibility as if I went and chose them, finding them abandoned on the street. Why is it that though she has employed relatives, it’s all on ME, someone who is terribly ill all the time, having various co-payments for my tests and nobody asks if I can even afford what I’m already doing, let alone the extra stuff she is almost demanding?

I shouldn’t have dared voice my thoughts.

What followed was a diatribe I didn’t listen to. I sent her voice notes to others who knew her so they could hear the real person. One person wept. The other said I should swear at her, cuss back at her like she was cussing me. That there’s nothing wrong with adoption so for her to go on at me for having adopted was unChristian for this cousin who claimed she’s a Christian.

The first is something I’ve shared before. That I am lazy for not having paid employment. That my mother did various things for me so I owed her. (Black Tax!) worse yet, things she’d never done at all! Like paying for a flat for me and my BOYFRIEND to live in. You all know I’d never be living alone unmarried with a man!

She’s the one who said that because I went against her and my mother’s wishes about adopting, God cursed me and sent me the twins as punishment. Who said that I took my husband away to the mission field in Tanzania so he could also be unemployed like I was, supported by my mother. NOPE. I never viewed it that way, we both wanted to do mission work and my husband was doing remote work for his job. We never needed my mother’s money. Instead, we even regularly gave financial support to a newly widowed relative while out in the mission field.

What hurt was not only that I now knew for sure that she hated innocent babies finding parents, it was also the knowledge that my mother had lied about what she’d done for me. She did hate my life and who I was. But I didn’t know it would extend to lying about me in a negative manner and leaving me open to others abusing me. Your own daughter!??

I wept once after an appointment wishing I had a mother who loved me and would ask me how I am. The phone calls I used to get were asking for money. Now that will never happen. Instead I have the bitter knowledge that my mother lied to all and sundry about my life. Anything to make herself look good. Typical narc.

So, that night in June, I thought of my life compared to my other friends and their loving mothers who were great grannies to their children. How even my poor husband had tried to intervene. Had driven all the way to my parents to tell them they were hurting me and literally killing me (from stress which I was told to avoid big time for the sake of my stomach that gets inflamed.) See, as usual, we’d taken grocery etc to them and bought electricity. I had signing rights over my mother’s banking as the relative in the house seemed to be taking cellphones, bank cards, tithes, to live a life of’ fun’ while we fed her with never ever any gratitude. This employed relative sent a message the day after a surgery, asking me to buy something small. I told them I had just taken a whole lot of stuff to the house just a week before and they could surely rustle up the money to do what she wanted. They responded by telling me I am a fake Christian that doesn’t want to care for my parents. Make that make sense!

Husband went and told them they were abusing me. That I had had surgery the day before and I was no longer telling them when I had tests, operations as they never asked how I was, but only phoned me to abuse me. And he gave back the bank card which we’d topped up monthly so we could help. They responded with alleged sick and said that they’d call to apologise and admit their wrongs.

I’m still waiting for that call.

I wish you could feel the sense of betrayal and pain. This is a cousin much older than me, who I used to admire. I thought they loved me. I thought each message I sent telling them I’d be going silent as I was just about to have a procedure under anesthesia was seen. I thought they got me.

They then sent angry voice messages to my poor husband who was at work🤦🏾‍♀️ He too didn’t listen to them. He’s not a voice note person, I could have told her that.

So, my mother opened the door for others to abuse me. And THAT hurt a lot. That’s definitely not what society was saying mothers are for.

We go back to the night in June, 2023. I looked back over my life as a daughter. The childhood and adult insults. Strangers being told I’m a waste. And googled “Mother hates my body.” It took me to narcissistic mothers. “Your mother hates your body and here’s why…” I read site after site, identifying her as a narcissist. It finally came together. I’d yearned for my mother to be proud of me for being a law abiding relative giving her consistently my love through financial help since 2013. I thought she’d have boasted about us using our bonus to pay off three quarters of her debts when she retired. I hoped she’d one day appreciate my raising my children and educating them using a difficult curriculum like Cambridge.

But nope, narcs are only happy if you do things their way, and for THEM.

The next morning (after this random googling session and light bulb moment), I was told she had died. Do you believe we get communication or pre knowledge when our parents die? My husband did. He just suddenly stopped the blender and said, “My dad has just died.” He was correct. And so, I believe that that sudden late night search over characteristics of my mother was my premonition or warning. It was finally going to end. Never an apology, nothing. No telling me she loved me.

My mother’s relatives came. None said they were sorry for my loss. I’m not surprised and had even wanted not to go. It’s not like she’s seeing me. Ecclesiastes says the dead know nothing. Psalm says the grave holds sleeping bodies that do nothing… You see… Some December, I suddenly got a call and then audio notes from one of her nephews. In NATAL! Telling me I must go take care of her. I don’t know why they had my number. And you don’t order anyone around, let alone someone with her own family and problems.

See, the relative my parents defended when we called them out for stealing from my parents, has left them alone and one night my mother had fallen and this relative could not be found. (We’d had family meetings about their neglect of my parents. This relative is why I’d hired someone to do what they should do.) My mother slept on the floor and this random relative in Natal was more phoning me telling I must do something. With what back?? What strength? And.. WHY? They had their golden child living with them (What narcissist experts call the favorite relative *ahem*) and this golden child together with my parents, was telling all and sundry that she’s caring for them. While eating the food we were buying. So let that relative do the care work m! And more importantly, why phone me who lives far away? Phone the person they rely on, not the one they lie about.

When I told my friend who’d spent over a month with my parents, that my mother has died, her beautiful response was, “I’m sorry. You loved your mother though she didn’t love you back.” A different relative who knew the family dynamics asked, “did your mom ever apologise to you for the things she has told our family, did she make things right with God?” Those were the right responses. They’d seen it. I was abused and needed to receive an apology and God needed a repentant person, waiting for the resurrection.

No. She didn’t ever apologise.

So yes, I was scapegoated by these people so not a single soul greeted me. They climbed into funeral Mercs we’d paid for but never said a word to us. THAT was over. No more parental pain…

But I had two parents.

Emotional Trauma Part 1

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I just finished reading *Psalm 6, and it reminded of the narcissistic parent and sibling issue. So here goes.

I was a child whose father as more overtly loving. Unlike my mother who told me I was ugly, had a large forehead, looked like a boy, had thin calves, couldn’t dance, had too wide hips (That one only came in adulthood) and looked ugly with short hair (Said when I cut my hair and was growing my locs)

Unlike my mother,y father never told me my lips were ugly, embarrassing and looked like those of a drunk. He told me I was his black beauty, I had skin like dark mahogany wood and he would dance with me and play with me- when I was under six years old. I have fond memories of him. He made scones, made us yummy hot chips and made us porridge for breakfast. He also made amagwinya (vetkoek) and until I started cooking at age 13, cooked quite a lot as well.

But he also used to beat us mercilessly with a long cane. I don’t know what it was made from, it was like flexible wood. Or, like a very hard whip. It was as thick as my index finger and not breakable. He would beat us even when we knew we hadn’t done anything ‘wrong,’ no matter what age we were. Whether it was a mistake (like mistakenly breaking a vase while sweeping), or childish naughtiness. As I got older, I started realizing that he wasn’t punishing us, he was abusing us. I remember one time he was chasing my little sister with the cane and I told her to run. I tried to lock us into the bathroom but knew there’d be even more trouble when we came out. I tried to get into his way and run in front of him but then he just whipped me instead and still ran after her. I told him he was abusing us and would phone the police – didn’t help. And I didn’t know if Black police officers would really have viewed it that way anyway. So I didn’t.

School…My father wanted me to get an education. Even on decades “stay away” days when our people were on strike to try force the apartheid government to take us seriously, when my own school headmistress spoke to us and told us it would be ok for me to stay home so they don’t attack us for breaking their rules, he took me to school. He even took me to school when the whole country was on lockdown and no school was open, thankfully stopped from leaving me outside the gates alone, hates that wouldn’t open, by another dad who had arrived first and told him there was absolutely nobody there so he shouldn’t leave me behind. He valued education above everything else. We had a Christian version of Girl Scouts at our church. From 10-12 on Sundays. If I hadn’t done all our homework, my dad would stop us from going. I’d remind him that I had the whole of the afternoon to do it. He refused. For me as a young child, it felt like he was putting secular education ABOVE God. As mentioned before, my mother definitely didn’t value God at all. She’s the one who mocked me when she walked into my room when I was 16 years old, “What? You’re reading your Bible? Are you trying to make yourself holy?” Wow. “Staunch Adventists” as her sister claim they are.

I will summarise it this way. Two Sabbaths ago, my daughter asked if I miss being young. If I missed being a little girl her age. I told her honestly. “No. No I don’t. My mom used to hit me for anything and everything with whatever was next to her hand. My dad also used to whip us. They didn’t help me with to school work and weren’t fair. I used to wish a kind mom and dad would adopt me. I don’t miss being a child at all.”

I did. I’d seen my friends’ moms. They were even kinder to me than my own parents. They cared about my preferences. My parents hated that I was a bookworm. My friend’s mom let me read books at my friend’s birthday party! I am such an introvert! I’m embarrassed NOW! But it was a pool party, I was 13 and didn’t know how to swim as doctors had told me to never let my ears get water after having recurring middle ear infections from age 3 upwards. It was a PARTY!!! But while the rest of our friends, and the birthday girl played in the pool, I sat quietly reading a book her mom had told me to choose from her personal bookshelf. “N told me you like reading and are shy. If you want to read something, I’ve got lots of books here!” Never ever did a parent ever even know my preferences! When I was 16, I told my mom that my smoking friend had invited me to a club. What we called a rave back then. (I don’t know if they still have raves today.) I was telling my mom in the context of, “Can you believe she asked ME, a Christian girl, to a RAVE!?” My mom’s response was a questioning, “So why aren’t you going??”

Preferences. I was a bookworm that loved my Bible. THAT was wrong. I should have been going to clubs.

Upside down parenting and I didn’t realise it back then. I didn’t realise that the continued insults about my personal, my personality, my body, my looks were abuse. I was abused not only physically, but emotionally or psychologically. And the scars remain for a long time.

But there were moments that made it better. Where I thought, “Well, I’m ugly in my mom’s eyes, but others don’t think so. Maybe I will find a husband who thinks I’m beautiful.”

The Coloured bakery lady at Pick n Pay when I was in high school who called a Black man from the back to say to him, “Look at her! Isn’t she beautiful!!???” I wanted to cry. I had never been ‘admired’ before for anything except my singing by the choir mistress.

Or the Coloured homeless lady when I was in university who told me, “Oh my word! Look at your smile! Everybody!! Look at her beautiful smile! I was having a bad day, girlie. But your smile has filled my heart.”🥹

How could I forget a few years ago? Sitting in a restaurant in Durbanville and a White Roman comes to me and says, “I hope you don’t mind me coming to say this. But my daughter is 11 and she’s been staring at you all evening! She said you’re beautiful! You look like a princess!”

And even today, I have a friend who tells me I look younger than my 43 years and tells me I’m beautiful. I have a friend who LOVES my grey hair. (My mom used to make me dye her hair black.) One day I’ll believe the kind voices. One day they’ll permanently drown out all the negative words I heard over my 43 years of life from the one who should have been my biggest support and who society taught us loved us the most. What a warped idea of love did I grow up on? (Totally grammatically wrong! But that’s what I knew. My mom loves me. She buys me things. She beats me. And she tells me I’m ugly.) She told me she couldn’t wait for my locs to grow so I stop looking ugly. They grew but she found other things to be negative about. I don’t know why I hoped it would end one day.

And actually, yes, mom. I do want to be holy. And God is ok with that! And for Him and others who love Him, LOOKS DON’T MATTER! He doesn’t point our perceived physical flaws out to us. Nor make life all about looking beautiful. He wants the heart, though I will say I know I am fearfully and wonderfully made!

I’ll end with this. The last thing my mother said to me before her death, the very last words she spoke, were, “You’re fat. Your lips finally look better than they did but you’re fat. But that’s good. I like fat.”

When I went to the house upon hearing she’d died that morning, as we got out the car, I reflexively buttoned up my jacket, thinking to myself, “Ok, close it up so mom doesn’t tell me I’m fat. Maybe she won’t mention it…” (I’m very sensitive about my big post- twin pregnancy belly)

Then I remembered. Her words would never come from her mouth ever again. I was there because she was dead.

* I will share Psalm 6 at a different time. It reminded me of someone who was given the power to utter vile words by my mother.

Your Brother’s Keeper

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I didn’t know I could still be shocked by people till yesterday. There’s a lady who says they are Christian and claims to belong to our denomination, but puts online, videos and photos that are extremely..not what we have learnt. Tight yoga pants, exercise bras, cleavage, close ups, squats. Let me share a photo to illustrate.

I don’t have a single non Adventist friend who posts any photos this naked. They don’t even post photos of themselves at the beach or in the pool! So to see a so-called SDA from my own congregation do it, is jarring. I do not aim to condemn women who walk around in public like this, but I do have to state very clearly that when Adam and Eve walked around in fig leaves, God gave them coats (robes). And modesty is enjoined also in the New Testament. And what will God give us in heaven? Long ROBES. Would she go to church like this? And our church in particular, has been taught that this nakedness is not godly.

So yes, I myself did once say something to the naked lady. I am my sister’s keeper. If I would want to be told when doing wrong so I can be a good influence, then I know God wants me to help my sisters to be a good influence too. But it was about a photo on a different medium to the public one. And it didn’t change anything.

Someone else then took it upon themselves to try upon seeing the public videos and photos and praises to God while in this virtually baked (for us) state. Can you imagine a Muslim sharing video after video in dressed like this? Imagine what her fellow Muslimahs would say! Or think. Or feel. So, in disappointment or shock, or dismay, someone from a different congregation but from our denomination wrote a message privately and part of it appeared on the public platform, shared by the naked lady.

And this is where I lost even more faith in people. I know the lady who wrote the message. If you worship at our congregation, you will all know the lady, because the naked lady shared some message in which the concerned sister stated that they visited our church sometime last year. And there’s only one other person in my world who would ever VOICE their concern. Not our church elders or deacons or deaconesses, but this sister who doesn’t worship with us.

So, this naked sister put up a caption to go with the private message received, which totally broke my heart. Again, I know the lady who wrote to her in concern, asking if she realised that she was naked and not conforming to modest standards she knew our congregation had been taught. I know her. This naked lady doesn’t know her except for having met during that visit, and from MY statuses. And you can be sure that I don’t share any hypocrisy on my statuses. What you see is real. And I’ve spent time with the concerned sister- together physically and texting weekly. I’ve seen another letter she sent. I know her heart. (I’ll share it in the narc family series) I know she truly wants God to be glorified by those who use His name. I know everything, her private struggles against sin.

So for the naked lady to call her “holy” (you can imagine the mocking tone that is meant and accuse her of “judging” (Love how it’s never about caring about one’s salvation. These people are always being judged.🙄) There was rambling about how she is a sinner so it’s ok for her to be naked in public (Huh!? Make that make sense!)

What I hated was that it was put up to defend what we all know is indecent for someone who has joined a congregation in which THIS below, was taught. And the worst thing is that an elder’s wife commented saying they know the person who sent the concerned message. No rebuke, no “Hmm, interesting points.” That in itself says a lot.

I don’t use that platform except to search for info for my children in the groups I’m in, or for AS info. So I hardly go on there. But that doesn’t matter. It’s still very public so this is my public response.

💔

The end.

Still Keeping It Real

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I don’t thank Him EVERY day. Today, I’m out of options and solutions and hope. Today, I am done. I am tired. I am sad. Today, I am fearful, anxious, worn and weary. Today, I am not feeling anything close to thankful, only desperate.

Truth is, it CAN be worse. But, my goodness, it could be better too! And so today, I will recognise that acknowledging that things could be easier is not wrong. Asking God why He won’t make any aspect easier is a very fair question.

There will be days when we just sink. Distressed, upset, faking the smile that adorns our faces. Patient when feeling impatient with God. Where is the help You promised? Where is the strength You said you’d provide for each day? Because right now, today…I am weak.

I honestly despised the light, trivial, thoughtless happy new year messages I received this year. It was like the sender put no through into it at all. How can this be a great year when none of my years have ever been great, pray tell? How can I be happy – the way it’s meant in that phrase- when every day is painful? Physically and emotionally?

I’m also mindful of those who didn’t send such light, pithy messages. The ones who wished I “get better”…Umm, I have an incurable disease. Keep your miracle hopes to yourself . I know they didn’t mean, “I hope this year brings treatment that brings relief.” I know they actually have no idea what AS and her friends have done to me and continue to do to me. Just like the very same people have no cooking clue how hectic my parenting and educating journey is.

I don’t need messages, I need help. And I don’t know where to find it.

I need affordable special needs educators for all three of my younger children. There aren’t any.

I need my mommy dragging non speaking angel to stop dragging me and stop seeing food when she sees me. It gets in the way of our ‘learning’ and our play and my chores and my interactions with the other kiddies. Will it ever happen?

I need to figure out how to help my middle two who it turns out have words, but have no idea what the words mean. How do you even communicate when you have to ask them to re-phrase just in case what they are passing on isn’t what they intend to share?

Where is the help? I wish we were living in my book. Lol. There’s a foster book I was reading based in the UK . The foster child got the child one on one help via a teaching assistant or aide that sat through each lesson with the child and helped that one child. Ha! What are the chances HERE? That would definitely be something I’d use if I were there. (And a foster mom. I don’t know if the State provides the services to normal families.)

My body pain is increasing. I feel sick – nausea etc (Finished my antibiotics tests and REFUSE to take more!) I’m done . I want to sleep. I want to rest. I want to relax.

While I wait for that opportunity. I’ll rejoice in having hung half the laundry. It could have been none of it. I’ll be glad I did something educational with my talking children who do engage with me. I will rejoice over how once during a very long puzzle play, my non talking angel told me “two!” as she put the number 2 in the correct slot. I’ll be happy in how she now does turn the pieces around, only giving up a few times and asking me (Pulling my hand while holding the piece and directing me to the right hole!!)

I can not thank God for our challenges as they are just too overwhelming. But I’ll thank Him for other things. I hope He sees the above paragraph because I’m too sad to talk ‘happy’ right now. Maybe later 😅

And He won’t mind waiting.

It Gets Even Better!

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Man, specialists are BUSY!

The hand specialist can see me about my finger- On February 20th! Not sure what I’ll do if the pain gets worse before then. Not doing the GP thing for a third time for a fourth round of antibiotics, that’s for sure!

PS. I changed number. Those who had my old one, please mail me and I’ll send you my new one. Not all were saved as contacts.

How to Get Onto the Cancelations List-TMI warning

Grace by any other name1 Comment

Speak your thoughts out loud instead of just thinking it! That’s how to get on.

I am struggling scarily now. As predicted, the stricture (narrowing) has returned to my urethra. I spend so long trying to PUSH urine out that my feet both become numb and the pain when I have to get up and use them is horrendous. I almost cried out to my family to try rub some life into my feet earlier on today. It’s so bad, the struggle, how long it takes me to get just a few drops out, that the other night I suddenly heard my husband shout, “Are you dead?”

Even as I type, I’m on the loo, having fallen asleep twice while in here with a full bladder that I cannot empty. It’s scary. And that’s why I’m blogging, to keep myself awake.

So, earlier today, I phoned the urologist’s rooms to make an appointment. I was given February 19th. I said out loud, “Well, there we go! He told me not to “wait so long next tome “but HE is so busy that there’s no choice!” She then quickly asked if she should make a note to call me if anyone cancels. Yes please! And I hope it won’t be on the day I and Mr son go to the pulmonologist. In the same way I suspect he has AS, I am not very sure if his lungs. If mine are partially collapsed and get sick the most when we catch a virus, what if that’s why he is always the worst of the children? Why does his chest take the longest to heal? And what about his allergies? It’s time to find out exactly what he’s allergic to and get the perfect prescription for him. Currently he’s using Allergex tablets.., I was on them till the pulmonologist moved me to mometasone nasal spray. So who knows..?

In the meantime, I think back to the first time I got this stupid urethral stricture. To when my legs became so numb that I couldn’t feel my feet at all why I stood up and feared I’d fall. I truly couldn’t feel the floor. Stupid me thought my bladder prolapse had gotten worse. Haha. Wrong!

I feel like my body is conspiring against me. And my questions about the urethra is- WHY? What’s causing this? And what will the long term plan be? I can’t keep having procedures under anesthesia every two months. I had the surgery on November 15. Symptoms began in December.

And here I sit, scared. This will set my kidneys backwards. What if I end up totally unable to urinate before Feb 19’s appointment that will only set up a date for the actual procedure to help me? I’m terrified of self catheterisation.

All this, the pain, the struggles, the fatigue..to think (More disease, different disease..)it can get worse is horrifying.

Why? Why is my urethra being strangled? Tingling has begun in my feet and is traveling up to my ankle even though I stood up for a while. Undignified, this blog post. But so is disease-undignified.

And scary.

And each time I stand up, I get upset ‘cos that means the urine isn’t being forced down. I feel like when you’re giving birth and the baby’s head slips back upwards again. But more helpless. At least in labour there’s an eventually going to be a forceps or an emergency c- section. Here it’s me alone in the toilet at 23:24. No catheter in site.

I hope tomorrow will be better.

And no, no change in my finger. Tomorrow is the last day of the third antibiotic for it.

Fun times!

I’m giving up. I’m going to try sleep knowing I have urine in my bladder that I couldn’t get out. I have four more tablets given by the urologist post surgery to help flow of urine. Time to use them. Then what?

Sorry for the TMI. But I will not gloss over my suffering. And I can’t be the only one in the whole world going through this right now. Maybe they’ll find this piece and know they aren’t exaggerating.🤷🏽‍♀️

I’ll Thank Him ANYWAY

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Wow, wow, wow. After a terrible night where my elbow (the one that was operated on ) was keeping me up, today took me back to 2011. The pain is low, where my coccyx is. And it has not reduced in intensity no matter which tablets I’ve taken. I just want to CRY. Or kick. Or scream!

This is nonsense! Deep ache going down my leg. It’s like someone is drilling into my back, and I don’t know why it’s so bad! I didn’t overdo anything yesterday. I didn’t sweep anywhere today. I didn’t bend into a trolley like I do sometimes when Mr doesn’t do the grocery shopping with me. I didn’t do much of a workout, only 15 minutes…I didn’t even wash dishes- I stacked the dishwasher. Ok, I guess THAT bending might not have helped. But it shouldn’t be like that! It shouldn’t be like this!!!! Life is not meant to be about levels of pain. It should be pain free completely.

I read something shared by one of the Associations. I can’t recall if it was the British AS one or the other one called something like ‘Autoimmune inflammatory Arthritis society,” that covers all the autoimmune inflammatory arthritis types out there, but anyway, the article said that scientists had found that unlike rheumatoid arthritis where it’s the joint that’s inflamed, for AS, it’s the bone, not the joint. No duh!! We feel it throughout, it’s not only in the joint! I could have told them that for free. But I felt validated too. Because every time I tried to seek help and they’d try tell me it’s muscle not bone, I’d tell them that to ME it feels like my bone. They would try poke my JOINTS in my between my spinal vertebrae even up to my middle back area (as opposed to down in my my SI joints where I said the pain was!) and of course I didn’t feel much there back in 2011-2015!

What do I with all this? The excruciating pain? The fatigue that was so evident that Mr felt sorry for me, telling me at midday that I look “so tired, shame!” What do I do when I feel extremely alone, nauseated from the pain tablets and helpless?

I thank God anyway. He must be doing SOMETHING with all this suffering. It can’t be for nothing. It’s been decades and it’s relentless. He MUST be preparing something stupendous and amazing for me. I know He will wipe the tears away, I know He will be excited to give me a new body. I know He sees my pain and hates that I’m going through it. And I know He loves that I lean on Him anyway. Even though He isn’t healing me.

Even though He isn’t healing me.

God isn’t a fairy godmother like I thought when I was a child and expected Him to work miracles for me. He isn’t magical. He doesn’t just do things for the sake of just doing them. He doesn’t NEED to perform a miracle in order for me to believe in Him, trust Him and love Him like He has to for some doubters. So..Why SHOULD He heal me when I don’t need to be well in order to glorify Him?

I can ‘live’ for God even when I feel like death would be preferable. I can show His character to every radiographer. To every doctor…The GP just had this look of awe on Friday as he heard about my life- he’d wanted to write me a sick note to be off work for the finger, not my bones. Like he was seeing what the friend of an acquaintance saw in me, like I’m an angel. (Not that I FEEL like one.)

God made me to glorify Him in the pain. And I can do THAT perfectly. I can smile at my children, sympathize when they spin and smash into the TV stand, getting a bloody lip. I can praise my teen daughter for giving away a whole box of expensive, fancy biscuits (she’d bought for herself) to a beggar on the street whose board claimed he had no food at home. I can be a present mom precisely because I know God is present for me too.

I’ve been studying the book of Job. I always study the Bible from the start to the end. I don’t do thematic study except for when it comes to Daniel and Revelation where I compare similar themes. This month more than ever, I felt Job. When his friends hurl accusation after accusation, he can confidently tell them he KNOWS God is not punishing Him for something because he has done nothing wrong, and done everything right.

And so do I.

I got sick from infancy. I did nothing wrong. And I aim to do everything right. Unlike some accusations hurled at me over the years, I DO have faith. Faith that God knows best. Unlike some accusations, I know I will not be miraculously healed by seeing some weird guy who claims to fly to Russia in his head! I know my healing will be when God comes. After all, I’ve heard of some AS patients going into remission. But not healed. Why should I think I deserve what they don’t have? I know of too many AS patients who have died due to it. Why should I live? I’m not any better or more worthy than they were.

And that’s ok. I’ll thank Him anyway. I’ll praise Him for the good and the bad. I’ll thank Him for the little milestones. Like how my non-talking twin was terribly afraid of dolls for AGES! And now suddenly has been taking her big sister’s baby girl from her room. I will tell you that I left the shops extremely sore but happy that I found two brown babies for the twins so the one stop stealing her big sister’s baby, and so the other stops crying that she too doesn’t have one in HER hand.

My baby girl isn’t scared of dolls anymore!! I’ll thank Him. Now and forever more.

Toxic Parents?

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I have seen this topic on YT where people or psychologists etc speak about toxic parents, narc parents…I came across a concept I shared with someone who because they’d never lived it, it didn’t even merit a comment. Yet is something extremely sad.

Losing a mother who didn’t love you.

I am grieving not the loss of someone who supported me, encouraged me, cared about me, called me to ask how I am, I grieve the fact that I will never, ever, experience that. Ever.

I come across memes (always did) about being grateful for mothers because they are our biggest cheerleaders, will fight for us… I stop reading. I stop reading because it is so untrue that it hurts. What 42 year old woman with a living mother drives home from a medical appointment crying wishing she had a mom? One whose mother doesn’t know how to be one.

Some people grieve their deceased moms terribly because they’ve left a huge hole in their lives. I have an acquaintance whose mom died over a decade ago I think, yet the pain is so fresh and awful even today. When she first told me how much it hurts to not have a mother, I naively told myself that the positive in not having a loving mother is that I wouldn’t feel such pain at her death.

It’s not actually true.

It’s still horrible.

Listening to the lies at the funeral was one of the worst things. I knew I hadn’t wanted to be there! Standing there next to my lying sister was HORRIBLE. During the week, she had sent through what she had wanted to read out as a “children’s tribute.” I told her point blank that it’s a lie. I told her should say “me, I” instead of using “we/our.”

She didn’t listen to me.

“Our mother loved us very much. We are what we are today because of her. She supported us…”Me are what we are because of her…” VOMIT! LIES! I had wept when her coffin arrived at home. My dear sister-who stole from her till her dying day- was busy primping and preening while the body arrived. Some friend of hers was putting make up on her much as a bride gets made up (Well, the bride who wears make up. I don’t.) She was naked under a towel- I assume so that her evening gown type dress didn’t get make up on it. The very picture of deep grief.🙄

She came up with some tears after lying about my mother’s final evening. I can bet anyone a million Rand that my mother was NOT dancing and singing to music by my sister’s singing group. I don’t even know that she was even home that evening. (She seldom is. Ask social workers currently involved. Yes, this year I’m telling all the truth.)

I was so angry at her lies about mom supporting us. Supporting where when she called me “a waste?” When she told me I was “lazy” for being my children’s teacher and my home’s domestic worker and children’s nurse? When she was ungrateful for food bought with our own money, busy telling her niece that we didn’t buy her meat when she had enough money to buy her own meat? Support my foot! Our singing friend had said that if we broke down, she too would break down and then she wouldn’t be able to sing. Well, the lies made sure I felt no grief. I definitely didn’t break down into tears. And I stupidly hadn’t fully realised how bad my sister was. When she broke down as we sang, I kissed her. I thought she had a heart.

Weeks later while she was out having fun, paramedics arrived at my dad’s house- where she lives. She had made a false call, stating that he was frothing and foaming at the mouth and was unconscious. She wasn’t even home. The neighbours had seen the ambulance arriving and had rushed over in a panic. My VERY WELL father was nicely seated in the house. He told the paramedics, “She took my bank card and was meant to buy grocery. She stole R5000. She hasn’t been back, she probably called you so you would take me to hospital so she can be free and not care for me.”

I kissed someone who could do THAT to their recently widowed father. Someone who helped get rid of three workers we hired to do her job as a young, able-bodied adult child living in her parents’ house, eating her sister’s food and using her electricity.

This post is going to be the start of my dealing with my life as the child and sibling of narcissistic people. I hope that in the same way I felt “seen” when I read others’ posts, my post will validate someone else suffering in silence and hurt . Only last week did I state to a friend, and then my cousin also state to ME , that I was not only abused, but am being abused today- by the very same father who we tried to get help for and were still feeding and giving electricity to despite him being able to afford it. This wasn’t only Black Tax, this was narc abuse. And I am trying to now come to terms with that. With what it did to me. What it has allowed others to do to me. And the fact that I was loved as long as I lived by their rules. But now that I’m an adult, that love was found to be conditional.

I didn’t ever have a loving mother. But my father is not loving either. Ask me how many times he has phoned in the last five years to purely ask how I am. Ask how many times he has called me asking me to phone my sister to ask where she is so she can go back home and care for the parents she tells everybody she is caring for. Ask me how many times he phoned me telling me I must buy more than what I had already bought him. Ask me if he at least tried to remember any of my chidlren’s birthdays, and I’ll tell you how he often tells us to remember my narc sister’s child’s birthday.

It all hurt. I have a relative who hated my mother so much that they said I had to now work on the trauma of her hating me. While I was still in touch with my father whose final phone call on Dec 31,2023 to me was to tell me my children had stolen his cellphone.

As my daughter said, “Grandpa knows how many thousands we spend on him every month. Over ten years of those thousands. If we wanted a phone, you’d have bought one for us yourself. We have money.”

I’ll elaborate on this later when I explain why I’ve gone no contact with him and my sister. A sister who stole so many of my mother’s phones that my mother in law stopped sending replacements.

I can’t heal while wounds are still being created.

And neither can you if you came here as the adult child of a toxic parent. You can merely survive. And survive I did. Able to love others. Never emotionally stunted. Able to be empathetic. Able to give my heart DESPITE, not because of her…I am who I am because that is my nature. (When I was a teen, my GP became exasperated with me for caring about a family at church so much that I got tension headaches and a huge IBS flare up.)

I am what I am, because God is my Father.

I know our experiences will be different, but the pain caused is the same. And may we who are believers find healing in Him Whose name we bear. Who is proud of us for following Him. Who loves us for obeying Him. (My mother criticized my decision to be modest over and over and even mocked friends who visited them in my absence when they heard my father was sick, telling they were dressed like me.)

I grieve what a mother should have been to me, and I rejoice in what my children think of me. I pray they always view me the way they do today- fair, not harsh, caring, gentle, very patient…I’ve certainly never whipped them with a cane as my father did, nor threw anything at them that took the breath out their lungs and caused them to wheeze for air. I will never have a mother who is proud of me for living right. But I will be a mother proud of every good thing my children do.